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He doesn't have a cowboy hat.
He says that he might have boots.
I wonder if he has chaps.
That's my question.
Here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.
You know, I just, I haven't done enough shopping here in the Dallas Metroplex to go looking for chaps, so.
that I've got a little time yet to work on that.
Anyway, thank you, Parker Olson, producing things in Madison, I normally say down in Madison, but up in Madison from where we are in Texas this week on the road.
But nice to have you along for more every year listing across the civic media radio network.
And coming up this hour, we are minutes away from hearing from Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom and the below the Beltway newsletter, the latest about the government shutdown and more.
Happening in the nation's capital then at the bottom of the hour we will be joined by Dan Schaefer From the recombobulation area to talk about state capital matters tomorrow on the program We will have Chuck Collins from patriotic millionaires coming in and talking about wealth inequality in this country
And on Thursday, we will have Congressman Mark Pocan joining us to tell us his perspective and the things that he's been doing this week, which includes another round of town halls in the third congressional district.
You may say, but wait.
Mark Pokan is not from the third congressional district.
He's in the second congressional district.
That is true.
That checks out.
But the guy in the third congressional district, Derek Van Orden, does not feel like hearing from his constituents in a public town hall setting about the government shutdown and the massive cuts to healthcare that are causing it.
So Congressman Pokan is helping provide some representation to the constituents there.
And so we'll talk to him more on Thursday morning about what is happening.
need to be sure you join us then.
But for the latest on what is happening in the nation's capital right now, let's head over and visit with Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom.
He also has the below the Beltway newsletter that you can subscribe to at beltway.news or head over to couriernewsroom.com to learn much more.
Cam, good morning.
How
are you?
Good morning.
I am doing all right, doing all right.
You know, it's a little bit slower here of the last couple of days.
We got people on furlough, people worried if they're going to get laid off, and a lot of people are just waiting for the government to reopen.
Yeah, and the chatter, I guess you could call it, is that there are plenty of Republicans, members of Congress, who pretty much
understand how a lot of us think this is going to end with eventually restoring some of the cuts either to Medicaid or to affordable Care Act subsidies or both.
And that's the only way that they're going to get democratic votes, which would end the shutdown.
Now, clearly, not every Republican feels like that.
And the president certainly is trying to inflict maximum pain in the meantime.
But is it
Is it just that everybody feels like we're in a holding pattern until people feel like the time is right to actually start negotiating again?
Well, it's almost as if, well, not almost.
We are in a forced holding pattern.
Typically what would happen during this negotiation process, and I'm sure anyone could...
apply this to their regular life, is that when you're trying to reach a compromise, the way that you do that is you talk with the people you're trying to compromise with and reach an agreement.
And normally during leading up to government shutdown or budget talks, that's what happens.
But this time around, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in order to avoid negotiation and compromise at all costs, he has sent every House Republican back home to their district.
And just like,
Representative Van Orden, like you were talking about, he's instructed them not to hold town halls, not to meet with constituents, not to hold fundraisers, not to do anything.
Basically, just hole up or hide out.
in the hopes that Democrats will cave and give Republicans everything they want without making any compromise.
So in other words, vacation.
They are getting taxpayer funded vacations this week, which Van Orden is now getting for a third week, along with other Republican members of Congress.
And that's really been the main working mode of the Speaker of the House is to avoid conflicts by sending the members
home and doing no work whatsoever.
But the other thing that Speaker Johnson is doing that I know people continue to point out on social media.
And, you know, my words not yours, but is just flat out lying about, you know, the cause of the shutdown and also the talking points behind this again, clinging to the talking point that the
you know, the massive cuts to healthcare are somehow only going to affect people who otherwise wouldn't be eligible for healthcare, undocumented immigrants, you know, the super wealthy, things like that.
Nothing that's in keeping with what, you know, the Trump Republican mega bill has actually done to the future of healthcare in this country.
Yeah, well, and that's the thing about this lie that they're trying to propagate is that it's easily disproven.
because it's not as if Democrats are asking for universal health care, unfortunately, or anything to change or alter the health care system or laws that we have.
It's just to keep the laws that we already had.
And anyone who works in health care or is associated with it in any form knows who has had access to health insurance, who is covered by federal.
health laws and who isn't and it's not the people that speaker johnson and president trump say it is and so
just making stuff up and hoping that people believe it.
It may work for a small percentage of the population who wants to believe it anyway, but most people know that that's not the case and they just want the healthcare that we were already promised.
Right.
I mean, of course it works to your base.
They are your base.
They, you know, lap this stuff up.
But when you're trying to appeal to moderate voters, if you're trying to appeal to moderate voters, you know, inflicting pain through a shutdown,
doesn't help, nor do the what I considered the distractions, like sending troops into the streets of American cities or maybe playing footsie with martial law is is a better way of putting it.
And there continue to beat these court battles about whether the president can unilaterally send federal troops into places like Oregon and Chicago, and elsewhere.
What's the the latest that people are talking about there in DC?
Yeah, well,
I mean people don't like it.
They don't like I mean the representatives I've talked to in Illinois and Oregon They and their voters are you know, this should be obvious but are very against the idea of active military troops being in their cities and and Policing civilians
I'm speaking with Representative Maxine Dexter later today who says that, one, they want to make sure that troops don't come into Portland.
It's just like any other city in any other state.
You know, things are operating normally.
There might be a couple scuffles here and there, but Portland isn't the war zone that the President of the United States says it is, and they don't need troops there.
And his insistence on
militarizing our cities is only strengthening their resolve to not compromise because when you
compromise even on budget stuff.
In essence, you're compromising with an administration that's okay sending military against regular citizens.
Yeah, we're talking to Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom.
He authors the Below the Beltway newsletter.
You can sign up for that over at beltway.news or couriernewsroom.com to get all of his latest dispatches from Capitol Hill.
Colored this as a distraction obviously the one that hasn't been talked about lately would be the Epstein files But again, I notice you know through social media more so than the broadcast networks That there are still people that haven't taken their eye off of that ball that again as if we're talking just about moderate voters or swing voters
The more that they know or the more that they're reminded that somebody is sitting on these files and denying justice for all these victims You know it resonates with them and I don't doubt that the Trump administration is well aware of that as well Doing everything possible that that the name Jeffrey Epstein doesn't come up in news coverage But you know other people haven't
forgotten no well in
Despite his insistence that everybody forget the the president of the United States hasn't either and he's instructed his I guess accolades his sycophants in Congress to avoid anything related to Epstein at all costs It which is pretty infuriating with everyone who isn't implicated in the Epstein files, which is almost everyone except for the rich and powerful and It's even gotten to the extent where
certain members of Congress, mostly Democrats, or mostly Democratic members, have made headway.
They've been able to get access to certain documents, certain financial records.
I've been following the financial records of Jeffrey Epstein that the Treasury holds, and they were able, they were finally able to
give these records to an oversight committee in Congress, the House Oversight Committee.
Just hours after the House received them, Speaker Johnson shut down the House, told everyone to go home, and left town.
Stopping that investigation in its tracks until the House reopens, and also denying an elected member of Congress their seat.
Adelita Grajava in Arizona, she was elected
in mid-September in a special election.
And because the House left, they have not seated her.
And she, one, is duly elected, and two, is a pivotal vote in releasing some of these records to the public.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
We have we have not discussed that at all that since she won that special election in Arizona.
The Speaker Johnson has refused to, you know, have her sworn in.
She would represent the 218th vote for a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
And again, if this were a Republican winning a special election, you would not see this kind of a delay.
Speaking of delays, we talked a little bit ago about transportation secretary
Secretary Sean Duffy talking about how air travel is probably going to start to see some delays.
Air traffic controllers, TSA workers, they're not getting paid.
They're still expected to work.
It was those mounting air delays that actually put pressure on Trump to end the government shutdown from back in 2018.
I have a feeling the chatter is the same out there this time around that it might be the real impact of travel delays that helps force the hand of people in Washington.
Yeah, well if you think about it air traffic controllers people who are federally required to be on their job are in one of the most stressful positions That you can have it's a really you know, it's a tough job.
It's a lot of stress It's hard when you're getting paid But when you add on to that the fact that people in a couple weeks aren't gonna get their paycheck They're gonna have to choose what bills they can pay they may have to
Skip on meals.
You know, I mean, I know me personally.
I can only I can only last so long without a paycheck I think that kind of goes across the board and when people in these stressful positions who control our travel are going to hit that point is right around the holidays, you know, Thanksgiving's just around the corner and with with
them out of their job or having to take sick days or take time off, that's going to severely reduce everyone's ability to travel.
So, you know, people aren't going to get home to their families.
You know, military aren't going to be able to travel back as easily.
It's just going to kind of be a mess.
it is but the shutdown does give cam stevenson more time to catch up on his bad bunny and taylor swift listening and in between all of that he writes below the beltway head over to courier newsroom.com or beltway.news to learn more cam always appreciate the weekly updates thank you very much hope you have a great day
Thank you.
You too, Pat.
Enjoy Texas.
Thank you very much.
Trying to do just that.
And we'll be talking tomorrow in our homeroom segment about Texas education and the explosive growth of taxpayer-supported vouchers.
Kam and I have talked about that previously from an Arizona standpoint and how to stem that before it blows up the Wisconsin state budget as well.
All right, Dan Schaefer coming up in about 15 minutes here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
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North News Daily newsletter this week has an emphasis on Band of Books week and some of the virtual book clubs that are out there that put an emphasis on reading the kinds of things that other people don't think you should have the right to read.
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The Milwaukee Brewer Chicago Cubs game three of the National League
division series moves to Wrigley Field and that game will be held tomorrow afternoon.
First pitch a little after four o'clock, so the pregame will be at 3.30 on stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha Park Falls, and Hayward.
So if you're in those areas, tune in to your local favorite civic media station and listen on the radio instead of those national broadcasters who, I mean...
give the word generic a bad name, frankly, for the way that they've been covering things here so far.
And if you're following a badger football.
Keep in mind that the civic media radio network has some stations carrying the Badger football team and they will be in Iowa this coming Saturday late game coverage begins at 4pm on some stations where you can follow along and then the Packers are back in action coming up on Sunday night and then Parker we've gone so long without having to focus on the Packers.
I didn't even put in front of me who were playing next Sunday afternoon.
Who day the Bengals?
Oh yeah, that's right.
The Bengals are a very easy team to
Forget they
blend in with those tiger stripes, you know, you
can't see them.
When was the last time you thought of the Cincinnati Bengals as, you know, a massive Super Bowl threat?
Pretty recently.
Well,
if you're in the amp, see, you know,
well, okay.
Yeah, I'll give you that with my homes and all that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So okay.
So Cincinnati coming up.
And again, that's a late start 325 is the kickoff.
So pregame would be he said, quickly looking for his notes that Luke Mathers gives us every single day.
And so you'd think I'd have that right at my fingertips.
But no, instead, it is a one o'clock pregame start on Sunday for the Packers at Cincinnati to take on the Bengals.
You know, it's been a while since we've had more than like two noon games in a row.
I think
we've
won this
year.
Yeah.
Well, that is one of the side effects of being a good team.
You know, there are some teams you never hear of and they play every Sunday at noon.
And, you know, the college team plays every Saturday at 11 because that's just where you are in genericville, you know.
But we get we get the prime time games.
We get we get the reasons why we sound a little punchy sometimes in the morning because people like Parker stayed up for the entire Brewer's game last night.
Yes.
Yes.
The entire thing.
The entire thing.
Even when the game was well in hand.
Yeah.
Well, you never know.
I know.
You never know.
I worry about things.
You do worry.
You spend a lot of time worrying about this stuff.
Did you catch then because we had to wait on the TV networks, we had to wait for the Phillies Dodgers game to finish.
So were you watching that as it as it wrapped up as the Phillies tried to come back in the bottom of the ninth?
I switched
over.
So I saw I think I saw first pitch of the burrow game.
OK, so I don't remember what the Phillies had already scored.
The
Phil, well, they were down for one heading into the bottom of the ninth they brought in this relief pitcher Blake Trinen who just frankly just not have a good reputation.
And yeah, he probably I think it was a walk a hit in a home run or something like that.
You know, or a walk in a home run.
Anyway, they scored and brought it to four to three.
And we're threatening in the bottom of the ninth.
Yeah, but instead that the Dodgers go up to nothing in that series.
So
If these things hold, it would be the Brewers versus the Dodgers and the National League Championship Series.
And again, I'm not trying to get ahead of myself here.
I'm just saying if current trends hold, we get to do deja vu for 2018 all over again.
Hopefully with a better outcome.
Hopefully with a better game seven.
Hopefully with a much better clinching a clinching game.
is what we'd really like to see this time around in that.
So again, first things first, we got to take care of the Cubs tomorrow in Wrigley.
And so catch that game on the Civic Media radio network.
All right, when Dan Shavers here, we'll be talking about several different things that are happening at the state Capitol.
So one more thing out of DC that we didn't have enough time to cover with Cam Stephenson just now.
And that would be about the Trump trade war, and the bailouts that apparently are looming out there.
The story in the New York Times begins this way.
It says punishing Chinese tariffs that prompt painful retaliation.
American farmers on the brink of bankruptcy.
a multi-billion dollar bailout to keep farmers afloat.
It's 2018 all over again.
See, it's not just the purrs and the dodgers.
It's the Trump shutdown.
It's 2018 all over again as the Trump administration prepares to address the same policy crisis that it faced seven years ago.
I would edit that to say that it created seven years ago when Trump imposed stiff tariffs on Chinese imports had to shield the American farmers from the fallout of his trade war.
And of course, that did happen because with China not buying US farm products, farmers did not have revenue coming in and faced potential bankruptcy.
That last time around, the bailout totaled just about $20 billion.
This time around, Republican lawmakers are estimating that farmers could need as much as $50 billion in economic support.
Apparently that big of a price tag hasn't gotten to the president yet because in this New York Times article, when asked about it, all Trump said at the White House yesterday was quote, I'm going to do some farm stuff this week.
So we'll we'll see what exactly that farm stuff turns out to be.
But you know, American farmers feed the world.
They feed the world because of their exports.
But those exports have to have a market.
We're not doing it all out of charity.
and somebody has taken those markets away.
And that is going to be leading to the need for, apparently, this bailout that's going to blow the national debt even higher.
So that's the some stuff we're expecting to see from the president.
We'll monitor when it comes out and what the details are and pass that along here.
But first, of course, we've got to talk about what's happening out in Madison and across the Wisconsin political scene.
And for that, we have Dan Schaefer from the Reconbobulation Area and Civic Media's political editor coming up next.
I'm Pat Quitelow.
This is the Civic
Media Radio Network.
All right, this is first and foremost a radio show and we appreciate everybody who listens across the civic media radio network.
But of course, you can catch us as a podcast head over to Spotify and follow the show or Apple wherever you get your podcast.
But we are also a video product, at least for folks who watch us on YouTube or Facebook.
And that would include people like Tony
who sends in a note on YouTube, Pat, why did you move the logo to the top left?
It covers your face in the three person view.
And he's absolutely right.
I moved that the other day and I forgot to move it back.
So for the video audience, I'm going to press this little button here and boom, there it is.
Backward.
I know it did that.
That scare you a little bit.
A little bit.
Well, you move fast.
The magic of computers and video and everything.
But what say we get back to making this a radio show and Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation Area and Civic Media's political editor joins us now.
Dan, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning, Pat.
Doing well.
Always wonderful to join you here on Mornings with Pat Crichtlow.
Also, you know, feeling good today after a brewer's win.
You have to be.
Absolutely.
I mean...
I noted that on Saturday, you know, we went down by home run in the top of the first and Sherry said to me, don't worry.
They always feel like they have to come back from behind.
They have to be chasing something.
Last night, three run home run in the top of the first.
And again, Sherry's like, not worried.
They need to chase something.
Sure enough, they did.
You know, they chased it down with a three run homer in the bottom of the first inning from Andrew Vaughn.
It only got more exciting from there.
It was great to see Jackson, Cheerio not be as
banged up as well feared that he would be so it was just not
just not banged up delivering that through run homer dead center that was that was incredible
which he didn't wait too late to do he didn't where I could go to bed at a decent hour and go all right we're good if we screw this up I don't want to see it so I would be asleep and just looking at looking at my phone at 4am was nice to look at my phone at 4am and see that you know everything held just fine so we've got game three and the potential for a sweep tomorrow
afternoon at Wrigley Field.
And I'll say again, Dan, I do not get tired of the cutaways to Craig Council and the dugout.
Oh, those are real fun, aren't they?
They are
real fun.
They are nice.
Look, before we get to the politics as well, you are also the chief Bucks fan of the Civic Media radio network.
And the first, is it the exhibition season starting here?
Yeah, they had their first preseason game last night.
Oh, it was last night, all right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I didn't catch that one because I was a little focused on the Brewers.
But yeah, they had their first game against Miami last night.
So we are not far away from from Bucks basketball.
It always creeps up on you because October is such a busy sports month with the baseball playoffs with
NFL, college
football, everything else.
Like all of a sudden it's like, whoa, we've got basketball in a couple of weeks here.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, for some people, I've
seen so many season opener NBA commercials over the past week.
And if every one of them are gonna have the same feeling like I'll catch in March.
Okay, when March and
the sets, you know, but but fans like you, they're there all the time.
And they need you.
God, God love you for it.
Because those are the ones where when they miss the playoffs by like one game, you'll be the one that points to a game in October and go see that's
right.
That's right.
If you know, I'll be I'll be
complaining about that one loss in Charlotte in November or whatever it
is.
Well, turning to politics here, I opened up the show early this morning, talking about three different instances where they fall under the umbrella of people attacking free and fair elections in this country.
You have a group of eight Republicans in the State Assembly introducing a new bill that would get rid of
absentee ballot drop boxes.
Just get rid of the drop boxes all together.
And they were echoing some of the same, you know, mistaken talking points of Donald Trump.
You have a Waukesha County judge that's telling the Wisconsin Elections Commission, they have to go through this massive change to check citizenship status on 3.8 million voters.
And you have Ron Johnson whining that he's discovered that the FBI was looking at his phone records
in and around the time that he was trying to undermine the 2000 election.
And then I throw all three of those at you to take your pick.
But again, just to put the umbrella out there that it still strikes me so odd that there is a political party, a political class in this country that wants to make it harder to vote, I guess, because they can't win on their ideas.
But it just, I just
can't believe the way they just keep coming back and attacking elections.
Well, yeah, you're right to point that out.
And when you zoom out and you see that all of these different things that Republicans are doing to attack legal voting, to limit legal voting, this is just not a normal practice from a...
mainstream political party in a democracy.
We should want more people participating in the process.
We should want more people to have different options for voting.
I think a big reason to have ballot drop boxes is so people who might be people with disabilities, older folks, just give more options for people to be able to participate in the democratic process.
And I think so much of what Republicans have done on this over the years have just really been driven by conspiracy.
And even going back to the voter ID push from a decade ago, that might be a little bit more common practice now, but it was never rooted in any actual data saying that there was anything nefarious going on with elections.
Same thing with Dropboxes now, same thing with all of the nonsense about finding undocumented immigrants on the voter rolls or what have you.
So much of this is just absolute nonsense.
But it has really been.
a cornerstone policy for the Republican Party in so many different ways.
And we're seeing that play out over and over again.
And I think in Wisconsin, you know, we talked to, I think it was last week or, you know, we've talked on various shows across the civic media network about these pushes from, you know, in part from State Representative Scott Krug, who was part of the elections committee to find some sort of pathway forward to, you know, allow for the early count for absentee ballots.
to be counted in time and also to have some sort of measures on Dropboxes.
I didn't really agree with what he was doing.
But then you have the rest of his caucus saying coming out and not just saying that we should add different security measures to Dropboxes or what have you that he proposed.
They're saying, yeah, we just want to get rid of these entirely.
And I guess that's the challenge.
If you're a Republican wanting to get things done on election matters these days, you have to deal with this wing of your party that has been kind of overtaken by these.
election integrity conspiracy theorists.
Yes.
And to do that, you have to keep in mind that there was before Trump and after Trump.
Now, after Trump is where you get the dropbox issue.
Prior to Trump using that as a crutch to protest the election results of 2020, Republicans as much as Democrats were supportive of dropboxes and of mail-in absentee voting.
Before Trump,
their main boogeyman was voter ID.
And now you've got this judge in Waukesha County kind of reinforcing this notion that we need to check citizenship status.
Again, even though there is no information, no evidence of any kind of
massive voting by undocumented immigrants because why would they risk deportation, you know, for getting caught.
So in my mind, and this is simply my opinion that this is very thinly veiled, you know, racial profiling that you want.
If you want voter ID, if you're all antsy to check citizen status when there is no problem with it.
So, you know,
That was the before Trump status.
Now you've got the after Trump or we're buying into the drop boxes.
And then the part that's right there in the juicy middle, the 2020 attempt to undermine the election is where you've got Ron Johnson now saying, I was being surveilled for being a Republican.
No, you weren't, you were being surveilled because you were entertaining every kind of conspiracy theory.
And as it turns out, you were this close to being a mule.
for fake electors ballots.
If only Mike Pence had gone along with the thing.
All three are disingenuous to some degree or another, Dan.
There's just nothing.
There's no there there.
You're absolutely right.
And I think the lack of accountability about 2020, about coming after the folks who fueled the insurrection and tried to overturn the election, the lack of accountability for that is, I still think, is opening doors for many of these same Republicans to fuel these types of nonsense.
I very much is fueling what Ron Johnson is going after right now.
But I think there is another aspect of this that is a little bit unexplored, which is that, as we saw in the last
election, the low propensity voters, so people who don't necessarily vote in every election might not vote in the midterms or local elections and what have you, might only vote in the presidential election, those voters swung really significantly towards Trump in the last election.
So Republicans are now, you know, if for so long it was Democrats who had done better with these lower propensity voters and it was all about
you know, trying to drive turnout and get more people to the polls, because if you get more people to the polls, typically they would vote Democratic.
Well, now that has shifted.
So I do wonder if some of these like attacks on legal voting, these limits on legal voting, are going to have a detrimental impact on Republicans that on their own voters, because you're going to have people in situations who, you know, might not be registered, might not have the right voter ID, might not have the right documents to get in place to vote in time.
And these people who might not vote in every election might
might only show up for certain things.
They might not have the same opportunity to show up and vote if you're continuing to limit legal options for people as well.
I think some of the high turnout that we saw connected to drop boxes, connected to having many different options to vote that allowed more people to vote and that many of those people did vote Republican.
And so I think that is it's also a misunderstanding.
And I think, you know, a decade ago when Republicans were going after various things to try and limit legal voting, Republicans were winning those lower turnout elections.
Now Democrats are dominating in those lower turnout elections.
And so I think Republicans might see some results from this and give themselves some pause and say, hey, wait a minute, we are blocking our own voters from going to the polls here by doing these these limitations on legal voting.
And so I think that's a factor to consider that we don't always talk about as much because I do think it matters with this political realignment that we're seeing.
Yeah, we're talking to Dan Schaefer, Civic Media's political editor, founder of the Recombobulation Area.
You can get his newsletter by signing up at therecombobulationarea.news.
It just seems, Dan, that for a party that
used to always love to talk about getting rid of red tape.
We always heard the term red tape or bureaucracy or whatever you want to call it, you know, over regulation.
But it appears that they have now learned to, you know, become the purveyors of that.
In other words,
We're not talking about Medicaid cuts so much as you're putting all this red tape extra red tape in front of people so that they're less likely to see if they qualify for Medicaid.
Similarly, whether it's a voter ID or having to put 24 hour webcams on a Dropbox and stream it through a municipal website.
Again, they're not saying well,
some are saying get rid of them entirely but a lot of them are just figuring out how do you put these barriers in place so that people won't do it and we go we didn't cut it we just were we're trying to keep things you know only the people who belong there when it's really again disingenuous to claim that.
Yeah, you're right.
They have really kind of wanted to bolster the they always talk about going after the administrative state.
You know, Republicans will talk about like you talked about the red tape to talk about going after the administrative state and wanting to gut that.
Well, but they're they're doing the opposite and creating administrative burdens for whether it's Medicaid, whether it's SNAP, whether it's the Affordable Care Act, creating all sorts of extra burdens, extra hurdles for people to go over so that only people who I guess
are good at paperwork, are going to be getting health benefits or getting food assistance or whatever it might be.
And I think we're seeing the same thing with elections, just creating extra hurdles for people.
And we should really be working to go in the opposite direction.
I think Democrats should be putting out the...
you know, election packages of their own that makes it easier for people to vote, makes automatic voter registration, takes, you know, different steps to bring more people into the process.
And I think that's what we need to be doing.
When we come back, we'll talk to Dan more about Tom Tiffany and scrubbing some stuff from his personal website.
What's up with that for the new candidate for governor?
We'll discuss that with Dan Shafer and talk about the government shutdown as well.
On the other side, I'm Pat Quitelow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Back now with Dan Schaeffer from the Reconpopulation area and to correct the record from the last segment, Tony puts up on YouTube.
Are you trying to start a fight with Luke about who is the bigger Bucks fan?
No, I'm not trying to start a fight like that at all.
It's it's clear that it's Dan.
There's really nothing to fight about it.
But if Luke wants to, I mean, Luke wears the biggest bucks cap that I've ever seen with that bill, you know, that you can land a Harrier jet on top of.
But I mean, he is a fan Dan, he's just not a Dan Schaefer level fan, I would argue.
Maybe if you lived in Milwaukee, it would be different.
Oh, I think you got to live
in Milwaukee,
right?
Yeah, there we go residency clause All right, man, there's game game on we're talking to Dan Schaefer about not just fandom but things that are happening in the political realm as well We will have we we never talk about appeals court judge races in in the state
But you're going to have to get used to that because we've got one who's retiring, Lisa Neubauer, former candidate for state Supreme Court.
We've got Maria Lazar, who is running for Supreme Court as a conservative.
You have Chris Taylor, appeals court judge running former Democratic assembly rep, so running from the liberal end of things.
And frankly, Dan,
If you think state Supreme Court races have gotten political, and they most certainly have, then it doesn't take much to predict that, yeah, we've got a big state Supreme Court race in April of next year, but our state appeals court races are getting increasingly political.
I would point to Maria Lazar, who knocked off an incumbent when she ran for appeals court, funded by some very, you know, high-dollar right-wing groups.
That's right.
And now she's and now she's running for Wisconsin Supreme Court and she's kind of using this language where she's saying, you know, she wants to be non-partisan wants to, you know, doesn't want to bring an ideological bent to the court or anything like that.
But it's just like one look at her background in any capacity.
You know, she was part of the, you know, Walker team, department of justice.
She was, you know, ran this campaign that she did a couple of years ago.
So why try to run a campaign for
state Supreme Court that is completely different from everything that's been in your record as a judge so far.
But I think, you know, we've seen some interesting, you know, she she launched her campaign last week.
And I think we're already seeing, you know, some of the movement that from that as well, the Wisconsin Democratic Party officially endorsed Chris Taylor in a press release yesterday.
So that's obviously going to, you know, kind of mirror what we've seen in the last couple
State Supreme Court elections where the State Democratic Party really gets behind a certain candidate, as we saw with Janet Protasewicz in 2023, as we saw with Susan Crawford earlier this year.
And now we're going, it looks like we're going to be seeing a similar playbook unfold here with Chris Taylor too.
So if it is Chris Taylor against Maria Lazar, considering that Taylor has
big war chest behind her with the fundraising that she's been able to do since she entered the race.
I believe it was Mayor June after the April spring election and then Lazar just announcing now after Rebecca Bradley kind of surprised some folks by saying that she was not going to run for another 10-year term.
I think you got to think the Liberal candidate here is the favorite going into that spring election next year.
Well, especially when you consider that the progressive or the Democratic candidate has won like 15 out of the last 18 statewide elections, which takes me to your point about Judge Lazar essentially trying to claim to be the independent.
Why don't you just run on who you are and what you have historically been?
that takes us to the Dan Bice story this morning out of the Journal Sentinel about Congressman and former State Senator Tom Tiffany from up in the Imanakwa area, essentially scrubbing his personal website, tomtiffany.com, from references about, you know, his fight against women's reproductive health rights, his, you know, stances on gun safety and all sorts of other things.
And you saw him try to have it
you know, both ways on the abortion issue in terms of an abortion ban when questioned when he first got into this race for governor.
So I guess for me, Dan, maybe for you as well, it's not the world's biggest surprise that at the moment, conservatives are not in a hurry to show, you know, the extreme sides of their positions when they're running for statewide office.
Oh, you know, that's that's certainly part of it But maybe Tom Tiffany just wants a little bit of a digital reset, you know wants a what doesn't want any maybe scrubbing all of his different Social media platforms from anything in the past.
Maybe you needed to learn something from what happened with Bill Barry and in
his
campaign as well So maybe he's just trying to make sure everything's taken care of and cleaned up Before he really you know becomes the emerges as the frontrunner in this race, which it does seem like
that's what's happening.
We saw a poll over the weekend, too, that showed Tiffany way out front of the Republican field, even with some people who have some statewide recognition, like Tim Michaels and Eric Havde, also in the poll.
But I think this is just what campaigns do now.
They've got to make sure all of their different websites are cleaned up.
And especially with Tiffany, he's not going to be able to hide his record on these types of things, on abortion rights, on gun rights, on these issues that a number of
Johnson Republicans during their time, you know, in the state Senate and in state assembly have been on the wrong side of a lot of 80, 20 issues under Robin Voss's leadership under the legislative Republican leadership over the past few years.
So, you know, he's not going to be able to run from that.
But, you know, maybe he's his campaign has a little things a little bit more in order than Mr. Barry instead.
I guess maybe start closer to the center before you make that drift off to the right.
And then finally, in terms of the government shutdown, it seems like the most visible, the most
part of it is Congressman Mark Polkan who will be on this show on Thursday morning and going to do some more events in Congressman Derek Van Orden's third district since Congressman Van Orden isn't doing those kinds of things.
Is there anything else that's topping that in terms of, you know, talking about the shutdown or is that really kind of the proxy for what's happening in DC?
I think it is, and I think this issue over the Affordable Care Act tax credits, I'm starting to see some real traction with this from Democrats here.
I think they have a winning issue on this that, you know, the polling is on their side.
I even saw Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet something yesterday in favor of the ACA tax credits.
And I think if you've got even Republican members saying like, hey, this is going to be really bad for people in my district.
might be worth holding out to get a win here.
Might be.
And then if Republicans go the other way, if they don't approve them, then, well, you've got an issue to run on.
That's right.
Sign up for Dan's newsletter at therecombobulationarea.news.
And of course, all he does is political editor for Civic Media at civicmedia.us.
Dan, thank you very much.
Have a great day.
Thanks, Pat.
Be well.
All right, and thanks to all of you for joining us here today as well.
We will be talking about what we can learn from here in Texas about the rapid explosive growth of the voucher school program and how to prevent that kind of disaster in Wisconsin.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
Have a great day.
See you tomorrow.
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