You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
Across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Gritlow, powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Gritlow.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you here Up North on this Tuesday morning, November 18th, 2025, 855-75 Civic.
That's our phone number.
Same number to send us a text message as well.
8-5-5-7-5 Civic or use that Civic Media app to call us, text us, or to send us a voicemail.
A little voice note that you can record.
And speaking of apps, that's our question for the day here as well, because we noticed that now Culver's is adding an app and a loyalty program, which is all fine and good.
Nothing against that.
But at what point?
Do people go, how many apps do I have on my phone at this point?
So we ask, how many apps do you have right now for food?
Do you have one that is your favorite?
You have one that is especially useful one that you stopped using because it wasn't working How many apps is enough or will they keep coming as long as you find them useful if you want to weigh in hop into the comment sections at YouTube Or Facebook where you can watch a video feed of this show through up north news or civic media Or of course again use that civic media app to call text or send us a voice note along the way.
All right camp Stevenson has been a very
busy bee for Courier Newsroom as our national political correspondent up there on Capitol Hill.
And his newsletter is below the belt way.
You can sign up at couriernewsroom.com.
But you should also head to couriernewsroom.com because of something Cam did, something he created, which takes us to today's House of Vote on the Epstein Files.
And Cam Stephenson joins us now from the nation's Capitol.
Cam, good morning.
How are you?
I am good.
Like you said, it's been busy, but I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me on.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
So on the Courier Newsroom website and at the below the Beltway newsletter, you see the headline that says, we created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein's estate.
And again, to make clear, this is what's been released.
There's still a whole lot that hasn't been released, but a lot has been released.
And Cam,
I love being your colleague, you know, I think the world of you.
I did not have you pegged as a computer scientist, but I know when it says we, I know it was you, you created a searchable database for these 20,000 Epstein files.
You been busy?
I have.
Yeah.
No, it's a, it was, it was an interesting evolution of a project because when I first heard that the house released these, these
emails and text messages between Epstein and all these different people.
I went and downloaded the raw files, which were terribly organized.
It was a few vaguely named folders with subfolders, and some of them just had PDFs that were screenshots of emails, and some of them had just very, it was impossible to find anything.
So I downloaded them all and I put them into a program, a tool that Google has created, Google Pinpoint, to create a repository, a searchable...
website where now anyone can type in Trump's name, Clinton's name, Obama's name, Bubba.
They can type in anything they want and it will show you every mention of these people.
It has political organizations.
It's very easy to use and the shocking thing was is it was the first one that people have been waiting years.
for anything from the Epstein files to come out.
And then we get this huge dump, and it's gatecapped by people who...
who are just putting out selective information.
And so this is really a way to democratize that information and give anyone the opportunity to search.
And people have been.
I've gotten hundreds of tips.
This thing's been used millions of times.
And I would encourage anyone who's curious to give it a scroll through.
Yeah, there have been some curious things that have come out already as people have started sifting through again, more than.
20,000 different items to see what's happening with the, you know, the life and times of that late sexual predator.
And so now will be this vote in the House of Representatives today, finally, in light of a discharge petition that now finally has enough signatures.
And I've mentioned a couple of times here that now that President Trump has flip-flopped again,
on the Epstein files and now says he'll sign this bill if it comes to him mandating his department of justice release the files.
It needs to be said he doesn't need a bill to come to him.
He can with a wave of his hand have these files released.
He doesn't need to wait for Congress to take a vote.
No, this is the one time where Trump instead of doing an executive order or just saying
you know by his decree so it shall be uh he's deciding to let congress do it um which i mean that's a whole other thing to unpack but uh but yeah it's it's i mean you know he changes his stance on things this has been
not releasing the Epson files has been the most consistent.
He's been on anything in a very long time.
Right.
And so him suddenly having an about phase and saying, no, yeah, let's get him out there, but let's let Congress do it.
Well, but that raises eyebrows for somebody like me who watched what he did in his first term with the Mueller report saying, oh, yeah, it's coming out.
But it was selectively released in the beginning to not show, you know, some of the contact with with Russian operatives so that when the whole thing came out,
later on, the narrative was already there that, you know, there was no collusion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm, I'm, I'm now when he suddenly does such an about face on releasing these, I'm starting to think, okay, does that mean he was able to do, and again, I don't like sounding like that, but I remember Trump's first term.
So needless to say, there are some folks very curious as to, to what degree will things be released?
Right.
Well, and that's the thing is if he ordered the Department of Justice to do it right now, he could have them release, you know, Epstein files version six that has, you know, so things selectively taken out and, you know, is heavily redacted.
Whereas Congress, they can require the Department of Justice to release the base raw files, you know, with.
you
know,
victims and that sort of thing, you know, private identity kept private.
And so I think long-term it's better if it comes from Congress, but either way, I think there's gonna be a lot of skepticism, which I think is very, it's also very helpful that we have these other documents independently from Epstein's estate, because then we can compare what's been released last week with what is in the files to see what Trump's Department of Justice has taken out.
We're talking to Cam Stevenson, Courier Newsroom's national political correspondent up on Capitol Hill, live from Washington DC.
And we're talking about a searchable database that Courier Newsroom has created with all of the 20,000 plus Epstein files that have been released so far.
You can also get it through Cam's newsletter below the Beltway, which you can sign up for at Beltway.News or again through CourierNewsroom.com.
But in terms of the vote today, Cam,
by Trump flip-flopping, it seems difficult for me to see how people are gonna vote no on this because they're no longer running cover for Trump, okay?
He's saying, he'll sign the bill if it comes through.
So, needless to say, I think people are curious about every Republican.
I'm certainly curious about Derek Van Orden and Tony Weed and Brian Stile and Tom Tiffany and the others from Wisconsin.
how they're going to go on this today, are they going to continue to claim, well, I didn't want to vote yes for a witch hunt, which would then have them going counter to what their president is giving them a pass on this.
So I just have the sense that you're going to have a busy afternoon finding some of the no votes and asking them, what's up with that?
Yeah, it's going to be a very interesting
vote result because we know they have the base amount of votes.
We also know that Speaker Mike Johnson has sent home his Republican caucus not once but twice this year.
They recessed early in the summer and then he sent everyone home so they couldn't even negotiate during the budget shutdown, mainly because the FCM files were on the cusp of being released.
And so now that-
The president has said, hey, let's get him out there.
I think we're going to see a ton of people change their mind and vote yes.
I think there's still going to be some holdouts.
Maybe they didn't get the memo.
Maybe their donors don't want them to release the files.
But I'm going to be curious to see what their justification is.
Cam Stevenson's here from Courier Newsroom live from Washington, DC on today's House vote to.
to force the release of more of the Epstein files.
There's another wrinkle that we haven't discussed much, and it deals not with the sexual crimes.
And again, we just don't know whose names are listed as doing what and, you know, due process, you know, is due for the alleged as well as for the victims.
But apart from the sexual crimes, just based on some of the emails that we've seen so far, Jeffrey Epstein really liked to talk about money laundering.
and ways that wealthy people would talk to him or with him about ways to shelter things from taxes or hide ownership of a company or a property or something like that.
And again, I don't know what's connected to Donald Trump or not, but it's another thing to be looking out for is if when these files are released, it's not just the sexual crimes, but there may be a lot of white collar crime that we learned from all these wealthy people who partied with Jeffrey Epstein.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
That's what Oregon Senator Ron Wyden's been investigating since 2022.
He has an investigation going on in the Finance Committee where they've been trying to get the financial records of Epstein because what they say in the emails, that could just be talk, but.
If there's a paper trail, it's in the US Treasury, it's held by banks, and it's something that can be provably traced back to anyone who is involved.
And the interesting thing about Epstein is that any money laundering or any tax evasion that he did does tie directly to his sex trafficking operation because that is what he used to fund those things.
And so I think that's why there's...
That's going to be an underlying issue as to why people might be against releasing the files Because they have wealthy donors who maybe they weren't maybe they didn't go to the island But they did evade a hundred million dollars in taxes and they don't want they don't want to have to pay that
Right.
Cam Stephenson here.
We're talking about the Epstein files and the one last potential roadblock, well, two of them actually, one is even if it passes the House, it's still got to go to the Senate.
And, you know, Senate Republicans aren't making any guarantees, you know, on a vote there.
But also there's this arrangement with President Trump.
Ordering the Attorney General of the United States essentially because she'll say sure yes, sir to investigate Democrats connections to Jeffrey Epstein Which is weird because he just said it was a hoax and yet if it's a hoax Why are we starting a new investigation cam?
Is it put possible that because of this new?
Investigation against Democrats that that's a reason to withhold files that might otherwise be released after today's vote
And that's that's definitely there's speculation that
the Department of Justice could say that.
They could say, well, now we have an ongoing investigation, so we can't release these files.
That's possible.
I think that that is a very short-sighted strategy, because even Trump supporters who want every Democrat in there to be pinned to the wall and thrown in jail for 100 million years, they still want-
the files.
They still want the access and withholding those documents, even if it's an attempt to give the people, his people, what they want, I don't think it's going to be well received at all.
in case you feel like I've heard all this before.
Yeah, it was Trump and his taxes.
Oh, I've got an ongoing audit.
The audit that never ends.
So again, Cam and Courier have created a searchable database with more than 20,000 Epstein files released so far.
Find a link at couriernewsroom.com or through Cam's newsletter below the Beltway at Beltway.News.
Cam, thanks again as always for all you do and we'll check in with you later on.
Awesome.
Thanks a lot, Pat.
All right.
No, thank you very much.
Have a great day.
Still ahead, we'll talk to Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation area about things happening at the Wisconsin political level.
From the heart of America's Up North Live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Nice to have you back at 822 here on a Tuesday morning.
I was looking to pull up a news story that I was going to read and Parker as I was pulling up the website, I got, I got the dreaded pop-up ad and the commercial was so loud.
I couldn't even hear that we were back from commercial break at that point.
Wow.
That's
impressive.
Places with the pre-roll are just, I mean, there's a special place in hell,
but anyway.
There is.
There's a couple of things.
couple of websites that I frequent that are awful.
Yeah.
So what I was looking for was information here about the Eau Claire school district.
They are getting set to host a little public information session called how to run for school board.
And so again, this isn't Eau Claire only, but I think it's great information.
And over here off the WEAU website, it says that two school board members will be hosting an informational session this evening from seven to eight at the school district's administration building 500 Main Street.
And so is anyone interested in learning more about how to become a candidate for the upcoming school board election next spring is welcome to attend.
And you can go to the Eau Claire school district website to learn more.
It's certainly something that we have talked a lot about here.
We talked to Brian Kennedy a few weeks back from the standpoint of municipal officers and the aid that they give to people who are considering running for, you know, city council.
town board, county board, things like that.
And this is the time to start thinking about it.
Because if you think, I might actually want to be on my local school board, city council, whatever the case may be, that election is next April.
And I'll get you the exact date here.
But the election is next April.
But that means that if there's a primary that is needed, it would be in February.
So the election will be April 7.
The primary
would be, I want to say February 10th, something like that.
But to then get on the ballot for those things, you have to get enough signatures on what's called a nominating petition.
And you can start collecting signatures on those nominating petitions sometime in early December.
So we're talking in the next couple of weeks here or so, and the deadline is sometime in early January, I believe.
We'll get all those exact dates and pass them along, but when I saw that the Eau Claire School District was holding this little informational session tonight, I thought that'd be a good time to get up on my soapbox and say, again, how wonderful it would be if you would consider running for office of some sort.
We talk a lot about members of Congress and the legislature and things like that.
Of course, they have their place.
But things don't get done locally unless you've got good people willing to run and serve for a time in a local government, city council, town board, county board, school board, things like that.
And so I would really encourage you to look into it, see if it's the right thing for you or maybe you think it's the right thing for somebody else and you want to learn more about it and maybe convince them to run and you can be their campaign manager because every good candidate at any level
Needs a good partner needs that campaign manager that keeps them focused.
Let's them know what tasks have to be done next and things like that So you should absolutely consider running for local office.
Let's check a little sports at 826 here because the the Bucks are a little concerned Milwaukee's Superstar forward Yanis on a Takumpo left Monday night's game with a left groin strain with no indication as to how long he will be sidelined the Milwaukee Bucks lost last night in Cleveland 118 to 106
They are back home on Thursday to take on the Philadelphia 76ers.
The Badger Men's basketball team, they're now 4-0 after taking care of the small school part of the schedule, beating up last night on Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville, final score 94-69.
Now the Badgers head on the road, the Badger Men will be playing some basketball Friday afternoon in Salt Lake City against BYU.
And then after that, they head down to San Diego for a tournament that begins on Thanksgiving Day.
Some of those games can be heard on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Check out the Civic Media website to learn more.
The Badger women's basketball team plays tomorrow at UIC in Chicago.
Let's update some of the national rankings for Badger sports.
You've got the Badger men's hockey team still ranked number seven in the country after last weekend split with Ohio State.
They next play at number one ranked Michigan State this Friday and Saturday.
The Badger women's hockey team is still the number one team in the country.
12 wins on the season, one loss, one tie.
They will host St.
Thomas on Thursday and Friday nights.
In division three women's hockey UW River Falls is still the nation's top ranked team.
They're four and 0 to start the season.
The Badger women's volleyball team rose a spot to number 10 in the national rankings after a pair of weekend victories and tomorrow they will host ninth ranked Purdue.
And of course, in football, you've got the Packers hosting the Vikings next Sunday at noon and then playing on Thanksgiving at noon in Detroit.
And again, to find out where you can hear that game on the Civic Media Radio Network, head to the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Same goes for the Badger football team, which hosts Illinois, come Saturday night.
All right, our question of the day was asking about apps and how many apps you've got, how many apps you used, do you find them useful?
And it's all popped up because Culver's is now launching a new nationwide loyalty program.
It just started.
It's called Delicious Rewards.
And you can earn points and unlock offers.
Kelly Arsenault writes about it in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Culver CEO, Julie Fusner says, I know we're a tad late to the game on this one talking about apps and loyalty programs.
But they're saying we built this one from the ground up so that we could reward guests with the things that they truly crave.
Now that it's finally here, we're confident our guests are going to love it.
Customers can earn or can join rather by downloading the Culver's app.
We're going to culvers.com slash earn EARN to earn points.
They scan their membership code in restaurant or share their phone number with a cashier.
It's getting more important to do that all the time because as I've learned the hard way, Parker, if I go to my local grocery store where I'm part of a gas rewards club and if I come home with groceries and I'm asked, did you remember to scan your gas card?
And I do not answer in the affirmative.
Rough night.
I get a look.
That only happens once.
You only have to have that happen once.
Dan Schaefer from the Reconvobulation Area joins us next.
I'm Pat Critello.
You're up north.
our question of the day on this Tuesday, how many apps do you have for food?
Got some good ones or bad ones to tell us about?
Can you have too many apps on your phone?
We say all this because Culver's is launching a new loyalty program and an app.
And Dan Schaefer from the Recon Bobby, if anything is going to discombobulate you, it's going to be
phone apps because there's so many of them.
Dan, good morning.
I've already talked up that the Panera one works really well for me.
The McDonald's one has been a little glitchy.
Are you a food app person at all?
Or maybe like the, you know, DoorDash, the delivery ones, things like that?
Not really.
Just DoorDash, I guess, would be the one that I'll use.
But they all want you to download the app for every individual place.
I'm just opting out of that entirely.
So I've made it a policy.
I'm just like, I'm not doing this.
I'm not doing any of your apps.
No, for food.
I know where to get it, if need be.
Dan follows politics across Wisconsin as civic media's political editor and, of course, the recombobulation area.
at therecombobulationarea.news.
We want to start by promoting something on the website, because we had Emily Cefos on recently.
She's running for state senate, she's run for legislature before, and she is just a tireless activist in the community, and she's done a guest column for the Recombobulation Area as well.
You want to give that little plug?
Yeah, absolutely.
Emily's been, like you said, she is just a tireless.
advocate for so many things, and now running for state Senate in District 19 in Wisconsin as well.
But she wrote a piece at the Reconbibulation Area.
It was a bit of a reaction to the Democrats' vote at the national level to reopen the government, the eight Democrats who sided with Republicans to
I don't know my words, but cave On that on that debate there And I think she really highlighted a number of the struggles that down ballot Democrats are facing Because of this decision and I think you know one of the I so often focus on try to focus what's happening on the local level what's happening down ballot and you know I think we can forget sometimes the connection that these national
you know, democratic brand type of decisions can reverberate down ballot too.
So one of the, one of the quotes that she had there was, I'm proud to be a Democrat, but I'm also furious, furious at the complacency, the calculation and the careerism that treats politics like a game while people's lives hang in the balance.
I think that, I think that's a point that can resonate with a lot of people.
And it's a terrific piece.
I encourage you all go to go check that one out at the recombobulation area.
Yep.
And hey, subscribe while you're there.
Why not?
There
you go.
That's it.
Exactly.
And he doesn't even have an app that he's going to make you do.
So.
There's a sub stack app that you can get.
That's true.
I do like.
I do
have the sub stack app, but there's no special den with a little, you know, a cartoon face caricature of you on the app, you know, on a little screen.
None of
that.
We're working on it.
We're going to workshop that.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Well, one other.
story that we will take national down to the state level that of course is the house voting later today on the discharge petition about the Epstein files and you know the the republican members of the Wisconsin delegation have done you know they have been unified in essentially you know
protecting Trump.
If that's the right way to put it, there isn't like some independent Republican voice saying, you know, why don't we just keep the focus on the victims?
Having said that, I mean, we have no way of knowing until the vote happens this afternoon how many Republicans will decide to go along with the release.
But I'm wondering if you expect, you know, that the six congressional Democrat or the six congressional Republicans are all going to vote in a similar fashion or if you expect different votes out of each of them today.
Yeah, I mean it's gonna be interesting to see but I think ever since Trump said he supports this vote or supports this release or whatever It might be by saying you he's saying he has nothing to hide Which is always a great tell that you definitely have something to hide.
Yes No one was asking if you had anything to you know, you made that statement that that wasn't like a response to a question That was like a statement he put out saying he had nothing to hide.
Okay.
Sure.
Yeah, definitely believe that one being very normal about this whole
thing the Trump administration is.
Yeah, that's for sure.
But, you know, I think now that Trump said something, I think it was already headed in the direction that they knew they had the numbers.
So I think the floodgates were going to be open for people to, you know, even Trump supporting Republicans to be voting for this.
And yet I would still expect I would not be surprised I guess I should say if there are some some no votes You know like a Derrick van Orden or a you know a Glenn growthman for example Who will continue to say well no matter what the president said this is still a witch hunt and a distraction and I'm not gonna vote to to go along with this so I I would not be surprised to see some no votes among some of our delegation today put it that way
Yeah, you you might be right about that.
I think there's a there's you know, there's always a
chance for some weirdness when it comes to Wisconsin Republicans, isn't
it?
Yes, yes indeed.
Dan Schaffer's here from the Reconpopulation Area, Civic Media's political editor as well.
We were talking to James Kelly earlier about this is local budget season, counties are passing their budget, cities, school boards, things like that, and a wheel tax is one of the things that's been discussed.
And we discussed for a time yesterday how in the Milwaukee suburb of Cudahay, the proposal for a wheel tax was
you know, the subject of a great hue and cry and was eventually rejected.
But that doesn't solve the problem of a state government that is consistently underfunding, not doing its share of helping local governments pay for services.
Any signs in the legislature that Republicans might try to do something to reduce the need for higher wheel taxes?
Well, the wheel tax issue has really exploded in Wisconsin in recent years.
This is a way that governments have used to fund road construction or other kind of transportation related projects at the local level.
And like you said, it's yet another indicator that the state is not adequately funding local government in the way that it should.
We had the shared revenue reform bill that passed a little over two years ago now.
very needed and did provide some structural reforms but it
is already proving in a myriad of ways to not be the long-term answer.
So of course, recognizing this, the Wisconsin State Legislature is working on a fix to help people fund these important needs or responding to the reality.
No, I'm just kidding.
They're introducing a bill to make it harder for local governments to pass a wheel tax and still providing not the adequate level of funding that local government needs.
Of course they are.
It reminds me of our Up North News reporter, Selena Heller also
covers stories in some other states, and she had me reviewing a story out of Iowa where they have school referendums, but they're called...
bond issues or something like that.
And of course, the Iowa Legislature there has put in a supermajority.
You need 60% in order to pass.
A simple majority can't pass things that would help your local school district.
So in Wisconsin, why wouldn't you put another barrier?
First, you shortchange the local government, and then you say, well, they're going to have to vote to raise their own taxes, but we're going to put a limit on what they can do to raise their own taxes.
You
do
remember they were the party of local control, right?
Am I dreaming that?
Or were they not the party of local control in 2010 when they were running and took over all of Wisconsin?
You know, sometimes you can say things.
They don't actually necessarily mean anything, which has been the case here.
That was under, you know, the eight years of, you know, kind of
trifecta Republican rule in Wisconsin Republicans really gutted local government.
They gutted the shared revenue formula.
They left everything flat for a number of years and you know in my and others reporting on this and how this impacted Sprite here in Milwaukee that
you know, leaving things flat for shared revenue as long as they did amounted to about $100 million cut in Milwaukee's budget every year.
Now, I know the folks on the right like to bark about the streetcar all the time.
The streetcar is a less than one half of 1% of Milwaukee's overall budget.
It is a $4 million a year annual operating cost.
that's not quite a hundred million dollars in cuts from state shared revenue, which was the case for all of that time.
And that, again, it is an issue that not is just a Milwaukee one, not just a Madison one, but it is one that is being felt in communities across the state.
According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum over the past five years, the number of communities implementing a wheel tax to pay for these things has grown to 63 Wisconsin municipalities, towns, and counties.
I think it was in the single digits as recently as like 2019 or something like that of communities that were implementing this.
And so we're seeing these school referendums.
We're seeing these wheel taxes.
And it is part of the Republicans' shell game that they are playing at the state level, moving this money around, making it look like they are being the party of fiscal responsibility when all they are really doing is passing the buck on to local governments and on to you, the citizen of your community.
extraordinarily frustrating that yet again Republicans are denying local control in this bill that they are proposing to do away or make it more difficult to pass a wheel tax by making each and every one of them go to a public referendum when they could what they could do is just it's pretty simple fund local government they could fund local government to the adequate degree that it needs to be funded.
I like that because it's right on par with what we've said about Trump and the Epstein Fowles.
He doesn't need this bill.
He could just release it.
You could just release it.
You could just fund local government.
You could just do these things that are right and instead of forcing all these convoluted processes to get to doing the right thing.
And one more example of that too.
I just saw a news story as I was doing some research this morning.
The village of Sturdevant, which is in Racine County, has just announced that they are closing their police department.
Closing their police department.
And now the Racine County Sheriff's Office will be taking over the duties of that village's police department.
Sounds like what's happening is things are rolling downhill here, and Republicans at the state level are kind of defunding the police, would you say?
I would say.
I would say, I have said, and I will continue to say, Alicia puts up on YouTube a comment about places like Kimberley are going broke because, again, they've had their hands tied in terms of being able to fund essential services like the police.
But this is what we're getting currently.
previous norms are blown up, whether it's local funding or whether it's, say, the way that we nominate people to spots in America's judiciary.
And I am referencing Senator Tammy Baldwin, who is blasting President Trump for his naming, as Senator Baldwin puts it, installing failed politician Brad Schimmel for a top prosecutor job in Wisconsin.
Recall, Schimmel ran for attorney general.
What was the attorney general?
Yeah.
Um, and now he is the new U S attorney for Eastern Wisconsin because Trump blew up the process, the bipartisan process where Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson would collaborate on a prospective slate of nominees.
I'm not expecting to hear that same criticism from Ron Johnson though, cause you know, partisans.
No, no.
He is not exactly consistent in his criticism when it comes to members of either party.
But, you know, I thought it was really interesting that Baldwin went as far as she did in these comments, in this press release and being...
really especially critical of this process and saying Brad Schimmel quote I'm quoting from the release here Brad Schimmel was soundly rejected twice by Wisconsinites because they knew he would play politics with the law not deliver justice fairly for everyone and he has no business being a top prosecutor in Wisconsin as President Trump politicizes our justice system is more important than ever that the people serving in the courts and on the bench are committed to upholding the rule of law not loyalty to the president.
Makes sense
it does this is a guy who I mean this is his consolation prize for running for state Supreme Court and losing to Susan Crawford is being able to you know get this plum assignment from a president but by By passing again the norms that helped ensure a more shall we say independent judiciary?
We're talking to Dan Schaefer from the recombobulation area here And again you can read what he does over at the recombobulation area dot news and when we come back We're gonna get into some painful territory here for Dan
Yeah, Yannis is out with an injury.
Where do the bucks go from here?
Matt Nair on air coming up next from 9 to 11 here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Cradle from Up North News.
Follow what we do over at UpNorthNewsWI.com and sign up for those newsletters.
Newsletters, plural.
Life from the lake.
We'll be back.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Tomorrow on the program we've got our weekly homeroom segment about public education in Wisconsin and a pretty special edition of it tomorrow morning at 7.35.
You see, Wisconsin's school funding system is a mystery to most folks.
The bigger mystery is this.
Gathering dust on a shelf somewhere is a comprehensive bipartisan plan to simplify and improve school funding in our state.
Whatever happened to that?
It's the 2017 Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding.
It was praised as a model for how Republicans and Democrats could work together to make public education more stable and taxpayer costs more affordable.
but putting those words into deeds required action by the legislature, and we see how that's been going these days.
So tune in tomorrow.
We'll talk to two members of the Blue Ribbon Panel.
Julie Underwood, former dean of the UW School of Education and former state representative, Sandy Pope, as they discuss whether their Blue Ribbon Plan could still be a roadmap for lawmakers today in a very broken school funding system.
Again, that's tomorrow morning in our homeroom segment at 7.35.
Continuing now with Dan Schaefer at 8.53.
on this Tuesday morning.
Dan, let's start with sports simply because you're one of our Milwaukee Bucks super fans here and so allow me to be dramatic for a moment.
So, Giannis went out with a left groin strain.
So, I guess that's it.
Pack it up.
Season's lost now, right?
Thank you, Parker.
Well, that's the exact sound that went through my head when Giannis went down holding his own last night during the game.
You know, it was shaping up to be a pretty fun game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers.
Cavs are one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference.
Bucks trying to get back into, you know, returning to being a contender.
And, you know, as so often happens in the Milwaukee Bucks game, Yanis got fouled and they didn't call it.
And then he, you know, collapsed into a heap and then headed to the locker room.
And it looks like Yanis might have a little bit of an injury on his hands,
which
is unfortunate.
But hopefully, you know, he he, it's hard to keep him off the court, even if he
is injured, so we'll see what the details show today once they do the MRI and do all the different stuff.
Definitely a bummer.
Definitely a bummer.
It is.
But I mean, you know, the roster is not one player by by any stretch of the imagination.
There's there's a lot of time yet to to play with this.
So all right, well, keep an eye on that.
It's definitely going to affect our next subject, which is online sports betting, which again, there's there's this proposal to allow online sports betting because again, there's an app for everything to allow online sports
betting.
So instead of having to go to one of the casinos run by one of Wisconsin's travel nations through them, they would coordinate online sports betting.
Governor Evers indicating he he might be supportive of such a measure.
I guess I was a little surprised to hear that.
But I mean, I guess I just don't know enough of the governor's thoughts on online gambling overall.
But it certainly would be
something beneficial to Wisconsin's tribal communities rather than, you know, whatever those big companies are, DraftKings and things like that.
Yeah, it's an interesting bill.
It has been really racing through the Wisconsin State Legislature.
You and I always talk on this show and elsewhere how slow things can move in the Wisconsin State Legislature, how they can kick the can down the road and so many different instances.
There's actually a really good pro-publica piece about Robin Voss doing something that is just that on extending health care for new moms.
You should go check that one out too.
But this one is moving quickly.
why this one is moving quicker than others.
I'm not sure, but it might have something to do with the people lobbying behind the bill.
So if you can go to lobbying.wi.gov, I believe, you can go find who is lobbying in favor or opposed to each bill that is being voted on.
So today there's a state Senate, the state Senate is a floor session.
They're taking up dozens of bills.
If you take a look at this one, you can see that a number of the tribal casinos are lobbying in favor
favor of this bill as is the Milwaukee metropole.
Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, all lobbying in favor of this one.
It passed through committee by a 10 to nothing vote.
I do expect this one to eventually pass when it reaches the floor in the state assembly tomorrow.
And then, like you said, Tony Evers in his comments over the weekend on WISN's upfront indicated that he would likely sign this one.
So my understanding is this would
really just changed the definition of things.
It wouldn't exactly put the, you know, agreement into place.
There would have to be some negotiating post this bill between the governor's office and tribal casinos and, you know, any other parties like the fan duels and draft kings of the world who might be into online sports betting.
But I think we all know that this is happening.
regardless of whether it's legal or not, right?
So I think that is part of the impetus for getting a bill like this done is to bring things out of the shadows and just make it a legitimate enterprise and collect some tax revenue from that and just
get out of people's way and let them gamble on sports if they so
please.
By the way, and contrast that with our discussion yesterday with State Senator Jody Habers-Sinneken about the stewardship program and how, you know, they could get a bipartisan solution through to, you know, restore funding for the stewardship program, but it would take one Senator, Rob Stashhold from New Richmond, to schedule a committee hearing on it.
He does have a committee hearing scheduled, but it's for a bill about hunting and sandhill cranes.
So
things,
things move fast when people want them to move fast.
And that's, that's the only way that speeds are determined in that great big white dome in Madison.
Dan Schaefer follows.
Follow
the money, Pat.
Follow
the money.
That's
right.
Find it at therecombobulationarea.news.
Thank you again, Dan, as always, have a great day.
Thanks be well.
All right, thank you.
Thanks to all of you for being with us as well.
What a busy day we've had today.
We had Dan Hagan on from News Watch 12, and he'll be off the next couple of weeks skiing in Canada.
The things we do to get ready for a burkey.
Well, the things he does, I'm not going with a burkey.
My thanks to Hans Breitenmoser for talking about the ongoing effort to reform immigration for farm labor in Wisconsin.
Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association, talking about Christmas tree farming in Wisconsin.
James Kelly filled us in on some headlines around Western Wisconsin.
Dan Schaefer, of course, from the recombobulation area, and Cam Stevenson about Courier Newsroom's searchable database of key words from all the Epstein files that have been released so far, head to couriernewsroom.com to learn more.
I'm Pat Critello from Courier, a pro-democracy newsroom.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
We'll see you 6 a.m., bright and early tomorrow morning, here up north.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
