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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crite-Lo, powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crite-Lo.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back, 8.06.
Now, it's a Tuesday morning, December 9th, 2025.
Parker Olson producing things down there in Madison.
Coming up later this hour, Ruth Conniff from the Wisconsin Examiner will be talking to us about a column she wrote about
Ice enforcement and our county jails.
It's part of our question of the day.
Should Wisconsin jails be used for ice roundups of people who are not covered by an arrest warrant?
You know, actual criminals.
Ruth has written a column about that and we will talk to her in our next half hour all about that.
But first we want to talk to you and talk about what's happening in the nation's capital with Cam Stevenson from Courier Newsroom who has the below the Beltway newsletter sign up at Beltway.News or look through CourierNewsroom.com for his dispatches from Capitol Hill and Cam Stevenson joins us now.
Cam, good morning, how are you?
Good
morning.
I am doing all right.
Apparently a little bit warmer than you are in Wisconsin.
I didn't realize you've been blanketed with so much snow
already.
We have and much more is coming today, including a winter storm warning for parts north of the I-94 corridor in western Wisconsin, mixed precipitation south of there.
So, folks, be sure you check your local road conditions before heading out later on today.
Now, you moved to the nation's capital over the summer from Arizona.
Your kids are, what, 11 and 13 now?
So how have they liked the weather adjustment to this point?
It's mixed.
You know, the 11-year-old still has the wonderment of a child and is very excited and loves the snow and nature.
The 13-year-old is a teenager, and so he's doing his best to be as unimpressed as possible.
Well, I think it's enjoying it deep
down.
They specialize in that, yes.
We still tease one of our daughters.
And we took her to the Yellowstone.
We're right there with Old Faithful.
It's doing its majestic thing.
And she's like, that's it?
I'm like, what do you mean that's it?
It's a geyser.
And she's like,
There's better stuff in the movies.
I'm like, this isn't a movie.
This is the real thing.
So yeah.
So I'm
sure the 13-year-old is looking at snow falling from the sky for the first time and going, ah, yeah, sure.
Sure, sure.
Yeah.
On the
outside.
Hopefully nice and impressed that Dad moved you from the desert southwest to a place that's going to get four to five more months of snow.
Anyway,
yeah, it's a little chilly
for sure.
Okay, sounds good.
So this week in Washington DC, let's talk first about the vote in the Senate that's coming up this week on health care and for folks who need a refresher.
The government shutdown that took place recently, the deal to end it included a promise by Republicans in the Senate, I hasten to add, to vote on the enhanced premium tax credits that would help make the afford
care act policies more affordable.
And well, I mean, let's just take it from there, Cam.
Is there indeed going to be a vote?
And what comes of it then, if anything?
Yeah.
So I think it's important to start off with the acknowledgement that nearly everyone in Congress knows that if these health care laws don't get renewed, then it's going to be very bad for everyone.
You know, everyone's health care is going to go up, not just if you use ACA or not just if you have Medicare, Medicaid.
everyone's prices are going to go up.
And so Republicans, they promised to give a vote to extend these laws in exchange to end the shutdown.
They didn't promise to vote in favor of it, though, just to vote for it.
And they have no, Republicans have no intention of passing the bill that Democrats are putting forward.
So it's essentially doomed from the start.
And the only thing is, is that Republicans know that something needs to be done to keep costs low.
They just they.
They don't even have concepts of a
plan.
They've got nothing.
Not even concepts of a plan.
The president is talking again about, I don't know his exact line, but it's something like, let's just put the money in the hands of the consumers and give them the power to purchase the health insurance that's right for them.
Well, that was life before the Affordable Care Act.
And we all, I mean, how many people seem to have forgotten that wasn't a great situation at the time, but that, again, seems to be the closest there is to an actual Republican plan.
No, I mean, it turns out that when millions of people need the same thing, the best thing is for everyone to pool their resources together, so it's lower cost for everyone.
But yeah, they want to go back to the late 90s plan where everything was overpriced, a lot of people weren't insured at all, and even bringing back denials for preexisting conditions, which would be detrimental.
Unfortunately, that's all they got.
In the House, there's about the same amount of movement.
There's been talk of doing another discharge petition, which would force a vote on health care.
But it's unclear that that would go through, that there's enough Republicans to sign on, or even if there were, that that bill would go anywhere in the Senate.
Sure.
Now, folks got used to hearing me say this.
I promise I'll stop real soon.
But there is this rose colored glasses scenario where, you know, just enough Senate Republicans recognize that, you know, this, this is an issue that's
killing them, and so they end up supporting the extension of these enhanced premium tax credits for health insurance, and that there are just enough House Republicans that also understand if they don't have any better plan, this is going to doom them in November and that they go along with it as well.
But I know over the past, what, two, three weeks since this deal came out,
Everybody I've mentioned that to has kind of looked at me and also wanted to pat me on the head and said, that's adorable that you think that that could happen.
That, you know, that a few, and it would only take a few, just a few Republican senators and a few Republicans in the house.
And they could save 20 million Americans and more from these big price bikes and their health insurance.
And there is not.
It seems that handful of Republicans in the House and Senate who are going to do that this week.
But I say it once again, Justin, I mean, come on, surprise me guys, right?
It's I mean, crazier things have happened.
The in the Senate, the only need 51 votes.
They don't have to wait for a filibuster proof majority.
I think honestly, the best bet that people have is to call their senators and representatives.
I know it sounds cliche, but.
But they're getting calls from people who want them to not pass it.
And
so in order for that to get offset, they need people to vote to call and let them know that they want these health care laws to go into place.
Exactly.
Cam Stevenson here from Courier Newsroom joining us from Washington, DC, where he's covering things on Capitol Hill for us.
Let's also talk about the economy and over the Black Friday weekend, which is a massive shopping weekend, both in person and online.
There was a campaign.
We had stories about it here at Up North News called
we ain't going to buy it or we ain't buying it.
That targets some of the mega corporations and people wonder, well, you know, these are monstrous corporations.
Does it do any good?
You've done a little reporting on this.
So tell folks about the campaign and what you discovered.
Yeah.
So the campaign has the idea of an economic boycott where people essentially vote with their dollars and.
target companies that are, you know, supporting the Trump administration, whether it be through, you know, anti-immigration efforts or, you know, large donations to his ballroom or other pet projects.
It's been growing and gaining steam all year and organizers of We Ain't Gonna Buy It and, you know, No Kings and 5051 movement, they all, you know, urged people to not shop on Black Friday or to do minimal shopping.
And honestly, it had mixed results.
I would say it largely benefited the people who were doing the boycott.
A lot of people who organized it, they said, you know, if you are going to buy anything, shop local.
We did see the majority of sales or purchases over Black Friday weekend went to smaller local stores rather than places like Home Depot or Target, which were the source of.
these protests.
And we did see that larger purchases, and this is more of a sign of an unhealthy economy rather than an economic boycott, but a lot of larger purchases were done using things like Klarna or a firm or the buy now pay later plans where people are taking on massive amounts of interest payments so that they can buy these things now.
And that's
I mean, that's just not a good sustainable way to grow an economy.
And so as far as the boycott goes, it seems like people did prefer to shop local.
And as far as the, you know, Trumponomics of it all, it seems like his current economic strategy.
is not working for everyday people.
What, to call it the affordability crisis of hoax?
That's not sitting well with people?
I find that hard to believe.
Yeah, tell that to my grocery bill.
Right.
So we're going to be talking in the next half hour with Ruth Conniff, editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner about the ice and the race-based roundups of people all throughout the country.
And I know that Home Depot is one of the companies that was the target for this kind of economic boycott.
One protest coordinator with the National Day Labor Organizing Network said in your newsletter, quote, Home Depot's lots have become hunting grounds for immigrant workers and their customers.
And Home Depots remain silent.
We demand dignity, safety, and accountability.
And I think between the vocal outcry and the ways that customers are pushing back, you again are seeing that when people don't just sit on their hands and actually use their voices and take action, they can make a little bit of progress.
You can't turn the ship on a dime, but those voices are starting to be heard.
Right.
No, exactly.
Finding effective strategic ways to use your voice.
You know, Home Depot, people who have been protesting at Home Depot have been doing this all year because Home Depots across the country have allowed their parking lots to be locations for ICE rates.
You know, a lot of day laborers show up there and they get picked up by contractors or, you know, different labor, you know, maintenance companies.
And they would, and Home Depot would allow,
ice to come without a warrant and just pick everyone up that they saw.
They are allowed by law to require a warrant before these things take place.
This is private property and they have not been doing that.
So protesters eventually gearing up to Black Friday, they started to, I think we may have talked about this, they kicked it up a notch and they started doing acts of civil disobedience where they would go in, they'd purchase ice scrapers and then they'd return them.
Just clogging up the lines,
making this a pricey return process for the company and just showing a physical display of protest.
Home Depot did after that say that they weren't cooperating with ICE.
They haven't taken any measures to stop ICE, but it is a good sign that the protests are working, that they acknowledge them at all.
And then we'll close by just reminding folks that CAM has created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Jeffrey Epstein's estate that have been released to this point.
Obviously there's much more that still hasn't been unwrapped, but it still seems there's always a continual drip, drip, drip of things we're learning about Epstein and Donald Trump and others who have escaped any kind of accountability until now.
Yes.
Yeah.
The database is still being used pretty frequently.
When the full release of the files comes out, supposedly on December 19th, by law it's supposed to, I'll be creating a more exhaustive database.
And the House Oversight Committee has also received a bunch of Epstein's financial records.
And so I'm working with members of Congress to obtain those so that people can search those things and find out who is giving Epstein money, who he was paying, and where all this money was going.
So Cam's going to take a nap because he is going to nerd out when all of this stuff comes out and put all that together for you to be able to find online.
And if you'd also like to read up on what else he's writing about in the nation's capital, subscribe to below the Beltway over at beltway.news or through couriernewsroom.com.
Cam Stephenson, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you next week.
All right, sounds good to have a good day.
You bet.
Thank you.
And again, on the other side, we will be talking to Ruth Conniff from the Wisconsin Examiner about Wisconsin communities that have been standing up to ICE and now the Wisconsin Supreme Court could do the same.
Details on the way.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Welcome back to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you, Parker.
Now that we're unmuted, let's try that again.
Welcome back Tuesday, December 9th.
823 is the time right now.
A couple of quick sports notes here.
Of course, you know that the Packers are going to be playing in Denver against the Broncos.
You can hear that game on several civic media stations this Sunday.
Kickoff is at 325, and so your pregame will begin at one o'clock on Sunday on stations in Richland Center.
Park Falls, Racine Kenosha, Watoma, and Ironwood, Michigan.
Tomorrow, the Badger Men's Basketball team is playing at Nebraska.
Coverage begins tomorrow at 730.
on stations in Wisconsin Rapids, Richland Center, and in Ironwood, Michigan.
The Bucks are off until Thursday when they are going to be hosting the Boston Celtics.
Looking at stories that caught my eye here, and can you believe that the guy, the president, who said he was going to be the father of IVF?
Remember on the campaign trail?
He said that he was going to make sure that, you know, insurance companies covered IVF or he said, you know, we're going to pay for it, meaning the federal government.
Nothing's happened yet.
And meanwhile, a defense policy bill, the thing that kind of takes care of the Defense Department for the full year, that bill included a bipartisan provision that would have expanded coverage
for members of the military who need IVF, another assisted reproductive technology.
And yet that language was taken out of the bill apparently because of Speaker Mike Johnson.
Service members receive something called TriCare Insurance.
And it currently only covers fertility services for military members whose infertility was caused by serious or severe illness or injury while on active duty, writes The Hill newspaper.
And earlier versions of the National Defense Authorization Act included a provision that would have expanded the coverage to all active duty members regardless of the reason for infertility.
It had been backed by, again, members of both parties, but was somehow missing from the part that was put out last Sunday.
That has, as you would expect, made a few people unhappy, including Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a veteran herself, and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of being the driving force because of his extreme anti-abortion views.
By extreme, I mean that some anti-choice advocates oppose IVF because it often involves the disposal of unused embryos.
For IVF to work, and because of its expense and complexity, you often have to fertilize many eggs, create many embryos, hoping that one of them will take.
And if so, and if the parents decide not to have any other children, those embryos face the possibility of being destroyed, which in their mind is abortion or murder.
And so in that sense, they pay lip service saying that they're for IVF, but they're not really.
Senator Tammy Duckworth told CNN, there's nobody opposing this other than Speaker Johnson and his religious views.
Duckworth said Johnson was undermining his own president's promise to make IVF cheaper.
Duckworth said the president promised on the campaign trail to make IVF available to all Americans, and I can't think of a better place to make it available than the men and women who wear the uniform of this great nation, Duckworth said.
And in the Hill, their article includes a link to when Trump touted himself as
the father of IVF, which wasn't at all a really creepy thing to say.
In October, the president announced at a White House event that his administration had negotiated with some pharmacies and a drugmaker to lower the costs on one commonly used IVF medication.
Okay.
The administration also issued guidance that would allow employers to offer IVF coverage as a benefit.
as part of company insurance plans.
But again, it was permissive guidance only.
There is no requirement for IVF benefits.
Another member of Congress said stripping the IVF provision out of the military bill was an unbelievably selfish and callous move against people who have served and sacrificed so much.
And she was disappointed that President Trump failed to do anything to change Speaker Johnson's position on this issue.
Well, he shouldn't be because that is par for the course for this president who loves to make big promises and Then for a guy that loves to be all powerful and insert himself in all kinds of things If he doesn't really want to insert himself into something he just blames the other person So in this case he's gonna say hey, I want you to have IVF covered But that that speaker of the house, you know, he's very powerful and he you know He's gonna do what he's gonna do and and I am simply helpless.
I didn't lie to you
on the campaign trail.
I just happen to be blaming the Speaker of the House and I'm not going to lift a damn finger to help you out on that.
Again, that's what this guy does.
And that's why IVF coverage has been stripped away from this bill that had been negotiated by both parties in the House and the Senate.
And now we wait to see if it goes through that way.
If there is perhaps any standalone legislation.
that would come up instead or if the Trump administration will do anything else other than window dressing and words to follow up on promises to take care of people who are fighting fertility issues in our military and in our country.
All right, I mentioned that Ruth Conniff will be on the way and we'll be talking about her column about ice and roundups, but there's one other article I'm going to ask her about coming from their parent company, state's newsroom.
And the headline is Medicare's new AI experiment sparks alarm among doctors and lawmakers.
And the article starts like this.
A Medicare pilot program will allow private companies to use artificial intelligence to review older Americans' requests for certain medical care and will reward the companies when they deny it.
So using AI to find reasons to deny coverage and then reward those insurance companies that deny coverage.
What a world, huh?
We'll talk to Ruth Coneff about that and more from the Wisconsin Examiner.
Coming up next, I'm Pat Critewell.
You're up north.
Tomorrow on the program, we will have Ellie Bordeaux, our newsletter editor at UpNorth News.
Earl Ingram will be along as well.
And we'll have Melissa Baldoff with our climate check joining us too.
So stick around.
And of course, another chance to win in the grown-up gift list text-to-win contest.
You've got your next chance in the nine o'clock hour for matinee on air.
But we, of course, kick things off in the seven o'clock hour each weekday morning here with a keyword that you can text in.
So do that again tomorrow morning in the seven o'clock hour.
Happy to welcome in Ruth Conniff now from the Wisconsin Examiner to talk about some of the stories that they have been covering and There's a lot between gubernatorial campaigns wrapping up and things at the national level and then there's that intersection of national and state news when it comes to the various ice raids around the country and Ruth has written a column that says Wisconsin communities have been standing up to ice now the state Supreme Court could do the same
And you can read more over at WisconsinExaminer.com.
And Ruth Conniff is with us right now.
Ruth, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning.
Good.
Well, nice to see you.
And let's talk about this, especially in the way of explaining, you know, it's one thing to round people up.
It's another thing to detain them, especially if you don't have an arrest warrant.
And now, so that's where we get into the difference between an arrest warrant versus something called an administrative warrant.
So can you set us up a bit more with, you know, how that ties into whether or not Wisconsin's county jails can and should be used by ICE for these types of things?
Yeah, I mean there are communities around our state that are grappling with this.
So some of them had signed ICE cooperation agreements like Palmyra and then decided that in fact it was not a good idea.
The community did not like the idea of local law enforcement functioning basically as an arm of federal immigration enforcement.
So there are communities that are
working with ICE, where local law enforcement is picking people up or holding people in county jails, pass a time that it makes sense to hold them there so that ICE can pick them up and deport them.
And then there's a lot of activism at the local level saying, this is just not what we want Wisconsin to look like.
We don't want to start to see the kinds of scenes that we're seeing in St.
Paul and Minneapolis and Chicago.
where people are just getting grabbed off the street.
And as you point out, there's a difference between an administrative warrant, which is just icing.
They think somebody might be here without documents and a judicial warrant, which is really what the Trump administration started out saying it was trying to do, which is pick up people who have committed crimes for deportation.
So a lot of the people who are being picked up on an administrative warrant, there's just no.
there's no crime.
And this is what we're seeing with ICE detentions around the country is that they are mostly people who have not committed any kind of crime.
They are, you know, people who are working, who have families, and these violent scenes of people being grabbed off the street are
really alarming.
Well, I mean, you rightly mentioned, or the way you describe it, is a campaign of terror.
And that, you know, here we were
promised, I guess, some kind of relief from the violence being perpetrated by migrants.
The violence is being perpetrated by masked secret police who, as you right here, mass federal agents are aiming guns at civilians, smashing out car windows and dragging parents from their children, hustling them off to detention centers to be fast-tracked out of the country without due process.
I don't think campaign of terror is in any way shape or form hyperbolic.
Yeah, I mean, and this is why it's very significant that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case to decide whether it's constitutional in the state of Wisconsin.
for local law enforcement to cooperate in these raids when there's no underlying crime.
There's no other reason for law enforcement to be involved.
And this is something that individual communities have decided across the state.
But now the Wisconsin Supreme Court is going to hear this case and decide whether, in fact, we're just not going to do this here in Wisconsin.
We have
a relatively quiet time compared to some of our neighboring states.
We haven't seen this kind of really scary stuff.
happening very much in our state.
And I think there's a really good shot that the Supreme Court will decide that that's just not the way that Wisconsin works.
That's not the way that our laws allow people to behave.
Yeah, the case was filed, you write, by the state chapter of the ACLU on behalf of the immigrant rights group, Voices de la Frontera, contending that Wisconsin law enforcement agencies do not have the authority to make arrests or keep people in jail on detainers based solely on ICE's administrative warrants, which is again to say, because the knee-jerk reaction is, you know, soft on crime or things like that.
When we're talking about administrative warrants, we are not talking about the
The narco terrorists that Trump and others promised was going to be the focus of all of this ice activity.
No, I mean, we're talking about roofers and landscapers and, you know, dairy workers and, you know, people who have been part of our communities for a long time and who are peaceful, hardworking people and that sort of violent raids that terrify people are not making our communities safer.
Yeah, let's let's highlight some of the other things that you can find over at WisconsinExaminer.com, not the least of which that caught my eye.
Medicare's new AI experiment sparks alarm among doctors and lawmakers, the article says.
And I'm just going to read the lead because again, it seems almost dystopian here.
A Medicare pilot program will allow private companies to use artificial intelligence to review older Americans' requests for certain medical care.
and will reward companies when they deny it.
So again, this is Medicare.
People have paid in their taxes all their lives.
They are expecting medical care.
Doctors are requesting care.
But if health insurance companies use AI to review these things and deny the doctors and patients request for care, they're actually going to get a bonus in our tax dollars.
I wish I could say you can't make this stuff up, but it's right there at the Wisconsin Examiner website.
It's really, it is scary to think this is a pilot program.
It's being launched in several states.
It's part of Medicare Advantage.
And so we, for a long time, have had a problem in this country that we have a health care system that is based on the profits of the middleman, the insurance companies.
So the way that you squeeze more money out of the health care system is to deny people care.
So there's already a problem with private health companies denying care in order to save money.
accelerates it through the, you know, the government provided system of Medicare.
Medicare Advantage is contracts with private companies.
And the introduction of AI makes it even more creepy.
Sinister,
yes.
Yeah.
So you don't have a, you know, you have doctors who say that people need a certain treatment or a certain procedure, and then you have AI reviewing the record and saying, no, maybe we can save the money and not allow them to get that care.
Again, look for that at WisconsinExaminer.com.
I always like highlighting by name some of the folks on your team who are working on things.
Baylor Spears is already working on the governor's race and recently caught up with former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.
Yeah, Mandela Barnes was in Madison yesterday at a bike shop and Baylor talked to him, listened to his pitch on his campaign and he was there to talk about tariffs and the problem with tariffs for local businesses in Wisconsin and she will continue to be following around several of the candidates around the state.
Yeah, Ruth Conif is here, the editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner.
Henry Redmond is working on a story about Wisconsin Land Trusts, and we have talked on this program before about the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Fund and Republican legislators' efforts to defund it.
Again, an instance where you hear that there's bipartisan support to a certain level for this program, but in terms of what actually passes a Republican-controlled legislature is another matter, and Henry's headline
says it pretty well, just don't kill it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that is a quote from one of the sources in the story who's really worried that Knowles Nelson is not going to be renewed.
And that would affect about 700,000 acres of land in Wisconsin that have been protected through this very popular program that
helps to pay for setting aside conservation areas in the state.
And he really digs into what a huge difference it will make for places like Dorr County, places that attract tourists because of the beauty of the natural landscape there.
And there's a lot of beautiful parts of the state that will be lost if they don't renew the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Fund.
There are a couple of different proposals.
There's a Republican and a Democratic proposal to renew it.
The sticking point for some
Republicans up north is that they feel that there needs to be more private ownership of land and that this has blocked development in some areas, you know, and there's a debate about what's a better value for Wisconsin.
But also there's a concern by Republican legislators that they don't supervise the DNR enough.
And so the Republican proposal would make any land purchase of a million dollars or more go through the legislature to go through.
That process is so slow that conservationists say it wouldn't work at all.
And so then there's a Democratic counter proposal that just raises the cash limit on what the legislature supervises before DNR can be involved in setting land aside.
It doesn't seem like they're going
work this out.
No.
And it always makes me nostalgic for those days when when Republicans campaigned as the party of local control and smaller government.
And the record since they've taken over has been about micro management.
And that's what this Republican bill is about is is again allowing for micro management of individual partial purchases, as opposed to the Democratic proposal put forward by state Senator Jody Habers-Sinneken that would reauthorize the program and create an independent board made up of members appointed
by the legislature to approve large land purchases through the program.
Again, we'll plead guilty to having rose-colored glasses on and thinking, well, maybe there's enough support that they'll work out some kind of a compromise measure in the fall session.
That did not happen, so now we're left asking ourselves if this is going to get done in January, February, or not at all for the year.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
So we're talking to Ruth Conniff here from the Wisconsin Examiner.
And there's one other story I wanted to mention.
And it is, of course, about Trump's trade war and Wisconsin farmers.
The headline is Trump to send 12 billion in one time payments to farmers to offset ag losses.
And offset is is doing a lot of heavy lifting on there because it's more than $12 billion in markets that farmers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are losing.
Yeah, I mean, we saw the effects of the trade war when all this bumper soybean crop was just sitting in the fields and China was no longer purchasing any soybeans from our country.
That has temporarily that crisis has temporarily been averted because China is buying some soybeans from the US now, although has opened up other markets in Latin America.
So we've lost a big portion of that market for our Wisconsin soybean farmers.
You know, the long term effect of the tariffs and trade wars is to destabilize markets and it's not
going to be fixed with a one-time cash payout.
The other thing about the cash payout from the Trump administration is that the Trump administration says it's coming from tariff revenue.
Well, the revenue is the money that farmers are paying to pay more for products that they used to pay less for because of these tariffs.
So farm equipment, the inputs, the fertilizer, the tractors,
that money it's sort of they're giving back some of the money that the farmers have paid in a tax in order to say well here we've made it up to you for the tariffs and it's a one-time payment so it doesn't fix the structural problem.
No, it doesn't.
And again, it's creating a problem and then claiming to have solved the problem that you created.
The article notes that a reporter asked if Trump would be open to another round of relief.
Trump said it would depend on how international trade develops and said farmers would not want further aid.
He says China is buying a lot.
Other countries are buying a lot.
Farmers, they don't want aid.
They just want a level playing field.
Yeah, but except they're not buying a lot yet.
They're buying a
lot.
And all he's offering is the aid.
So it's a lot of double speed.
He's
offering
it.
He's not fixing the structural problem.
He's saying farmers don't want aid.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
No.
So read up on that and everything that Ruth's team is doing over at WisconsinExaminer.com.
Ruth Connifedder and chief.
Always nice to catch up with you, Ruth.
Thanks so much.
Have a great day.
You too, Pat.
All right.
We'll have some final news and notes here from Lake Wissota coming up in just a bit.
Then, of course, we've got Matt Nair on air, Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bach, four little days left here before Jane's retirement.
So you want to tune in for the surprises that Greg and others are conjuring up for making sure that Jane has all the tools she needs to ride off into the sunset and go, hey, that was fun.
But it's time to do what's next.
We'll wrap things up here in just a bit.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Nice to have you back.
I'm Pat Critell here in Chippewa Falls.
Jane McNair, Greg Bach coming up right after the top of the hour here.
Over at Up North News you can sign up for our newsletters at UpNorthNewsWI.com and there in our Sunday morning newsletter which has an emphasis on politics we ask a question of the week.
This week we ask are the alcohol rules on wedding barns too strict?
You'll recall that we have had guests on in the past who have talked about, you know, the topic of wedding barns and how there was a an overhaul of liquor laws for distributors for brewers and distillers and for retail establishments.
But the wedding barns felt left out.
They felt like they got lumped in with the bars and taverns and even though
they don't operate every day like bars, taverns, banquet halls and things like that.
They have the same higher level of restrictions.
And they'd like some relief from that.
Well, the legislature did not grant that relief so far in this session.
And there are those who say that they shouldn't grant relief.
So as far as the responses to our question of the week, here's an answer from Lawrence, who says, So a family run tavern shouldn't need a license either.
Zoning should
be enforced and since the barn and parking areas aren't being used for ag purposes, that should be properly taxed too.
Maybe we need to think about septic needs too.
It's a business.
The owners need to meet the same requirements as any other business.
But there are a lot of other folks who are a bit more sympathetic, saying, for example, Sharon writes, the Tavern League Lobby has done a lot to stifle new business competition.
Another says, farms are struggling enough as it is any help for them as a positive move.
What's disappointing is, from my understanding, rural legislators aren't backing them.
Who are they representing?
And another says, I don't know enough to make a choice, but I think that wedding barns should be able to operate more days.
These barns are beautiful and preserve our heritage.
Owners put a lot of labor and finances into them.
The result is a unique setting for weddings.
And the thing that really stuck out to me talking to others about this is, yeah, there's a high number of Republican legislators who represent rural areas.
And yet it appears that they don't really have a champion among them.
There isn't like one key rural Republican legislator who's out there fighting for the wedding barns.
And now I know the Tavern League of Wisconsin is, you know, makes for an easy target on this.
They are very politically involved.
They make a lot of donations.
Their members, you know, donated to me back in the day 15 plus years ago when I was a state senator, and the issue was the smoking ban.
So they know how to activate their members, whereas wedding barns don't really have a lobbying group.
It's a relatively new sector of the economy.
And as such, what's the old saying about politics?
If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
And that appears to have been the case for these wedding barns.
And they're looking for that champion right now, because otherwise they are now severely restricted with how many days they can be open a month when they're actually really only open during the summertime.
So we'd love to know what you think about that.
That's why it's our question of the week.
To catch our question of the week first, sign up for that Sunday mornings with Pat quite low newsletter over at UpgroundNewsWI.com.
The US Supreme Court today is taking on another case that could tear down some of the norms that built up our country over the years.
Yesterday we told you about them hearing arguments
sympathetic toward dismantling the independence of several government agencies and allowing presidents to play politics more often groups that are supposed to be independent as they oversee workers and consumers and environmental protections.
Well, now today they're going a step further and they're looking at getting rid of what few limits are left when it comes to campaign cash, specifically for corporations.
This has been going and building since the Citizens United case back in 2009-2010 started to erase limits.
And some of the last of them could be on the way out based on a case that the Supreme Court is hearing today.
A case filed in part by Vice President J.D.
Vance back when he was a member of Congress, arguing that these limits are not legal.
And the right wing justices on this U.S.
Supreme Court might be on the verge of agreeing.
At issue is really just a case of money laundering because there are campaign limits in place right now I will just say it's a $2,000 for somebody running for a particular office And that's the most you can give them and yet you hear that these campaigns are just these multi multi-million dollar affairs Well, how does that happen if you can only give a candidate $2,000?
Well, here's how you give the money to the party where there aren't those set limits
and give basically unlimited money to the party.
And then the parties can essentially give unlimited help to the candidate.
So you're not helping the candidate directly, but you know, wink, there's ways around that.
And what few laws are left are practically window dressing.
And this Supreme Court may be on the verge of getting rid of them.
Now, I've been arguing again for 15 years now that there is room
for somebody to campaign just on a reform platform.
And I know people say, no, no, no, you got to be talking about affordability.
Or if you're on the right, you got to be talking about border security.
I would find it very refreshing if we just got a crop of candidates that talked only about political reform.
putting limits back in place so that corporations are not people.
Corporations do not have unlimited First Amendment rights to spend unlimited cash on election campaigns.
While we're at it, let's clean up some of the other laws that make sure that we have free elections.
There's the whole notion of gerrymandering and making sure that you prevent that from happening by having independent redistricting commissions.
Again, this stuff isn't sexy, but it is the stuff that is literally undermining our democracy as we wipe away some of these norms.
And I, for one, would love to see the day when we have more people taking this seriously rather than a Supreme Court that is tearing down what little protection is left.
My thanks to today's guest, Superior Mayor Jim Payne, WJFW's Dan Hagen, Courier Newsroom's Cam Stevenson, Wisconsin examiners Ruth Conniff and you for being here today.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, the Wisconsin Home for Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Enjoy your day.
We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, bright and early 6 a.m.
here up north.
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