It's a wake-up call in more ways than one.
Time for some sh** you need to know.
Iran has warned U.S.
forces on, uh, well, today.
Not to enter the Strait of Hormuz after the President said the United States would quote, guide out ships stranded in the Gulf by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Trump gave few details of the plan to aid ships and their crews that have been confined to vital waterways and are running low on food or other supplies after more than two months into the conflict.
I'm shocked that he didn't have many details.
We have told the countries that we will guide their ships safely out of these restricted waterways so that they can freely and ably get on with their business.
Trump said in a post on true social yesterday in response, Iran's unified command told commercial ships and oil tankers to refrain from any movement that was not coordinated with Iran's military.
We have repeatedly said the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands and the safe passage of vessels needs to be coordinated with the armed forces.
The head of the Forces Unified Command said in a statement, we warn that any foreign armed forces, especially the aggressive US Army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has blocked nearly all shipping into and out of the Gulf, apart from its own, since the start of the war, cutting off about a fifth of the world's oil and gas shipments and sending oil prices soaring by 50% or more.
Jamie, I was under the impression, I was told by the administration that the war's over.
Right,
that's what I was gonna
ask.
But the war's not over.
There's
a ceasefire, but we're going to go in aggressively into the straight.
This weekend, the president was trying to tell us that there was peace in the Middle East.
This doesn't seem very peaceful at all to me, but my definition in his could be different.
Sure.
Well, yours is
based in fact, his is based
in, I
don't know.
This still feels very much like a war.
I mean, that's essentially what it feels like.
They
are calling this by a different operational name, though.
It's not the same name.
So that's his way of skirting
around,
not getting congressional approval after 60 days by calling this something else, even though it doesn't seem like this is going to work.
They just can't get their message straight.
And it becomes painfully obvious every day.
that this man is led not by fact or reporting or advice from experts.
He, whatever he feels that day is what it's going to be.
And then everybody else is left scrambling, trying to figure it out.
And they all have to parrot what he says.
And it's one minute, we're in a war.
One minute, we're not.
One minute, we're going to have a, you know, we've talked to them about peace.
Then it's not a good deal.
And the word deal just keeps coming.
Deal, deal, deal.
This is negotiations.
This is diplomatic negotiations.
There's no deal here.
It's diplomacy, negotiation, because that's what it takes to actually work with these countries.
And it's not
done on social
media.
No, and I'm going to say it again, because it's worth repeating.
There was a deal in Iran.
There was a deal.
It was working.
It was set out by the... Yeah, but
the straight wasn't open.
The Obama administration set out a deal.
I
was hoping you would contradict me instead of just letting that facetious statements... People go, does Brian
really not know that it was open?
No,
it was open.
Everything was working the way it should set up by the Obama administration.
The UN was involved.
There were inspections on the nuclear sites.
The straight was in fact open.
There were no...
there were no tolls on the Strait of Hormuz.
It was working the way it was supposed to and the nuclear program in Iran was not growing under this particular treaty, deal, negotiation, whatever you want to call it, it was on the books and it was working.
It's worth
repeating.
The more times you say that, the more time you repeat facts, they counter
with the fallacy that Iran had a nuclear weapon.
They were close to a nuclear weapon.
And they just keep screaming that louder and louder and louder and more often and more often and more often.
And there's some people, some people who believe it, some people who discount all the things you said about the inspections and everything else that are easy to check.
Yes.
But they don't.
You want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
Yeah, that's what we want.
Also told.
that in June, during that first operation, that all nuclear weapons were completely destroyed.
They had no capability.
Their
capabilities were obliterated.
So, I mean, and here we are, and it's never going to end, which again was the problem going into the Middle East and what even Republicans were concerned about.
Because once you start some sort of effort in the Middle East,
you end up getting sucked in, and it is never short-term, no matter what this administration wants us to believe.
Here's something else we should all be very worried about.
This president gets bored easily.
He's like a child.
And this did not work out anything like he wanted.
He thought he could come in, bully Iran like he bullied Venezuela, and things would just fall.
It's not.
We're dragging into now two months, we're two months in.
His poll numbers are plummeting.
people are angry all over this country.
So what does he do?
Over the weekend, he talks about pulling a battleship up to Cuba.
So now we're going to we're now we're going to shift.
Oh, hey,
let's distract over here.
I'm going to talk about taking over Cuba.
And then Cuba's leaders get all upset.
And there's so now does he think we're going to forget?
that we're at war?
Does he believe we're going to forget that gas is now some of the highest
it's
ever been?
And I can also tell you who's not going to forget that we're at war in Iran.
Iran.
The Iranians?
They're not going to also forget.
So it's a quagmire, and we just are the...
All we can do right now is sit here and watch it play out and hope.
And again, I know that this is a deep hope that somebody has enough sense to basically check and balance this particular administration.
But I don't see that happening.
There
has to be more stuff we need to
know.
There is, and we're gonna bring it closer to home.
According to a new analysis that was released by the University of Wisconsin,
This was completed, an analysis was completed by a consulting firm, Trip Umbach.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison says that it has contributed billions in statewide economic impact to this last fiscal year.
Now, the report's total includes $13.2 billion in estimated impact from UW-Madison, which of course is the flagship for the universities of Wisconsin.
The report also encompasses $13.3 billion.
and impact from affiliated organizations, including the UW Health System and UW Research Institutions.
Now, the tally also includes $12.4 billion from hundreds of what the report refers to as spin-off companies.
Those startup companies are rooted in the UW-Madison research, according to the report.
Now included in that list of companies was Exact Sciences, the Madison-based healthcare diagnostics company.
Exact Sciences generated roughly $3.2 billion in annual revenue and employed nearly 6,900 people in 2025, according to this report.
And calculating the economic impact, the consultants looked at the university spending on operations
as well as spending by students, faculty, and staff, and also by visitors to the university.
They also considered how much UW-Madison and its affiliates generated in local and state tax revenue.
Additionally, the total impact includes full and part-time jobs at UW-Madison, along with indirect jobs, including people who work for a supply chain connected to the university.
This report's release comes as the Trump administration is cutting federal research funding to university
and other institutions.
It follows years of debate about how much funding state lawmakers should allocate to the state's public university system.
In fiscal year 2025, UW-Madison got $609.4 million in revenue from the state.
This report was paid for by the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association.
That is a nonprofit that fund raises on behalf of UW-Madison.
I mean, when you think about the impact that our university system
as in this state.
It is local businesses, healthcare systems, supply chains, tourism from visitors and students, thousands of jobs directly and indirectly.
And if you flip that, when funding gets cut, especially that federal research funding, which is
obviously already happening.
We're starting to see the ripple effect of that.
Less research money can mean fewer breakthroughs that turn into companies, fewer high-paying jobs across the state, less innovation that stays right here in Wisconsin, and potentially some sort of brain drain where we see talent, which this is true, and we are seeing it, that starts leaving the state.
We see it a lot in many fields.
Teaching, we've talked about that a lot.
A lot of people who are educated here and trained to be teachers leave.
And you're going to get that with all sorts of different fields.
So good for, you know, we think about, oh, how much do we spend if we go to a game or how much?
But as you mentioned, it ripples all throughout the economy.
So good on them.
Something else you need to know.
The makers of the abortion pill, Mifeprestone, have filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court Saturday they did that urging the justices to pause a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked Americans from accessing the drug through the mail.
The fast-track case filed with conservative justice Samuel Alito
puts the drug and the issue of abortion back on the High Court's docket less than two years after the justices rejected a similar challenge, a decision that allowed the drug to remain widely available.
Now the Rush appeal comes a day after the conservative 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a nationwide requirement that the medication be obtained in person.
Undermining access to the method of abortion that has grown more widespread since the court overturned Roe v. Wade,
which you know was the precedent that established a constitutional right to abortion.
Now the lower court ruling said that the supreme that it injects
immediate confusion and upheaval into a highly time-sensitive medical decision.
Danko Laboratories is the manufacturer of this.
They said that they urged the Supreme Court to issue an administrative stay that would immediately pause the Fifth Circuit's decision.
It also urged the Supreme Courts to take up the case on its merits.
GenBioPro is the maker of the generic version.
They filed a separate emergency application later.
Here's a little bit of background on this.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, women have been able to obtain Miphaprestone, one of the two drugs in the Medication Abortion Regiment, sorry, through telehealth appointments.
Now, President Biden's administration finalized the rules that ended the requirement that the pills be obtained through in-person doctor's visits in 2023 after the Supreme Court overturned rows.
So once again, ladies, the government wants to decide your health care.
And I don't care if you're pro or con, where you stand on the abortion issue.
A woman's choice is a woman's choice.
What she does with her health is up to her and her doctors.
It is not up to the government.
And it is infuriating that just like the Supreme Court has now chipped away people's voting rights, they continue to try to chip away
and the courts try to chip away at women's rights.
And Jamie, this must make you, well, I can't speak
for you.
How do you feel
about the
courts once again limiting?
This is ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Access was already limited.
And so when you start removing this telehealth and this male access, you're not just changing convenience.
You're realistically changing who can get care at all.
You're talking about women in rural parts of Wisconsin.
You are talking about people without reliable transportation.
Women who can't afford to take time off work to actually get to the doctor.
And sometimes you just need privacy because we don't know what has caused somebody to
need this medication.
Right and you're still talking to a doctor whether
you're
on the phone or on a telehealth appointment or in person you're still getting medical advice.
Yes.
Crew members from an Iranian ship seized by the US after trying to breach its military blockade last month have been transferred to Pakistan for
repatriation, sorry, according to Pakistan's foreign ministry.
22 crew members held aboard the MV Tuska container ship were taken to Pakistan Sunday night and will be handed over to Iranian authorities today, according to the ministry in a statement released this morning.
The Iranian ship will also be back loaded to Pakistani territorial waters for return to its original owners after necessary repairs.
Pakistan describes a move as quote a confidence building measure by the U.S.
and said the repatriation is being coordinated with support of both the U.S.
and Iran.
Yeah, it again as we talked earlier this morning It certainly doesn't feel like things are slowing down in in the Middle East and it certainly doesn't feel like again I know we sound like a broken record But it certainly doesn't feel like anybody in the Middle East has gotten the memo from the president of the United States that the war is over
No, so well, and if the war were over why would he need to start another mission?
to skirt the congressional approval for a war that ran out the other day.
So a lot of conflicting messages as always coming out of this administration, but the hard fact is we are still at war, a war of choice.
We are still paying the cost for that war on a number of fronts and we will be continuing, even if the war were to end, we will continue to pay the price for this war for months if not the next year.
So there's that.
In other headlines, as we bring things closer to home, stuff you need to know, efforts to relieve high water levels after mid-April storms flooded communities in the Green Bay, Appleton and Oshkosh areas have closed the port of Green Bay for two weeks, causing a mounting economic impact on key industries.
The Army Corps of Engineers in mid-April opened the dam gates on Lake Winnebago to relieve high water levels after major storms dumped record rainfalls across the massive
the Fox Wolf watershed.
The outflows increased the water velocity on the Fox River to speeds that since April 18th have made it unsafe for ships to navigate the port.
The port of Green Bay director said that the entire watershed got so much rain it created one of a kind conditions on the river and for the port, which generates about $217 million in economic activity every year and supports more than 1600 local jobs.
The unexpected conditions left
terminal operators to scramble for alternative ways to take delivery of raw materials like wood pulp, petroleum products, and cement that are vital to key northeastern Wisconsin industries like paper, construction, and agriculture.
At least four ships, possibly as many as 10, have diverted to a different port or turned around.
Companies that shift deliveries to a different port have to pay to have the materials delivered to Green Bay via trucks.
One ship, the Edenburg, has been docked in the bay for
for 12 days now, waiting it out, unable to deliver its wood pulp cargo.
The Lake Winnebago Dam gates could need to remain open, making the port inaccessible for another 10 to 14 days without an alternative solution.
I mean, when you're talking about that kind of economic impact, you really hope that this...
gets alleviated sooner than later, I think, because...
And the elevated cost of having to truck stuff with fuel costs for trucks rising at a rapid rate again, that's got to add more.
So it would mean as it should that things are going to start costing more again.
If the suppliers have to pay more and the companies have to pay more,
They got to make that up somewhere and it's coming to us.
I mean, we really don't think about, I don't know, I think for a lot of people, we've talked a lot about the supply chain over the last few months in terms of this war in Iran.
But when you look at it on a more local level, I don't think we think about the environmental impact that supply chains can be overwhelmed by.
I
mean,
in this case, it's a flooding or a river running too fast.
Obviously, that throws everything off, which is just bad for business.
And in a very simple thing, you would think, well, they're ships.
They're on the water.
Little more water.
How's that going to affect the ship?
Well, it doesn't affect the ship itself.
It affects how the ship gets to the port.
you know where it's going to dock so that's
it also I think it also highlights how interconnected our economy is in this
state
because you're like oh it's just coming into to Green Bay it's wood pulp it's it's you know petroleum I know that that stuff that has to get to other places within
this state it
just happens to come into Green Bay
that's the easiest spot for it to get unloaded
yeah
yeah
All right, some more S.U.
need to know.
U.S.
Attorney Janine Pirro, you remember her from TV, said that the bullet that struck a secret service agent in the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner was, quote, definitely from suspect Cole Thomas Allen's gun.
We can now establish that a pellet that came from the buckshot from the defendant's Mossberg pump action shotgun was intertwined in the fiber of the vest of the Secret Service officer.
That was according to Pirro on CNN State of the Union.
USA Today also previously reported that evidence collected so far indicates the only Secret Service agent who actually fired their weapon at Allen was the one who was injured as he tried to prevent what prosecutors alleged was an attempted assassination.
President Trump.
The agent who has not been identified fired five times but did not hit the suspect.
Initial court filings did not specifically allege that Allen shot the agent, though Trump and administration officials have claimed that he did in public comments, of course.
Why wouldn't they?
That's their go-to.
This is interesting and noteworthy because what it shows is the government does not yet have a conclusive proof that the suspect did not shoot the agent.
That is, according to Mark Lesko, a former U.S.
attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
He told the BBC that on Friday he, Alan, the suspect currently faces assassination and firearm charges.
There may be some more charges filed when he appears before a grand jury on May 8th.
I think this is interesting for multiple reasons, because obviously, just last week, there was speculation about whether the agent might have actually even been hit by friendly fire.
And then this weekend, we find out that the evidence points directly, at least according to Jeanine Pirro, to the suspect's gun.
But
it's one, see what I don't understand, and what I know about firearms is limited.
I will admit that.
But I also know buckshot.
While it does scatter, there's still concentration of the buckshot.
One pellet getting into it, that seems unusual to me.
And maybe I'm off, but that just seems, that seems a little unusual.
And then an agent firing five times and not hitting someone, these guys are really highly trained.
Well, I mean and that I think that goes
back to I've never been shot at I think that's what
goes back to what we talk about though Right who were the agents in the lobby because we talked about this after the incident Were those agents actually secret service agents or they were were they part of some sort of independent?
Security firm I those are questions that this this administration still hasn't answered and and let's be clear We're not going to get I mean that that should be the the pause that all of us have on this is we're not going to get the
story on this at all.
Never.
No.
Are we going to find out about this canine unit that sniffed and looked, went in the door where the suspect came out of, but was pulled away by his handler.
And the new footage that's coming out, we do see that they were breaking down that station.
They, the law enforcement had decided that nobody else was coming through here.
So they were in that they had one magnetometer left up.
They had broken down.
They were in the process of breaking down one.
I don't know how many had been broken down before that.
I mean...
And when we look at the type of rhetoric that we already have in this country, anytime we start adding this sort of speculation, it just adds to all of that, right?
And I
think that's what bothers me the most is this administration could quickly put all of that speculation and that rhetoric to rest, but they just choose not to.
They absolutely choose not to by not giving out the full details, by not giving the full story, by continually surrounding
themselves in some sort of vague mystery.
And part of the problem
is they jump to conclusions.
It is infuriated.
But but they jump out with first it was, oh, he's dead.
Well, he wasn't down the suspect.
Then it's he shot the guy.
Well, we don't know yet.
So they're in such a hurry to make headlines and to get in front of a camera that they don't allow the facts to play out.
And then, you know, we can wait a few minutes.
Right.
I know in this accelerated news cycle, we don't think that we can wait a few minutes, but I would rather wait and just have the report come out.
There's been a shooting, more details to follow.
Okay, let's wait for some facts and some details.
Is that
part of the ploy?
That's where my mind goes.
Is that part of the ploy from this administration who likes to surround themselves in this layer of mystery and likes to convey this mistrust among people?
Because if you do that and there is this mistrust, then that trickles down to our institutions, law enforcement, the justice system.
Yeah, but the mistrust is aimed at them.
But they
don't see it like that.
For a lot of their base of voters, it is a mistrust of the entire system because they believe anything this administration tells them.
And this administration, I'm not sure, has learned that that doesn't necessarily work with all voters.
Well, it also has to, even for the most ardent MAGA supporters, wouldn't it seem like this would get confusing if one minute
that your hero is telling you one thing, and then he comes out 15 minutes later and tells you something else, and the day later he tells you the exact opposite?
You would think, but they continually try, they believe what this president says.
It's been a pattern that we've seen.
And that's why earlier this morning when we talked about the polling numbers, where 85% of Republicans still support the president and this administration and their agenda,
This is why, because they continually believe what they're being told, even if things change or seem contradictory to other people.
And I wish I could explain it.
It's a full level.
I
wish you could explain it too.
I wish I could
explain it.
I really do, because I find it a really interesting phenomenon, because I don't know if we've ever seen it to this level with any other president of the United States, of either party, who have
been able to
lie like this and continually change their story.
And I know, you know, we can talk about cognitive dissonance and people not wanting to believe things that go against their core belief for whatever reason, whether it's they are really true believers, or even if they're not true believers, now they're embarrassed.
They don't want to be proven wrong, that maybe they backed the wrong horse, or maybe they were lied to.
Even if people are lied to, they don't want to
they don't want to turn their back on that liar they don't want to make because then it's it reflects badly on you right if you believe a liar all the time what does that say about your intelligence your character all of that so it's the internal struggle to not
not have to be proven wrong.
Right.
And nobody likes to be proven wrong.
No, nobody likes to be proven wrong.
We have just about a minute left, and I think this is a big one, especially if you're somebody who loves the outdoors and other headlines of stuff
you need to know.
Oh, I wondered if you were going to try to get to this.
Yeah, we'll
get to it really quickly.
Wisconsin health professionals are bracing for a bad year for Lyme disease because tick activity is already higher in April than it was at the same time last year.
We have a lot of warmer and wetter weather, which can increase the risk of illnesses
from ticks because they thrive in warm, humid weather.
And something I didn't know about ticks until I moved to the great state of Wisconsin, they can actually survive in temperatures above freezing.
They become, in fact, more active when it's about between 45 and 50 degrees.
They
don't
actually die during the winter, so ticks darn it, they are always around.
Did I tell you I had one on me last week?
Yeah, probably
mow in the grass.
It was
gross.
Probably
mow in the grass.
Gross, gross, gross.
