Transcript
What’s New With Wisconsin Watch? With Jack Kelly (Hour 2)
The Todd Allbaugh Show · Mon May 12, 2025
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Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm Todd Allbaugh along with Mr. Aaron Zommers, our producer and engineer on the board.
It is six past the hour of three o'clock.
Welcome into hour number two of the big program.
It is Monday, May 12th, 2025.
It is a great day.
to be a Wisconsinite.
And I mean a great day.
Temperatures in the 80s through parts of Wisconsin, as they say, cooler near the lake, Lake Michigan, that is.
But most of Wisconsin in the 80s and 70s today, pretty blue skies out there right now as we come to you for the World Headquarters of Downtown Madison on State Street, Zomers.
I know a little warm for you, but I'll take this.
all
No, no, you won't.
You won't melt.
Just chill out a little bit.
Good to be with you.
Many thanks to Senator Keller Royce from Hour Number Two.
Always a lot of fun to talk to the senator, her insight on the Joint Finance Committee, and hope to continue that into the summer months here as the joint, last several weeks.
They hope to be wrapped up by end of June.
We'll see.
We'll see how that goes.
Anyway, coming up here just a bit, we'll do what's worse.
And then at the bottom of the hour, 235 to be precise, Jack Kelly from Wisconsin Watch in with more Wisconsin news headlines over the weekend and the things going on.
And the what's new on their great newsletter as well.
Always great to have Jack stop by.
Sorry.
I was looking inside.
I thought you were going to say something to the knowing and nothing.
nothing.
Look a lot's going to try to catch up a little bit over the weekend as we said again hearts go out to the folks in Milwaukee who went through that major fire over the weekend a four-story apartment complex set of blaze and Five people I believe now have lost their lives three more in critical condition Dozens if not hundreds of others are displaced and this was an older building built in the late 60s
before the fire codes changed.
And God bless the fire chief down in Milwaukee.
He did not mince words after this with the press in saying, look, people have to make a decision here.
And, you know, whether it's a home builders association or whoever Wisconsin, I get it to retrofit these buildings with fire suppressant systems, ie sprinklers.
It would cost a lot of money, but I've got at the time four and now five families
I'm having to comfort and talk to who would think that cost would be nothing.
And again, as we, right before the top of the hour there, that call from LA Tom, lots of folks, and I know we're experiencing this in Madison, that there are some places, and I'm not talking about like the suburb areas where you have the McMansions or whatever, I'm talking about basic one bedroom apartment housing.
in Madison, certainly on the Isthmus here, and I know there was just an article in, I'm not sure where it was in, but it was, I believe it might have been the journal Sentinel, on Milwaukee's housing crunch, and how they're facing this as well.
And it's not that there isn't housing available, it's affordable.
And when I say affordable, I'm not talking about
you know, the what, what some people would consider quote unquote welfare or poor people or, oh, you know, they're just uneducated and they're not working and they're lazy and all these stereotypes.
I'm talking about people who are gainfully employed, some of whom have technical or four year degrees and who are working full time and yet cannot afford to live in modest one bedroom homes in typical neighborhoods in Madison, Milwaukee.
And kids.
And so this is something we've talked about before.
I hope to talk about it more as we continue on into this year is the housing crisis in Wisconsin.
And so here now over the weekend, we see one of these apparent neighborhood, not neighborhood, but an apartment complex where the rents were cheaper because it was an older apartment building, but had no fire suppression systems in it.
and a fire started and it just went like kiddling and a lot of injuries.
And the question begs, and I get it, I stopped myself for a second because if you're a landlord, you say, well, I bought this and our family's owned it for 40 years and before this happened and now it would cost us millions of dollars or whatever it would cost.
And I get it, for some people it might just be,
cost prohibitive.
But it would seem to me that maybe perhaps we could take part of that $4 billion in our state budget and say, hey, what buildings are there in certain cities where there's a housing crisis where we could possibly partner with builders and landlords to put in fire suppression systems so these things wouldn't happen?
Because I bet you if you go a block away, Zomers, and go to the Joint Finance Committee,
And you ask anybody on there, Republican, Democrat, or whatever, hey, would you like your kid or grand kid to live in a building that has no fire suppression system?
Nobody there is going to say yes.
So my question is if you, legislator, don't want that.
Why would you why should we expect it to be okay for other people fellow Wisconsinites?
And I get it you can't solve every problem every budget But it would seem to me at least having a pilot program or taking a step in that direction might be a good thing to do But yeah, that's
That's
just me I honestly between this with the no fire suppression systems and the problems with lead in Milwaukee that are well documented and persist to this day
I find it a tremendous indictment on the, I don't know if it's the fault of the city of Milwaukee or the state government, but it's frankly unacceptable.
And people are dying because of it.
And someone's got to do something.
We shall see.
We shall see.
What happens as we move forward here?
But anyway, I just thought I would bring it up so that people could maybe be aware of this and discuss a little bit.
13 minutes now past the hour of three o'clock.
I want to get to this before we do what's worse today.
Timely, timely indeed, as Mike Lucas likes to say, President Donald Trump today launched a version on price controls to reduce drug costs for the U.S.
consumers by basing payments for some medications on their prices in other countries.
In an executive order signing, Trump said, quote, Big Pharma will either abide by this principle voluntarily or will use the power of the federal government to ensure that we are paying the same price, unquote.
Under the order, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
will, quote, set clear targets for price reductions across all markets, unquote, in the US and open a, quote, round of negotiations, unquote, with the industry.
Kennedy lauded Trump's executive order and said the policy was the fulcrum pardon me Quote the fulcrum of Bernie Sanders's run for presidency in 2016 and 2020 unquote Now as listeners of our show Republicans historically oppose increasing the minimum wage or have any minimum wage laws why?
Because they have said a minimum wage is a version of price control
As we learned in high school, price controls have been used multiple times in US history and policy has always backfired.
Richard Nixon famously launched broad price controls to combat inflation.
When price controls were lifted, the result was even more inflation.
Will this populist move by Trump, which distracts from his tariff debate, by the way, and differently?
Well, we'll see.
Now remember, during the...
Through the campaign we were so fortunate to have Mark Cuban on the show He was a surrogate for then vice president Kamala Harris Mark Cuban most of you many of you might know he's on shark tanker I think now the season he's off.
He was on shark tanks for the beginning owner of the medallist Mavericks although he's sold his majority interest in the Mavericks multi-billionaire What Cuban has started this new company called cost plus drugs
And he's taking his wealth and he's making deals directly with pharmaceutical makers and putting the middle person out of business.
And Charlie Kirk tweeted this last night about what Trump just read.
And here's what Mark Cuban, a guy who knows a lot about drug prices, said, quote, drug prices are too damn high.
But the big culprit isn't the brand manufacturers, it's the big middlemen.
Namely, PBMs.
They work so hard to distort pricing, the first lines in their contract with everyone is literally, quote, you can't disclose any of this, unquote.
How bad are they?
Have you ever seen them disclose a net price list?
For your company, Charlie Kirk, ask your PBM for a list of claims and the price paid for each medication.
Let us know if you can get them.
This EO executive order has a real shot and big pharma isn't innocent.
But the PBMs that have screwed things up, whether they have screwed things up, separate formulas from Jim and make them disclose all claims to employers and manufacturers, and we may be able to get brand meds cheaper than many countries.
Unquote that from Mark Cuban.
So what Cuban is basically saying you read a couple of his other tweets he's put out the last 24 hours He's saying look what Trump's doing today isn't necessarily going to fix the problem But you can't say it's not a step in the right direction because it may bring transparency And this has been one of Mark Cuban's main points in creating cost plus drugs is that there's no transparency
We're not seeing how much the pharmaceutical company is charging the middlemen, and then how much of that gets passed on to either our local pharmacy or our hospitals or our clinics, and that's what ultimately really drives prices up.
So I'm not here to necessarily flat out endorse what Trump is doing on this today, but based on people who are a lot smarter than me on this stuff like Mark Cuban, you know, it may help.
And I think it's good to at least acknowledge that and say, you know what, if there's something that could help the pharmaceutical or the cost of drugs to consumers in this country, hey, that's a good thing.
And
Yeah, I have a lot of respect for him.
I'd love to have him back on the show.
I think maybe our friend Trigby is working on that.
But interesting indeed.
Should we open the thing up now or should we wait?
We can do it now.
All right, here we go.
Time once again for What's Worse.
Let's go.
for What's Worse.
No prize.
Nobody involved.
Nothing to give away.
But it is your chance to have your voice heard across all 11 news, sports, talk stations, and the Civic Media Ready Network across Wisconsin.
All right.
That time of year, Todd needs to get it back out and exercise, put out a few pounds over the winter.
So here it is.
Today's category, what's worse?
Pointing out weight loss or not pointing out weight loss.
855-752-4842, 855-752-4842.
What's worse?
Pointing out weight loss or not pointing out weight loss.
855-752-4842, 855-752-4842, or you can text us at the Civic Media app.
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What's worse?
Pointing out that somebody has lost weight,
or not pointing out weight loss.
We'll come back, take your calls after this, 855-752-4842, 855-752-4842.
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Welcome back to the town of all show on the civic media brain network coming up just after the bottom of the hour Jack Kelly from Wisconsin watch will be in talking about important stories across the state of Wisconsin Politically catching us up to speed on there.
They have a great newsletter at Wisconsin watch We'll talk more about that in just a few minutes.
Mr. Kelly who is in the green room right now better known as the couch outside the door Right now asking the questions of the not so important, but
sometimes amusing.
Today's what's worse, the category is pointing out weight loss or not pointing out weight loss.
855-752-4842, 855-752-4842.
Zomers, have you ever been in a position where you don't know if you should say something or not?
I mean, if someone clearly has lost weight, you want to compliment them, but
Well, you're thinking, well, if I say that, then it's going to sound like I thought they were heavy before.
But yet, if you don't say it, they're going to be like, I've done all this work and nobody notices.
which
All right.
All right.
Well, if anybody else has a more decisive answer, eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two, eight, five, five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two.
Let's go to Milwaukee on WAUK.
Brian, listening to Milwaukee.
Brian, pointing out weight loss or not pointing out weight loss?
What's worse?
It's
funny that Somers said exactly what I was going to say because it really depends.
And here's my example.
Because for me, for example, I've always been a short, stocky, heavy-set guy.
And about two years ago, I was visiting with family for Christmas.
And my aunt, who I haven't seen in like a year, said, Brian, aren't you trying to lose weight?
Because I gained, like, 50 pounds since you last saw me.
And my stepmom said, well, you don't know, but he was diagnosed with some health issues.
And now I was on, put on prednisone, which you gain a lot of weight with that.
And, and then she's like, but Brian, you're so young, how did you gain all this weight?
And, you know, when we found out what was going on, you know, was that type of thing.
And then when I saw her this past Christmas, she actually complimented me on the weight loss I've been trying to do being on the medication.
So it really depends because you could have a situation like that where you know the person's trying to lose weight.
But then again, if someone's going through like chemotherapy, has like chronic wasting syndrome, and they're losing
weight, you don't compliment that.
Exactly.
Now, let's keep you on the phone, Brian, because I'm interested because you've gone through this a little bit.
Carolyn from Heartland just texted in on WAUK, and she just texted what
I basically what I was going to say, she says, just say, you look great.
I mean, so that was just something I have done.
I like if I see someone and it's like it's pretty clear that they've that they've, you know, lost weight in a good way, what I think is a good or healthy way.
I'll just say, wow, you look fantastic.
I haven't seen you in a while.
And like if they say, well, thank you, I've really been trying.
Well, then you could kind of pick up on that.
But if they just say, oh, thank you, I appreciate it, then maybe there's something else going on.
Is that an acceptable way of
thinking?
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
Like, even when I was in high school, when I was younger, I gained a lot of weight because of some of the medication I was on.
And I stopped taking the medication.
My doctor said, you need to diet and exercise.
personally to help you know consequences later on in your life and I lost a whole bunch of weight when I was senior year in high school and all of a sudden I was getting compliments from you know students and teachers going oh my god how'd you do it well I just ate healthy that's right right you know
and I
also think it really depends on the situation
and I also think if if you know I've had
People friends in my life that might have been heavier, but they lost they lost some weight It wasn't where they wanted to be yet, but I would still say hey you look fantastic.
I mean, it's not that we all have to be like I I'm certainly no model, you know a center full or anything like that I think I think weight weight is particular to the person what they feel good about what's healthy for that individual We all walk a different journey So, you know some sometimes just like a new shirt or whatever and it's like wow this person's been colored
And it's funny too, because I've been talking to my doctors, you know, over the years about trying to lose weight.
And because I'm, for example, I'm 55 and currently 308 pounds.
When you look in a textbook, like a fitness book of what they say, a male at my age, which is 39, you know, with my height and my weight, you know, should weigh.
Well, then when you look at it, the doctor's like, no, you should not be this 100 and something, you know, pounds because that's going to be
on your type of body, that's going to be too low.
You need to aim for, you know, they said like aim for like 220, 225, 230 because that's going to look better on you.
You know, so everyone's a little different,
you
know.
I appreciate the call, Brian.
Thanks for sharing that personal information.
We, I think it's just good to have these open discussions.
Sometimes this stuff ends up being more humorous and sometimes it makes us have cool conversations that are just real.
And I like that.
Oh yeah.
interesting.
Megan in some prairie listening to WMDX says, I agree with Carolyn almost had that typed word for word before I heard her comment.
Casper in engineering says I made it a personal thing to just not comment on other people's appearances in general.
Well, there's that too.
But I don't know anything else.
Oh, someone else said, just say, oh, Jude in East Troy, just say, you're looking good.
And they get it.
Yeah, I think that's, I tend to be like.
I don't know if someone truly looks I'm like I won't I won't tell people they look fantastic if they if it's clear they don't like if they're if they're ill or or You know what I mean?
gonna judge me like oh you must think I look terrible if you don't say but my point is I reserve that like if I know a friend or family is going is trying to lose weight and then they do if I truly notice it and I know the work they put in I want to like be complimentary of that right that's the point all right come on back we'll get to the point with mr.
Jack Kelly from Wisconsin Watch, a little Wisconsin news for you on this side.
It's the Tottenham
Bowl
Show in Suffolk, Indiana.
Civic Media already that we're glad to have you along here on a Monday, May 12th, 2025.
Say 35 minutes past the hour already.
never hurts to set the time.
Maybe I've had an extra mushroom.
I'm looking, we're joined here at the desk now.
We hope to be every week from someone at Wisconsin watching and Jack Kelly is in.
Jack, how the heck are you?
I'm
doing great.
Thanks for having me
again.
It's always a pleasure.
We were talking mushrooms before we came back on the air, but morale mushrooms.
And then one of our listeners, Cameron Appleton,
texted at me right before I went to the air and said, please teach me about mushrooms.
I wish to grow them.
I'm not entirely sure which type of mushrooms he's talking about.
I don't know how to provide any advice
either.
Look, I like mushrooms.
I like to eat them.
Are you a morale
fan?
I am, you know, I'm not, I'm not picky in choosing.
Eating mushrooms is an adult era, uh, innovation for me.
I was
like 25 years old when I started doing it again.
So I was like, you know, mushrooms on pizza, whatever, never my thing.
Now I can't get enough of it.
That's fantastic.
I grew up on Morels as a kid, but they're, they're pricey now.
I saw that not on Saturday, but Wednesday here downtown, $25 a pound.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Wow.
They're the elusive Morale mushroom, but of course the capital Morale mushrooms in southwest Wisconsin, Muscatty.
All right.
Yeah, you said there was a place of Rothschild that claims this or whatever.
Oh, no.
And in Rothschild is where the state Republican Party convention is going
to be.
There may be a lot of mushrooms and bite in Rothschild, Wisconsin.
All right.
Well, this is enough of old mushroom home week.
Anyway, what Jack is here to do is and the great folks at WisconsinWatch.org.
That's WisconsinWatch.org.
Keep track of what the happenings are in the state of Wisconsin.
It's a great website.
You do a great new.
I wanted to pick up a little bit, Jack.
We had State Senator, Kelly Royce here earlier in the show, Democrat from the Madison area, and she's on the Joint Finance Committee.
But what I want to talk about is something to pick up our friend and colleague, Jane McNair, touched on this this morning on her show.
And for our afternoon listeners, talk a little bit about this joint finance budget and the
the oddness, I'll call it, or uniqueness of this time around, they've done something different in terms of what you can say and what you can't say in the state budget.
Yeah, so Wisconsin is different than many states in the sense that the state passes an operating budget.
and a capital budget every two years.
So when we talk about the state budget, we're talking about how lawmakers in Madison and the governor are planning to spend your $100 billion, roughly, over the next two years as the taxpayer.
And so the Joint Finance Committee had what was its first working meeting last week.
They met for about two hours, and they did something similar to they've done the last three budgets proposed by Governor Tony Evers, which is they pretty much went
uh, command a delete
and, and
strip it down to the very, very bare bones.
Um, so, you know, that, that's what they did.
Uh, we've seen this before something that is, um, not totally unique, but they have started to push more is that they, they kind of do that in two parts.
The first part they do is to delete.
In this instance, it was, um, several hundred provisions that the governor proposed basically for good.
They, they, the, the motion that they talk about, it says.
to be a list of items to be removed from budget consideration.
What that means is don't bring it up, don't talk about it, it's dead.
We're not going to think about it for the budget.
So they did that in one piece, and then in another piece, they deleted the rest of it, but some of those ideas could come back up.
So it's kind of a, you know, two halves.
You can see what they got rid of for good, and you can see what they might consider over the next couple of months as they finish crafting the budget.
So am I correct in saying what they're, what they're putting out here, and this applies not just for people that might testify, but like
Sitting state senators representatives particularly the Democratic Party do not talk about these things or will cut off your mic because they're they're hitherto Gone.
Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
I think state senator Roy's experienced this last session I believe it was something about childcare that she was talking about During one of the joint finance committee meetings and they turned her mic off and that is the case for many things and particularly
for certain ideas that the public came and told the committee at four different listening sessions across the state over the last kind of month in April, that they really cared about it.
And it was things about education funding, about healthcare and healthcare access, about childcare, et cetera.
Like one of the things, for example, that they killed for good is childcare counts.
People on the program might have heard that before.
We've been talking about it for several years now.
It's a program that the governor created using federal money.
The state basically
provides funds to childcare providers effectively to keep them open so that you can have places to send your kids.
And Democrats have raved about it.
They've seen it as very successful.
Republicans have been lukewarm at best.
After they've been very against it, they have kind of turned down the idea of making it a state-funded permanent program at every turn, and they did that again.
So childcare counts, it's out.
Don't bring it up again in the budget.
But, for example,
A big thing that the governor wants is to increase the amount of funds that are reimbursed to school districts for special education.
Special education is very expensive.
Many districts will tell you they have to transfer money from their general fund into that fund to help pay for special education costs.
He wants to increase the reimbursement rate up to, I think, 60 percent.
The state will cover 60 percent of special ed costs for all districts in the state.
Republicans took that provision out, but they didn't kill it for good.
So we could see a version of that come back in the budget bill.
It just, we're talking to Jack Kelly of Wisconsin Watch.
You can find all these stories at WisconsinWatch.org.
Jack, it just seems on the first one of those things you mentioned there.
on the childcare.
And today, I guess, is the national day of childcare, whatever they're calling it, where to bring awareness to this very important subject.
We talked about it last week with Kareen, who has a childcare facility in beautiful Nucleus, Wisconsin.
Incidentally, I was at Bailey's Run in Nucleus over the weekend.
Beautiful place to have a beverage and a piece of our wonderful meal.
But in order for people in that community Nucleus to work, they need a place to have their kids in childcare.
To this very serious point that you're bringing up why on you're here to report not but but I guess I would say as a guy who analyzes the news it just seems confounding to me that a Current state senator or representative would say we're not even going to allow a discussion of
on child care in this particular, and this is going to mean that child care workers go out of business some, and some people no longer have a place to leave their kids, which means they won't be able to go to work, which means they'll be unemployed, and those same people that say we're not talking about this will point the finger back and say, well, you're lazy.
It's an interesting dynamic, right?
I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, assembly Republicans advanced a whole package of bills.
about bolstering the state's workforce.
Democrats come right back to them and say, if you want to bolster the state's workforce, invest in childcare.
I will say, Republicans on the committee
kind of panned the idea that because they were throwing out childcare counts, nothing's going to get done on childcare, right?
You know, Howard Markline, Senator Howard Markline, he's the committee co-chair from, he's Republican from Springgreen, you know, in the crater, Madison area.
You know, he said during the committee, this idea that the door is closed on all of these things is pretty ridiculous.
And his committee co-chair, Representative Mark Bourne from Beaver Dam, kind of piled onto that and he said,
There is more than one way to address issues, and those will all be debated and built over the next couple of months.
So what they're saying is just because we don't want to do it the way the governor wants to do it.
doesn't mean we're not going to do it at all.
And so now we wait and see as they go behind closed doors, strike deals, and really make the sausage of the spending plan for the next two months.
The fiscal year for the state runs out on June 30.
It's kind of a soft deadline.
If they don't pass a budget, we don't have a state government shutdown.
Funding levels just continue as is.
But, you know, there's some pressure.
People typically like to be done with the budget by or shortly after the 4th of July, and with the 4th of July being a Friday this year, I think lawmakers will probably be eager to meet the deadline.
I think you're absolutely right.
And I don't mean to harp on this too much, because we talked about Senator Mark Line in the first hour, a guy I happened to know for my days in the Capitol.
I would take Senator Mark Line and his word in what's in your article saying that he what he said was the word he used It's ridiculous to say they're not going to address child care.
Is that right?
We'll make sure I get it right
The idea that the door is closed and all these things is pretty ridiculous
So Howard says the idea that the door is closed is quote-unquote pretty ridiculous.
This is the same guy
who a couple of years ago, I was at a town hall, 100 plus people packed in a room trying to save the UW Richland campus and asking Howard and asking representative Kurtz, who both sat on the joint finance committee then as well, saying, how can we get money?
We need like maybe three or four million to keep this campus open.
And Howard literally looked at people and said, quote, I don't know.
I don't have any power.
I don't really have any real power.
That's we that's what he told people and here's a guy who is the one of the most powerful legislators in the state
most definitely
and So now so my point is when we come back to this was in the story of Wisconsin watch what he said.
Well, you know, this is ridiculous.
How should?
Voters take this guy at his word when he clearly hasn't been serious in the past
it's interesting and You know, obviously this this is on its face of policy discussion, right?
We're talking about the state budget is
by no means the sexiest thing.
You use the right term.
Sausage making.
But there's always politics to it as well.
Right.
Howard Marklein was drawn into a different district.
More
democratic leading.
Right.
And is probably the most vulnerable or certainly one of the two most vulnerable Senate Republicans and Democrats will be eager to win his seat come in 26 because they see it as the path to taking the majority in the Senate.
And so.
Here you have Senator Mark Klein.
He is in a position of power.
As you pointed out, the Joint Finance Committee is the most powerful legislative committee.
Oftentimes, you'll see journalists call it the powerful budget writing
committee, et
cetera.
We'll see how he uses that to maybe soften himself on certain stances that maybe he's been opposed to in the past.
Now that he's going to be in a district, that's probably going to be a real dogfight.
Well, correct me if I'm wrong, because sometimes I'm, as my teacher used to say, too poor to pay attention.
Ken Lewis, by the way.
There's a fundraiser tonight.
Speaking of Tony Curtis, there's a fundraiser tonight at five o'clock.
Wasn't that supposed to be at one time?
illegal for a sitting state legislator to fundraise during a joint finance session?
Gosh, I have that.
I just dream that I
would have to ask a legal expert.
I'm not sure.
I
mean, I there was talk at one point years ago in the state legislature to say maybe while the guy and the gal who are writing the budget, maybe they shouldn't be accepting money at the same time from from supporters.
That might be bad idea.
You know, kind of like giving a four hundred million dollar plane to a president.
I think.
you know, maybe are blurry.
But I would have to ask an attorney
for sure.
I didn't mean to throw, I just, that baffles me.
I do a lot of reporting on legal issues.
But
every time I talk to an attorney, I have to start up front with the, you know, I have to couch it, I have to qualify it.
I am not an attorney.
But Jack Kelly is a strong name, if you were an attorney.
I think it's a strong name anyway, but I mean the attorney, the law firm of Jack Kelly, called Jack Kelly.
One call, nah, it's already been done.
All right, well, we're talking with Jack Kelly at Wisconsin Watch.
Anything else on joint finance or the budget before we leave that?
I mean, I just think it's going to be really interesting.
One thing that I want to lift up that could be a backdoor to get Wisconsin on par with 48 other states is that they left the door open to post part of Medicaid expansion for new moms up to a year.
I should note.
Every Republican senator on the committee including the co-chair Howard Markline just voted for that as a standalone bill And now I would be interested to see if they would back a motion to put it in the state budget Because that would be a way to circumvent the leading opposition to the bill
Assembly Speaker Robin Boss, who of course, without his say, without his approval, no bill in the Assembly gets a vote.
So would they be willing to put that into the budget, the kind of circumvent Voss?
Because it seems unlikely to me he would spike the whole budget bill over that.
Do you think, I've just made some different reporting, your reporting, do you think in the state Senate that they're going to need Republican vote, or Democratic votes to pass it?
Maybe.
Maybe, there you go.
All right, sounds good.
I'll come back and my old party is meeting with mushrooms.
Maybe.
We'll come back and talk more about the Republican Party Convention.
Could this shim sham man be on the way out?
We'll ask Jack Kelly.
It's the title of our show on the Civic Media Ready Network.
back to the Taliban show across Wisconsin on the civic media network where it is now eight before the hour of four o'clock at the top of the hour, ABC or CBS News, depending upon which of our great stations you're listening to.
Let a weather update for you.
I can tell you what is going to be in one word.
Great.
That's it.
That's the weather right there.
Now back to you, John.
It's beautiful.
Hot, sunny.
That's all you need to know.
Feels like summertime.
Exactly.
If the weather is great.
And then Mike Clemens is back at the sports desk and he will be in with a look at the happenings around State of Wisconsin.
Brewer is going to try to get back on a winning streak.
I think they start pre-game show at the bottom.
I'm next hour in Richland Center Hayward Oshkosh Wisconsin Rapids, I believe as well.
So there you go Wisconsin our Milwaukee Brewers 430 pitch tonight or this afternoon against the Cleveland Guardians still hard to get used to that guardians, but the guardians and then also Clemens is reporting on Yanis now.
They're saying that got us off the the Kupo Thank you at least at least Jack
Kelly from Wisconsin watch.
I know he does.
We're not here to talk
sports, but as a Wisconsin guy, Yana say he's willing to think about maybe going to other teams.
Does he go?
Oh,
man, does he go?
Maybe.
Should the bucks really entertain it?
Yes, because they have no picks for like six years.
So
it's all right all the world of Michael Mike Clemens is this poor sky he'll stick to that Jack Kelly of Wisconsin watches here to talk a little politics by a former party the state Republican Party of Wisconsin They are having their state convention come up Jack.
I couldn't get a little spicy It could
this is the first time that they will have gathered for the state party convention
since Donald Trump's triumph in return to the White House, but also what can only be described as an absolute shellacking in the April State Supreme Court race, which when you really consider what's going to have a more profound effect on your life as a Wisconsin resident, was probably the one that they maybe would have wanted to win more.
So it is going to be interesting for sure.
And I think, you know, there's been a lot of online chatter.
Especially from you know, the Republican Party of Wisconsin is very so interesting, right?
They have for a long time Relyed on the work of volunteers.
They've been very relying upon the grassroots for donations, etc to feel fuel the party The state Democratic Party is not that way.
They have raised just unbelievable amounts of money They have a full-time year-round professional staff.
They approach things differently and some of the Republican faithful that those grassroots volunteers who are
the lifeblood of the party are dissatisfied with state GOP chairman Brian Schimming.
And so it'll be interesting to see if that gets fiery this weekend up in Rothschild.
Now I've known Brian Arthur Schimming, that's his full name, other state party chair for a long time.
And he comes from more of the, I'll call it the old traditional line of Republican politics.
He's adapted to the MAGA, but he's not, that's not who he really, really, really is.
And now other reporting I've seen is saying that the
the ultra or uber maga part of the Wisconsin public party, particularly in Milwaukee, the largest county in the state.
And then Green Bay, Brown County, I believe it was Eau Claire Lacrosse, are coming together to try to vote him out.
But I hear that that's kind of not possible.
It's not entirely clear.
I
was never like on the big committees.
It's
not entirely clear.
To my knowledge, this would be kind of a novel thing.
I think it's more representative of the fact that you kind of have this, you have this, I don't know if it's a need, but you have this tendency of grassroots people in politics, both sides of the aisle, but for sure, more recently in Wisconsin on the conservative side, looking for the scapegoat when something goes wrong.
You know, I
think back, I was at the state party convention a couple of
years
ago.
Democrats had just cleaned up in the 22 midterms by and large in Wisconsin.
Of course, Ron Johnson got reelected.
And I wrote a whole story.
Ken Republicans in Wisconsin bounced back.
They sure did.
And people were very confident that they could when I was there.
But at that convention, there were a lot of grassroots people who were very upset with Assembly Speaker Robin Voss.
And now it seems that the focus has shifted to Brian Schimming, which is interesting to me in some ways because, sure, they get out fund-raised.
like crazy.
But there's also something to the fact that Republican donors like to put their money in the packs that they can control, rather giving to a party to let it be used.
Democratic donors just to give money to the party and let the party go nuts.
So it's really interesting because you talk about what happened in April.
Well, some things that the state Republican Party did in April, they transferred close to $10 million to Schimel's campaign.
Schimel's campaign.
You know, they were knocking doors.
They were out there.
They haven't been doing that.
They didn't have $9 million to transfer in previous election cycles, right?
They came nowhere near that investment for Dan Kelly.
And we saw that this goofballs from Arizona was the turning point, whatever that's called, the big Republican pact.
They were more visible in this spring election.
To me, it seemed like the Wisconsin Republican Party.
Right,
but look, think back to November.
Did you get a Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
door-knocker?
Well, you got America packed door knockers.
You got turning point action door knockers He outsourced basically a hundred percent of his ground game to these third-party groups.
It was risky.
It seemed to work for him It was basically the same playbook in April.
It's just that again, it you know kind of defies all logic
many Donald Trump voters didn't show up because Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot.
And that's the thing, Jack, as we look at this Republican Party of Wisconsin convention this week, it doesn't seem like the momentum, the Big Mo, as George H.W.
Bush called it, is transferring from Trump into state party Republican candidates.
No.
And I mean, that has been the case for as long as Donald Trump has been on the political scene or nervous, you know, going back to 2015, 2016, when he really shocked the world and then took office in 2017.
That's been the case, right?
We haven't seen Trump voters turn out and off your elections.
We haven't seen Trump voters turn out and vote for people who are not Donald Trump.
That run true again.
I think he only got 62% of Trump voters or something, just being Brad Schimmel, whereas Crawford got 77% of Kamala Harris voters.
Consider how many fewer people voted that adds up to a 10-point blowout
for all those covering the Wisconsin Republican Party convention this week Hang out with Steve Knoss.
He's a lot of fun at a state party convention Jack Kelly is always fun.
Jack at Wisconsin watch org Appreciate you're a hell of a guy and a great reporter and I admire you a lot.
Thank you for being here
Thanks for having me on I appreciate
it always a pleasure to find all these stories at Wisconsin watch or G also many thanks to states that are killed a Royce For being on the show as well as armors is always all of you for listening Meg
Eat on its next, tell all balls to say whatever you're fighting for, whatever you believe in.
Do not give up, keep banging your drum.
We'll
see you tomorrow, bye bye.
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