☀️ Good morning!

It’s Sunday, August 24, 2025

📡 There’s a lot to appreciate about how we can get all kinds of information from the “world wide web,” but what if you need something that’s not quite so global — like local news?

💻 It’s ironic and tragic that we’re able to access limitless data on an information superhighway that has bypassed local news and information. Local news outlets, especially newspapers, have become the ghost towns left behind as we zip between all sorts of global and national web sites, some reputable and some with dangerous levels of misinformation.

📻 Thankfully, some communities still have trusted local outlets, like our friends in Wisconsin Rapids. This week, WFHR Radio kicked off a celebration of its upcoming 85th anniversary. The station signed on by giving the local results of the 1940 presidential election. Ever since then, it has been a mainstay of public information and a place for conversation. 

It was an honor to take our radio show to WFHR this week to reaffirm the UpNorthNews commitment to state and local coverage. Whether it’s a classic radio station or the new generation of digital outlets, we need to support local news. It binds us as a community, ensures our local leaders are doing their jobs, and restores our faith that democracy works best when we put value in trusted sources of hometown information.

Enjoy your day. And stay up to date with our weekday newsletter, our social media posts, and our morning radio show.

⏮️ Last Week: Nobody echoed Sean Duffy’s opinion that President Donald Trump wants to follow him as US Secretary of Transportation. In fact, most of our readers have a very clear opinion about what Trump’s next job title should be after he’s out of the Oval Office.

Here’s a fair sample of what was sent in:

⏭️ This Week: President Trump is again attacking mail-in voting based on phony claims about election fraud.

📬 Where do you stand on absentee ballots?

🄰  –  What we have now is working. Leave it alone.

🄱  –  I’d get rid of drop boxes and/or in-person early voting.

🄲  –  Get rid of it all: drop boxes, early voting, mail-in ballots. If someone can’t come to the polls on Election Day, too bad. (With an exception for military service or medical verification.)

To answer this week’s question or to suggest a different answer, hit reply or email me directly at pat@couriernewsroom.com, and we may share it in a future newsletter or on our radio show.

Yes, there are still court cases involving fake electors, a scheme set up by aides to President Donald Trump ahead of his 2020 election loss. In the Wisconsin case, a Dane County judge on Friday rejected a motion from three defendants to have the charges dismissed.

Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin Rapids native, and Jim Troupis, a former Dane County judge who was acting as a the Trump campaign’s attorney in Wisconsin, have previously acknowledged their roles in helping to create, organize, and execute a plan to offer up “alternative electors” to the rightful ones won by President Joe Biden.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed felony forgery charges 14 months ago against Chesebro, Troupis, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020. 

Court cases related to the fake electors scheme remain active in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia.

👉🏼 MY VIEW: How is this still a thing? I understand our courts are overloaded — but priorities, people! This was a plot to overthrow an election and take down the United States government. 

It’s easy to understand why so many Americans think the system is broken — even to the point of re-electing someone working so blatantly to tear it apart. That, of course, is a terrible option, but it was made more viable by four years of prosecutorial dithering and by coddling every effort by the Trump cartel to run out the clock. Everyone in these courts should be embarrassed at their contribution to the truism: Justice delayed is justice denied… in this case, to an entire country and its election security.

(Photo by Pat Kreitlow)

Just because Russian dictator Vladimir Putin convinced President Donald Trump to attack mail-in voting doesn’t mean it’s going away in Wisconsin anytime soon. A bipartisan group of former Wisconsin political leaders underscored the broad support for using absentee ballots so that voters can take part in elections by mail, through drop boxes, and with in-person early voting.

“Wisconsin has displayed time and time again that our elections are safe and secure,” said former Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen, former Republican US Rep. Scott Klug, and former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate in a statement on behalf of the Democracy Defense Project.

Trump’s meeting one week ago with Putin did not result in any progress toward ending the war in Ukraine (something Trump promised to do on the first day of his second term), so he used a post-summit interview on a basic cable channel to claim Putin agreed with his false claims about the 2020 election being rigged because of mail-in voting. (Putin has had election rules changed repeatedly in order to stay in power for two decades.) 

Trump said an executive order “to lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots” would be coming. But presidents can’t do that, as election administration is handled by each individual state.

“The Constitution is clear: the federal government does not administer elections at the state level,” said the Democracy Defense Project leaders. “Just half a decade ago, Republicans in Congress vehemently opposed [a Democratic election reform bill] for many of the same reasons – that the federal government has no place in managing the individual elections of states.

For the record, the Democratic bill would have ended partisan gerrymandering, strengthened ethics rules, and added new protections to voting rights.

1️⃣ Godlewski Running for Lt. Gov. – Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski is not running for re-election next year. Instead, she has launched an effort to become the state’s next lieutenant governor. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is seeking the governor’s post, now that Gov. Tony Evers is retiring.

WATCH an excerpt from Godlewski’s appearance on our radio show.  

2️⃣ Give Voters More Democracy – Wisconsin is among the states that does not have a process allowing citizens to initiative ballot measures to pass constitutional amendments or state laws. The political reform group New America wants to change that. Their deputy director Maresa Strano was joined on our radio show by Matt Rothschild, retired former executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign to talk about advocating for someday getting more democracy in Wisconsin.

3️⃣ Ignorance About Canada’s Wildfires – Former state Rep. Fred Clark has written a column critical of Wisconsin Republicans like US Rep. Tom Tiffany who have signed strongly worded letters blaming Canada for the record number of wildfires that have led to our smoke-choked summer skies. Clark told us that many of the fires are in remote areas that have no regular forestry practices because they are inaccessible. He also notes the irony of criticism coming from politicians who have gutted US Forest Service funding and remain in denial about how a changing climate has created the current conditions in the world’s forests.

Catch our radio show weekdays from 6-9 a.m. on our Facebook and YouTube pages as well as stations across Wisconsin thanks to our friends at Civic Media. If you can’t listen live, listen on-demand by subscribing on Spotify.

📱 And stay up to date all day with all of our team’s work through our social media feeds, including Instagram and TikTok.

🏁 Thanks for reading today’s update.

Have a great week.