☀️ Good morning!

💥 I’m not gonna lie: It was rather satisfying to watch the Oval Office bromance turn into a MAGA version of another Space X rocket explosion. But I think a lot of us floated back down to Earth pretty quickly after President Trump and Elon Musk had their “Real Housewives” moment. 

🤯 Their disagreement over Trump’s “Big Bloated Boondoggle” of a budget bill had nothing to do with getting rid of their excessive tax breaks for corporations and the super-wealthy. They and other Republicans simply disagree over whether to put those sweetheart deals on the nation’s credit card a little bit or a lot. Either way, they want massive cuts to healthcare, food aid, education, natural resources, and everything else average Americans expect our tax dollars to support.

So what is this weekend’s takeaway? Republicans showed us again this week they want to ram their agendas through Washington, DC and Madison without doing the things Americans expect of politicians: negotiate, compromise, find the workable middle ground. 

Trump wants everything in one bill in order to avoid having to negotiate with Democrats. And Republicans in the Legislature just walked away from months of budget negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers. Their actions remind us of the dangers that come from electing politicians who don’t want to govern so much as they want to rule.

⏮️ Last Week: If the state budget bill written by Republicans doesn’t meet certain standards when it comes to supporting education, health care, and other issues, some progressives say Gov. Tony Evers should not try to fix it with partial vetoes. Instead, they say he should veto the entire bill. 

🔴 65% said Evers should veto the whole bill and tell the Legislature to start over.

🟡 32% are good with Evers doing what he can through partial vetoes.

🏳️  3% said Evers should sign whatever Republicans pass.

Nancy H. supports partial vetoes. “Let’s start using the surplus effectively to help schools and the caregivers crisis AND tax cuts.”

Tony wants a full veto: “The scorched earth practices of the GOP must be met with the same hard line. They have no interest in compromise and need to be shown for what they are.” 

Dale S in Merrimac: “Usually I’m in favor of partial veto but this time veto the whole bill. Evers needs to let Wisconsinites know how bad the GOP effort was and really hit the public with what it could have done to Wisconsin.  A partial veto allows the GOP to claim some victories.”

Tammy would go with partial vetoes: “Politics is the art of the possible, and until the Democrats can gain the majority in at least one of the chambers, progressives will not get their perfect wish list met.”

⏭️ This Week: Wausau isn’t the first community that has debated having a city manager form of government instead of an elected mayor, but it’s the latest to have a lively discussion about it—in part because conservative Mayor Doug Diny continues to butt heads with members of the city council. (The same mayor who took it upon himself to remove a ballot drop box from its location, despite being advised to leave it alone.) How do you feel about city and county governance? 

🟦 A)  City Manager/County Administrator – Communities need professional administration for day-to-day business. Checks and balances would still come from the elected city councils or county boards that do the hiring of managers.

🟨 B)  Mayor/County Executive – The people should choose their local leaders from among themselves. Even outside professionals can run into political problems from the city council/county board, so let’s have elected officials from top to bottom.

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 UpNorthNews Radio.

(Mornings with Pat Kreitlow)

We talked to US House Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) on our radio show about the Trump-GOP budget plan, especially the blowback it’s getting—from some of the Republicans who voted for it!

As more is learned about the (over 1,000-page) bill, some GOP lawmakers are saying they would not have supported some of its contents (like blocking states from protecting Americans from high tech AI abuse) if they’d known what was in the bill before voting to pass it. 🤨

“Well, I don’t blame them,” Pocan told us. “I mean, there’s a lot of bad stuff in that bill. If I was Derrick Van Orden or Bryan Steil or others in Wisconsin and I voted for a half-trillion dollars to cut from Medicare, if I voted to kick off 14 million people in the country from their health care and 11 million kids and others from food assistance, I’d be as ashamed as you could imagine as well. And then they won’t do a town hall. If you’re proud of something, you don’t hide in your basement and hope no one calls. And that’s exactly what every Republican in Wisconsin is doing right now.”

Not that Van Orden has been silent. He’s been doing his shouting from a tiny keyboard.

👉🏼 WATCH what I had to say about one particular 24-hour period with at least 45 posts on X (Twitter), including an attempt to have one of his constituents fired or harassed and a post spreading long-ago debunked misinformation.

“It is a remarkably unhinged, social media presence that Wisconsin’s member of Congress from the 3rd District has,” said political journalist Dan Shafer of The Recombobulation Area. “It’s insults all the time. It’s conspiracy theories all the time. And, you know, he is not exactly an accomplished legislator at the end of the day, either.”

Shafer pointed to a column by Bill Lueders in The Bulwark that notes, “Of the 32 bills and resolutions Van Orden sponsored in the 118th Congress (2023–24), exactly none became law; just three bills passed the GOP-controlled House before dying in the Senate, and a single Van Orden resolution received agreement in the House: It encourages all Americans to ‘engage with veterans.’ A legislative titan he is not.”

“So, maybe a little bit less time tweeting?” Shafer deadpanned.

👉🏼 MONDAY: State Sen. Chris Larson. Emily Pritzkow of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council on growth in construction apprenticeships.

👉🏼 TUESDAY: Dan Shafer

👉🏼 WEDNESDAY: Earl Ingram

👉🏼 THURSDAY: State Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein

👉🏼 FRIDAY: WI Supreme Court candidate, Judge Chris Taylor 

And, of course, much more!

“Mornings with Pat Kreitlow” can be heard from 6-9 a.m. and seen on our Facebook and YouTube pages. Subscribe to the show as a podcast on Spotify. 

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

1️⃣ – Budget Blockers – Republican leaders in the Legislature walked away from budget negotiations with Gov. Tony Evers. He met them halfway on their tax cut demands. They wouldn’t meet him halfway on his priorities for supporting education and childcare. For now, as in previous budget cycles, Republicans will write a budget bill, send it to Evers, and criticize whatever he crosses out with his veto powers.

2️⃣ – Stewardship Agreement – There are more hopeful signs of compromise when it comes to some individual items. Republicans put forward a bill that would fund the long-running Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program that purchases land for conservation. It’s not as much as Gov. Evers proposed and it comes with some strings attached, but it maintains a program that some Republicans had threatened to end altogether. (The program is named for two former governors, a Republican and a Democrat, who valued land conservation during their terms in the 1960s.)

Republicans also added a provision to the budget bill that beefs up a fund that provides low-interest loans for municipalities to use on infrastructure for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater. 

3️⃣ – Legal Waves Over Wake Boat Bans – WATCH our summary of how local communities are being doubly threatened by wake boats—modified speed boats designed to make waves that are large enough to surf. The first threat is the potential damage to the shoreline and lake bottoms, as well as the noise and disruption. The new threat comes from lawsuits to get local wake boat bans overturned. The Legislature could make things clearer, but there’s always the risk lawmakers could make things worse by interfering with local control or siding outright with the out-of-state parties bringing the lawsuits.

🏁 Thanks for reading today’s update.

Have a great week.

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