🌞Happy Sunday +  Happy First Week of Baseball ⚾️

We made it! It’s the first weekend of spring, with the season opener for the Milwaukee Brewers coming up on Thursday. The air is crisp, the songbirds are returning.

And we’re only 9️⃣ days away from an important Election Day and the end of another nauseous cycle of political ads. 

So here’s this weekend’s update and a reminder that you can vote early throughout this week. Contact your local clerk’s office for hours. Find your clerk’s contact info at MyVote.WI.gov.

Speaking of the election: Here’s a sample of the many video clips we’ve posted from our recent Wisconsin Supreme Court event. Share ’em with anyone who might still be on the fence about whether to vote on April 1. 

📉 Last Week: We did a temperature check over the ongoing assault on the stability that holds up the US economy. 

What stood out to me in your responses wasn’t so much that 79% of you responded  that you feel pessimistic right now—it’s that so many of you went on to type the words yourself: “We are toast!” and other feelings. Another 19% went with “skeptical” while 2% were “hopeful.” Nobody offered up a full-throated “optimistic” in defense of MAGAnomics. 

Pam said: “The people that have been fired from their jobs in the federal government are going to be looking for jobs also. It sounds like to me more people are going to be on the unemployment line and will also qualify for Medicaid for healthcare. The Republicans do not live in the real world!”

But there was this viewpoint from Jane in the 53204: “Finding waste, fraud, and abuse should be something everyone can get behind.  Not everything DOGE has done is perfect, but it’s a start. So I say, give it time.  We may be disappointed, but then again, we may be pleasantly surprised.”

🩻
This week: Cuts to the VA and to Medicaid got us wondering about how we should treat health care in the only developed, wealthy nation in the world that doesn’t guarantee healthcare for all of its citizens. Let us know what you think:

A:  On Your Own – I believe health care is a consumer good like anything else. Buy whatever insurance you can afford.
B:  Catastrophic Coverage – I believe most healthcare is done by choice, but we should all have coverage from major injuries and illnesses.
C:  Tweak the ACA – I believe ObamaCare was a good first step, using public dollars to assist in buying private insurance. Cover more things and/or add a public option. 
D:  Single-Payer – I believe health care is not a private sector consumer market. Every other developed nation has figured out how to provide some form of universal coverage. 

Hit reply or email me directly at pat@couriernewsroom.com, and we may share it in a future newsletter or on UpNorthNews Radio.

Les Danielson on his farm in Cadott

(Photo by Salina Heller)

You know Wisconsin is an important swing state. Politicians know Wisconsin is an important swing state. And as it turns out, the countries upset at President Trump’s trade war also know Wisconsin is an important swing state—and their retaliatory tariffs are aimed at products and markets that’ll hit the Badger State harder than any other.

An analysis by the New York Times shows that tariffs imposed by Canada, China, and the European Union in response to Trump’s latest tariffs are concentrated on industries that account for 9.5% of the Wisconsin workforce, leaving them exposed to the reduced sales, exports, and potential job losses that can occur during a trade war. Other states would see only 1% to 8% of their workforce exposed.

“Canada was prepared, they expected it, and they have come back with reprisals,” said Sean O’Malley, a Hudson native whose Wall Street career specialized in financial compliance and risk assessment. “One that’s going to be most impactful to Wisconsin farmers is the tariff on potash, one of the major ingredients in agricultural fertilizer.” 

And as those prices rise, they’ll be passed on to the consumer in higher food prices.

Dairy farmer Hans Breitenmoser in Lincoln County said there’s a place for tariffs amid trade negotiations, but he says Trump is going too far—especially with two of Wisconsin’s biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico.

“I keep coming back to the idea that these are the same trade agreements that the president himself came up with the last time he was in office,” Breitenmoser said, while expecting Trump to once again add to the national debt by having to send billions of dollars in support checks to keep farmers afloat when markets for their exports dry up.

As a small newsroom, we rely on reader donation drives a few times a year. Yes, there are also a few medium and larger-sized donors, but they don’t cover the full cost of providing you with…

📰 news that holds politicians accountable, 

❤️ stories that lift up the voices of those with new and better ideas, or 

🧺 features that offer ideas for that next weekend road trip. 

In five years of doing this, we’ve never had a paywall and we never will, so please consider chipping in a small amount to help us continue our work. 

If this newsletter is your new Sunday morning newspaper, think of this as the earnest young paperboy on your doorstep making collections—but without the commitment of a subscription that always rolls over whether you want it to or not!

👉🏼 Schimel rehashes debunked vote-counting claim – Even though audits and recounts have consistently shown no significant issues with ballot counting in Wisconsin, Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel recently trotted out the conspiracy theory that Milwaukee’s late-night election results are suspicious. 

🤨 Schimel knows that it takes hours to count all of the regular and absentee ballots—especially since absentee ballots cannot be processed until Election Day. Other states allow the Monday before the election to be used to verify (but not count) each absentee ballot in order to speed up the count on Tuesday, but Republicans in the State Senate killed a bipartisan bill last year to allow it in Wisconsin.

👉🏼Micromanaging sheriffs’ departments – County sheriffs in Wisconsin have wide latitude in determining the extent to which they will cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. That discretion would change under a bill passed by Republicans in the state Assembly that calls for a 15% reduction in state aid to communities where local law enforcement refuses to carry out stricter practices sought by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

🚔 Critics say the legislation would only increase the likelihood that crimes would go unreported by victims, even if they are living in the US legally, because of the fear of errant arrests that would come from increased racial profiling.

This is usually the place for a lighter story, but it’s hard to do that when Wisconsin has a congressman who epitomizes America’s ongoing slide toward authoritarianism—and, when called out for it, decides he’d rather make us part of his ongoing addiction to internet slurs.

US Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s campaign account got a big check this past week from Elon Musk, a billionaire government contractor with financial interests in China who is reportedly gaining access to America’s biggest military secrets.

Musk gave the maximum allowable contribution to Republican members of Congress who called for the impeachment of the judges who are asking that the President of the United States adhere to the law. 

For that alone, Van Orden deserves scorn. But now he also has his 30 pieces of silver for betraying the same Constitution he took an oath to defend. The rule of law is not some kind of political gray area. No judge, no congressman, and no president is above the law. 

How did Van Orden respond? With his trademark name-calling, using personal insults and profanity as much as possible. Juvenile behavior is his right, as someone who’s been prone to lashing out ever since he was photographed on the US Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. All we ask is that any member of Congress from Wisconsin try to tame their social media addictions, put their constituents above politics, and put the Constitution above any president—even one from his own party.

Have a great week.

🔔 Remember 🔔

📻 We talk about all of these stories and more every weekday morning on UpNorthNews Radio, 6-8 a.m. on seven Civic Media stations across Wisconsin, and on our YouTube and Facebook pages. 

📱 And, of course, you can stay up to date every day through our social media feed—pick your favorite platform: Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok.