Wisconsin and Minnesota Primaries; Plus, $300M Federal Grant for Increased Policing

Good morning. Welcome to Up Front. I'm Philip Muldery, sitting in for Ryan Edwards Teakert. Coming up on today's show, we're going to talk about doing something with your brain, actually installing, I'm not sure what, that will result in being able to control your actions, your motions, your thoughts. remotely. It's a little scary. So we'll be talking all about that coming right up on up front. But first, it's time for the news. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Wisconsin moderate Democrat David Crowley has won the Democratic primary for governor over Democratic socialist Francesca Hong. Hong had been hoping to ride the wave of support for progressive candidates and other contests around the nation. Donna Warder has more. I am so deeply, deeply grateful to my core. for how hard you have all fought. Audio courtesy of WISN, Crowley is vying to become Wisconsin's first black governor, and in November he'll face Republican Tom Tiffany, currently a U.S. representative endorsed by President Donald Trump. I'm Donna Warder. Another Tuesday primary results, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's 26-year-old son-in-law Michael Alfonso won a five-way primary for Duffy's old U.S. House seat, and GOP Senator Darlene Graham advanced to a runoff in South Carolina's special Republican primary to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham in the U.S. Senate. The first-time candidate will face Congressman Ralph Norman. who also emerged from a ten-way field in tuesday's primary. The winner of the August 25th Republican runoff is expected to claim the U.S. Senate seat over the Democratic nominee. Colombian rescue crews are continuing to work around the clock to look for victims of this week's deadly earthquake in the west of the country. The quake has killed over 100 people so far, and thousands are listed as missing. More from Ben Thomas. Search teams dug through the rubble in Kali, Colombia after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck collapsing hundreds of buildings. By Monday afternoon, people had begun reporting their loved ones missing on digital databases, one listed more than 2000, the number steadily climbing. The epicenter that was Chocco. Barbara Mello with World Vision. It's very known for its poverty, so a lot of people are in it right now. She tells Sky children are of particular concern. We ask adults to know how to react, imagine the children.

The desperate scenes recall the search is still ongoing in neighboring Venezuela after it was devastated by powerful back-to-back earthquakes in June. They killed more than 6,300 people. I'm Ben Thomas. President Trump says he slipped away from Air Force One after a NATO summit in Turkey last month because the Secret Service and military wanted him on a different plane due to an Iranian threat. White House press personnel and staff remained on the other plane essentially as decoys. More from Darling Superville. The Washington Post had reported that the misdirection carried out by the White House was done because of an Iranian assassination threat against the president. President Trump and some of his aides, after they boarded the Air Force One, were secretly taken off the plane through a back door into a catering compartment that is usually used to deliver food and other supplies to the plane. They were then driven to a smaller government plane. that flew them all to the United Kingdom. There have been questions about the safety of the new Air Force One that was a gift from Qatar. Intelligence officials, according to reports in the New York Times and CBS News, were concerned about a potential attack on the president or the new jet. That's Darling Superville. President Trump's executive order to change the childhood vaccine schedule is drawing criticism designed to hurt his aligned candidates in November's midterm elections. Trump's order was part of a years-long focus he's had on spacing out shots to separate visits, an idea contradicting medical group's guidance. So the MMR we want to have separate, separate visits, separate times. But even among the Maha or Make America Healthy Again coalition, Trump credits with helping him win back the White House. A poll shows re-evaluating vaccine safety is not a top concern. Democrats slammed Trump's order in messages to voters. Public health experts warn spacing out shots could increase the risk of infection. Iranian-backed Houthis have attacked a ship off Yemen, killing six people, including three Pakistani nationals. Pakistan's foreign minister, Ishak Dar, condemned the attack today, saying it endangers lives and violates international law. The attack occurred Tuesday in the Bob El Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping route. This incident is part of a series of Houthi strikes against Yemeni government forces and Saudi oil facilities. The violence raises fears of reigniting Yemen's civil war and expanding the Middle East conflict. The decade-long Yemeni civil war killed some 400,000 people. North Korea has launched a ballistic missile toward the sea.

the second such weapons test by North Korea in less than a week. That's according to South Korean officials. North Korea's launch events are likely a protest of the upcoming South Korea U.S. military drills that North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal. South Korea's military says it detected the launch from North Korea's eastern coast. The launch came two days after South Korea and the U.S. announced they will kick off their annual military drills next week to beef up readiness against the North Korean threats. U.S. inflation slowed last month and a measure of underlying price pressures also cooled, suggesting higher oil and gas prices from the Iran War are only having a limited impact on broader costs in the economy. The Labor Department said today that consumer prices rose 3.4% in July from a year ago. That's down slightly from 3.5% in June. But inflation is still higher than before the Iran War began in February when it was 2.4%. On a monthly basis, prices rose just 0.1% from June to July. A fast-moving wildfire is threatening the rural coastal area of Big Sur in Monterey County. The fire has prompted evacuations and state park closures this week. Partly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 60s, and the Central Valley. Sunny, highs in the 90s, lows tonight in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. And I'm Philip Moldery sitting in for Brian Edwards Teakard. We're having a little difficulty getting through to our guest on the topic I just described a bit ago. Brain data regulation is in the wind trying to absolutely... makes sense out of what can be done with regard to implanting controls in our brain that will allow for some activities, for example, being able to help people with disabilities operate their wheelchair, people who are blind, to be able to, in fact, deal with their situation. So we might have to go to a little bit of music to see if we can get through to our guest. So do stay tuned. I'll be right back.

Thank you. Well, we've had difficulty getting through to our guest on the topic of brain data regulation, so we will obviously reschedule that in the future. But right now, we have the great pleasure of being joined by George Chidi. George is a democracy reporter for the Guardian in the U.S. based in the Southeast. And he has been following exactly what is involved with... the federal government, the Department of Justice, funding local police departments. Now this has been happening for decades that police departments nationwide have gotten money from the feds to bolster their activities. But most recently, these funds from the feds are definitely having some strings attached that were never attached before. Do we have George, George Chidi, welcome to Up Front here on KPFA. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So again, I was saying that money to local police departments from the feds have been happening for quite some time. It's just a bit different under Trump. Would you elaborate? Sure. So there are a couple of changes. And let's start with this. Like in 1994, the federal government enacted some. new funding that put a bunch of grants through the Department of Justice to local communities. And in general, like those were relatively small grants, like a million dollars here, five million dollars there. And it added up, you know, about 700 million a year. I mean, it's not, it's substantial, but it also generally wasn't like game changing for any given police department. When Trump took over in 2025, they started to consolidate a lot of that. They cut a bunch of funding for things like violence interruption because it was viewed as ideological. And then in the one big beautiful bill... they set aside a $300 million chunk of money to say, hey, we want to do this sort of upscale surge policing like you see in Memphis or Washington, D.C. And we're going to give this $300 million to only four cities, maybe as few as two cities over the course of three years. And so, I mean, that could be $25 million a year.

for, you know, a city of 100,000 or more. The problem is you have to do, by taking it, you also have to adhere to the Trump administration's views on things like diversity, equity, and inclusion, or immigration enforcement, or other ideological things that have never been part of the grant process. Many cities in California and across the country, in fact, the state of California are designated as sanctuary cities, a sanctuary state, meaning that local police and state police will not cooperate with immigration and turning in people whose documentation is not entirely clear. Where does that stand? So for the purposes of these grants, a city would have to rescind that posture. The grants explicitly require cooperation with the federal government on ice. And there's a substantial oversight. Like, to some degree, you're turning over administration of your city to the federal government around policing. And that's more than just these model cities grants. That is increasingly being extended to any federal grant from the Department of Justice. And the administration has recently made noises about cutting housing grants for communities that are not cooperating with ICE. I question the constitutionality of that, and I imagine so will the lawyers of most of these cities. So, again, the 300 million that you were talking about was for police, but they're talking about expanding this to all kinds of federal grants for cities and states. And those cities and states are now going to be forced to cooperate with the feds on not just immigration, but diversity and equity and inclusion. They're going to be required to. essentially give up their local sovereignty. So, like, yes and no, and I say this because I legitimately question the constitutionality of the administration's posture here. And generally speaking, when the feds are getting sued over this stuff, they lose. So they'll make a pronouncement. saying, hey, you can't, yeah, you can't, here's an example. Kansas City is being sued right now because their city uses minority preferences in some of its contracting. Like the federal government has joined that lawsuit. Like, you'll start to see things like that. The fact of the matter is, I expect most of those lawsuits.

to be successful and for the federal government's demand it to be turned back. But it's a cost. Like it is, it's requiring a fight where there wasn't a fight before. And to some degree, that's the intent. That's the intent. Well, again, many cities and states don't have the wherewithal to come up with the money that's required to operate all of the programs that they have. And federal grants were very much a part of making them whole. So again, are we talking about cities and states having to go it alone? And you're saying that... They can sue, and chances are they will win. But that costs money, too. You have to hire lawyers. You have to deal with all the delays involved. He's got two and a half more years in office to mess with people, right? It does. And it's a problem and possibly a political problem for the administration. I honestly imagine people are going to start voting on this stuff once they start to see the effects. In terms of the policing thing, like as I was talking to the administrators of cities and mayors of cities, I am wondering exactly who's going to take the federal money right now just to begin with. Like, I think there's a longer-term secular change here. You know, a big cyclical move away from federal dependency for a lot of municipalities simply because the administration has shown that it has a general hostility toward urban America, towards municipal government, toward, like, blue cities, per se. And I imagine those blue cities are going to start looking for ways to become more self-reliant. So you mentioned surge policing. I don't know what search policing looks like. What is that? Well, I have gotten a good look at it. I've spent some time in Memphis. So you may, I know, this is one of these things that sort of slid under the news radar over the course of the last year. Last year, Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a surge in federal law enforcement in Memphis. And we'd seen what those surges looked like around the country, like Los Angeles, fought one off.

Seattle, Chicago, with, you know, Midway Blitz. In general, large municipalities with progressive voter bases fought in court and in the street, basically pushed ice out. Tennessee is different. Tennessee has a Republican governor, it has a Republican majority in its state. Memphis is a two to one or three to one Democratic city, but it is dominated by its state government. And so more than a thousand federal law enforcement officers, FBI, Homeland Security, like the Department of Housing and Urban Development has cops. It's one of those things you learn when you're looking at this stuff. Like they send everybody they at. to Memphis. And the state activated the National Guard to patrol the streets in downtown Memphis. Those federal law enforcement officers have been doing little more than serving warrants and stopping brown people in cars. And I wish I was exaggerating, but that's basically how it's gone. They're making big claims about reductions in violence, but violence is falling across the country regardless of whether or not there's some gigantic surge going on. And in the meanwhile, the federal law enforcement folks are killing people. There were four deaths in an eight-week period earlier this year, just a couple of months ago. The last one was a young man who was shot by the National Guard, and I am still trying to understand how that is floated under the radar. Like, this is a Kent State moment, in my opinion. Yeah. National Guard, where? Where was this person killed? So this was the weekend of July 4th. Tyrone Johnson, 20 years old, a father, from a reasonably wealthy family, I might add, African American, was out on like downtown Memphis. early morning, July 5th, after the fireworks were done. The police said that they were looking for a robbery suspect. Tyron Johnson was running, or so we are told. Two National Guardsmen in an unmarked vehicle rolled up on him, and they say he had a weapon and turned and they shot and killed him. I've spent some time talking with the family and looking at whatever I can look at. It is entirely possible that the National Guard shot the victim in that case and not the suspect. Johnson had been threatened with robbery by, you know, essentially local gangsters.

and had armed himself legally. He had no criminal record. The weapon was obtained legally, and he was trained by his family who were, like, have a disproportionate number of military veterans and law enforcement people in it. Nothing. There's no real public outcry because black kid with a gun, right? But I'm looking closely at this. And the rate at which the federal law enforcement and National Guard are killing people relative to historical norms is extraordinary and deserves more attention. Well, of course, Washington, D.C. is not a state, and they are under the thumb of the federal government, and the National Guard is now in Washington, D.C. until the end of Trump's terms two and a half years from now. And again, their crime rate has gone down, but it was going down. before the National Guard got there, before Trump was elected, Washington DC's crime rate was on the decline. So again, Trump has taken credit for a decline in crime, but it doesn't seem deserved. No, and this is something that I've been writing about for quite a while. Crime has been falling, generally speaking, in the United States since 1994. And though there was an uptick during the pandemic and a significant one, that has been almost completely erased, in fact, it's been more than erased in most places, started falling in 2023 again in the fastest fall of violent crime in American history. And that happened in the last two years of Joe Biden's administration. Trump had nothing to do with it. Trump had nothing to do with the spike, in my opinion. Like, these are, that was the pandemic. A lot of this has to do with declining birth rates. So there are fewer young people, a decrease in the amount of alcohol that's being consumed, a sort of a general sense of how much damage a criminal record will do to somebody's life prospects. Crime has been falling for reasons that make sense.

And they've been falling fastest in places like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Memphis. Some communities have done a lot more work than others, and they're seeing the results of that. But in general, it has not been because they spent more money on cops. Like a lot of this has to do with violence interruption and intervention, where the local community understands how to stop a shooting before the shooting happens by getting to the people who are... likely to commit a crime and essentially talking them out of it. That process works, like, and we're seeing it. We're safer now than we have been in 100 years. But you talk to most folks, they think crime is rising, and it's because of the media that they consume. And, of course, it's people that don't live in the cities, the rural people that are supporting Trump in this effort. George, we're out of time. George Cheaty, again, is a democracy reporter for The Guardian. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Copy. I'll do it again. Okay. Thank you. You're listening to Up Front here on KPFA. I am Philip Moldery sitting in for Brian Edwards Teakert. Coming up after the news headlines, we're going to connect with Ruth Conniff in Madison, Wisconsin, about the primary they held yesterday. Also the primary in neighboring Minnesota, which was quite interesting as well. So stay tuned for that. Right now, time for the news. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Wisconsin moderate Democrat David Crowley has won the Democratic primary for governor over Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong. Hong had been hoping to ride the wave of support for progressive candidates and other contests around the nation. Donna Warder has more. I am so deeply, deeply grateful to my core. for how hard you have all fought. Audio courtesy of WISN, Crowley is vined to become Wisconsin's first black governor, and in November he'll face Republican Tom Tiffany, currently a U.S. representative endorsed by President Donald Trump. I'm Donna Warder. Another Tuesday primary results, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's 26-year-old son-in-law Michael Alfonso won a five-way primary for Duffy's old U.S. House seat, and GOP Senator Darlene Graham, advanced to a runoff in South Carolina's special Republican primary to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham, in the U.S. Senate. The first-time candidate will face Congressman Ralph Norman, who also emerged from a 10-way field in Tuesday's primary. The winner of the August 25th Republican runoff is expected to claim the U.S. Senate seat over the Democratic nominee.

Colombian rescue crews are continuing to work around the clock to look for victims of this week's deadly earthquake in the west of the country. The quake has killed over 100 people so far, and thousands are listed as missing. A fast-moving wildfire is threatening the rural coastal area of Big Sur in Monterey County. the fire has prompted evacuations and state park closures this week the timber fire which ignited southeast of a loma vista on sunday has grown to two thousand acres and was five per cent contained as of a tuesday update from cal fire An evacuation shelter has been opened at Carmel Middle School, where evacuees can receive incident information, resource referrals, and assistance coordinating next steps as conditions evolve. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Wall Street is flirting with a record after several AI stocks reported better growth for the spring than analysts expected. While a report showed inflation across the U.S. was slightly less bad last month. The S&P 500 added 0.3% Wednesday and was on track for its first gain since setting its all-time high on Friday. The Dow Jay Jones average rose 55 points and the NASDAQ composite climbed 0.6%. Partly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 70s, lows tonight in the 60s, In the Central Valley, sunny, high is in the 90s, lows tonight in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. And I'm Philip Muldery, sitting in for Brian Edwards Teakert. There were primaries across the country yesterday, particularly I want to take a look at Wisconsin and Minnesota. We're joined by Ruth Conniff. Ruth is editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. She formerly was editor-in-chief of the Progressive Magazine, where she worked for many years, both in Madison and Washington, D.C. Ruth Conniff, welcome back to KPFA. Yeah, glad to be here. So again, we'll start with Wisconsin, but I do want to move on to talk about what happened in Minnesota as well. As was reported in our newscast just now, the Dems had quite a close, what can I say, close race for the Democratic nomination to be the next governor. of the state of Wisconsin. Your current governor is not termed out, but he decided not to run for a third term. Tell us the two candidates that went head to head yesterday and what happened.

Well, I mean, this is the weirdest primary Wisconsin has ever seen and really has to rank among them for the country. We had a campaign over months that started with seven candidates that, you know, basically the frontrunners in the race, apart from Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialist state legislator. They fell apart. It was crazy. And Hong got stronger and stronger during the course of the race. There was polling throughout this race that showed her in the lead steadily since the spring. She has had a lead and it only grew. And national media was jumping into report that she had a double digit lead and that we were going to nominate a Democratic Socialist for governor. But in Wisconsin, most people had not made up their minds because they were going through this chaotic primary. People that I know had not decided by Election Day who they were going to vote for. And, you know, in this crazy disruptive primary, we had both the lieutenant governor and the former lieutenant governor drop out of the race. We had the Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who just won. I just was watching him give his speech accepting the nomination. drop out of the race and then get back into the race with the endorsement of the current governor, Tony Evers. And last night, all of us who watched this stuff were up all night long until AP finally called the race after 2.30 this morning. It's an incredibly narrow margin. But Francesca Hong has conceded to David Crowley. So, you know, we now have potentially the first black governor in Wisconsin history running, you know, he's the first. nominee for governor running against Tom Tiffany who is a trump ally at U.S. Congressman. And it's just been a head-spinning race. The twists and turns in this race have been hard to follow. So, you know, it felt like the late polling that showed for sure that Francesca Hong would be the nominee was a little hard to credit if you lived here because it was hard to find people who were sure who they were going to vote for. And in fact, it turns out that it was wrong. So the numbers I have, and you correct me if I'm wrong, is that David Crowley, the winner, had 41% of the vote, and Francesca Hong had 37%. Is that what you have? No. No. I think it was much, much closer than that. David Crowley, according to AP, which is really the standard, I would go with, won by 39.8% of the vote to Francesca Hong's 39.3%. Really? That's why we didn't know. We didn't know who won. So it's like one percentage point between them. No, there's less than one percentage point. There's a half a percentage point. Now both of these. Which actually legally puts it in recount territory in Wisconsin, but the second place finisher has to request a recount and she has conceded the race. So there won't be a record. So in the meantime, both of these people are people of color and Wisconsin is up.

a pretty white place if you've ever been to Wisconsin. So again, but this is the Democratic primary, and we're going to be looking forward in November to the battle against the Republicans. Does this look like a Democratic sweep this year, which, if it were a Democratic sweep, you would be having the first black governor in Wisconsin's history? I mean, sweep, I think, is going to be, you know, I mean, if it's a sweep, it's going to be a sweep by this kind of margin, this very, very narrow margin. Every statewide election in Wisconsin is close with the exception of the recent state Supreme Court races where the liberal candidates won definitively in a backlash against the, you know, far right. which, you know, took over our state. I mean, we had, you know, going back to Scott Walker, we had the Republicans controlled all branches of government, drew the most gerrymandered maps in the country to lock in two-thirds control of the state legislature, despite the fact that it's a 50-50 state. Those maps under two-term Democratic Governor Tony Evers were finally. The state Supreme Court, the liberals on the state Supreme Court who took the majority there overturned them. The legislature produced new maps that Evers had drawn. And basically, we came up with a 50-50 legislative map. So Democrats right now are hoping that for the first time in a decade and a half, they could take control of one or both chambers of the state legislature again. And that's really the... you know, if they manage to do that and they manage to take the governor's office, then we go from being essentially a red controlled state, then a divided state to a blue controlled state. It's definitely possible, but it's not going to be by huge margins. So, you know, Trump won here by 20,000 votes, Biden won here by 20,000 votes, then Trump went again, but again, a tiny margin. So. it's a you know everything is very tight in wisconsin and that became sort of the talking points about this campaign because Francesca Hong who's very progressive and really animated younger voters and got a lot of young people who had not voted before into her campaign did a lot of on-the-ground organizing throughout the state was a huge opponent of data centers which is a hot issue in wisconsin she really she she injected some energy and excitement into the race and she's also you know, a very new politician. She's been in the assembly a couple of terms, but she was getting hammered by news stories about tweets that are not the kind of tweets that politicians right, that she didn't like Thanksgiving and she, you know, didn't like Valentine's Day and she felt nervous being in a culvers, which is the, you know, burger chain in Wisconsin because there were all these old white people in there. So the Tiffany campaign was really setting up to hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer, And they've wasted, the Republican Party has wasted millions and millions of dollars preparing for a huge negative campaign against Han, and now she's not the nominee. David Crowley, who's a Milwaukee County executive, you know, in the shorthand, especially the national media analysis of the Wisconsin race, he's the establishment candidate because he did get back into the race with a very late endorsement from the governor and the...

you know, last week of the campaign was characterized by the governor and David Crowley running around the state trying to resuscitate a campaign that he had previously suspended. But his personal story is not the story of an establishment candidate. You know, he grew up in poverty. His parents struggled with mental illness and addiction. He has, as the Milwaukee, the first black Milwaukee County executive really emphasized human services. And, you know, particularly for unhoused people, he had been evicted multiple times as a kid. you know it's not it's not exactly the narrative that is imposed on the race um but there were a lot of people who you know thought they were going to vote for one candidate that candidate dropped out thought they're going to vote for another candidate that candidate dropped out and just hadn't made up their minds what to do by the end of the race and it it all came together last night with this result which is kind of like a stunning conclusion to a mind-bogglingly chaotic campaign. Well, in Michigan, we obviously saw APAC way in APAC as the pro-Israel lobby and with lots of money to contribute to campaigns. They obviously were anti-Hung, who had been in DSA and a defender of the people of Gaza. I don't know where David Crowley stands on the Middle East, but in a governor's race, maybe the Middle East is not as important as in a Senate race. Was APAC busy in this election yesterday? Sorry, that glitched out a little bit while you were talking for me, Philip. You're comparing us to Michigan. Was APAC active in yesterday's campaign? Well, it's a governor's race. It's not a federal race, right? Like, we're not going to do anything about policy on Israel and Gaza and the state of Wisconsin. Like, that's not what this campaign was about. And there are a lot of comparisons to Michigan, I think, because you had the dynamic of a Democratic socialist candidate. and a Democratic Party that was really worried about electability. That is a similarity. But the conditions are different. The race is different. It's not a federal election. And the individual candidates are different. So it's, you know, it's a, there is an analogy to be made there, but it's, you know, it's very qualified. Well, I do want to ask you about Minnesota as well, which is not exactly your focus as you are the editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. Once again, I'm speaking with Ruth Conniff, who's in Madison, Wisconsin right now. And thank you, given that you probably got no sleep last night for coming on the air with us. Senator Krobuchar, who has been a Democratic senator from Minnesota for decades, decided to give up her Senate seat and run for governor. And she won the Democratic nomination for governor walking away without any problem. I presume in November she will get elected with relative ease. Do you agree?

Oh, yeah, I do. You know, I think that, I think Amy Klobuchar has been setting up this run for a while. And when Tim Walz decided not to run again, that's where a lot of, that's where a lot of people were going. And I don't see it, you know. She's now she's now she's on track to do it. And Tim decided not to run again for personal reasons, whatever. No, I think the DFL pushed him out. I mean, I think, you know, similar to our governor in Wisconsin, Tony Evers, he could have run for a third term. Both of them are older men. And I think there's a real fear of repeating the Biden mistake, you know, in the Democratic Party. And basically, you know, there was pressure for him to step aside. Even though, you know, both of these governors are pretty popular and it sets up a more contentious race in the state. I mean, Minnesota is more blue than Wisconsin, but like Wisconsin, there's a real chance for Republicans statewide there. So. It creates a little bit of a dicey or dynamic. So, of course, that opened up a Senate race in Minnesota. And this one was very much, what can I say, DSA was involved here. And the more left candidate, Peggy Flanagan, defeated the more establishment candidate, Angie. Craig, what can you tell us about that race? Well, so this is another race that is really about what do we do about living under this violent authoritarian regime in the Trump administration? And Angie Craig, who, you know, I think in many ways was a very, you know, she's described as the moderate in the establishment candidate, but, you know, was a pretty progressive Democrat in Congress. But she voted for the Lake and Riley Act. And you may remember that Minnesota had a lot of thoughts about ice. You know, so. Angie Craig, I think it felt to voters, and it certainly felt to Peggy Flanagan, the very progressive lieutenant governor who won that race, that she wasn't meeting the moment. And to agree with the Trump administration that there needs to be this push against what the Trump administration describes as these violent criminals who are immigrants was really kind of grotesque in a state that was experiencing. Metro surge and watching car windows be broken and people dragged away by ice and put an indefinite detention and family split up. And the, you know, the Twin Cities were paralyzed by this ice attack and neighbors were really organized to try to protect their neighbors. And so that was the backdrop to a race where you had a, you know, moderate-ish, dumb, liberal, dumb saying, you know, we need to...

We need to come together. And then you had Peggy Flanagan, who would be the first Native American in that seat, saying, we have to respond more assertively to ICE and just using language, similar to what Francesca Hong was doing in Wisconsin, just rallying people to say, these are not ordinary times. And we can't just sort of make these broad comments about prosperity. We need to face this violent authoritarian attack. So how significant is the fact that Peggy Flanagan is Native American? Is that something that resonates with both Native American people and the rest? Yeah, I mean, in the Upper Midwest, there are a lot of tribal voters and there's just a feeling that, you know, here is a underrepresented community and it's, you know, it matters. It's historic. I mean, similar, you know, I was watching David Crowley give his acceptance speech this morning and people are asking about the idea of being the first black governor of Wisconsin. He's saying, you know, it's not lost on me. And it's historic and it matters. And you have this sense of people who have not been adequately represented. But in the end, it's also about either there's this idea of people trying to come together and figure out, you know, for Democrats, figure out how to present themselves to voters and how to govern in these really extreme times. So one candidate backed by Trump in the Republican primary, Lindell. Tell us, he's the guy that was selling carpets and... My pillow. My pillow. Yeah, I've... Mike Lindell often described as the my pillow guy is an election denier and Trump ally who really raised his profile in 2020 by absolutely insisting that Joe Biden never won the presidency, you know, an assertion that he continues to make. So it's a very stark contrast in Minnesota between Mike Lindell and Peggy Flanagan. Well, he didn't win the Republican primary, so it's not going to be. I mean, he is a real outlier. But he lost. So even the Republicans of Minnesota couldn't handle my pillow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. Unfortunately here in Wisconsin, the running away easy win nominee for governor Tom Tiffany also says that he can't tell you for sure who won the 2020 election and, you know, has promised to do something about quote unquote fraud in elections in Wisconsin. So it's, you know, it's still a live issue. And these Trump supported candidates are basically required to take this position.

So tell us more. Tom Tiffany, again, will be the Republican opponent of David Crowley for governor. Tell us more about him. Is he like a Scott Walker person? Tom Tiffany has been in the Congress for a really long time. He represents the top half of Wisconsin, the seventh congressional district, which is the largest congressional district. He was in the state legislature for many, many years. He is interested in selling off public lands. He thinks that we need to have more extractive industry in the state. He has, you know, as I said, he's an election denier. He won't say that Trump didn't win the 2020 election and has made a lot of noises about how undocumented immigrants are voting in huge numbers in Wisconsin and stealing elections. I mean, he's a very right-wing guy, very anti-abortion guy, has voted for the one big, beautiful bill act, is required of Trump allies in Congress. So, you know, has really reduced. healthcare for thousands and thousands of Wisconsinites, major cuts to the state's food share program, which is the SNAP program here. And he's running on this very pro-Trump conservative message, which is interesting because Trump won Wisconsin by a narrow margin, but he's really underwater in terms of public approval here. And so it sets up a race for a Trump ally against somebody who is kind of a, you know, friendly, moderate, dumb. Well, it's also historically, Wisconsin is divided between Milwaukee and Madison on one side and the rest of the state, the rest of the state being predominantly rural and predominantly Republicans. The things have changed. The rest of the state is not exactly as extreme as what I was just describing. But it's still, Milwaukee is still viewed as sort of enemy territory by a whole lot of upstate voters. Yeah, I mean, there's going to be a hill to climb for Crowley as the black Milwaukee County executive because Republicans have really made it their brand to beat up on Milwaukee, which is a, you know, it's kind of a racist code when people say Milwaukee, similar to Detroit and Michigan and other, you know, urban areas that are more diverse than the rest of the state. So. That's going to be a hill to climb. But I think not an insurmountable one, Obama won Wisconsin. You know, it is possible for people of color to win statewide here. And Trump is very unpopular. And Tiffany is going to have to run, you know, basically as a proxy for Trump. Is it actually the policies of Trump that people react against or his persona, which is...

uh so extreme and so bizarre at times well i think extreme and bizarre is not a super winning formula for the shy people of the upper midwest but i think shy people conflict avoidant at least i mean i think you know a lot of republican voters in wisconsin have supported trump and distanced themselves from his flashy loud and, you know, aggressive statements. So that's gotten harder to do in the second administration. But more than that, I think the issue is the cost of living is through the roof. People can't afford rent. Food and health care are retreating. And farmers are facing horrible crushing tariffs that, you know, are making it really hard for them to get by. And over time, the... the rhetoric just isn't enough to overcome the lived reality that people are experiencing. So MAGA is on the decline? Oh, yeah. I mean, Trump's in the 30s in public opinion polls here, like he is across the country. But I think people are tired of... of just having a really hard time. And they're going to have an even harder time over the next couple of years here. And in this campaign up until November, it's not looking like gas prices are coming down. And the tariffs, you know, trade war situation continues to get worse. And the stock market is doing well. But for regular people, the kinds of people who form the MAGA base, things are not looking that great. Well, you wrote the book, Milked, which was about dairy farmers in Wisconsin no longer being able to find local labor to milk the cows, and so rely on immigrants to do that work. Most of those immigrants are undocumented. And if those undocumented farm laborers are deported, nobody's going to be there to milk the cows. Yeah, that is very true. And you know, there is a lot of hype around immigrants. It's really horrible. the idea that they're all criminals, and that is not the experience of farmers in Wisconsin who rely on really hardworking people who are not eligible for any kind of legal visa if they do year-round farm work, because the United States does not allow that. So that industry relies on, you know, 80% immigrant labor where almost every single one of those laborers is undocumented because there's no visa for them. You know, that's a complexity with the immigration rhetoric. On the other hand, there haven't been a lot of farm raids. The ice activity in Wisconsin is focused really heavily on Milwaukee. And that's sort of part of the, you know, the way that Trump has managed to balance.

attacking immigrants and continuing to be supported by people who rely on immigrants. Ruth, we're going to have to leave it there. Ruth is editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, and we'll be back in touch around November, I'm sure. Okay. Take care. So thank you for joining us this morning on Upfront. I'm Philip Moldery, sitting in for Brian Edwards Teakert. We post information about topics and our guests on KPFA.org, where you can also dig through archives from past shows. If you'd like to give us feedback on something you heard or suggest something to cover, you can send an email to Upfront at kpfa.org. The program is produced by Kimia Akbari. Kirsten Thomas' at the Controls Brian Edwards Teakert is the host, and I'm sitting in for Brian today. So do take care. Stay tuned for law and disorder coming your way at 8.

Historian and acclaimed author, Robin D.G. Kelly. David Walker, who was a black abolitionist, who was a free African-American, published this pamphlet called The Appeal to the Colored Race. where he says, do you understand your own language? Hear your language proclaim to the world July 4th, 1776. What he's saying is that you need to be careful. First of all, you don't even believe your language. You don't even believe that all men are created equal because you're certainly not practicing it. But the other part you don't actually understand is that when you say that oppressed people have a right to throw off their government. to resist, to rebel. You've got to understand that's going to happen to you. Don't be fooled into thinking that enslaved people, that black people will never throw off your murderous government. But rather, violent insurrection is inevitable. It's going to come. Get Learned Only on KPFA. Algorithms promote whatever keeps you scrolling. Corporations fund whatever protects the bottom line. KPFA answers to something different. The people listening. When you become a monthly guardian, you help build a dependable foundation for independent news, cultural programming, radical conversations, and music selected by people who actually care about what you hear. Make a difference today. Champion Independent Radio right now. Stand with KPFA at this very moment by becoming a monthly guardian at KPFA.org. This is 94.1, KPFA and 89.3, KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1, KFCF in Fresno, and online everywhere at kpFA.org.