Battleground Wisconsin

We discuss the House Republicans narrow vote on Thursday to pass their disastrous health care plan which will result in 24 million people losing their insurance and allow discrimination against people with preexisting conditions. The panel looks at what’s next for GOP health care plan in the Senate. We also have an interview with Daniel Biss, a progressive candidate for Governor of Illinois. Mr. Biss is running on a bold progressive platform that hopefully will inspire you and a Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate with a similar agenda.

This week we have a special edition of the Battleground Wisconsin Podcast featuring exclusive interviews with 3 rising progressive leaders who have unique perspectives on how to build the political power to achieve the full promise of American life. The interviews were recorded this week in Washington, D.C. at the People’s Action Founding Convention. The interviews include: (1) Van Jones, a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He served as a special advisor to the Obama White House and is currently a political contributor on CNN. (2) Pramila Jayapal, a newly elected Congresswoman from the state of Washington who had already made a huge splash on the national scene. She is an Indian immigrant who came to America when she was 16. Pramila attributes her election to her bold, progressive agenda and not being afraid to stand up to corporate and special interests. 3) Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Co-director of the Caring Across Generations Campaign. Ai-Jen is considered one of the top progressive strategists in America. She has been organizing immigrant women workers for over two decades, forging pathways to sustainable quality jobs for the caregiving workforce and fighting to guarantee access to affordable care for the nation’s aging populations.

We welcome guest panelist Anna Dvorak to review another busy political week in Wisconsin. We cover Trump’s visit to Kenosha, Sen. Ron Johnson’s debate with high school students, Gov. Walker’s Medicaid waiver that allows drug testing and raises costs, and the push by conservatives in the legislature to end abortion coverage for state employees. We also focus on the crazy anti-government outburst from Rep. Sean Duffy at his public town hall that revealed a dangerously constricted view of government that if fulfilled would eliminate Medicare and BadgerCare and would abolish public schools. Anna details the growing movement in Wisconsin for fair elections and nonpartisan redistricting reform. We conclude by exposing the sophomoric research by a UW-Madison researcher with strong ties to Gov. Walker that claims (with no causality) that the Manufacturing and Agricultural tax break is responsible for creating 42,000 jobs - A laughable 25% of all job growth under Gov. Walker.

In a media call this morning Citizen Action of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, and substance use disorder experts Dr Richard Brown and Jesse Heffernan raised concerns about Gov. Scott Walker proposed Medicaid waiver seeking permission from the Trump Administration to make a series of changes in the state’s BadgerCare program.

President Trump threatened to sabotage the Affordable Care Act this week, showing his willingness to play politics with the lives of the American people. We discuss what this act of political terror portends for the GOP’s ability to pass a disastrous healthcare bill. We talk about the continued ducking of public town halls by Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Paul Ryan, while other members of Congress, like Glenn Grothman, hold packed public hearings to try and defend themselves on GOP health care plans. Paul Ryan’s star maybe fading with Americans but he is still popular with big money special interests who helped him raise tens of millions. The 2018 elections have a new progressive Attorney General candidate named Josh Kaul, a former federal prosecutor who also recently took on incumbent Brad Schimel over Republican voter suppression laws. We preview the "March for Science" in Madison on April 22nd and review the strong rebuke by Wisconsin sportsman of key GOP anti-environmental legislation at this week’s Conservation Congress.

We welcome sunny weather with a debrief of this week’s spring general election in Wisconsin, which included a big victory for State School Superintendent Tony Evers and a number of progressive women candidates. It appears President Trump, Paul Ryan, and House Republicans have failed to resuscitate their disastrous healthcare bill before the April recess while Gov. Walker is pushing a punitive plan to drug test BadgerCare recipients. We highlight the state budget public hearings that started this week, a Republican bill to greatly restrict election recounts, and more troubles for Walker's failing jobs agency. We close with a discussion of the immediate and long term implications of the Senate Republicans use of the “nuclear option” to ram through the conformation of Trump SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch.

We conduct an autopsy of RyanCare while looking ahead to emerging threats and opportunities in the battle for the future of health care in America. The panel speculates on the future of Paul Ryan in the aftermath of his healthcare debacle. We discuss Trump’s dangerous executive order reneging on our international obligations to fight climate change. We welcome the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Andrea Kaminski, to unpack the conservative campaign to call a Constitutional Convention. We encourage listeners to participate in the upcoming public hearings on the state budget that start on Monday (see list of JFC public hearings below). This is GOTV (Get Out The Vote) weekend for Spring elections on Tuesday, April 4th. Citizen Action reminds you to vote for Tony Evers on Tuesday and get out and volunteer this weekend. We close the podcast celebrating the arrival of an election opponent for controversial Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke in 2018.

We discuss the failed push by Donald Trump and Paul Ryan to force through a dangerous “healthcare” plan that will take health coverage away from 24 million Americans. We dig into the shocking last minute changes Ryan made after pulling the vote on Thursday in a disparate attempt to appease right-wing conservatives. We also speculate as to the next steps in the fight now that Trump and Ryan have suffered a humiliating defeat. We also take a step back to put the historic vote in the broader perspective of the right-wing crusade to dangerously constrain the role of our democracy as an instrument for social and economic justice, and the implications of a stunning defeat for the future of conservatism and progressive reform.

The panel reviews the huge snow-covered protest of Paul Ryan's murderous health care plan that took place this week outside Paul Ryan's Racine office. Ryan has now become the central character in an plot to take take health care away from 24 million Americans. We also welcome economics professor Dr. Michael Rosen, president of AFT Local 212, to discuss Trump’s plan to cut aid to college students. Robert interviews Tony Evers, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, about his important upcoming April 4th general election against ethically challenged conservative Lowell Holtz. Matt talks with Wisconsin Working Families executive director Marina Dimitrijevic about the effort elect pro-public education school board members in Milwaukee on April 4th.

The panel digs into the latest Republican health care "bait and switch" delivered by Paul Ryan this week, and preposterous Scott Walker defenses of disastrous new Wisconsin jobs numbers. We also have a special interview with People's Action Co-Director George Goehl, who is one of the national progressive leaders plotting a strategy to get from Trump resistance to a political revolution.