Monday, February 17, 2025
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Monday, February 17, 2025

Milwaukee Press Club 'Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism' 2020 & 2021 Award Winners

Owens Talked About Potential ‘Coverup’ by Trump in Deleted Podcast

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In a deleted podcast, Republican Attorney General Candidate Ryan Owens said a “potential coverup here is ongoing” by President Donald Trump and his administration regarding the Ukraine call that provoked Trump’s impeachment.

UW-Madison released three of four missing podcasts on Sept. 30, the day after Wisconsin Right Now broke the story that they were removed from the Internet. UW-Madison has been unable to unearth the fourth missing podcast, at least so far, a 2019 conversation that Owens had with Never Trumper Charlie Sykes. Wisconsin Right Now has filed an open records request for that podcast.

The three released podcasts were conversations between Owens and Never Trump political consultant Mike Murphy; a conversation he had with Professor Ken Mayer, whose syllabus became controversial because it contained an anti-Trump line; and a conversation with Scott Coenen, who heads a conservative renewable energy group. You can listen to the discussion with Coenen here, with Murphy here, and with Mayer here.

In the released podcasts, Owens sounds very different than he does now as a candidate; as an AG candidate, he has adopted a series of firebrand ultra conservative positions at events with the GOP base around Wisconsin (the other candidate running in the primary is Fond du Lac County DA Eric Toney.)

In the podcasts, Owens mostly adopted a neutral moderator’s tone even when interview subjects took positions that are anathema to the conservative base; for example, he left it unchallenged when Murphy outright labeled Trump a “racist.”

It was on impeachment, though, where Owens stepped out of his moderator’s role here or there, revealing that he believed Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president was a problem and maybe even a cover up.

That’s ironic as it may be the cover up – the deletion of podcasts – that made this story worse for Owens than the actual content of the podcasts, which mostly showed him playing neutral moderator as guests criticized Trump or analyzed impeachment.

In the Coenen podcast, which focused on renewable energy, Owens said, referring to creating effective messaging about climate change in elections, “on both sides, you don’t want to go too far.”

Owens has given shifting statements about what happened to the podcasts, which were recorded when he ran the Tommy Thompson center on campus. He blamed a file transfer glitch to talk show host Mark Belling and then admitted to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he deleted some 2019 podcasts from the Internet, saying he thought they were “moot” and didn’t think they were newsworthy anymore.

UW-Madison has said it’s investigating and trying to find the Sykes podcast; it is a crime in Wisconsin to remove or destroy a public record, although it requires a finding of intent to injure or defraud. We discovered the podcasts had been deleted from the Internet and the Thompson Center’s website when reviewing Owens’ podcasts after comments he made praising Tony Evers’ COVID-19 response provoked talk radio controversy.

Comments on Impeachment

Owens told Mayer he read a summary of the phone call transcript between Trump and the Ukrainian president – the subject of Democrats’ impeachment of Trump, which was hotly criticized by Republicans. “My first reading was this is not great, it’s not good for the president but not as bad as some people were thinking it would be,” he said.

He said that was “my first reaction and then I went back and read it and reread it, and I thought to myself this is not good. It’s a simpler narrative than the Russian collusion; it’s a lot easier to sell this, and it’s happening in real time.”

Owens continued: “I thought this is going to become a significant problem for the president. Releasing that summary of the transcript I don’t quite understand why they did it, it seemed like political suicide to me but maybe it was the best option they had.”

The release of a whistleblower complaint “seems to be even worse,” Owens said. “it indicates two things, one that the president may have had multiple conversations of this sort where he tried to pressure or influence the president of Ukraine and number two that a potential coverup here is ongoing that rather than having these transcripts retain whatever traditional status they have that they tried to move these into highly classified area to get them out of access to the public arena and if that’s the case that seems to me where it’s a classic example of the cover up basically doing you in potentially even more than the initial thing although here both could be problematic.”

Owens also said the Ukraine story “broke, and it seems like the dam broke and the water is just pouring through.”

Some of his comments outlined the allegations. “I do think here there are possible other avenues they can go after him (Trump),” he said of Democrats at one point.

Owens criticized Joe Biden’s son Hunter, saying, “it was a stupid decision to be on this dictator’s gas board or whatever, but it’s a separate question from what we’re talking about here – the president using his authority to try to engage an investigation in a foreign country.”

When Mayer said, “Here the coverup would be evidence that they knew what they were doing is wrong,” Owens said, “right.”

Mayer also said, “it was before anybody found out about it. It’s also possible that the read out doesn’t have everything that was said.”

Owens also responded, “Right.”

When Mayer said that the people advising the president might have “terrible judgment” and questioned their competence, Owens laughed.

“We’re not dealing with a White House staff comprised of A listers with lots of experience,” said Mayer. “They no longer control this story. It’s beyond their ability.”

“Yeah,” Owens said.

Owens and Mayer discussed whether Republicans would turn on Trump, with Mayer bringing up President Nixon. “You are starting to see some of the people around the president, distancing themselves a little bit,” Owens said.

The podcast with Murphy was basically a detailed discussion, mostly driven by Murphy, of the chances of the Democratic and Republican primary candidates. The discussion with Coenen was a discussion that revolved around renewable energy and new technologies.

“One thing we know for sure that isn’t constant is our supply of coal and fossil fuels. They will run out at some point…that’s not going to be there forever,” Owens told Coenen.

Coenen said that climate change is a “deeply divisive issue.” Renewable energy doesn’t need to be tied to that discussion, he said, adding that people need to find common ground and find the right messaging.

“I think that’s great advice,” said Owens.

Owens said, “I don’t know if you followed this or not. But Australia they just recently had some national elections. One of the major issues…their messaging was climate change, climate change, climate change… and people started worrying about losing their jobs. The right in Australia said we recognize climate change is an issue and some of us do, some of us don’t. We recognize you think this is an issue, and voters are concerned about this but that voters are concerned about jobs….We are going to come up with a solution that isn’t far left.”

Owens said that was a lesson on “how you want to message this stuff. On both sides, you don’t want to go too far.”

U.S.-Canada Border

White House Touts Border Progress

The White House over the weekend touted its progress on the southern border as President Donald Trump completed his fourth week back in office.

"Encounters of illegal immigrants at our southern border are plummeting and migrants are starting to realize it’s fruitless to attempt to illegally cross our border," the White House said Saturday in a statement.

Upon taking office, Trump issued a series of executive orders ending Biden administration policies that allowed asylum seekers to flood into America. On his second day in office, the president sent 1,500 active-duty service members and additional air and intelligence assets.

Border crossing attempts are down more than 90% from the same time last year, according to data first obtained by the New York Post.

“Border numbers are down over 90% in three weeks,” Tom Homan, the pick by Trump called border czar, said during an interview on Fox News. “When you got 90% less people coming across the border, how many women aren’t being raped by the cartels? How many children aren’t drowning? How many women and children aren’t being sex trafficked in this country? President Trump is a gamechanger.”

Multiple media reports indicate many people headed from other countries to the United States have since changed their mind and headed back home.

The White House pointed out a Wednesday story from The Washington Times showing officials in Costa Rica and Panama are meeting to discuss how to handle the large number of people who had been waiting in Mexico to enter the United States but have since given up and are returning to South America.

The administration also linked a Thursday story from Telemundo saying "migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Columbia and Venezuela are heading back home" instead of continuing to America. And the White House linked a Thursday story from El Cronista saying the Mexican government provided a $9.3 million contract for 140 shelters to help with people "returning to Mexico."

Policies during the Biden administration allowed 12 million people to enter the country, most given dates to appear with immigration officials much later. The volume pushed many of those appointments beyond a year and even 18 months. A surge in fentanyl accompanied the timing.

Trump, the second term Republican, has reversed the trend. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and specifically ICE Enforcement and Removal regional offices, across the country have helped move many people illegally in the country back to their native homelands.

Trump also threatened tariffs against Mexico if it did not help fix the problem. To temporarily avert the tariffs, Mexico’s president agreed to deploy thousands more troops to the southern border.

In another reversal, the Biden administration worked – including litigation – to block Texas from installing border security measures like barbed wire and buoys in the river to keep people from swimming across.

In a social media post Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote, “Texas installed more buoys into the Rio Grande the SAME day President Trump returned to office. The Biden administration tried – and FAILED – to keep Texas from using this effective border security tactic.

“Now, we have a President who is partnering with Texas to deny illegal entry.”

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Trump to Stop U.S. Production of Pennies

President Donald Trump said late Sunday that he has ordered the U.S. Treasury Department to stop producing pennies.

Pennies famously cost more than a penny to produce, putting them in the crosshairs of Trump and DOGE’s government efficiency push.

"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," Trump wrote on TruthSocial, his social media site. "This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.

Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time," Trump added.

DOGE posted on X last month critical of the penny’s cost, hinting at its fate.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote on X. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced. Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts."

According to the U.S. Mint’s latest report, the cost of all coins is on the rise. From the Mint’s 2024 report:

"FY 2024 unit costs increased for all circulating denominations compared to last year. The penny’s unit cost increased 20.2 percent, the nickel’s unit cost increased by 19.4 percent, the dime’s unit cost increased by 8.7 percent, and the quarter-dollar’s unit cost increased by 26.2 percent. The unit cost for pennies (3.69 cents) and nickels (13.78 cents) remained above face value for the 19th consecutive fiscal year."

Lake Sturgeon Protection

Wisconsin Lawmakers Want State Exempt From Any Lake Sturgeon Protection

(The Center Square) – A group of Wisconsin lawmakers have filed legislation to protect sturgeon spearing in the state.

The bill would exempt Wisconsin from any listing of lake sturgeon under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The group, including Republican Congressmen Glenn Grothman and Mike Gallagher filed what they called the Sturgeon Protected and Exempt from Absurd Regulations Act.

Reps. Tony Wied, Grothman and Tom Tiffany introduced the legislation on Friday.

The bill is in response to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducting a status assessment of lake sturgeon after the group was sued by an animal rights group in 2018 attempting to have lake sturgeon listed as threatened.

“Sturgeon-spearing is crucial to maintaining Wisconsin’s lake sturgeon population which is why we must take proactive steps to ensure that we are exempt from any action to list the lake sturgeon under the Endangered Species Act,” Tiffany said about the bill. “Wisconsin is a global leader in sturgeon management, and the SPEAR Act will protect this unique and long-standing tradition for years to come.”

https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/BILLS-118hr7037ih

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it will not add the lake sturgeon to the endangered species list last year.

A bipartisan group of Wisconsin lawmakers sent a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2023 pointing out the impact a listing could have on Wisconsin and how the state has worked to manage the lake sturgeon population.

The letter was signed by Gallagher and Grothman along with Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil, Tiffany, Scott Fitzgerald and Derrick Van Orden.

“Wisconsin does not list lake sturgeon endangered nor threatened in state waters, and has in place a sturgeon program considered a world model for effective management and recovery, and as such should be exempt from any Federal ESA listing of the species”, said Dr. Ron Bruch, former Chief of Fisheries and Leader of the statewide Sturgeon Management Team for the WI Department of Natural Resources.

dpi wisconsin

Wisconsin Republicans Call for Transparency, Fairness in School Referendums

(The Center Square) – A pair of Wisconsin legislators are pushing for more transparency in the school referendum process in the state.

The proposal comes after 169 out of 241 school ballot referenda in 2024 elections were approved by voters at a cost of $4.4 billion to taxpayers.

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, R-Appleton, and Rep. Scott Allen, R-Waukesha, proposed bills that would require local governments and school boards to include information on the ballot about how much the difference in taxes would for a median-valued home in the community resulting from the referendum.

“Referendums are opportunities for voters to make important decisions about how their tax dollars should be spent,” Allen said. “Good decision making requires transparency in the information provided to voters.”

A second bill would protect school districts from losing state funding when other districts go to referendum.

“It was a shock to many to learn that the massive school referendum passed in Milwaukee would take away vital state funding from over 300 other school districts,” Allen said. “It’s only fair that large referendums in one district should not negatively affect other school districts.”

A Legislative Fiscal Bureau report last year analyzed by Badger Institute showed that a $252 million Milwaukee referendum would cost Madison, Waukesha and Racine $2 million a year in state funding while Appleton and West Bend would lose more than $1 million each year.

The impact is due to tax base equalization, which means that “a school district's property tax rate does not depend on the property tax base of the district, but rather on the level of expenditures.”

The bill states that any school referendum of over $50 million dollars should be paid for by the district that votes for the referendum instead of taking away money from shared school funding.

Tammy Baldwin Supports Transgender Children Surgeries

Trump Order Forces Many Medical Providers to End Transgender Procedures on Children

Late last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting “transgender” procedures on youth, including puberty blockers and surgeries such as mastectomies and penile reconstruction. In response, many medical providers including some of the top in the nation for performing them have announced they will comply with the EO.

The EO states that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”

Last year, nonprofit Do No Harm unveiled a database reporting that between 2019-2023, there were 13,000 gender reassignment procedures performed throughout the nation on minors; those procedures included both surgeries and prescriptions. Among the top states in the nation for those procedures was Ohio, which has since enacted legislation banning such procedures.

The Center Square reached out to more than two dozen medical providers throughout the country based on data provided by Do No Harm regarding their total billing, prescriptions, and surgeries performed, asking them how they planned to respond to Trump’s EO.

Among those to announce they were suspending all procedures was Seattle-based UW Medicine, which stated in an email that it was “committed to supporting the clinical care needs and well-being of all our patients, as well as complying with state and federal law. We are currently in compliance and are also continuing to provide our full spectrum of services.”

Seattle Children’s Hospital ranked among the top in the nation for puberty blocker prescriptions; though it did not respond to request for comment, there have been reports that it has suspended those services, and its webpage for gender affirmation surgery has since been removed.

MultiCare Mary Bridge Children's Hospital located in Tacoma wrote in an email that while it does not perform gender-affirming surgeries, “we are aware of the executive order that calls for an end to gender-affirming medical treatments for children and adolescents under 19 and are continuing to monitor the situation. Executive orders are directives to federal agencies on how they will operate. Much of what’s been issued has not yet become rules for us to evaluate.”

D.C.-based Children’s National Hospital released a statement that it will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or hormone therapy, noting that prior to the EO it did not perform gender affirming surgeries.

Coolie Dickinson Hospital based out of Massachusetts wrote in an email that it “is reviewing to see what, if any, actual impact the executive orders might have and would follow up, if there is any impact. In the meantime, the care we provide to our community continues as normal at this time.”

University of Michigan Health stated that its “teams are assessing the potential impact of this executive order on our healthcare services and the communities we serve. Our priority remains delivering high-quality, accessible care to our patients while ensuring compliance with the law."

Another medical provider to cease gender transition services for anyone under 19 is VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond, Virginia, which wrote in a statement that it was “in response to an Executive Order issued by the White House on January 28, 2025, and related state guidance received by VCU on January 30, 2025. Our doors remain open to all patients and their families for screening, counseling, mental health care and all other health care needs.”

UCSF’s Gender Affirming Care in San Francisco has also ended services for patients under 19, a policy also adopted by Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York simply wrote in an email that “we will keep you posted once we have an update on this matter.”

Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia both said they were reviewing their services.

Several hospitals and hospital systems who performed these procedures on minors did not respond to The Center Square's requests for comment on the executive order. The Center Square will continue to seek clarification on whether they plan to comply with the order.