All right, Fridry, let's go. Let's try it.
Let's rock and roll.
And I know you have never let me down.
Likewise.
As Wisconsin and the nation gear toward midterm elections, what are voters to make of what goes on in Washington and how it affects them?
Or are they tuning out because of the daily crush of headlines?
There's the ongoing war in Iran, prices at the pump and in the spring planting fields.
There is the nearly $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund that the president could give to people who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
There is the significant narrowing of the Voting Rights Act by conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the list goes on and on.
We regularly like to touch with our Washington delegation by way of meeting up with them for interviews, for their news and views.
Over the past couple of weeks, we've invited Wisconsin Republicans to share their viewpoints without success.
Tonight, we turn to 4th District Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Moore from Milwaukee.
And thanks very much for being here.
Always great to be with you, Fridry.
So of all the news that is swirling, what stands out for you as you represent your constituents?
Well, the thing that is obviously standing out to me is just the unending crush, economic crush, that people are facing.
Combination of the tariff tariffs, the war on Iran, the erratic, mercurial functioning of this president, him freezing funds for essential services like daycare and childcare.
These are things that are disrupting every day Wisconsin-ized lives, the crisis with health care and the doubling of people's health care premiums or the loss of their health care premiums.
You know, just the aggregation of all these things is placing a huge economic crush on families.
And so that's the thing that sort of stands out to me as the background for all of the very particular things that are happening.
As to the ruling related to the Voting Rights Act that a majority minority district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymender, what does that mean to minority representation?
It means an awful lot. You know, the 13th, 14th, 15th amendment, the 14th amendment of the Constitution in particular really guaranteed African Americans equality.
And we have seen throughout history, this is not new people, we have seen throughout history sort of lost cause, you know, Democrats and Republicans grieving over African Americans having access to the ballot, access to power, and their willingness to sort of interfere with that power
by any means necessary. You know, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan came as a result of African Americans being enfranchised.
And so this is absolutely no, this is a backlash for the power that African Americans have achieved and this could have an impact on a minimum of 19 sort of voting, voting rights districts in the country.
And already, we see, for example, in Texas, the primary that's coming up this week between Al Green, my classmate, and a newcomer Christian minify, where they're battling it out for one black seat, where there were two.
And we see the story Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, the only African American elected in South Carolina because of gerrymandering, and they're threatening to take his seat away, take that seat away, and so on.
And so we see the historic district in Memphis, Tennessee, that was ably represented by Stephen Colin, 67% African American district where they African Americans elected Stephen Colin, but now they have torn that district up.
And the Memphis district now moves out past Memphis 300 miles away from the city center. So it will mean that African Americans will not have a choice and the ability to elect members of their choice.
In Memphis, for example, they chose to elect Stephen Colin, a white man, time and a time again, but they will now lose the power to elect someone of their choice.
And I suspect that Memphis baby lost as well.
And yet we shouldn't anticipate changes to Wisconsin voting maps as a result of this Supreme Court ruling, right?
Not for this term at all, although if you look at the reasoning under the Roberts courts, we can easily get two more seats out of Wisconsin.
And then Wisconsin, you know, it's 50 50. It's a purple state. Everybody knows that every single vote counts.
We've had elections that Democrats and or Republicans have won by the hair of their chinny chin chin, because this is a 50 50 state.
So that does not explain why up until they did a state redistricting last time that we had only one third of our 99 member assembly be Democrats.
That was clearly a result of partisan gerrymandering. But if we'd use those same principles to redistrict in Wisconsin, we could have had two districts and maybe even more in Wisconsin.
Two more, excuse me, Democratic districts. And it may be a four four distribution of members of Congress in Wisconsin.
Turning to the war in Iran, the U.S. and Iran are reportedly negotiating our members of Congress on both sides,
tiring of this ongoing war and wanting a say.
Well, I'll tell you, we have been putting up war powers resolutions repeatedly privileged resolutions, which by the way the Republicans did not or yesterday.
We had yet another more powers resolution ripen and they didn't put it before us because they in the house did not have the votes to defeat it.
We've seen more and more and more Republicans join us.
And putting forth this war powers resolution to this day, we don't have a concrete reason that we went in there.
We don't see any path toward a resolution or victory.
And of course, the president campaigned on getting out of these forever wars and you really can't blame constituencies and voters for being attracted to that concept.
And this is one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency, that and of course, increasing prices through his tariffs and this war.
On another matter, in your mind, should Congress have a say over the nearly $1.8 billion fund that resulted out of a settlement president Trump made with the IRS that would pay people.
The administration believes were unfairly prosecuted.
It's all very ludicrous. I bet, Frederica, you can't even believe that you're asking this question.
This $1.8 billion slush fund for his cronies and his buddy.
It is separate from our judgment fund that the United States has for legitimate sort of overreaching of the federal government.
This is a slush fund that is set to expire when he leaves office in December of his final year of office.
And of course, these January six rioters, people who bludgeoned police officers, police officers died, you know, one day after I'm thinking of Brian Sicknick who died and lost his life.
The officers who died by suicide because of their apprehension about what happened on January six, all of these people are lining up to get their pay out.
And, you know, also a part of that other part of that agreement is a Donald Trump and his sons should never, ever, ever be on it again.
And that is absolutely the pinnacle of corruption.
You know, we saw one person, child paid, child, who was convicted on SEC securities fraud.
But, but to build his dollars worth of, of Trump's call and Eric Trump's coin base or cryptocurrency.
And he was fine. And so, you know, so Congress doesn't have any oversight over who he pardons.
But I mean, it is so obvious and so clear that this is more than quid pro quo. I don't know what you would call it. But as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, we did off.
We did offer in our mark up yesterday, which was on corruption of tennis, for example, corruption. We did offer amendments to try to get rid of this $1.8 billion fund.
Are your voters overwhelmed by the crush of everything that happens out of Washington on a daily basis?
You want to know something that I'll say.
The whole political strategy of the Trump administration has been to flood the zone to just keep us running like a rat on a treadmill so that we won't be able to respond to their chaotic, mercurial governance strategy.
To keep things going. But you know what, in the words of my former colleague, the late great John Lewis, we're going to keep our eye on the prize.
And the and the prize is that Democrats would resume power and we would resume a regular order. Who knew that the thing we would want more is just some normalcy.
We are hoping to get back into power to really resolve some of the major threats to our community of interest. That is the ability for people to vote.
The ability of people to be able to go to a doctor. The ability of people to be able to afford, you know, both the bacon and the eggs.
And and and to be able to live a productive life to be able to put gas in their car so they can get to work.
This is this is a this is the American dream just to have normalcy.
And so this is what we're offering voters in the future and that is we're keeping our eye on the prize.
I can tell you with the voting rights debacle, the message that black legislators have is that this is not just a problem of black legislators.
This is an American problem that African Americans like me represent districts that are filled with non African Americans with hopes and dreams and aspirations for their present and their future.
This is so many families that are not African Americans. This is so, you know, squashing the voting rights of African Americans will ignore to the detriment of all Americans.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore, we leave it there. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Are you done? Yes. Yeah, thanks. Okay.
Appreciate it.