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The defendants are scheduled for an initial appearance in Dane County Circuit Court in September.
If convicted, the maximum sentence is six years in prison.
When it comes to elections, Wisconsin is the land of the nail biter.
Those words from our next guest, state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler.
He's heading off to the state party convention this weekend in Milwaukee.
We spoke to the state Republican Party Chair last month, the head of that convention.
Ben Wickler joins us now. Thanks a lot for being here.
Great to be with you.
So as you head into your party convention, what are the stakes in this upcoming election up and down the ballot?
This election really is a hinge moment that we'll swing one way or the other in the fight for freedom,
for the freedom to make our own decisions about our own bodies, get the healthcare that we need in our state,
the freedom of the people to choose their leaders, as opposed to people overturning elections,
and the freedom to get a family supporting job, be able to organize for representation in a workplace,
build an economy that works for everyone.
As against from the Republican mega politicians, from Trump down to the state legislature,
over and over attempts to ban abortion, attempts to shred democracy and overturn elections
where the people have made one decision and they want to throw that decision out,
and on the right, from the Republican side of the aisle, we're seeing attempt after attempt
to give massive tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and then stick the middle class with the bill.
We think we should be bringing down costs for the middle class and the wealthy should pay their fair share.
Those are the stakes in this election and you see it at every level of the election
and Wisconsin specifically will tilt the entire country.
So it really could not be a more consequential moment for American democracy and for voters in Wisconsin.
In Wisconsin, polls indeed do show a nail-biter between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
How do you think Trump's 34 felony conviction plays even as he is massively fundraising off it?
Trump's 34 felony convictions underscore the threat that he poses to voters who want to be able to make
their own decisions about the kind of country we should be.
Trump cheated. He broke the law and then broke the law to cover up his law breaking
in order to get into the White House in the first place.
Then when he was in office, he tried to extort a U.S. ally to make up attacks against Joe Biden.
Then he lost the election. Again, oversaw criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.
We just saw in Diamonds this week in Wisconsin.
And now he wants to get back into the White House in order to, as he puts it,
become retribution to exact his revenge on the people he perceives as his enemies.
And frankly, anyone who voted against him before, anyone who's concerned about the idea
that he should have total immunity and total power, you might be on his enemies list.
This is not a comfortable situation for democracy.
And the felony convictions underscore that he will do anything, break any law in order to grab what he wants,
even if the public does not want to give it to him.
On the other hand, how does Joe Biden overcome low approval ratings and the apparent blame for inflation?
What's striking about this election is that the more voters learn about what Trump has planned for the country,
the more they support Joe Biden. And the more they know about Joe Biden's accomplishments
and what he has planned for the next term, the more they support Joe Biden.
So the more information we can get out to people, the more we can communicate
in ways that break through the noise and are memorable and connect with people's deepest values,
the better off Joe Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot will be.
And that is the job of every volunteer of the campaigns, of voters who believe
that it's important to choose someone who will bring decency and continue to bring integrity
and a focus on working Wisconsin voters to the next term.
How is your base feeling about the president's executive order effectively shutting the borders
in the case of reaching a cap on migrant crossings?
There's a lot of concern from a huge swath of Americans about the situation at the border.
And what most Americans want is what people have been advocating for for years,
which is a solution that involves securing the border and creating pathways for legal immigration,
a pathway to citizenship for folks that have been here following the law, paying taxes.
And there was actually a tough and fair border security bill agreed to by Democrats
and Republicans that Trump shot down.
So this is a far cry from an actual legislative solution that Trump refused to allow Republicans
to vote for.
But it's President Biden working to do something that is potentially within his reach to do
while he advocates for a more long-term solution to this crisis.
This system, the situation we have right now, it doesn't work for anyone.
And Americans deserve better.
They deserve a bipartisan agreement that can ensure that we have a safe and orderly system
and can address the crisis of the border and the humanitarian crisis associated with it
and ensure that people who are here to build a brighter tomorrow have a legal pathway
to follow the American dream.
Now, abortion figures prominently in your fighting for our freedom platform.
How salient, though, is that issue for Wisconsin voters who now have access to abortion?
The abortion man that was passed in 1849 and loomed over the state as the court cases
began right here when every abortion provider in Wisconsin stopped providing care after the
Dobbs decision.
That is in very recent memory for Wisconsinites.
And many Wisconsinites know someone personally who is directly affected by that abortion
ban were one bad election away from an abortion man coming back into place,
whether it's Trump with Project 2025, his plan to create a de facto abortion ban even without
passing a law, or the kinds of national abortion bans that Mike Johnson would pass
probably with help from people like Derek Van Ordon and Brian Style if they go back to the U.S.
House, all the way to our state, where Republicans and our state legislature have been supporting
and supported by the most, not just anti-abortion, but anti-contraception extreme groups.
And we know that there's an anti-abortion extremist running for Supreme Court in 2025,
Brad Schimmel.
So this is very real, and the threat has felt very personally to voters.
It might not be what you think about every day when you wake up, but what we found over
and over is that when you have a conversation with someone at your front door or with a
friend who's reaching out to talk to you about the campaign, this is an uncrossable
line, the idea that a politician would invade your family's private choices about medical
care that people should be making their own decisions about.
That's not something that Wisconsinites are ready to accept.
What is your party's message to black and Hispanic voters whose support may not be
ironclad for the Democrats?
I think the key thing for Democrats to do is show up, listen to people, and then act on
what they're hearing.
And one thing we're hearing right now really clearly is that people are so frustrated by
the cost of groceries, by the cost of gas, and that's why President Biden has a laser
focus on bringing down costs for the middle class.
He's tackled some of the biggest special interests in the country, drug companies.
Pharmaceutical companies basically ran Washington, D.C., until he and Tammy Baldwin
and other Democrats took the fight to them.
They brought down the cost of insulin to $35 a month.
They want to finish the job with other drugs and for people who are not on Medicare as
well.
There's so much more to do, but it requires a willingness to take on the wealthiest
special interests in our country.
And what you see with Donald Trump, with oil companies, he is telling them they can
have whatever they want if they raise a billion dollars for his campaign.
And we need to reduce oil company price gouging.
That's what Tammy Baldwin has just been calling for, not hand over the store to
the oil companies to raise prices however much they want.
So that's step one.
But step two is making sure that people's whole range of concerns around public safety,
around democracy, around voting rights, that all these things are both heard and that
Democrats are showing that we are fighting and trying, even though we have so much
more to deliver, if we have a second term, if we have a Democratic trifecta, there's
a ton we can get done and Republicans want to take those things away.
On the U.S. Senate race, when we spoke to Brian Schimming, he said that Tammy Baldwin's
numbers collapsed after a tough opponent got in the race, that being Eric Abdi.
What do you say to that?
I think it's very clear that Eric Abdi jumped in thinking that he could buy this
Senate seat.
This is someone who's been out in California making a giant fortune from running a
multi-billion dollar bank.
He was voted one of Orange County, California's most influential citizens three years in a
row.
And he launched his Senate race and then started buying millions of dollars of TV ads.
And the polls did tighten.
Now, in more recent polls, Senator Baldwin has been on offense and laying out her story
and her lead has grown.
But we should not take this race for granted.
It's very clear.
Wisconsin is an evenly divided state.
And for every Democrat running at every level, you have to take very seriously the work
needed to be done.
I have confidence in Senator Baldwin's campaign because she is a fighter.
She does that work.
And she will never stop fighting for Wisconsinites no matter what comes at her.
But no one should sleep on the Senate race.
Anyone who wants to re-elect Tammy Baldwin should donate, should volunteer and get involved.
In the congressional races, your National Party Committee is committing to the first district
with Peter Barker running against incumbent Brian Style.
Why is that district in play?
The first congressional district, like the third, which has a primary on August 13th,
so it's not yet in the general election zone.
But it's only one by Donald Trump by 2.4 percentage points.
So that's a small margin of victory.
And frankly, Trump is his performance in 2020 with a fully armed, as an incumbent president
before January 6th, before Dobbs, that may be the high watermark.
We have a chance there to flip a seat with a group of people who, as we saw in the Supreme
Court race, absolutely oppose attempts to overturn elections and attempts to ban abortion.
So Peter Barker is an extraordinary public servant, a long track record, deeply known
and beloved in the district.
Brian Style has sided with the MAGA extremist in Congress over and over and over.
That's a contrast that really leads to a democratic victory.
And right now, if Republicans lose more than a couple of house seats, they lose the majority.
With new legislative maps, Brian Schimming says Democrats are going to have to find another
excuse for losing.
What do you say to that?
I think with new legislative maps, Democrats have an opportunity to allow the majority
to choose the majority in our state legislature.
And if Republicans get the majority of the votes, they'll get the majority.
If Democrats do, they will.
That's a change because for a long time, Republicans have been hiding against this giant wall
built by the gerrymandered maps.
And so in 2012 and 2018, when Republicans lost the majority by a lot, they still had
most of the seats.
This time, it's actually accountability for what Republicans have done.
And what they've failed to do, failed to fund public education, failed to expand Medicaid
and provide health care to Wisconsinites, failed to put protections for abortion care into
the state, into law in the state of Wisconsin, and a chance to do the things that Democrats
and most Wisconsinites have been clamoring for.
We're ready for this fight.
And in every corner of Wisconsin, I think we're going to see patches of blue.
All right.
Ben Wickler.
Thanks very much.
Thanks so much for having me on.
Thank you.