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Quotes of the week

I remain optimistic that at the end Iran will not be funding terrorism and will not have a nuclear weapon to threaten the region and threaten U.S. national security interests.
– U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Janesville, on a tentative agreement announced this week to end the war in Iran. 

After our gas was going out of control in cost, all Trump got was a START of the negotiations. Not a deal. A beginning.
– U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, on the agreement. 

This week’s news

— U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said an agreement President Donald Trump is touting as an end to the war in Iran isn’t actually a deal, arguing he “often claims victory without any work to show for it, and this time is no different.” 

Trump and Iranian officials have announced they’ve reached an initial agreement to end the more than three-month-long war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Baldwin in a virtual press conference yesterday said there is no guarantee Iran will end its nuclear program or any assurance the war won’t continue. 

“In fact, we are told, without any paper to back it up, that President Trump has merely reached an agreement to keep talking about a deal over the next 60 days. On this deal to make a deal later, we have zero details and are told just to take the president’s word for it,” Baldwin said, adding the Trump administration and Iran “cannot even seem to agree on what is included in the agreement.” 

Trump yesterday said the agreement hasn’t been finalized and that the United States could start bombing Iran again “if they don’t behave.” 

Baldwin said Trump’s comments “just (underscore) that there is no deal.” She knocked Trump for abandoning a deal with Iran former President Barack Obama had negotiated more than a decade ago. 

“I can’t see possibly how we could end up with a stronger deal curtailing Iran’s nuclear program 60 days from now than we did back in 2015 after months of multilateral negotiation,” she said. 

U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, R-De Pere, criticized “the swamp” for attacking the agreement. 

“They either want to see America fail or want to see endless wars continue. I want to see this war come to an end and I am grateful to have a President who is (pursuing) peace through strength to protect our country and the American people,” Wied said. 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, has defended Trump’s stature toward Iran and praised him for “going to the hundredth mile” to reach a deal. 

In a telephone town hall this week, Johnson cited the Iranian regime’s support for terrorist groups, pursuit of nuclear technology and mass killings of civilian protestors earlier this year.

“Every president since Bill Clinton has said we can’t allow them to have a nuclear weapon. Trump’s the only person who’s done it,” Johnson said. “It’s not easy. It had to be a very tough decision for him, which is why you see him going to the hundredth mile to do a deal with them.”

—  Baldwin defended Dem efforts to push back against Trump, telling activists it’s a challenge with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress.

But Baldwin at the state Dem Party convention over the weekend touted what she saw as successes with the few tools Baldwin said Dems have.

“We are fighting back against Trump,” Baldwin assured the crowd while speaking on stage with state Chair Devin Remiker.

Polls have regularly shown the Dem Party underwater with the public. That includes a March Marquette University Law School Poll of Wisconsin voters that found 35% had a favorable impression of the Dem Party, while 58% had an unfavorable one. The split for the Republican Party was 42-52.

In an interview with WisPolitics earlier this month, Remiker chalked that up to self-identified Dems being unhappy with how the party has countered Trump in the early months of his second term.

That March Marquette Poll found 73% of Dems had a favorable view of their party. By comparison, 85% of Republicans had a positive view of the GOP.

Baldwin told the crowd she successfully pressured the Department of Health & Human Services to hire back staff that help communities facing issues with lead in their water supply after issues arose in Milwaukee. Baldwin also said she’s hopeful after she pressured HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that his agency will restore an option on a mental health hotline that caters specifically to LGBTQ+ callers.

And she touted the Dems’ ability to stop Trump supporters in the Senate, which requires 60 votes to pass most bills.

Baldwin said Dems are using their numbers to stop Trump’s No. 1 priority, a proposed national voter ID requirement that would also demand new citizenship documentation to register to vote.

Baldwin called it a cynical attempt to restrict ballot access for voters.

“We are not going to let that pass the United States Senate. There it will die,” she said.

Baldwin encouraged party activists to continue going to rallies to peacefully protest and to keep calling their elected officials.

The senator said before the Trump presidency, her office would get 50 to 100 calls a day. Lately, it’s been 500 to 1,000, and she said elected officials take notice of what their constituents are calling about.

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about political change, it does not start in Washington, D.C. It starts with all of you,” Baldwin said.

Also at the convention: 

*U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore called for party unity going into this year’s midterms, telling Wisconsin Dem activists the only thing that could beat them this November were Democrats themselves.

*U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan derided his GOP colleagues Tom Tiffany, Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden as enablers of Donald Trump who voted to cut healthcare and food assistance while protecting the “Epstein class.”

*Activists expressed frustration with national party organizations endorsing ahead of primaries but fell short in their effort to amend the WisDem constitution to allow local units to back candidates as well. 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has endorsed Rebecca Cooke in her bid for a rematch with U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, and it has become an issue in the three-candidate primary.

— Fresh off his hearing on Capitol Hill, U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald said the NFL may be violating the Sports Broadcasting Act and quickly dismissed concerns from the Green Bay Packers about any changes to the league’s shared revenue model.

“That’s absolutely ridiculous and almost laughable,” Fitzgerald said on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “Let me just say, when it comes to the NFL, shared revenue is not an issue, and as a matter of fact, I don’t care how the NFL divides up the pie amongst the teams in the NFL. It’s not something that’s even affected by the SBA, so that is absolutely the Packers going for kind of hair on fire, oh my gosh, the world’s coming to an end if this would be tweaked.

“When it comes to the NFL, the Packers are going to be fine,” he added.

Fitzgerald led a hearing last week in a House Judiciary subcommittee about the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act, which allows the NFL to negotiate national broadcast deals collectively and then distribute the revenue equally among all 32 teams.

“This isn’t something that we just dreamed up,” Fitzgerald said. “I mean, there’s a class action lawsuit in the 9th Circuit going after the NFL. Now the FCC has opened an investigation and the Department of Justice, so it appeared it was time for the antitrust committee, which I’m chairing right now, to dig into this issue and explore it. I thought the hearing did a very good job kind of laying out the different issues related to the Sports Broadcasting Act.”

Fitzgerald said he believes a case could be made that the NFL is in violation of the act at this point, though he doesn’t want to fully eliminate the SBA.

“No, I don’t think that would be necessary,” Fitzgerald said. “And actually some of the witnesses we had that testified kind of gave at least some credence to the idea of there’s certain things that should be tweaked, but overall the full elimination of it could create kind of the wild, wild west and nobody wants to see that.”

The Packers recently wrote to Fitzgerald that changes “would pose an existential threat to the Green Bay Packers and their existence in Green Bay as we know it.”

— In the meantime, Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of public affairs and policy, countered Fitzgerald’s assertion the league may be violating the Sports Broadcasting Act.

“We don’t see it the same as the congressman,” Miller told “UpFront.” “This bill was passed in 1961 to provide the league and other sports leagues the opportunity to collectively negotiate the distribution of our media rights, and we’ve done that for the past 65 years.”

Miller said the league is in routine discussions with Congress, including discussions surrounding the SBA.

“We talk to Congress all the time about this,” Miller said. “We certainly get the importance of it as a fan issue and a constituent issue. So we’ve been in talks about our media distribution policies not just with the House but with the Senate, with the FCC, with anybody else who wants to talk about it.”

“I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to do,” Miller said, referring to Fitzgerald’s hearing. “I think that the system works incredibly well for the city of Green Bay and Packers fans. After all, this is really important to me as somebody who grew up in Wisconsin, the fact that we can share all of our games and distribution of them and share the revenue collectively among all 32 teams permits the Green Bay Packers to exist, to thrive on the field and off the field.”

Posts of the week

ICYMI

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson weighs unsupported link between COVID-19 vaccines, cancer

WPR: Wisconsin senators clash over US war with Iran, Trump Attorney General nominee

Fox News: Van Orden praises ‘glorious’ US service members killed in Iran war

WEAU: Baldwin urges Trump administration to address New World Screwworm outbreak

WISN: Packers fire back at Fitzgerald saying fans should be ‘offended’ by push change broadcasting law

WEAU: Van Orden visits Menards Distribution Center to highlight no tax on overtime

WPR: Wisconsin congressional Democrats want to repeal national voucher for education

PBS Wisconsin: Wisconsin’s U.S. senators on war with Iran and inflation