Wisconsin congressman discusses TikTok, new committee chairmanship in UPFRONT interview
Wisconsin congressman discusses TikTok, new committee chairmanship in UPFRONT interview
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Wisconsin congressman discusses TikTok, new committee chairmanship in UPFRONT interview
Rep. Mike Gallagher says he’s planning to introduce a bipartisan bill this week that would ban TikTok nationwide.
“We’re going to make the case this is something we vote on pretty early on in the next Congress,” Gallagher said on WISN’s “UPFRONT,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com. “There’s a lot of Republican support. We’re slowly bringing on Democratic colleagues. The more people learn about the company that controls TikTok, the more concerns they have.”
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, which has increasingly concerned U.S. intelligence officials.
Last week, Gallagher and the Republican Congressional delegation called on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to ban the use of TikTok on all government devices.
“I think there was some suggestion by one of his staffers that we should have called him,” Gallagher said. “Listen, I would love to be able to call the governor. He’s never reached out to me. We haven’t had a delegation meeting in four years. So he can call me at any hour of the day or night. I’d love to explain to him why this is such a threat, and I think he has an opportunity to lead by example.”
Gallagher said he is backing Rep. Kevin McCarthy to be House Speaker in January. Last week McCarthy appointed Gallagher to chair the House Select Committee on China.
“I think the first move is going to be to build the team,” Gallagher said. “We want this to be a group of serious, sober members that are in it to get stuff done, not just to get clicks or get on TV, so I’m working with Kevin McCarthy to identify the roster of who our best members are going to be and also reaching out to Democrats to ask them to participate in this in good faith.”
Marti Wronski, the newly-appointed COO of the Milwaukee Brewers, is the only woman to currently hold the title across all of Major League Baseball and is the highest-ranking female executive for the Brewers since Wendy Selig-Prieb.
“I think we can look at this two ways,” Wornski said. “We can focus on that piece and the lack of progress or the numbers. They seem small, they are small. Or we can take a look at what we’re seeing in pro sports and across sports in general in terms of women that are entering the career path, that are thinking of sports as something where they can fit it.”
Wornski is entering her 20th year with the Brewers and was previously the team’s longtime general counsel while also in recent years overseeing the team’s HR and IT departments.
“The economy, COVID, you name it, it’s forcing all of us to look at our businesses in an interesting way and to sort of fill some gaps and make some changes that we might not have anticipated a few years ago,” Wornski said.
One of her top priorities as COO, Wronski said, is ensuring the team stays competitive across the league.
“I have every faith and every confidence that we can handle this without an issue,” Wornski said. “But ensuring that we are making sure we are on the cutting edge of everything that is coming next in these areas, that we’re not missing anything so we can continue to put the best show on for our fans, to be entertaining on the field and off.”
Nick Jarmusz, director of public affairs for AAA in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, says he expects near record-high travel in Wisconsin during the upcoming holiday season.
“Air travel, in particular, was up significantly,” Jarmusz said. “Here in Wisconsin, we actually set a new all-time record for air travel for Thanksgiving despite the fact that airfares are significantly higher than they were this time last year.”
Jarmusz said he also expects gas prices to continue to decline, noting the lowest prices in Wisconsin are in the south and eastern part of the state.
“We do think we haven’t seen the lowest prices yet,” Jarmusz said. “We’ve seen about a $2 decrease from the all-time high that peaked in June.”
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