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America, City, Daily Bread, Ethics, Low Standards, Self-Dealing, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 11.15.26: Controlling the Department and Writing the Rules to Benefit His Family

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Good morning.

By Stelo.xyz, Pttn, or Thomas Nguyen, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:47 and sunset is 4:31 for 9 hours 44 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971, Intel releases the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

Yesterday: The Most Corrupt Administration in American History (And Its Local Value). Today: Controlling the Department and Writing the Rules to Benefit His Family:

In Malaysia’s lush southern peninsula, a data center known as A201 is set to open next year, packed with hundreds of millions of dollars in Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence servers.

The data center plans to supply this computing power to a Chinese tech giant. The setup is legal and profitable. It will also sidestep U.S. rules that ban sales of the most advanced A.I. chips directly to Chinese firms.

The company operating the data center is a client of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm formerly led by Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who handed off leadership of it to his sons. Mr. Lutnick is now writing the rules that would have a substantial effect on the data center’s business.

Mr. Lutnick has been seen as a force slowing rules that would clamp down on the sale of Nvidia chips to data centers like A201, which sit outside China but provide A.I. computing power to Chinese firms.

[…]

In the administration, Mr. Lutnick has been seen as one of Nvidia’s strongest champions. 

His department has been increasingly criticized in recent months for giving Nvidia unusual access to rule-making and investigations, and standing in the way of sanctions on Nvidia’s customers.

The issue has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks with the scandal over the Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s affair with a woman the U.S. government deemed to be a Chinese intelligence asset.

See Ana Swanson, Aaron Krolik, and Paul Mozur, Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap With His Family Business (‘The commerce secretary has been writing new rules that would affect Southeast Asian data centers, some of which are clients of his former firm’), New York Times, November 15, 2026.

Imagine that: A man and his family rewriting rules to make business easier for his own family.

Nice gig if you can get it, right?

No and no again.

Some stains are indelible and, being so, are beyond removal by any rationalization, special pleading, or press release.

Mississippi:

“This is a new day for Mississippi and for mothers who so many of us have great dreams & hopes for our children. For a lot of us, that means maybe you you hope your kids leave & that they find a better place to be where there isn’t the hatred … Scott will be a leader that reverses the brain drain”

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 12, 2026 at 1:54 PM

America, City, Daily Bread, Ethics, Low Standards, Self-Dealing, Special Interests

Daily Bread for 11.14.26: The Most Corrupt Administration in American History (And Its Local Value)

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 46. Sunrise is 6:45 and sunset is 4:32 for 9 hours 47 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 24.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1680, German astronomer Gottfried Kirch discovers the Great Comet of 1680, the first comet to be discovered by telescope.

Perhaps, as I would like, others would like to have stronger conflict-of-interest standards for government. Typically, in a nation of 340 million people, one would look to the best standards nationally to apply to the lesser standards and cronyism locally. There has been some success in Whitewater in moving toward better standards.

The problem, of course, is that the last generation locally carried on with cronyism running to the marrow: some were special-interest men, others were operatives, catspaws, etc. More than one elected official in this town has carried on waiting to hear a landlord’s his master’s voice. These types are adult men and women who have lived as though they were perpetually obliging, obedient children. Just as there are various bird calls, one could record a special-interest man’s voice, play it to these catspaws, and they’d come racing toward the origin of sound. (Someone placing a recording device and speaker in the middle of Cravath would solve more than one problem…)

Nationally, however, we have so many conflicts of interest that one cannot look to the federal government as a source of best practices. Of course not. And yet, and yet, one can still make lemonade from those lemons: the federal administration is an example of what one should not do, of how one should not conduct himself or herself.

Consider the discussion between Catherine Rampell and J.V. Last about the conduct of Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and his adult children:

There is work yet to be done almost everywhere. How fortunate for those of us in small towns that Americans across the country are doing that inspiring work of demanding higher standards of ethical conduct.

Timelapse illustrates how US airspace cleared during nationwide ground stop:

Timelapse illustrates how US airspace cleared during a nationwide ground stop. More than 2,000 flights were canceled Saturday as airlines across the U.S. worked to dig out from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years, which stranded passengers and forced professional and college sports teams to scramble for alternate transportation.

Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs, Trade, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.13.26: Senescent Floridian Threatens More Tariffs Over False Claims of Caravans at Border

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 42. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset is 4:33 for 9 hours 49 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1851, the Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle.

Wisconsin — home to almost 5.9 million people — depends on trade with Mexico. In 2025, Wisconsin exported about $4.0 billion in goods to Mexico, equal to 14.9% of all Wisconsin goods exports. Wisconsin imported about $5.2 billion from Mexico that same year. Added together, that’s $9.2 billion in two-way goods trade. See Wis. Econ. Dev. Corp., Wisconsin Export Data (Sept. 17, 2026).

Despite this huge amount of trade, Donald J. Trump now threatens to double tariffs with Mexico over false claims of immigrant caravans at the border:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Thursday that no migrant caravans have reached the U.S. border since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, responding to his threat to double tariffs on Mexican goods unless Mexico stops migrants from traveling through its territory.

“Not a single migrant caravan has reached the north” since January 2025, Sheinbaum said at her daily news briefing.

Sheinbaum said a caravan of about 600 migrants traveling through the southern state of Chiapas had largely dispersed after its members were told that reaching the United States would be “very difficult.”

[…]

Earlier Thursday, Trump claimed on Truth Social that the United States faced an “invasion” following midterm elections in which Democrats won control of Congress.

“Huge caravans are forming and beginning their illegal march through Mexico. Many of the people in these Caravans are those that various countries don’t want,” he wrote. “MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW, and if they do not do so, the Tariffs on Mexico will be IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED.” 

(Emphases added.) See Sheinbaum rebuts Trump, says no migrant caravans have reached US border since January 2025, Associated Press, November 12, 2026.

In his remarks, one can see Trump’s ignorance. First, he can’t tell the difference between the border with Mexico and a southern Mexican state far from the border. Chiapas is a distance of over 900 miles from the border, at the opposite end of Mexico. (Chiapas borders Guatemala!)

Second, Trump claims that movement within Mexico, many hundreds of miles away from us, is itself “illegal.” No and no again — movement within Mexico is governed by Mexican law, not American law (just as movement within America is governed by American law, not Mexican law). Trump is not the president of Mexico; his false sense of entitlement to intervene anywhere and everywhere has only caused trade wars and violent wars.

America’s current president has wrecked our nation’s economy enough for a dozen terms of office. Threatening a worse trade war with Mexico, when our state depends heavily on exports and imports with Mexico, only makes ordinary Wisconsinites’ lives worse.

Meanwhile, Wholesale Inflation Hits 4-Year High: 6.5%:

High energy prices continue to ripple through US supply chains, raising the costs for businesses and setting the stage for further increases for American consumers. Wholesale inflation accelerated last month to its highest rate in nearly four years, data showed. https://cnn.it/4AzQqJ3

— CNN (@cnn.com) November 13, 2026 at 9:30 AM

Cats, Science/Nature

Friday Catblogging: A Puma Hunting… in the Treetops

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A puma from South America sought a higher vantage for hunting:

It’s a familiar sight for cat owners: You come into the room only to find your furry friend has climbed up onto the dining table in search of food.

A similar thing has now been caught on camera traps in South America: A wild puma (Puma concolor) has been spotted way higher up in the rainforest canopy than they’re usually thought to climb.

The account is reported in a new preprint paper from a team led by the National Museum of Natural History in France.

See Michael Irving, A Wild Puma Was Caught on Camera Hunting in an Unexpected Place, Science Alert, November 13, 2026.

Courts, Daily Bread, Law, Unions, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.12.26: Wisconsin Supreme Court Takes Up Challenge to Act 10

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 43. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset is 4:34 for 9 hours 51 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1948, in Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.

No act, so to speak, of Scott Walker’s tenure has been as memorable as Act 10. And yet, and yet — even what’s left of his time will now come under Wisconsin Supreme Court review in this time:

The lawsuit was filed by a group of unions in November 2023. It involves how workers were classified under Act 10.

The landmark 2011 collective bargaining law created two groups of employees. “Public safety employees,” like police officers and firefighters, preserved their union rights under the law. “General employees,” who make up the rest of the public workforce, did not.

The problem, unions argue, is that the list of “general employees” includes people like correctional officers working in state prisons, conservation wardens and Capitol Police. Unions contend there’s no “rational basis” to treat them differently than police or firefighters.

In December 2024, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost sided with unions, declaring the law unconstitutional. But Frost stayed his ruling almost immediately, keeping the law in place ever since.

In July of this year, a conservative state Appeals Court overturned the Dane County ruling. In that 2-1 decision, the appeals court said the lawsuit challenging Act 10 raised issues that had already been answered by previous rulings that upheld the law, both in state and federal court.

While Wednesday’s order was unsigned, only conservative Justice Annette Ziegler dissented. Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn did not participate in the ruling. Hagedorn, who was chief legal counsel for former Republican Gov. Scott Walker during the period when Walker introduced and signed the landmark law, had previously announced he won’t hear the Act 10 lawsuit.

See Shawn Johnson, Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear Act 10 lawsuit, Wisconsin Public Radio, November 11, 2026.

And look, and look — Act 10 was, apart from its alleged constitutional defects, a policy failure. Unions were never so powerful as Walker alleged, and of teachers’ unions in particular that was twice as true.

The deeper, enduring principle is that people, including employees, should be able to organize and bargain with and against local, state, or national governments. A free society favors its people over its government, and should not, by law, give organizing by employees less protection than organizing by voters. There should be many avenues for many parts of society to challenge governments.

Constitutional issues aside, Act 10 was a policy failure because it was an unnecessary impairment on individual liberty and individuals’ freedom of association.

There’s another claim here worth considering: It does not seem that Walker served eight years ago; it seems as though he served eight hundred years ago. Times don’t last; people go on to new conditions of their own design. There’s no going back, as what one hopes to find is no longer there.

Historic ocean liner sunk off the coast of Florida to become artificial reef:

The historic SS United States ocean liner has marked the end of its journey at sea, as it was sunk off the coast of Florida to become the ‘world’s largest artificial reef’, according to Okaloosa county. Once the fastest ocean liner in the world, the ship took around five hours to sink. It will rest on the seafloor at a depth of approximately 180ft, with the ship’s upper decks sitting about 55ft below the surface.

City, Daily Bread, Development

Daily Bread for 11.11.26: The Proposed Agreement of Sale for a 7.21-Acre Parcel Along Bluff Road

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Good morning.

Veterans Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered showers and a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:42 and sunset is 4:35 for 9 hours 53 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1918, Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne.

The City of Whitewater and Anderson Ashton/KML RE Holdings, LLC, a Wisconsin developer, have proposed an agreement of sale for 7.21 acres along Bluff Road. On Monday evening, that agreement passed review at Whitewater’s Planning Commission; the proposed agreement now goes before the Whitewater Common Council for possible approval. The proposal appears below.

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It is a sound and sensible agreement, flexible and valuable to Whitewater. The proposed sale follows an earlier June 2026 Letter of Intent between the parties. (While this libertarian blogger has also included from the agenda packet an accompanying memorandum to the proposed agreement of sale, that memorandum is explanatory; it is not itself a contractual term or a substitute for the language of the offer and addendum.)

Here are the principal terms of the agreement of sale as it now stands. (There are possible changes that either party might make. That’s common — some provisions might change slightly; here I am writing about the key provisions as they are now published.)

Parcel: KML RE Holdings LLC, associated with Anderson Ashton’s Matthew Mehring, offers to buy the city’s approximately 7.21-acre Bluff Road parcel for $1, with $1 in earnest money. The earnest money is not the sale price, but would ordinarily be applied toward it. (Whitewater would also be obligated to pay applicable brokerage fees and commissions to Anderson Commercial Group on the sale.)

City approval: The offer requires Common Council approval. The offer sets November 25 as its binding-acceptance deadline.

Buyer’s review period: After the specified city approval and notice, the buyer has up to 180 days to assess the land and project. The sale could close sooner than 180 days. The buyer may terminate during that period if dissatisfied with due diligence, including site conditions and economic feasibility.

Conditions to closing: The buyer must be satisfied with financing, required governmental and zoning approvals, a mutually acceptable development agreement, and commercial leases with tenants on terms acceptable to the buyer. Unless it expressly waives or satisfies in writing its conditions by the review deadline, the offer becomes void and its earnest money is returned.

Public support: The buyer seeks at least $500,000 for specified infrastructure through TID 11 on a pay-as-you-go basis. The staff memo calls the amount “approximately $500,000.” The final amount and terms are reserved for a later development agreement. (Any required economic benefit amount to Whitewater would have to be part of any development agreement, yet to be reached by the parties.)

Closing date: Closing is to occur within 15 days after the buyer satisfies or waives its conditions, though it may close sooner. The buyer can assign the offer without city consent to an entity under common control of the buyer. (Assignments beyond this would require city consent, which cannot be unreasonably withheld, conditioned, or delayed.) The proposed-use language permits other approved commercial uses, and the addendum allows a change after closing consistent with the eventual development agreement and zoning.

Whitewater is exposed to low risk during the review period. (Indeed, one risk is the microscopically small opportunity cost that another buyer might come along during this developer’s review period. This parcel has been vacant for many years — another good prospect is unlikely to come along in the next several months.)

The deal also provides flexibility: The proposed uses include a grocery store and daycare, but the agreement permits other commercial uses with city approval for the deal to conclude favorably — Whitewater and the developer need only reach a deal at a stated minimum municipal contribution, if agreeable to both parties.

This is a sound agreement of sale — very low risk to, but potentially high reward for, Whitewater.

Suet Breakfast For Pileated Woodpecker:

Enjoy this clip of a Pileated Woodpecker having a leisurely breakfast of suet. The leaves are changing on the trees of Sapsucker Woods as fall progresses in Ithaca, New York.

Congress, Courts, Daily Bread, Fair Maps, Gerrymandering, Legislature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.10.26: Perhaps Wisconsin Will Have a Faster Solution for Fair Congressional Maps

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 61. Sunrise is 6:40 and sunset is 4:36 for 9 hours 56 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1951, with the rollout of the North American Numbering Plan, direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

Ferris Bueller observed that “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” One sees this truth in the latest developments against Wisconsin’s gerrymandered congressional districts:

Democratic Gov.-elect David Crowley is pledging to sign into law new congressional boundaries if Democratic state lawmakers send him a new map.

Crowley made the comment less than a week after a midterm election that swept Democrats into every statewide office and into the majorities of both houses of the state Legislature. Now, Wisconsin Democrats will have a trifecta of power for the first time in 16 years.

[…]

“Right now I’m focusing on putting the transition team in place to make sure that we’re going to be ready on day one and to deliver results for Wisconsinites all across the state of Wisconsin,” Crowley said in an [sic] Nov. 9 interview with WISN-TV. “But just to put a nail in the coffin when it comes to this, if the bill was to reach my desk, I will sign it.”

Crowley’s pledge to sign into law new congressional maps reverses a position he took in September 2025 when he told Fox 6 he would not “go forward with redistricting mid-cycle.’

Democratic leaders Sen. Dianne Hesselbein and Rep. Greta Neubauer told the Journal Sentinel in interviews last week they will consider a mid-decade redistricting effort.

See Colby Lamb, Molly Beck, and Jessie Opoien, Gov.-elect David Crowley pledges to sign a new congressional map, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 9, 2026.

There are, as a post at FREE WHITEWATER noted, Two Ways to End Wisconsin’s Last Gerrymandered Districts: “through action by the Wisconsin Supreme Court or legislative action by the incoming Democratic majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature.” See Two Ways to End Wisconsin’s Last Gerrymandered Districts. See also Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1168 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026) and Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1008 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026), and FREE WHITEWATER, Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Congressional Gerrymandering Arguments, September 17, 2026.

Legislative action could come far more quickly than a ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court against the state’s current congressional maps. (That is, if there should even be a judicial ruling — legislative action would almost certainly preclude judicial determination.)

It’s becoming more likely that legislative action will make Wisconsin’s congressional maps more equitable. The bigger point for all of us to draw from this is that Bueller was right — life does move pretty fast.

How Far Away Is Voyager 1? One Light-Day, Explained:

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is approaching a historic milestone. On November 18, 2026, the spacecraft will reach a distance of one light-day from Earth. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, transformed our understanding of the solar system through their exploration of the outer planets. In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made spacecraft to enter interstellar space. Now more than 16 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 continues its journey into the unknown. At this extraordinary distance, a command sent from Earth takes 24 hours to reach the spacecraft, and another 24 hours for a response to return.

City, Congress, Daily Bread, Economics, Special Interests, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.9.26: The Fall of a Crypto Man (And Tales of Other Catspaws)

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 6:39 and sunset is 4:37 for 9 hours 58 minutes of daylight. The moon was new earlier today with none of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Innovation Center Advisory Panel meets at 2:30 PM and the Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1913, the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, reaches its greatest intensity after beginning two days earlier. The storm destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.

This libertarian blogger wrote, only days ago, that

Of Bryan Steil, the outgoing congressman from the 1st District: Has there ever been an emptier suit in Congress? Derrick Van Orden, defeated in the 3rd Congressional District, was at least plain — however objectionably — in his devotion to Trumpism. What of Steil? A devotion to crypto? An easy touch for business cronyism? Hoping big PAC money would see him through another election when most constituents had no idea where he stood except with his country club friends in D.C. Thin head, thin accomplishments, fat friends — a waste of a congressional seat.

That description of Steil must have seemed harsh. Well, if harsh, then also true:

Wisconsin voters delivered a blow to the cryptocurrency industry after Democrat Mitchell Berman defeated Republican incumbent Bryan Steil.  

Weeks before the 2024 election, Fairshake, the crypto industry backed political action committee, supported Steil’s re-election campaign with a $764,000 media buy and helped him get re-elected. 

Fairshake spent $1 million in the weeks before the 2026 election. 

Steil had been one of biggest advocates for the industry in Washington, D.C. 

As part of the House Finance Committee, Steil requested in 2025 to be chairman of the subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, which discusses crypto and blockchain legislation. 

See Ricardo Torres, Steil’s election loss to Berman could be blow to crypto industry, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 9, 2026.

Steil: A small catspaw of Big Crypto. (There’s a mistaken notion that all libertarians are enamored of crypto. We are not. Cryptocurrency’s privacy features are overrated — cryptocurrency transactions are most certainly not untraceable — and it’s often little more than a scheme to entice retail investors into acquisitions that will prove unprofitable for them but highly profitable for men like Trump, Trump Jr., Musk, etc.)

Now, Whitewater does not have a cryptocurrency of its own, even now, as the city’s various special-interest men lack the technical skill to create their own crypto coins. And so, and so, we have no perfect analog to Bryan Steil on the local level.

Instead, we have a few elected officials enamored of landlords’ interests. Like Steil, they speak mostly in even, normal tones while favoring special interests’ abnormal positions on key issues. Like Steil, as they owe their positions to more powerful men, they are instruments in others’ hands. For the most part, it’s best to concentrate on the toolmaker and not the tool, so, for example, I seldom refer to these other types by name. Indeed, even among the special-interest men, the type matters more than the person, as an ideological critique of avarice and economic ignorance applies so well. See The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town and The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town (Adjacent Support).

(Key point: A whole new generation has come up in Whitewater that simply doesn’t give a damn about bloodline this or pedigree that. It’s only some older residents who still care. If I thought a more particular critique would matter, I’d certainly not be disinclined. It doesn’t matter more, and so I’m not inclined. Indeed, from a polemical point of view, I’d prefer that this ilk talked about their legacies more often, as it only makes them look obtuse and backward-looking to those many more not brought up or captured by that mindset. The most important reason to look to the past, in my own estimation, is to show how many mistakes these self-promoting, special-interest men made. They’ve produced quite the archive of public policy failures. Other than noting as much, one’s own perspective should be forward-looking.)

Congressman Steil has been as I’ve described him; if he is to be remembered at all, he’ll be remembered as a mere tool of others.

Air pollution so bad in Delhi it’s as harmful as smoking a pack a day:

Authoritarian Populism, City, Daily Bread, Economics, Free Markets, Immigration, Never Trump, Sen. Ron Johnson, Trump, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.8.26: Those at America’s Border Know Better

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 61. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset is 4:38 for 10 hours of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 0.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1972, Home Box Office (HBO) launches.

In this beautiful city, residents endured a falsely styled press conference with hysterical nativist accusations from a conspiracy-addled United States Senator. From this beautiful city, out went a poorly considered and poorly composed letter to then-President Biden that brought only pressure against immigrant residents. In this beautiful city, after that letter, this city was expressly mentioned in a federal executive order as a target of federal overreach against immigrants. Many of these immigrants understandably fled the city rather than trust in the protection to which they were as residents entitled. Some of the special-interest men in town declared that, following the departure of these immigrants, Whitewater’s housing affordability challenge would somehow be solved. (Needless to say, while those men have achieved self-enrichment, their public policy positions have been a principal cause over the last twenty years of the affordability problems residents now face.)

A restrictive immigration position is both wrong and economically self-destructive: Defiance of three centuries of free-market labor theory is a misguided impulse. Voluntary exchange and freedom of contract call for limited government interference in the marketplace. Instead, we have had in this nation only extreme interference with workers and protesters, including our own nonviolent citizens killed on our nation’s streets.

And yet, and yet, in places closer to our southern border, places that know immigration better than we in this city will ever know immigration, those residents have sensibly turned away from aggressive and economically ignorant immigration enforcement — 

See Javier Figueroa, How the Democrats won back the US-Mexico border (‘Democratic candidates carried all 10 House districts in the region neighboring Mexico’), El País, November 7, 2026 and Associated Press Race Calls, All the Calls, November 8, 2026.

This beleaguered federal administration will, in desperation, only intensify its efforts. No one should be surprised — this is the ineluctable direction of authoritarian populism: ever more extreme until it meets its ruin.

And so and so, bad goes to worse— Trump replaces Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller as the White House chief of staff:

Conservation, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.7.26: The Nature Conservancy Then and Now

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:36 and sunset is 4:39 for 10 hours 3 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States.

The Nature Conservancy has advanced conservation in the Midwest for generations. Here’s a quick retrospective on that commendable work:

The shocking truth about Chihuahuas — Scientists find Chihuahuas share [some of the] same genetic makeup as coyotes:

Professional reporting on the study of Chihuahuas’ genetic heritage may be found at Tiny Chihuahuas Hold a Big Surprise: A Sliver of Coyote DNA:

A casual observer might assume Chihuahuas are descended from angry electric toothbrushes. The breed’s characteristic quivering has historically been chalked up to garden-variety neurosis or a low tolerance for chilly drafts.

But a new study published in the journal Nature Communications suggests a more poetic explanation: Tucked inside that 4-pound frame is a microscopic shard of a coyote, trying to break free.

Researchers at Stanford University were testing a new software algorithm designed to analyze the genomic ancestry of any species at high resolution. By happy accident, the team discovered that, unlike almost every other dog breed, Chihuahuas carry distinct hints of coyote DNA, most likely embedded long before Europeans set foot in the Americas.

The Chihuahua lineage is believed to wind back to the Techichi, a small, barkless companion animal domesticated by the Toltec civilization around the turn of the first millennium that has since gone extinct. Alexander Ioannidis, a Stanford geneticist who collaborated on the paper, notes that contemporary Chihuahuas still retain roughly a 4-percent slice of their ancestry from these pre-contact pooches.

See Franz Lidz, Tiny Chihuahuas Hold a Big Surprise: A Sliver of Coyote DNA, New York Times, November 5, 2026.

Congress, Courts, Daily Bread, Fair Maps, Gerrymandering, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.6.26: Two Ways to End Wisconsin’s Last Gerrymandered Districts

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see a mix of clouds and sun with a high of 48. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset is 4:41 for 10 hours 6 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1947, Meet the Press, the longest-running television program in history, makes its debut on NBC Television.

The last gerrymandered legislative maps in Wisconsin are for this state’s congressional representatives. There are two ways these maps might be made more equitable: through action by the Wisconsin Supreme Court or legislative action by the incoming Democratic majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Wisconsin’s high court is now considering appeals from separate three-judge panels that decided against ruling on the existing congressional maps. See Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1168 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026) and Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1008 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026). See also FREE WHITEWATER, Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Congressional Gerrymandering Arguments, September 17, 2026.

A second possibility to adjust the congressional maps is through legislative action:

Democrats will also consider a mid-decade redistricting effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps, where the party flipped two GOP seats on Tuesday. 

Neither Neubauer nor Hesselbein in interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel fully committed to pursuing new congressional maps, but Hesselbein said they have to “keep [it] on the table” and Neubauer said they’ll look to other states as they decide how to move forward.

In addition, Hesselbein said, Democrats will have “16 years of problems that we’re going to have to solve, of things being underfunded.”

See Jessie Opoien and Molly Beck, Democratic legislative leaders vow aggressive agenda in new majority, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 5, 2026.

Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts in the coming Congress will be split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, 4-4. Wisconsin’s First and Third Congressional Districts went for Democrats even under the gerrymandered maps — redistricting is likely to make those maps more equitable (and politically safer) for Democrats.

I’d be surprised if congressional redistricting did more than that — the remaining four districts, however configured, would remain red-favoring under any reasonable boundaries. Redistricting would simply rectify inequitably drawn boundaries in the First and Third Districts.

Of Bryan Steil, the outgoing congressman from the 1st District: Has there ever been an emptier suit in Congress? Derrick Van Orden, defeated in the 3rd Congressional District, was at least plain — however objectionably — in his devotion to Trumpism. What of Steil? A devotion to crypto? An easy touch for business cronyism? Hoping big PAC money would see him through another election when most constituents had no idea where he stood except with his country club friends in D.C. Thin head, thin accomplishments, fat friends — a waste of a congressional seat.

We could have done better, and one reasonably hopes we soon will.

One reads this morning about another waste coming to an end —

The decision to halt production of Tesla’s polarizing polygonal pickup marks the end of an error.

— WIRED (@wired.com) November 6, 2026 at 8:24 AM

Blogging, City, Daily Bread, Libertarians, Politics

Daily Bread for 11.5.26: Community Needs and Individual Purpose

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see occasional showers with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset is 4:42 for 10 hours 8 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1872, in defiance of the law at that time, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time and is later fined $100.

When a major event transpires in a community, it’s reasonable to ask two questions: What are the community’s needs now and what role will one play in addressing those needs?

Perhaps there’s a preliminary question: Was this a major event? For Wisconsin politics, the answer is undoubtedly that 11.3.2026 was a major event. The former chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Mike Tate, is quoted in the Journal Sentinel this morning describing the recent election:

 I remember standing next to a colleague who had been through all of these wars going back to 2010, and I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this in my career or in my lifetime…. It’s 2010 in reverse.

Yes, that’s right. Tate was less effective than his successors (notably less effective than Ben Wickler), yet he has assessed the significance of the election accurately. Whatever comes next, what came before from Walker locally and from Trump within the state has been brought to ruin. There will be Republicans and Democrats, of course. There will also be those who hold tenaciously and ferociously to Trump’s brand of authoritarian populism. Most officeholders in the state, however, will look beyond the Walker and Trump approaches.

That leaves those of us who are politically or ideologically oriented to assess what we believe matters for Whitewater and our own particular approach within this beautiful city. One can see that some of these assessments — without regard to an express perspective of ideology — were made by respondents to a recent community survey. (Note well, Whitewater: Scattered criticisms of that survey’s methodology were deficient; the survey was methodologically sound. On this point, see Whitewater’s Community Survey.)

In my own case, my list of concerns is most easily found in posts that present ‘what ails, or what heals’ or in my annual list of the scariest and most reassuring Whitewater developments over the prior year.

This libertarian blogger is still uncertain how these statewide political developments might reshape FREE WHITEWATER‘s latest lists. (At another, younger site, with a focus expressly on libertarianism, I’m still sorting priorities out. My best guess over there: a reckoning over how and where much of libertarianism failed in the face of authoritarianism, with the exception of those few of us who remained faithful to our principles as Never Trump libertarians. Then, suggestions for the reconstruction of our ideology. Those are not local topics, but they are pressing ones for those of us who, so to speak, kept the faith.)

In all of these matters, alongside so many others in this city and beyond who have been true to their worthy beliefs, one can be certain of this: If we have come through so many challenges in the years since the Great Recession set our contemporary times in motion, we will certainly not be yielding now.

It’s diligent and zealous, so best as we can achieve it, for so far ahead as the human eye can see.

Here’s hopeful news of the natural kind — Scientists discover that dying coral can be revived through contact with healthy coral:

Stanford University researchers have discovered that dying coral can be revived through contact with healthy coral in a lab. The finding could help scientists find new ways to restore coral reefs threatened by warming ocean waters.