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Monthly Archives: September 2025

Conspiracy Theories, Daily Bread, Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 9.11.25: On Anniversary of 9/11, Ron Johnson Again Spreads 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:30 and sunset is 7:11, for 12 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 81.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2001, the September 11 attacks, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks kill 2,977 people using four aircraft hijacked by 19 members of al-Qaeda. Two aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, a third crashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Ron Johnson. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / (CC BY-SA)

Sen. Ron Johnson, having previously spread lies about the 9/11 attacks, now encourages others to do so:

On the eve of the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson sought to encourage those promoting unsubstantiated theories about the tragedy to continue to investigate it.

He told a crowd of about 75 people gathered in northwest Washington to pursue the “truth” about the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and suggested the government was covering up key details about the events. Still, he said he’s unsure if the “full truth could ever be possibly revealed.”

“I know a lot of people have theories,” Johnson said Wednesday evening.

….

Johnson has previously questioned how World Trade Center 7, a third building in downtown Manhattan, could have collapsed in “any other way than a controlled demolition” since it was not directly hit by a plane. 

“What actually happened at 9/11?” Johnson asked during an interview with the MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson in April. “What do we know? What is being covered up? My guess is there is an awful lot being covered up in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11.” 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, whose investigation into the collapse Johnson has called corrupt, determined that debris from the destruction of the Twin Towers started fires on floors of Building 7. The sprinkler system failed, and heat from the flames meant a structural column failed, ultimately causing the whole building to fall.

See Lawrence Andrea, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson tells gathering of 9/11 theorists to pursue ‘truth,’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 10, 2025.

Johnson is an ignorant man who believes that asking questions and spreading doubt makes him a knowledgeable man. There’s a FREE WHITEWATER category dedicated to Johnson‘s past conspiracy theories, a catalog of his errors and lies. See also Ron Johnson Thinks the U.S. Government Was Behind 9/11.

Streets submerged in Indonesia after devastating floods:

Fifteen people are dead and 100 missing as Indonesia reels from floods caused by extreme rainfall.

City, Daily Bread, University

Daily Bread for 9.10.25: For UW-Whitewater, More Students Mean More Opportunity

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset is 7:13, for 12 hours, 43 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1607,  Edward Maria Wingfield is ousted as first president of the governing council of the Colony of Virginia; he is replaced by John Ratcliffe.

The early enrollment numbers from Universities of Wisconsin schools show an increase over last year in enrollment at UW-Whitewater and several other schools:

The preliminary headcount enrollment for fall 2025 is:

  • UW-Eau Claire: 9,498
  • UW-Green Bay: 11,500
  • UW-La Crosse: 10,627
  • UW-Madison: 51,550
  • UW-Milwaukee: 22,613
  • UW-Oshkosh: 12,457
  • UW-Parkside: 3,895
  • UW-Platteville: 6,406
  • UW-River Falls: 5,275
  • UW-Stevens Point: 8,538
  • UW-Stout: 7,047
  • UW-Superior: 2,859
  • UW-Whitewater: 12,075
  • Total: 164,340

The total for UW-Whitewater, including both the main campus and Rock County, represents an increase of about three percent over 2024’s final fall enrollment numbers.

More students mean more opportunity. They represent potential and potentialities; not certainties, only possibilities, for themselves and us. What the Whitewater community makes of these additional students depends on how they and we interact. In the last decade, the 2010s, Whitewater saw a university leadership inadequate to its students and faculty. (See categories 1 and 2.) No amount of rationalization then or since changes that decade’s series of mistakes and misconduct. This libertarian blogger was right then and remains right now.

We are past that time, and one should be grateful (I know that I am) that we are.

What we make of this opportunity — whether we achieve some or all of what we can — still lies ahead.

Scientists can now map spots on distant stars using orbiting exoplanets:

There is a new method to detect and map spots on stars by “using observations from NASA missions of orbiting planets.” according to NASA”s Goddard Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Congress, Daily Bread, Far-Right Populism, Politics, Populists, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 9.9.25: Steil and Van Orden Can’t Stray Because Far-Right Populism Moves in Only One Direction

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 6:28 and sunset is 7:14, for 12 hours, 46 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1972, in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park, a Cave Research Foundation exploration and mapping team discovers a link between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, making it the longest known cave passageway in the world.

Rich Kremer reports that Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden are Wisconsin’s top Democratic targets but haven’t strayed from Trump:

Trump has pursued much of his agenda without Congress, but his signature budget law is the exception. Nearly every Republican voted for it, including Steil and Van Orden.

Neither lawmaker has shied away from the votes, especially Van Orden. While he’s avoided in-person town halls, he’s been among the president’s most outspoken supporters, especially on social media.

“We will be passing @realDonaldTrump Big Beautiful Bill and anyone that is (in) the way needs to find another Party,” Van Orden wrote on X in late May.

“I am very proud to stand with @realDonaldTrump and the One Big Beautiful Bill,” he wrote in another post in June. “We are delivering on the mandate given by the American people. Cope.”

See Rich Kremer, Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden are Wisconsin’s top Democratic targets. They haven’t strayed from Trump, Wisconsin Public Radio, September 9, 2025.

Steil and Van Orden cannot stray from Trump: WISGOP primary voters in their gerrymandered districts would not allow it.

There’s another reason they’ll not stray, however, a reason more immediate and psychological. They’ve espoused a far-right populist agenda, and populism is an insatiable extremism from which few adherents ever recant. Those who develop a craving for populism (the nativism, the magical economics, the thirst to impose their will on others by force) want more, not less. Go that far, and you’ve gone too far to walk back. Drink a little, and they quickly fill another glass.

The gap between a reasoned politics and populism is canyon-wide. Van Orden and Steil will stay where they are, come what may.

Blood moon and lunar eclipse shine around the world:

Visible from Australia, across Asia and western Europe, a blood moon has been captivating stargazers. This marvel is caused when the Earth shades the moon from direct solar light, causing the moon to appear red.

America, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Far-Right Populism, Populists, Tariffs, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.8.25: Slow Growth Precludes a New Golden Age

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:27 and sunset is 7:16, for 12 hours, 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM. Whitewater’s Planning and Architectural Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1966, the landmark science fiction television series Star Trek premieres with its first-aired episode, “The Man Trap.”

A fitting headline describes the story ahead. So it is with U.S. could tumble into recession before seeing Trump’s promised golden age:

Administration officials also have said they expect provisions in Trump’s signature legislation, which he dubbed “the One Big Beautiful Bill,” to encourage greater business investment. In July, Bessent promised Fox that the measure “will set off growth like we have never seen before.”

Some Wall Street banks forecast a more muted performance, at least in the short term. Morgan Stanley pegs economic growth in the current quarter at 1.5 percent.

Today’s labor market weakness can be traced to several Trump policies, economists said. On-again, off-again tariff announcements over the past several months have made it difficult for businesses to plan new investments or to hire.

Trump has imposed the highest tariffs since the 1930s in a bid to encourage domestic manufacturing. Yet factory employment has dropped by 41,000 since February. Other trade-related sectors, including mining, wholesalers and oil and gas extraction, also have seen payrolls shrink in recent months. And the boom in factory construction that began under President Joe Biden ended after Trump eliminated many of the government subsidies that encouraged such projects.

“We aren’t even seeing the beginnings of a tariff-related recovery in manufacturing. You don’t expect to see it overnight. But it’s going in the wrong direction,” said economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington.

The president’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including workplace raids like the one at a Hyundai plant in Georgia on Friday, is driving down the availability of foreign-born workers, which also weighs on hiring. Over the first six months of the year, the nation’s foreign-born population fell by more than 1 million, according to the Pew Research Center.

Trump’s tougher immigration policy, coupled with the effects of societal aging, are reducing potential monthly job growth by more than 100,000 hires, according to Barclays.

See David J. Lynch, The U.S. could tumble into recession before seeing Trump’s promised golden age (‘The U.S. economy is at risk of entering a recession before President Trump’s promised golden age, with weak job growth and high inflation blamed on his policies’), Washington Post, September 8, 2025.

Large numbers of immigrants have left the workforce this year, but their departure has done nothing to boost native-born employment:

The Trump administration weathered another disappointing U.S. jobs report when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on September 5, 2025, that total nonfarm payroll employment rose by only 22,000 in August. The total seasonally adjusted labor force has increased by only 34,000 since January 2025 and has decreased by 357,000 since its peak in April 2025.

“The loss of immigrant workers and immigrant consumers is a major cause of slow job growth,” said labor economist Mark Regets, a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy, in an interview. “Immigrants both create demand for the goods and services produced by U.S.-born workers and work alongside them in ways that increase productivity for both groups.”

See Stewart Anderson, Immigration Has Declined, But No Evidence U.S. Workers Are Better Off, Forbes, September 7, 2025.

Far-right populism has no sound economic theory, certainly not a theory of mutually supporting, synergistic growth. (The populists aren’t free-market types.) Populism has, in economics and culture, only a zero-sum theory of someone’s loss as someone else’s gain. And so, and so, they erroneously believe that deportations, for example, would leave more for everyone else.

It hasn’t and it won’t work that way. It’s worth noting, however, that populist claims of an economic gain were, at bottom, only secondary to them in any event.

It’s a cultural and political retribution that they want. They’ll inflict (and endure) widespread economic pain for their primary cultural goals.

Seoul promises to help hundreds of Korean workers arrested in US in Ice raid:

South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, has promised to make ‘all-out efforts’ to resolve the arrest of hundreds of the country’s citizens by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) during a raid at a factory being built in Georgia, Atlanta, to make car batteries. The incident could exacerbate tensions between the Trump administration and Seoul, a key Asian ally and investor.

America, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.7.25: ‘The Toughest Time to Find Work’

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:26 and sunset is 7:18, for 12 hours, 52 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, according to American colonial reports, Ezra Lee makes the world’s first submarine attack in the Turtle, attempting to attach a time bomb to the hull of HMS Eagle in New York Harbor.

How odd, how very unexpected, that a man with six business bankruptcies has led America to a place where it’s the toughest time to be searching for work in America in years:

New data last week showed a fourth month of tepid job growth and propelled joblessness to its highest level since late 2021, when the economy was still recovering from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic. Now, as companies wrestle with inflation, economic uncertainty and trade policy whiplash, many are shredding payrolls and shifting tasks to artificial intelligence while pulling in higher profits. And some executives are pointedly broadcasting sizable layoffs as wins, a sign they’re making workforces leaner and more efficient. 

Hardly any corner of the economy is untouched by jobs cuts and slowdown: Employment in all goods-producing industries slumped in August, with the deepest losses coming from manufacturing and mining. The service sector was racked by steep layoffs in business and professional services and IT. 

Meanwhile, job vacancies are shrinking as employers hold fire on hiring, data show. Factor in dimming consumer sentiment — which hit a three-month low in August — and conditions are ripe for labor market gridlock, said Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank in Dallas, leaving the economy “operating in low gear.”

….

Mark Cohen, the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, expects those numbers to grow as retailers contend with tariff headwinds and as consumers feel increasingly pessimistic about the economy. 

“There’s enormous uncertainty throughout the economy. Retail and retail support is well over 70 percent of the economy’s makeup, and the inputs to retail are entirely linked to international trade,” he said. “In the face of uncertainty, what choice do they have? Hire fewer people.”

See Taylor Telford, Jaclyn Peiser, and Federica Cocco, Why it’s the toughest time to be searching for work in America in years, Washington Post, September 7, 2025.

Trump’s role was never economic. His role was, is, and always will be to deliver retribution for far-right populists against their ethnic, racial, and cultural enemies.

World’s largest iceberg is beginning to break apart:

The world’s largest and most enduring iceberg is splintering into smaller pieces, to the point that it’s no longer the biggest chunk of ice floating in the oceans. It’s currently drifting between the southern tips of Africa and South America.

Cats, Daily Bread, Good Ideas, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.6.25: The Catnapper of Green Bay

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 63. Sunrise is 6:25 and sunset is 7:20, for 12 hours, 55 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1976, Soviet Air Defense Forces pilot Viktor Belenko lands a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States; his request is granted.

There’s no better day than today, crafted by cat lovers as Caturday, to catch up on the adventures of Terry Lauerman, a Green Bay resident who takes naps with cats at Green Bay’s Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary. FREE WHITEWATER first posted about Lauerman in 2018, and I’m happy to read that he’s still doing well (in every sense of that term) in retirement:

At an animal shelter in Green Bay, a retired volunteer is living every cat lover’s — and nap lover’s — dream. 

For seven years, 82-year-old former Spanish teacher Terry Lauerman has been donating his time to Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary. The shelter is dedicated to rescuing cats and dogs with special needs and disabilities. Terry’s specialty? Lying down and snoozing with the shelter’s cats.

“When you get old, you fall asleep easily, so it’s natural,” Lauerman told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

See Beatrice Lawrence, Wisconsin’s viral ‘Cat Napper’ is living every cat lover’s dream (‘Retiree Terry Lauerman volunteers at Green Bay’s Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary, where he takes naps with the shelter’s special-needs cats’), Wisconsin Public Radio, September 5, 2025.

See also, from 2019, The Senior Taking Naps With Cats:

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Employment

Daily Bread for 9.5.25: National Labor Market Stalls

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 62. Sunrise is 6:24 and sunset is 7:21, for 12 hours, 58 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 93.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia.

We had heard, more than once, that the time after January 20th was to be the beginning of a New Golden Age. The claim doesn’t match America’s circumstances:

U.S. job growth slowed significantly in August, a sign the labor market is under increasing stress. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the United States added 22,000 jobs in August, well below expectations of 75,000. The unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.3%, in line with expectations. 

“The U.S. economy appears to have stagnated” since July, analysts with Citi said in a note this week. They cited a separate survey from the Federal Reserve released Wednesday that showed little to no increase in economic activity or employment over the past several weeks.

Revised data reported by the BLS showed the jobs market actually contracted in June, though it climbed slightly more than initial estimates in July. Combined, employment for the two months is now 21,000 lower than previously reported, the BLS said. The federal statistical agency issues revisions as more businesses and governments provide data, and as seasonal factors get recalculated.

See Rob Wile, The U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, confirming dramatic slowdown in the labor market (‘The August report is the first since President Donald Trump fired a top Labor Department official over accusations of releasing inaccurate data’), NBC News, September 5, 2025.

None of this should be surprising. Extreme populism does not, at bottom, have a coherent economics (let alone a sound economics); it has cultural grievances and political scores to settle.

Car goes airborne over Long Island highway:

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, September 9th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

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Tuesday, September 9th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Comedy/Romance rated R (language)

1 hour, 38 minutes (2025).

An aspiring author, looking to get more out of life, takes up a writing residency and finds herself in the sort of romantic entanglements that could come from the pages of a Jane Austen novel. Filmed in England and France. Dialogue in English and French with subtitles.

One can find more information about Jane Austen Wrecked My Life at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Far-Right Populism, Gubernatorial Race 2026, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 9.4.25: Populism Works Its Will on the WISGOP

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset is 7:23, for 13 hours, 0 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 87.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 476, Romulus Augustulus is deposed when Odoacer proclaims himself “King of Italy,” thus ending the Western Roman Empire.

A simple equation describes the state of the WISGOP: (SOME MONEY) + (PLENTIFUL EXTREMISM) + (MR. TRUMP’S ENDORSEMENT) = WISGOP GUBERNATORIAL NOMINATION. See Far-Right Populists Will Draft the WISGOP Gubernatorial Platform.

Two recent events show the operation of that equation in Wisconsin.

First, it was nearly inevitable that the WISGOP candidates now running for governor (and anyone else who will come along) would compete over the furthest-reaching policies to satisfy the appetites of the populist movement. So they now are, as Republican governor candidates Bill Berrien and Josh Schoemann signal support for troops in Milwaukee:

Whitefish Bay manufacturing CEO Bill Berrien said he supported Milwaukee Police Association President Alex Ayala’s plans to ask the Trump administration to send National Guard troops to Milwaukee, calling the city “one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country.”

And Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that he would “proactively work with the President to deploy sufficient law enforcement to keep our neighbors in Milwaukee safe, including the National Guard,” if he’s elected governor.

See Lawrence Andrea, Republican governor candidates Bill Berrien and Josh Schoemann signal support for troops in Milwaukee, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 3, 2025.

How could it be otherwise for them? They’re the equivalent of leaves on a river asking the river to keep flowing. They won’t shape their campaigns, even in part; the populist movement will.

Another element of the equation, the importance of Mr. Trump’s endorsement, saw its expression when Rep. Tom Tiffany received a cautious response from Donald Trump:

When Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced this summer he would not seek reelection in 2026, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany called President Donald Trump.

“With me considering doing it, I just wanted to make sure the president knew that Gov. Evers is not going to run for re-election. And we talked about it,” said Tiffany, who plans to announce whether he’ll launch a campaign for governor before the end of September. 

“The purpose of that call was to set up the state of play in Wisconsin because the president more than anyone understands the importance of Wisconsin,” Tiffany, who represents the solidly red 7th Congressional District, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Republican sources have told the Journal Sentinel that Trump declined to endorse Tiffany’s run for governor during his White House meeting. But Tiffany said Trump “didn’t say anything like that to me.”

He said Trump’s top concern during the discussion was maintaining a GOP majority in the House. Trump asked Tiffany what the status of the 7th District would be if Tiffany decided to run for governor. 

See Lawrence Andrea, Considering a run for governor, Rep. Tom Tiffany gets a cautious response from Donald Trump, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 4, 2025.

Oh my — pitiful as it is servile. In Tiffany’s telling, he felt the need to tell Trump that Gov. Evers wasn’t running again. Trump may not know economics, foreign policy, or public health (he doesn’t), but he does know politics. Trump most certainly knew that Tony Evers declined a third run without Tom Tiffany calling the White House. Honest to goodness.

Articles about the local aspects of the Wisconsin gubernatorial race are largely anachronistic. The Wisconsin gubernatorial race will be a national race, as populism and Mr. Trump’s opinion matter far more to the WISGOP.

New Mexico police rescue family from flash flood:

City, Daily Bread, Development, Economy, Housing, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.3.25: Projecting the Future of Work in Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with scattered showers and a high of 67. Sunrise is 6:22 and sunset is 7:25, for 13 hours, 3 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1783, the Revolutionary War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain (that became effective May 12, 1784).

Wisconsin Watch’s Natalie Yahr writes about The Future of Work in Wisconsin (in four categories across six charts): fastest growing jobs, jobs with most openings, declining employment, and popular jobs.

Two notable categories are most popular jobs today by absolute number, and occupations protected to lose the most jobs (also by absolute number):

Many of the jobs shrinking the fastest are ones you might expect: those based on outdated technologies or practices. About one in four positions held by telemarketers, switchboard operators, couriers, door-to-door salespeople and street vendors is projected to vanish by 2032.

Of the top 10 fastest-shrinking jobs, nine don’t usually require a college education. 

Secretaries and administrative assistants are expected to lose the most jobs (2,420), followed by couriers and messengers (1,990), customer service representatives (1,550) and tellers (1,290).

See Natalie Yahr, The future of work in Wisconsin, in six charts, Wisconsin Watch, September 3, 2025.

This city is sensible to do all it can to bolster and expand opportunities both to work and to live in Whitewater. Both are necessary.

Whitewater’s choice is not growth versus no-growth. It’s not business versus residential. It’s growth or decline.   

Kilauea’s on-and-off eruption is back on in Hawaii:

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano has been shooting lava from its summit crater about once a week since late last year, delighting residents, visitors and online viewers alike with a firehose of molten rock.

Daily Bread, Employment, Labor, Law, Unions, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 9.2.25: Wisconsin Act 10’s Future in Doubt

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:21 and sunset is 7:27, for 13 hours, 6 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 71.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5 PM and the Whitewater Common Council at 6 PM.

On this day in 1864, Union forces enter Atlanta as the city surrenders, ending the Atlanta campaign as a victory for General William T. Sherman.

Was Monday, September 1, 2025, the last Labor Day for the Walker era’s Act 10? That provision faces a likely Wisconsin Supreme Court decision:

A Dane County Circuit Court judge last year ruled that provisions of Act 10 were unconstitutional because the law treats public safety workers differently from other public employees. Judge Jacob Frost later ordered the restoration of collective bargaining powers for all public workers to what they were before Act 10 was adopted — a decision that appears all but certain to be decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority.

Fresh off his 2010 victory, then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker in February 2011 unveiled his plan to sweep away decades of protections for state public employees as a way to address a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit. The proposal eventually became known as Act 10, and it hobbled public unions across Wisconsin and remains one of the most divisive measures in state history.

Act 10 effectively ended collective bargaining for most public-sector unions by limiting what they could negotiate over to base wage increases only, limiting those to a rate no greater than inflation.

See Mitchell Schmidt, This could be Wisconsin’s last Labor Day under Act 10, Wisconsin State Journal, September 1, 2025.

The Dane County Circuit Court decision (Judge Jacob Frost) is on appeal. Predicting judicial decisions is a dicey business, and I’ll not offer a prediction here.

(A generation ago, it would still have been clear to most libertarians that any person should be able to form any association, to bargain with any public or private institution. Those are simply rights of association. I’d say that few libertarians now see this, but it’s more accurate to say that there are few libertarians.)

It’s worth noting, however, that Act 10 and Wisconsin’s still-gerrymandered Congressional districts are among the only enduring accomplishments of Scott Walker’s tenure. The WEDC is a shadow of former self, with Foxconn now remembered only as a mistake everyone would like to forget.

What’s changed most in Wisconsin, however, is the party of which Walker is a member. The WISGOP is a far-right party now, lousy with conspiracy theories and nativism, into which Walker, always an awkward man, now only awkwardly fits.

The WISGOP has moved on, even if Wisconsin law has not, and even if the law will not. Disadvantaging some workers over others is weak tea for a party that routinely demands deporting some workers over others. Anti-union is a pale version of anti-immigrant. Today’s WISGOP embraces a more dystopian vision for Wisconsin, one in which Act 10 seems tepid by contrast.

The night sky for September 2025:

Daily Bread, Labor

Daily Bread for 9.1.25: Working Six Jobs to Keep Her Island Afloat

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Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:20 and sunset is 7:28, for 13 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 62.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1939, Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, beginning the European phase of World War II.

She Works Six Jobs to Keep Her Island Afloat:

For most people, keeping track of one job is complicated enough—now, imagine juggling six. On the small island of North Ronaldsay off the northern coast of Scotland, that’s the case for many of the residents. With a population of just 50, everyone has to work a handful of jobs to keep the island afloat. Sarah Moore is part of North Ronaldsay’s trusted work force. She works as a mailwoman, home care worker, council clerk, airfield attendant, baggage handler, and firefighter. Oh, and did we mention she also keeps a flock of sheep? Sarah moved to the island after searching for quiet from the big city. In North Ronaldsay, she feels like she has found her purpose as a part of something bigger than herself—a caring community.

Sharks could begin losing their teeth more often, study finds:

A new study published in Frontiers in Marine Science found that in more acidic ocean waters, sharks’ teeth were weak, brittle and more prone to breaking.