Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:09 and sunset is 6:59, for 11 hours, 50 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, an Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Last night, Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel met in the only debate of their campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
Several times, Crawford accused Schimel of saying different things to broader audiences than to audiences made up of his political allies. She called attention to reporting by the Washington Post that Schimel said Trump was “screwed over” by the Supreme Court in its decisions regarding the 2020 election, and reporting by the Wisconsin Examiner that he had told a group of canvassers he’d be a “support network” for Trump.
“He is not impartial, and he says different things in front of a broad audience like this, where he knows it’s going to be televised, than he’ll say when he’s talking to his political allies,” she said. “He is not trustworthy.”
On the campaign trail, access to abortion has been one of the most prominent issues. The Court is currently considering a lawsuit that would have the state’s 1849 law declared invalid, while another lawsuit is pending in the lower courts asking if the state’s Constitution grants a right to abortion access.
Schimel has said he personally opposes abortion, that both of his daughters are adopted and he believes the 1849 statute is a “valid law.” In the debate he repeated what he’s said during the campaign on the issue — that it should be up to the state’s voters. Wisconsin doesn’t allow voters to influence state law through a referendum process.
See Henry Redman, Supreme Court candidates continue accusations of partisanship in sole debate, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 13, 2025.
Schimel likely knows, if he’s worked up the energy to read the law after his habitually light work schedule, that a voters’ referendum would be advisory,1 and to overturn Wisconsin’s 1849 statutory abortion ban would require a proposed state constitutional amendment2 that the WISGOP legislature would never put before voters.
Schimel being untrustworthy is an axiom. See FREE WHITEWATER, We Now Know that Schimel Has Lied at Least Once (Could Be More!), March 28, 2025.
Shrewd moment of the night came from Crawford:
At one point, in a remark that Crawford said was a “slip of the tongue,” she referred to Musk as “Elon Schimel.”
Worth running an add with that moniker for Schimel…
______
- As with a proposed advisory referendum in 2024 that, in fact, never made it out of the Wisconsin Legislature. ↩︎
- Gov. Evers has proposed the ability of voters to adopt or repeal state laws without the Legislature, but the WISGOP won’t approve that, either. ↩︎
How to see Thursday’s night, Friday morning’s lunar eclipse:
