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Daily Bread, Legislation, Legislature, Wisconsin, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 2.20.25: More a Wall than an Aisle

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 21. Sunrise is 6:44 and sunset is 5:33, for 10 hours, 49 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 51.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1933, Hitler secretly meets with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party’s upcoming election campaign.

At the Wisconsin Examiner, reporter Baylor Spears writes of Assembly bills that passed along partisan lines. See Baylor Spears, Assembly passes bills to regulate test scores, school spending, cell phone policies, Wisconsin Examiner, February 20, 2025. Wisconsin does not have, and is not likely soon to get, a bipartisan spirit. We are a divided state, with divided cities, towns, and villages. Those places are divided between each other, and within themselves.

Spears writes:

Wisconsin Republicans in the state Assembly passed a package of education bills Wednesday to implement new standards for standardized test scores, school funding allocations, responding to curriculum inspection requests and for keeping cell phones out of schools. 

Spears also quotes the remarks of Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson):

Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) said she was voting against the bill [AB 6, requiring in part that school boards assure that 70% of operating money would be spent on direct classroom expenditures] — — and others on the calendar — because they appeared to be written without “meaningful input” from teachers, administrators, superintendents, parents, students or community members. 

“I’m here to let you know that if you want support in the educational community for any education bill, you should do your homework,” Fitzgerald said, “including having conversations with the public and reaching across the aisle.” 

Fitzgerald said Franklin’s bill would take away local control from school districts and school boards and criticized the bill for including “vague” wording and “undefined terms,” saying the bills are unserious. 

The men who profited by gerrymandering for over a decade will not reach willingly across the Assembly aisle until their portion of the chamber is smaller. Then, and only then, will they be interested in deal-making.

Until then, the Wisconsin Legislature has more a wall than an aisle.

See also That ‘Bipartisanship’ Didn’t Last Long — Because It Was Never There (12.18.24) and The WisDems’ Bipartisan Delusion (1.23.25).

Rescuers save man buried alive in Vail Pass, Colorado avalanche:

Daily Bread, Elections, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.19.25: Underly, Kinser, and Wright

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 13. Sunrise is 6:45 and sunset is 5:32, for 10 hours, 46 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1878, Thomas Edison patents the phonograph.

Selected area election results (unofficial) among three candidates in the race for Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction:

UnderlyKinser Wright
City of Whitewater 335223183
Town of Richmond61129122
Town of Whitewater 486434

Obvious limitations: these are (1) unofficial results, (2) from selected areas, (3) in a primary, (4) on a cold day in February.

The statewide figures, with almost all precincts reporting, are Underly @ 38% of the vote and Kinser @ 34.5% of the vote, with Wright @ 27.5% of the vote.

Underly and Kinser will advance to the April General Election.

It’s winter in Montreal, too:

Campaign Ads, Conflicts of Interest, Courts, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.18.25: Musk’s PAC Puts in Six Figures for Schimel

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 8. Sunrise is 6:47 and sunset is 5:30, for 10 hours, 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1930,  Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.

Fair use, Link

Not content with the federal government, Musk again sets his gaze on Wisconsin:

A political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk has scheduled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV ads in Wisconsin this week with the state Supreme Court election fast approaching.

The ads are expected to aid conservative Brad Schimel who is running against liberal Susan Crawford in a race that will determine the ideological balance of the court. 

The ads from the Musk-backed Building America’s Future will start running on stations around Wisconsin Thursday and will continue through early March.

Available contracts posted by the Federal Communications Commission show more than $400,000 worth of ads will run in the Madison, Eau Claire, Wausauand Green Bay areas. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports more than $255,000 more will also be running in and around Milwaukee.

The FCC data doesn’t identify the content of Building America’s ads. However, the ads are expected to aid Schimel, the state’s former Republican attorney general.

See Rich Kremer, Group tied to Elon Musk investing in Wisconsin ahead of Supreme Court race, Wisconsin Public Radio, February 17, 2025.

Musk’s Tesla, by the way, is now suing the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in state court, Outagamie County, over that department’s decision against Tesla’s request to open dealerships in Wisconsin.

You never know, but just perhaps that’s litigation, should it one day reach Wisconsin’s highest court, that might be of interest to a Musk-backed Justice Schimel.

See also Musk Attacks Two Wisconsin Lutheran Groups (from 2.6.25) and World’s Richest Man Weighs In On Wisconsin Supreme Court Race (from 1.24.25).

Ice ‘Volcanoes’ in New York:

Budget, Daily Bread, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.17.25: $4,300,000,000

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 7. Sunrise is 6:48 and sunset is 5:29, for 10 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4 PM, the Police and Fire Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1801, a tie in the Electoral College between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr is resolved when Jefferson is elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

Even today, $4,300,000,000 is a lot of money:

As Gov. Tony Evers puts the finishing touches on his next state budget proposal, projections show Wisconsin is expected to see a surplus of around $4.3 billion. 

It sets the stage for a familiar battle, with the Democratic governor calling for investments in priorities like education and child care and leaders of the Republican-controlled state Legislature calling for tax cuts.

The $4.3 billion projection comes from an analysis by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which suggests state tax revenues will be nearly $895 million higher than expected throughout the next two-year budget cycle. The report credits that to a national economy that grew faster than expected in 2024 and modest increases in state sales tax revenue.

While the surplus is large, it’s not exactly new. Two years ago, Evers and lawmakers began the budget cycle with a projected $7 billion surplus. And even after they passed a new budget that increased spending and cut some taxes, the state ended last fiscal year with $4.6 billion in the bank.

See Rich Kremer, Wisconsin surplus projected at nearly $4.3B as Evers prepares next state budget, Wisconsin Public Radio, February 14, 2025.

There’s been no grand deal for the surplus these last few years, and regrettably the past is the best predictor of what’s to come.

‘Aqua tweezers’ manipulate particles with water waves:

City, Daily Bread, Politics

Daily Bread for 2.16.25: Updating a Post on the Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 23. Sunrise is 6:50 and sunset is 5:28, for 10 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1960, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

In 2021, this libertarian blogger posted (as part of a longer series) on the kinds of conservatives in Whitewater. See Whitewater’s Local Politics 2021: The Kinds of Conservatives in Whitewater, April 8, 2021. At that time, there were three conservative types of note: traditionalists (old-school types) transactionalists (deal-making types), and populists (what’s now called Trumpism or MAGA).

There was a question at the time:

The populists are often underestimated. I have been – and am – a critic of these rebranded Trumpists, but have never underestimated them.

These populist conservatives are not deal-makers: they want what they want, on their terms, as soon as they can get it. As the traditionalists fade away, the question among conservatives in Whitewater (and other places) will be whether the deal-makers or the populists dominate right-of-center politics.

There’s a sure answer now, four years later: only the conservative populists matter politically. There’s one movement, one way, one outlook.

A conservative might imagine himself as something else (a traditionalist or a deal-maker), and might be something else, but only in his house or in his head.

Conservatives in Whitewater’s public square are all populists.

Father describes moment humpback whale briefly swallowed his son:

Adrián Simancas was kayaking with his father, Dell Simancas, when the massive whale suddenly surfaced, trapping the young man and his yellow kayak in its mouth for a few seconds before letting him go.

Cats, Daily Bread, Weather

Daily Bread for 2.15.25: Ready for the Weather

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 5:26, for 10 hours, 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1989, the Soviet Union officially announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.

Winter requires the right gear:

Preparing NASA’s CADRE Moon Rovers for Launch:

Three small lunar rovers were packed up at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the first leg of their multistage journey to the Moon. These suitcase-size rovers, along with a base station and camera system that will record their travels on the lunar surface, make up NASA’s CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) technology demonstration. CADRE aims to prove that a group of robots can collaborate to gather data without receiving direct commands from mission controllers on Earth, paving the way for potential future multirobot missions. Seen here are tests of the CADRE software in January 2024 and scenes of a rover getting flipped over, attached to an aluminum plate for transit, and sealed into a protective metal-frame enclosure that was later packed into a metal shipping container a year later, in January 2025. The hardware was transported from JPL to Intuitive Machines’ Houston facility, where it will be integrated with the company’s Nova-C lander. Intuitive Machines’ third lunar mission (IM-3), which has a mission window extending into early 2026, will deliver CADRE and other NASA payloads to the Moon’s Reiner Gamma region. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages CADRE for the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. IM-3 is a mission under NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, which is managed by the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.

Daily Bread, Education, Elections, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.14.25: Outlook for Wisconsin’s Spring Primary for Superintendent of Public Instruction

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Good morning.

Valentine’s Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25, and snow likely this evening. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 5:25, for 10 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1876,  Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.

Robert Yoon writes of the spring primary in AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary between incumbent Jill Underly and challengers Brittany Kinser and Jeff Wright:

Kinser leads the field in campaign fundraising thanks to a flurry of contributions in January from big-dollar Republican donors. She had raised $316,000 through Feb. 3, compared with $123,000 for Wright and $121,000 for Underly. 

In 2021, Underly narrowly topped the seven-candidate primary field with 27% of the vote. Six candidates were aligned with Democrats, but none emerged as the clear alternative to Underly among Democratic voters. That helped the sole Republican-backed candidate that year, Deborah Kerr, to nab the second spot on the general election ballot with 26% of the vote. Underly went on to win the general election that year with 58% of the vote in a one-on-one contest with Kerr.

This year, three candidates are competing for two spots, and the primary has become several contests stuffed into a single race: one between Underly and Wright among Democratic-leaning voters, another with Kinser trying to consolidate enough support among Republican-leaning voters to outperform one or both of her rivals, and another with all three candidates competing for independent and crossover voters to tip the scales in their favor.

With only two candidates this year to potentially split the support of Democratic-leaning voters, Kinser would likely need to far outperform Kerr’s 26% in the 2021 primary to earn a spot on the April ballot, assuming a competitive contest between Underly and Wright.

See Robert Yoon, AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Wisconsin’s spring primary, Associated Press, February 14, 2025.

If the split between Democratic-leaning voters and Republican-leaning voters in this race is like 2021, then, yes, Kinser would likely need to outperform Kerr’s 2021 vote share.

It would be surprising, however, if the balance between ideologies is like that of 2021. At least, it would be surprising to me. If the conservative1 candidate cannot place comfortably in one of the two spots in this race, then conservatives wasted a campaign on a weak candidate or weak messaging. This environment, Spring 2025, is as much of a high-water level as the conservative populists in Wisconsin may ever have.

I’d guess Kinser will exceed 26 percent easily, and find herself in the Spring General Election against Underly.

We’ll know Tuesday night, and likely early Tuesday night.

______

  1. Conservative as an ideology in American is now synonymous with conservative populist. There are still a few different individual conservatives, but there is only one ideological movement: populism. ↩︎

Happy Valentine’s Day:

Daily Bread, Education, Elections, State Government, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.13.25: Conservative Candidate Outraises Opponents in State Superintendent Race

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 15. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset is 5:24, for 10 hours, 30 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Involvement and Cable TV Commission meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1960, with the success of a nuclear test codenamed “Gerboise Bleue,” France becomes the fourth country to possess nuclear weapons.

Brittany Kinser is far ahead in fundraising:

Wauwatosa education consultant Brittany Kinser has signficantly outraised both of her Democratic opponents, according to the latest campaign finance reports. Her half-million dollar haul ($508,000) so far this year is nearly four times as much as state Superintendent Jill Underly raised ($132,000) and about 13 times as much as Sauk Prairie School District Superintendent Jeff Wright ($38,000).

Kinser calls herself a moderate but is backed by conservatives for her pro-school choice positions. Underly, the incumbent, is backed by the Democratic Party, though Wright has chipped away at some of her base. ….

Both state parties are pumping their preferred candidate’s campaigns with cash at an unprecedented level for a state superintendent election at this stage of the race, shattering any assumption about it being a nonpartisan election.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $200,000 to Kinser’s campaign so far, nearly 10 times the amount it gave in the entire 2021 race. The state Democratic Party gave Underly about $106,000 this month. The party gave her about $208,000 in the entire 2021 race. Wright has neither party’s financial support.

And there’s still a month and a half to go before the April 1 election.

Kinser has more than doubled the superintendent fundraising record set by then-Superintendent Tony Evers in 2017 for this stage of the race. In Gov. Evers’ entire 2017 superintendent race, he raised about $517,000. Kinser has raised nearly the same amount in just the first month of this race.

See Kelly Meyerhofer, In Wisconsin school superintendent race, one candidate is far ahead in fundraising, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 13, 2025.

Inflation increased in January, posing obstacle for tariff plans:

Courts, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.12.25: Fundraising Strong in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of 26. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset is 5:23, for 10 hours, 27 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is born.

Susan Crawford leads Brad Schimel in reported campaign fundraising, but both candidates are receiving millions:

Liberal candidate Susan Crawford continues to out-raise her conservative opponent Brad Schimel in a race that will decide control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

With roughly 50 days to go until the April 1 election, the race is already on track to smash previous fundraising records for a Wisconsin judicial election. 

Crawford, a Dane County judge, has brought in about $7.7 million since announcing her campaign last year, according to the most-recent reports filed by her campaign committee this week.

Meanwhile, Schimel’s campaign has reported about $5 million in donations.

Reports due this week cover donations through early February. Those disclosures were filed by campaign committees and do not reflect outside spending on the race, such as by groups who pay for their own issue-based ads.

Emphasis added.

See Sarah Lehr, Crawford out-raising Schimel ahead of April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race (‘Both candidates have received large transfers of cash from state political parties’), Wisconsin Public Radio, February 11, 2025.

Detailed reporting on donors and donation amounts to the candidates is available at the Journal Sentinel. Note that while both major parties can transfer money to their preferred candidates, the candidates themselves cannot solicit more than twenty-thousand per donor. Candidate Schimel, predictably, didn’t seem to care about that limitation:

State campaign finance laws restrict donations to Supreme Court candidates to $20,000. But under a decade-old change by the Republican-controlled Legislature, political parties are allowed to receive unlimited donations, money they can then forward to their preferred candidates.

At a Calumet County Republican Party event in July, Schimel was caught on tape urging those who could afford to give more than $20,000 to donate to the party.

“Then, if you want to give a lot more, you can give that to either of the state parties, and they can transfer it,” he said. “They can transfer that to candidates. You can’t earmark it and say, ‘I’m giving you this money but you have to give it.’ But they’re going to those donors who are going to wait till after November 5 (2024) to make sure that I’m the last thing that they give the money to. But that money is going to come.”

See Daniel Bice, George Soros and Wisconsin GOP billionaires dump big donations in Supreme Court race, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 11, 2025.

Minuscule microrobots target drug delivery:

Scientists from the California Institute of Technology have developed microrobots smaller than the width of a human hair for targeted drug delivery. The minuscule robots can operate in body fluids and deliver the medicine exactly where it is needed in the human body.

Birds, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.11.25: ‘A Different Kind of Snowy Season’

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 22. Sunrise is 6:57 and sunset is 5:21, for 10 hours, 25 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets at 5 PM.

On this day in 1979, the Iranian Revolution establishes an Islamic theocracy under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

A Different Kind of Snowy Season:

More about Snowy Owls:

Snowy Owls lead nomadic lives and travel vast distances from year to year searching for productive feeding areas.

Grand Canyons on the Moon:

The Schrödinger impact crater sits near to the Moon’s south pole. Sprouting off it are two canyons — called Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck — each comparable in size to the Grand Canyon here on Earth. These were formed when debris, thrown up by a meteor or comet hitting the Moon, crashed back into the surface. Now, analysis suggests that these high-energy streams of rock could have excavated the canyons in under ten minutes. Understanding this area of the Moon is important as the region has been selected for investigation as part of NASA’s Artemis missions.

America, City, Daily Bread, Drug War, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.10.25: Tariffs Won’t Solve America’s Fentanyl Addiction

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 29. Sunrise is 6:58 and sunset is 5:20, for 10 hours, 22 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Plan & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1906,  HMS Dreadnought, the first of a revolutionary new breed of battleships, is christened.

In Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and across America, there are people addicted to fentanyl. Tariffs won’t relieve them of their addiction:

Americans consume more illicit drugs per capita than anyone else in the world; about 6% of the U.S. population uses them regularly. 

….

One such drug, fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that’s 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine – is the leading reason U.S. overdose deaths have surged in recent years. While the rate of fentanyl overdose deaths has dipped a bit recently, it’s still vastly higher than it was just five years ago.

Ending the fentanyl crisis won’t be easy. The U.S. has an addiction problem that spans decades – long predating the rise of fentanyl – and countless attempts to regulate, legislate and incarcerate have done little to reduce drug consumption. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis alone costs Americans tens of billions of dollars each year.

….

America’s experiments with tariffs can be traced back to the founding era with the passage of the Tariff Act of 1789. This long history has shown that tariffs, industrial subsidies and protectionist policies don’t do much to stimulate broad economic growth at home – but they raise prices for consumers and can even lead to global economic instability. History also shows that tariffs don’t work especially well as negotiating tools, failing to effect significant policy changes in target countries. Economists generally agree that the costs of tariffs outweigh the benefits.

Over the course of Trump’s first term, the average effective tariff rate on Chinese imports went from 3% to 11%. But while imports from China fell slightly, the overall trade relationship didn’t change much: China remains the second-largest supplier of goods to the U.S. 

The tariffs did have some benefit – for Vietnam and other nearby countries with relatively low labor costs. Essentially, the tariffs on China caused production to shift, with global companies investing billions of dollars in competitor nations.

This isn’t the first time Trump has used trade policy to pressure China on fentanyl– he did so in his first term. But while China made some policy changes in response, such as adding fentanyl to its controlled substances list in 2019, fentanyl deaths in the U.S. continued to rise. Currently, China still ranks as the No. 1 producer of fentanyl precursors, or chemicals used to produce illicit fentanyl. And there are others in the business: India, over that same period, has become a major producer of fentanyl.

See Rodney Coates, Why Trump’s tariffs can’t solve America’s fentanyl crisis, The Conversation, February 1, 2025.

Drug War or Trade War: prohibition has been and will be futile against addiction. Domestic demand seeks supply, whether that supply is produced on this continent or elsewhere.

More on tariffs, apart from supposed drug reduction: Metals tariffs ‘will have significant cost’ for US:

US President Donald Trump said he will introduce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US, in a major escalation of his trade policy overhaul. Economist Vicky Pryce of CEBR talks about the impact his announcement will have on trade.

Daily Bread, Federal Government, Law, Litigation, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.9.25: Wisconsin Joins Multi-State Lawsuit Against Musk’s Access to Restricted Information

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 28. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset is 5:19, for 10 hours, 19 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1870, President Grant signs a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Overdue, both legally and technically, but justified litigation nonetheless:

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul are joining Wisconsin to a multi-state lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk from accessing restricted government records on millions of federal employees.

In a statement, Evers said the lawsuit is aimed at protecting Wisconsinites’ personal details. “Wisconsinites expect the federal government to treat their Social Security numbers, bank account information, and other sensitive personal details with the highest level of protection and confidentiality — and that obligation doesn’t go out the window just because Elon Musk says it should,” Evers said.“Giving political appointees access to our most personal information like this is illegal. That’s plain as day.”

Agents working for Musk accessed the records maintained by the Office of Personnel Management, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing four U.S. officials with knowledge of the developments.

….

The 19 states are seeking an injunction to block the Trump administration from blocking access to the payment system and a declaration that the Treasury Department’s policy change is unlawful, according to Kaul.

“Donald Trump has put the whims of Elon Musk ahead of Americans’ privacy and security,” Kaul said in a statement. “We’ve gone to court to address this outrageous situation and to protect the American people.”

See Molly Beck, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers joins lawsuit over Elon Musk’s access to restricted information, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 8, 2025.

What a young tapir looks like:

A rare and endangered Malayan tapir calf was born at Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo, the second tapir birth in the zoo’s 120-year history.

Animals, Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 2.8.25: Saving Orphaned Otters

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset is 5:17, for 10 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971,  the NASDAQ stock market index opens for the first time.

Saving Orphaned Otters:

This British animal rehabilitation center rescues endangered Eurasian otters in the wild by giving them shelter and care in a safer habitat. Watch this animal loving couple protect the ecosystem by giving these cute creatures a second chance.

Watch Boom XB-1 take off and go supersonic in historic flight highlights:

Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 jet soared to at an altitude of around 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) and exceeded Mach 1, the speed of sound. It marked the first time a civil aircraft has gone supersonic over the continental United States. The chief test pilot was Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg.

Courts, Daily Bread, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.7.25: Unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules Elections Administrator Can Remain in Post

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 31. Sunrise is 7:02 and sunset is 5:16, for 10 hours, 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 74.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1964, The Beatles land in the United States for the first time, at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport.

This morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s Administrator, Meagan Wolfe, can remain in her post. The ruling was probable based on a prior court decision (under a different court majority) from 2022, as Scott Bauer reports:

A unanimous Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that the swing state’s nonpartisan top elections official, who has been targeted for removal by Republican lawmakers over the 2020 presidential election, can remain in her post despite not being reappointed and confirmed by the state Senate.

Republicans who control the state Senate tried to fire Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe in 2023, leading the commission to sue in an effort to keep Wolfe on the job.

The state Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court’s ruling in Wolfe’s favor. The 7-0 ruling means that Wolfe can remain in her position and not face a confirmation vote by the Republican-controlled Senate.

The court said that no vacancy exists and, because of that, the elections commission “does not have a duty to appoint a new administrator to replace Wolfe simply because her term has ended.”

….

The court relied on the precedent set in its 2022 ruling that allowed Republican-appointee Fred Prehn to remain on the state Natural Resources Board after his term had ended. That ruling came when the court was controlled by conservatives. The court now has a 4-3 liberal majority.

See Scott Bauer, Wisconsin Supreme Court says swing state’s embattled elections chief can remain in post, Associated Press, February 7, 2025.

I felt that Prehn should have resigned at the end of his term (and been removed for failing to resign), but the Prehn ruling in 2022 made today’s decision as certain as a legal outcome could be.

‘Marsquakes’ travel deeper than expected, says new research: