Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27 for 9h 03m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated. 

On this day in 1929, Soviet General Secretary Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” leading to a Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kulaks (prosperous peasants) and their families. 

  Jessie Opoien and Molly Beck report in a general readership story that Republicans likely to take Wisconsin gerrymandering case back to the U.S. Supreme Court:

In order to get the U.S. Supreme Court to look at the case, the Legislature and its allies will need to make the argument that there was a violation of federal law. That’s because, explained Rob Yablon, University of Wisconsin Law School professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative, the core legal claim in the case — contiguity — is a matter of state law.

The case brought to the court argued the maps violate Wisconsin’s Constitution because some legislative districts include pieces of land that are not connected.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has the last word on state law questions,” Yablon said.

A request for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a state Supreme Court decision (or a federal appeals court decision) is known as a petition for certiorari, or cert petition. Under U.S. Supreme Court rules, four of nine justices must vote to accept such a case.

“(The majority) did a really intentional job of sticking to very narrow state constitutional issues, which has the effect of insulating a lot of the decision from U.S. Supreme Court review,” said Daniel Suhr, a Republican attorney who served in former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. “When a case is decided on only state constitutional grounds, there’s not a U.S. constitutional hook for the Supreme Court to rely on in intervening.”

In their story, Opoien and Beck consider two principal arguments for federal intervention (Protasiewicz’s participation in the Wisconsin decision and if any new maps have an unlawful racial bias) but report through interviewed experts that both lines of argument have uncertain prospects. 

In any event, while it’s four to take the case, it’s five to overturn on federal grounds.

What ChatGPT is and what it’s not: A three-minute guide: