Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:45 and sunset 7:57 for 14h 12m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2000, President Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.
No. (The Republican National Committee press release announcing Trump’s Waukesha visit, however, did include an express reference to Whitewater. There was, therefore, reason to be attentive to his remarks.)
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset 7:56 for 14h 09m 50s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Lakes Advisory Committee meets at 4 PM and the Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the Asiatic Squadron of the United States Navy destroys the PacificSquadron of the Spanish Navy after a seven-hour battle. Spain loses all seven of its ships, and 381 Spanish sailors die. There are no American vessel losses or combat deaths.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:48 and sunset 7:55 for 14h 07m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first President of the United States.
One person can make a difference, for good or ill. For ill (where ill means filing lawsuits with bogus allegations of fraud), one such person would be Peter Bernegger. Alice Herman reports How one Wisconsin man plagued election offices and stoked mistrust (‘Peter Bernegger has brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices over alleged fraud – now he faces criminal charges’):
Peter Bernegger has spent the last three and a half years bombarding local election offices in Wisconsin with litigation and accusations of fraud. He’s brought at least 18 lawsuits against election clerks and offices in state court, and on social media, he has relentlessly promoted his litigation and circulated false claims about election fraud in the swing state.
His campaign has recently landed him in legal trouble – Bernegger now faces criminal charges for allegedly falsifying a subpoena in connection with a lawsuit against the state’s top election office.
It’s an escalation for the 61-year-old activist from New London, Wisconsin, who according to court documents, interviews with election officials and emails obtained by the Guardian, has drained election offices of already-limited resources and stoked mistrust in the electoral process in his years-long quest to uncover election fraud.
In the universe of activists who dispute the results of the 2020 election and have spent years searching for evidence of widespread voter fraud, Bernegger’s star power is small. He has not served on a Trump campaign team, no high-powered conservative law firms have taken on his cases and his media appearances are mostly relegated to interviews with fringe podcasts on the rightwing YouTube alternative Rumble.
But his efforts prove that in a country where election offices are chronically underfunded and heavily scrutinized, a single, relatively unknown person can exercise an outsize, and detrimental, impact on election administration.
In response to a request for comment, Bernegger did not address the claims raised in this article except to call them “false and misleading” and potentially defamatory.
A few people have spent a great deal of time pushing election conspiracies in this state (Michael Gableman most infamously), that, as a consequence, have taken up a lot of others’ time. Bernegger is one of them.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:49 and sunset 7:54 for 14h 04m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 70.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1861, Maryland’s House of Delegates votes not to secede, but to remain in the Union.
A nativist position — immigrants out, migrants out, etc. — is easier to hold if one ignores the economic cost of anti-labor-market policies. ‘Get them out’ trips off the tongue; explaining the value of a free-labor market that has made America the most productive nation in all history takes longer. Rob Mentzer reports Central Wisconsin farmers: Immigration crackdown, trade war affect our business (‘Farmers say US trade, immigration policy choices have direct effects on Wisconsin businesses’):
Those deportations, if carried out, would likely hit Wisconsin dairy farms hard. Dairy producers rely on immigrant labor, often from Mexico and South America, to operate. While many workers come here with legal status through temporary work visas, that is not the case for all of the workforce.
“It seems foolish to just pretend that foreign-born workers aren’t here and that we don’t need them,” said Hans Breitenmoser, whose dairy farm outside of Merrill has about 460 cows. “We need a means by which their presence here can be legal and sustainable, and also provide them with the dignity that they deserve.”
Recent public opinion polling has shown a turn in favor of the crackdown advocated by Trump. An April 25 survey by Axios and The Harris Poll found a majority of Americans said they would support mass deportations.
In Wisconsin, the most recent Marquette Law School Poll found 30 percent of Wisconsinites said undocumented immigrants currently working in the U.S. should be deported — a figure that has nearly doubled in the last two years.
Closer to Whitewater: egg farmers, too, one can guess.
Whitewater, regrettably, may find herself under both a general and a specific immigration focus between now and November. The general focus will be simply as one Wisconsin city among many where an anti-immigration position gains adherents.
A specific focus, made possible because Whitewater’s officials themselves raised immigration as an issue, would name the city expressly in campaign literature and campaign stops. Whitewater has come to the attention of Mr. Trump (or, at least, his campaign aides):
“Does anybody know Whitewater after being inundated with Biden migrants? This tiny town now has a budget shortfall,” Trump said. “Their public schools are straining with hundreds of new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”
Earlier this year, Whitewater officials told WPR the influx of immigrants had strained city resources, but they were doing everything they could to help them become integrated into the community. Officials believe the migrants started arriving in early 2022, and didn’t arrive all at once.
Here’s the relationship between general polling and Whitewater as a specific reference: as statewide and national polls show increasing nativist sentiment, then Whitewater will likely be a convenient topic (however misused and falsely described) in statewide and national conversations this fall.
Sunday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:50 and sunset 7:53 for 14h 02m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 79.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to demonstrate that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.
Political campaigns will likely spend hundreds of millions of dollars on elections in Wisconsin this year, agreed the state chairs of both major political parties at a forum in Madison on Thursday.
Democrat Ben Wikler and Republican Brian Schimming would not commit to a specific dollar amount, but they agreed spending will be high for contests up and down the ballot.
Wisconsin is a pivotal state in the presidential race. There are also competitive races for the U.S. Senate, two congressional seats and new state legislative districts.
Could spending in Wisconsin indeed be in the hundreds of millions? Yes. Campaign spending in the 2022 Wisconsin gubernatorial race was $164 million, campaign spending in the 2022 U.S. Senate race was $205 million, and spending on 2022 Wisconsin legislative races totaled $41 million.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:55 and sunset 7:49 for 13h 54m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Community Development Authority will hold a housing roundtable at 9 AM.
Eighteen of former president Donald Trump’s associates and allies have been indicted in Arizona for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results by trying to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Joe Biden, who won the state by 10,457 votes.
The group includes Trump’s final White House chief of staff and six aides or attorneys who worked on or supported his 2020 campaign. Oneis now advising his 2024 presidential campaign, and another is a senior official at the Republican National Committee. Also indicted were 11 Arizona Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner and then transmitted it to the federal government.
All defendants appear to have been charged under each count of the indictment. The charges are as follows: conspiracy, fraudulent schemes and artifices, fraudulent schemes and practices, and forgery. All are felonies, with the most serious being fraudulent schemes and artifices, which carries a standard sentence of five years in prison.
Wisconsin, too, had fraudulent presidential electors. In our state, an investigation into those electors is ongoing, although there has been a settlement in a lawsuit from two legitimate electors against the fraudulent ones. Patrick Marley reports that
Investigators for state Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) have interviewed Chesebro as a possible witness as part of an ongoing probe. Other details about the investigation have not been made public. Separately, [Atty. Kenneth] Chesebro, Trump attorney James Troupis and the 10 Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors recently settled a lawsuit brought by two of the state’s legitimate electors. As part of the deals, they publicly released records about their efforts and withdrew their false filings from the National Archives. In addition, those who acted as electors agreed not to do so again this year or any time Trump is on the ballot. Troupis paid an unspecified amount of money to those who brought the suit.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 5:56 and sunset 7:48 for 13h 52m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Over at the Washington Post, there are useful tables showing how members of the U.S. House and Senate voted on border measures, sanctions including a TikTok ban, Indo-Pacific aid, Ukraine aid, and Israel aid. (In the Senate, the aid packages and TikTok ban were within a single vote, up or down.)
Wisconsin House Delegation’s Votes:
Wisconsin Senate Delegation’s Votes:
Read full bill text for H.R. 8038 (sanctions, including TikTok ban), H.R. 8036 (Indo-Pacific), H.R. 8035 (Ukraine), H.R. 8034 (Israel), H.R. 3602 (border measures), and H.R 815 (the combined House bill on which the Senate then voted).
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 67. Sunrise is 5:58 and sunset 7:47 for 13h 49m 22s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1985, Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
People should desire (and libertarians, among others, do desire) peaceful relations with nations across the globe. It’s been years since Americans understood through consensus that we do have adversaries — enemies — abroad. Ronald Reagan more than once accurately observed that it takes two to tango. We may want good relations with the Chinese or Russian peoples, but dictatorships in both those nations have other desires, ambitions, and plans.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said a new federal investigation into China’s shipbuilding practices is the first step toward addressing the country’s alleged unfair trade practices and to protecting the industry in Wisconsin and across the country.
Baldwin held an event Monday at Fincantieri Ace Marine in Green Bay to highlight the investigation. The company builds vessels for the U.S. Navy and commercial customers at the Wisconsin shipyard. She was joined by officials from the United Steelworkers union and the nonprofit Alliance for American Manufacturing.
She said the United States Trade Representative is leading the investigation, which will collect data about trade practices that allow Chinese shipbuilders to undercut domestic manufacturers.
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Last year, China built more than 1,000 commercial vessels, while the United States produced fewer than 10, Baldwin said.
“For years, China has gotten away with tilting the playing field, and it’s American workers and our national security that are paying the price,” Baldwin said. “We cannot let China eat our lunch. That’s why I’ve been so proud to work alongside the steelworkers and other workers across the country to say enough is enough and call on the Biden administration to take action.”
Often, one does not choose an adversary — it is the adversary itself that imposes a hostile relationship.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 5:59 and sunset 7:46 for 13h 46m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board goes into closed session shortly after 5:30 PM and returns to open session at 7 PM.
Friday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:04 and sunset 7:42 for 13h 38m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1775, the Revolutionary War begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
Democrat Peter Barca, a former state representative who served in Congress 30 years ago, announced a new congressional run Thursday.
Barca will attempt to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil of Janesville, a Republican, to serve Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District. Barca most recently served as the secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue, but he stepped down from that role earlier this month.
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Barca previously served as a U.S. representative for the 1st District from 1993 to 1995.
The Kenosha resident spent a total of nine terms as a representative in the Wisconsin State Assembly. That included a stint as Democratic minority leader before he stepped down from that role in 2017.
The GOP offered a typically calm & understated reply:
In response to Barca’s announcement, Mike Marinella, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Barca would be “too extreme for Southeast Wisconsin.”
“Peter Barca has consistently put his out of touch policies ahead of Wisconsinites, and Bryan Steil will have a resounding victory this November,” Marinella said in the statement.
Barca as extreme would only make sense to people who haven’t seen or heard of Barca. Marinella’s reply is tailored to low-information diehards who think every last person who’s not bright red is, definitionally, an Extremist-Radical-Leftist-Marxist-Socialist-Rastafarian-Syndicalist-Epidemologist.
If anything, Barca is too mild in manner and too tepid in rhetoric for these times. Steil, by contrast, will say whatever he needs to get his base to the polls. If Barca gets the nomination and makes it a close race, then the 1st Congressional District (and Whitewater, especially) can expect Steil to say anything whatever to motivate the conservative populists of the district. If that means falsely describing Whitewater as a dystopia, then Steil (like Trump in Green Bay on 4.2.24) won’t hesitate.
Mount Ruang has repeatedly erupted since Tuesday and officials fear it could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami, as happened in 1871. The alert level for the volcano, which has a peak of 725 meters above sea level, was raised from three to four, the highest level in the four-tiered system
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset 7:41 for 13h 35m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:07 and sunset 7:40 for 13h 33m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1970, the damaged Apollo 13 spacecraft returns to Earth safely.
The state’s general fund balance — its largest source of reserves — hit a record high of $6.7 billion by June 2023. That was a 42% increase over the previous year.
The [Wisconsin] Policy Forum previously found that in 2020, the general fund had closed the fiscal year with a small positive balance for the first time on record — but the news came as the state grappled with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and faced a recession. The report attributes the strength of the general fund to federal aid, a resilient economy and the development of vaccines to mitigate the severity of the pandemic.
As of June 2023, the report found, Wisconsin had nearly 2.5 times more cash and liquid assets than short-term financial obligations — the highest ratio on record since 2002.
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The percentage of state transportation fund revenues directed to paying off debt rose from 7% in 2002 to 18.9% in 2019. That share is projected to fall to 16.2% by 2025, thanks in part to fee increases and borrowing decreases, but transportation debt remains an issue.
“Going forward, transportation debt will likely remain an ongoing concern for Wisconsin unless lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers identify additional revenues for the transportation fund, make the general fund transfers permanent, or sharply scale back road projects. None of these options are politically appealing, making this an issue to watch in the next state budget,” the report noted.
A large surplus, ongoing needs for road projects, but beyond that: the surplus as a surplus has only a limited value to residents who have needs and lives beyond the influence of either state budgets or state transportation projects. A surplus for the sake of a surplus isn’t productive.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be windy with evening showers and a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:09 and sunset 7:39 for 13h 30m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley announced Thursday morning she won’t be running for a fourth 10-year term on the bench. The announcement sets up a race for an open seat on the Court, giving conservatives a better shot at regaining their majority after liberals gained control for the first time in 15 years in 2023.
The Supreme Court race last year, which was won handily by Justice Janet Protasiewicz over former Justice Dan Kelly, broke national records for campaign spending. In recent years, the Court has been dominated by narrow 4-3 decisions — including cases to affirm President Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020, declare absentee ballot drop boxes illegal and strike down the Republican gerrymander of the state’s political maps. The Court is also expected to soon determine the legality of abortion in the state.
Bradley won her last re-election campaign by 16 points, yet with the Court’s increasing importance in deciding statewide issues in a state with divided government, the 2025 race is likely to be contentious. Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has already announced a run for the seat.
“From the beginning of my campaign, I made it clear that I’m not just running against one person, I’m running against the Court’s leftist majority,” Schimel said in a statement. “I wish Justice Ann Walsh Bradley well in retirement after decades of public service. I look forward to continuing the fight to bring integrity and respect for the Constitution back to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.”
It would be surprising if the race didn’t see a couple of candidates from each of the state’s main ideological camps. The most reasonable forecast (and it’s an obvious point) is that an open seat in ’25 will attract as much interest and campaign spending as the race in ’23.
Georgian lawmakers came to blows in parliament as ruling party legislators looked set to advance a controversial bill on “foreign agents” that has been criticized by Western countries and sparked protests at home.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:10 and sunset 7:38 for 13h 27m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 47.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1861, Wisconsin Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from Washington requesting one regiment of 780 men to serve the Union for three months in the Civil War. Within a week, ten companies from Kenosha, Beloit, Horican, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready.
The fall election in Wisconsin is expected to be competitive for presidential and U.S. Senate candidates. Perhaps it will be. A competitive United States Senate race, however, requires two capable candidates, not one capable candidate and a vanity candidate who sounds like he fell from a turnip truck yesterday. Nikki McCann Ramirez reports Trump-Endorsed Senate Candidate Questions if Nursing Home Residents Are Alive Enough to Vote (“If you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six-month life expectancy,” Eric Hovde said in an interview earlier this month):
During an April 5 interview on The Guy Benson Show, Hovde, a Republican running to unseat Democratic Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, claimed that it was suspicious that some nursing homes in Wisconsin had “100-percent voting” percentages. “Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote and you had children, adult children showing up saying, ‘Who voted for my 85 or 90-year-old father or mother?'” Hovde told Benson.
Hovde, whose comments were first reported by Heartland Signal, is not entirely correct in his assessment of nursing home life expectancy. While it’s true that some residents die within months of entering assisted living, many live comfortably for years in long-term residential care, while others voluntarily leave nursing homes for a multitude of reasons, including a preference for in-home care.
Regardless of how long a person stays in a nursing home, the right to vote has no age-based expiration date. Wisconsin became a focal point for election conspiracies in the aftermath of the 2020 election, including through largely baseless claims that nursing home employees had fabricated or manipulated the votes of elderly patients.
Hovde, a banker and investor by trade, made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2012, and announced his second attempt to win a seat in the higher chamber in February.
Hovde is trying to explain (presumably) that some nursing home ballots are coerced, but he’s green and awkward in mixing that narrow message with a message about life expectancy. An experienced incumbent in a competitive race would not have made a mistake like Hovde’s.
Like Tim Michels before him, Hovde’s a vanity candidate, the choice of established men who assume that other established men must, as though a law of nature, be right for whatever they attempt.
