Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of two. Sunrise is 7:11 AM and sunset 5:04 PM, for 9h 53m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 33.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred eleventh day.
On this day in 1865, the 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery fights a skirmish at the Combahee River on the coast of South Carolina, and the 3rd Wisconsin Infantry fights another one 50 miles west at Robertsville, South Carolina.
Recommended for reading in full:
Yian Mui reports The government shutdown cost the economy $11 billion, including a permanent $3 billion loss, Congressional Budget Office says:
“Among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business,” the report said. “Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income.”
Michael Scherer and Scott Clement report Democrats’ 2020 presidential contest is wide open as danger mounts for Trump, new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows:
A 56 percent majority of all Americans say they would “definitely not vote for him” should Trump become the Republican nominee, while 14 percent say they would consider voting for him and 28 percent would definitely vote for him. Majorities of independents (59 percent), women (64 percent) and suburbanites (56 percent) rule out supporting Trump for a second term.
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While 75 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents approve of Trump’s performance in office when asked separately, nearly 1 in 3 say they would like to nominate someone other than Trump to be the party’s candidate for president.
Patrick Marley reports Gov. Tony Evers to use private attorneys after AG declines to defend lame-duck laws:
Attorney General Josh Kaul has declined to represent Gov. Tony Evers in a suit over lame-duck laws limiting their powers, prompting Evers to spend up to $50,000 of taxpayer money on private attorneys.
The move comes soon after Republican lawmakers approved billing taxpayers for their own private attorneys in the legal fight. They have not said what firm they plan to use.
The Democratic governor selected the Madison firm Pines Bach to represent him last week after Kaul told Evers he couldn’t represent him because of a conflict of interest.
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Kaul sent Evers a letter Jan. 18 telling him he would not represent him because one of the lame-duck laws in question curbed the power of Kaul’s Department of Justice.
“DOJ has a direct and substantial interest in this case that is in conflict with the defense of this case,” the Democratic attorney general wrote.
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GOP lawmakers recently agreed to pay the Chicago firm Bartlit Beck up to $840,000 to represent them in a lawsuit over legislative maps they drew in 2011. Including previous expenses, those maps and the lawsuits they spawned are on track to cost taxpayers $3.5 million.
(The contrast between the WISGOP-controlled Assembly’s use of public money and Evers’s use of private money is stark.)