Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:09, and sunset is 6:10, for 11 hours, 0 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 98.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis begins as U.S. President John F. Kennedy is informed of photos taken on October 14 by a U-2 showing nuclear missiles (the crisis will last for 13 days starting from this point).
Anti-immigrant messaging from a vocal faction does not represent the sentiments of most Wisconsin voters. Jack Kelly, reporting at Wisconsin Watch, writes that Donald Trump wants mass deportations, but poll finds even majority of Republicans don’t support that:
Anti-immigrant messaging featured prominently at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.
Convention goers waved “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” signs. The party’s 2024 platform declared that with a second term former President Donald Trump would “CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY.”
But even as immigration remains a top issue for the Trump campaign and voters — it was tied for the second most important issue for voters in a recent Marquette Law School Poll — new survey results suggest a majority of Wisconsin Republicans might not be sold on one of Trump’s top campaign pledges.
The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which has been conducting in-depth surveys on key issues in six battleground states, found that 63% of Wisconsin residents would prefer finding a pathway to citizenship for “undocumented immigrants who have been living in the US for some years and have not committed a serious crime. They would pay a penalty and any taxes they owe. After several years, they would be allowed to apply for citizenship.”
Only 25% in Wisconsin support mass deportation, described as an effort “with the goal of finding, detaining and deporting most or all of the 11 million people who have been living in the US without legal status. States would be asked to use their local law enforcement or National Guard, and the Federal government may use the military.”
More than three in four Democrats and 51% of Republicans in Wisconsin prefer a path to citizenship over a mass deportation program. Thirty-six percent of Republicans in this crucial battleground state preferred mass deportation. Nationally, 58% prefer a path to citizenship while just 26% favor mass deportation.
Kelly quotes Steven Kull, the Program for Public Consultation’s director, with an explanation for the dissipation of heated rhetoric at rallies and campaign ads when voters as asked to consider proposals:
[I]n a rally or group setting, a message of “this is going to be dealt with” resonates with voters, he said. But, when voters “actually reason through” the pluses and minuses of each option, they are able to shift their views on something they initially like when hearing surface-level details, Kull said.
Rhetoric that tends toward demands for mass deportation is a minority view in Wisconsin, and it’s a minority view in Whitewater. See FREE WHITEWATER The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night.
Pair of giant pandas arrive at National Zoo: