Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 6:32 and sunset is 4:44 for 10 hours 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Innovation Center Advisory Panel meets at 1 PM. The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1973, NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury. On March 29, 1974, it becomes the first space probe to reach that planet.
There’s a possibility — though uncertain — that the Wisconsin Supreme Court may order new congressional maps for the state. See Wisconsin Supreme Court Orders Briefs in Congressional Map Challenges. New maps for 2026, however, face a tight timeline. Attorneys representing different plaintiffs in the case have differing views of how much time remains:
[Attorney Abha] Khanna said her team filed the lawsuit with enough time to potentially redraw the maps, despite the congressmen’s recent actions.
“There certainly is time to affect the 2026 elections,” she said.
This lawsuit lays out a more familiar partisan gerrymandering argument, in which lawyers say Wisconsin’s congressional maps discriminate against Democratic voters. Six of the state’s eight House seats are filled by Republicans, even though statewide elections have been close partisan races. Sens. Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin — a Republican and Democrat, respectively — won their most recent statewide elections by a percentage point or less, while Gov. Tony Evers kept his office by more than 3 percentage points in 2022 (Evers will not be seeking reelection in 2026)….
Not everyone involved is so optimistic that this will be resolved quickly. Jeff Mandell, a plaintiff attorney in the redistricting lawsuit alleging that the maps are illegally too favorable to incumbents — a new argument that hasn’t been tested in the state — said it is “exceedingly unlikely” that new maps could be drawn in time for the midterm elections. Primary candidates must file their nomination papers to the elections commission by June 1, 2026. The final district lines must be in place by spring for candidates to circulate their papers among the right voters.
“If we don’t have maps by the end of March or so, it’s very, very difficult to run the election next November,” Mandell said.
See Jade Lozada, Wisconsin’s redistricting fight isn’t over, but will new maps be drawn in time for 2026 election?, Wisconsin Watch & NOTUS, October 31, 2025.
Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica becomes the world’s tallest church: