Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 48. Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 14m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1941, Japanese Emperor Hirohito gives the final approval to initiate war against the United States.
Patrick Marley reports Wisconsin Supreme Court says it would minimize changes to current election maps, handing Republicans an initial redistricting victory:
MADISON – A narrowly divided state Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would minimize changes it would make to Wisconsin’s election maps, effectively guaranteeing Republicans will continue to maintain control of the Legislature for the next decade.
The 4-3 ruling comes as the justices prepare to issue a final ruling that will establish the exact contours of the state’s legislative and congressional districts. Where the lines go has a profound effect on which political party has an edge in elections.
Tuesday’s decision broke along ideological lines, with the four conservatives in the majority and the three liberals in the minority.
In the most significant part of their ruling, the justices wrote that they would limit the changes they would make to maps that were drawn 10 years ago, when Republicans controlled all of state government and established district lines that favor their party.
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The majority concluded it should make as few changes as possible to the maps because courts should not weigh in on policy matters.
“Just as the laws enacted by the legislature reflect policy choices, so will the maps drawn by that political body. Nothing in the constitution empowers this court to second-guess those policy choices, and nothing in the constitution vests this court with the power of the legislature to enact new maps,” Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority.
Dallet in dissent countered that the majority opinion had a political cast to it because it would help cement the Republican advantages that were established a decade ago.
“In effect, a least-change approach that starts with the 2011 maps nullifies voters’ electoral decisions since then,” she wrote. “In that way, adopting a least-change approach is an inherently political choice. Try as it might, the majority is fooling no one by proclaiming its decision is neutral and apolitical.”
See the November 30, 2021 opinion of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, below.