Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see a mix of clouds and sun with a high of 48. Sunrise is 6:35 and sunset is 4:41 for 10 hours 6 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, Meet the Press, the longest-running television program in history, makes its debut on NBC Television.
The last gerrymandered legislative maps in Wisconsin are for this state’s congressional representatives. There are two ways these maps might be made more equitable: through action by the Wisconsin Supreme Court or legislative action by the incoming Democratic majorities in the Wisconsin Legislature.
Wisconsin’s high court is now considering appeals from separate three-judge panels that decided against ruling on the existing congressional maps. See Bothfeld v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1168 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026) and Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, No. 2026AP1008 (Wis. argued Sept. 16, 2026). See also FREE WHITEWATER, Wisconsin Supreme Court Hears Congressional Gerrymandering Arguments, September 17, 2026.
A second possibility to adjust the congressional maps is through legislative action:
Democrats will also consider a mid-decade redistricting effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps, where the party flipped two GOP seats on Tuesday.
Neither Neubauer nor Hesselbein in interviews with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel fully committed to pursuing new congressional maps, but Hesselbein said they have to “keep [it] on the table” and Neubauer said they’ll look to other states as they decide how to move forward.
In addition, Hesselbein said, Democrats will have “16 years of problems that we’re going to have to solve, of things being underfunded.”
See Jessie Opoien and Molly Beck, Democratic legislative leaders vow aggressive agenda in new majority, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 5, 2026.
Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts in the coming Congress will be split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, 4-4. Wisconsin’s First and Third Congressional Districts went for Democrats even under the gerrymandered maps — redistricting is likely to make those maps more equitable (and politically safer) for Democrats.
I’d be surprised if congressional redistricting did more than that — the remaining four districts, however configured, would remain red-favoring under any reasonable boundaries. Redistricting would simply rectify inequitably drawn boundaries in the First and Third Districts.
Of Bryan Steil, the outgoing congressman from the 1st District: Has there ever been an emptier suit in Congress? Derrick Van Orden, defeated in the 3rd Congressional District, was at least plain — however objectionably — in his devotion to Trumpism. What of Steil? A devotion to crypto? An easy touch for business cronyism? Hoping big PAC money would see him through another election when most constituents had no idea where he stood except with his country club friends in D.C. Thin head, thin accomplishments, fat friends — a waste of a congressional seat.
We could have done better, and one reasonably hopes we soon will.
One reads this morning about another waste coming to an end —
The decision to halt production of Tesla’s polarizing polygonal pickup marks the end of an error.
— WIRED (@wired.com) November 6, 2026 at 8:24 AM
