Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:16 AM and sunset 4:21 PM, for 9h 04m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is both the one thousand four hundred ninety-fourth day and the thirty-fifth day.
On this day in 1901, Morris Pratt incorporates his institute for spiritualism, located in Whitewater.
Recommended for reading in full —
Patrick Marley reports Republicans are calling partisans instead of election professionals for their hearing on voting in Wisconsin:
MADISON – A month ago, Republican lawmakers said they were prepared to issue subpoenas for the first time in decades to haul election officials before them to get answers about how the presidential contest was conducted.
But they have now abandoned that plan and aren’t even bothering to invite them to attend a Friday hearing looking into an election that Democrat Joe Biden won by about 21,000 votes in the state.
Instead, they’re asking to hear from a conservative radio talk show host, a former state Supreme Court justice, a postal subcontractor who has offered a debunked theory about backdated absentee ballots and an election observer whom President Donald Trump wants to testify in court in one of his lawsuits over the election.
Friday’s hearing before two committees is being overseen by Rep. Ron Tusler of Harrison and Sen. Kathy Bernier of Lake Hallie.
The two have not sought testimony from Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, or Claire Woodall-Vogg, the director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. Tusler has spent the last month reviewing what he has said are thousands of complaints and concerns about the election, but he’s yet to talk to Woodall-Vogg about them, Woodall-Vogg said.
“No one has contacted me during the course of their ‘investigation’ into claims over the past month,” Woodall-Vogg said by email.
Amber Phillips writes Why the Texas lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election may be the most outlandish effort yet:
This is a lawsuit that seems both like President Trump’s last major attempt to get the courts to overturn his loss — and like it’s destined to flop. That’s the consensus of numerous legal experts on a recently filed lawsuit by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) alleging rampant fraud in four states that numerous other court cases have so far failed to prove.
Paxton alleges “the 2020 election suffered from significant and unconstitutional irregularities” in four states that swung from President Trump in 2016 to President-elect Joe Biden in 2020: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.
And he asks the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to pick electors in those states instead. That part of the equation is now familiar, given Trump is also trying to pressure state lawmakers to overturn election results.
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It’s a legitimate question what right Texas even has to bring such a lawsuit against other states. (Lawsuits between states are rare.) The Supreme Court could dismiss it out of hand for that reason, if it offers a reason at all.
And then you get into the substance of it, which is more like a Newsmax reel than actual legal arguments, said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and host of the legal podcast “Passing Judgment.”
“It’s all of the Hail Mary pass lawsuits strung together, in the erroneous hope that somehow lining them all up will make them look more impressive,” she said. “It’s procedurally defective. It’s substantially defective. And I think the Supreme Court will have not only no appetite for it, but it will actively nauseate them.”