Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:15 and sunset is 4:20 for 9 hours 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Public Arts Commission meets at 5 PM, and the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Commission meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1941, Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following America’s declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.
Foxconn is back in the news:
A Wisconsin plant that President Donald Trump and Republicans championed during his first administration as the “8th Wonder of the World” is set to venture into building data centers with a new $569 million[1]investment.
But members of Congress said the state should first address serious concerns from constituents about manufacturers’ energy and water use, which could strain existing infrastructure and leave consumers footing the bill.
“The average Wisconsinite should not have to subsidize the power or water for a commercial entity,” Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden said.
Foxconn, a Taiwanese company and one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, says it will create nearly 1,400 jobs in Racine County over the next four years, in exchange for up to $96 million in total performance-based tax credits. It’s the second amendment to the company’s contract with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. after Foxconn dramatically rolled back its initial plan, proposed in 2017, to invest $10 billion and create as many as 13,000 jobs.
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Some Wisconsin residents have spoken out against data centers’ environmental impacts, including at small protests in seven cities across the state in the first week of December.
Just two major data centers slated for development alone, including the Microsoft project, would require the energy of 4.3 million homes, according to Clean Wisconsin, an advocacy organization that has criticized rising resource demands from the state’s data centers.
“The issue is we only have 2.8 million homes in Wisconsin,” said Amy Barrilleaux, a spokesperson for the organization.
See Jade Lozada, Foxconn, Trump’s ‘America first’ factory, is moving to AI. It’s giving lawmakers some pause, NOTUS, December 5, 2025.
If Foxconn has moved on to new sketchy claims after the failure of old ones, the same can be said of the local Whitewater men who once touted Foxconn’s fortunes. These same Whitewater gentlemen who showcased Foxconn’s Wisconsin scheme2 during the last decade have now moved on to advising residents about local policy3.
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- A claimed investment. But then, Foxconn has made many claims, with only some being true. ↩︎
- See A Sham News Story on Foxconn. ↩︎
- Their track record locally is, in fact, a version of error all its own. ↩︎
Hiker mired in quicksand in Utah’s Arches National Park is rescued unharmed: