Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 37. Sunrise is 7:23 and sunset is 4:24 for 9 hours 1 minute of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1864, Savannah, Georgia, falls to the Union’s Army of the Tennessee, and General Sherman tells President Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
Didn’t Mr. Trump say of mail-in voting that “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS”? He did.
Didn’t he say he’d sign an (unconstitutional) executive order purporting to end mail-in voting? He did.
And yet, and yet, Republicans now push mail-in voting for the midterms in defiance of Trump:
Republicans are making mail-in voting a core part of their midterm battle plans — a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s efforts to abolish the practice as they scramble to turn out his base.
In Wisconsin, the state party is preparing a full-court press of mailers, emails, phone banks, door knocks and digital ads to get voters to sign up for mail ballots.
…
Trump has long falsely decried mail voting as rife with fraud. Over the summer, he vowed that Republicans “are going to do everything possible [to] get rid of mail-in ballots.” In November, and again this week, he called on Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster and pass a law to ban mail-in voting.
But, as has been the case for several years, he and his party are out of sync.
(Emphasis added.) See Lisa Kashinsky, Republicans push mail-in voting for the midterms in defiance of Trump (‘Fearing a turnout slump, Republicans are promoting mail voting to keep Trump’s supporters engaged — even as he tries to end the practice’), POLITICO, December 17, 2025.
See also Avery Lotz, Trump raises end to mail-in ballots after claiming Putin questioned their security, Axios, August 18, 2025. Putin is a tyrant and war criminal, with one more distinctive trait: Russia’s dictator knows how to manipulate Mr. Trump like nobody’s business.
What happened? Perhaps the WISGOP, and GOP parties across the country, woke1 up to the security and popularity of mail-in balloting. No. It’s more likely that worry over political trends drove them here.
No matter — mail-in voting is a sound and sensible choice for millions across the country.
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- Woke: Used here as a verb, but more powerful as an ill-defined noun whose use causes blood-pressure spikes on the far right. ↩︎
Red-winged blackbirds in the spotlight: