Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset 4:29 for 9h 04m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1812, the USS Constitution, under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures HMS Java off the coast of Brazil after a three-hour battle.
On Wednesday, FREE WHITEWATER posted on A Story on Federal Review of Wisconsin’s Recent Gerrymandering Case. The Journal Sentinel story described avenues and prospects for federal review of Wisconsin’s high court decision. (See Republicans likely to take Wisconsin gerrymandering case back to the U.S. Supreme Court.)
Two other recent stories describe the legal process the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ordered on redistricting. At the State Journal, Alexander Shur reports Who are the 2 referees the Wisconsin Supreme Court named to review new maps?:
When the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week ordered parties to a redistricting lawsuit to draw new legislative maps, it also named two referees to evaluate the maps’ adequacy.
The two consultants — University of California, Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman and Carnegie Mellon University postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Cervas — may not be household names in Wisconsin, but they have played prominent roles in settling map disputes in other states.
In Wisconsin, they’ll weigh in on whether the maps abide by the court’s standard that any new maps contain equally populated districts; be bounded by county, precinct, ward or town lines; include only contiguous territory; be as compact as possible; and comply with federal law.
They’ll also assess whether the maps preserve communities of interest, reduce municipal splits and are drawn so that no party benefits more than the other.
On Tuesday, the consultants sent out a letter to parties in the case specifying how they will evaluate the proposed maps. They called for each party to note themselves when their proposed maps may go up against one of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s proposed metrics, and said they’ll independently verify each claim.
The new maps must be submitted by Jan. 12, and the professors’ evaluations are due by Feb. 1.
Rich Kremer of WPR spoke with Morning Edition about the upcoming legal processes:
AC [Alex Crowe of Morning Edition]: There’s going to be a big fight now over drawing some new maps. With this ruling, are we going to get new maps right away before the election in 2024? What does that process look like?
RK [Rich Kremer of WPR]: The court didn’t immediately draw new legislative districts to replace those deemed unconstitutional, but like you said, they have to be in place prior to the 2024 elections. Justice Karofsky said she’s hopeful that the GOP-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will agree on new maps.
In the meantime, they’re going to be proceeding toward adopting what they call remedial maps. What that means is in a separate court order, the majority laid out deadlines for maps and they appointed two national experts to oversee the process. Parties in the case have until Jan. 12 to submit remedial maps. These consultants have until Feb. 1 to file a report on the competing proposals.
The majority also said it will consider partisan impact when evaluating the remedial maps. But Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said in recent months that the U.S. Supreme Court will have the last word on the redistricting litigation in Wisconsin. This week, he said the Legislature will pursue all federal issues arising out of the case.
And so, and so — there are state processes certain to take place, and federal litigation likely to take place.
Perseverance Rover Zooms in on Ancient Mars River:
After 1,000 Martian days of exploration, NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying rocks that show several eras in the history of a river delta billions of years old. Scientists are investigating this region of Mars, known as Jezero Crater, to see if they can find evidence of ancient life recorded in the rocks. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley provides a guided tour of a richly detailed panorama of the rover’s location in November 2023, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument.
Composed of 993 individual images and 2.38 billion pixels, this 360-degree mosaic looks in all directions from a location the rover science team calls “Airey Hill.” Portions of the rover itself are visible in the scene, appearing more distorted toward the edges as a result of the image processing.
A color enhancement applied to the image increases contrast and accentuates color differences. By approximating what the scene would look like under Earth-like lighting conditions, the adjustment allows mission scientists to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. The view on Mars would be darker and more reddish. The panorama can be explored and downloaded at: https://go.nasa.gov/3tmJnGB.
Isn’t it interesting that all of the gentle, yet foul, zephyrs emanating from Whitewater’s most famous student slumlord’s nether regions RE: impeaching judge Janet have proven ephemeral? Vos was always bluffing and trying to stampede Janet off the case. The thing about stampedes is that both the cowboys and the cows have to agree before a stampede happens. If either party blows it off, it doesn’t happen. Janet said “nope” and Vos folded.
Now Vos/R-Team are running up against a very carefully crafted lawsuit/opinion. Nothing about this decision is at all non-Wisco-World related. The US supremes are going to have to stretch really hard to get involved. US House seats are left alone, although I’d be surprised if they don’t get challenged next. The SCotUS is, at this point, a highly partisan operation, but we shall see if all of that pious “States Rights” talk was merely Argle-Bargle. January will be an interesting month.
Yes, very much agree. It’s a well-crafted, solidly-anchored decision. A lot of bold talk (impeach this, impeach that) melted away even before the decision, and what was left evaporated after the Clarke decision was handed down.
Few bases for federal review and those few sure to be flimsy for the WISGOP. Any proposed map, for example, will be unlikely to give opponents of that new map an adequate claim based on race. Claims against Protasiewicz’s participation don’t fit the circumstances of Caperton.
The ruling is well-focused and removed from federal bases for objection.