Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 5:57 PM, for 11h 46m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 3.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2011, an earthquake measuring 9.0 in magnitude strikes 130 km (81 mi) east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a tsunami killing thousands of people.
Recommended for reading in full —
Rob Mentzer reports Marshfield Police Chief Charged with Sexual Assault Will Get $72K from City for Resignation:
The city of Marshfield last week struck a deal to pay its police chief $72,000 in a separation agreement as he faces sexual assault charges. At a meeting Tuesday night, members of the public sounded off on a conflict between the city’s mayor and its Fire and Police Commission that has the mayor facing removal hearings.
Chief Rick Gramza submitted his resignation to the city Thursday, just days before Police Commission hearings on his behavior were set to begin. Gramza is charged with sexually assaulting a female officer he supervised, first as a lieutenant and later as chief. A judge last month dismissed related charges of misconduct in office.
The police chief’s resignation is part of broader turbulence in the central Wisconsin city of about 18,000 people, which includes a complaint against Mayor Bob McManus that stems from a conflict with the Fire and Police Commission. At the Common Council meeting Tuesday, members of the public blasted the commission, which some in the community perceive as having protected Gramza while moving against McManus.
Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman report Trump, Hungry for Power, Tries to Wrestle Away G.O.P. Fund-Raising:
It was a familiar play by Donald J. Trump: lashing out at his enemies and trying to raise money from it.
The former president this week escalated a standoff over the Republican Party’s financial future, blasting party leaders and urging his backers to send donations to his new political action committee — not to the institutional groups that traditionally control the G.O.P.’s coffers.
“No more money for RINOS,” he said in a statement released on Monday by his bare-bones post-presidential office, referring to Republicans In Name Only. He directed donors to his own website instead.
The aggressive move against his own party is the latest sign that Mr. Trump is trying to wrest control of the low-dollar online fund-raising juggernaut he helped create, diverting it from Republican fund-raising groups toward his own committee, which has virtually no restrictions on how the money can be spent.
Russ Choma writes Trump Has Gone to War With the GOP Over His Fundraising Brand. He Will Lose:
“The committee [Republican National Committee] has every right to refer to public figures, that is unambiguously true, individuals and entities engaging in political speech can talk about people, reference people, quote people,” says Alexandra J. Roberts, a law professor who teaches trademark law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. “If they want to refer to Trump’s policies, Trump’s supporters—that’s always fine, well within the sphere of the First Amendment.”
The RNC itself did not seem particularly concerned about the letter, sending out a slew of Trump-heavy fundraising pitches in the days since. One missive was an email encouraging recipients to send a “virtual thank you” to Trump—an expression of gratitude that required making a donation to the RNC. As long as the RNC—or any other political fundraising committee—sends messages along that line, which clearly exploit a recipient’s potential affection for Trump, but don’t make any representations that Trump is involved with the effort or is endorsing anything, there’s not much he can do, Roberts says.
Scientists discover glow-in-the-dark sharks off New Zealand: