Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 49. Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 7:13 PM, for 12h 27m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1965, civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day, 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
Recommended for reading in full —
Daphne Chen reports Appeals court weighs lawsuit over naming businesses linked to COVID-19 outbreaks:
A Wisconsin appeals court heard arguments Wednesday over a lawsuit regarding the release of data on businesses linked to COVID-19 cases — records first requested by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel more than nine months ago.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby, sued in October to stop the release of the information to media outlets, arguing that disclosure of the information would “irreparably harm” businesses.
The Madison-based District IV Court of Appeals agreed to take on the case after a Waukesha County circuit judge sided with WMC and temporarily blocked the state health department from releasing the data.
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Lawyers for the Journal Sentinel and the state have argued that the business lobby is not one of the groups awarded the right to challenge the release of public records as defined by the state Legislature.
However, on Wednesday, WMC attorney Ryan Walsh argued that the organization has the standing to sue because the data — which does not contain the names of people — is derived from confidential medical records.
“It can’t be that any record in the government’s possession is an open record,” Walsh said. “(The state) has all kinds of records that can’t be released. What I’m asking the court to consider is the broad implications of this case.”
Judges Kloppenburg and Fitzpatrick questioned Walsh on whether the WMC can speak for businesses who are not members of the association, and whether the WMC represents business owners or employees.
“We don’t understand how you can be also taking on the mantle of speaking for the interest of the employees,” Kloppenburg said, adding that some employees “might want the public to know that there have been a lot of COVID cases where they’re working.”
Greg Sargent writes How Trump is exposing the ugly truth about the GOP plan to retake power:
The focus-grouped phrase justifying all this is “election integrity.” That’s the name of a new group, run by the Republican National Committee, that is developing more such proposals for export to states.
But Trump has already told us what standing for “election integrity” really means: making it harder to vote for the express purpose of making it easier for Republicans to win future elections.
Trump made this explicit during his Conservative Political Action Conference speech. He declared that the GOP must be the party of “election integrity” and that this means reversing efforts to make it easier to vote wherever possible and that this is an “urgent” matter facing the GOP.
Speaking about the 2020 election, Trump said: “We can never allow this to happen again.”
It is “urgent” for the GOP to make it harder to vote wherever possible, in the name of “election integrity,” and the 2020 election loss drove this home.
Christina Jewett and Lauren Weber report Former Covid official Deborah Birx joins company behind hazardous air-cleaners banned in California:
The former top White House coronavirus adviser under President Donald Trump, Dr Deborah Birx, has joined an air-cleaning company that built its business, in part, on technology that is now banned in California due to health hazards.
Dolphins Spotted Swimming in New York’s East River Tuesday Morning: