Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:16 and sunset is 6:54, for 11 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (rebuilt from the engines and lower hull of the USS Merrimack) fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships.
The populists don’t seek government efficiency merely for its own sake. The use government efficiency as a means to pressure others into silence over speech the populists don’t like:
An Assembly Republican is using the authority of the Elon Musk-inspired GOAT Committee to investigate the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives of local governments across the state before the committee has even met.
Rep. Shae Sortwell, R-Two Rivers, the committee’s vice chair, confirmed Thursday he sent or plans to send information requests to all 72 counties and the state’s 50 largest cities. Wisconsin Watch first reported Thursday that Sortwell had sent requests on Feb. 20 to multiple cities and counties.
The requests state that GOAT “has been charged with undertaking a review of county use of taxpayer dollars for positions, policies, and activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Sortwell’s emails ask for “documentation” from January 2019 to the present relating to the following items:
- DEI-related grants the communities may have received.
- the communities’ “adopted/enacted” DEI policies.
- any DEI training programs the communities might be involved with.
- the titles and salaries of employees with DEI-related positions.
- and the “estimated associated costs” of DEI-related policies and trainings.
Officials for Fitchburg, Manitowoc, Oshkosh and Racine told Wisconsin Watch their respective cities plan to treat and fulfill Sortewll’s request like any other public records request they receive.
Sortwell did not respond to questions for Wisconsin Watch about his information requests and the committee’s work.
See Jack Kelly, Republican uses GOAT Committee authority to investigate local government diversity efforts, Wisconsin Watch, February 26, 2025.
Of course they do: no group in America is more disturbed by contrary speech than the conservative populists. Critique their work, and they experience narcissistic injury rarely otherwise seen1. They insist that they want free speech, but blanch2 at criticism, and when in power define speech that they do not like as unlawful.
It’s all about speech with them, until it’s not. It’s all about local control with them, until it’s not.
Populism3 is a horde’s insecurities and vendettas transformed into a political movement.
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- At least, rarely seen outside an institutional setting. ↩︎
- In their case, even paler than normal. ↩︎
- See also Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? (2016). ↩︎
Multiple wildfires burned earlier this week in Tennessee: