Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 15h 10m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 48.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1997, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died. He was executed four years later.
Recommended for reading in full —
Lauren White reports Evers Says Full Budget Veto Possible:
Over the past several weeks, Republicans have removed hundreds of the governor’s priorities from the state spending plan, including major items like an expansion of Medicaid and legalization of marijuana.
The governor has the power to partially veto the state budget, as he did in 2019 to increase school spending, or to veto the entire budget outright — a step Evers said Tuesday he hasn’t ruled out.
“That’s too early to tell, but that is always an option that’s on the table,” he said.
If the governor were to veto the entire budget, the current 2019-2021 spending plan would be extended to fund programs while Evers and lawmakers began negotiations again from square one.
Edgar Sandoval, David Montgomery, and Manny Fernandez report ‘Contested, Heated Culture Wars’ Mark Ultraconservative Texas Session (‘This was the session that pushed Texas further to the right, at a time when it seemed least likely to do so — as the state becomes younger, less white and less Republican’):
State Representative Jarvis D. Johnson, a Democrat from Houston, said this had been a particularly partisan session. He cited but one example: the dismissive Republican response to his efforts to abolish Confederate Heroes Day, an official state holiday in Texas.
“Last session I was able to get a committee hearing on this,” Mr. Johnson said. “That’s something I could not even get this year.”
Mr. Johnson had a heated exchange on the House floor with a Republican lawmaker over the role of slavery in the Texas Revolution, one of many confrontations and arguments between Democratic and Republican legislators.
Kate Lyon reports US secretary of state warns Pacific leaders about ‘coercion’ in veiled swipe at China:
The US secretary of state has warned leaders of Pacific countries about “threats to the rules-based international order” and “economic coercion”, in what appears to be a veiled swipe at China’s growing influence in the region.
Antony Blinken was addressing leaders and their delegates from 11 Pacific countries and territories including Fiji, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Palau and Marshall Islands as part of the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, which is held in Hawaii.
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But the main focus of his televised address was China’s growing influence in the region.
“Economic coercion across the region is on the rise. The US is all for more development and investment in the islands, but that investment should adhere to international standards for environmentally and socially sustainable development and should be pursued transparently, with public consultation,” he said. “And every country, no matter its size, should always be able to make choices without fear of retribution.”