Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 16m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department holds a business meeting at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1967, it becomes legal to purchase oleomargarine in Wisconsin.
Recommended for reading in full —
Molly Beck reports Wisconsin lawmakers pass bill that labels legislators’ discipline records ‘confidential’:
Wisconsin lawmakers on Wednesday sent Gov. Tony Evers legislation that could make it harder to get records about lawmakers who are disciplined or accused of harassment, government transparency experts warn.
The measure would formally create a human resources office for the state Legislature and says disciplinary records and complaints against lawmakers should be treated confidentially, bolstering a legislative practice of withholding complaints against lawmakers.
The proposal passed the Senate Wednesday and goes to Evers just as a Dane County Judge ruled that Assembly leaders violated the public records law by withholding a sexual harassment complaint against a Democratic lawmaker after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other news outlets sued seeking the records.
“This greatly magnifies the concern that I have over the proposed human resources office,” Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said. “The Legislature is trying to change the law after getting caught breaking it.”
The measure passed both the Assembly on Tuesday and the Senate on Wednesday with no opposition.
Reid Epstein reports Wisconsin G.O.P. Wrestles With Just How Much to Indulge Trump:
Wisconsin Republicans were already going to great lengths to challenge the 2020 election results. They ordered a monthslong government audit of votes in the state. They made a pilgrimage to Arizona to observe the G.O.P. review of votes there. They hired former police officers to investigate Wisconsin’s election and its results.
But for Donald J. Trump, it wasn’t enough.
In a blistering statement last week on the eve of the state party’s convention, the former president accused top Republican state lawmakers of “working hard to cover up election corruption” and “actively trying to prevent a Forensic Audit of the election results.”
Wisconsin Republicans were alarmed and confused. Some circulated a resolution at the convention calling for the resignation of the top Republican in the State Assembly, Speaker Robin Vos, who in turn announced the appointment of a hard-line conservative former State Supreme Court justice to oversee the investigation. The Republican State Senate president released a two-page letter addressed to Mr. Trump that said his claims about Republicans were false — but that made sure to clarify in fawning language the state party’s allegiance to the former president.
“The power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin,” the Senate president, Chris Kapenga, wrote, adding that he was wearing “Trump socks” and a “Trump-Pence mask” while boarding a commercial flight.
Alex Horton reports The land was worth millions. A Big Ag corporation sold it to Sonny Perdue’s company for $250,000:
In February 2017, weeks after President Donald Trump selected him to be agriculture secretary, Perdue’s company bought a small grain plant in South Carolina from one of the biggest agricultural corporations in America.
Had anyone noticed, it would have prompted questions ahead of his confirmation, a period when most nominees lie low and avoid potential controversy. The former governor of Georgia did not disclose the deal — there was no legal requirement to do so.
An examination of public records by The Washington Post has found that the agricultural company, Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), sold the land at a small fraction of its estimated value just as it stood to benefit from a friendly secretary of agriculture.