Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 94. Sunrise is 5:30 and sunset is 8:31 for 15 hours 1 minute of daylight. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1916, in Seattle, William Boeing and George Conrad Westervelt incorporate Pacific Aero Products (later renamed Boeing).
In the first few months of 2025, after Trump’s second inauguration, it seemed to many as though Trumpism and the MAGA movement were America’s foreseeable future. Those of us in opposition, including those of us who are Never Trump, knew that those grandiose claims of an enduring future were false, would prove transitory and, in retrospect, delusional. And look, and look — those heady days of Trumpism now seem as though they were a hundred years ago.
And yet, and yet — at the time, Trump and his then-allies thought and acted as though they were free from the practical and moral constraints present across centuries of American history:
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has referred two complaints against billionaire Elon Musk to the Brown County district attorney’s office, saying it found “probable cause” to believe Musk broke state election bribery laws last year.
Two letters sent to Musk and Wisconsin residents who filed the initial complaints state that the elections commission’s bipartisan board voted 5-1 last week on a motion finding probable cause that Musk violated the state’s election bribery statute, “by making a social media post that offered one million dollars to individuals who voted in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election in order to induce them to vote in that election.”
The actual complaints themselves are not publicly accessible under state law.
Musk was heavily involved in backing former Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel’s campaign against current liberal Justice Susan Crawford. Musk and groups connected to him gave more than $20 million to support Schimel’s campaign and offered $100 payments to residents who signed a petition opposing “activist judges.” Musk also said he gave people in Green Bay and Eau Claire $1 million for signing the petition.The Wisconsin Elections Commission letter, however, appears to focus on a specific post from Musk to his social media platform X on March 27, 2025, in which he announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” at an event where only “those who have voted in the Supreme Court election” would be allowed in.
“I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” said Musk.[…]
He deleted the post the next day and replaced it with another stating that people who signed his petition “in opposition to activist judges” would be allowed in and the million-dollar payments were no longer just for those who voted.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul tried to stop Musk’s million-dollar giveaway, but his lawsuit was dismissed by a county circuit court, state appeals court and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. At the event, held in Green Bay on March 30, 2025, Musk handed out two large checks for a million dollars. One of them went to the state chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans.With the elections commission’s referrals, it’s up to Republican Brown County District Attorney David Lasee to decide whether or not to file criminal charges.
See Rich Kremer, Wisconsin Elections Commission says Elon Musk likely violated bribery law, Wisconsin Public Radio, July 15, 2026.
I’ll not be waiting for Brown County’s district attorney to take action. It seems unlikely that there will be any prosecution of Musk for his 2025 actions.
Note, however, how distant Musk’s Wisconsin intervention feels now. In Wisconsin Supreme Court races, Crawford defeated Schimel easily in 2025, and Taylor defeated Lazar easily in 2026.
Tariffs, bloated federal legislation, concealment of Epstein’s vast network, murders in our streets, and wars in Venezuela and Iran have reminded a majority of our people what Trumpism consists in equal measures impracticality and moral transgression.
Musk himself is likely to escape justice in Wisconsin, but a far harsher sentence — public rejection — builds against the movement Musk so ludicrously promoted in the winter and spring of 2025.
This long political conflict is not over: worse is yet to come, but whatever comes will, despite the difficulty, be overcome.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.
A headline for our time: ‘Can We Lose the Same War Twice? With Trump, Anything’s Possible.’ U.S. reimposes Iran blockade after attacks on ships in Strait of Hormuz: