Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 90. Sunrise is 5:40 and sunset is 8:23 for 14 hours 43 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1996, the remains of a prehistoric man are discovered near Kennewick, Washington. Such remains come to be known as the Kennewick Man.
In this country, there’s an ongoing debate about whether Americans are experiencing an affordability crisis. While Trump doubts there is an affordability crisis, the sentiments of millions of Americans suggest Trump’s insistence otherwise is both false and, as is typical from him, self-serving.
A new, thorough economic analysis confirms yet again that the tariffs so much a centerpiece of Trump’s economic policies have been expensive for Wisconsin:
“President Donald Trump’s tariffs in 2025 have cost the average Wisconsin household $1,095 and caused the loss of 3,910 manufacturing jobs statewide, according to a new report.
The report also found the tariffs had a particularly strong impact on the Midwest due to its focus on manufacturing and agriculture, with small businesses and lower-income families bearing the highest costs. But Wisconsin households fared better than the average Midwest and U.S. households, which lost $2,044 and $1,320, respectively, to the tariffs Trump imposed in 2025.”
[…]
Lower-income and middle-class families were impacted more by Trump’s tariffs than their richer counterparts because they spend more of their income on goods like groceries and household essentials, the report said. Meanwhile, wealthier families spend proportionally more on services, whose costs are less impacted by the tariffs.
See Jaeha Jang, New report reveals cost of Trump tariffs on Wisconsin households, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 24, 2026.
The small faction of landlords in Whitewater who manipulated local economic policy over the last generation sometimes present themselves, especially in these recent years, as champions of ordinary taxpayers. An evergreen reminder: each time they have done so, as with Trump, it has been a self-serving mendacity.
Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis and a New Ethics Ordinance.
Trump dons ‘TRUMP 2028’ hat, jokes about ‘fourth term’: