Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:25 and sunset is 8:34, for 15 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1962, Starfish Prime tests the effects of a nuclear test at orbital altitudes:
Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 900 miles (1,450 km) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms, and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian Islands.
(Citations omitted.)
Less than a month ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled unanimously when striking down a law enacted in 2018 that required the Wisconsin Department of Justice to obtain approval from the Joint Finance Committee before settling many civil cases. See Kaul v. Wisconsin State Legislature, 2025 WI 23, No. 2022AP000790 (June 17, 2025).
Yesterday, the Legislature saw another clawback of its Walker-era authority when Wisconsin’s high court curtailed, in a 4-3 decision, a legislative committee’s power to stop executive agency regulations:
State laws that let a 10-member committee of the Legislature override regulations are unconstitutional, a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The ruling hands the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a victory in an ongoing battle with the Legislature’s Republican leaders.
….
The ruling finds five statutes, granting power to the Legislature’s committee that reviews and periodically suspends administrative rules, violate the Wisconsin Constitution.
Taken together, wrote Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for the four justices making up the Court’s liberal wing, the statutes give the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules the power to effectively change state laws without going through the full legislative process.
“The ability of a ten-person committee to halt or interrupt the passage of a rule, which would ordinarily be required to be presented to the governor as a bill [to block the rule], is simply incompatible with Articles IV and V of the Wisconsin Constitution,” Karofsky wrote.
….
The Evers administration argued that five statutes granting JCRAR the power to review, object to and block rules before or after they are promulgated violate the state Constitution. Those include a law enacted in December 2018, after Evers was elected governor but before he took office, that allows the committee to lodge “indefinite” objections blocking a rule.
The Court majority agreed with the administration’s argument.
The Wisconsin Constitution requires that for a law to be enacted, it must pass both the Assembly and the Senate and then be presented to the governor to be signed or vetoed.
“By permitting JCRAR to exercise discretion over which approved rules may be promulgated and which may not, the statute empowers JCRAR to take action that alters the legal rights and duties of persons outside of the legislative branch” without going through the lawmaking process, Karofsky wrote.
See Erik Gunn, State Supreme Court curtails legislative committee’s right to stop regulations, Wisconsin Examiner, July 9, 2025.
An email newsletter from the Wisconsin Examiner offers this hysterical, histrionic quote from Sen. Steve Nass:
“The liberal junta on the state supreme court has in essence given Evers the powers of a King.”
– State Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules
A few remarks:
1. These powers of the Legislature (now curtailed) are not ancient rights of the people: they are Walker-era changes that the WISGOP pushed through quickly before Tony Evers first took office.
2. Nass is still a state senator? Bulking up that state pension, right?
3. Nass lists his district as R-Whitewater, but that’s only through part of the Town of Whitewater, not the city proper. Nass doesn’t live in, and would never be elected from, the City of Whitewater.
4. So Trump assumes authoritarian power unto himself, and becomes the subject of No Kings rallies across America, but Nass thinks Gov. Evers — Tony Evers, of all people — now has the essence of royal powers?
5. Nass says it’s a liberal junta that did this? Isn’t this overwrought legislator supposed to be speaking English-only like the native born? A Spanish language borrowing should be of concern to each and every blood-and-soil nativist. I thought Mr. Trump issued an executive order on that very matter.
Perhaps one of them will check Nass’s playlist for Yeri Mua.
See Tony Evers v. Howard Marklein, 2025 WI 36, No. 2023AP2020-OA (July 8, 2025):
See the close encounter between a paddleboarder and two sharks: