Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:05 and sunset is 7:50, for 13 hours, 44 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1944, the Liberation of Paris begins as Paris rises against German occupation with the help of Allied troops.
Pres. Trump wants a movement to end mail-in voting, but leaders from both of Wisconsin’s major parties know that ending mail-in voting would be a bad idea:
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” Trump wrote.
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Neither the president nor the federal government has the authority to manage election administration in this way. The law gives individual states broad power to decide how to run their own elections.
After Trump’s post, the Democracy Defense Project-Wisconsin board, which includes former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Attorney General JB Van Hollen, former U.S. Representative Scott Klug, and former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate, said in a statement that such an action would increase inaccuracy in the state’s elections.
“The Constitution is clear: the federal government does not administer elections at the state level,” the group said. “In fact, improved access to voting methods, including the electronic machines Wisconsin uses that produce paper ballots and are unable to be connected to the internet, have benefitted Republicans just as much as Democrats. Wisconsin has displayed time and time again that our elections are safe and secure, and while we can always make them more efficient, there is no tolerance for inaccuracy in our results.”
See Henry Redman, Bipartisan group of former Wisconsin leaders criticize Trump election proposal, Wisconsin Examiner, August 18, 2025
Trump has gone back and forth on mail-in voting, and the GOP spent millions last year supporting mail-in voting. In any event, Trump’s executive order will not have the force of law across states that administer their own elections. Some may act to end mail-in ballots, but others will see that both major parties have benefited from the practice.
It’s likely Trump knows that mail-in voting will continue in many states, and the purpose of his campaign against them is to claim falsely that a vote next year against him will have been fraudulent. Mid-cycle redistricting, complaining about ballots, compelling private media to toe his line: all of these efforts and more are designed to preserve his authoritarian project against voters’ will.
NISAR’s Record-Breaking Antenna Reflector Deployed in Space:
The reflector is one of NASA’s key hardware contributions to the NISAR mission. Short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR is collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). The mission will use an advanced, dual-band radar system — with complementary radar instruments provided by each agency — to collect high-resolution, near-global coverage of Earth, providing insights into natural hazards, agriculture, glacier and ice sheet movement, and more. The reflector plays a crucial role for both radars, which is why the successful deployment of the hardware is such a significant milestone.