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Daily Bread, Politics, Walworth County, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 8.1.25: Rep. Bryan Steil’s Town Hall in Elkhorn

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:46 and sunset is 8:15, for 14 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 50.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1774, British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.

There are statewide stories this morning describing the critical reception that U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin’s First Congressional District received during his town hall in Elkhorn:

See Rich Kremer, US Rep. Bryan Steil met by hostile audience during raucous town hall, Wisconsin Public Radio, August 1, 2025. See also GOP Rep. Bryan Steil holds an in-person town hall event and is greeted with boos over Trump bill, Complaints about Trump dominate noisy listening session with U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, and Steil met with questions — and both boos and applause — at town hall in Elkhorn.

Four points for today:

First, many partisans live within information bubbles and echo chambers where no criticism of their views is offered. When they encounter a protest in person, it’s startling to them. They’re not used to replying with an argument because those they watch and read don’t do so. In imitation they respond only with a sensory preference (what they’re seeing is disgusting, nauseating, etc.). Some supporters of Steil were surprised in that way, and reacted in that way.

Those who are insulated and cosseted approach contrary arguments not as matters of reasoning but as matters of taste. We live in an era of a stunted, scarcely literate politics.

Second, when partisans encounter opponents, their surprise sometimes leads them to believe that the opponents must be paid, must be plants, and cannot possibly be a genuine opposition. That’s not true, and certainly not true here: Walworth County opponents of Steil don’t have any political money, and, in fact, don’t have much money otherwise.

Third, it’s easier to gather and protest when you have a specific time and place to meet, clear issues, and —this is key — a definite opponent. All those conditions were present here. (Steil knew this too, of course; both sides could see each other’s preparations on social media.)

Fourth, absent an unlikely order from the Wisconsin Supreme Court for congressional redistricting before November 2026, Steil has a good chance of being re-elected. A well-funded and savvy challenger is unlikely to emerge. (Rep. Van Orden of Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District, by contrast, will face exactly that sort of challenger; even without possible redistricting he will have a rough go of it.)

The Best of the Night Sky August 2025:

Accidents, Cats, Good Ideas

Friday Catblogging: Amsterdam Builds Cat Stairs Alongside Canals

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To prevent drowning cats, the famous Amsterdam canals get cat stairs, the help them getting out when they fall in. www.parool.nl/amsterdam/al…

— Rudolf de Bruin BA (@art-deco-1945.bsky.social) 2025-07-22T06:38:06.918Z

Amsterdam is building stairs along its canals to allow cats & other animals to escape without drowning:

Amsterdam will install special steps in its canals to prevent cats and other small critters from drowning because they can’t get out on their own. The Amsterdam city council adopted a proposal to this effect by animal party PvdD, Parool reports.

According to PvdD council member Judith Krom, figures from the Amsterdam Animal Ambulance show that 19 cats drowned in Amsterdam canals over the past six months. She proposed asking the Animal Ambulance to map out where these drownings occur most frequently and installing steps there, following the example of Amersfoord.

Officially, the steps are called wildlife exit sites, because other small animals can also use them to get out of the canals. According to Krom, the investments required for these steps are disproportionate to the suffering of the animals and their owners.

See Amsterdam to install kitty steps in canals to save cats from drowning, NL Times, July 22, 2025.

City, Daily Bread, Early Childhood, Education

Daily Bread for 7.31.25: An Early Childhood Education and Childcare Center for Whitewater

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:45 and sunset is 8:16, for 14 hours, 31 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 40.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette “be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States.”

It’s mid-summer in Whitewater, but if one looks carefully, we’re truly in early spring, with many seasons ahead. The City of Whitewater announced yesterday a donation to Whitewater for a Whitewater Early Childhood Education and Childcare Center:

Big things are coming to Whitewater!

A $10 million donation is helping bring the Whitewater Early Childhood Education and Childcare (ECEC) Center to life!

We need your input to help shape it. Please take 10 minutes to complete this confidential survey conducted by UW–River Falls. There is a survey for community members and one for businesses.

? Take the survey now!

Household survey: tinyurl.com/whitewaterecechh

Business survey: tinyurl.com/whitewaterececbus

Learn more: https://whitewaterecec.com/

The two survey links above will aid project leaders in crafting a center that most nicely fits Whitewater’s needs. The third of the three links presents the goals of the project:

Project goals

  • An attractive, centrally-located center with easy access to outside play spaces
  • A high-quality, play-based curriculum, similar to that of the UW-Whitewater Children’s Center
  • A center that enhances — and does not compete with — existing providers
  • A close collaboration with the Whitewater Unified School District
  • An inclusive fee structure that ensures access for all
  • ESL programming and support to help non-native English speakers become kindergarten-ready
  • Competitive teacher compensation to encourage retention

Stretch goals

  • Programming from birth through kindergarten
  • An optional dual-language classroom
  • A replicable model for other communities to follow

To begin with a survey, and then to support this work, is to nurture our youngest residents and fortify the community.

An Early Childhood Education and Childcare Center will be an extraordinary (literally so) and welcome (happily so) part of this city. Best wishes for success that will make others’ success possible.

Electric weed control proves shockingly effective:

America, Daily Bread, Newspapers, Social Media

Daily Bread for 7.30.25: Social Media Now Leading News Source in America

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:44 and sunset is 8:17, for 14 hours, 33 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 31.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971, on Apollo 15, David Scott and James Irwin in the Apollo Lunar Module Falcon land on the Moon with the first Lunar Rover.

One of a series of images taken as a pan
of the Apollo 15 landing site, taken by
Commander Dave Scott. Featured is the Lunar
Roving Vehicle at its final resting place after EVA-3. At the back is a rake used during the mission. Also note the red Bible atop the hand controller in the middle of the vehicle, placed there by Scott. By NASA/Dave Scott; Public Domain, Link.

Social media take crown from television:

For years, social media and video apps weren’t quite able to overtake good old television as Americans’ most-used source for news. That’s finally changed, according to Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) in its 2025 Digital News Report, out Monday.

RISJ has released a digital news report every year since 2012. This year it surveyed nearly 100,000 people in 48 countries (new this year: Serbia) about their news consumption, via a YouGov survey. Below, Nieman Lab’s team breaks out a few of the main findings. And stay tuned because we’ll be running two more pieces by RISJ researchers next week — one on local news, and one on AI and personalization.

Traditional news sources are losing influence in the United States.

For the first time, social media has displaced television as the top way Americans get news. “The proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) is sharply up,” the report’s authors write, “overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.”

….

Social media — and news consumption on it — continues to splinter, according to the report. There are now six platforms with weekly news reaches of 10% or more: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, and TikTok. A decade ago, there were just two with double-digit reach: Facebook and YouTube.

See Staff Report, For the first time, social media overtakes TV as Americans’ top news source (‘Plus: The pivot to video is really happening, digital subscriptions may have peaked, and other findings from RISJ’s 2025 Digital News Report’), Nieman Lab, June 16, 2025.

Sea lions dive into the sea during earthquake:


Daily Bread, Far-Right Populism, Populists, Tariffs, Trumpism, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.29.25: Tariffs Mean Higher Costs, Higher Prices

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:43 and sunset is 8:18, for 14 hours, 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1958, President Eisenhower signs into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Not smarter, definitely harder:

As President Donald Trump prepares to announce new tariff increases, the costs of his policies are starting to come into focus for a domestic manufacturing sector that depends on global supply chains, with a new analysis suggesting factory costs could increase by roughly 2% to 4.5%.

“There’s going to be a cash squeeze for a lot of these firms,” said Chris Bangert-Drowns, the researcher at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth who conducted the analysis. Those seemingly small changes at factories with slim profit margins, Bangert-Drowns said, “could lead to stagnation of wages, if not layoffs and closures of plants” if the costs are untenable.

The analysis, released Tuesday, points to the challenges Trump might face in trying to sell his tariffs to the public as a broader political and economic win and not just as evidence his negotiating style gets other nations to back down. The success of Trump’s policies ultimately depends on whether everyday Americans become wealthier and factory towns experience revivals, a goal outside economists say his Republican administration is unlikely to meet with tariffs.

….

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth analysis shows how Trump’s devotion to tariffs carries potential economic and political costs for his agenda. In the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, more than 1 in 5 jobs are in the critical sectors of manufacturing, construction, mining and oil drilling and maintenance that have high exposures to his import taxes.

The artificial intelligence sector Trump last week touted as the future of the economy is dependent on imports. More than 20% of the inputs for computer and electronics manufacturing are imported, so the tariffs could ultimately magnify a hefty multitrillion-dollar price tag for building out the technology in the U.S.

See Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman, Trump’s tariffs could squeeze US factories and boost costs by up to 4.5%, a new analysis finds, Associated Press, July 29,2025.

It’s improbable that most Trump supporters will care about higher prices under Trump. All the excitement, all the thrill, of right-wing populism was and is, in any event, cultural. The movement was, and will always be, a cultural and ethnic revenge fantasy made real. Prices will be higher for everyone, but die-hards and dead-enders will consider those prices worth the cost of their culture war.

Drone footage captures scale of wildfires in Turkey’s Bursa province:

Thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes as firefighters battle to contain wildfires in Turkey, fanned by strong winds and searing heat. More than 1,100 firefighters were deployed to tackle at least 76 blazes that broke out within 24 hours, as the country faces a wave of heat-driven infernos.

Daily Bread, Newspapers, Politics, Scott Walker, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.28.25: We Weren’t Teasing, Scott Walker Was Teasing!

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:42 and sunset is 8:19, for 14 hours, 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 15.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board goes into closed session shortly after 6 PM, and returns to open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is certified.

Declining circulation and declining profits leave Wisconsin’s professional press (what’s left of it) rattled. The Journal Sentinel is the last major daily in Wisconsin (as the State Journal is roundly paywalled, and roundly paywalled in today’s environment is scarcely read). We live in Fog-Shrouded Wisconsin, a place of enfeebled journalism. In that environment, professional journalists will feel pressure to get attention, and the poorly-sourced will masquerade as seriously-reported. See How Many Journal Sentinel Reporters Does It Take to Flack Unnamed WISGOP Sources? At Least Four.

There’s another example from the Journal Sentinel from last week: Scott Walker offers a feeble tease on X about a possible run for governor, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel then spends days touting Walker’s run as a genuine possibility, until reality compelled them to tell readers that, honest to goodness, a Walker candidacy was never going to happen.

Here’s the timeline:

7.24.25 @ 12:01 PM: Gov. Evers announces that he’ll retire after two full terms.

7.24.25 @ 12:52 PM: Scott Walker posts on X a photo of a red MAGA hat with the numbers 45 – 47 on the side. These are the numerical designations for Trump’s terms of office, but would also be the designations for Walker’s, too, if he were somehow returned to office after Evers. (Walker then posts another version of the photo that same day @ 7:16 PM.)

7.25.25 @ 11:32 AM: The Journal Sentinel reports Walker’s post on X as a serious possibility. See Molly Beck, Scott Walker teases interest in another run for Wisconsin governor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 25, 2025. Beck adds, again from X, Walker’s 7.25.25 post on “28 policy priorities” the next governor of Wisconsin should support. (Anyone with 28 priorities doesn’t know how to prioritize.) It’s a paywalled story relying on Walker’s freely available posts on X.

7.27.25 @ 5:25 PM: Scott Walker, on X, admits that he is not, in fact, running for governor in 2026.

7.27.25 @ 9:18 PM: The Journal Sentinel reports Walker’s not running. See Maya Bell, Scott Walker says he’s not running for Wisconsin governor in 2026, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, July 27, 2025.

A few remarks:

1. Walker was never going to run. Never. Anyone, even Walker, knows that he’s unsuited to a right-wing populist environment. Years of insisting that he lunched on brown-bag ham sandwiches isn’t what today’s WISGOP wants to hear. Right-wing populism wants to inflict misery on its perceived cultural and ethnic enemies. (Foxconn, for example, would never have been their ambition.) It’s ethnic cleansing, closet-confining, and book banning that they’ve in mind.

2. The Journal Sentinel put Beck’s story about nothing save Walker’s tweets behind a paywall, as though someone should subscribe to read Walker’s free-to-anyone social media. This works to reduce professional reporting to nutty notions and rumors at subscribers’ expense.

Three days of nonsense is, at bottom, three days of nonsense. Professional reporting is having a rough go of it; click-bait reporting will only make their situation worse.

ISS astronaut gets kimchi fried rice ingredients on recent cargo delivery, demonstrates microgravity:

Expedition 73 flight engineer Jonny Kim (NASA) talks about getting kimchi fried rice ingredients to give him a little taste of home while he serving on the International Space Station. Footage is from an :in-flight interview July 24 with International Space University Space Studies Program participants in Seoul, South Korea,” according to NASA.

Daily Bread, Economy, Tariffs, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.27.25: Tariffs Are Making Conditions Hard for Wisconsin Businesses

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 89. Sunrise is 5:41 and sunset is 8:20, for 14 hours, 39 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1866, the first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is successfully completed, stretching from Valentia Island, Ireland, to Heart’s Content, Newfoundland.

Of course:

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are making it harder for Wisconsin businesses to predict the price of raw materials and are straining decades-long relationships with trade partners — and more tariffs are expected to take effect next month.

Many businesses have been hesitant to speak out. But Dale Kooyenga, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, said on Friday that the “vast majority” of businesses in the Milwaukee area have expressed concern about tariffs. He said the companies that “think this is good” represent a minority of businesses.

Kooyenga, a Republican former state lawmaker, said they raise the cost of raw materials manufacturers need to make their goods. And the uncertainty around when new tariffs will be implemented or delayed makes it nearly impossible for businesses to make financial forecasts. 

“You have to be a psychiatrist that’s intimately familiar with Trump’s head to know exactly how you are going to forecast the price of copper or aluminum,” he said.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to implement a 50 percent tariff on copper imports. In June, the White House also said it was raising tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from 25 percent to 50 percent. This summer, the administration announced the framework of a trade deal with China that keeps tariffs on that country high at 30 percent. 

See Joe Schulz, Trump tariffs are straining Wisconsin business relationships, price predictability (‘Tonnage through the Port of Milwaukee shrunk through early 2025 compared to last year, port director says’), Wisconsin Public Radio, July 22, 2025.

Car explodes in Virginia and fire spreads to other vehicles:

Conservation, Daily Bread, Nature, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.26.25: Beautiful Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:40 and sunset is 8:21, for 14 hours, 41 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1848, the first governor of Wisconsin, Nelson Dewey, establishes the University of Wisconsin–Madison (then named the University of Wisconsin).

Inside the Loudest Sound Produced on Earth:

Do you know what created the loudest sound on Earth? People 3,000 miles away described it as “cannon fire from a nearby ship,” but it wasn’t cannon fire. Ranchers on a sheep farm in Alice Springs, Australia, almost 2,500 miles away said they heard two shots from a rifle, but it wasn’t a rifle. But what was behind this sudden and unprecedented sound? Estimated at 310 decibels, scientists believe it was the loudest sound ever produced on the surface of the planet.

Conservative Populism, Daily Bread, Elections, Far-Right Populism, Gov. Evers, Newspapers, Politics, Populists, Social Media, Wisconsin, WisDems, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 7.25.25: Fog-Shrouded Wisconsin

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 84. Sunrise is 5:39 and sunset is 8:22, for 14 hours, 43 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1965, Bob Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling a major change in folk and rock music.

A few remarks on Gov. Evers’s decision not to seek a third term in 2026.

Of Evers. I find myself agreeing with Rep. Mark Pocan about Evers: “I think he is the most quintessential Wisconsin politician I’ve ever seen.” There’s much to admire in that.

Of Newspapers. Wisconsin’s newspapers, like those elsewhere, are in decline. Their weakness (desperation, truly) makes them susceptible to clickbait headlines, and this year and next will reveal how shallow is their reporting and speculative is their analysis. The Journal Sentinel and the State Journal have paltry circulation numbers even in their home cities. Gannett is taking its employees, including those at the Journal Sentinel, through another round of buyouts. The employees who are left will be under pressure to seek attention for their publications any way they can.

(Of paywalls, specifically: any Wisconsin publication with a hard paywall in this environment is an irrelevant publication. I’ve mentioned the State Journal in Madison, but that paper’s influence collapsed a decade ago as both readers and reporters fled for other destinations. Small papers, like the APG publications near Whitewater, are an impossible, nutty combination of paywalled sites that demand confiscatory advertising rates for ads no one will see. They’re unread and too expensive.)

Of Facebook. Facebook remains popular in Wisconsin, and leans toward right-wing populism. It’s a perfect medium for short, scarcely literate assertions and rumors. Expect every day to be filled with another comment about how the WISGOP is on the verge of TOTAL and PERMANENT victory.

If Facebook accurately presented the Wisconsin electorate, Brad Schimel would be awaiting his swearing in ceremony as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on August 1st. (Congratulations and best wishes to Justice-elect Susan Crawford.)

Very few Facebook pages are moderated well, and it doesn’t take long for populist trolls to dominate a Facebook page. (Center-left Facebook pages that allow right-wing trolls free rein are the equivalent of people who would allow someone else to vomit on their clothing: allowing as much shows a profound intellectual and psychological confusion.)

Populism of any kind, and certainly of the kind Wisconsin faces, tends toward sarcasm, schadenfreude, and sadism. Those expecting more of the populists are expecting too little of themselves.

Of Political Predictions. None to offer now, as we’ve a long way to go until Wisconsin elections in April, August, and November 2026. (If pressed, I’d say that the WISGOP is likely to lose the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April 2026, regardless of what Justice Bradley decides.)

In so many critical 2026 elections, and especially with an open Wisconsin governor’s race, one can expect lots of fog-shrouded reporting and Facebook commentary.

Meanwhile, monsoon season prompts rescue in New Mexico:

Another afternoon of heavy rainfall prompted further flash flooding in the southern mountain village of Ruidoso, New Mexico, on Thursday. The community was still digging out following a deadly flood just weeks ago when more storm water overtook canyons and roadways.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, July 29th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Black Bag

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Tuesday, July 29th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Black Bag @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

Spy thriller/Mystery/Romance

Rated R (language) 1 hour, 33 minutes (2025)

The tale of a British spy (Michael Fassbender) who must ferret out a traitor in their midst amongst five potential suspects… one of which is his wife (Cate Blanchett). Also stars Pierce Brosnan. An erudite, clever, well-acted cat-and-mouse cloak-and-dagger spy mystery!

One can find more information about Black Bag at the Internet Movie Database.

City, Daily Bread, Library

Daily Bread for 7.24.25: Whitewater Public Library

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater see afternoon thundershowers with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:38 and sunset is 8:23, for 14 hours, 45 minutes of daytime. The moon is new with 0.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1935, the Dust Bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109 °F (43 °C) in Chicago and 104 °F (40 °C) in Milwaukee.

Whitewater’s public library, now undergoing a renovation, is being renamed, sensibly, the Whitewater Public Library:

The change has been under discussion for months in public meetings of the library board. (As a matter of law, this board was free to change the name, based on the scant conditions of the prior naming agreement, the significant renovation of the building now underway, and a general presumption in Wisconsin law against a perpetual designation in light of the former.)

As it turns out, the library board has picked well: it’s a good name for this town’s library.

Galaxies, exploded stars and more in new NASA Chandra images:

NASA has released a new batch of images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory that they have dubbed “razzle-dazzle across space.”

Daily Bread, Elections, Legislature, Politics, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 7.23.25: A Better Wisconsin Politics Requires a Better Wisconsin Legislature

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 91. Sunrise is 5:37 and sunset is 8:24, for 14 hours, 47 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1829, William Austin Burt patents the typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.

By RyanCodyPotochnik – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

A better Wisconsin politics requires a better Legislature, and a better Legislature requires better legislators:

An analysis by Marquette University Law School researcher John Johnson suggests there are four “battleground” state Senate districts in play ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

They include:

  • The 5th Senate District held by Sen. Rob Hutton, R-Brookfield
  • The 17th Senate District held by Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green
  • The 21st Senate District held by Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine
  • The 31st Senate District held by Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick

“The good news for Democrats is that I would say all four of these seats lean Democratic, even though three of them have Republican incumbents,” Johnson told WPR. “I say that because not only did (Democratic U.S. Sen.) Tammy Baldwin win a majority of the vote in each of these districts in her 2024 senatorial reelection campaign, so did Kamala Harris, even though she lost the state.”

See Rich Kremer, Fight for control of Wisconsin Senate is shaping up ahead of 2026 election (‘Democrats focused on flipping seats made competitive under new legislative maps’), Wisconsin Public Radio, July 23, 2025.

Want better? Elect more.

What’s happened to Japan? Bear drill takes place following recent attacks in Japan:

Following the recent attacks across Japan, the police in Tochigi Prefecture, approximately 100 km north of Tokyo, and the local hunters club conducted a bear drill on Monday. In the mountainous area police demonstrated how to scare off a wild bear using fireworks.

Honest to goodness. If bear attacks on people were to befall Whitewater, the residents of this beautiful city should expect more than fireworks as a defense.