Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 25. Sunrise is 6:45 AM and sunset 5:31 PM, for 10h 45m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 38% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1930, while studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
Recommended for reading in full —
Rory Linnane reports Superintendent candidate Deborah Kerr deletes account after tweets about her experience with the N-word:
The prompt, from Madison Payton, host of the Race Through Education Podcast: “When was the first time someone called you the n- word?”
Kerr replied, “I was 16 in high school and white — my lips were bigger than most and that was the reference given to me.”
When another Twitter user asked how the experience impacted her, she replied, “It made me realize that we are all different and that is the gift we give to one another.”
(There’s dense and then there’s denser: the consequence of the racial slur directed at the alabaster Kerr would be different from the same slur directed at someone Black, and use of the slur is not a reminder of diversity but an expression of bigotry.)
Henry Redman reports Election Commissioner Bob Spindell can vote whether or not to investigate himself for election fraud:
Republican elections commissioner Robert Spindell, who has been accused by Law Forward of fraudulently casting an Electoral College vote for former President Donald Trump, will have a say in the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) decision over whether or not he should be investigated, unless he recuses himself due to a conflict of interest.
Spindell and nine others, including Wisconsin Republican Party chair Andrew Hitt, met on Dec. 14 to cast Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes for Trump, even though Joe Biden won Wisconsin and was awarded the state’s votes.
Progressive legal outfit Law Forward wrote a letter to Milwaukee County District AttorneyJohn Chisholm and sent a complaint to the Elections Commission alleging that the actions of Spindell, Hitt and others was a violation of state law.
The Milwaukee County DA has the authority to decide whether or not to file criminal charges against the group and the WEC has the authority to decide whether or not to investigate the allegations made in the complaint.
Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper report Promotions for Female Generals Were Delayed Over Fears of Trump’s Reaction:
Last fall, the Pentagon’s most senior leaders agreed that two top generals should be promoted to elite, four-star commands.
For the defense secretary at the time, Mark T. Esper, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the tricky part was that both of the accomplished officers were women. In 2020 America under President Donald J. Trump, the two Pentagon leaders feared that any candidates other than white men for jobs mostly held by white men might run into turmoil once their nominations reached the White House.
Mr. Esper and General Milley worried that if they even raised their names — Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force and Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson of the Army — the Trump White House would replace them with its own candidates before leaving office.
So the Pentagon officials agreed on an unusual strategy: They held back their recommendations until after the November elections, betting that if Joseph R. Biden Jr. won, he and his aides would be more supportive of the Pentagon picks than Mr. Trump, who had feuded with Mr. Esper and had a history of disparaging women. They stuck to the plan even after Mr. Trump fired Mr. Esper six days after the election.