FREE WHITEWATER

City, Daily Bread, Economy, Foreign Affairs

Daily Bread for 3.9.26: Foreign War Hits Domestic Markets — Even Supermarkets

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 69. Sunrise is 7:17 and sunset is 6:54 for 11 hours 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 67 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1044, the people of Constantinople riot against emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, whose preference of his mistress Maria Skleraina over empress Zoe Porphyrogenita is seen as an insult.

Iran is far from America, but global markets reach even the supermarket aisle:

What’s happening in the Middle East can seem very far away — at least until you stop for gas. Prices at the pump have jumped since Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the conflict, creating a gap in the energy supply chain that spans the world.

It’s a reminder that war has profound effects on all those who are connected to it. And we are all connected to it, somehow.

Take agriculture. “The longer the conflict in the Middle East continues,” writes my colleague Peter Goodman, who covers global economics, “the greater the likelihood that people around the globe will pay more for food. And those in the most vulnerable countries could face hunger.”

Why is that? Because the Persian Gulf is a dominant source of the world’s fertilizers, especially those that deliver nitrogen to soils — a source of nourishment for crops that amount to half the world’s food. Fertilizer is produced in the region and shipped … everywhere. If the Strait of Hormuz remains strangled, prices for fertilizer will rise. And as a result, farmers may use less on their crops, if they can get any at all. The world will get less food, and it will cost more.

[…]

Which is terrible timing for farmers in the Northern Hemisphere, who will soon need fertilizer to boost their spring crops. Where might they get it? China’s the most obvious alternative, Peter writes. But last year the Chinese government imposed restrictions on the export of fertilizer, in part to shield its farmers from just the sort of geopolitical chaos this war brought on.

Prices are already climbing. Over the past week, the price of urea sold in Egypt, a market that economists track closely, climbed more than 35 percent. If the trend continues, governments across the Global South could need to subsidize the cost of growing crops. And that could add to their debt burdens.

Missiles fly over Iran: People get poorer in Africa. The cost of groceries in Dallas mounts.

See Sam Sifton, The New York Times, The Morning Newsletter (Mar. 9, 2026).

The man who builds hotels around the world selectively forgets that it’s a global economy for more than a few billionaire hoteliers.

Not long ago, the local landlord faction (well-read, thoughtful as always) was putting up signs on their rental properties warning about higher prices:

They should have spent less time putting up signs and more time studying at the university that sustains them. Even before this war with Iran, Mr. Trump’s long commitment to tariffs was sure to increase prices.

‘Not many off-ramps’ available to get oil back under $100:

A barrel of Brent Crude hit $119 at one point as traders rushed to price in massive supply disruption in the Middle East. Tim Graf of State Street told Reuters technical measures like releasing oil reserves may not change sentiment much.

Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 3.8.26: ‘Roaring Economy’ Not So Roaring

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 60. Sunrise is 7:18 and sunset is 6:51 for 11 hours 35 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 75.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1979, Philips demonstrates the compact disc publicly for the first time.

How’s the economy doing? Not well:

“WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” Trump posted on social media Feb. 11 after the monthly jobs report showed gains of 130,000 jobs in January.

Since then, the job market has evaporated in worrisome ways.

Friday’s employment report showed job losses of 92,000 in February. The January and December figures were revised downward, with December swinging to a loss of 17,000 jobs. Monthly data can be rocky, but a trend has emerged that shows an enduring weakness. Without the health care sector, the economy would have shed roughly 202,000 jobs since Trump became president in January 2025. 

[…]

The president has repeatedly told Americans that keeping gas costs low would be key to defeating inflation. He has talked up the decline, citing figures that were far below the national average to assure the public that driving was getting cheaper.

But the strikes against Iran that began Feb. 28 have, for the moment, crushed that narrative. Prices at the pump have jumped 19% over the past month to a national average of $3.45, according to AAA. The investment bank Goldman Sachs warned in an analyst note that, if higher oil prices persist, inflation could rise from its 2.4% reading in January to 3% by the end of the year.

[…]

“Under the Biden administration, America was plagued by the nightmare of stagflation, meaning low growth and high inflation — a recipe for misery, failure and decline,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

The scoreboard tells a far different story, one that makes Biden’s track record in 2024 look better than Trump’s performance last year. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8% pace during Biden’s last year, compared with 2.2% under Trump in 2025.

See Josh Boak, Trump’s ‘roaring’ economy meets a rough start to 2026: What the latest numbers show, Associated Press, March 8, 2026.

And look, and look, these promises of economic success from the man who lost money in the casino industry were always dubious beyond the point of the ludicrous. Touting Mr. Trump’s record has never been about the accuracy of his claims; touting Mr. Trump’s record has always been about applying a thin veneer of economics to a thick mix of cultural warfare for his base and grifting for insiders.

Critiquing Mr. Trump’s record isn’t about persuading the minority that still believes in him; it’s about reminding others that the majority of Americans sensibly see through his claims.

Video shows a tornado in Michigan destroying homes in its path:

At Lisa Piper’s home near Union City, Michigan, she can be heard repeatedly yelling out, as she films from her back deck a ferocious rotating column of air that appears to be a tornado tearing through a section of buildings across the lake from her.

Daily Bread, Education, Gubernatorial Race 2026, LGBTQ+, Tom Tiffany, Wisconsin, WISGOP

Daily Bread for 3.7.26: So, Who’s Up for a Culture War Over a New Richmond, Wisconsin School Policy?

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be windy with a high of 59. Sunrise is 6:20 and sunset is 5:51 for 11 hours 31 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1799, Napoleon captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops proceed to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.

WISGOP Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Tiffany, Public Domain, Link.

Who’s up for a culture war over the bathroom policy of a school in New Richmond, Wisconsin?:

A St Croix County school district that has become the target of right-wing politicians and activists for allowing students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity is now being investigated by the Trump administration Department of Education over the practice.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced in a press release Thursday it was investigating the New Richmond School District “based on reports that the District is allowing biological men to use female restrooms.” 

The head of a Wisconsin LGBTQ+ rights group Friday called the administration’s action an attempt to “bully” school children. 

“The law protects trans girls and their ability to use the girls’ bathroom,” said Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin. “A federal department’s press release does not, and cannot, change law. However, a federal administration can bully our kids, and that is exactly what this announcement of an investigation is.”

[…]

A week after the issue first arose in January, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany posted on Facebook a demand that the district reverse its policy. Michael Alfonso, who is running in the 7th Congressional District race to succeed Tiffany, has posted on his campaign Facebook page at least five times in the last month about the policy, directing increased national attention to the district. State lawmakers from the area have also weighed in. 

Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, who previously represented the 7th District, and recently was endorsed by President Donald Trump. 

See Baylor Spears and Erik Gunn, Department of Education launches investigation over Wisconsin school district’s bathroom policies, Wisconsin Examiner, March 6, 2026.

We’ve a sinking economy and wars abroad, and so these gentlemen return to another war at home to hold their followers’ support.

The war against immigrants, however violent, has not been enough to satiate this ilk. And so, and so, they return to another domestic war against another innocuous minority.

What the February Jobs Report Means for the Economy and the Fed — “In a word, it was dismal”:

America, Daily Bread, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Immigration, Nativism

Daily Bread for 3.6.26: Checking on the ‘New Golden Age’ and the ‘Board of Peace’

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Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:22 and sunset is 5:50 for 11 hours 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1967, Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States. She would later live in Richland Center.

So, at week’s end, let’s check in on Mr. Trump’s economic promise of a ‘new golden age‘ and his promise of global harmony through a ‘Board of Peace.’

The Economy:

His signature initiatives must — simply must — be going well. Trump is, after all, by his own account a ‘very stable genius.’ Here’s the latest:

The U.S. economy lost jobs in February, a month marred by severe winter weather and a strike at a major health care provider, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by 92,000 for the month, compared to the estimate for 50,000 and below the downwardly revised January total of 126,000. February marked the third time in the past five months that payrolls declined, following a sharp revision showing a drop of 17,000 in December.

At the same time, the unemployment rate edged higher to 4.4% as jobs declined across key areas. A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons moved lower, at 7.9% or 0.2 percentage point below the January level.

See Jeff Cox, U.S. payrolls unexpectedly fell by 92,000 in February; unemployment rate rises to 4.4%, CNBC, March 6, 2026.

Well, perhaps gas prices are finally down. Let’s check:

Gasoline prices in the United States jumped seven cents to $3.32 a gallon, on average, on Friday, the latest in a series of price increases in the week since the start of the war led by the United States and Israel against Iran.

That was the highest since September 2024, according to the AAA motor club, and could become a political problem for President Trump, who has frequently boasted about how gasoline prices have fallen during his second term, and exaggerated the extent of the decline. After the recent gains, prices are now higher than when this term began.

The price of gas has risen by 34 cents, or about 11 percent, over the past week.

See Emmett Linder, U.S. Gas Prices, Up 11% in a Week, Pile Pressure on Trump, New York Times, March 6, 2026.

President Donald J. Trump oversees Operation Epic Fury at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, March 1, 2026. (White House photo by Daniel Torok)
I did that!

When gas prices were high before, countless little vandals put stickers with Joe Biden’s face on gas pumps. I’d not encourage putting any outside stickers on gas pumps, but far worse than the petty vandalism is the prospect of having to look at this gentleman’s face while pumping fuel.

Peace and Harmony:

Well, there’s always global harmony. How’s that Board of Peace working out? Oh:

  • The Israeli military announced a “new stage” in its campaign against Iran, with US and Israeli officials hinting at escalating strikes. The IDF said it has “additional surprising moves” as part of this new phase, without elaborating, while US defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced that strikes on Iran will “surge dramatically”.
  • The IDF claimed to have destroyed the underground bunker of the slain Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which it claims is still used by senior Iranian officials. The Israeli military said approximately 50 fighter jets dropped about 100 bombs at the site in Tehran, which it claimed spread across multiple streets and included “many entry points”. There was no immediate comment from Iran.
  • The UN said nearly 100,000 people have been displaced within Lebanon and tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the country have fled back over the border. It follows a mass evacuation order by the IDF for people to flee a vast swathe of Beirut’s southern suburbs as it bombs what it says are Hezbollah targets in the area.
  • Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has urged the US to move “very quickly” with its investigation into a deadly strike on a school in southern Iran, which Tehran has blamed on the US and Israel. Türk also said the IDF’s evacuation order for southern Beirut raises serious concerns under international law, “in particular when it comes to issues around forced transfer”.
  • Officials in Azerbaijan said they are withdrawing diplomatic staff from Iran for their own safety. It comes a day after Azerbaijan said four Iranian drones had crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.

See Mideast Crisis Live, The Guardian, March 6, 2026.

The Board of Peace may want to consider adding some weekend hours…

These destructive conditions, made incomparably worse at home through a domestic campaign of ethnic cleansing, took only a year to bring about.

Mr. Trump may work poorly, but he does work quickly.

Cats

A Four-Eared Cat

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Stephanie Brown tells The National about the moment she fostered a rare four-eared cat named Dobby.

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, March 10th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Blue Moon

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Tuesday, March 10th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Blue Moon @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:

(Biography/ History/ Drama)

Rated R (language); 1 hour 40 minutes (2025)

On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) confronts his shattered self-confidence in Sardi’s bar as his former collaborator, Richard Rodgers, celebrates the opening night of his groundbreaking hit musical “Oklahoma.” Oscar nominations for best actor (Hawke) and original screenplay.” 

One can find more information about Blue Moon at the Internet Movie Database.

Daily Bread, Health, Reasoning

Daily Bread for 3.5.26: Spotting Sketchy Nutrition Claims Online

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 47. Sunrise is 6:23 and sunset is 5:49 for 11 hours 26 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 94.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board will hold a Governance Workshop at 6 PM.

On this day in 1946, Winston Churchill delivers his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College, Missouri.

Click image to play video

When someone makes a claim, for example a nutrition claim on Instagram, how should one consider that claim? A post from FREE WHITEWATER on 2.27 highlighted Dr. Idrees Mughal’s debunking of the claim from the “Gluten Goddess” that one should be worried because “fruit is not natural.” See What Good Debunking Looks Like.

Embedded above is a useful follow-up, from Alex Falcone on being skeptical of what you read from nutrition Instagrammers.

Note well: Falcone is a comedian, not a doctor. In a world where so many non-doctors are sure that their own “research” proves something, Falcone reminds us that basic principles of reasoning should lead one to skepticism about that kind of nutritional or medical self-study. One doesn’t have to be a doctor or nutritionist to see that self-study about medicine and nutrition should be undertaken with caution. In the Instagram Reel above, Falcone provides helpful clues to spot sketchy online nutrition claims.

So, is today’s post truly about nutrition?1 Only in part. It’s also a post about not taking local public policy claims (or other political claims) at face value. Whitewater, sadly, has her share of residents2 making weak claims.3 A person should consider such claims with caution, and Falcone offers good tips for reviewing online information that can serve as a model for crafting one’s own cautious approach to other discussions.

_____

  1. Of course one’s health matters. I’ve nothing but love in my bleeding-libertarian heart for all my fellow residents. Good reasoning matters, too, to keep people from falling prey to spurious health claims. ↩︎
  2. Mostly — how surprising! — the city’s special-interest men, their operatives, and their catspaws. See The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town. ↩︎
  3. See Adventures in Underpowered Sampling that discusses the thin argumentation from a local landlord, former member of the Whitewater Community Development Authority, former chairman of that body, former member of the Whitewater School Board, and former president of that board. ↩︎

Chaotic heart of the Milky Way spied by ALMA Array:

Using the ALMA radio telescope array, astronomers have discovered the chemistry hidden at the heart of our galaxy. Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S

Daily Bread, Laws/Regulations, Legislation, Legislature, School District, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.4.26: School Districts, Not the State, Should Decide for Themselves on a Complete Mobile Phone Ban

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Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 6:25 and sunset is 5:48 for 11 hours 23 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1776, the Continental Army fortifies Dorchester Heights with cannon, leading the British troops to abandon the Siege of Boston.

There’s legislation before Gov. Evers that would ban mobile phones during the full school day (rather than only during instructional time). Baylor Spears reports on that bill:

A bill to implement a “bell-to-bell” cell phone ban in Wisconsin schools is making its way through the state Legislature, though Gov. Tony Evers hasn’t decided whether he would sign it if it makes it to his desk.

Wisconsin became the 36th state last year to implement a limit on cell phones in schools. Wisconsin Act 42, signed in 2025, requires school districts to implement policies that ban cellphones during instructional times starting in July 2026. The policies have to include exceptions for emergencies, for educational purposes and cases involving student health care, individualized education plans (IEPs) or learning environment accommodations, also known as 504 plans.

When Evers signed the law in October, he said he had a hard time deciding whether to do so because  he believes in local control and wished lawmakers had taken a different approach. Nevertheless, he said he signed the bill because he was “deeply concerned” about the effect cell phones and social media are having on students. 

Last week, however, Evers said  he hasn’t made up his mind about the bill that would go a step further.

“That’s tough. We already, you know, did something,” Evers told reporters last week when asked if he would sign the new measure. He said it could put the state in the position of telling districts to do something that not all of them may want to do. “I have to think through that,” he added. “I’m concerned about that.”

Wisconsin school districts can already choose to implement a bell-to-bell ban under current law, but AB 948 would require policies banning cell phone use in school — prohibiting them throughout the school day, including during class time, recess, the time between classes and the lunch period. The bill requires the policies to be implemented by July 1, 2027.

See Baylor Spears, Evers says he has to think about the ‘bell-to-bell’ cell phone ban lawmakers are pushing, Wisconsin Examiner, March 4, 2026.

Evers is right to hesitate, and he’d be right to veto the bill. Local school districts should decide about a complete mobile phone ban, not the State of Wisconsin.

I’ll advance a few general principles, offered from a libertarian viewpoint. First, where legislation advances local freedom of peaceful action, that legislation should be encouraged.

Second, where legislation regulates local freedom of action, it should do so to provide minimal, uniform rules of conduct that make local freedom of action orderly. (This would be along the lines of Hayek’s observation about state planning: “Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.” See F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom 89 (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2 ed. 2007)).

Third, where legislation prohibits local action, there should be a weighty justification in favor of state policy over local choice.

The existing state regulations seem more than adequate; local restrictions on mobile phone use beyond them (for districts that choose to impose a bell-to-bell ban) should require a thorough justification. On this issue, that justification (however dubious) belongs in the hands of local school boards (however dubious the overall judgment of those local boards).

A deer takes the Golden Gate Bridge:

Click image for video

Daily Bread, Laws/Regulations, Legislation, Legislature, Lobbyists, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.3.26: The Safest Bet Ever Placed

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Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 45. Sunrise is 6:27 and sunset is 5:47 for 11 hours 20 minutes of daytime. The moon is full with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets at 5:30 PM, and the Whitewater Common Council at 6 PM.

On this day in 1969, NASA launches Apollo 9 to test the lunar module.

Lunar Module cutaway illustration. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Collection. Public Domain, Link.

For those who are gamblers, here’s a sure bet — tribes and gambling companies will clash over a bill legalizing online sports betting in Wisconsin:

The legislation would allow Wisconsinites to place a sports bet via a cell phone or computer if the server used to host the wager is physically located on the state’s federally recognized tribal lands. Currently, sports betting is only legal at tribal casinos in Wisconsin.

If the bill becomes law, Wisconsin tribes interested in offering online sports betting “would need to renegotiate” their gaming compacts with the state. And those compacts would need to be approved by the federal government, according to testimony from Sen. Howard L. Marklein, R-Spring Green.

The bill passed the state Assembly on a voice vote without debate last month. It’s unclear if the bill will receive a vote in the state Senate.

The proposal is supported by several Wisconsin tribes, including the Forest County Potawatomi and the Ho-Chunk Nation. But it’s opposed by some of the biggest names in the online sports betting industry, like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM because of the power it would give tribes over online gambling in the state. 

See Joe Schulz, Tribes, gambling companies at odds over bill legalizing online sports betting in Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio, March 3, 2026.

It’s the safest bet on Earth that various competing gambling interests will clash over any legislation involving gambling. These competing interests will do whatever they can to craft the legislation their way.

They will use the Legislature as their trough, and they will demand their preferred flavor of slop.

These companies already have on retainer the laborers they need: no one — no one — mixes slop like a lobbyist.

Everyday life plus constant decisions equals a need for math:

Many Wisconsin students struggle to learn mathematics, as educators emphasize the importance of numeracy in daily life and point to examples of schools and teachers that find success with numbers.

Agriculture, Daily Bread, Tariffs, Trade, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.2.26: Worsening Market Conditions for Wisconsin Farmers

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 43. Sunrise is 6:28 and sunset is 5:45 for 11 hours 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1949, Captain James Gallagher lands his B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas, after completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight in 94 hours and one minute.

Perhaps Wisconsin’s farmers somehow thought that Mr. Trump, returned to office, would improve their economic prospects. Hope (or at least wishful thinking) springs eternal.

No: Wisconsin farmers are struggling under weak market conditions that the federal government exacerbated:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month announced the list of specialty crops that will qualify for payments under $1 billion set aside last December under the administration’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program.

Referred to as the Assistance for Specialty Crop Farmers, or ASCF, payments will be based on planted acres in 2025. USDA won’t announce the payment rates for each commodity until the end of March, with payments coming sometime after that.

But fruit and vegetable industry leaders are already asking for more help.

“It’s simply not enough, especially when it’s spread out over all these specialty crops, as well as sugar and some of these other commodities are now tapping into that,” said Tamas Houlihan, executive director of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Grower Association.

His group, along with more than 100 other specialty group organizations, is asking Congress for an additional $5 billion in assistance for specialty crops as part of a larger aid package being pushed by the ag industry.

Houlihan said potato growers alone have faced losses estimated at $789 million over the past three years. He said that’s due in part to a roughly 20 percent reduction in buying from the country’s largest processors.

“We’re just seeing a decrease in consumption, and we are also seeing an increase in imported products and a decrease in our ability to export products,” he said. “With all those factors combining, we’ve got a massive oversupply situation.”

Houlihan said competitors in China and India have stepped up their exports, creating more competition for U.S. companies selling overseas. At the same time, tariffs on machinery and other inputs coming into the country have raised the cost of production for both growers and processors.

(Emphasis added.) See Bailout for specialty crops has yet to arrive. Growers warn they need more than $1B promised (‘Farm aid promised last December is still months away from being paid out to fruit and vegetable growers. But industry groups say it won’t be enough to get them through tough market conditions.’), Wisconsin Public Radio, March 2, 2026.

Mar-a-Lago is many things. A farm is not among them.

Sky & Telescope’s Sky Tour Podcast — March 2026:

This month’s episode showcases the stars and planets visible on March evenings. First up: March 3rd’s predawn total lunar eclipse! Then track down three planets after sunset, and savor the easy-to-spot Winter Triangle of bright stars. So grab your curiosity, and come along on this month’s Sky Tour.

Daily Bread, Fact Checking, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 3.1.26: Fact Briefs at Wisconsin Watch and the Journal Sentinel

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 32. Sunrise is 6:30 and sunset is 5:44 for 11 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1953, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later.

Is it so hard, in these intense times, to call something true or false? More bluntly: is a backlash to the truth so worrisome that one dare not say true or false, yes or no? Americans have had difficult times before now,1 and yet during those times we did not recoil from candid assessments. Indeed, candid assessments allowed us to overcome those difficult times.2

Over at Wisconsin Watch, in partnership with the Journal Sentinel, there’s a new effort to assess plainly whether a statement is true in the way that matters (whether a claim corresponds, bluntly stated, to reality, to actual conditions in the world). That one sometimes cannot determine the truth or falsity of a proposition does not mean that one never can:

Wisconsin Watch has a new partner in the fight for facts.

Ahead of another pivotal election year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Watch are teaming up to produce more Fact Briefs, 150-word answers to yes/no questions based on claims made in the infosphere.

Wisconsin Watch has partnered with Gigafact since 2022 to produce more than 600 bite-sized fact checks. We’re part of a network of 18 nonprofit newsrooms across the country working to equip the public with accurate information to inform civic discussion.

The Journal Sentinel, part of the USA Today Network and the largest newsroom in Wisconsin, was an early adopter of PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking nonprofit founded in 2007.

As Journal Sentinel Editor Greg Borowski writes in a column today at jsonline.com, the switch to Fact Briefs will appeal to readers seeking accurate information quickly and with a clearer true-or-false format, rather than PolitiFact’s six-tiered “score card” for assessing whether a claimant is telling the truth. Fact Briefs focus less on the claimant, and more on the claim itself.

See Matthew DeFour, Wisconsin Watch partners with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to produce more Fact Briefs (‘The newsrooms will deliver more bite-sized responses to yes/no questions in the lead-up to the 2026 election’), Wisconsin Watch, February 25, 2026.

Quite welcome —  one can often apply reason to evidence and make a firm conclusion. If it should be too hard in ordinary matters, then the first place to look is inadequate evidence gathering or deficient reasoning. It’s not the case, and never has been, that arriving at the truth is so hard that no one knows nothin’. Americans did not build a world-historical civilization across a continent because everything everywhere was unknowable.

Here’s an example: Sue Bin Park, Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates?, Wisconsin Watch via Skeptical Science, February 23, 2026. (Spoiler: the answer is YES.)

_____

  1. The Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression. ↩︎
  2. Overcoming, respectively: the British, the Confederates, and economic calamity. ↩︎

How Perseverance Learned to ‘Self-Locate’ on Mars:

NASA’s Perseverance rover can now precisely determine its own location on Mars without waiting for human help from Earth. This is possible thanks to a new technology called Mars Global Localization.

This technology rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps. It’s done with an algorithm that runs on the rover’s Helicopter Base Station processor, which was originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. In a few minutes, the algorithm can pinpoint Perseverance’s position to within about 10 inches (25 centimeters). The technology will help the rover drive farther autonomously and keep exploring. Mars Global Localization was first used successfully for regular mission operations on Feb. 2, 2026, and the team expects related reliability techniques to inform future missions, including exploration on the Moon.

Business, Daily Bread, Economy, Trump, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 2.28.26: Wisconsin Companies Seek Refunds of Unlawfully Imposed Tariffs

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 6:32 and sunset is 5:43 for 11 hours 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1844, a gun explodes on board the steam warship USS Princeton during a pleasure cruise down the Potomac River, killing six, including Secretary of State Abel Upshur. President John Tyler, who is also on board, is not injured from the blast.

On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, finding unlawful the Trump Administration’s stated basis for the imposition of tariffs. See Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. _ (2026). Understandably, Wisconsin companies are seeking refunds for unlawfully imposed tariffs:

Ten Wisconsin-based companies — including  Kohl’s, Milwaukee Tool and Ashley Furniture — had sued the Trump administration over its tariff policy before the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down, according to court documents. 

They are seeking refunds for the tariff duties. Some also accuse the import taxes of violating the U.S. Constitution. 

President Donald Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on international trade since his return to office, using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify the move. But, the 10 companies suing his administration claim he had no jurisdiction to do so. In December, some Wisconsin companies started fighting the policy in court, hoping the litigation could help their chances of receiving compensation for paid tariffs. 

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The Wisconsin companies suing range in size, and include well known names like Kohl’s, Milwaukee Tool, Ashley Furniture and Duluth Holdings. Others include the HellermannTyton Corporation, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Weyco Group Inc., Lamplight Farms and Colony Brands. 

Weyco Group was one of the first of the companies to sue. Their suit requested that the U.S. Court of International Trade “declare the president’s unprecedented power grab illegal.”

The footwear company now wants an “immediate refund” with interest, according to the document. 

Milwaukee Tool filed its suit last month. The complaint argues the imposed tariffs had “little relation” to the “purported national emergency” Trump used to justify them.

See Steph Conquest-Ware, Kohl’s and Milwaukee Tool, other Wisconsin companies sue Trump for tariff refunds (‘The companies began filing in December before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision ruling the tariffs unconstitutional’), Wisconsin Public Radio, February 27, 2026.

Tariffs are passed along from importers to consumers. See Douglas Baird, Who’s Really Paying for the Trump Administration’s Tariffs?, Univ. of Chi. News (Feb. 2026) and Scott Lincicome and Nathan Miller, The White House Still Can’t Grasp That Americans Pay US Tariffs, Cato at Liberty (Feb. 19, 2026): “In short, seven independent research teams have now examined the “who’s paying” question and have reached essentially the same answer: We are. The White House can attack the messengers, but it can’t change the data—and at this point, the data speaks for itself.”

American companies should be refunded promptly. They won’t be refunded promptly, of course, but they should be.

The surprising science of squeaky sneakers:

It’s not just shoes that squeak when they slide over a hard surface. Bike brakes, rubber tyres, even some biomedical implants like artificial hips have been known to squeal as soft and hard surfaces come into contact with each other. So to better understand exactly what is causing these noises, a team of researchers have used high speed photography to capture a rubber block sliding across a hard acrylic sheet. They found pulses more commonly associated with the dynamics of earthquakes driving the squeaks, and tiny bolts of lightning initiating those pulses. This understanding could lead to advances in engineering, metamaterials or earthquake research – or even new musical instruments.