"The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate has passed a sweeping measure taking power away from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general, and reducing how long early voting can take place."

"The measure was approved on a 17-16 vote with all Democrats and one Republican voting against it. The Assembly was expected to give final approval later Wednesday morning and send the measure to Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who has signaled his support. The bill would limit the governor’s ability to put in place administrative rules that enact laws and give the Legislature the power to control appointees to the board that runs the state economic development agency until Sept. 1. The legislation would also require legislative approval to withdraw from lawsuits, taking that away from the attorney general."

AP reports.

ADDED: "Lame duck" is an insult, not a requirement. The legislature and governor who are in power now were elected to a full term, not elected with a proviso that they go "lame" once the election has happened. Who says what can happen in that last part of a term of office? Look up what the 2010 Congress did after the election and how it was talked about in the press?

Here's a dialogue from yesterday at FiveThirtyEight, "Are Lame-Duck Sessions Undemocratic?" Excerpt:

perry: I think it’s worth considering that even if there is some Democratic precedent in the past, do we think Gov. Malloy of Connecticut or Gov. Brown of California would have cut the powers of the new governor if a Republican had been elected? I really, really doubt it. For example, Maryland Democrats did not do this in 2010. I think part of the issue is right now, in the 2010s, it seems like one party is regularly pushing the envelope.

natesilver: I think the literature is pretty convincing that it’s asymmetric. Asymmetric doesn’t mean that Republicans push the boundaries 100 percent of the time and Democrats do it 0 percent of the time. Maybe it means the GOP does it 70 percent of the time and Democrats do it 30 percent. 

Maybe it means....

Here's an enthusiastic article in The Atlantic in late 2010: "The Most Productive Lame Duck Since WWII -- and Maybe Ever."

Driven by the looming Christmas holiday and the upcoming change in power in the House -- not to mention the likelihood that Democrats will not again control both Houses of Congress and the White House until 2014 at the earliest, should Obama win re-election -- Democrats were moved to push forward aggressively on controversial legislation they'd punted on all year long.

Where did this "duck" business come from?

The phrase "lame duck" was coined in the eighteenth century at the London Stock Exchange, to refer to a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. The first known mention of the term in writing was made by Horace Walpole, from a letter in 1761 to Sir Horace Mann: "Do you know what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are?" In 1791 Mary Berry wrote of the Duchess of Devonshire's loss of £50,000 in stocks, "the conversation of the town" that her name was to be "posted up as a lame duck". In the literal sense, the term refers to a duck which is unable to keep up with its flock, making it a target for predators.

AND: The GOP has will still have a solid majority in both houses of the legislature in the new session:

Republicans held their majority in the 2018 elections for Wisconsin State Assembly, winning 63 seats to Democrats' 36. All of the chamber's 99 seats were up for election. At the time of the election, Republicans held 64 seats to Democrats' 35.... The Republican Party maintained control of the state Senate and Assembly but lost its trifecta in Wisconsin in 2018 as the Democratic Party flipped the governorship.