Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will bring a high of seventy-seven, with a one-third chance of isolated thunderstorms. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:22 PM, for 12h 58m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Wagner observes that In action after action, Trump appeals primarily to his dwindling base:

President Trump pardoned a tough-on-immigration Arizona sheriff accused of racial profiling. He threatened a government shutdown if Congress won’t deliver border wall funding. He banned transgender people from serving in the military. And he is expected to end a program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who consider the United States home.

These and other moves — all since Trump’s widely repudiated remarks about the hate-fueled violence in Charlottesville less than a month ago — are being heartily cheered by many of his core supporters. But collectively, they have helped cement an image of a president, seven months into his term, who is playing only to his political base.

Trump’s job-approval numbers remain mired in the 30s in most polls, and several new findings last week gave Republicans interested in expanding the party’s appeal fresh reason to worry. A Fox News survey, for example, found that majorities of voters think that Trump is “tearing the country apart” and does not respect racial minorities….

(Trump is playing to his base, and what’s left of that lumpen band is the very worst among us: ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, excuse-making, unproductive. Trump’s glass now contains only the dregs.)

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno writes that Trump Sells Snake Oil on Opioids:

….In a number of remarks, President Trump has stressed his priorities: ramping up federal drug prosecutions, getting “very, very tough” on the southern border and targeting the “pretty tough hombres” he says are responsible for the opioid crisis. His approach is all about doubling down on the most extreme policies of the failed war on drugs. And it’s a craven betrayal of those people in New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and other states hard hit by opioid overdoses, where Trump’s preferred policies will do nothing to stem the wave of deaths he claims are his priority.

The reality is that the war on drugs — the billions of dollars that have been poured into the enforcement of laws criminalizing drug use, production, and distribution since the 1970s — has never actually prevented drug abuse. Drug use fluctuates but has largely remained steady over the decades. And far from preventing violence, the drug war has driven up drug profits, providing an endless source of wealth for international organized crime.

What the war on drugs has done very effectively is devastate black and Latino communities. Across the country, it has served as the justification for heavier policing of black neighborhoods in particular, even though black and white people use drugs at similar rates. Millions have been arrested, torn from their families, imprisoned, saddled with criminal records, deported, and even killed in the name of drug prohibition….

Nafeesa Syeed reports that Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote:

….“They haven’t stood still since 2016,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow in information defense at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, which tracked the activity. “People have woken up to the idea that bots equal influence and lots of people will be wanting to be influencing the midterms.”

While special counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller keeps investigating the 2016 race, Nimmo’s work is among a number of initiatives cropping up at think tanks, startups, and even the Pentagon seeking to grasp how bots and influence operations are rapidly evolving. Blamed for steering political debate last year, bots used for Russian propaganda and other causes are only becoming more emboldened, researchers say.

They’re preparing “and sowing seeds of discord” and “potentially laying the groundwork for what they’re going to do in 2018 or 2020,” said Laura Rosenberger, senior fellow and director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund….

Lawrence Summers contends that It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers:

….What can be done? This surely is not the moment for lawmakers to further strengthen the hand of large employers over their employees. Sooner or later — and preferably sooner — labor-law reform should be back on the national agenda, especially to punish employers who engage in firing organizers. We should also encourage union efforts to organize people in nontraditional ways, even when they do not involve formal collective bargaining. And policymakers should support institutions such as employee stock ownership plans, where workers have a chance to share in profits and in corporate governance.

In an era when the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics, the role of unions cannot go back to being what it was. But on this Labor Day, any leader concerned with the American middle class needs to consider that the basic function of unions, balancing the power of employers and employees, is as important to our economy as it has ever been….

Great Big Story shows How the Japanese Craft the World’s Hardest Food:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:22 AM and 7:24 PM, for 13h 01m 45 of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1783, representatives of the United States and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. Britain ceded land including present-day Wisconsin to the United States.

Recommended for reading in full —

Nina Burleigh reports that Trump’s Claim that Obama Wiretapped His campaign is False:  U.S. Department of Justice:

In a stunning filing last night [Friday, 9.1], the Department of Justice stated in a court case that neither the FBI nor its National Security Division ever wiretapped Trump Tower, contradicting a bombshell claim President Trump made in a series of early morning tweets on March 4.

The document is the first time the Department of Justice has officially denied the substance of the Tweets. Former FBI Director James Comey had already denied that the FBI ever wiretapped Trump.

“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.” the filing states….

Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker report that Toxic waste sites near Houston flooded by Harvey, EPA not on scene:

….The Associated Press surveyed seven Superfund sites in and around Houston during the flooding. All had been inundated with water, in some cases many feet deep.On Saturday, hours after the AP published its first report, the EPA said it had reviewed aerial imagery confirming that 13 of the 41 Superfund sites in Texas were flooded by Harvey and were “experiencing possible damage” due to the storm.

The statement confirmed the AP’s reporting that the EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had “not been accessible by response personnel.” EPA staff had checked on two Superfund sites in Corpus Christi on Thursday and found no significant damage….

Kimberly Kindy, Sari Horwitz and Devlin Barrett write that the Federal government has long ignored white supremacist threats, critics say:

On June 3, 2014, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. restarted a long-dormant domestic terrorism task force created after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. A former Ku Klux Klan leader had just murdered three people near a Jewish Community Center in a Kansas City suburb and yelled “Heil Hitler” as police took him into custody.

For too long, Holder said, the federal government had narrowly focused on Islamist threats and had lost sight of the “continued danger we face” from violent far-right extremists.

But three years later, it is unclear what, if anything the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee has done, despite expectations that its reanimation would better focus efforts throughout the Justice Department to disrupt and detect plots in a more centralized way, as was already being done by the department and FBI when it came to hunting Islamist terrorists.

Krishnadev Calamur considers North Korea’s Nuclear Test: What We Know and Don’t Know:

….The U.S. Geological Survey said it detected a tremor with a magnitude of 6.3 after the North’s test at 12:36 p.m., local time, at the Punggye-ri underground test site, in the northwest of the country. South Korea estimated the magnitude at 5.7—lower, but still “five to six times more powerful than” the North’s previous test in September 2016, said Lee Mi-Sun, the head of South Korea’s Meteorological Administration’s earthquake and volcano center. A second, weaker tremor, which came minutes after the first, likely indicated the “collapse” of tunnels at the test site, the USGS and South Korean officials said.

Notwithstanding North Korea’s claim that it tested a hydrogen bomb—which is far more powerful than the atomic bombs typically tested—it’s not clear if it was an actual hydrogen bomb that was detonated Sunday. The last time the North claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb was in January 2016, but many experts say that was a bomb “boosted” using tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that produces a higher yield during explosions. South Korean officials said the nuclear blast yield of Sunday’s test was between 50 and 60 kilotons, lower than the yield for a real hydrogen bomb, which can be in the range of 10,000 kilotons. This assessment would suggest that the bomb tested Sunday was not a true hydrogen bomb. But other estimates of the yield are higher.

Either way: What is known is the weapon is far more powerful than anything the Kim regime has previously tested, and that, combined with its regular ICBM tests with increasing range, makes the North a very threatening adversary. But perhaps still not an imminent one.

Today I Found Out recounts When the Beatles Were Pelted with Jelly Beans:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:26 PM, for 13h 04m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, Imperial Japan formally surrenders in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri.

On this day in 1862, rumors of an Indian attack worry some Wisconsinites: “Manitowoc settlers were awakened to the cry of “Indians are coming.” Messengers on horseback arrived from the Rapids, Branch, Kellnersville, and other nearby communities, announcing that Indians were burning everything in their path, starting what was known as the “Indian Scare of 1862.” Fire and church bells gave warning to frightened residents. Over the next few days, people from the surrounding areas fled to Manitowoc and other city centers. Ox carts were loaded with women and children carrying their most valuable belongings. Men arrived with guns, axes, and pitchforks, anything with which to defend themselves and their community. A company of recruits from the Wisconsin 26th Regiment formed themselves into two scouting units, both of which returned to report that there was no threat of an Indian attack. Even after the excitement had subsided, many frightened farm families could not be persuaded to return home.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Nicole Perlroth, Michael Wines, and Matthew Rosenberg report that Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny:

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.

Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.

Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before….

Jennifer Rubin asks That’s all Trump’s lawyers have?:

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on two memos President Trump’s lawyers prepared for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III:

One memo submitted to Mr. Mueller by the president’s legal team in June laid out the case that Mr. Trump has the inherent authority under the constitution to hire and fire as he sees fit and therefore didn’t obstruct justice when he fired Mr. Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May, these people said.

Another memo submitted the same month outlined why Mr. Comey would make an unsuitable witness, calling him prone to exaggeration, unreliable in congressional testimony and the source of leaks to the news media, these people said.

As legal arguments, these are pathetic. Taking the last one first, arguing to Comey’s long-time colleague Mueller that Comey is a liar won’t win the day, nor does it pass the laugh test. Comey’s testimony will be lined up against written evidence and other witness testimony and actually may come out looking even more credible as a result. This is the sort of weak assertion one would make on Sean Hannity’s show; it’s not worthy of consideration by Mueller or any other serious prosecutor.

The “he can fire at will” argument is obviously flawed for at least three reasons. The argument is so bad one wonders if the Trump team is not ready for prime time or is simply trying to provide fodder for his cult-like following to support him if he tries to fire Mueller.

Bill Buzenberg catches readers up on All the Trump-Russia News You May Have Missed:

As crises both national and international have set in this month, Trump has been on a tear, from his comments blaming “both sides” for the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to his brazen pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas. Somewhat lost in the fire and fury (literally) has been a series of consequential developments concerning the multiple ongoing investigations into Team Trump’s ties to and possible collusion with Russia.

Perhaps the biggest of the bunch: On August 27, the Washington Post reported that Trump was actively pursuing a deal to build a “massive” Trump Tower in Moscow while campaigning for the presidency. And the New York Times exposed a series of emails between Trump’s business associate Felix Sater and his lawyer Michael Cohen, in which Sater boasted about how the Moscow deal could help Trump win the White House. “Our boy can become president of the USA,” Sater wrote, “and we can engineer it.”

Here are some of the other Russia investigation-related developments you may have missed in recent weeks: [list follows]….

Ronald Brownstein writes of Why a Republican Pollster Is Losing Faith in Her Party:

Good morning.

A new month begins in Whitewater under partly cloudy skies with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 07m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 78.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1939, the Second World War begins as Nazi Germany invades Poland. On this day in 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs is born. Burroughs used the Midwest in his stories: “In chapter 27 of “Tarzan of the Apes”, Burroughs depicts Tarzan saving Jane from a forest fire in Wisconsin. ”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Chris Smith observes that Robert Mueller’s Lines of Attack Are Getting Clearer:

Robert Mueller is not ending the summer with a tan. The 73-year-old special counsel leading the sprawling Department of Justice investigation into alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia is keeping the same grueling hours he did a decade ago as director of the F.B.I. Mueller is among the first of his team to arrive in their borrowed offices inside Washington’s Patrick Henry office building every morning and one of the last to leave each night.

More of what’s going on behind Mueller’s office door is showing up in public, though, a sign of the growing momentum of his probes into possible collusion, money laundering, election hacking, and obstruction of justice. NBC News reported that Mueller has obtained notes from the phone of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, that include a cryptic reference to “donations” and “RNC.” The notes were apparently taken during a meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower. And Politico’s Josh Dawsey broke the news that Mueller has begun working with the office of New York state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. (The offices of Mueller and Schneiderman declined to comment.)

The special counsel’s staff had been in touch with Schneiderman’s office for months, exchanging information and discussing whether they might coordinate their efforts, because the attorney general has spent years looking into Trump’s finances. He added to that knowledge in March by hiring Howard Master, who had been deputy chief of the criminal division under former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bharara’s office had assembled a major money-laundering case against 11 Russian companies; the scheme had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow jail under mysterious circumstances. A defense lawyer who represented the Russian companies, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was part of the now-famous Trump Tower meeting, supposedly to discuss adoptions, during last year’s presidential campaign….

Andrew Prokop offers Paul Manafort’s central role in the Trump-Russia investigation, explained (“Why Robert Mueller appears to be zeroing in on the former Trump campaign manager”):

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation about Russian collusion has increasingly appeared to zero in on one particular Trump associate: Paul Manafort.

In July, we learned that Manafort — Trump’s former campaign manager — attended a meeting Donald Trump Jr. set up with a Russian lawyer last year to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Later that month, the FBI raided Manafort’s house for documents. His business associates, from PR firms to his former lawyer and his current spokesperson, are being slammed with subpoenas from Mueller’s team. Even Manafort’s son-in-law has reportedly been approached and asked to cooperate with the investigation.

“If I represented Paul Manafort, I would conclude that my client has significant criminal liability,” says Renato Mariotti, a partner at Thompson Coburn and a former prosecutor for a US Attorney’s office in Illinois….

David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby report Kushners’ China Deal Flop Was Part of Much Bigger Hunt for Cash: 

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, wakes up each morning to a growing problem that will not go away. His family’s real estate business, Kushner Cos., owes hundreds of millions of dollars on a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue. It has failed to secure foreign investors, despite an extensive search, and its resources are more limited than generally understood. As a result, the company faces significant challenges.

Over the past two years, executives and family members have sought substantial overseas investment from previously undisclosed places: South Korea’s sovereign-wealth fund, France’s richest man, Israeli banks and insurance companies, and exploratory talks with a Saudi developer, according to former and current executives. These were in addition to previously reported attempts to raise money in China and Qatar.

The family, once one of the largest landlords on the East Coast, sold thousands of apartments to finance its purchase of the tower in 2007 and has borrowed extensively for other purchases. They are walking away from a Brooklyn hotel once considered central to their plans for an office hub. From other properties, they are extracting cash, including tens of millions in borrowed funds from the recently acquired former New York Times building. What’s more, their partner in the Fifth Avenue building, Vornado Realty Trust, headed by Steve Roth, has stood aside, allowing the Kushners to pursue financing on their own….

Aaron Blake finds A very intriguing new subplot in the saga of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting:

The Washington Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Karoun Demirjian had previously reported that Manafort took notes during the [June 2016] meeting — notes that naturally were of interest to investigators — but this appears to be the first report to indicate he did so using his phone.

Why is that significant? Because Manafort being on his phone was presented by both Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, as evidence of his disinterest in the meeting. It was used to suggest that the meeting was rather insignificant — a disappointment to all involved — and didn’t go anywhere. Trump Jr. and others have said that the information promised was a bust and was never used by the Trump campaign, whatever their intent in accepting the meeting was….

Precisely what this means is up in the air. But Trump Jr.’s version of the Russia meeting has been wrong before. And it doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that maybe he misunderstood how closely Manafort was paying attention in that meeting in June 2016 — and documenting the proceedings.

NASA highlights What’s Up for September 2017: