Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon showers with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:33 PM, for 15h 06m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832, General Henry Atkinson’s troops begin construction of Fort Koshkonong after being forced backwards from the bog area of the “trembling lands” in their pursuit of Black Hawk: “The Fort, later known as Fort Atkinson, was described by Atkinson as “a stockade work flanked by four block houses for the security of our supplies and the accommodation of the sick.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Rich Kremer reports Search Committee Named to Find Next UW System President:

University of Wisconsin Board of Regents President Edmund Manydeeds has named a 19-member search committee charged with selecting a new UW System president. The announcement comes just more than a year after a previous search failed, with the sole finalist withdrawing his candidacy citing “process issues.”

The naming of the search committee kicks off what is expected to be a 10- to 12-month process to find a new leader to replace interim President Tommy Thompson, who has held the job since July 1, 2020.

The committee is more than twice the size of the previous presidential search committee, which drew anger and multiple resolutions from campus employee and student government groups because it didn’t include faculty, staff or non-regent students.

Regent Vice President Karen Walsh will chair the search committee, which includes four other board members, two former regents, three chancellors, two provosts and a campus vice chancellor along with professors and staff members from multiple UW campuses.

 Maya Yang reports Charlottesville removes Confederate statues that helped spark deadly rally:

Work was under way on Saturday morning to remove a statue to a Confederate general that helped spark a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

The small Virginia city said the equestrian statue of Gen Robert E Lee and a nearby statue of Gen Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson would be removed to storage. Designated public viewing areas for the removals had been established.

A crane was moved into place and workers were preparing as the sun came up first to hoist Lee away. Just after 8am local time, the statue of the man on his horse was hoisted slowly off its plinth.

Charlottesville’s mayor, Nikuyah Walker, gave a speech in front of public and media as the lifting equipment was moved into position.

(America’s seditious enemies are unworthy of America statues.)

 Philip Bump writes A third of White conservatives refuse to get vaccinated — a refusal shown in polling and the real world:

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released over the weekend shows a stark divide in vaccination hesitancy by political group. Overall, about a fifth of Americans say they definitely won’t get vaccinated. That’s about the percentage for independents and Whites overall. But among Republicans and White conservatives, the figure is more than a third.

If you’re skeptical of those results, fair enough. But there is a correlation in the real world: States that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 have almost uniformly seen lower densities of vaccinations than states that voted for Biden. About the time that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was paused, the two groups of states diverged, with blue states continuing to add vaccinations far faster than red ones.

Poor People’s Campaign co-chair on voting rights, poverty:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:34 PM, for 15h 08m 10s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1962, Starfish Prime tests the effects of a nuclear explosion at orbital altitudes.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Molly Beck reports Tony Evers signs Republican-written state budget that cuts income taxes, announces $100 million more for schools:

WHITEFISH BAY – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday signed into law a new state budget written by Republican lawmakers that includes billions in income tax cuts and announced he would be providing school districts with an additional $100 million in federal funding to make up for what he characterized as a plan that falls short for schools.

The Democratic governor signed the $87.3 billion two-year state spending plan in an elementary school library in a Milwaukee suburb, igniting his reelection campaign that will rely on areas like Whitefish Bay where a shifting electorate could prove crucial in Wisconsin’s tight statewide races.

The governor tweaked the plan using his veto authority in 50 largely minor areas but left intact the centerpiece of the Republican plan — a more than $2 billion tax cut package that would reduce the state’s third tax bracket for about half of Wisconsin residents to 5.3%.

 Shamane Mills reports DOJ: Wisconsin Could Get $65M Under Proposed Opioid Settlement:

Wisconsin could receive $65 million from a proposed $4.3 billion multistate settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced Thursday.

In 2019, Attorney General Josh Kaul filed suit against Purdue alleging the maker of OxyContin helped ignite the drug crisis with deceptive marketing claims.

“It’s critical that we hold those responsible for the opioid epidemic accountable,” said Kaul in a statement announcing a proposed settlement. “No lawsuit can undo the destruction the opioid epidemic has caused. But by recovering funds from those whose unlawful conduct led to the opioid crisis, we can support prevention, treatment, and recovery programs and deter the kind of conduct that led to the epidemic.”

Wisconsin is one of 15 states that dropped their opposition to the Purdue Pharma Oxycontin bankruptcy plan which critics initially thought let the Sackler family, which made billions off the sale of opioids, off too easily.

 Rebecca Beitsch reports Trump appointee erred in firing Voice of America whistleblowers: watchdog:

A government watchdog found the Trump-appointed leader of Voice of America (VOA) erred in his dismissal of six employees, which was likely retaliation against whistleblowers and wrongly stripped some of them of their security clearances.

President Biden dismissed U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) CEO Michael Pack on his first day in office following a string of complaints by employees that he was politicizing VOA and other state-funded media outlets.

Five of the employees in question have already been reinstated to their positions by the new administration, but the Thursday review from the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) clears all the employees of wrongdoing, while documents reviewed by The Hill include some previously unreported details about strife at the agency.

….

“What is shocking are OIG’s discovery of the many more ways Pack and his political appointees – while running USAGM for a mere six months – managed to break the law, abuse authority, endanger public health and safety and grossly mismanage the agency,” David Seide, a whistleblower attorney with the Government Accountability Project who represented one of the employees, said in a statement.

Pack faced complaints from more than 30 whistleblowers during his tenure, firing six on the same day who had protested management decisions while at USAGM.

Zaila Avant-garde wins Scripps National Spelling Bee:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:25 AM and sunset 8:34 PM, for 15h 09m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 2.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1789, James Madison introduces twelve proposed amendments to the United States Constitution in Congress.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ricardo Torres reports ‘We never agreed to anything’: Foxconn area property owners get $1.6 million they didn’t ask for and their business is landlocked:

It may seem like the Ericksons got a good deal from the Village of Mount Pleasant: $1.6 million for less than 2 acres of land to help make way for the massive Foxconn project.

But it’s a deal the family didn’t ask for, or agree to, and now they’re waging a fight against the village.

“It closed our business,” Jack Erickson said. “So when you say you got $1.6 million for an acre and a half; well, an acre and a half plus you closed our business. And you landlocked us on 11 acres. They know what they’re doing.”

Jack and his wife, Colleen, have owned and operated Erickson Trucks-N-Parts since 1997 in Mount Pleasant. In 2016, they were planning to construct a new building on their property along the frontage road.

Then, in 2017 the Foxconn Technology Group announced it would be building a massive campus in Mount Pleasant, and the Ericksons’ property was in Area I of the development.

Now the Ericksons are one of the few remaining private properties in the Foxconn area. They’ve launched a fight against the village to prevent officials from declaring the property blighted, be fairly compensated for their property or have access to a public road so they can maintain their business.

See also FREE WHITEWATER‘s dedicated category on Foxconn.

 Paul Waldman writes Trump’s latest ridiculous lawsuit shows how small he has become:

The lawsuit itself is so laughable that it gives away the game; not even Trump could think this is something he’d actually win.

His complaint against Facebook — presumably prepared by actual lawyers, hard as that may be to believe — claims that it “rises beyond that of a private company to that of a state actor. As such, Defendant is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech in the censorship decisions it makes regarding its Users.”

It goes on to use the word “unconstitutional” again and again to describe Facebook’s decisions, despite the fact that only government action is or isn’t constitutional.

Facebook may be one of the most pernicious forces on Earth, but it’s a private company that set up rules for those who chose to use its service. Trump repeatedly violated those rules, and was kicked off. It really isn’t all that complicated, and it’s the furthest thing from “unconstitutional.”

….

To repeat, even if the companies were just removing Republicans for being Republicans (which they aren’t), they would have every right to do so.

Ambitious politicians often stage stunts to appeal to their party’s base; the dumber they think that base is, the dumber the stunts will be. But Trump is a former president. No one expected him to discover dignity for the first time in his 75 years, yet so much of what he is doing these days is just petty and small.

And what is this suit about? It’s about money, of course. As soon as Trump announced the suit, fundraising texts were blasted out to his supporters.

“President Trump is filing a LAWSUIT against Facebook and Twitter for UNFAIR CENSORSHIP!” they read. “Please contribute IMMEDIATELY to INCREASE your impact by 500% and to get your name on the Donor List President Trump sees!”

Sikh soldier honors his religion and his country:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered thunderstorms with a high of 80. Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 10m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 6.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832 during the Black Hawk War, General Atkinson leads his entire militia, which includes future presidents Abraham Lincoln and Zachary Taylor, to a camp just south of Palmyra

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Kelly Meyerhofer reports UW System proposes no tuition increase for in-state students despite freeze set to be lifted:

Tuition for in-state undergraduates enrolled at a University of Wisconsin System campus will remain flat over the next school year under a plan put forth by System officials.

That’s despite the UW Board of Regents being poised to have its tuition-setting authority restored for the first time in eight years under a state budget that Gov. Tony Evers must act on by Friday.

….

UW leaders have long lamented the freeze. In 2019-20, UW-Madison charged in-state undergraduates the fifth-lowest tuition rate among public Big Ten schools and charged out-of-state students the third-highest.

Asked why interim System President Tommy Thompson didn’t include a tuition increase in the budget, System spokesperson Mark Pitsch said only that the Regents and Thompson “are committed to a thoughtful consideration of tuition.”

The average cost of attending college this year will, however, increase slightly.

When factoring in room and board, along with student fees, System officials calculate the average cost for a Wisconsin student living on campus will increase 1%, or $160 at four-year campuses. At UW-Madison, student fees will decrease from $1,469 to $1,447, dorm rates will increase by about $200 and meal plans will cost $50 more.

The budget Republicans forwarded to Evers also includes $8.25 million in additional state money for the System, a fraction of the $96 million UW requested and all of which is tied to a specific purpose. That means campuses will have to find a way to foot their portion of a 2% pay increase for UW employees in each of the next two years — about $8.4 million — with existing funds.

Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger reports Attempted Hack of R.N.C. and Russian Ransomware Attack Test Biden:

Russian hackers are accused of breaching a contractor for the Republican National Committee last week, around the same time that Russian cybercriminals launched the single largest global ransomware attack on record, incidents that are testing the red lines set by President Biden during his high-stakes summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month.

The R.N.C. said in a statement on Tuesday that one of its technology providers, Synnex, had been hacked. While the extent of the attempted breach remained unclear, the committee said none of its data had been accessed.

Early indications were that the culprit was Russia’s S.V.R. intelligence agency, according to investigators in the case. The S.V.R. is the group that initially hacked the Democratic National Committee six years ago and more recently conducted the SolarWinds attack that penetrated more than a half-dozen government agencies and many of the largest U.S. corporations.

The R.N.C. attack was the second of apparent Russian origin to become public in the last few days, and it was unclear late Tuesday whether the two were related. On Sunday, a Russian-based cybercriminal organization known as REvil claimed responsibility for a cyberattack over the long holiday weekend that has spread to 800 to 1,500 businesses around the world. It was one of the largest attacks in history in which hackers shut down systems until a ransom is paid, security researchers said.

Student Completes One of the World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzles:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 92. Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 11m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 11.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1885, Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister, a boy who was bitten by a rabid dog.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Marchese interviews Rep. Adam Kinzinger on the Moral Failure of Republicans and the Big Lie:

Do you suspect that some members of Congress were aware of what was going to happen that day and supported it? I won’t name names, but yes, I do have that suspicion. I will say, if you just looked at Twitter — the whole reason I brought my gun and kept my staff home and told my wife to stay in the apartment was looking at Twitter. I saw the threats. When Lauren Boebert — I will call her out by name — tweeted “Today is 1776,” I don’t know what that meant other than this is the time for revolution. Maybe it was a dumb tweet that she didn’t mean. Fine. I’ll give her that credit for now. But if you have members of Congress who were involved in nurturing an insurrection, heck yeah, we need to know.

….

What’s your sense of whether Trump was sui generis or a particularly bad symptom of trends that had already been going on in the Republican Party? The best analogy I can give: He’s like a gangrenous limb. But then that limb gets cut off, and now you don’t have a leg. He’s a symptom of what probably was about a quarter of the party that was always kind of conspiracy-driven but was generally suppressed by most normal Republicans. But everybody has fear in their heart, and when somebody, especially somebody in authority, speaks to the darkest parts of your heart, your fears, your racism — it gives you permission to let those things overtake you. That’s what happened with a lot of the rest of the party.

 Amy Gardner reports In ramp-up to 2022 midterms, Republican candidates center pitches on Trump’s false election claims:

 John Flesher reports As many as a third of Wisconsin’s wolves were killed after the species dropped from the endangered species list, study says:

As many as one-third of Wisconsin’s gray wolves likely died at the hands of humans in the months after the federal government announced it was ending legal protections, according to a study released Monday.

Poaching and a February hunt that far exceeded kill quotas were largely responsible for the drop-off, University of Wisconsin scientists said, though some other scientists say more direct evidence is needed for some of the calculations.

Adrian Treves, an environmental studies professor, said his team’s findings should raise doubts about having another hunting season this fall and serve notice to wildlife managers in other states with wolves.

Removing federal protections “opens the door for antagonists to kill large numbers in short periods, legally and illegally,” Treves and two colleagues said in a paper published by the journal PeerJ. “The history of political scapegoating of wolves may repeat itself.”

This Argentinian city is turning vacant land into urban food gardens:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 92. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 12m 38s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 17.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832, General Atkinson and his troops enter the area known by indigenous people as “trembling lands” in their pursuit of Black Hawk: “Many of the militiamen were on horses, which plunged to their bellies in the swamp. The “trembling lands” forced Atkinson to retrace his steps back toward the Rock River, in the process losing days in his pursuit of Black Hawk.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Heather Long reports 20 million Americans still don’t have enough to eat. A grass-roots movement of free fridges aims to help:

PHILADELPHIA — Darrell Brokenborough opened the bright yellow refrigerator that stood on the sidewalk outside a row home at 308 N. 39th St., smiled and said, “It’s full.” He balanced on his cane so he could take a closer look at the apples, yogurt, greens, pasta, cheese and chicken inside. On the front of the fridge was written: “Free food” and “Take what you need. Leave what you don’t.”

Brokenborough grabbed several bags of apple slices to slip in his slim over-the-shoulder bag. He tried to stuff some applesauce containers in his pouch but returned the applesauce for someone else. His favorite groceries are fresh bagels and cream cheese, which weren’t there this time.

“I always recommend the fridge to my friends with kids. There’s always something healthy here,” he said, calling the free food he gets at the fridge on his way to and from a nearby medical facility a “blessing.”

Philadelphia now has more than 20 of these refrigerators sitting outside homes and restaurants, offering free food to anyone passing by. Volunteers keep the fridges clean and stocked with food donated from grocery stores, restaurants, local farmers and anyone with extra to share.

The concept of the community fridge ? sometimes called a “freedge” ? has been around for more than a decade, but it exploded during the pandemic as hunger spiked in the United States and worldwide. Images of thousands of cars lined up at U.S. food banks shocked the nation, and people looked for ways to help. There are now about 200 of these community fridges in the United States, up from about 15 before the pandemic, according to the organizers of the Freedge website, at freedge.org.

“There was a big focus on mutual aid in the past year in the U.S. as people were losing jobs. People wanted to bridge the gap between people who have food and people who don’t,” said Ernst Bertone Oehninger, who set up a freedge outside his Davis, Calif., home in 2014 and serves as a community organizer for Freedge. “Community fridges won’t solve all the problems of food insecurity and food waste, but they help people connect, like community gardens.”

(Key info: Whitewater once had, and perhaps still does, at least one Little Free Pantry. She now also has, to caring volunteers’ credit, a Community Space located at 834 E. Milwaukee Street where residents can find basic provisions.)

The Associated Press reports Neenah Inc. To Close Appleton Paper Mill By September:

The company did not say how many employees will be affected by the shutdown of the plant, which Neenah Inc. expanded about five years ago. But, according to the Cities Chamber of Commerce’s website, the facility employs about 100 people.

The facility isn’t the first of its kind to close in the Fox Valley. Clearwater Paper Corp. announced last month the indefinite closure of its paper mill in Neenah where nearly 300 people are employed.

Tonight’s Sky for July:

Good morning.

Independence Day in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 92. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 13m 36s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 25.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Independence Day events include the Whippet City Mile at 11:30 AM, a parade at Noon, amusements, food vendors from Noon to 10 PM, Steve Meisner at 3:30 PM, the band Cold Sweat and the Brew City Horns 7-10 PM, and fireworks @ 10 PM.

On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratifies the text of the Declaration of Independence, after having voted unanimously for separation from Great Britain two days earlier. 

Recommended for reading in full — 

Kellen Browning reports Hundreds of Businesses, From Sweden to U.S., Affected by Cyberattack:

Hundreds of businesses around the world, including one of Sweden’s largest grocery chains, grappled on Saturday with potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities after a software provider that provides services to more than 40,000 organizations, Kaseya, said it had been the victim of a “sophisticated cyberattack.”

Security researchers said the attack may have been carried out by REvil, a Russian cybercriminal group that the F.B.I. has said was behind the hacking of the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, in May.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos writes The Supreme Court showcased its ‘textualist’ double standard on voting rights:

Today’s conservative judges pride themselves on being textualists. When interpreting a statute, they always start with the law’s text. Unless the law is ambiguous, they end with the text, too. As Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. put it just last year, the courts’ focus must never waver from what a statute’s “words were understood to mean at the time of enactment.” Any other approach, even one that “sails under a textualist flag,” Alito lectured, is “like a pirate ship” — inappropriate and illegitimate.

So it was a shock to see the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by none other than Alito, stacking one extra-textual constraint after another onto Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. That provision prohibits any “standard, practice, or procedure” that makes it disproportionately harder for minority citizens to vote. In that situation, voting isn’t “equally open” to citizens of all races, and minority citizens “have less opportunity” to vote.

But Alito, and the five conservative justices who joined his opinion in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, were unwilling to heed this clear textual command. They invented several limits that will make it harder for plaintiffs to win future Section 2 cases — and that appear nowhere in Section 2’s language.

One of these is a requirement that a law impose more than the “usual burdens of voting,” before being struck down. But Section 2 states that it applies to any “denial or abridgment” of the right to vote. The court qualified that broad language, effectively inserting the word “substantial” before “abridgment,” with no basis in the text.

The court also manufactured out of whole cloth a principle that, even if a particular regulation is racially discriminatory, it can be overlooked if a state offers “other available means” for voting. Maybe that’s a good idea; maybe not. But it wasn’t Congress’s idea. On the contrary, Congress made clear that each electoral restriction must be analyzed separately.

The court’s most astonishing extra-textual move, however, was its pronouncement that one “relevant consideration” is “the degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice” in 1982, when Section 2 was revised in response to an earlier Supreme Court ruling. Why on earth would that be? The provision never says that. In fact, Section 2’s whole point is to unsettle the status quo, to end voting restrictions that disproportionately harm minority citizens. The provision aspires to move American democracy forward, not keep it fixed forever in 1982.

Meet The Last Artisans Making Traditional Bagpipes By Hand In Scotland’s Capital:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 89. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 14m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 33.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Independence Weekend events include amusements (with a wristband special of $20 from 12-4 PM), food vendors from Noon to 10 PM,  a car show 2 – 7 PM, the band Wunderlich from 7-10 PM, and fireworks @ 10 PM.

On this day in 1863, the Union is victorious on the third and final day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Frum writes Trump Is Preparing for the Worst:

So far, the danger is to Trump’s friends and his business, not the former president himself. But the danger could spiral, because Trump knew only so many tricks. If Trump’s company was bypassing relatively moderate amounts of tax on the income flows to Trump’s friends, what was it doing with the much larger income flows to Trump and his own family? Even without personal testimony, finances leave a trail. There is always a debit and a credit, and a check issued to the IRS or not.

An early indication that things may end badly for Trump is the statement released today from the Trump Organization. “Allen Weisselberg is a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather who has worked for the Trump Organization for 48 years. He is now being used by the Manhattan District Attorney as a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President. The District Attorney is bringing a case involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other District Attorney would ever think of bringing. This is not justice; this is politics.”

Here is what is missing from that statement: “I’m 100 percent confident that every investigation will always end up in the same conclusion, which is that I follow all rules, procedures, and, most importantly, the law.” That’s the language used by former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke when he was facing ethics charges in 2018. Likewise, when Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was accused of violating campaign-finance laws in 2016, he too was “very confident” that “there was no wrongdoing.” Plug the phrases very confident and no wrongdoing into a search engine and you will pull up statement after statement by politicians and business leaders under fire. For some, their matter worked out favorably; for others, not so much. Either way, everybody expects you to say that you’re confident you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the thing an innocent person would want to say. So it’s kind of a tell when it goes unsaid.

 Catherine Rampell writes One economic prediction I’m glad to have been wrong about:

Early in the pandemic — with entire industries shuttered and millions of workers laid off — state tax revenue plummeted. Demand for government-supplied assistance of various kinds spiked. Understandably, forecasts for state budgets looked ugly.

The implications for the economy were troubling, since state budget problems can drag on the private-sector recovery.

This is what happened during and after the Great Recession. That downturn left states and municipalities strapped for cash; state and local governments’ own-source revenues (those excluding federal grants) plunged by 8 percent and stayed below their prerecession level for years. Balanced-budget requirements and insufficient federal aid forced states to implement austerity measures, which then rippled throughout the rest of the economy.

More than a year into the pandemic, though, things look quite different.

After an initial dip, tax revenue quickly rebounded. Nominal state and local tax receipts over the past four quarters were slightly higher than over the preceding year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Recent state tax revenue data from the Urban Institute shows strong growth so far in 2021, with states’ coffers likely to fatten further as the economy rebounds.

Siberian center uses tattoos to protect rare falcons: