Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-six.  Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 4:28 PM, for 9h 36m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Parks and Recreation Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1928, the animated short Steamboat Willie premieres as the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ellen Nakashima and Nick Miroff report Trump fires top DHS official who refuted his claims that the election was rigged:

President Trump on Tuesday fired a top Department of Homeland Security official who led the agency’s efforts to help secure the election and was vocal about tamping down unfounded claims of ballot fraud.

In a tweet, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at DHS and led successful efforts to help state and local election offices protect their systems and to rebut misinformation.

Earlier Tuesday, Krebs in a tweet refuted allegations that election systems were manipulated, saying that “59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’

Krebs’s statement amounted to a debunking of Trump’s central claim that the November election was stolen.
….

Krebs’s dismissal was not unexpected, as he told associates last week that he was expecting to be fired. His latest tweet about the security of the election, which followed similar earlier assessments by his agency, including on its Rumor Control Web page, angered the president, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

In recent weeks Trump has made repeated, unproved charges of voter and ballot fraud, and his campaign is challenging election results in several states — so far with little success.

Krebs’s agency has asserted its independence in recent days, on Thursday issuing a statement thatcontradicted Trump’s allegations of fraud.

Sam Levine reports Pennsylvania court deals blow to Trump campaign’s bid to overturn Biden win:

Philadelphia election officials did not improperly block Donald Trump’s campaign from observing the counting of mail-in ballots, the Pennsylvania supreme court ruled on Tuesday, a major blow to the president’s alreadyflailing legal efforts.

The decision is significant because one of the Trump campaign’s loudest claims since the election has been that they were improperly blocked from observing the counting of ballots in Philadelphia.

….

Even the two Republican justices who dissented from the majority opinion disagreed with the idea, advanced by the Trump campaign, that legitimate votes should be rejected because of improper observation practices.

“Short of demonstrated fraud, the notion that presumptively valid ballots cast by the Pennsylvania electorate would be disregarded based on isolated procedural irregularities that have been redressed – thus disenfranchising potentially thousands of voters – is misguided,” wrote chief justice Thomas Saylor in his dissenting opinion.

“Accordingly, to the degree that there is a concern with protecting or legitimizing the will of the Philadelphians who cast their votes while candidate representatives were unnecessarily restrained at the convention center, I fail to see that there is any real issue.”

Dachshund and turtle playing soccer:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 6:51 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 38m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1989, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia begins when riot police quell a student demonstration in Prague, leading to an uprising aimed at overthrowing the communist government (that succeeds on December 29).

Recommended for reading in full — 

Katherine Faulders, Anne Flaherty, and Benjamin Siegel report GSA official blocking Biden’s transition appears to privately plan post-Trump career:

Emily Murphy, head of the GSA, recently sent that message to an associate inquiring about employment opportunities in 2021, a move that some in Washington interpreted as at least tacitly acknowledging that the current administration soon will be gone.

Murphy has the power to decide — or “ascertain” — when election results are evident enough to trigger a transition of power, allowing the winning team access to career staff at federal agencies and internal government information including national security matters and plans for administering a COVID-19 vaccine.

Donald Trump appointed Murphy in 2017, and she’s so far refused to certify Biden as the election’s winner as Trump attempts to overturn the election result in court.

A White House spokesperson referred ABC News to the GSA when reached for comment.

A GSA spokesperson denied the account that Murphy was actively looking for a job, but noted that it wouldn’t be unusual for someone in government, especially a political appointee, to consider future opportunities.

Adam Satariano interviews A former right-wing media creator on how a ‘different reality’ became so prominent:

Matthew Sheffield started his first conservative website in 2000, dedicating it to criticizing the former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who Mr. Sheffield believed was a partisan liberal and not critical enough of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Mr. Sheffield then went on to help create NewsBusters, another right-leaning website that criticized the mainstream media for liberal bias. Later, he became the founding online managing editor of the Washington Examiner, another popular outlet for conservative views.

“I basically built the infrastructure for a lot of conservative online people and personally taught a lot of them what they know,” he said.

But Mr. Sheffield, who is 42 and lives in the Los Angeles area, grew disillusioned in recent years. He said facts were treated as an acceptable casualty in the broader political war. “The end justifies the means,” said Mr. Sheffield, who hosts a politics and technology podcast called Theory of Change and is writing a memoir about growing up in a strict Mormon family. He now blames right-wing media for undermining faith in American democracy by spreading unsubstantiated claims by President Trump and others that the election was rigged. Through websites and platforms like Facebook and YouTube, Mr. Sheffield said, right-wing media has created an environment in which a large portion of the population believes in a “different reality.”

….

Would this be possible without Facebook and social media platforms?

Facebook is the primary protector and enabler of the far right in the United States, without question. The company has sheltered and promoted this content for years. Mark Zuckerberg even now says that Steve Bannon calling for beheadings is not justification to ban him. Zuckerberg was also fine with tolerating Holocaust denial until he was called out for it.

 ‘Baby Yoda’ in space with SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-three.  Sunrise is 6:49 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 40m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:30 PM, and the Library Board via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1990, Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Ishaan Tharoor reports Europe is ready for Biden to get started:

President Trump and his supporters don’t seem to think it’s over. Over the weekend, thousands marched in Washington protesting the election result. On Twitter, Trump vowed to not concede and repeated baseless and false claims of widespread voter fraud. On Sunday network shows, analysts puzzled over whether Trump’s defiance ought to be read as a corrosive threat to American democracy or one last farce in the waning twilight of his presidency.

But across the Atlantic, societies and governments seem eager to turn the page. A recent Morning Consult poll found that news of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory almost immediately boosted the U.S.’s net favorability by more than 20 points in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

During a parliamentary session last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson referred to Trump as the “previous president.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed Biden’s election and hoped he would reinvigorate transatlantic ties. The United States and the European Union “must stand together in order to face the great challenges of our time,” Merkel said.

Those challenges include climate change. Biden is expected to return the United States to the Paris climate pact upon his January inauguration. French President Emmanuel Macron said a Biden presidency presented a new chance to “make our planet great again.”

Susan Hennessey writes How Did a Trump Loyalist Come to Be Named NSA General Counsel—And What Should Biden Do About It?:

Earlier this week, the Washington Post broke the story that Michael Ellis—a former staffer for Rep. Devin Nunes and current National Security Council (NSC) official—has been selected as general counsel of the National Security Agency. This set off alarm bells among commentators and those familiar with the agency, in part because it comes in the same week in which Trump summarily fired the top civilian leadership of the Department of Defense and installed loyalists and cronies in their places.

The circumstances of Ellis’s selection, however, point to something different—and in some respects worse—than the developments at the Pentagon. The firings at the Defense Department involve political appointees, nearly all of whom will be gone as of Jan. 20. By contrast, selecting Ellis as NSA general counsel appears to be an attempt to improperly politicize an important career position. Relatedly, it appears to be an effort to “burrow,” or improperly convert a political appointee into a career position. And to make matters worse, the ample public record suggests that Ellis is particularly ill-suited to discharge the essential functions of the office.

While important details remain unclear, media accounts include numerous indications of irregularity in the process by which Ellis was selected for the job, including interference by the White House. At a minimum, the evidence of possible violations of civil service rules demand immediate investigation by Congress and the inspectors general of the Department of Defense and NSA.

 SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts in space – Booster landing, Dragon separation:

NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Michael Hopkins and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi are in space after their Falcon 9 launch on Nov. 15, 2020.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy & windy with a high of thirty-seven.  Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 4:30 PM, for 9h 42m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe is born in Sun Prairie.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David J. Lynch writes Raging virus triggers new shutdown orders and economy braces for fresh wave of pain (‘Containing raging disease is key to healing the economy’):

“We see stronger growth in 2021. But we need a bridge to get there,” said economist Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics. “The outlook is honestly quite dark.”

The backsliding comes after a stronger-than-expected rebound from this spring’s abrupt recession. Slightly more than half of the 22 million Americans who lost their jobs when nonessential businesses closed have returned to work, and the current 6.9 percent unemployment rate is well below the double-digit figures that most Wall Street economists originally had forecast. Output expanded in the third quarter at a record rate.

Yet with more than 11 million still jobless, the United States is in danger of squandering the hard-won progress it has made in rebuilding the economy. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the rampaging virus represented “an emergency of the highest magnitude.” But she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have held no talks on a new rescue package.

In El Paso, local officials have deployed 10 mobile morgue trailers to handle a backlog of corpses. The county’s top elected official this week extended a shutdown of nonessential businesses until Dec. 1, ordering residents to stay home and avoid travel.

The pandemic has driven roughly 300 companies out of business in the border community, according to David Jerome, the president of the local chamber of commerce. An additional 300 companies — restaurants, hair salons and retail shops — have only enough cash on hand to survive for less than a month.

“We’re hitting a bit of a tipping point,” Jerome said. “People are getting to the point where they’re pretty stretched. People are vulnerable.”

Eight months into a historic crisis, the United States appears to be suspended in a sort of economic purgatory. The labor market is slowly healing, with initial unemployment claims falling for four straight weeks. But the virus outlook is grim and getting grimmer.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs reports Biden Faces Early Test With Immigration and Homeland Security After Trump:

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has said that one of his first priorities will be rolling back his predecessor’s restrictive immigration policies. To do it, he may have to overhaul the Department of Homeland Security, which has been bent to President Trump’s will over the past four years.

The department, created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has helped enforce some of Mr. Trump’s most divisive policies, like separating families at the border, banning travel from Muslim-majority countries and building his border wall. When the president tried to reframe his campaign around law and order this year, homeland security leaders rallied to the cause, deploying tactical officers to protect statues and confront protesters.

After agents were videotaped hauling demonstrators off the streets of Portland, Ore., into unmarked vans, department critics called for systemic changes to the agency, or even its dismantlement. But the incoming administration is intent on keeping the department intact.

Still, change is coming.

Interviews with 16 current and former homeland security officials and advisers involved with Mr. Biden’s transition, and a review of his platform, suggest an agenda that aims to incorporate climate change in department policy, fill vacant posts and bolster responsibilities that Mr. Trump neglected, including disaster response and cybersecurity.

 Digital Car Windows Could Make Your City Safer:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see light afternoon showers with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:47 AM and sunset 4:31 PM, for 9h 44m 25s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is published in America.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Philip Bump writes This is what the pandemic is doing to the country:

On Wednesday, 31 states were at the highest seven-day averages of new coronavirus cases they had seen since the pandemic erupted this year. Twenty-two states were reporting more hospitalizations than at any previous point. Ten states saw their highest seven-day averages of deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

We are in the middle of the third coronavirus surge the country has seen over 2020. The first ended in early April after the number of new cases confirmed each day reached 31,000. The second began in early June, just as Vice President Pence was writing that the country was not undergoing a second wave of infections. By July 22, the country was seeing 67,000 new cases a day before the surge receded.

The current surge, the third, began Sept. 12. It is ongoing, with the country exceeding 127,000 new cases Wednesday — as many cases that day as were added in total from the beginning of the pandemic through March 28.

….

The White House has repeatedly touted the fact that a smaller percentage of those who contract the virus are dying than earlier in the pandemic, which is true. It is also true both that the ratio of new cases to deaths has been fairly steady since early July and that the current surge in cases threatens to fill hospitals with coronavirus patients, reducing hospital capacity for any type of patient, covid-19-related or not. The point of “flattening the curve” this year wasn’t just to limit the spread of the virus; it was to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. In some states, they already are.

Dhruv Khullar writes The Pandemic’s Winter Surge Is Here:

Almost every flu pandemic since the eighteenth century has come with a second wave; the fall of 1918 was far deadlier than the spring. Today, as the Northern Hemisphere steps deeper into autumn and more activity moves indoors, the spread of the coronavirus is, predictably, accelerating. America is again following Europe’s lead. In the last week of October, the U.S. recorded more new coronavirus cases than it has at any point during the pandemic; there have been days in November on which more than a hundred and thirty thousand people have been found to be newly infected. A few states—Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa—have among the highest per-capita infection rates in the world. The new surge has no epicenter. Infection records are being set in more than half of U.S. counties, and large swaths of the Midwest and mountain West are struggling with skyrocketing hospitalizations. On many days, more than a thousand Americans are now dying of covid-19—a number that is certain to rise, since deaths lag behind infections by several weeks.

The mortality rate for the virus has fallen substantially since the start of the pandemic, probably because of improvements in care and a shift in viral demographics: many of the newly infected are young. But a lower death rate combined with a vast rise in infections will still create profound suffering. One model predicts that, by the end of the year, two thousand Americans could be dying from covid-19 each day. The American death toll could reach four hundred thousand by January.

 The Ganges Chasma of Mars in stunning spacecraft imagery:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-two.  Sunrise is 6:46 AM and sunset 4:32 PM, for 9h 46m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing for a sign ordinance amendment review at 9 AM.

On this day in 1962, NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Lois Beckett and Julia Carrie Wong report The misinformation media machine amplifying Trump’s election lies (‘Rightwing news outlets have taken up the president’s message on social media, stirring supporters into a frenzy’):

But in a video posted on Facebook on 7 November and viewed more than 16.5m times since, NewsMax host and former Trump administration official Carl Higbie spends three minutes spewing a laundry list of false and debunked claimscasting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election.

“I believe it’s time to hold the line,” said Higbie, who resigned from his government post over an extensive track record of racist, homophobic and bigoted remarks, to the Trump faithful. “I’m highly skeptical and you should be too.”

The video, which has been shared more than 350,000 times on Facebook, is just one star in a constellation of pro-Trump misinformation that is leading millions of Americans to doubt or reject the results of the presidential election. Fully 70% of Republicans believe that the election was not “free and fair”, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted since election day. Among those doubters, large majorities believe two of Trump’s most brazen lies: that mail-in voting leads to fraud and that ballots were tampered with.

Trump himself is the largest source of election misinformation; the president has barely addressed the public since Tuesday except to share lies and misinformation about the election. But his message attacking the electoral process is being amplified by a host of rightwing media outlets and pundits who appear to be jockeying to replace Fox News as the outlet of choice for Trumpists – and metastasizing on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.

Since election day, 16 of the top 20 public Facebook posts that include the word “election” feature false or misleading information casting doubt on the election in favor of Trump, according to a Guardian analysis of posts with the most interactions using CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool.

David E. Sanger, Matt Stevens, and Nicole Perlroth report Election Officials Directly Contradict Trump on Voting System Fraud:

Hours after President Trump repeated a baseless report that a voting machine system “deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide,” he was directly contradicted by a group of federal, state and local election officials, who issued a statement on Thursday declaring flatly that the election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems were compromised.

The rebuke, in a statement by a coordinating council overseeing the voting systems used around the country, never mentioned Mr. Trump by name. But it amounted to a remarkable corrective to a wave of disinformation that Mr. Trump has been pushing across his Twitter feed.

The statement was distributed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for helping states secure the voting process. Coming directly from one of Mr. Trump’s own cabinet agencies, it further isolated the president in his false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election.

Lockdown is named Collins Dictionary’s 2020 word of the year:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 4:33 PM, for 9h 48m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 10.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1927, Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Andrew Higgins writes Trump’s Post-Election Tactics Put Him in Unsavory Company (‘Denying defeat, claiming fraud and using government machinery to reverse election results are the time-honored tools of dictators’):

There is little indication that Mr. Trump can overcome the laws and institutions that ensure the verdict of American voters will carry the day. The country has a free press, a strong and independent judiciary, election officials dedicated to an honest counting of the votes and a strong political opposition, none of which exists in Belarus or Russia.

Still, the United States has never before had to force an incumbent to concede a fair defeat at the polls. And merely by raising the possibility that he would have to be forced out of office, Mr. Trump has shattered the bedrock democratic tradition of a seamless transition.

The damage already done by Mr. Trump’s obduracy could be lasting. Ivan Krastev, an expert on East and Central Europe at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, said Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede would “create a new model” for like-minded populists in Europe and elsewhere.

“When Trump won in 2016 the lesson was that they could trust democracy,” he said. “Now, they won’t trust democracy, and will do everything and anything to stay in power.” In what he called “the Lukashenko scenario,” leaders will still want to hold elections but “never lose.” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been doing that for two decades.

Among the anti-democratic tactics Mr. Trump has adopted are some that were commonly employed by leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia — refusing to concede defeat and hurling unfounded accusations of electoral fraud. The tactics also include undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the courts, attacking the press and vilifying opponents.

Like Mr. Trump, those leaders feared that accepting defeat would expose them to prosecution once they left office. Mr. Trump does not have to worry about being charged with war crimes and genocide, as Mr. Milosevic was, but he does face a tangle of legal problems.

Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama and a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, described the president’s “refusal to accept the results of the election” as “his parting gift to autocrats around the world.

David A. Fahrenthold, Rosalind S. Helderman, and Tom Hamburger report In poll watcher affidavits, Trump campaign offers no evidence of fraud in Detroit ballot-counting:

On Wednesday, President Trump’s campaign asked a federal judge to take a drastic step: block the state of Michigan from certifying the results of its presidential election. President-elect Joe Biden now leads Trump by about 148,000 votes there.

To back up that lawsuit, Trump’s campaign had promised “shocking” evidence of misconduct.

Instead, the campaign produced 238 pages of affidavits from Republican poll watchers across Michigan containing no evidence of significant fraud but rather allegations about ballot-counting procedures that state workers have already debunked — and in some cases, complaints about rude behavior or unpleasant looks from poll workers or Democratic poll watchers.

Bigfin squid filmed in Australian waters for the first time:

Good morning.

Veteran’s Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 51m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 19.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1964, the Rolling Stones first performed in Wisconsin, to a crowd of 1,274 fans at the Milwaukee Auditorium.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, and Jim Rutenberg report The Times Called Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud (‘The president and his allies have baselessly claimed that rampant voter fraud stole victory from him. Officials contacted by The Times said that there were no irregularities that affected the outcome’):

Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race, amounting to a forceful rebuke of President Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election.

Over the last several days, the president, members of his administration, congressional Republicans and right wing allies have put forth the false claim that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump and have refused to accept results that showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the winner.

But top election officials across the country said in interviews and statements that the process had been a remarkable success despite record turnout and the complications of a dangerous pandemic.

“There’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections,” said Frank LaRose, a Republican who serves as Ohio’s secretary of state. “The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant. For some reason, elections breed that type of mythology.”

….

The New York Times contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state on Monday and Tuesday to ask whether they suspected or had evidence of illegal voting. Officials in 45 states responded directly to The Times. For four of the remaining states, The Times spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state; none reported any major voting issues.

 Shawn Boburg and Jacob Bogage report Postal worker recanted allegations of ballot tampering, officials say:

A Pennsylvania postal worker whose claims have been cited by top Republicans as potential evidence of widespread voting irregularities admitted to U.S. Postal Service investigators that he fabricated the allegations, according to three officials briefed on the investigation and a statement from a House congressional committee.

Richard Hopkins’s claim that a postmaster in Erie, Pa., instructed postal workers to backdate ballots mailed after Election Day was cited by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in a letter to the Justice Department calling for a federal investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr subsequently authorized federal prosecutors to open probes into credible allegations of voting irregularities and fraud before results are certified, a reversal of long-standing Justice Department policy.

But on Monday, Hopkins, 32, told investigators from the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General that the allegations were not true, and he signed an affidavit recanting his claims, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.

….

The Erie postmaster, Rob Weisenbach, called the allegations “100% false” in a Facebook post and said they were made “by an employee that was recently disciplined multiple times.”

How To Use Apple’s AirDrop:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy.  Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 4:35 PM, for 9h 53m 18s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 29.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s Policy Review Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10 AM and the city’s Public Works Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1983, Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Rachel Abrams, and David Enrich report Growing Discomfort at Law Firms Representing Trump in Election Lawsuits:

Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio, lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm’s election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm. At least one lawyer quit in protest.

Already, the two firms have filed at least four lawsuits challenging aspects of the election in Pennsylvania. The cases are pending.

….

During the Trump presidency, Jones Day has been involved in some 20 lawsuits involving Mr. Trump, his campaign or the Republican Party, and it worked for the Trump campaign on government investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The work has been lucrative. Since 2015, Jones Day has received more than $20 million in fees from the Trump campaigns, political groups linked to Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee, according to federal records. Jones Day lawyers said that was a small portion of the firm’s overall revenue.

(‘Discomfort’ during representation is still representation.)

Stephanie Aaronson and Wendy Edelberg write Tracking the mounting challenges among those who have lost their jobs:

The US economy is entering its ninth month of recession. The latest data on Gross Domestic Product show a substantial rebound in spending in the third quarter of the year, as self-quarantining eased, and businesses reopened following the initial pandemic-induced reductions in economic activity. However, the level of economic activity remains well-below pre-pandemic levels, and in September the aggregate unemployment rate stood at 7.9 percent, 4.4 percentage points above its February level. Moreover, recent data suggest that the pace of consumer spending and job growth have tapered off, in part due to the waning boost from fiscal policy.

As fall turns into winter, and with cases increasing across the country, the risk is that the COVID-19 pandemic and an insufficient policy response lead to a further slowing of the economy and possibly another contraction. That raises the likelihood that some of the damage to the economy, which largely started out as a temporary response to the pandemic, will become structural, making the recovery even more difficult and protracted.

In this analysis, we find evidence of structural damage in the monthly employment data. Early in the pandemic, most workers who lost jobs were laid off temporarily, as businesses expected to reopen and recall their workers. However, as time has passed, an increasing share of unemployed workers have no expectation of being recalled: the fraction of the unemployed on temporary layoff has declined from about 80 percent in April to about 40 percent in September, while the fraction of the unemployed whose previous jobs have been permanently eliminated has increased from 10 percent to about 40 percent.

Egypt’s Giza Pyramids are getting a revamp to boost tourism: