Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with a dusting of snow, and a high of forty.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 5:54 PM, for 10h 30m 50s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 77.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 7 PM.

 On this day in 1944, America is victorious at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Lisa Rein, Josh Dawsey, and Toluse Olorunnipa report Trump’s historic assault on the civil service was four years in the making:

President Trump’s extraordinary directive allowing his administration to weed out career federal employees viewed as disloyal in a second term is the product of a four-year campaign by conservatives working from a ­little-known West Wing policy shop.

Soon after Trump took office, a young aide hired from the Heritage Foundation with bold ideas for reining in the sprawling bureaucracy of 2.1 million came up with a blueprint. Trump would hold employees accountable, sideline their labor unions and give the president more power to hire and fire them, much like political appointees.

The plan was a counterweight to the “deep state” Trump believed was out to disrupt his agenda. Coordinating labor policy for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, James Sherk presented his bosses with a 19-page to-do list titled “Proposed Labor Reforms.” A top category was “Creating a government that serves the people.”

The result this week threatens to be the most significant assault on the nonpartisan civil service in its 137-year history: a sweeping executive order that strips job protections from employees in policy roles across the government. Exactly which roles would be affected will be up to personnel officials at federal agencies, who were tasked on Friday with reviewing all of their jobs and deciding who would qualify.

 Julian Borger reports Republicans closely resemble autocratic parties in Hungary and Turkey – study (Swedish university finds ‘dramatic shift’ in GOP under Trump, shunning democratic norms and encouraging violence):

The Republican party has become dramatically more illiberal in the past two decades and now more closely resembles ruling parties in autocratic societies than its former centre-right equivalents in Europe, according to a new international study.

In a significant shift since 2000, the GOP has taken to demonising and encouraging violence against its opponents, adopting attitudes and tactics comparable to ruling nationalist parties in Hungary, India, Poland and Turkey.

The shift has both led to and been driven by the rise of Donald Trump.

By contrast the Democratic party has changed little in its attachment to democratic norms, and in that regard has remained similar to centre-right and centre-left parties in western Europe. Their principal difference is the approach to the economy.

The new study, the largest ever of its kind, was carried out by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, using newly developed methods to measure and quantify the health of the world’s democracies at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise.

Anna Lührmann, V-Dem’s deputy director, said the Republican transformation had been “certainly the most dramatic shift in an established democracy”.

Belarus protests: Riot police use stun grenades as opposition calls for a general strike:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 5:55 PM, for 10h 33m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1836, the first legislative session of the Wisconsin territory convenes in Belmont, Wisconsin. (“During this first session, forty-two laws were put in the statute books. At this time, the Territory of Wisconsin included all of present-day Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and part of the two Dakotas.”)

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Ashley Parker reports How Trump claimed credit for an Obama veterans achievement (‘President Trump has told mistruths about the 2014 VA Choice Act more than 156 times, seeking to deny the contributions of rivals including Barack Obama and John McCain’):

The first time President Trump claimed false credit for the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act — which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2014 — was on June 6, 2018. That day, as Trump signed the Mission Act, a modest update to the bipartisan VA Choice legislation, he seemed to conflate the two.

“So it’s now my great honor to sign the VA Mission Act, or as we all know it, the Choice Act, and to make Veterans Choice the permanent law of our great country,” the president said, standing in the Rose Garden. “And nobody deserves it more than our veterans.”

In the coming weeks, Trump began systematically erasing from the legislation’s history not just Obama but also the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who not only co-sponsored the VA Choice Act but also was so instrumental in passing the Mission Act that he is one of three senators for whom the act is officially named.

That didn’t stop Trump from falsely claiming — as he did at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio, in March 2019 — that McCain, his frequent political rival, failed to make any progress on the VA Choice Act.

“McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets and the VA, and they knew it,” Trump said.

More than two years after signing the Mission Act, which made limited changes to the much broader Obama veterans law, Trump has repeated some version of his VA Choice Act mistruth more than 156 times, according to an analysis by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, eventually claiming full credit for the bill codified by his predecessor.

 Chris McGreal reports Many midwest Democrats stayed home in 2016. Will they turn out for Biden?:

A lot of people in Cleveland chose not to vote [in 2016]. Driven by disillusionment with Obama and dislike for Hillary Clinton, turnout fell in the overwhelmingly Democratic city where nearly half the population is black, as it did in others across the midwest, helping to usher Trump to victory.

This year, [Jamal] Collins sees it differently.

“Trump’s presidency, the last four years, have been absolutely horrible. Trump blew life back into white supremacy. Him being so open and unapologetic about the stuff he says, and things that he’s done, really gave that power,” he said.

“Plus coronavirus, because now we have tens of thousands of people, especially in the black community, really suffering from Covid-19. We have an economy decimated to almost the proportions of the depression. The loss of jobs and loss of wealth is worse than I’ve ever seen before.”

Inside The $5 Billion Apple Headquarters:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-three.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 5:56 PM, for 10h 36m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 59.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1590, John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, returns to England after an unsuccessful search for the ‘lost’ colonists.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Mary Spicuzza and Molly Beck report Wisconsin Republicans have been facing an outbreak among lawmakers and aides. But they don’t want to talk about it:

Wisconsin Republican lawmakers and top GOP aides have been facing a coronavirus outbreak in recent weeks following a series of in-person events, including a retirement party for a longtime Capitol staffer, a dozen sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

But Republican leaders would not disclose how many or which lawmakers have contracted COVID-19, nor would they answer questions about contact tracing efforts — including whether anyone worked at the state Capitol after they were exposed to the virus.

Those affected by the COVID-19 outbreak include Jenny Toftness, chief of staff for Speaker Robin Vos, who got sick after attending the retirement party in September.

….

It’s unclear whether those who were infected notified any Capitol authorities, who could alert others who work in the statehouse.

“We are not aware of any reports from either legislators or legislative staff,” Britt Cudaback, spokeswoman for Gov. Tony Evers, said in an email in response to questions about COVID-19 policies of the Department of Administration, which oversees the Capitol.

 Roger Sollenberger reports Trump Organization renewed the TrumpTowerMoscow.com domain name — this year:

The Trump Organization reregistered the domain name TrumpTowerMoscow.com this June, internet records show, suggesting that contrary to President Trump’s claims, the company has not necessarily abandoned its pursuit of the lucrative real estate deal that figured prominently in multiple investigations into his connections with Russia.

The Trump Organization has re-upped the domain every year of his presidency. This year it renewed its ownership on June 9, under a company called DTTM Operations, which Trump’s financial disclosures show manages more than 100 company trademarks. DTTM Operations appears now to have registered a total of more than 3,000 domains, according to a whois search, including renewals for TrumpRussia.com, TrumpTowerLondon.com and DonaldTrumpSucks.com — 2,000 more than reported in 2017.

The domain was first reported in early July 2017, about two months before the Washington Post’s bombshell report that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump Organization had tried to strike a deal with Russian developers to build the luxury hotel and condo tower. A series of BuzzFeed News reports starting the next year illustrated the significant progress the project had made and the extent of Donald Trump’s involvement.

Initially envisioned as the tallest building in Europe, Trump Tower Moscow was spearheaded on the Trump side by Sater and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and included the personal involvement of Ivanka Trump. But even with a Russian developer on board, the project needed the blessing of government officials to get off the ground, a responsibility that fell to Cohen.

At one point the company proposed awarding Russian President Vladimir Putin the $50 million penthouse suite for free, a quid pro quo for the green light to break ground, and which had Trump’s approval.

(While most domain renewals are routine, a renewal of this domain is extraordinary – it shows the Trump Organization is willing to persist in visible conflicts of interest even after widespread ethical criticism. Shameless, truly.)

SpaceX Starship SN8 gets its nose cone:

SpaceX attached the nose cone to the Starship SN8 prototype at their Boca Chica, Texas facility on Oct. 22, 2020. They are prepping the rocket for an uncrewed 9 mile (15 km) hop.  

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of sixty.  Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 5:58 PM, for 10h 38m 52s of daytime.  The moon is in its first quarter with 49.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Planning Commission and some city employees will meet today via audiovisual conferencing at 9 AM to discuss amendments to Whitewater’s sign ordinance.

 On this day in 1956, secret police shoot several anti-communist protesters, igniting the Hungarian Revolution.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Julian E. Barnes, Nicole Perlroth, and David E. Sanger report Russia Poses Greater Election Threat Than Iran, Many U.S. Officials Say (‘Russia’s hackers appeared to be preparing to sow chaos amid any uncertainty around election results, officials said’):

While senior Trump administration officials said this week that Iran has been actively interfering in the presidential election, many intelligence officials said they remained far more concerned about Russia, which in recent days has hacked into state and local computer networks in breaches that could allow Moscow broader access to American voting infrastructure.

The discovery of the hacks came as American intelligence agencies, infiltrating Russian networks themselves, have pieced together details of what they believe are Russia’s plans to interfere in the presidential race in its final days or immediately after the election on Nov. 3. Officials did not make clear what Russia planned to do, but they said its operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results, especially if the race is too close to call.

F.B.I. and Homeland Security officials also announced on Thursday that Russia’s state hackers had targeted dozens of state and local governments and aviation networks starting in September. They stole data from the computer servers of at least two unidentified targets and continued to crawl through some of the affected networks, the agencies said.

Nick Miroff reports Study finds no crime increase in cities that adopted ‘sanctuary’ policies, despite Trump claims:

Cities that have adopted “sanctuary” policies did not record an increase in crime as a result of their decision to limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, according to a new Stanford University report. The findings appear to rebut the Trump administration’s rhetoric about the policies’ dire effects on public safety.

The study is one of the first to measure those effects by looking at data on violent crime and property crime. Researcher David K. Hausman compared statistics across more than 200 sanctuary counties and jurisdictions between 2010 and 2015, when the policies were adopted in many U.S. cities with a large number of residents living in the country illegally.

The data show that the policies were effective at limiting deportations of nonviolent offenders but did not result in higher crime rates in those cities. And Hausman found that violent criminals continued to be deported at the same pace because the sanctuary policies do little to prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials from taking those offenders into custody.

“Sanctuary policies do serve a protective role, but there’s not the cost to public safety that critics claim,” Hausman said in an interview. His findings were published in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

ICE has targeted sanctuary jurisdictions in recent weeks with a campaign called “Operation Rise” that has led to more than 300 arrests and dovetailed with the president’s campaign attacks on Democratic mayors.

Cities and police departments that have adopted the sanctuary measures say they preserve trust between local police officers and immigrants who might be reluctant to report crimes if they fear they could be deported.

 Australian wildlife: 2019 and 2020 bush fires caused unprecedented damage to local fauna:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of sixty-five.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 5:59 PM, for 10h 41m 35s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 38.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

 On this day in 1962, President Kennedy announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Devlin Barrett and Josh Dawsey report Trump weighs firing FBI director after election as frustration with Wray, Barr grows:

President Trump and his advisers have repeatedly discussed whether to fire FBI Director Christopher A. Wray after Election Day — a scenario that also could imperil the tenure of Attorney General William P. Barr as the president grows increasingly frustrated that federal law enforcement has not delivered his campaign the kind of last-minute boost that the FBI provided in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter.

The conversations among the president and senior aides stem in part from their disappointment that Wray in particular but Barr as well have not done what Trump had hoped — indicate that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden or other Biden associates are under investigation, these people say. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.

In the campaign’s closing weeks, the president has intensified public calls for jailing his challenger, much as he did for Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016. Trump has called Biden a “criminal” without articulating what laws he believes the former vice president has broken.

Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti report Ex-Spy Was Central to Project Veritas Hiring Effort, Testimony Shows:

A British former spy recruited by Erik Prince, the security contractor close to the Trump administration, played a central role in a secretive effort to hire dozens of operatives for the conservative group Project Veritas, deposition testimony shows.

Job applicants traveled to Wyoming in 2017 for interviews with the former intelligence officer, Richard Seddon, as Project Veritas sought to expand its operations early in the Trump administration, according to a lawsuit deposition reviewed by The New York Times. The interviews conducted by Mr. Seddon and his colleagues took place near the airport in the small town of Cody, not far from Mr. Prince’s family ranch.

The new details about Project Veritas show the extent of the group’s ambitions to build an intelligence-gathering apparatus to infiltrate Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations, news media and other groups. Project Veritas is known for its sting operations aimed at such groups, which have prompted allegations that it has published deceptively edited videos.

Why There Are No Megatall Skyscrapers in New York?: