Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 20m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 13.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified District’s Policy Review Committee meets at via Zoom Online at 9:30 AM.

On this day in 1673, Marquette and Jolliet reach the Mississippi.

Recommended for reading in full —

 John Cassidy writes Taxpayers Have a Right to Know Who Is Getting Their Stimulus Money:

As of June 12th, the S.B.A., which is administrating the P.P.P., had approved about 4.6 million loans. The average size of the loans was about a hundred and twelve thousand dollars. The total amount committed was $512.3 billion, equivalent to about 2.4 per cent of G.D.P.

That’s a large sum to spend on what are effectively grants. (As long as a business participating in the P.P.P. maintains its payroll, most or all of its loan will be eligible to be forgiven.) And yet, with a few exceptions, taxpayers don’t know who has received all this money. Despite pressure from Congress and the filing of a Freedom of Information lawsuit by a number of media companies, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to publish a list of P.P.P.-loan recipients and the sizes of their loans. The Trump Administration has not yet provided such data to the Government Accountability Office.

Appearing before the Senate Small Business Committee last week, Mnuchin said the secrecy was necessary to protect the “proprietary information” of loan recipients. The Administration’s argument is that if it publishes how much a certain business has received its competitors will be able to figure out its revenues, because the size of a P.P.P. loan is linked to a firm’s total outlays on payroll. But this argument flies in the face of at least two realities. In April, the S.B.A., which has routinely published the names of the businesses it has lent to, indicated that it would do the same for loans issued under the P.P.P. Moreover, the application form that borrowers have to fill out for a P.P.P. loan says that, under the Freedom of Information Act, “subject to certain exceptions,” the S.B.A. is obliged to supply information including “the names of the borrowers (and their officers, directors, stockholders or partners), the collateral pledged to secure the loan, the amount of the loan, its purpose in general terms and the maturity.” It’s all there in black and white.

 Clayton Sandell and Jeffrey Cook report George Floyd’s death awakens activism in rural, white America:

Well attended protests have occurred in small American towns like Alpine, TX, Lodi, CA, Hagerstown, MD and Taylorville, IL. The name George Floyd is echoing through the consciousness of white America, putting uncomfortable conversations front-and-center.

The subject of racism and anti-racism has shown little sign of slowing down. Even weeks after Floyd’s death, a small protest popped up in Parachute, a Colorado town of 1,100 people on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains. Twenty people, mostly, if not all, white, gathered outside the police station with signs, candles and words of support for Black Lives Matter. Nearly all five of the town’s police officers observed, offering water to the protesters.

 Riding a roller coaster in Wisconsin:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 20m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 21.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1858, Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

Recommended for reading in full —

Paul Farhi and Elahe Izadi report Top Voice of America editors resign amid strife with White House, arrival of new Trump-appointed director:

The top two editors at Voice of America resigned Monday amid White House criticism of the government-funded but editorially independent news agency and as a new overseer loyal to President Trump was about to take office.

It wasn’t immediately clear why VOA Director Amanda Bennett and Deputy Director Sandy Sugawara submitted their resignations. In a memo to staff on Monday, they jointly wrote, “It is time for us to leave,” but cited no specific reason other than the arrival of Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who will head the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA. Pack is an ally of Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist.

They added, “As the Senate-confirmed C.E.O., he has the right to replace us with his own VOA leadership.”

Their departure comes amid concerns within the agency that the Trump administration is seeking to exert greater control over what and how VOA reports.

 Michael O’Hanlon writes Why cutting American forces in Germany will harm this alliance:

The 35,000 American troops in Germany would be reduced by 10,000, as some would come home and some would possibly head to Poland. While there is nothing wrong with increasing the modest United States military presence in Poland, this must not be at the expense of a strong foothold in Germany, where American forces stood in the hundreds of thousands amid the Cold War and have been reduced in the last few decades.

American forces in Germany are mostly Army and Air Force units. They include an armored brigade and a fighter wing, then logistics, supports, and headquarters capabilities that facilitate any massive reinforcements that could be needed to defend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in war. If there were a crisis in the Baltic region, the United States would be unlikely to send most of its forces directly to Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. These small exposed countries have only a few major ports and airfields between them, and are all dangerously close to Russian firepower.

 Sarah Owermohle reports FDA ends emergency use of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus:

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday withdrew emergency use authorizations for two coronavirus treatments that President Donald Trump promoted despite concerns about their safety and effectiveness.

The agency revoked the authorizations for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine after a request from Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

After reviewing new information from large clinical trials the agency now believes that the suggested dosing regimens “are unlikely to produce an antiviral effect,” FDA chief scientist Denise Hinton said in a letter announcing the decision.

Critics have accused the agency of caving to political pressure when it authorized use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in hospitalized Covid-19 patients in late March despite thin evidence.

Kathy Sullivan, the First Person to Walk in Space and Reach Ocean’s Deepest Point:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 44s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 29.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1215, King John of England puts his seal to Magna Carta.

Recommended for reading in full —

Asawin Suebsaeng and Lachlan Markay report Trump Aides Know His Polls Are Terrible—And Tell Him Otherwise:

This past week, Donald Trump’s campaign did what one senior aide on the president’s 2020 team described to The Daily Beast as the “dumbest thing I’ve read in a long time.”

In a cease-and-desist letter dated June 9, 2020, the president’s re-election staff demanded that CNN retract and apologize for a recently released poll that had presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leading Trump by 14 points. The letter, which the cable news network immediately laughed off, heavily cited the work of Trump pollster John McLaughlin, whose company alleged that CNN had somehow engaged in a “defamatory” act of “misinformation” and deliberately “skewed” data in an attempt to depress the president’s supporters.

….

In the characterization of one source close to the president, a chunk of the re-election team focuses on proving to the president that his “dumpster-fire numbers” aren’t as bad as they seem, or reinforcing Trump’s conviction that pollsters get it wrong “all the time.”

But not everyone on Team Trump is buying the spin. In fact, efforts to pacify the president about the polls and his campaign’s position ahead of November have been undercut from within, with several key advisers making personal entreaties to Trump in the past few weeks to try to convince him that he should not brush off the numbers, even unpleasant ones that comes from news organizations such as CNN.

“I have told the president that the numbers are real and that I believe he can and will win, but that right now it looks bad,” said a Republican who recently spoke to Trump. “He said, ‘Come on, don’t you know that’s all fake?’ But in a lot of these internal numbers [that I’ve seen], we’re way down right now.”

 Catherine Rampell writes Trump wasted so much money harassing immigrants that his immigration agency needs a bailout:

The immigration agency admonishing immigrants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps seems to have destroyed its own boots.

For three years, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the federal agency that processes visas, work permits and naturalizations — has lectured immigrants about how they should become more self-sufficient. It has alleged, without evidence, that too many immigrants are on the dole. (Actually, immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in federal benefits, and the foreign-born use fewer federal benefits than do their native-born counterparts.)

The agency implemented a broad, and likely illegal, rule allegedly designed to weed out immigrants who might ever be tempted to become a “public charge” and try to benefit from taxpayer largesse.

Well, now USCIS is broke — and is trying to become a “public charge” itself, by begging Congress for a bailout.

Can Kohl’s Survive?:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 24s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 38.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1855, Robert M. La Follette is born.

Recommended for reading in full —

 David Roberts writes The Tom Cotton op-ed affair shows why the media must defend America’s values:

Last week, the New York Times editorial page published an op-ed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton calling for a wide-scale military crackdown on riots and looting that broke out on the periphery of protests against police brutality.

….

The small-l liberal model is roughly as follows: Certain shared values and rules, enshrined in America’s founding documents and developed in its social and legal traditions, define the small-d democratic playing field. Values like respect for accuracy and shared facts, devotion to equality under law and democratic participation, and opposition to unlawful power are necessary to create a level playing field, but on that field, ideas about government and issues of the day should compete on merit. The more speech the better; let the best speech win. (Obviously I’m describing the liberal ideal, never actually reached in practice, either journalistically or politically.)

To act with good faith in this model is to accept those shared values, rules, and norms and agree to compete within the boundaries of the playing field — to play by the rules. The marketplace of ideas only works if it is open to any idea that conforms to those rules and closed to ideas that reject them.

Here’s the thing, though. While Cotton very deftly exploited the liberal tolerance that Sulzberger and Bennet are so proud of to get his piece published, he does not share that tolerance. The movement he represents — he is often identified as the “future of Trumpism” — is ethnocentric and authoritarian. It is about maintaining the power and status of rural and suburban white people, even as they dwindle demographically, by allying with large corporate interests and using the levers of government to entrench minority rule.

Such a movement is incommensurate with the shared premises that small-l liberals take for granted. Minority rule is incompatible with full democratic participation. A revanchist movement meant to restore power to a privileged herrenvolk cannot abide shared standards of accuracy or conduct. Will to power takes precedent over any principle.

 Jim Brunner reports Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle’s protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone:

Fox News published digitally altered and misleading photos on stories about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in what photojournalism experts called a clear violation of ethical standards for news organizations.

As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone, where demonstrators have taken over several city blocks on Capitol Hill after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, Fox’s website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.

The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle. Another altered image combined the gunman photo with yet another image, making it appear as though he was standing in front of a sign declaring “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.”

Fox’s site had no disclaimers revealing the photos had been manipulated. The network removed the images after inquiries from The Seattle Times.

In addition, Fox’s site for a time on Friday ran a frightening image of a burning city, above a package of stories about Seattle’s protests, headlined “CRAZY TOWN.” The photo actually showed a scene from St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 30. That image also was later removed.

A stolen #Banksy artwork has been recovered, over 870 miles from where it was originally painted:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:34 PM, for 15h 19m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 47.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971, the New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Recommended for reading in full —

Todd Gitlin contends This isn’t 1968. It’s 1969 (‘Today’s movement more closely resembles the antiwar Moratorium protests than the unrest of the previous year’):

Yes, there is something of 1968 in 2020. But the 1968 synapse oversimplifies greatly. The uprising underway now signals a vastly more popular and widespread movement reminiscent of the great outpouring of anti-Vietnam War action in October and November 1969, under the aegis of a national project called the Moratorium, which, amid outrage long in the making, cried out: Enough.

Even as the country’s largest radical organization of the 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society, broke up into warring “revolutionary” factions, the majority of war opponents, rallied by unsung leaders, turned to congenial tactics. The issue was different from today’s, but the ecumenical spirit, the resolve and the conviction about the need for a new political start were similar. Then as now, the rallies expressed both solidarity and self-interest. In 1969, with the draft in force, many in the Moratorium crowds had a huge personal stake, though many did not. Today, black protesters have the most obvious stakes, but whites in the far-flung crowds, under a broad range of leaders, are also moved selflessly and morally.

(About this Gitlin is easily right: these protests are overwhelmingly peaceful.)

Benjamin Parker asks Where is the DOJ Civil Rights Division? (‘Policing the police is a core reason the Department of Justice exists in the first place. But Attorney General Barr continues to defend the questionable actions of federal law enforcement officers’):

While the office of the attorney general dates from the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Department of Justice wasn’t created until 1870. Formed amid Reconstruction, its first tasks were to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The key provision of the 14th Amendment, then and now, is its mandate that

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In other words, the Justice Department was tasked with defending the civil rights of newly freed African Americans from infractions committed by the states.

The Civil Rights Act of 1957 recommitted the Justice Department to oversight of state and local law enforcement by creating the Civil Rights Division, which “works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.”

Now would seem like a particularly busy time for the Civil Rights Division, considering how frequently images of Americans being bullied, beaten, tear-gassed, and even arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights have become in the past few weeks.

 Video from Space – Weekly Highlights – Week of June 7, 2020: