Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:32 PM, for 15h 16m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 91.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

 The Whitewater Unified School District Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM, and the Whitewater Planning Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing this evening.

On this day in 1984, the Barneveld tornado outbreak destroys most of Barneveld, Wisconsin and kills at least 13 people across three states including 9 in Barneveld alone.

Recommended for reading in full —

Megan Flynn reports Armed driver barrels toward Seattle protesters, shooting one before surrendering to police:

A chaotic scene unfolded Sunday night in Seattle when an armed driver barreled toward a crowd of protesters, shooting one person who apparently tried to stop him, before ultimately surrendering to police, according to authorities and video footage of the incident.

The violence interrupted a peaceful protest in the name of George Floyd near the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct just before 8:30 p.m. Sunday.

Videos showed protesters appearing to chase after a black Honda Civic as it sped down the street toward a larger crowd, slowing just as it crashed into a metal barrier near an intersection. One protester caught up to the vehicle, video by the Seattle Times shows. The man appeared to try to reach inside the driver’s side window, when a shot rang out.

The protester jolted backward, falling onto the pavement. Bystanders and medics rushed to his aid. The suspect, who has not been identified by police, then exited the vehicle, as the people who had just surrounded his car fled in all directions.

“He’s got a gun!” people screamed in video taken by a Seattle Times reporter.

The suspect then headed toward the heart of the protest where hundreds were gathered in the street. With nowhere to go, some raised their hands in the air. Some lay on the ground.

The man ran through the crowd toward the police line on the other side of the protesters.

Once he emerged from the crowd, he walked toward police with his hands in the air. He walked nearly all the way up to the police line before officers took him away, video of the arrest shows.

  Dan O’Brien of ProPublica writes We Reported on Corporate Tax Breaks in the Rust Belt. Now Officials Want Tougher Enforcement:

State and local elected officials in Ohio are reassessing one of the state’s marquee economic development programs and calling for tougher regulation of corporate tax breaks after a Business Journal and ProPublica investigation raised questions about the effectiveness of so-called enterprise zones.

Under the program, struggling communities like Youngstown are empowered to award property tax breaks to companies that agree to invest a certain amount of money and create a targeted number of new jobs.

But in a report published last month, the news organizations found that half of the 94 projects that have received millions of dollars in tax abatements from the city since 1991 have failed to deliver on their job promises. One in four didn’t create a single position. All of the tax breaks, however, remained intact.

Peaceful Protests You May Have Missed:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:31 PM, for 15h 15m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee presents a Resolution for Independence to the Continental Congress.

Recommended for reading in full —

Bill Glauber, Elliot Hughes, and Ben Steele report ‘If it’s not making you uncomfortable, it’s not working’: Wisconsin protests show no sign of slowing on ninth day:

For the ninth day in a row in Milwaukee, calls for change echoed in the streets following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

Day by day, protests have become more organized, more widespread and more impassioned.

Six Milwaukee Bucks players, including star Giannis Antetokounmpo, joined marchers on the city’s near west side. The players, wearing T-shirts that said, “I can’t breathe,” pulled up in two trucks with several U-Haul vans that contained drinks and snacks for protesters.

“This is our city, man,” Antetokounmpo told the marchers, adding, “We want change. We want justice.”

Antetokounmpo was joined by Bucks teammates Sterling Brown, Donte DiVincenzo, Brook Lopez, two-way player Frank Mason II and Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Giannis’ brother.

Michael Gerson writes Every crisis America faces has been made worse by Trump:

The country is sick and getting sicker. America has somehow managed to experience the severe economic and social consequences of a national lockdown while remaining the hottest spot of a global covid-19 pandemic. All pretense of social distancing seems to be breaking down, and a further, cruel culling of our elderly population seems to be an acceptable outcome for many politicians.

The economy is experiencing a swift-onset great depression. Massive unemployment is feeding a sense of social desperation. And the United States will be at a lasting disadvantage against economic competitors who responded to covid-19 more promptly and effectively.

….

Every crisis the United States now faces has been made worse by Trump’s limits as a leader and a man. We needed a president who could imagine what the American experiment looks like from the perspective of those who find its promises fraudulent. We got someone incapable of empathy. We needed a president who would be data driven in matters of public health policy. We got someone driven by irrational enthusiasms and the advice of cronies. We needed a president who could calm destructive passions. We got someone who now urges the militarization of his fight against the left. We needed a president capable of speaking across differences. We got someone whose only authentic public communications are expressions of rancor.

….

A man of Trump’s character, background and talents is the answer to precisely none of the great challenges of our time. His election in 2016 was an act of irrationality and folly by a powerful, noble and indispensable nation. It has made us more pitiable, more degraded and more replaceable than before. And this likelihood was obvious to anyone with a single grain of foresight.

The True Story Behind the Iconic Kit Kat Jingle:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:30 PM, for 15h 14m 23s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1944, the Allied invasion of Normandy—codenamed Operation Overlord—begins with the landing of 155,000 Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in France.

Recommended for reading in full —

Eric Lipton, Abby Goodnough, Michael D. Shear, Megan Twohey, Apoorva Mandavilli, Sheri Fink, and Mark Walker report The C.D.C. Waited ‘Its Entire Existence for This Moment.’ What Went Wrong?:

The C.D.C., long considered the world’s premier health agency, made early testing mistakes that contributed to a cascade of problems that persist today as the country tries to reopen. It failed to provide timely counts of infections and deaths, hindered by aging technology and a fractured public health reporting system. And it hesitated in absorbing the lessons of other countries, including the perils of silent carriers spreading the infection.

The agency struggled to calibrate its own imperative to be cautious and the need to move fast as the coronavirus ravaged the country, according to a review of thousands of emails and interviews with more than 100 state and federal officials, public health experts, C.D.C. employees and medical workers. In communicating to the public, its leadership was barely visible, its stream of guidance was often slow and its messages were sometimes confusing,sowing mistrust.

“They let us down,” said Dr. Stephane Otmezguine, an anesthesiologist who treated coronavirus patients in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Richard Whitley, the top health official in Nevada, wrote to the C.D.C. director about a communication “breakdown” between the states and the agency. Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois lashed out at the agency over testing, saying that the government’s response would “go down in history as a profound failure.”

Sean Collins writes Why these protests are different:

We have seen uprisings over racism and police brutality before, the most famous being the civil rights movement of the 1960s. There was sometimes a sense that those uprisings had brought on a great deal of progress in a short period and that the eradication of systemic racism would be a long-term project from then on out, with incremental changes ensuring the arc of the moral universe bent toward justice. The recent protest movement — though nascent — seems to reject that idea. The protesters want change now.

….

There is also a regression in policy that has stemmed from the country’s leadership. Policies instituted to protect black lives have been systematically rolled back in recent years, from the return of mandatory minimum sentences to the Department of Justice refusing to conduct oversight of police departments accused of civil rights violations and President Donald Trump signing an executive order once again allowing police easy access to military equipment.

The realities of illness, unemployment, polluted air and water, unequal access to education, and mass incarceration — compounded with the fear of being killed by one of your fellow Americans or by a mysterious and still unchecked disease — has life feeling particularly fragile and the world particularly dire. Many are fed up. They need to direct their rage. They cannot live and suffer any longer as they once felt they had to.

 How Spider Silk Could Help Regrow Nerves:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with scattered thundershowers and a high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:30 PM, for 15h 13m 28s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1883, William Horlick patents the first powdered milk in the world.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Dan Friedman reports Democrats Think Officers Policing Protests Need to Identify Themselves. Bill Barr Disagrees:

Over the past few days, Mother Jones and other media outlets have noted the presence of armed personnel with no visible identification confronting the protests in DC that were sparked by the recent police killing of George Floyd. These officers have consistently said that they are “with the Department of Justice” or that they are part of the “federal government.”

The Justice Department has since said these are officers are from Special Operations Control units in the Bureau of Prisons—that is, officers trained primarily to quell prison riots.

In response, Democrats in both chambers said Wednesday they would introduce legislation requiring uniformed federal officers doing domestic security work to identify what agency or military branch they represent. Several shared a photo I took on Tuesday.

In a letter Thursday to President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) requested a list of the agencies involved in responding to protests in DC and an explanation of the roles different troops and law enforcement agencies are fulfilling. Pelosi also blasted the deployment of officers without clear identification. “The practice of officers operating with full anonymity undermines accountability, ignites government distrust and suspicion, and is counter to the principle of procedural justice and legitimacy during this precarious moment in our nation’s history,” she wrote.

She noted that the Justice Department has previously warned local police departments against allowing officers to work anonymously.

Michael Carvajal, the acting BOP director, addressed this criticism in a news conference on Thursday, saying he was not aware of officers being ordered not to identify themselves, and stated the issue was that “within the confines of our institutions and we don’t need to identify ourselves. Most of our identification is institution-specific and probably wouldn’t mean a whole lot to people in DC.”

But, he said: “I probably should have done a better job of marking them nationally as the agency. Point is well taken.”

 Employee backlash rocks Facebook:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 15h 12m 30s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The City of Whitewater will hold a town hall about the COVID-19 pandemic via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway begins.

Recommended for reading in full —

  Charles Duan and Jeffrey Westling write Will Trump’s Executive Order Harm Online Speech? It Already Did:

The threat of the order itself, even as wrong as it is, does exactly the damage Trump wants to do: It pressures companies into giving his content preferential treatment.

Over the next few months, Twitter and other platforms must gear up to fight the administration as it tries to twist the language of Section 230. They may be hauled in to FTC investigations over whether a removal didn’t occur in good faith or whether a company acted deceptively. These investigations almost certainly will exonerate the companies, but only after they shell out massive attorney fees. At least Twitter is big enough to afford all this; smaller platforms likely cannot.

And the final catalyst for all of this? Twitter decided to fact-check the president.

This thought will undoubtedly cross the mind of Jack Dorsey and other Silicon Valley CEOs: Wouldn’t it be easier to let him be? To give more leeway to rule-breakers and purveyors of misinformation? To do nothing in the face of campaigns of mistruth that undermine democracy and trust in government? Thus far, it appears that Dorsey will stand firm. The day after Trump issued the executive order, Twitter notably hid a tweet from the president threatening protestors in Minneapolis that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” However, many other platforms may ask themselves these same questions and find the fight is not worth the risks. For his part, Mark Zuckerberg preemptively capitulated to Trump’s executive order with a statement that Facebook “shouldn’t be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.”

The First Amendment allows private companies like Twitter to speak as they see fit and to fact-check leaders. But the executive order’s threats of changes to Section 230 and FTC investigations render the Constitution powerless to stop Trump from using the weight of the federal government to attack companies that criticize him.

Trump claims that he acts in the name of users’ First Amendment rights, that the platforms are the “21st-century equivalent of the public square” and as such must host all content equally. But Twitter, or even Facebook, is not so large as to squeeze out every other venue of online speech. Numerous alternatives exist. And notably, the incident that sparked Trump’s ire, the fact-checking of his vote-by-mail tweet, did not involve any suppression or censorship at all: Trump’s tweet remained up on the platform, with an additional note from Twitter. It is Trump, not Twitter, who is calling for suppression of speech.

  Testing a home antibody kit for tracking Covid-19 transmission:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers with a high of eighty-six.  Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 15h 11m 27s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1889, the first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between Willamette Falls and Portland, Oregon.

Recommended for reading in full —

Kevin M. Kruse writes Law and order won’t help Trump win reelection (‘A challenger can call for law and order, but the message falls flat from an incumbent’):

In 1968, Nixon’s law-and-order campaign rested on his repeated claims that Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration was largely to blame for the nation’s lawlessness and that only replacing it with a new administration would solve them. “If we are to restore order and respect for law in this country,” Nixon vowed in his acceptance speech, “there is one place we are going to begin. We are going to have a new attorney general of the United States of America.”

As a presidential candidate, Nixon was able to run, and win, on a critique of the status quo. But once he was president, that critique no longer worked.

Nixon learned this the hard way in the 1970 midterm elections. He spent the fall campaigning across the country for GOP candidates, with the “law and order” message front and center. “From Missouri to Tennessee to North Carolina and Indiana,” a reporter noted in late October, “he urged more respect for police, plugged the virtues of Republican congressional candidates and asked ‘the silent majority of America to stand up and be counted against violence and lawlessness.’ ” The president urged Americans “in the quiet of the polling booth” to vote for Republicans and thereby strike a blow against politicians who “condoned lawlessness and violence and permissiveness.”

This time, the appeal fell flat. Republicans lost 10 seats in the House and, more significantly, lost a large number of governor’s races across the country, including almost all the Midwest. The Los Angeles Times captured the rebuke well in a headline: “Silent Majority Speaks Out, Rejects Law-And-Order Alarm, Votes Liberal.”

Erin Banco reports LISTEN FOR YOURSELF: Trump’s ‘Unhinged’ Rant to Governors on Protests:

President Trump on Monday told the nation’s governors that they needed to get “much tougher” in responding to the protests breaking out across the country. He said the lack of response has so far made state officials look weak. Trump encouraged them to mass arrest those inciting violence at protests and said if they didn’t they would “look like a bunch of jerks.” “You have to arrest people and you have to try people. And they need to go to jail for what they’ve done,” Trump said.

The president told governors that the Department of Justice was looking into how to prosecute some of those protesters engaging in violence under federal law. “We will activate Bill Barr and we will activate him strongly,” Trump said referring to the attorney general.

SpaceX Demo-2 Crew Dragon hatch opening: