Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-three.  Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 55m 00s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1934, notorious murders and bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow meet their end:

At approximately 9:15 a.m. on May 23, the posse were still concealed in the bushes and almost ready to concede defeat when they heard Barrow’s stolen Ford V8 approaching at a high speed. Their official report had Barrow stopping to speak with Methvin’s father, who had been planted there with his truck that morning to distract Barrow and force him into the lane closer to the posse. The lawmen opened fire, killing Barrow and Parker while shooting about 130 rounds. Oakley fired first, probably before any order to do so.[101][103][104] Barrow was killed instantly by Oakley’s head shot, but Hinton reported hearing Parker scream as she realized that Barrow was dead before the shooting began in her direction.[101] The officers emptied all their weapons at the car.[105] Nearly any of their wounds would have been fatal, yet the two had survived many bullets over the years in their confrontations with the law.[106] 

Recommended for reading in full:

S.V. Date reports Trump’s Golf Costs: $102 Million And Counting, With Taxpayers Picking Up The Tab:

Donald Trump’s golf habit has already cost taxpayers at least $102 million in extra travel and security expenses, and next month will achieve a new milestone: a seven-figure presidential visit to another country so he can play at his own course.

U.S. taxpayers have spent $81 million for the president’s two dozen trips to Florida, according to a HuffPost analysis. They spent $17 million for his 15 trips to New Jersey, another $1 million so he could visit his resort in Los Angeles and at least $3 million for his two days in Scotland last summer, $1.3 million of which went just for rental cars for the massive entourage that accompanies a president abroad.

Edvard Pettersson reports So Far, $1.57 Billion for Wall Yields 1.7 Miles of Fence:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has put up just 1.7 miles of fencing with the $1.57 billion that Congress appropriated last year for President Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexican border, a federal judge was told.

A lawyer for the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives provided the information Tuesday to the judge in Oakland, California, who is weighing requests from 20 state attorneys general and the the Sierra Club to block Trump from using funds not authorized by Congress to build the wall.

“The administration recently provided updated information to Congress on the status of its efforts as of April 30, 2019,” the attorney, Douglas Letter, said in a court filing. “Based on that updated information, it appears that CBP has now constructed 1.7 miles of fencing with its fiscal year 2018 funding.”

Who Makes Money From Professional Poker?:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 5:24 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 53m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 86.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1968, the Milwaukee Bucks get their name: “Milwaukee Bucks” was selected as the franchise name after 14,000 fans participated in a team-naming contest. 45 people suggested the name, one of whom, R.D. Trebilcox, won a car for his efforts.”

Recommended for reading in full:

Alex Ward reports Secret documents show Russian plot to stoke racial violence in America:

The Russians who interfered in the 2016 US presidential election are still at it — and this time, they’re trying to ignite racial violence in America and a partial collapse of the United States.

According to secret documents obtained by a Russian opposition group, hackers have discussed plans to stir up racial resentment in the United States in hopes of tearing American society apart. The operatives are apparently associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man who set up a troll farm and was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for his role in 2016 meddling.

Those documents, shared with but not verified by NBC News on Monday night, are extremely troubling.

Prigozhin and his team of Russian trolls tried to inflame racial tensions during the 2016 cycle by operating several social media accounts that tried to discourage African Americans from voting, mainly by repeating messages of police violence and voter fraud.

But the apparent new plot, discussed as recently as 2018 ahead of the 2020 presidential election, goes much further. The documents reportedly contain shocking proposals such as sending black Americans to Africa “for combat prep and training in sabotage,” as well as targeting people who have previously been incarcerated and people “who have experience in organized crime groups … for participation in civil disobedience actions.”

The goal, it seems, was to encourage the newly trained African Americans to create their own pan-African state in America’s South. That would “undermine the country’s territorial integrity and military and economic potential,” according to one document, by “destabiliz[ing] the internal situation in the US.”

It’s possible Prigozhin’s associates felt they had an opening to do this because President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory “deepened conflicts in American society,” per one of the documents.

Jeff Stein and Josh Dawsey report Confidential draft IRS memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless president invokes executive privilege:

The memo contradicts the Trump administration’s justification for denying lawmakers’ request for President Trump’s tax returns, exposing fissures in the executive branch.

Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instead denied the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them.

But according to the IRS memo, which has not been previously reported, the disclosure of tax returns to the committee “is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.”

How GameStop Lost $673 Million:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning rain with a high of fifty.  Sunrise is 5:25 AM and sunset 8:17 PM, for 14h 51m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 92.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1673, Fr. Jacques Marquette, fur-trader Louis Joliet, and five French voyageurs pulled into a Menominee community near modern Marinette, Mich. 

Recommended for reading in full:

Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Rachael Bade, and Josh Dawsey report Judge rules against Trump in fight over president’s financial records:

“It is simply not fathomable,” the judge wrote, “that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a President for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct — past or present — even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry.”

Trump has argued those congressional inquiries are politically motivated attacks on the authority of the presidency, while Democrats insist the subpoenas are essential to ensuring no president is above the law.

help visa holders find work and assimilate. The cap on green cards should be increased. Visa holders would have to find and maintain a job or start a business within a reasonable period of time.

Kevin Poulsen reports The Hell of Working at Trump’s New Favorite Network (“Conspiracy theories, racist outbursts, and a whole lot of Putin love. Working for the far-right One America News Network was a deeply weird experience, former employees say”):

If you don’t live in a world where Donald Trump’s inauguration drew record crowds, Roy Moore won the Alabama special election in a landslide, and Hillary Clinton has her political enemies assassinated, viewing OANN for a couple of hours is a surreal experience that inspires the same vague, uneasy dread you get from a David Lynch movie.

Working there is a million times worse.

“It was a really bad chapter in my life,” a former OANN anchor told the Daily Beast in an interview granted on condition of anonymity. “There were lots of afternoons where I would just sit in the car and cry. I didn’t understand why they were doing what they were doing.”

The Daily Beast spoke with four former OANN employees—three anchors and a writer, all of whom were experienced journalists when they started at the network’s headquarters on the northern edge of San Diego, California. Some of them were at OANN long enough to remember a time when they found much to admire in the network’s news coverage, particularly its focus on the kind of international stories neglected by CNN and Fox News.

….

If OANN is all about getting Donald Trump’s attention, it’s finally working. After snubbing the network for two years in his frequent media-focused tweet storms, Trump is now mentioning the channel regularly.

 In rural Pennsylvania, Trump jokes about serving a 5th term:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-eight.  Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:16 PM, for 14h 49m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Library Board is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1863, Union forces regroup at Vicksburg, Mississippi:

After the unsuccessful assault on Vicksburg the previous day, Union forces regrouped in front of the city. The 1st Wisconsin Light Artillery and the 8th, 11th, 18th and 23rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments joined the 14th and 17th Infantries to prepare for the next attack. While these arrangements were taking place at Vicksburg, the 4th Wisconsin Infantry fought in a skirmish in Cheneyville, Lousiana.

Recommended for reading in full:

David Haynes writes Wisconsin is losing people in their prime working years. Are more foreign workers the answer?:

Unemployment is low, jobs are being created and businesses are having trouble finding workers.

These are all signs that the economy in Wisconsin — and the nation — remains strong.

But behind those statistics is a problem that could put the brakes on growth: The number of people in their prime working years is declining.

Wisconsin has 150,000 fewer people between the ages of 25 and 54 than it did in 2007, which could create a host of problems for communities as fewer homes are built, the tax base shrinks and entrepreneurs say no thanks to starting a business.

“It’s a major concern when 50% of counties overall in Wisconsin are losing population outright but nearly every county is losing prime working age population,” said John Lettieri, author of a recent study by the Economic Innovation Group. EIG, a bipartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., recommends a new visa program to allow more skilled foreign workers into the United States.

….

EIG recommends:

The program should target regions facing population declines and underserved by existing immigration programs. It should be voluntary. It should tie workers to a place, not a company. It should be in addition to current immigration quotas. It should provide a path to permanent residency. Additional federal and state funding should be provided to help visa holders find work and assimilate. The cap on green cards should be increased. Visa holders would have to find and maintain a job or start a business within a reasonable period of time.

(Free markets in capital, goods, and labor are a superior solution to quotas and planned outcomes, but even a partial lessening of labor restrictions is a good, next-best outcome.)

Brian Fung reports Rural America feels the sting of Trump’s China trade war:

Farmers have already been struggling to adapt to Chinese tariffs on US soybeans, corn and wheat.

“Farmers were [Trump’s] base,” John Wesley Boyd Jr., a Virginia-based soybean farmer, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar in a recent interview. “They helped elect this President … and now he’s turning his back on America’s farmers when we need him the most.”

Anatomy of a Scene: How to Create a Funny Action Scene in ‘Pokémon Detective Pikachu’:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thunderstorms with a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 47m 48s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1863, a direct Union assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi begins:

For three days in May 1863, Union forces attempted to capture the city of Vicksburg to gain control of shipping on the Mississippi River. The troops climbed up steep ravines and crossed trenches to attack the fortifications above them. The 14th and 17th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in this unsuccessful assault. At the end of the day, the Union had lost nearly 1,000 soldiers without achieving its goal.

Recommended for reading in full:

Rick Barrett reports ‘Struggling to tread water’: Dairy farmers are caught in an economic system with no winning formula (‘Family farms are at the mercy of trade wars, economies of scale and a complex pricing system’):

The dairy crisis worsened last year when China and Mexico imposed steep tariffs on U.S. dairy products in retaliation for President Donald Trump slapping tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel.

Trump’s criticisms of Mexico, the largest foreign market for American dairy products, heightened trade tensions. When the president threatened to close the Mexican border, it alarmed former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, now president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.

Closing the border would be a “gut punch” that could set the dairy industry back 20 years, Vilsack said.

More than one in seven days’ worth of U.S. milk ends up in products sold in foreign countries. Trade wars, and the failure of the United States, Mexico and Canada to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — meant to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement — worries the industry.

“We shipped $1.4 billion in dairy products to Mexico last year, which accounts for more than one-fourth of U.S. dairy exports,” Vilsack said. “Without a trade treaty with Mexico in place, the dairy industry would be hard-pressed to maintain and expand these sales, as our competitors in Europe are expected to implement a lucrative trade deal with Mexico by next year.”

Wisconsin farmers have received more than $10 million in payments from a Trump program meant to help producers of milk, pork, soybeans, corn and other commodities who have seen prices tumble in trade disputes.

That’s about $725 for a 55-cow dairy which probably lost between $36,000 and $48,000 in income in 2018 from low milk prices, according to Wisconsin Farmers Union. A 290-cow dairy stood to receive $4,905 but would have lost several hundred thousand dollars in income.

The Mess family [of Watertown] said the payment they received didn’t even cover 10% of what they had to borrow to remain in business.

“We want trade, not aid,” Carrie Mess said.

….

Wisconsin still has about 1.3 million cows spread across nearly 8,000 dairy farms, more than any other state. The dairy industry contributes $43.4 billion to Wisconsin’s economy each year, or more than $82,500 per minute.

The Parrot Whisperer Can Fix Your Bird Woes:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see an occasional thunderstorm with a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:14 PM, for 14h 45m 53s of daytime.  The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Skamania County, Washington erupts. 

Recommended for reading in full:

Eliza Newlin Carney writes Republicans Abandon Election Security:

Russian attacks on the U.S. election infrastructure in 2016 were even more serious than reported at the time, recent disclosures show, and intelligence officials say they are bracing for more aggressive attacks from a wider array of foreign adversaries in 2020.

Yet instead of moving to shore up the nation’s vulnerable voting machines and databases, the Trump administration is sabotaging efforts to enhance election security at every turn. Trump’s determination to portray Russian interference as a hoax has made it taboo for members of his own administration to even talk about foreign meddling, and has derailed the leading bipartisan election security bill on Capitol Hill.

To make matters worse, Republicans have signaled that they don’t even plan to hold a single hearing on election security legislation—despite a growing list of bills introduced in recent weeks to block foreign interference on multiple fronts, many of them bipartisan. The reason? It seems that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is in such a fit of pique over House Democrats’ approval of sweeping democracy legislation that he’s unwilling to discuss election legislation of any kind.

….

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report on Russian interference disclosed for the first time that Russian hackers accessed election information from “at least one” Florida county—we now know it was two—in 2016. Mueller also disclosed that Russian hackers infiltrated and installed malware on the network of a U.S. vendor that manufactures voter registration software.

Jackson Diehl explains The real reason Venezuela’s Maduro survives: Dirty money:

When asked to explain why their efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have fallen short, Trump administration officials typically cite the sinister influence of Cuba and Russia, which they say has stiffened the regime’s resistance. What they don’t speak about so much is a possibly more important factor: the Cartel of the Suns.

That colorful term refers to the drug-trafficking network that each year flies hundreds of tons of Colombian cocaine from Venezuelan airfields to Central America and the Caribbean for eventual distribution in the United States and Europe — and that includes some of the most senior officials in the Maduro regime. These men are not clinging to power because they are true believers in socialism, or because of their fealty to Vladimir Putin and Raúl Castro. They hang on because, in spite of Venezuela’s economic implosion, they are still reaping millions — and they are likely to find themselves imprisoned in Venezuela or the United States if they walk away.

  Watch Jeff Bezos Reveal Blue Origin’s Detailed Plan For Colonizing Space: