Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 5:53 PM, for 10h 29m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, a Waukesha soldier sinks a Confederate ship:

On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandoned ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]

Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s dark inspiration, a one-party outlook, conspiracy theorists stick with their false theories, Megyn Kelly has nowhere good to go, and video of NASA’s test of a Martian parachute —

 Rick Wilson writes Of Course Donald Trump Inspired Cesar Sayoc’s Alleged Terrorism:

For three long days this week, the Republican Party held its breath as a serial bomber sent a dozen devices to CNN’s New York headquarters, two former Democratic presidents, a former Democratic vice president, two former CIA directors, several elected Democrats, and Democratic activists George Soros and Tom Steyer. After months of rabid attacks on his opponents as enemies of the people, Donald Trump’s crop of crazy came to fruition this week and was almost ready for harvest. By either incompetence, luck, design flaws, or providence, none of the bombs in this campaign of political terror cost life or limb.

….

Introspection isn’t exactly one of this president’s strong suits, and the discovery that the MAGA Bomber was one of the millions of creatures he created, inspired, and motivated to wage war against those he describes as Enemies of the People will never trouble the placid waters of his stunningly shallow intellect. Worry about his responsibility will never penetrate the vacuum of his moral landscape. Trump made an enemies list, and then he weaponized his social media power to push that enemies list into the minds of the furious and febrile who slavishly lap up his every utterance. What, precisely, did he think would happen?

….

This is why we need to look objectively at Trump’s role in this affair. No one in American political life has even a fraction of his power to inspire behavior and action. No one. It’s time we recognize that Trump’s unique social media presence is a weapon of radicalization. No one else in the American political landscape stokes the resentments, fears, and prejudices of his base with equal power.

Trump always misses the chance to be bigger and better. He never fails to close the door on opportunities to be a consequential leader and not a winking, simpering buffoon who holds the title but never wears the mantle of the presidency. As we saw after Charlottesville, his defiance of every American norm and his eagerness to “both sides” every argument is an extended middle finger to our republic.

David A. Graham observes Trump Wants to Be President of a One-Party State:

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Trump sometimes yearns for a one-party state. It’s a thread that runs through his opposition to critical press coverage and threats to throttle the media, his celebration of violence against the press, his incitements to violence against protesters, and his threats to prosecute and imprison political rivals like Hillary Clinton.

The result is that Trump is unable to extricate a criticism of him from a criticism of federal-government policy, and vice versa. When, for example, Puerto Ricans complained that aid was not reaching the island’s residents fast enough following Hurricane Maria, Trump took that as a personal affront and launched a long-running feud with the mayor of San Juan. For Trump, l’etat, c’est lui.

This produces a strange transference that makes Trump the ultimate victim of everything. The bombs are an attack on him because he is the government; they are also an attack on him because he is the head of the Republican Party, which he fears might be hurt by the fact of political violence aimed at Democrats.

 Eli Rosenberg reports Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and others stick with conspiracy theories after mail-bomb suspect’s arrest:

The sending of package bombs to prominent Democrats and other high-profile figures this week was accompanied by a disturbing phenomenon. Baseless conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringes in the wake of violent acts, leaped with shocking speed into the mainstream discussion of the attacks.

A surprisingly large number of figures from the conservative establishment — commentators, radio hosts, a Trump family member, and other pro-Trump figures — shared, liked, hinted at, raised questions about or otherwise endorsed an evidence-less theory that this was a “false-flag” attack — one that was staged to advance the political goals of the very people it seemed intended to hurt (in this case, Democrats).

But the FBI’s arrest of a suspect Friday pointed to the hollowness of these claims, raising questions about why they were voiced on such a fraught issue in the absence of evidence. The bombs were not “hoax devices,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said Friday. The suspect, 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc, “appears to be a partisan,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. And images circulating of the suspect’s van, which was plastered with pro-Trump and anti-Democrat imagery, and what was believed to be his social media feed, painted a portrait of a distinctly right-wing ideology.

Lloyd Grove and Tim Teeman write Networks Won’t Touch Megyn Kelly. But There’s Always Newsmax. (“Media industry experts told The Daily Beast that even when Kelly’s blackface crucible is finished, she will have very few career opportunities”):

Several media industry experts told The Daily Beast on Friday that even when Kelly’s blackface crucible is finished, she will likely have very few career opportunities—and none on a par with  NBC News. Perhaps she’d be welcome at a second-tier conservative-leaning cable channel like One America News Network or a local station consortium like Sinclair.

In recent days, executives at CBS, ABC and CNN—outlets that might once have jumped at the chance of hiring her—have displayed a decided lack of interest in her services; even Fox News, where she spent a dozen years and left for NBC after a series of controversies—including accusing the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes of sexually harassing her, an allegation he denied—has slammed the door on a possible Kelly return, issuing a statement that essentially said there was zero room for her in their programming lineup.

“She could be hired by an outlet that is not interested in attracting African-American audiences,” said former CNN President Jonathan Klein, who once wished he’d hired Kelly from Fox News. In those days, a decade ago, “she was an impressive, accomplished, tough, edgy, in-your-face, kickass journalist,” Klein said. But when she came to NBC and tried to impersonate a female-friendly morning show host, “she tried so hard to spin it the other way to the point where it never felt authentic,” Klein added. “I think what she needs to do is be her authentic self and find a media home that allows her to be whatever that is.”

 NASA is Testing a Parachute for Mars:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 5:54 PM, for 10h 32m 12s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1881, there’s a gunfight at the O.K. Corral:

a 30-second shootout between lawmen and members of a loosely organized group of outlaws called the Cowboys that took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It is generally regarded as the most famous shootout in the history of the American Wild West. The gunfight was the result of a long-simmering feud, with Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury on one side and town Marshal Virgil Earp, Special Policeman Morgan Earp, Special Policeman Wyatt Earp, and temporary policeman Doc Holliday on the other side.

Recommended for reading in full — How national attention changed Scott Walker, tariffs shake Wisconsin, a reunion in Paris for Trump & Putin, Roger Stone in the spotlight, and video about a way to deter great white sharks —

Rick Barrett reports Wisconsin companies step up complaints on tariffs and trade wars at town hall meeting:

Higher tariffs cost Wisconsin companies $95 million in August, up 47 percent from a year earlier, according to new data from Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a business group behind the town hall meetings being held in several cities.

The restaurant industry was part of the discussion because various products, from seafood to stoves, are subject to higher costs from trade wars.

It’s tough to pass the additional costs on to consumers through higher prices on the dinner menu, according to [executive vice president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association Susan] Quam.

Peter Bildstein writes I Respected Scott Walker. Then I Worked for Him:

Even early on, however, I noticed that not everything was as it should be. At more than one Cabinet meeting, the secretary of the Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch, told us never to send him or the governor any electronic documents of consequence, and to avoid the use of our state-issued cellphones. “If you send me an important report electronically, I won’t open it,” I remember him saying, “and if you call me on your state phone, I won’t answer it.” If we had any important documents, they were to be “walked over” and hand-delivered to the governor’s office. As a result, open-record requests by the media or political opponents would be almost futile. This lack of transparency would be a hallmark of the Walker administration.

….

After he won his recall election, Walker rarely attended Cabinet meetings anymore, and radically reduced the number of one-on-ones with Cabinet secretaries. He took more far-right positions, probably because he thought they would play well with the Republican base. Funding for public education and our University of Wisconsin system was cut dramatically. Our infrastructure continued to deteriorate to the point that we ranked 49th in the nation in the quality of our roads and bridges.

 The Committee to Investigate Russia writes Meet Me In Paris:

National security advisor John Bolton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for 90 minutes Tuesday and agreed to have President Trump meet with Putin next month on the sidelines of a World War I commemoration being held in Paris.

Bloomberg Politics:

The two leaders plan a “normal, bilateral meeting” on Nov. 11, Bolton told reporters Tuesday. It would be the first such encounter between the two presidents since July, when they met in Helsinki. That meeting was marked by Trump’s apparent acceptance of Russian statements that Moscow didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, a view quickly refuted by top U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers from both parties.

Carol D. Leonnig,  Manuel Roig-Franzia, and
Rosalind S. Helderman report Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens:

n recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsel’s quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — or any other associate of the president — have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016?

While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures of emails believed to have been hacked by Russian operatives disrupted the 2016 presidential campaign, according to people familiar with the special counsel probe.

Stone, who boasted during the race that he was in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said since that his past comments were exaggerated or misunderstood. Both he and WikiLeaks have adamantly denied they were in contact.

This Is the Only Proven Way to Deter a Great White Shark:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 5:56 PM, for 10h 34m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1836, a territorial legislature meets:

On this date the first legislative session of the Wisconsin territory convened 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 —  Chinese & Russians intercept Trump’s unprotected calls, letting go of Gen. Lee, some of Trump’s lies are impeachable offenses, wage stagnation, and video of the misunderstood ‘false vampire bat’   —  

Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman report When Trump Phones Friends, the Chinese and the Russians Listen and Learn:

When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said.

Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them.

Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements. The officials said they were doing so not to undermine Mr. Trump, but out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.

American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.

(Trump’s nationalism shows no regard for the security of this nation from its authoritarian adversaries.)

Retired Army General Stanley A. McChrystal writes At 63, I Threw Away My Prized Portrait of Robert E. Lee (“I was raised to venerate Lee the principled patriot—but I want no association with Lee the defender of slavery”):

On a Sunday morning in 2017 I took down his picture, and by afternoon it was in the alley with other rubbish awaiting transport to the local landfill for final burial. Hardly a hero’s end.

….

A mythology grew around Lee and the cause he served. For many, Lee’s qualities and accomplishments, already impressive, gained godlike proportions. This was the Lee I first came to know: a leader whose flaws and failures were sanded off, the very human figure recast as a two-dimensional hero whose shadow had eclipsed the man from whom it came.

But as time passed, the myth was reexamined. The darker side of Lee’s legacy, and the picture in my office, now communicated ideas about race and equality with which I sought no association. Down it came.

(Good for him – Lee was an enemy of the United States, and his failed effort succeeded only in bringing four years of death, continued slavery, and treason. See also Lee’s Reputation Can’t Be Redeemed.)

 Bob Bauer writes Some Presidential Lies Are Impeachable Offenses:

President Trump is a committed liar, as even his most dependable supporters openly concede. The Washington Post columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen recently wrote that “the president lies all the time,” and he included this candid assertion in a piece favorable to the president. A serious question is whether Trump’s lies have put him at risk of impeachment.

….

Some lies, however, may represent a dereliction of constitutional duty, and these cannot be left to the political marketplace.

As Philip Bobbitt shows in his supplement to Charles Black’s landmark study of impeachment, a “conspiracy to pervert the course of a presidential election” by “acting in league with a hostile foreign power” is clearly a basis for removal. So, too, is any false statement made to impede an investigation into this kind of conspiracy—including false statements to the public. A clear precedent is the article of impeachment on obstruction passed by the House Judiciary Committee in the proceedings against Richard Nixon. It included a charge that Nixon had made “false and misleading public statements,” which were “contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government.”

It is entirely possible that Trump has made “false and misleading public statements” of exactly that sort.

 Tory Newmyer writes It’s not just the stock market dive the GOP should worry about:

President Trump can’t be happy that after another steep sell-off on Wall Street, the U.S. stock market has now erased all of its gains this year. Trump revels in the market highs, and the recent slide comes at a precarious moment for Republicans hoping economic tail windslimit their midterm losses.

But a less splashy piece of news Wednesday arguably should be more worrying for the GOP: The Federal Reserve reports that wages are moving higher but only at a “modest to moderate” clip, despite the tight labor market. 

The finding is the latest piece of evidence suggesting the strong economic growth evident in headline numbers isn’t trickling down to everybody. And it follows a new poll by Bankrate.com showing six in 10 Americans say they’re financially no better off today than they were two years ago — a number that climbs to nearly eight in 10 for those earning less than $30,000 a year.

(Emphasis in original.)

 Behold The Misunderstood ‘False Vampire Bat’:

Deep in the Maya forests of Mexico lives the rarely-seen Vampyrum spectrum—the false vampire bat. Little is known about these carnivorous mammals, as their nocturnal lifestyle and remote habitats make them exceedingly difficult to study.

That didn’t deter biologist Rodrigo Medellin and photographer Anand Varma. In Jason Jaacks’s short documentary, In Search of Tzotz, Medellin, Professor of Ecology at the University of Mexico, and Varma, on assignment for National Geographic, spent months scouring ancient ruins and labyrinthine caves in the Yucatan for traces of the mysterious winged creatures, whom the Maya called Tzotz.

“Through Dr. Medellin’s research and Anand’s incredible visual storytelling skills, we witnessed several new behaviors never before seen by science,” Jaacks told The Atlantic.  “We spent quite a bit of time crammed in a small tunnel inside an 800-year-old Mayan temple, in near-pitch darkness, filming the False Woolly Vampire bat roost. To hear a bat with a 2.5-foot wingspan fly over you in tight quarters was utterly amazing…Being in the presence of these bats is an awe-inspiring feeling.”

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 5:57 PM, for 10h 37m 33s of daytime.  The moon is full today.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.

It’s United Nations Day:

UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force in 1945 of the UN Charter. With the ratification of this founding document by the majority of its signatories, including the five permanent members of the Security Council, the United Nations officially came into being.”

Recommended for reading in full —  Why Trump’s supporters will believe any lie he tells, Trump’s closing argument for 2018 elections is dark and divisive, how Russian runs its disinformation against American elections, Georgia Republican bemoans opponent’s supporters exercising their right to vote, and video of the amateur astronomer who found a lost NASA satellite —  

 Teri Kanefield considers Why Trump’s Supporters Will Believe Any Lie He Tells (“From Kavanaugh to Khashoggi, they are immune to the truth”):

Part of Trump’s defense against his various investigatory pursuers is to persuade his followers that all politicians are corrupt liars, which is one reason the “Lock her up” chant has been so devastating. If people believe all politicians are corrupt, going after Trump becomes political persecution, or a “witch hunt.”

Trump’s final aim isn’t simply to escape accountability for his crimes. The final aim is to replace democracy itself with a form of autocracy, under which he and his cronies are forever unaccountable for criminal actions. Normalizing lies and flooding the zone shatters the public sphere upon which democracy depends. Without that shared reality, Mueller poses no threat to Trump. Similarly, without a shared public sphere, Trump doesn’t have to worry about resistance. As Yale professor Jason Stanley says, without truth it is impossible to speak truth to power, so there is only power.

The United States is on a steep learning curve. Because truth, factuality, and our very public sphere are under attack, our democracy (and republic) is in danger. The attack is devastatingly effective, partly because we have never experienced anything like this and thus are largely unprepared. Our task now is to save our public sphere. The way to do this was demonstrated by how the Chileans got out of the far more extreme Pinochet regime and reinstated democracy: All sides opposed to authoritarianism and committed to democracy worked together. That means they started actually talking, and listening, to one another. In the United States, this would mean that all groups that claim to be committed to continuing our democratic republic, from supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Never Trump Republicans, would need to join forces. We will likely soon find out if the nation is up to the task.

David A. Graham writes Trump’s Closing Argument for the Midterms Is Dark and Angry (“With just two weeks to go, the president is resorting to the mixture of immigration fearmongering and dishonesty that got him elected”):

With the election just 14 days away, Trump is campaigning hard. He has four rallies scheduled this week alone—his other stops are central Wisconsin, Charlotte, and southern Illinois. His closing argument is a familiar one. Following the blueprint that brought him to victory in 2016, he’s relying on the power of immigration fears, enhanced by blatantly false rhetoric.

For example, Trump claimed he had begun constructing his border wall; he has not. He claimed Democrats are for open borders; for the most part, they are not, nor is Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, against whom Trump was campaigning. He claimed Democrats were to blame for asylum seekers traveling to the United States; the migrants are fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries. Trump also claimed—without evidence—that Democrats started the “caravan” of refugees currently wending its way northward through Mexico.

If that were true, and there’s no evidence for it, it would be a colossal blunder. The specter of a column of Hispanics marching northward in the closing weeks of the election has provided Trump just the talking point he wants to whip up his supporters, and on Monday night he showed how he intends to use it.

Trump covered lots of other ground in the speech, of course. There was a strange, and coolly received, riff about Hurricane Harvey. (The president continues to believe, for some reason, that people went out in pleasure craft to enjoy the storm; he also complained that the storm was expensive, and “I’m paying for it.”) There was also an apparently bogus promise to cut taxes 10 percent in the coming week.

But that’s a reminder that almost a year ago, when Trump rammed a tax cut through Congress, it was supposed to be the heart of the GOP’s pitch to voters in 2018. Instead, it’s been a total flop, which is why Trump was out beating the immigration drum once more.

 Philip Ewing reports Here’s How Russia Runs Its Disinformation Effort Against The 2018 Midterms:

Who’s responsible?

The branch of active measures the Russians call “Project Lakhta” has been running since “mid-2014,” and works through some dozen Russian entities, of which the best-known probably was the “Internet Research Agency.” It, quasi-“news” and other organizations employed hundreds of people, with a global budget of the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, U.S. officials say.

Who pays for it?

The money comes through a company called Concord, which is controlled by a billionaire ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Justice Department’s allegations.

“Our fifth anniversary is coming up next May … and I am hoping we can make it to then,” he said.

….

How does it work?

Worker bees within Project Lakhta disguise themselves as Americans and insert themselves into conversations on social media. They create Facebook and Twitter identities, for example, that make them appear to be Americans. They use technical means to disguise the fact that they are logging in from St. Petersburg, Russia.

Court documents unsealed in February described how influence-mongers within the Internet Research Agency set up virtual private networks and used American email accounts, along with some stolen identities of Americans, to plausibly pose as Americans, disguising the fact that they were using workstations in St. Petersburg.

Other people working in the disinformation project bought display ads, in some cases, through “third-party intermediaries,” according to court documents. So disinformation practitioners could get into an American user’s Facebook feed at least those two ways: by pretending to be real users or by having paid for ads.

Facebook and Twitter have vowed to clamp down on fake accounts and they say they’ll mandate more disclosure about who pays for political ads.

 Jamil Smith reports Exclusive: In Leaked Audio, Brian Kemp Expresses Concern Over Georgians Exercising Their Right to Vote:

Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.

An attendee of the “Georgia Professionals for Kemp” event says they recorded 21 minutes and 12 seconds of the evening, held last Friday at the Blind Pig Parlour Bar near Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. As proof of their attendance, the source shared with Rolling Stone a receipt of their donation, which granted access to the gathering.

….

On Tuesday morning, a member of the Kemp campaign confirmed that the event took place, but the campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the specific remarks. On Monday evening, a Facebook page for the event was removed from public view. Candice Broce, the press secretary for the Georgia Secretary of State, told Rolling Stone that she does not respond to campaign-related inquiries because she represents the office.

It is fairly typical for a political candidate expressing confidence in his campaign to lament his opponent’s efforts to increase turnout. But Kemp’s position as Georgia’s Secretary of State clouds his statements. While it is not uncommon for someone in such a position to be on a ballot during an election that he or she oversees — they do have to run for re-election, after all — the state’s top elections official speaking of “concern” about increased early and absentee voting raises further questions about a conflict of interest.

Meet the Amateur Astronomer Who Found a Lost NASA Satellite:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 5:59 PM, for 10h 40m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites serve at the Battle of Westport, Missouri:

The 9th Wisconsin Light Artillery fought in the Battle of Westport, at present-day Kansas City, Missouri. Sometimes called the “Gettysburg of the West,” this battle ended the last significant Confederate operation west of the Mississippi River. It was one of the largest battles fought west of the Mississippi River, with over 30,000 men engaged.

Recommended for reading in full —  Trump’s trade war hits Wisconsin’s small businesses, DNA crime-testing backlog grows under Brad Schimel, Trump lies about ‘Middle Easterners’ in migrant caravan, former attorney for Trump admits Robert Mueller is an American hero & his investigation is not a witch hunt, and video on the evolution of Stephen King  —  

Rick Barrett reports As tariffs continue, panic beginning to sink in among Wisconsin manufacturers:

Across America’s heartland, small and midsize manufacturers are reeling from higher costs and lost business attributed to a breakdown in foreign trade.

While some have benefited, others have been hammered by rising tariffs — a tax on imported or exported goods — on products including boats, electronics, sporting goods, bourbon and baby cribs, to name a few.

The “handshake deals” Trump made with Canada and Mexico may have saved thousands of automaker jobs. Yet smaller companies, [president and CEO of Marquis-Larson Boat Group Rob] Parmentier said, haven’t seen much relief.

“The rest of us little guys are just getting crushed,” he said.

The tariffs that China recently placed on American ginseng and bourbon, for example, have clobbered Great Northern Distilling, in Plover, Wisconsin, which makes ginseng-infused bourbon.

It’s cost the company 25 percent of its sales.

“All of the buyers have cold feet now. They’ve said until this gets resolved, they’re not placing an order,” said Brian Cummins, co-founder of the distillery, which has 11 employees.

“Our fifth anniversary is coming up next May … and I am hoping we can make it to then,” he said.

Keegan Kyle reports DNA backlog grows to nearly 800 cases in state crime labs, new figures show:

State crime lab workers have sped up drug tests in the past year, but a backlog of months-old DNA evidence has continued to grow to nearly 800 cases.

Attorney General Brad Schimel, who oversees the state crime labs, released new figures Friday about the tests, about four weeks after USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin requested them under open records laws.

Schimel is campaigning for re-election Nov. 6 and has faced criticism from his opponent, Democrat Josh Kaul, over crime lab delays. When the Republican entered office in 2015, DNA evidence rarely took more than two months to test.

Now, about half of all DNA tests take at least two months and hundreds of cases typically take more than three months — potentially slowing police investigations or court cases that rely on DNA.

Karla Zabludovsky reports “We Would Know”: Caravan Migrants Have No Idea What Donald Trump Meant With His “Middle Easterners” Tweet (“The president’s claim that the caravan had been infiltrated was news to the Honduran migrants traveling north”):

TAPACHULA, Mexico — As the migrant caravan advanced through Mexico en route to the US on Monday, 15 days before midterm elections, President Donald Trump attempted to stoke new fears, tweeting that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.”

“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic],” he added.

In Tapachula, the southern Mexico town where the caravan spent the night before starting the next leg of their journey, more than a dozen people asked by BuzzFeed News hadn’t heard about the accusation. When they were informed, though, they were baffled.

“What?” Melvin Gómez, 32, exclaimed in English. “Most of us come from Honduras. It’s small, we all know each other. We would know.”

The criminals “must be the children, the women. The diapers must be the bombs,” said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the organization that coordinated a smaller caravan in April, during a press conference Monday.

“It’s a shame that such a powerful president utilizes this caravan for political means,” he added.

In a discussion on “The President, the Presidency and the Law,” former Special Counsel to President Trump Ty Cobb calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller “an American hero.” (He also admits the Mueller investigation is not a witch hunt.):

The Evolution of Stephen King: