Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 15m 34s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s 4th of July festival opens today at 4 PM.

On this day in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg continues:

On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp’s Hilland Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Frum considers The Great Russian Disinformation Campaign:

When Westerners first began to hear of Vladimir Putin’s troll army—now some five years ago—the project sounded absurd. President Obama in March 2014 had dismissed Russia as merely a weak “regional power.” And Putin’s plan to strike back was to hire himself a bunch of internet commenters? Seriously?

In a recent talk in Washington, the historian Timothy Snyder observed that Russia’s annual budget for cyberwarfare is less than the price of a single American F-35 jet. Snyder challenged his audience to consider: Which weapon has done more to shape world events?

Snyder is an unusual historian-activist, both a great scholar of the terrible cost of 20th-century totalitarianism and also a passionate champion of endangered democracy in Ukraine and Eastern Europe—and now, the United States. Increasingly, he sees his concerns fusing into one great narrative, as methods of manipulation and deception pioneered inside Russia are deployed against Russia’s chosen targets.

Clausewitz defined war as the use of violence by one state to impose its will upon another. But suppose new technology enabled a state to “engage the enemy’s will directly, without the medium of violence,” Snyder writes—this would be a revolution in the history of conflict. This revolution, Snyder argues, is what Russia has imposed upon the United States and the European Union. How, why, and with what consequences is the theme of Snyder’s newest book, The Road to Unfreedom.

Matthew Mosk and John Santucci report Special counsel eyeing Russians granted unusual access to Trump inauguration parties:

Several billionaires with deep ties to Russia attended exclusive, invitation-only receptions during Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities, guest lists obtained by ABC News show.

These powerful businessmen, who amassed their fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union — including one who has since been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department — were ushered into events typically reserved for top donors and close political allies and were given unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle.

Their presence has attracted the interest of federal investigators probing Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Matthew Olsen, a former senior national security official who now serves as an ABC News consultant, said their presence at inaugural events is “very concerning.”

“This reflects a Russian strategy of gaining access to our political leaders at a time when they are just forming a government,” Olsen said. “They don’t need to be spies in the James Bond sense. They are powerful people with significant wealth who are in a position to exert influence on U.S. policy makers. And they’re in a position to report back to Russian intelligence services on what they’re able to learn.”

Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick report North Korea working to conceal key aspects of its nuclear program, U.S. officials say:

U.S. intelligence officials, citing newly obtained evidence, have concluded that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and secret production facilities, according to U.S. officials.

The evidence, collected in the wake of the June 12 summit in Singapore, points to preparations to deceive the United States about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, the officials said.

The findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize.

The assessment stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s exuberant comments following the summit, when he declared on Twitter that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea. At a recent rally, he also said he had “great success’’ with Pyongyang.

Intelligence officials and many North Korea experts have generally taken a more cautious view, noting that leader Kim Jong Un’s vague commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula is a near-echo of earlier pledges from North Korean leaders over the past two decades, even as they accelerated efforts to build nuclear weapons in secret.

  Clive Irving contends It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini (“The false threat of murderous immigrants, the draconian response, a government agency going rogue—it’s all been seen before and it’s very dangerous”):

This is not Italy in 1925. Nonetheless there is no comfort to be gained from the gap in place and time. There are too many clear similarities in the Trump administration’s language, techniques and actions.

First, there is the flashpoint issue designed to make populations feel insecure—and therefore, to justify a draconian response.

Trump has used immigration as that issue from the day of his notorious candidacy-launching “rapists and murderers” speech.

And, like Mussolini, Trump is surrounded by his own hard core of fanatics eager to use that issue to achieve their own ideological purposes.

Mussolini was greatly under the influence of Roberto Farinacci, a lawyer and one of the most unrelenting dogmatists of the fascist movement. Trump has Stephen Miller, under the nebulous title of political adviser, who has for years been in lockstep with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in whipping up fears about the browning of America (which is, in any case, already demographically inevitable).

The ultimate ghastly achievement of the Miller-Sessions axis has been the “zero tolerance” policy for those crossing the Mexican border without permission. In other words, the automatic criminalization of refugees.

Here’s What’s Up for July 2018:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see occasional thunderstorms with a high of eighty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 16m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 90.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s 4th of July festival opens today at noon.

On this day in 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg begins:

After his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North—the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.

Elements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brig. Gen. John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of the town to the hills just to the south.[14]”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Adam Davidson reports The Inconvenient Legal Troubles That Lie Ahead for the Trump Foundation:

Barring an unexpected change, the Donald J. Trump Foundation will be defending itself in a New York courtroom shortly before this fall’s midterm elections. The proceedings seem unlikely to go well for the institution and its leadership; President Trump and his elder children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric, are being sued by New York’s attorney general, Barbara Underwood, for using the charity to enrich and benefit the Trump family. On Tuesday, the judge in the case, Saliann Scarpulla, made a series of comments and rulings from the bench that hinted—well, all but screamed—that she believes the Trump family has done some very bad things.

The judge seemed frustrated, even confused, that the Trumps were fighting the case at all. At one point, she told a lawyer for the Trump children that they should just settle out of court and voluntarily agree to one of the sanctions: a demand by the Attorney General that they not serve on the boards of any nonprofits for one year. (The case will be tried in civil court, and the Trumps aren’t facing any criminal charges.) That’s far from the worst sort of punishment, but to accede to it would be a public embarrassment and an acknowledgement that the family did, indeed, use the foundation as something of a private slush fund to enrich themselves and reward their cronies. Judge Scarpulla made clear that she felt the children should agree to the sanction now, and that, if they don’t, she will probably impose a similar restriction “with or without your agreement.”

The case against the Trumps appears damning. Charitable foundations are governed by a crucial compromise: they can operate without paying taxes on the condition that their leadership insures that all money spent is spent in pursuit of the public good. The case brought by Attorney General Underwood shows that the Trump Foundation was neither well-managed nor focussed on what would generally be considered the public good. Its operations were shockingly sloppy; at least one of the organization’s official board members said that he had no idea he was on the board and that the board had never met, to his knowledge. No surprise, then, that the other controls that normally govern nonprofits were absent. As David Fahrenthold, of the Washington Post, exposed in a series of stories in 2016, the Foundation did virtually none of the charitable things it claimed to be doing.

  Adam Liptak and Maggie Haberman report Inside the White House’s Quiet Campaign to Create a Supreme Court Opening:

One person who knows both men remarked on the affinity between Mr. Trump and Justice Kennedy, which is not obvious at first glance. Justice Kennedy is bookish and abstract, while Mr. Trump is earthy and direct.

But they had a connection, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Congress in February 2017. As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.

“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”

Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.

During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.

About a week before the presidential address, Ivanka Trump had paid a visit to the Supreme Court as a guest of Justice Kennedy. The two had met at a lunch after the inauguration, and Ms. Trump brought along her daughter, Arabella Kushner. Occupying seats reserved for special guests, they saw the justices announce several decisions and hear an oral argument.

Nina Totenberg writes Justice Kennedy May Soon Find Himself Disappointed And His Legacy Undermined:

That will leave Chief Justice John Roberts with the next move. Though a consistent conservative, he occasionally has voted with the court’s liberals, as he did this year in declaring that police must obtain a warrant to obtain cellphone location information from service providers.

Few doubt that any new Supreme Court justice appointed by Trump will move the court decidedly to the right, but as professor Rick Hasen, of the University of California, Irvine, put it this week, “The question is how John Roberts wants to move.”

Court observers have “spent the last 11 years asking what Anthony Kennedy had for breakfast,” he said. Now it’s ” ‘What did John Roberts have for breakfast?’ and it’s a slightly different menu.”

Lachlan Markay reports Exclusive: Pro-Trump Group, Turning Point USA, Has Finances Revealed:

Turning Point reported $1.87 million in grants to other charitable groups. But the vast majority of that sum, $1,825,150, was given to an affiliated nonprofit arm, the Turning Point Endowment, to which the IRS granted tax-exempt status this year. It reported an additional $45,000 in grants to individuals, but the form doesn’t list who those individuals are.

That means that Turning Point gave out exactly zero grant money to any charitable organization not directly affiliated with Turning Point itself. That, of course, doesn’t tell the full story. Turning Point isn’t a grantmaking organization; its nonprofit program activities take place in-house, and its tax filing says about 88 percent of its budget went toward program expenses.

That would make its lack of grantmaking unremarkable, but for [organization leader Charlie] Kirk’s own public statements of late. Responding to allegations that Donald Trump illegally used his personal foundation to benefit his presidential campaign, Kirk claimed that all of the Trump Foundation’s money went to charitable grants, whereas the Clinton Foundation sent “only 6.4 percent of money to charities.” But like Turning Point, the Clinton Foundation conducts most of its charitable work in-house. Grantmaking is not the sole measure of a charitable group’s activities or effectiveness, as Kirk suggests. If it were, Turning Point’s record would be vastly more problematic than the Clinton Foundation’s.

They’re Catching Tiny Fish With Tiny Rods:

Every fisherman today has a big fish story, but in ancient Japan, the tiniest fish was the biggest catch. Tanago fishing is a Japanese tradition dating back to samurai over 200 years ago. A tanago fish can be as small as the nail of a pinky finger; in order to catch one, a fisherman must have a hook, bait, and a very special fishing rod called Edo Wazao, handmade from natural bamboo. Twin brothers Toryo and Shuhei Tosaku are the 8th generation of their family to keep up the precious craft of Edo Wazao. With less than ten skilled craftsmen left, the brothers are hoping carry on the legacy of their ancestors.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety-three.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 17m 01s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s 4th of July festival opens today at noon, live music begins at 2 PM, and there will be fireworks at 10 PM.

On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress establishes sixty-nine Articles of War to govern the conduct of the Continental Army.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Heather Long writes ‘Not what we expected’: Trump’s tax bill is losing popularity:

In a packed arena in Fargo, N.D., this week, President Trump’s most ardent supporters roared with approval when he talked about protecting the U.S. borders, beating the Democrats and “respect for our great, beautiful, wonderful American flag.” When Trump pivoted to the tax bill, his top legislative accomplishment, the crowd clapped — but without the fervor they had shown for many of his other applause lines.

Trump signed the tax cut legislation just before Christmas. Six months later, it is losing popularity.

American families are unsure whether they are benefiting from the tax cut, and small businesses say they are confused by the complex changes affecting them. A recent poll from Monmouth University found 34 percent of adults approve of the tax cut now, a slide from January when adults were about evenly split between approving and disapproving. And about a third of families say they are better off because of the cuts, according to polls by Politico and the New York Times.

  Reid Wilson explains Foxconn deal raises concerns of taxpayer giveaways:

“The state is grossly overspending on a very risky deal. Even by its own math, the state says it won’t break even for 25 years. In high tech, that’s three lifetimes,” said Greg LeRoy, who heads Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that tracks lavish incentive packages states and cities give to corporations.

The incentive package passed by Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled legislature, during a special session last August, will offer the company $1.5 billion to offset payroll costs and another $1.35 billion for capital expenditures. The state will give Foxconn $150 million in sales tax exemptions on construction materials, and it plans to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on road improvements near the new factory.

The town of Mount Pleasant, where the factory will be located, will offer $763 million to help pay for the project, and Racine County gave the company $50 million to acquire the land.

In total, Wisconsin, Racine County and Mount Pleasant gave the company nearly $4.8 billion in tax breaks, incentives and taxpayer dollars for improvements. If Foxconn delivers all 13,000 jobs it has promised, that works out to about $370,000 per job.

“Foxconn is a great deal for Foxconn and an absolutely terrible deal for Wisconsin,” said Richard Florida, an urban planning expert who heads the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute. He called the deal “a complete and total waste of taxpayer money.”

(The national press knows and reports what a waste Foxconn is; it’s only some of the state and local press, or local business leagues, etc., that sell a different – and false – story to the desperately gullible or profoundly ignorant.)

Tiffany Hsu reports G.M. Says New Wave of Trump Tariffs Could Force U.S. Job Cuts:

General Motors warned Friday that if President Trump pushed ahead with another wave of tariffs, the move could backfire, leading to “less investment, fewer jobs and lower wages” for its employees.

The automaker said that the president’s threat to impose tariffs on imports of cars and car parts — along with an earlier spate of penalties — could drive vehicle prices up by thousands of dollars. The “hardest hit” cars, General Motors said in comments submitted to the Commerce Department, are likely to be the ones bought by consumers who can least afford an increase. Demand would suffer and production would slow, all of which “could lead to a smaller G.M.”

The president has promoted tariffs as a way to protect American businesses and workers, aiming at dozens of nations with metal tariffs, as well as bringing broader levies against Chinese goods. But companies, which rely on other markets for sales, production and materials, have been increasingly vocal about the potential damage from his policies.

The warning by G.M., echoed in comments by trade groups and other automakers, could test the president’s aggressive approach to trade and his commitment to business. In the past, Mr. Trump has lauded General Motors for its job creation and vowed to defend the auto industry.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas writes With the revelation of Marc Short’s impending departure, President Trump has lost the vast majority of Tier One staff members:

In the whirlwind of staff departures that has characterized the first year and a half of the Trump administration, Marc Short’s recent announcement struck me as particularly noteworthy for a few reasons. Unlike many senior aides, Mr. Short has not drawn the ire of his boss via Twitter, nor does it appear that he is resigning under any pressure. Instead, his tenure has been marked by the passage of tax reform and the ability to maintain ongoing support among most congressional Republicans. Perhaps more importantly, however, his departure marks the further erosion of the most senior-level staff members within the Trump team.

To analyze the impact of Short’s impending departure, I relied on the National Journal’s series “Decisionmakers.” (Published at the beginning of each administration from Reagan through Obama, this special issue identifies the most influential aides to an incoming president.) An inventory of these many positions revealed that twelve were mentioned in every single edition (I call these “Tier One”), and presumably reflect the “crème de la crème” within the ranks of presidential advisers. This sub-sample includes the following positions: Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, Press Secretary, Assistant to the President for Public Liaison, Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs, White House Counsel, Staff Secretary, Cabinet Secretary, National Security Adviser, Deputy National Security Adviser and Chair of the Counsel of Economic Advisers.

Of these twelve positions within the Trump Administration, a full two-thirds have left the White House, and with the recent revelation that the Legislative Affairs Director, Marc Short, will be leaving this summer, 75 percent of the president’s most senior aides will have departed within the first 18 months of the administration. In some instances, a single position has turned over a full two times or more (e.g., Deputy Chief of Staff, Deputy National Security Adviser, and National Security Adviser). The three remaining Tier One aides within the Trump team are White House Counsel Don McGahn (who has reportedly threatened to leave), Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett.

Sometimes, one confronts a bridge fireplace mantle too far:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety-four.  Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 17m 40s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s 4th of July festival opens this evening at 5 PM, with music beginning at 7 PM.

Update, 11:30 AM – I’ve received additional documents concening a 6.26.18 public records request, with some email header information yet pending, and will organize the results over the weekend to ready them for posting here at FW.

On this day in 1862, the over a year into the Civil War, the Battle of Savage’s Station, Virginia takes place: “The Battle of Savage’s Station was fought during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia. The 5th Wisconsin Infantry and Co. G of the 1st U.S. Sharpshooters took part.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Matthew DeFour reports Donald Trump calls Foxconn’s Wisconsin campus ‘the 8th Wonder of the World’:

MOUNT PLEASANT — President Donald Trump declared a Foxconn Technology Group campus in Racine County “the 8th Wonder of the World” during a ceremony in which he and Gov. Scott Walker praised each other for bringing the Taiwanese manufacturer to America.

(If Trump thinks that Foxconn is the eighth wonder of the world, then perhaps he thinks the first seven are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.)

  Natasha Bertrand reports Trump Backs Russia on Election Interference Ahead of NATO Summit:

Just weeks before his back-to-back summits with Nato members in Belgium and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland, President Trump is legitimizing Russia’s claim that it did not interfere in the 2016 election, contradicting the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump tweeted on Thursday morning, before launching a diatribe against former FBI Director James Comey and his “disgraced” agents. “Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!”

The outburst is the latest instance of Trump effectively shunning the conclusions of U.S. intelligence and national-security officials, who in a 2016 report determined that “Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” while bolstering Moscow’s denials. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is currently investigating whether the Trump campaign aided that operation, and whether the president attempted to obstruct the inquiry into Moscow’s interference.

Mark Landler reports In Meeting With Putin, Experts Fear Trump Will Give More Than He Gets:

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s appetite for a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, his aides say, was whetted by his talks with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, two weeks ago. But it is precisely that encounter that is stirring unease among foreign policy experts, including some in his own administration.

They worry that Mr. Trump will make the same kinds of concessions to Mr. Putin when they meet in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16 that he made to Mr. Kim in Singapore, tilting a relationship that has already swung in Russia’s favor.

In the past few weeks alone, Mr. Trump has called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of 7 industrial powers, suggested it has a legitimate claim to Crimea because a lot of Russian speakers live there and continued sowing doubts about whether Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election — or if it did, whether the sabotage actually benefited Hillary Clinton.

In Singapore, Mr. Trump emerged from a lunch of sweet and sour crispy pork with Mr. Kim to declare he had solved the nuclear crisis with North Korea, even though the North conceded nothing on its weapons and missile programs. Mr. Trump also canceled joint military exercises with South Korea, a concession long sought by Pyongyang.

The Washington Post editorial board writes Trump is kowtowing to the Kremlin again. Why?:

Meeting with John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, Mr. Putin declared that the tensions are “in large part the result of an intense domestic political battle inside the U.S.” Then Mr. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov insisted that Russia “most certainly did not interfere in the 2016 election” in the United States. On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump echoed them both on Twitter: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”

….

Just as Mr. Bolton was flattering Mr. Putin, Russia was engaging in subterfuge on the ground in Syria. The United States, Russia and Jordan last year negotiated cease-fire agreements in southwestern Syria, along the border with Jordan and the Golan Heights. In recent days, the United States has warned Russia and its Syrian allies not to launch an offensive in the area, where the rebel forces hold parts of the city of Daraa and areas along the border. The State Department vowed there would be “serious repercussions” and demanded that Russia restrain its client Syrian forces. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, saying an offensive would be unacceptable. All to no avail; Syria is bombing the area.

This is what happens when Mr. Trump signals, repeatedly, that he is unwilling or unable to stand up to Russian misbehavior. We are on dangerous ground. Either Mr. Trump has lost touch with essential U.S. interests or there is some other explanation for his kowtowing that is yet unknown.

So, Can Ambulance Drivers Get Speeding Tickets?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-six.  Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 18m 14s of daytime.  The moon is full today.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1832, Atkinson starts up the Rock River in the Black Hawk War:

On this date General Henry Atkinson and the Second Army began its trip into the Wisconsin wilderness in a major effort against Black Hawk. The “Army of the Frontier” was formed of 400 U.S. Army Regulars and 2,100 volunteer militiamen in order to participate in the Black Hawk War. The troops were headed toward the Lake Koshkonong area where the main camp of the British Band was rumored to be located. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark, p. 93-94]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jennifer Rubin describes Paul Ryan’s legacy: Gallons of red ink:

We know why the debt is increasing — Congress is spending more on big entitlement items while slashing revenue. Those Republicans who insisted the tax cuts would pay for themselves should hang their heads in shame. And as “as members of the baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) age and as life expectancy continues to rise, the percentage of the population age 65 or older will grow sharply, boosting the number of beneficiaries of those programs,” the CBO says. Rising health-care costs have increased spending on Medicare and other health-care programs. Interest on the ever-growing debt is skyrocketing while revenue is “roughly flat over the next few years relative to GDP,” according to the report. Unless Congress is prepared to see massive tax hikes in 2026, the gap between entitlements and revenue will continue to grow.

The debt seems abstract, but another recession would not be; neither would continued meager growth. As the CBO observes:

Large and growing federal debt over the coming decades would hurt the economy and constrain future budget policy. The amount of debt that is projected under the extended baseline would reduce national saving and income in the long term; increase the government’s interest costs, putting more pressure on the rest of the budget; limit lawmakers’ ability to respond to unforeseen events; and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

Republicans used to claim entitlement spending was the problem. However, they’ve shown no political appetite to actually reduce it. By disingenuously claiming that tax cuts would pay for themselves and refusing to come up with the spending cuts they had warned were necessary, they have taken the country into a fiscal cul-de-sac.

Manny Fernandez and Katie Benner report The Billion-Dollar Business of Operating Shelters for Migrant Children:

HARLINGEN, Tex. — The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business.

It’s a billion-dollar one.

The nonprofit Southwest Key Programs has won at least $955 million in federal contracts since 2015 to run shelters and provide other services to immigrant children in federal custody. Its  shelter for migrant boys at a former Walmart Supercenter in South Texas has been the focus of nationwide scrutiny, but Southwest Key is but one player in the lucrative, secretive world of the migrant-shelter business. About a dozen contractors operate more than 30 facilities in Texas alone, with numerous others contracted for about 100 shelters in 16 other states.

If there is a migrant-shelter hub in America, then it is perhaps in the four-county Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, where about a dozen shelters occupy former stores, schools and medical centers. They are some of the region’s biggest employers, though what happens inside is often highly confidential: One group has employees sign nondisclosure agreements, more a fixture of the high-stakes corporate world than of nonprofit child-care centers.

 Donie O’Sullivan reports American media keeps falling for Russian trolls:

Russian trolls posing as an American college student tweeted about divisive social, political and cultural issues using an account that amassed thousands of followers — and appeared in dozens of news stories published by major media outlets — as recently as March.

More than 50,000 people followed @wokeluisa, an account that featured a photograph of a young black woman who called herself Luisa Haynes and claimed to be a political science major from New York. Twitter has identified @wokeluisa as the work of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm and propaganda operation linked to the Kremlin.

Trolls created the account in March 2017, and racked up an impressive number of followers in just one year. The account, which has been suspended, remained active until at least three months ago, a cache of tweets viewed by CNN shows.

Journalists helped propel the account’s remarkable growth, which continued even after Twitter and Facebook vowed to crack down on troll accounts. CNN found more than two dozen instances in which tweets from @wokeluisa appeared in news stories published by the BBC, USA Today, Time, Wired, HuffPo, BET, and others.

Marissa J. Lang reports 50 years later, the new Poor People’s Campaign lays out a political strategy beyond its Washington rally:

Before the sun rose on the final morning of a 40-day protest blitz for poor people’s rights, the Rev. William Barber was wide awake.

He was intently watching the television in his Washington hotel room, scanning the crawl of headlines for the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce a “zero tolerance” immigration policy that separated more than 2,500 immigrant children from their parents.

As he watched, Barber shook his head, closed his eyes, gathered his thoughts.

“We need to take the risk of believing that people have not lost their humanity,” he said Thursday. “Lots of people — poor people, white people, black people, Latinos — they’ve been bamboozled into thinking we’re all on different teams. We need to love them enough to go there and show them the truth.”

This idea is at the core of the new Poor People’s Campaign, the resurrection of a movement organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before his death in 1968: Meet people where they are and trust that given facts and, yes, love, they will see the intricate web of issues that connect poverty, racism and voter suppression.

Here’s How To Find The Summer Constellations (360°):

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 18m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1837, the Milwaukee Sentinel is founded:

On this date the Milwaukee Sentinel, the oldest newspaper in the state, was founded as a weekly publication by Solomon Juneau, who also was Milwaukee’s first mayor. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride, p. 19]

Recommended for reading in full — 

Jeff Stein reports The federal debt is headed for the highest levels since World War II, CBO says:

Government debt is on track to hit historically high levels and at its current growth rate will be nearly equal in size to the U.S. economy by 2028, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.

By the end of this year, the ratio of federal debt to the United States’ gross domestic product will reach 78 percent, according to the CBO, the highest ratio since 1950.

The debt is projected to grow to 96 percent of GDP by 2028 before eventually surpassing the historical high of 106 percent it reached in 1946.

Currently, the federal government’s debt burden is about $15 trillion, according to Marc Goldwein, senior vice president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank.

Jamelle Bouie reminds that Donald Trump Is Still Not Popular:

But Trump’s improvement is overstated. Even after that spike, polling averages show him well below his margin in the 2016 presidential election. FiveThirtyEight has him with 42.3 percent approval to 51.6 percent disapproval. HuffPost Pollster has him with 42.8 percent approval to 51.8 disapproval, and RealClearPolitics has him with 43.7 percent approval to 51.1 percent disapproval. These are averages, so they don’t capture recent trends, which show Trump on the decline. A new Gallup poll released on Monday shows Trump back where he was before the brief spike: with 41 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval.

To put those numbers in context, Trump is less popular at this point in his term than any president since Gerald Ford. If his job approval continues its recent decline, then he’ll once again claim the mantle of historic unpopularity.

….

On the issues, Trump remains at a distinct disadvantage. Most Americans prefer Democrats on health care and taxes, as majorities oppose Obamacare repeal and the Republican tax law. While White House officials see immigration as a wedge issue for Trump, most Americans reject his approach to the border. Seventy-five percent say immigration is a “good thing” and just 29 percent say immigration to the United States should be decreased. Two-thirds of Americans opposed his child-separation policy.

Gabriel Sherman reports  “Stephen Actually Enjoys Seeing Those Pictures at the Border”:

Meanwhile, as the border crisis spirals, the absence of a coordinated policy process has allowed the most extreme administration voices to fill the vacuum. White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has all but become the face of the issue, a development that even supporters of Trump’s “zero-tolerance” position say is damaging the White House. “Stephen actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border,” an outside White House adviser said. “He’s a twisted guy, the way he was raised and picked on. There’s always been a way he’s gone about this. He’s Waffen-SS.”

(This isn’t how Miller’s opponents describe him; it’s how one of his colleagues describe him.)

Chris Buckley and Henry Fountain report In a High-Stakes Environmental Whodunit, Many Clues Point to China:

XINGFU, China — Last month, scientists disclosed a global pollution mystery: a surprise rise in emissions of an outlawed industrial gas that destroys the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer.

The unexpected spike is undermining what has been hailed as the most successful international environmental agreement ever enacted: the Montreal Protocol, which includes a ban on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and which was expected to bring a full recovery of the ozone layer by midcentury. But the source of the pollution has remained unknown.

Now, a trail of clues leads to this scrappy industrial boomtown in rural China.

Interviews, documents and advertisements collected by The New York Times and independent investigators indicate that a major source — possibly the overwhelming one — is factories in China that have ignored a global ban and kept making or using the chemical, CFC-11, mostly to produce foam insulation for refrigerators and buildings.

Now that’s a stump remover — Machine Can Destroy A Tree Stump In Seconds:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with occasional thunderstorms and a high of seventy-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 11s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1963, President Kennedy delivers his now-famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech in West Berlin.

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.” Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sic nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of. the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany—real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Alan Rappeport reports Trump Threatens Harley-Davidson as Company Shifts Production Overseas:

President Trump lashed out at one of his favorite American manufacturers on Tuesday, criticizing Harley-Davidson over its plans to move some of its motorcycle production abroad and threatening it with steep punitive taxes.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, the president accused the Wisconsin-based company of surrendering in Mr. Trump’s trade war with Europe and said the firm would lose its “aura” if it produced bikes overseas.

“If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end — they surrendered, they quit!” he wrote. “The Aura will be gone and they will be taxed like never before!”

The attack came a day after Harley-Davidson announced that it would move some of its production abroad in response to stiff retaliatory tariffs that the European Union imposed in response to Mr. Trump’s trade measures. Rather than raise prices to cover the new 31 percent tariff on bikes it exports to the European Union, Harley said it would shift some of its production to overseas facilities to avoid the tariffs.

(Trump’s trade war undermines America competitiveness, and when companies try to compensate for the consequences of his harmful economic policies, he threathens them with even worse consequences.)

Matthew DeFour reports As immigration debate rages, Scott Walker is not weighing in:

On Monday, Walker refused to comment on Trump’s statement questioning whether detained immigrants should receive basic due process rights, saying “that’s a federal jurisdiction.”

But in response to another question, he explained that he wants to reduce or eliminate international tariffs imposed by the Trump administration that led to Harley-Davidson’s announcement Monday that it is moving some production overseas.

“Obviously, tariffs we just talked about are a federal issue, but they directly impact the businesses in the state of Wisconsin,” Walker said.

When it was pointed out that immigrant labor has a major impact on the state’s dairy industry and Walker’s own re-election campaign has used the deployment of Wisconsin National Guard troops to the border in online ads, Walker continued to resist taking a position on immigration.

(So much for being ‘Unitimidated.’  Marc Thiessen wrote Walker’s book, but didn’t manage to give Walker the characteristic of the title.)

Molly Beck reports Justices are considering limits on how the Wisconsin public records law applies to courts:

MADISON – The state Supreme Court is deliberating over how the state’s public records law applies to justices, judges and other court officials — setting off alarm bells with government transparency advocates.

It’s unclear exactly what the justices are considering — the state’s court system director said earlier this month the high court intended to decide whether the court system is subject to Wisconsin’s public records law.

But on Monday, the Supreme Court spokesman indicated the court is weighing something narrower: whether email addresses for judges and justices should be released, potentially answering a long-debated question of whether unsolicited, direct communication from the public can disrupt the judicial process.

….

A records request filed June 12 by conservative radio show host Mark Belling seeking email addresses for judges, justices and other court officials prompted the review, Sheehan said.

The court’s deliberations are troubling state government watchdogs who are worried the court could go further and end up matching an unsuccessful effort by the state Legislature three years ago to keep private nearly every record created by a lawmaker.

Jay Rosen contends It’s time for the press to suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency:

In 2012 the government of Canada announced that it would suspend diplomatic relations with Iran. “Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today,” said the foreign minister.

Journalists charged with covering him should suspend normal relations with the presidency of Donald Trump, which is the most significant threat to an informed public in the United States today.

….

I began making this point on the third day of his presidency, January 22, 2017, when I said the press should send interns to the White House briefing room. Normal practice would not be able to cope with the political style of Donald Trump, which incorporates a hate movement against journalists.

“Send the interns” means our major news organizations don’t have to cooperate with this. They don’t have to lend talent or prestige to it. They don’t have to be props. They need not televise the spectacle live (CNN didn’t carry Spicer’s rant) and they don’t have to send their top people. They can “switch” systems: from inside-out, where access to the White House starts the story engines, to outside-in, where the action begins on the rim, in the agencies, around the committees, with the people who are supposed to obey Trump but have doubts… The press has to become less predictable. It has to stop functioning as a hate object. This means giving something up. [Rosen lists other ways to suspend normal relations in the full article.]

Lena Masri reports Astronomers at famed Greenwich observatory turn eyes to the skies again after 60-year break:

After a 60-year hiatus, astronomers at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in London are studying the sky again.

The observatory, which is home to the Prime Meridian of the World and Greenwich Mean Time, has installed a new telescope that will allow astronomers to study the surface of the sun, star clusters and perhaps even exploding stars in other galaxies. The telescope is named after Annie Maunder, one of the first women scientists to work at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

The Royal Observatory was founded in 1675 by King Charles II and it was a working observatory until 1957, when its instruments were moved to Herstmonceux in Sussex, England. The observatory then became a museum and place that educates the public about modern astronomy. With the new telescope, the site will go back to being a working observatory.