Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with morning flurries, and a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 09m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fifteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Downtown Whitewater meets at 5 PM, and the Planning Commission at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1865, Lee surrenders to Grant in the village of Appomattox Court House:

Well-dressed in his customary uniform, Lee waited for Grant to arrive. Grant, whose headache had ended when he received Lee’s note, arrived at the courthouse in a mud-spattered uniform—a government-issue sack coat with trousers tucked into muddy boots, no sidearms, and with only his tarnished shoulder straps showing his rank.[14] It was the first time the two men had seen each other face-to-face in almost two decades.[13] Suddenly overcome with sadness, Grant found it hard to get to the point of the meeting and instead the two generals briefly discussed their only previous encounter, during the Mexican–American War. Lee brought the attention back to the issue at hand, and Grant offered the same terms he had before:

In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.[15]

The terms were as generous as Lee could hope for; his men would not be imprisoned or prosecuted for treason. Officers were allowed to keep their sidearms, horses, and personal baggage.[16] In addition to his terms, Grant also allowed the defeated men to take home their horses and mules to carry out the spring planting and provided Lee with a supply of food rations for his starving army; Lee said it would have a very happy effect among the men and do much toward reconciling the country.[17]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ben White observes the budget outlook under Trump:

The CBO is about to report that there will be trillion dollar-plus budget deficits for every year of Trump’s presidency. https://t.co/8G18oyvG50

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) April 9, 2018

➤ Dave Weigel reports Farmers who propelled Trump to presidency fear becoming pawns in trade war:

When China threatened a 25 percent tariff on soybeans, Mike Petefish, who grows the crop over 2,000 acres, feared the worst. Soybeans are a $2 billion business in Minnesota.

“A 40-cent drop in soybeans, like we saw on Wednesday, meant $50,000 of value evaporating out of my bottom line,” said Petefish, the 33-year-old president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. “The last time I talked to our banker, he told me that of all his clients — these are all farmers — only four made money last year. We kind of broke even. But this year was looking tough even before the tariffs.”

➤ Matthew Rosenberg and Gabriel J.X. Dance explain ‘You Are the Product’: Targeted by Cambridge Analytica on Facebook:

Christopher Deason stumbled upon the psychological questionnaire on June 9, 2014. He was taking a lot of online surveys back then, each one earning him a few dollars to help pay the bills. Nothing about this one, which he saw on an online job platform, struck him as “creepy or weird,” he said later.

So at 6:37 that evening, Mr. Deason completed the first step of the survey: He granted access to his Facebook account.

Less than a second later, a Facebook app had harvested not only Mr. Deason’s profile data, but also data from the profiles of 205 of his Facebook friends. Their names, birth dates and location data, as well as lists of every Facebook page they had ever liked, were downloaded — without their knowledge or express consent — before Mr. Deason could even begin reading the first survey question.

The information was added to a huge database being compiled for Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm with links to Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. None of the people whose data was collected knew it had happened, not even Mr. Deason. “I don’t think I would have gone forward with it if I had,” Mr. Deason, 27, said in a recent interview.

➤ Madeleine Albright asks Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? (“Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II”):

On April 28, 1945 — 73 years ago — Italians hung the corpse of their former dictator Benito Mussolini upside down next to a gas station in Milan. Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the streets of war-ravaged Berlin. Fascism, it appeared, was dead.

To guard against a recurrence, the survivors of war and the Holocaust joined forces to create the United Nations, forge global financial institutions and — through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — strengthen the rule of law. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the honor roll of elected governments swelled not only in Central Europe, but also Latin America, Africa and Asia. Almost everywhere, it seemed, dictators were out and democrats were in. Freedom was ascendant.

Today, we are in a new era, testing whether the democratic banner can remain aloft amid terrorism, sectarian conflicts, vulnerable borders, rogue social media and the cynical schemes of ambitious men. The answer is not self-evident. We may be encouraged that most people in most countries still want to live freely and in peace, but there is no ignoring the storm clouds that have gathered. In fact, fascism — and the tendencies that lead toward fascism — pose a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.

Warning signs include the relentless grab for more authority by governing parties in Hungary, the Philippines, Poland and Turkey — all United States allies. The raw anger that feeds fascism is evident across the Atlantic in the growth of nativist movements opposed to the idea of a united Europe, including in Germany, where the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland has emerged as the principal opposition party. The danger of despotism is on display in the Russia of Vladimir Putin — invader of Ukraine, meddler in foreign democracies, accused political assassin, brazen liar and proud son of the K.G.B. Putin has just been re-elected to a new six-year term, while in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a ruthless ideologue, is poised to triumph in sham balloting next month. In China, Xi Jinping has persuaded a docile National People’s Congress to lift the constitutional limit on his tenure in power.

➤ Consider The Surprisingly Recent Invention of the T-Shirt:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:29 PM, for 13h 06m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 47.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fourteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s home-run record:

The Braves returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game—a Braves attendance record. The game was also broadcast nationally on NBC. In the fourth inning, Aaron hit home run number 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing.[6] Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield wall trying to catch it, the ball landed in the Braves’ bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two college students [51] sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron for part of his circuit around the bases, temporarily startling him. A very youthful Craig Sager actually interviewed Aaron between third and home for a television station, WXLT (now WWSB-Channel 40) in Sarasota.[52] As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron’s parents ran onto the field as well.

Braves announcer Milo Hamilton, calling the game on WSB radio, described the scene as Aaron broke the record: “Henry Aaron, in the second inning walked and scored. He’s sittin’ on 714. Here’s the pitch by Downing. Swinging. There’s a drive into left-center field. That ball is gonna be-eee… Outta here! It’s gone! It’s 715! There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron! The fireworks are going. Henry Aaron is coming around third. His teammates are at home plate. And listen to this crowd!”[53]

Meanwhile, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racial tension — or apparent lack thereof — in his call of the home run: “What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. …And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.”[54]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Caroline Linton reports Trump Tower fire is second 2018 blaze in sprinkler-free residential tower:

The fire on the 50th floor New York City’s Trump Tower that left 67-year-old Todd Brassner dead and six firefighters injured was the second fire in the building in 2018 — President Trump’s centerpiece Manhattan skyscraper built that opened in 1984, but which does not have sprinklers on its residential floors. FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro noted on Saturday that the upper, residential floors of Trump Tower do not have sprinklers — a measure required in new buildings since 1999, but which President Trump, then a private citizen and property developer, lobbied to try and prevent.

New York City in 1999 became last big city in the nation to require sprinklers, according to the New York Daily News. Under the 1999 legislation, buildings constructed before then were only required to have sprinklers if they underwent gut renovations.

According to The New York Times, Mr. Trump was one of the developers in the late 1990s who lobbied against sprinklers in buildings. He then recanted once the legislation passed with grandfathering provisions that meant existing buildings did not need to install them, saying that he understood they made residents “feel safer.” Commissioner Nigro said on Saturday that there is extra fire protection at Trump Tower when Mr. Trump is there.

(There’s so much about Trump in these words: he won’t provide – even apart from legislation – a common safety measure for his tenants, he falsely denigrates that measure as offering only a feeling of safety although sprinklers have been shown to save lives, but makes sure that when he’s in the building he has “extra fire protection.”)

➤ Eve L. Ewing explains Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts:

But as Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.

Authoritarian leaders throughout history have intuited this fact and have acted accordingly. The Stalinist government of the 1930s required art to meet strict criteria of style and content to ensure that it exclusively served the purposes of state leadership. In his memoir, the composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich writes that the Stalinist government systematically executed all of the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian folk poets. When Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile in 1973, muralists were arrested, tortured and exiled. Soon after the coup, the singer and theater artist Víctor Jara was killed, his body riddled with bullets and displayed publicly as a warning to others. In her book “Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship,” Claudia Calirman writes that the museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt had to hide works of art and advise artists to leave Brazil after authorities entered her museum, blocked the exhibition and demanded the work be dismantled because it contained dangerous images like a photograph of a member of the military falling off a motorcycle, which was seen as embarrassing to the police. Such extreme intervention may seem far removed from the United States today, until we consider episodes like the president’s public castigation of the “Hamilton” cast after it issued a fairly tame commentary directed at Mike Pence.

In its last round of grants, the NEA gave $10,000 to a music festival in Oregon to commission a dance performance by people in wheelchairs and dance classes for people who use mobility devices. A cultural center in California received $10,000 to host workshops led by Muslim artists, including a hip-hop artist, a comedian and filmmakers. A chorus in Minnesota was granted $10,000 to create a concert highlighting the experiences of LGBTQ youth, to be performed in St. Paul public schools. Each of these grants supports the voices of the very people the current presidential administration has mocked, dismissed and outright harmed. Young people, queer people, immigrants, and minorities have long used art as a means of dismantling the institutions that would silence us first and kill us later, and the NEA is one of the few wide-reaching institutions that support that work.

➤ Cristian Farias writes Mueller (Quietly) Keeps Turning Up the Heat:

Right now there are two competing narratives in Washington about Robert Mueller. The first one, pushed by Paul Manafort and various members of the GOP congressional caucus, is that the special counsel is a loose cannon, accountable to no one and way over the line in his limited authority under a Department of Justice order appointing him to the job. The other, which has a much broader constituency in the capital and beyond, is that he’s playing by the rules.

The first narrative, which Manafort has been trying to sell in recent months to a federal judge in the District of Columbia, is not faring so well in the light of some new revelations over the past several days. You know you’re on the ropes when the judge, during a hearing to dispose of your (frivolous) civil lawsuit against the special counsel, calls you out: “I really don’t understand what is left of your case.” That’s what U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort’s lawyer in open court Wednesday, according to Reuters. Kevin Downing, the lawyer, is worried (and expressed those concerns to Jackson) that his client may soon face a new round of charges from Mueller. The civil lawsuit is an effort to challenge the scope of Mueller’s authority, and thereby limit Manafort’s legal exposure.

But recent court filings by the special counsel’s office in the Russia saga paint a picture very different than the one Manafort’s legal team is trying to sell: Mueller is hewing closely to his mandate to investigate links between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and into whether crimes against the United States were committed in the process or in response to any subsequent investigation. A CNN report published Wednesday that Mueller’s team has obtained “search warrants to access electronic devices” of U.S.-bound Russian oligarchs suspected of making illegal campaign donations to the Trump campaign seems to fall squarely in line with why we have a special counsel in the first place. Mueller just won’t stop turning up the heat. 

➤ Mark Sommerhauser reports ‘Unprecedented’ outside spending hits Tammy Baldwin, boosts Kevin Nicholson in US Senate race:

Seven months before Election Day, outside groups have given Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race an early barrage of big money unlike any other in the nation — and likely, any other in history.

That torrent of political ads has put Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on the defensive. And the backing of one wealthy donor, Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein, has boosted Kevin Nicholson in his primary bid against fellow Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir.

More than $9 million has been spent in the race by outside groups, more than twice as much as any other U.S. Senate race, according to one measure by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Outside spending in Wisconsin likely is “unprecedented” for a U.S. Senate campaign, excluding special elections, at this stage, according to Andrew Mayersohn, a researcher for the center.

➤ Before Alarm Clocks, There Were ‘Knocker-Uppers’:

Imagine life without alarm clocks. Workdays would start at noon, breakfast would be brunch, and no one would make it to class before the first bell. From the early 1800s through the 1960s, factory workers didn’t have much of a choice. To get to work on time, they relied on “knocker-uppers,” aka, human alarm clocks. Using long bamboo sticks, or peashooters, Britain’s knocker-uppers would stroll down the streets rapping at windows to help their patrons kick-start their days.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 6:24 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 03m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred thirteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1862, (then) Maj. Gen. Grant and his soldiers are victorious at the Battle of Shiloh (although public opinion at the time misunderstood Grant’s success):

In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Northern newspapers vilified Grant for his performance during the battle on April 6, especially for being surprised and unprepared. Reporters, many far from the battle, spread the story that Grant had been drunk, falsely alleging that this had resulted in many of his men being bayoneted in their tents because of a lack of defensive preparedness. Despite the Union victory, Grant’s reputation suffered in Northern public opinion. Many credited Buell with taking control of the broken Union forces and leading them to victory on April 7. Calls for Grant’s removal overwhelmed the White House. President Lincoln replied with one of his most famous quotations about Grant: “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”[115] Although all of the Union division commanders fought well, Sherman emerged as an immediate hero after Grant and Halleck commended him especially. His steadfastness under fire and amid chaos atoned for his previous melancholy and his defensive lapses preceding the battle.[116]

Army officers that were with Grant gave a starkly different account of his capacity, and performance, than those of enterprising newspaper reporters far away from Grant during the battle. One such officer, Colonel William R. Rowley, answering a letter of inquiry about allegations aimed at Grant, maintained:

I pronounce it an unmitigated slander. I have been on his Staff ever since the Donelson affair (and saw him frequently during that) and necessary in close contact with him every day, and I have never seen him take even a glass of liquor more than two or three times in my life and then only a single at a time. And I have never seen him intoxicated or even approximate to it. As to the story that he was intoxicated at the Battle of Pittsburg, I have only to say that the man who fabricated the story is an infamous liar, and you are at liberty to say to him that I say so. …

—?Yours &c W R ROWLEY [117]

In retrospect, however, Grant is recognized positively for the clear judgment he was able to retain under the strenuous circumstances, and his ability to perceive the larger tactical picture that ultimately resulted in victory on the second day.[116] For the rest of his life, Grant would insist he always had the battle well under control and rejected claims from critics that only the death of Johnston and arrival of Buell’s Army prevented his defeat. In his 1885 memoirs, he wrote:

Some of these critics claim that Shiloh was won when Johnston fell, and that if he had not fallen the army under me would have been annihilated or captured. Ifs defeated the Confederates at Shiloh. There is little doubt that we would have been disgracefully beaten if all the shells and bullets fired by us had passed harmlessly over the enemy and if all of theirs had taken effect. Commanding generals are liable to be killed during engagements; and the fact that when he was shot Johnston was leading a brigade to induce it to make a charge which had been repeatedly ordered, is evidence that there was neither the universal demoralization on our side nor the unbounded confidence on theirs which has been claimed. There was, in fact, no hour during the day when I doubted the eventual defeat of the enemy, although I was disappointed that reinforcements so near at hand did not arrive at an earlier hour.[118]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Scottie Lee Meyers writes Wisconsin Has Seen Largest Middle-Class Decline Of Any State, Study Finds:

A new state-by-state analysis from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that Wisconsin experienced the biggest decline in middle-class households in the country between the years 2000 and 2013.

The study found that the percentage of households in the middle class dropped in all 50 states, with Wisconsin’s drop from 54.6 percent to 48.9 percent being the most significant. Moreover, Wisconsin saw a 14 percent decline in median household income.

➤ Mary Jordan and Scott Clement report In reaction to Trump, millions of Americans are joining protests and getting political:

Tens of millions of Americans have joined protests and rallies in the past two years, their activism often driven by admiration or outrage toward President Trump, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll showing a new activism that could affect November elections.

One in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in political rallies since the beginning of 2016. Of those, 19 percent said they had never before joined a march or a political gathering.

Overwhelmingly, recently motivated activists are critical of Trump. Thirty percent approve of the president, and 70 percent disapprove, according to the poll. And many said they plan to be more involved politically this year, with about one-third saying they intend to volunteer or work for a 2018 congressional campaign.

(The dustbin awaits Trumpism.)

➤ Elaine Kamarck writes Rebuffed by Congress, Trump resorts to old ideas on the border:

Aside from the normal Trumpian hyperbole, there are two major problems with President Trump’s announcement that he would use the military on the border between the United States and Mexico. The first involves long-standing legal restrictions on the use of the military in domestic law enforcement and the second, perhaps bigger, problem is: why now?

Under a law passed in 1878 called the Posse Comitatus Act, the United States military is prohibited from operating on American soil in a law enforcement capacity. The law, originally part of the withdrawal of Union forces from the occupied South after the Civil War, has become such a centerpiece of American government that many people assume, mistakenly, that it is part of the Constitution.

…

Therefore, injecting the military into domestic law enforcement operations is possible but not without introducing potential problems. It diverts military resources from other operations that are perhaps more important, and it is costly (GAO estimates that the Bush and Obama operations cost over $1.3 billion). And finally, at the core of the restrictions is the fact that the National Guard cannot arrest the people they help identify—only the border patrol agents can.

But perhaps the bigger problem is that militarizing the border now sounds suspiciously like a ploy to energize Trump’s base before the midterm elections rather than a sound response to an actual problem. First of all, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has been decreasing rather than increasing ever since the Great Recession reduced job opportunities in the United States, as has the number of apprehensions at the border.

Second, the number of Mexicans has been decreasing as a proportion of the total population of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S.—so while militarizing the border with Mexico could help, it doesn’t begin to address all the people who come in on tourist or other visas and stay. Furthermore, the 1000-plus, mostly Honduran refugees now marching into Mexico are part of a demonstration that has been
going on annually for several years in order to draw attention to the plight of migrants—and they are being evaluated for asylum protections by the Mexican government.

All of this said, Donald Trump fueled fear and loathing of unauthorized immigrants and turned it into a path to the White House. But faced with the reality of the situation, Congress has rightfully concluded (several times now) that they have other things to spend money on than Trump’s border wall. And so his latest gambit is just one more instance of trying to milk the immigration issue for every ounce of its political juice.

➤ Mary Jordan and Scott Clement report In reaction to Trump, millions of Americans are joining protests and getting political:

Tens of millions of Americans have joined protests and rallies in the past two years, their activism often driven by admiration or outrage toward President Trump, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll showing a new activism that could affect November elections.

One in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in political rallies since the beginning of 2016. Of those, 19 percent said they had never before joined a march or a political gathering.

Overwhelmingly, recently motivated activists are critical of Trump. Thirty percent approve of the president, and 70 percent disapprove, according to the poll. And many said they plan to be more involved politically this year, with about one-third saying they intend to volunteer or work for a 2018 congressional campaign.

(The dustbin awaits Trumpism.)

➤ The Committee to Investigate Russia summarizes reporting on Manafort’s M.O.:

The Guardian reveals the deceitful and underhanded way Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafortoperated when he was working for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin former president of Ukraine.

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine’s former president featuring “black ops”, “placed” articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.

The project was designed to boost the reputation of Ukraine’s then leader, Viktor Yanukovych. It was part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort carried out by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych’s embattled government, emails and documents reveal.

Manafort’s strategy relied on spreading disinformation about Yanukovych’s political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko. After she lost in 2010, Ukrainian prosecutors arrested her for what is believed to be political retribution.

In 2011 Manafort approved a clandestine strategy to discredit Tymoshenko abroad. Alan Friedman, a former Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reporter, based in Italy, masterminded this project. Friedman has previously been accused of concealing his work as a paid lobbyist.

Also involved were Rick Gates, Manafort’s then deputy, and Konstantin Kilimnik, another senior Manafort associate who the FBI believes has links to Russian military intelligence.

In July 2011 Friedman sent Manafort a confidential six-page document titled Ukraine – A Digital Roadmap. It laid out a plan to “deconstruct” Tymoshenko via videos, articles and social media. Yanukovych deferred to Manafort, who gave the project the go-ahead, sources in Ukraine’s former government say.

(…)

Manafort’s media operation included attacks on Clinton. In October 2012 Gates emailed Manafort and Friedman, flagging a piece written by the journalist Ben Shapiro. The Breitbart article criticised Clinton for her public support of Tymoshenko, who had recently made an electoral pact with the far-right Svoboda party.

The article cited a Jewish “leader” who accused Clinton anonymously of creating a “neo-Nazi Frankenstein”. Gates wrote: “Gentlemen – Here is the first part of a series of articles that will be coming as we continue to build this effort. Alan, you get full credit for the Frankenstein comment.”

In addition to the money Manafort and Gates earned for their Ukrainian work being at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s current charges against them, The Guardian points out that how the two men conducted business from 2010 to 2014 resembles what Russia did to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

Manafort’s Ukraine strategy anticipated later efforts by the Kremlin and its troll factory to use Twitter and Facebook to discredit Clinton and to help Trump win the 2016 US election. The material seen by the Guardian dates from 2011 to 2013.

➤ Have You Ever Really Seen the Moon?:

On a whim, Wylie Overstreet set up his telescope outside his apartment. He wanted to look at the moon. He had no idea he would, in a matter of hours, inspire awe in hundreds of strangers on the streets of Los Angeles. “It’s incredible how many people have never looked through a telescope,” Alex Gorosh, a friend of Overstreet’s, told The Atlantic.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will see a partly sunny day with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset 7:27 PM, for 13h 00m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 66% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred twelfth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1917, the United States declares war on Imperial Germany:

On the battlefields of France in spring 1918, the war-weary Allied armies enthusiastically greeted the fresh American troops. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day,[47] at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. The Americans won a victory at Cantigny, then again in defensive stands at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. The Americans helped the British Empire, French and Portuguese forces defeat and turn back the powerful final German offensive (Spring Offensive of March to July, 1918), and most importantly, the Americans played a role in the Allied final offensive (Hundred Days Offensive of August to November). However, many American commanders used the same flawed tactics which the British, French, Germans and others had abandoned early in the war, and so many American offensives were not particularly effective. Pershing continued to commit troops to these full- frontal attacks, resulting in high casualties against experienced veteran German and Austrian-Hungarian units. Nevertheless, the infusion of new and fresh US troops greatly strengthened the Allies’ strategic position and boosted morale. The Allies achieved victory over Germany on November 11, 1918 after German morale had collapsed both at home and on the battlefield.[50][51]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ella Nilsen and Rachel Wolfe of Vox Sentences write of Facebook in Once more, into the (data) breach:

• Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg heads to Capitol Hill to testify before Congress twice next week, and lawmakers have a lot of questions for him. [Vox / Jen Kirby and Emily Stewart]
• This comes after a few weeks of not-great news for Facebook, starting with the Cambridge Analytica scandal a few weeks ago, when it was revealed that the data of 50 million users was secretly used by the firm as part of its work for Trump’s 2016 campaign. [NYT / Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr]
• Since then, the number of users whose data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica has been revised to 87 million. [BBC]
• But the news doesn’t stop there. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Facebook admitted “malicious actors” used certain search tools to get at the information of most of its 2 billion users all over the world. Basically, the company admitted that if you were a user, there was a good chance your information had been accessed at some point. (Those search tools have since been disabled.) [Washington Post / Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, and Elizabeth Dwoskin]
• The narrative here could be that things are getting bad for Facebook, but the reality is that’s because things haven’t been great for Facebook users, whose data has apparently been vulnerable for quite a while. Zuckerberg has been owning up to the responsibility, a notable change in tone from right after the 2016 election, when people were asking questions about Russia using social media to influence the outcome. [Recode / Kurt Wagner]
• Zuckerberg is also trying to address how the company is combating fake news that was disseminated by Russians and spread across the social network, telling Vox’s Ezra Klein in a recent interview that it’s something the company is taking seriously. [Vox / Ezra Klein]
• He’ll have to talk about all this and more on Capitol Hill — where lawmakers of both parties will likely have a lot of questions. [Washington Post / Tony Romm and Craig Timberg]

➤ The Washington Post condemns Trump’s mind-boggling gift to America’s enemies:

Mr. Trump’s new position [on Syria], which envisions a U.S. withdrawal in months and suspends the modest reconstruction aid recently allocated by the State Department, abdicates responsibility for those challenges. It also delivers a stab in the back to the Syrian forces, led by Kurds, who have collaborated with the United States in fighting the Islamic State and now could be left to deal alone with a Turkish regime irrationally bent on annihilating them.

That Mr. Trump’s intended retreat is a gift to Vladi­mir Putin perhaps should not be surprising, given Mr. Trump’s curious eagerness to accommodate the Russian ruler. But by boosting Iran at Israel’s expense, Mr. Trump is flagrantly undermining a central tenet of his foreign policy. Israel has said it cannot tolerate the presence of Iranian bases near its northern border, but a U.S. evacuation would remove one of the main obstacles to Tehran’s military expansion. The eventual result could be an Israeli-Iranian war that could devastate Syria, Lebanon and Israel itself.

➤ Arelis R. Hernández reports In Puerto Rico’s ‘last mile,’ power is still elusive as next hurricane season looms:

The neighbors belong to a community along Puerto Rico’s “last mile,” the cluster of communities marking Hurricane Maria’s destructive path across difficult and isolated terrain, from the island’s southeast corner through the central mountains and out the northwest coast. They are among the last people on the island still without power, more than six months after the storm.

The hurricane knocked down the frail power grid that distributes wattage from generation plants in the south across transmission towers spread like dominoes along the peaks of the island’s mountains. The local public utility, which struggled to maintain normalcy in good times, has been trying alongside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to restore ­electrical service since September.

It has been a wearisome operation tainted by allegations of corruption and coordination, meltdowns, and the cacophony of politics, experts say. Many residents report that having been without power for so long has led them to lose faith in the state-owned power company and, ultimately, the island’s government.

“There has been no sense of urgency,” said Josian Santiago, the mayor of Comerio, whose town still has outages in its more isolated sections; some might never have their municipal power restored and will have to resort to alternatives. “The problem is not that we don’t have a lightbulb to turn on or a refrigerator to cool… They are torturing the people.”

(Puerto Ricans are American citizens, and Trump has been disgracefully neglected them.)

➤ Betsy Woodruff contends Want Asylum in America? Get Ready for Hell:

Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney based in Northern Virginia who specializes in asylum cases, told The Daily Beast that the last four times he’s gone with a client for an asylum interview, the client’s documentation—which he turned in prior to the questioning—had been mysteriously lost.

“I don’t know how often it happens, but I know I’m zero for four in the last four interviews,” Dzubow said. “Not a good success rate. Whether that will affect the outcome, I don’t know.

“Maybe they’re permanently lost or they’re just temporarily lost, I don’t know,” he added. “But this is an epidemic.”

Those documents are important; they’re a key part of how many asylum-seekers make the case for staying in the United States. If the asylum officers questioning them don’t have the documents, then a significant part of the asylum-seeker’s case is just missing.

Sui Chung, the president of the South Florida chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says she and her South Florida colleagues have faced this problem numerous times.

➤ So, How do turtles survive in winter?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will see a partly cloudy day with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 7:26 PM, for 12h 58m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with74.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred eleventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1860, a Wisconsin congressman is challenged to a duel:

[W]ith the threat of civil war hanging in the air, John F. Potter, a Wisconsin representative in Congress, was challenged to a duel by Virgina representative Roger Pryor. Potter, a Northern Republican, had become a target of Southerners during heated debates over slavery. After one exchange, Pryor challenged Potter to a duel and Potter, as the one challenged, specified that bowie knives be used at a distance of four feet. Pryor refused and Potter became famous in the anti-slavery movement. Two years later, when Republicans convened in Chicago, Potter was given a seven foot blade as a tribute; the knife hung with pride during all the sessions of the convention.  Before his death, Potter remembered the duel and proclaimed, “I felt it was a national matter – not any private quarrel – and I was willing to make sacrifices.” [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Philip Bump writes China’s retaliatory tariffs will hit Trump country hard:

It was inevitable that China would respond in kind to tariffs levied against it by President Trump. The president argued that the trade deficit and Chinese theft of intellectual property necessitated taking economic action. But the net effect is that China also will charge more for American products to enter its country — tariffs that are likely to affect places whose residents voted for Trump more significantly than voters in other areas.

The products to which China will add additional duties include manufactured products such as airplanes and vinyl records. (For some reason.) But they will also apply tariffs to a number of agricultural goods, according to CNBC, including:

• Yellow soybeans
• Black soybeans
• Corn
• Corn flour
• Uncombed cotton
• Sorghum
• Other durum wheat
• Other wheat and mixed wheat
• Tobacco

It won’t surprise you to learn that agricultural areas produce most of these goods. And rural areas supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

➤ Brian Stelter reports Sinclair producer in Nebraska resigns to protest ‘obvious bias’:

Justin Simmons gave notice at KHGI TV on March 26. This was after Sinclair’s corporate headquarters mandated that local anchors read the controversial promos warning of “fake” and biased news, but before the promos went viral and became a national topic of discussion.

Simmons told CNNMoney that he had been concerned about Sinclair’s corporate mandates for the past year and a half, and that the promos were just the final straw.

“This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers,” he said.

He said his feelings are shared by others at his station, but didn’t want to say anything that would imperil his colleagues.

Simmons’ decision to quit is a dramatic example of the tensions that exist between Sinclair-owned newsrooms and the company’s Maryland-based management. Staffers like Simmons feel that the conservative owners of Sinclair are interfering in local news coverage. (Most of Sinclair’s stations are CNN affiliates — meaning CNN shares content and resources with them and vice versa.)

(This is the right response. Sinclair is a private business, and it has a right to publish the content it wants. In reply, self-respecting employees should leave as soon as they can, and community residents who object to Sinclair’s content should organize boycotts against advertisers. That’s free society at work: the stations can publish, but residents can – and should – show advertisers how they feel about Sinclair’s views. If Sinclair sinks into the ocean, I’ll not be sorry.)

➤ Craig Gilbert writes Liberal Supreme Court victory boosted by fired-up Democratic base, Dane County landslide:

If the key takeaway from Tuesday’s state Supreme Court race is a fired-up Democratic base, then the most dazzling sign of that energy is the liberal landslide that occurred in Madison and surrounding Dane County.

Dane, the state’s fastest-growing and “bluest” county, showed once again it is on fire politically, galvanized in opposition to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republican President Donald Trump.

The county turned out a rate 50% higher than the state as a whole.

And it voted 4 to 1 — 81% to 19% — for the more liberal candidate, Rebecca Dallet, over the more conservative one, Michael Screnock.

➤ Molly Ball contends Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job:

Even if his tenure ends tomorrow, Sessions would leave a legacy that will affect millions of Americans. He has dramatically shifted the orientation of the Justice Department, pulling back from police oversight and civil rights enforcement and pushing a hard-line approach to drugs, gangs and immigration violations. He has cast aside his predecessors’ attempts to rectify inequities in the criminal-justice system in favor of a maximalist approach to prosecuting and jailing criminals. He has rescinded the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and reversed its stances on voting rights and transgender rights. “I am thrilled to be able to advance an agenda that I believe in,” he told a group of federal prosecutors in Lexington later that day. “I believed in it before I came here, and I’ll believe in it when I’m gone.”

Sessions’ liberal critics agree that he’s been remarkably effective. That’s why they find him so frightening. He has, they charge, put the full force of law behind Trump’s racially coded rhetoric. “The Justice Department is supposed to be protecting people, keeping people safe and affirming our basic rights,” says Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat who took the extraordinary step of testifying against a fellow Senator during Sessions’ confirmation hearings last year. “But he has rolled back the Justice Department’s efforts to do that.” The irony of Sessions’ position is that the same critics who despise his policy initiatives are adamant that Trump should not remove him. “Jeff Sessions is not acting in defense of the rights of Americans. He should not be in that job,” Booker told me. “But I do not think he should be fired for the reasons Donald Trump would fire him.”

(Sessions is effective, in the worst way.)

➤ Nathaniel Lee and Jessica Orwig write an Animated map of Mars reveals where humans should build the first Martian cities:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will see a partly sunny day with a high of thirty-four. Sunrise is 6:29 AM and sunset 7:25 PM, for 12h 55m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 82.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred tenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., aged 39, is shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. King delivered his final speech the evening before:

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Matt Taibbi asks Can We Be Saved From Facebook?:

We shouldn’t be asking Facebook to fix the problem. We should be fixing Facebook. It’s our collective misfortune that this perhaps silliest-in-history supercorporation – a tossed-off hookup site turned international cat-video vault turned Orwellian surveillance megavillain – has dragged us all to the very cliff edge of modern technological capitalism.

We’ve reached a moment in history where many companies are more powerful than even major industrialized nations, and in some cases have essentially replaced governments as de facto regulators and overseers. But some of those companies suck just a little too badly at the governing part, leaving us staring into a paradox.

The Russians call this situation a sobaka na sene, a dog on the hay. Asleep in the manger, the dog itself won’t eat the hay. But it won’t let you eat it either.

➤ Clint Watts contends For Russia, Trump Was a Vehicle, Not a Target:

A lot of the focus on the Mueller investigation has fallen on Donald Trump: Did he obstruct the investigation? Was he a “Manchurian Candidate” or just a Russian ally, by ideology or business interests?

In my view, as a former F.B.I. special agent who has watched the Kremlin’s infiltration of America since 2014, the answer may be neither. A standard Russian approach would have been to influence Mr. Trump through surrogates like Mr. Gates and Paul Manafort rather than through direct command through an individual — in this case, the candidate and then president.

Russian intelligence develops options and pathways over many years; as objectives arise — like the election of Mr. Trump — they focus and engage all available touch points.

…

Typically, the Kremlin deploys layers of surrogates and proxies offering business inducements, information or threatened reprisals that can individually be explained away by coincidence while masking the strings and guiding hands of the Kremlin’s puppet masters and their objectives. When called upon by the Kremlin, oligarchs, contractors, criminals and spies (current or former) all provide levers for advancing President Vladimir Putin’s assault on democracies.

➤ Molly Beck reports  State paid more than $735K in last decade to settle cases involving sexual harassment:

Wisconsin taxpayers have paid at least $735,500 since 2007 to resolve at least 12 complaints of sexual harassment, newly released records show.

The state paid that amount between January 2007 and November 2017 to resolve complaints that included allegations of sexual harassment within UW-Madison, UW-Stevens Point, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Justice, the state Legislature and Barron County courts.

The payments range from $6,500 to $250,000, according to records released by the Department of Administration to the Wisconsin State Journal under the state’s open records law and information from UW-Madison.

➤ Josh Barro observes If Trump runs against Amazon, he will lose:

• Amazon is going to be a brutal opponent for President Donald Trump if he decides to escalate his battle with the company.
• Amazon is largely popular with the American public — even with Trump supporters.
• Trump’s past corporate opponents, like the NFL, were weak where Amazon is strong.

(Trump’s like someone from the recording industry at the dawn of digital music, lacking any grasp of the strength of digital, and the changes it would inexorably bring.)

➤ So, Who Invented the Fahrenheit and Celsius Temperature Scales?:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a mix of rain or snow showers during the day,  a high of thirty-seven, and snow in the evening. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:23 PM, for 12h 52m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1860, the first Westbound Pony Express trip left St. Joseph, Missouri on April 3, 1860 and arrived ten days later in Sacramento, California, on April 14th.

On this day in 1865, Union soldiers take the Confederate capital:

When Petersburg, Virginia, fell on the night of April 2, 1865, Confederate leaders hastily abandoned Richmond. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry participated in the occupation of Petersburg and Richmond. The brigade containing the 19th Wisconsin Infantry was the first to enter Richmond on the morning of April 3rd. Their regimental flag became the first to fly over the captured capital of the Confederacy when Colonel Samuel Vaughn planted it on Richmond City Hall.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Deadspin shows How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media:

How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

➤ Madison’s WMSN decided to resist:

In response to the Sinclair message aired: “WMSN/FOX47 Madison did not air the Sinclair promotional announcement during our 9pm news this weekend. Rather, we stayed true to our commitment to provide our Madison area viewers local news, weather and sports of interest to them.” pic.twitter.com/MdQ568cWrH

— FOX 47 Madison (@fox47madison) April 2, 2018

(Whatever the consequences, they’ve made the right decision.)

➤ Kriston Capps considers Mapping the Threat of a Census Disaster in 2020 (“The GOP seems to be betting that damage from a major undercount will be isolated to Democratic-leaning cities. But it’s not that simple”):

At least a dozen states plan to sue the Trump administration over its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, with the attorneys general of New York and California—populous states with large immigrant populations—leading the charge. But the damage of a potential undercount won’t be confined to the coasts.

Before Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the citizenship question on Tuesday, the Democratic co-chair of the House Census Caucus had already proposed a bill to block last-minute census interference. Democrats in the Senate introduced mirror legislation to ensure that any changes to the census were properly tested before a survey. Another House Democrat from New York floated the possibility of withholding appropriations for the census.

While it’s Democrats who are erupting now, tracking populations that are hard for the census to reach reveals that the damage from an undercount could disrupt conservative-leaning states, too. Counties in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, contain some of the hardest-to-reach populations in the country, according to a mapping tool developed by the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in collaboration with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. A major census undercount could jeopardize new congressional seat pick-ups anticipated by Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and other states that have traditionally trended GOP.

(See also  Trump’s Census policy could boomerang and hurt red states as well as blue states.)

➤ Nick Miroff reports Trump administration, seeking to speed deportations, to impose quotas on immigration judges:

The Trump administration will pressure U.S. immigration judges to process cases faster by establishing a quota system tied to their annual performance reviews, according to new Justice Department directives.

The judges will be expected to clear at least 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” performance rating, a standard that their union called an “unprecedented” step that risks undermining judicial independence and opens the courts to potential challenges.

…

Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the quota system could introduce an “appealable” issue and invite legal challenges.

“It could call into question the integrity and impartiality of the court if a judge’s decision is influenced by factors outside the facts of the case, or if motions are denied out of a judge’s concern about keeping his or her job,” Tabaddor said.

“We don’t know of any other court whose judges are subject to individual quotas and deadlines as part of performance reviews and evaluations,” she said.

(There seems not a single institution Trumpism doesn’t twist.)

➤ Robotic Fish Could Revolutionize How We Study The Ocean:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see a morning wintry mix of rain or snow showers and a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:22 PM, for 12h 49m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey has its world premiere in Washington, D.C.

On this day in 1865, final Battle of Petersburg, Virginia heralds the Confederacy’s doom:

The final Battle of Petersburg brought about the fall of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in the final assault on Petersburg. The 5th Wisconsin Infantry was in front at the charge and their flag was the first one planted on the rebel works.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Erica Bernstien explains What Bananas Tell Us About Trade Wars:

➤ Annysa Johnson reports Federal investigation found 100-plus examples of racial disparities in MPS suspensions:

A federal investigation into alleged racial disparities in the way Milwaukee Public Schools disciplines students uncovered more than 100 instances over a two-year period in which black students were punished more severely than their white peers for the same or similar misconduct, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Education.

The document, obtained by the Journal Sentinel through an open records request, details the 3½ year investigation, which became public in January when MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver informed board members that she had entered into a settlement agreement with the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

RELATED: MPS agrees to settle U.S. civil rights complaint over discipline of black students

The report, dated Jan. 31, 2018, describes the extensive investigation, which included a massive collection of data and documentation, as well as multiple interviews with teachers, students and principals at 17 MPS schools. And it offers the first specific examples of disparities, beyond the statistical data that showed black students were suspended and expelled at far higher rates than their white peers.

➤ Ifeoma Ajunwa contends Facebook users aren’t the reason Facebook is in trouble now:

After news broke this week of Cambridge Analytica’s unauthorized siphon of millions of Facebook users’ data for political targeting, one particularly troubling reaction emerged: Some commentators implied that Facebook users themselves are also to blame for not being more discerning about or questioning how their data might be used. Coincidentally, this reaction echoed past comments by the social network’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who had derided Facebook users for giving up their personal data.

As a law and organizational scholar who studies platforms, I find the idea that users should bear any of the blame for the unauthorized exploitation of their data on Facebook outrageous. This notion goes against legal concepts that maintain that platforms to which we entrust our personal data should be expected to protect that data and not use it to manipulate us. Yes, there is always some onus on consumers to make informed choices about products and services they consume, but Facebook’s business model of ever-changing terms of service, riddled with the indecipherable legalese used by most platforms, and its general lack of information about data governance mean that consumers are often left in the dark about Facebook’s data collection practices.

[ Why Facebook users’ data obtained by Cambridge Analytica has probably spun far out of reach ]

And ultimately, after all, harvesting user data for targeted advertising was part of Facebook’s business strategy. Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain Facebook users’ data precisely because Facebook itself was already collecting and allowing third-party app developers to access that data. Facebook has extracted ever-more personal information as part of the bargain for using its platform; Cambridge Analytica may have done it in a way Facebook now says it shouldn’t have, but the firm was using the platform exactly as intended.

➤ Tom Haudricourt reports Zach Davies is eager to start the Brewers’ home opener after a year of adjustments:

To take that step forward, Davies is determined to put behind him those first-inning woes (6.27 ERA in 2017, highest of any inning he pitched) as well as crazy home-away splits. Counsell dismissed those facts and figures as mere paperwork but it was impossible to dismiss how much better Davies pitched away from Miller Park, which has favored hitters since opening in 2001.

In 17 starts at home, Davies went 8-7 with a 5.82 ERA, compared to 9-2, 2.04 in 16 games on the road. But, as an indication that he started to figure out what he was doing wrong, home or away, Davies posted a 4.90 ERA in the first half and 2.87 ERA after the break.

Live and learn.

“Early on, I kind of shot myself in the foot by throwing way too many pitches, not going deeper into ball games,” said Davies, who averaged 5 1/3 innings per start in the first half and 6 1/3 innings afterward. “So, I should have been over 200 innings, in my mind.

➤ (If) This Is the End of the Silicon Chip, Here’s What’s Next: