Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see snow with a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:22 AM and sunset 5:50 PM, for 11h 27m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with  85.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred eightieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1953, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin dies. On this day in 1935, the controversial Elizabeth “Baby Doe” McCourt pass away: “On this date, the controversial wife of Horace (H.A.W.) Tabor, silver mine owner during the 19th century Colorado gold and silver booms, died. Born Elizabeth Bondeul McCourt in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1854, she was first married to Harvey Doe, Jr. of Oshkosh but in 1880 divorced him on the grounds of adultery. She then moved to Colorado where she married Leadville’s silver king, Horace Tabor. Despite great wealth, she died penniless and alone in Leadville: she froze to death in a cabin near the famous Matchless mine, which in its heyday had produced $10,000 worth of silver ore per day. Elizabeth and Horace are the subject of an American opera, ‘The Ballad of Baby Doe’.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ The New York Times observes Donald Trump Sure Has a Problem with Democracy:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mild and sunny with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 5:48 PM, for 11h 24m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with  92.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1789, the federal government under the U.S. Constitution begins. On this day in 1863, the 22nd Wisconsin Infantry fights in the Battle of Thompson’s Station, also known as the Battle of Spring Hill, approximately 30 miles south of Nashville, Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker reports In 406 days, President Trump has made 2,436 false or misleading claims (Updated March 1, 2018):

(The database is interactive, and lists each false claim and the number of times Trump made it.)

➤ Steven Mufson and Damian Paletta report In his expanding war over global trade, Trump aims harsh rhetoric at close U.S. allies:

In his expanding war over global trade, President Trump has aimed his harshest rhetoric at an unlikely target — the closest U.S. allies.

In Twitter posts while at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday, Trump vowed to strike back at European leaders who said they would retaliate for his promised tariffs on aluminum and steel.

Bring it on, Trump warned.

(Trump is both economically ignorant and a helpmate to Putin & Russia’s longstanding policy goal of dividing America from her democratic European allies.)

➤ Christopher Mathias, Jenna Amatulli, and Rebecca Klein report Exclusive: Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast (“Dayanna Volitich suggests Muslims be eradicated from the earth, believes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories … and teaches middle school social studies”):

Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old social studies teacher at Crystal River Middle School in Florida, has been secretly hosting the white nationalist podcast “Unapologetic” under the pseudonym “Tiana Dalichov” and bragging about teaching her views in a public school, HuffPost has discovered.

In her most recent podcast on Feb. 26, a guest railed against diversity in schools, dismissing the idea that “a kid from Nigeria and a kid who came from Sweden are supposed to learn exactly the same” and have the “same IQ.” Volitich enthusiastically agreed with the guest, and went on to argue that “science” has proven that certain races are smarter than others.

In the same episode, Volitich boasted about bringing her white nationalist beliefs into the classroom and hiding her ideology from administrators. She said that when parents complained to the school’s principal about how she is injecting political bias into the classroom, Volitich lied to the principal and said it was not true.

“She believed me and backed off,” she said.

Volitich also agreed with her guest’s assertion that more white supremacists need to infiltrate public schools and become teachers. “They don’t have to be vocal about their views, but get in there!” her guest said. “Be more covert and just start taking over those places.”

“Right,” Volitich said. “I’m absolutely one of them.”

➤ The Associate Press reports SEC dropped inquiry a month after firm aided Kushner company:

The Securities and Exchange Commission late last year dropped its inquiry into a financial company that a month earlier had given White House adviser Jared Kushner‘s family real estate firm a $180 million loan.

While there’s no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the agency’s decision to drop the inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the timing has once again raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner’s family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

The SEC detail comes a day after The New York Times reported that Apollo’s loan to the Kushner Cos. followed several meetings at the White House with Kushner.

“I suppose the best case for Kushner is that this looks absolutely terrible,” said Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Without presuming that there is any kind of quid pro quo … there are a lot of ways that the fact of Apollo’s engagement with Kushner and the Kushner businesses in a public and private context might cast a shadow over what the SEC is doing and influence consciously or unconsciously how the agency acted.”

➤ This Pink Winged Stick Insect is Hiding in Plain Sight:

This is a pink winged stick insect at the Montreal Zoo. These guys have quite the camouflage on them. Despite growing up to 21 inches in length, these insects are able to hide in plain sight, blending in among sticks and foliage. As camouflage is their primary defense, many stick insects are nocturnal and will play dead in the face of attack. Unfortunately, heavy deforestation has made the future of this species precarious.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 5:47 PM, for 11h 22m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with  96.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1879, Congress creates the U.S. Geological Survey. On this day in 1862, the Siege of New Madrid, Missouri begins: “Union General John Pope began the siege of New Madrid, Missouri. The 8th and 15th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries took part in this effort to open the Mississippi River to Union shipping.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ John Harwood considers Trump’s embrace of Russia: The evidence on public display already paints a jarring picture:

But whatever the special counsel concludes legally about “collusion,” evidence on public display already paints a jarring picture. It shows an American president who has embraced Russian money and illicit favors, while maintaining rhetoric and policies benefiting Russia and undercutting national security officials of his own country.

Long before running for president, Trump relied on Russian money.

His partners in the Trump Soho project in New York, announced in 2006, included a former official of the Soviet Union and a Russian who confessed to felony fraud involving organized crime. Son Donald Trump Jr. said two years later that money was “pouring in from Russia” for “high-end product.”

The same year, a Russian oligarch paid Trump $95 million for a Florida mansion Trump bought in 2004 for less than half that price. Showcasing a family golf course in 2013, Eric Trump told a journalist that Russian financiers provided what American banks would not. (The younger Trump later denied saying so.)

Donald Trump openly courted Russian President Vladimir Putin while staging a beauty pageant in Moscow. With help from the same organized-crime-linked felon who collaborated on Trump Soho, Trump sought to develop real estate in the Russian capital while seeking the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

(Emphasis in original.)

➤ Jim Tankersley reports Trump’s Steel Tariffs Raise Fears of a Damaging Trade War:

Even the prospect of a trade war could hurt the economic expansion underway. That’s because any uncertainty can prompt companies to curtail investment or hold off on hiring.

If other countries follow up on their threats to retaliate, the pain could be significant. Beyond tariffs, their tools include taking strategic strikes at certain industries or taking their grievances to the World Trade Organization.

Any actions threaten the global supply chains on which the American economy is heavily dependent. The number of workers who will lose out if countries are cut off from America far exceeds the number who stand to gain from the pending tariffs.

“Industries that buy steel and aluminum, not to mention agricultural exporters, employ many times more people than the industries that the president wants to protect,” said Peter A. Petri, an economist and trade expert at Brandeis University’s International Business School. “Whether we go through with his approach is anyone’s guess, but business investment depends on predictable policy, and relentless chaos takes its toll even if cooler heads prevail on the policies that the president is tweeting about.”

➤ Marwa Eltagouri reports Shortly before Trump announced tariffs, his former adviser dumped millions in steel-related stocks:

President Trump’s decision Thursday to impose crippling tariffs on the imports of steel and aluminum took many by surprise — particularly investors, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the day’s tradingdown more than 400 points, or 1.7 percent, at 24,608.

But one billionaire investor and former Trump adviser, Carl Icahn, was seemingly unvexed, having dumped a million shares tied to the steel industry a week before the president announced 25 percent tariffs for foreign-made steel.

A Feb. 22 SEC filing shows Icahn sold off his $31.3 million stake in the Manitowoc Company, which is a leading global manufacturer of cranes for heavy construction based in Manitowoc, Wis., according to the company’s website. Since Trump’s announcement Thursday, Manitowoc’s stock has plummeted to about $26. Icahn — who has had majority interest in several companies including Motorola, Xerox, Family Dollar and Pep Boys — had sold his shares for about $32 to $34 each, according to the SEC disclosure, which was first reported by Think Progress.

➤ Jennifer Rubin contends Trump’s calamities are coming faster — and in bunches:

Now, anyone who is surprised by the utter chaos, the ethical sleaze, the policy incoherence and the nepotism/cronyism was not paying attention during Trump’s career in real estate or during his campaign. This is how Trump ran his family operation, stumbling through one failed venture after another. This is how Trump wound up declaring bankruptcy multiple times. No one — not Kelly, Ivanka, Jared, the GOP Congress or even Hicks — can keep him on task. Trump is still indifferent to learning policy and is prone to prattle in public about subjects he doesn’t bother to study. No one else can make up for his lack of diligence, ethics and decency. This is not so much as an administration as a weird fusion of the court of Louis XIV and the Mafia, all built around a cult of personality that lacks any self-restraint or awareness.

Republicans who empowered him and refused to stand up to him have a giant mess on their hands — a dysfunctional government and a looming electoral disaster. Trump will either be compelled to leave office or will continue to spin out of control. Aides tell the press this is a new level of chaos. Don’t worry — it’ll get worse. It always does.

➤ At Camp Sundown, children with xeroderma pigmentosum have a chance to camp and play together:

A day at Camp Sundown begins just after the last rays of the sun have disappeared from the horizon. Shielded by a cloak of darkness, campers flood the grounds to play soccer and drive Go-Karts. For these children, who suffer from a rare UV light-sensitivity, nocturnality is the norm. They are allergic to sunlight. They rarely see the light of day.

Sundown, directed by Liza Mandelup, is an intimate portrait of life in a short-lived haven for children with xeroderma pigmentosum. According to the National Library of Medicine, affected children develop a severe sunburn after spending just a few minutes in the sun. “Society is not set up for these kids to live a normal life,” Mandelup told The Atlantic. “They have to stay out of the sun for their entire lives. This camp is created so that for two weeks, these kids can feel like they’re normal. They wait all year for these two weeks. This is the best time of their lives.”

Ultimately, Mandelup said she “was inspired by the normalcy that someone can create from any situation.”

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 5:46 PM, for 11h 19m 11s of daytime. The moon is full, with  99.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1904, Dr. Seuss, Theodor Seuss Geisel, is born. On this day in 1967, Beloit students and faculty protest Dow: “a group of Beloit College students and faculty staged a silent vigil, protesting Dow Chemical representatives recruiting prospective employees on the Beloit campus. Dow Chemical manufactured napalm, or jellied gasoline, used by the U.S. military in bombing raids during the Vietnam conflict. Dow was prominently protested the same year at the University of Wisconsin Madison campus.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Natasha Turak reports ‘Straight up stupid,’ ‘incompetent’ and ‘misguided’: Economist Adam Posen rips Trump’s tariffs:

President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports are “straight up stupid,” a top economist told CNBC on Friday.

Trump’s tariffs announcement Thursday night has been broadly condemned by both sides of the U.S. political spectrum and the international community at large.

“This is just straight up stupid,” Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institution for International Economics, said Friday. “This is fundamentally incompetent, corrupt or misguided.”

Posen, who served at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the mid-1990s, currently sits on the panel of economic advisors to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.

The president’s protectionist move, which would impose a 25 percent levy on all steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, has garnered widespread criticism, with trade partners of the U.S. already threatening to retaliate. Downstream producers of steel and aluminum products — including car, plane and consumer goods manufacturers — say it will jack up their costs, and experts fear a trade war that could harm global growth.

➤ The New York Times editorial board writes Jared Kushner Flames Out (“Bad advice, shady deals and incompetence define the presidential son-in-law’s tenure at the White House”):

For more than two centuries, the principle that federal officials would be selected on the basis of merit, not heredity, has been protected as much by tradition, cultural norms and a desire to avoid the appearance of impropriety as it has been by law. That has proved an insufficient bulwark against an insecure, ignorant president, and his administration, and the American people are now paying the price.

What a liability Mr. Kushner has proved to be. American officials have intercepted conversations in which at least four countries, including China and the United Arab Emirates, discussed ways to take advantage of Mr. Kushner’s indebtedness, naïveté and ignorance of foreign policy to further their interests, according to The Washington Post. This week, The Times reported that Kushner Companies received hundreds of millions of dollars in loans through American companies, including Citigroup and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, after their top executives met with Mr. Kushner in the White House. The Qatari government’s investment fund was a major investor in Apollo’s real estate trust.

This was all occurring while Mr. Kushner had access to top-secret intelligence, despite having failed to secure a permanent security clearance. His faulty disclosures of his financial interests and foreign contacts and his indebtedness have most likely held up his clearance for more than a year. His access was downgraded this week from top secret to secret, hardly reassuring.

➤ Richard Painter contends “This is how you run a banana republic”:

“This is how you run a banana republic,” says @RWPUSA of the Trump administration #inners pic.twitter.com/6EQobY7u8T

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) March 2, 2018

➤ Tim Mak reports Depth Of Russian Politician’s Cultivation Of NRA Ties Revealed:

A prominent Kremlin-linked Russian politician has methodically cultivated ties with leaders of the National Rifle Association, and documented efforts in real time over six years to leverage those connections and gain access deeper into American politics, NPR has learned.

Russian politician Alexander Torshin claimed his ties to the National Rifle Association provided him access to Donald Trump — and the opportunity to serve as a foreign election observer in the United States during the 2012 election.

Torshin is a prolific Twitter user, logging nearly 150,000 tweets, mostly in Russian, since his account was created in 2011. Previously obscured by language and by sheer volume of tweets, Torshin has written numerous times about his connections with the NRA, of which he’s a known paid lifetime member. NPR has translated a selection of those posts that document Torshin’s relationship to the group.These revelations come amid news that the FBI is investigating whether Torshin, the deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to assist the Trump campaign in 2016, McClatchy reported in January.

➤ Here’s Popcorn Under A Microscope:

Good morning.

A new month in Whitewater begins with rain (and perhaps a bit of snow) with a high of forty-three. Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 5:45 PM, for 11h 16m 18s of daytime. The moon is full, with  99.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets at 2:45 PM, the Fire Department holds a business meeting at 6 PM, and the Landmarks Commission meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1961, Pres. Kennedy signs an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. On this day in 1916, Pabst Brewing Company introduces its first  non-alcoholic beverage.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jesse Drucker, Kate Kelly, and Ben Protess report Kushner’s Family Business Received Loans After White House Meetings:

Early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.

The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show.

It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.

(Emphasis added.)

➤ Natasha Bertrand reports Roger Stone’s Secret Messages with WikiLeaks (“Transcripts obtained by The Atlantic show Donald Trump’s longtime confidante corresponded with the radical-transparency group”):

On March 17, 2017, WikiLeaks tweeted that it had never communicated with Roger Stone, a longtime confidante and informal adviser to President Donald Trump. In his interview with the House Intelligence Committee last September, Stone, who testified under oath, told lawmakers that he had communicated with WikiLeaks via an “intermediary,” whom he identified only as a “journalist.” He declined to reveal that person’s identity to the committee, he told reporters later.

Private Twitter messages obtained by The Atlantic show that Stone and WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, communicated directly on October 13, 2016—and that WikiLeaks sought to keep its channel to Stone open after Trump won the election. The existence of the secret correspondence marks yet another strange twist in the White House’s rapidly swelling Russia scandal. Stone and Trump have been friends for decades, which raises key questions about what the president knew about Stone’s interactions with Wikileaks during the campaign. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The depth of Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange has been closely scrutinized by congressional investigators examining whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia—or anyone serving as a cut-out for Moscow—to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Stone confirmed the authenticity of the messages, but called them “ridiculously out of context” and “a paste up.” He said that he provided the complete exchange to the House Intelligence Committee, but did not immediately respond to a request to provide his own record of the conversation to The Atlantic.

A screenshot of the exchange, which has not been previously reported, was provided to the House Intelligence Committee last year by a third-party source. The private messages confirm that Stone considered himself a “friend” of WikiLeaks, which was branded a “non-state hostile intelligence service” by CIA Director Mike Pompeo last April. Stone insisted that the messages vindicated his account. “They prove conclusively that I had no advance knowledge of content or source of WikiLeaks publications,” he said. “I merely had confirmed Assange’s public claim that he had information on Hillary Clinton and he would publish it.” He also narrowed the scope of his earlier denials, saying that he’d only denied having communicated directly with Assange, not with Wikileaks. Wikileaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

➤ Jack Shafer writes Ivanka Should Quit (“If she can’t handle legitimate questions about her father, she shouldn’t serve in his White House”):

Assistant to the president Ivanka Trump dodged the press like a professional on Sunday when NBC News’ Peter Alexander asked her in a sit-down interview, “Do you believe your father’s accusers?”

Taking a short pause to consider a question she had to know was coming, Trump responded: “I think it’s a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he’s affirmatively stated there’s no truth to it.”

Nice try, Ivanka. Labeling something as “inappropriate” works if you’re a harried parent and you don’t have time to explain to your kids why they shouldn’t stick their dirty hands into the guacamole. But in adult-on-adult conversations, the “I” word almost always lands as an attempt to strike down the question and shame the questioner without explaining why the question is invalid. And it isn’t invalid. The president’s extramarital ways have been Page 1 news for a year and a half, and the topic continues to consume the press as new allegations about his conduct surface. If anything, it would be inappropriate to withhold such a vital question from public discussion, especially from an assistant to the president.

Trump pleads for recusal from the question, though, not because the question itself is wrong to ask. She pleads for recusal because she thinks it’s wrong for the press to ask a daughter such a question after her father has issued his denials. Do daughters of presidents who are also assistants to the president really get to wave such a flag of privilege? No way. No journalists can make any public official answer a question, so if Ivanka Trump wants to say “no comment,” she should help herself. But to declare a question illegitimate requires more explanation than she volunteers.

➤ Sarah Hauer reports ‘Thanks but no thanks’: Critics say Wisconsin’s pitch to young Chicagoans is ‘misguided’:

John Greenfield, transportation columnist for the weekly Chicago Reader, said “thanks but no thanks” to Wisconsin’s offer in a piece published last week.

“WEDC would be wiser to play up the benefits of Wisconsin than telling Chicagoans what’s wrong with their town,” Greenfield said Monday.

Greenfield said he thinks the transit argument, in particular, was “misguided.” Greenfield also is the editor of the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago.

“The folks behind the campaign projected their values onto young Chicagoans — ‘We’re anti-transit so we assume people who ride the train to work would like much more to drive,'” Greenfield said. However, many young people want to take rapid transit to commute to and from work. They don’t own a car and don’t want to, he said.

➤ Amanda Kooser reports Giant Australian funnel web spider gets named ‘Colossus’
(“Yikes. The Australian Reptile Park adopted a venomous funnel-web spider so big it had to be named fittingly”):

Milking venomous spiders is not a job for the faint-hearted, but employees at the Australian Reptile Park zoo in New South Wales are willing to do it for the good of humanity.

Before you milk a Sydney funnel-web spider, however, you need to obtain a spider, and the park now owns a real whopper.

“Colossus” is the largest male funnel-web spider ever to be handed in to the reptile park. The park posted a dramatic Facebook video of Colossus, who looks a little grumpy, on Tuesday. It warns readers that recent rainfall has caused the potentially deadly spiders to emerge in large numbers.

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-three. Sunrise is 6:30 AM and sunset 5:43 PM, for 11h 13m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8:00 AM.

On this day in 1862, Battle of Island No. 10, Missouri, begins: “The Battle of Island No. 10 began at New Madrid, Missouri. The 8th and 15th Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fought in this important battle.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Cynthia McFadden, William M. Arkin, Kevin Monahan, and Ken Dilanian report U.S. intel: Russia compromised seven states prior to 2016 election:

The U.S. intelligence community developed substantial evidence that state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were compromised by Russian-backed covert operatives prior to the 2016 election — but never told the states involved, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.

Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.

➤ AJ Vicens reports Trump’s NSA Director Admits US Hasn’t Done Enough to Deter Russian Hacking (“President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay”):

In a response to questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rogers said “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay here…and that therefore I can continue this activity.”

The hearing also focused on the NSA and Cyber Command’s operating authorities. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Rogers whether he had received orders to go after the Russian meddling operation where it originated: “Have you been directed to do so given the strategic threat that faces the United States and the significant consequences you recognize already?”

“No I have not,” Rogers responded, adding that based on authority he already has, he has “directed … to begin some specific work,” but wouldn’t elaborate in a public setting. Certain overt actions by Cyber Command, a branch of the US military, could be considered an a act of cyber warfare.

“But essentially, we have not taken on the Russians yet,” Reed pressed. “We’re watching them intrude in our elections, spread misinformation, become more sophisticated, try to achieve strategic objectives that you have recognized, and we’re just, essentially, sitting back and waiting.”

➤ Kara Scannell, Pamela Brown, Gloria Borger and Jim Sciutto report Mueller team asks about Trump’s Russian business dealings as he weighed a run for president:

Investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller have recently been asking witnesses about Donald Trump’s business activities in Russia prior to the 2016 presidential campaign as he considered a run for president, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Questions to some witnesses during wide-ranging interviews included the timing of Trump’s decision to seek the presidency, potentially compromising information the Russians may have had about him, and why efforts to brand a Trump Tower in Moscow fell through, two sources said.

The lines of inquiry indicate Mueller’s team is reaching beyond the campaign to explore how the Russians might have sought to influence Trump at a time when he was discussing deals in Moscow and contemplating a presidential run.

➤ Shane Harris, Carol D. Leonnig, Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey report Kushner’s overseas contacts raise concerns as foreign officials seek leverage:

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

Kushner’s interim security clearance was downgraded last week from the top-secret to the secret level, which should restrict the regular access he has had to highly classified information, according to administration officials.

➤ What About That Time Snoop Dogg Tried to Rent an Entire Country?:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:32 AM and sunset 5:42 PM, for 11h 10m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred seventy-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1922, Justice Brandeis delivers the unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Leser v. Garnett, upholding the constitutionality of the Nineteenth Amendment that recognized women’s right to vote.

On this day in 1904, Wisconsin’s second state capitol building burns: “On the evening of the 26th, the generator was turned off for the night. The only lights visible were two gas jets serving the night watchman. At approximately 2 a.m., night watchman Nat Crampton smelled smoke and followed the odor to a recently varnished ceiling, already in flames. A second watchman arrived to assist, but there was no water pressure with which to operate a hose. The fire department encountered a similar situation upon arrival. Governor Robert M. La Follette telegraphed fire departments in Janesville and Milwaukee for assistance. La Follette was at the capitol, directing efforts to douse the fire and entering the burning building to retrieve valuable papers. The fire was completly extinguished by 10 p.m. the next day. Losses were estimated to be close to $1 million.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Max Boot writes Trump vs. Mueller is a battle for America’s soul:

Reading Marc Fisher and Sari Horwitz’s extraordinary article comparing the lives of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and President Trump made me realize that the war between the two men is not just a struggle over the fate of this presidency. It is a battle for the soul of America, because each of them represents a recognizable American archetype.

Mueller was born to wealth and attended elite institutions — St. Paul’s School, Princeton University, the University of Virginia School of Law — but felt compelled to serve his country. During the Vietnam War, when most of his classmates were avoiding the draft, he volunteered for the Marine Corps and earned numerous decorations leading a rifle platoon in fierce combat. Returning home, he became a prosecutor and eventually ran the Justice Department’s criminal division. In the 1990s Mueller went into private practice. It was lucrative, but he hated it. Watching the spike of drug-driven murders in the District of Columbia, he volunteered to become a line prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office. It was as if a retired general had volunteered to serve as a private in wartime.

…

Trump is Mueller’s opposite in every meaningful respect save that he was also born to privilege. He has much in common with the land promoters who bamboozled English immigrants into coming to the New World in the 17th century with fanciful tales of riches — what Trump would describe as “truthful hyperbole.” He is the kind of charming con man who peddled patent medicines in the 19th century and then, in the 20th century, penny stocks and time-shares. These scofflaws and scammers were the inspiration for the phony duke and dauphin in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jay Gatsby and the Wizard of Oz.

Trump combines the hedonism of the 1970s with the bigotry and sexism of the 1950s: the worst of both worlds. His consciousness was not raised in the 1960s, but his libido was. He did not take part in the civil rights or antiwar movements and won five draft deferments — including one for “bone spurs” — so that he could devote his life to the pursuit of women and wealth. He later said that fear of catching a sexually transmitted disease was “my personal Vietnam.”

(An American majority opposes Trump, and always has. What’s been said of him so many times, in similar variations, is true: Trump’s a stupid person’s idea of a smart person, and an ignorant person’s idea of a knowledgeable one.)

➤ James Palmer contends China’s Stability Myth Is Dead:

The announcement on Sunday that China would abolish the two-term limit for the presidency, effectively foreshadowing current leader Xi Jinping’s likely status as president for life, had been predicted ever since Xi failed to nominate a clear successor at last October’s Communist Party Congress. But it still came as a shock in a country where the collective leadership established under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s was once considered inviolable. Xi, like every leader since Deng, combines a trinity of roles that embody the three pillars of power in China: party chairman, president, and head of the Central Military Commission. But like every leader since Deng, he was once expected to hand these over after his appointed decade, letting one generation of leadership pass smoothly on to the next.

It’s virtually impossible to gauge public opinion in China, especially as censorship has gripped ever tighter online. But among Chinese I know, including those used to defending China’s system, the move caused dismay and a fair amount of gallows humor involving references to “Emperor Pooh” and “West Korea.”

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Perhaps the system was always doomed, as soon as a cunning enough leader emerged — though Xi was not only skilled but lucky, utilizing the fall of his likely rival Bo Xilai to consolidate his own supremacy. There will be a certain grim amusement in watching intellectual apparatchiks scuttle to explain how their previous arguments in favor of collective rule have been superseded by the needs of the times and that strongman rule is now the only answer. As the New York Times’s Chris Buckley pointed out, Hu Angang, a regular and vocal apologist for the government, made collective rule the centerpiece of his book on the superiority of the Chinese political system — published in 2013, just after Xi’s initial ascension.

(One can’t say that the China has chosen her fate, but rather that Xi and the CCP have chosen for her.)

➤ Jason Stein reports Eric Holder’s group sues Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker over not calling special elections:

A group led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sued Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Monday over his refusal to call special elections to fill two open legislative seats.

Fresh off a victory in a Senate special election last month, Wisconsin Democrats have demanded that Walker call these two additional special elections and give their party an opportunity to notch more wins.

With Democrats seeing an opportunity — and Republicans seeing a threat — the controversy over the special election has taken on a strong political cast.

Holder’s group, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, jumped into the fight Monday, bringing the lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court on behalf of Wisconsin Democrats who live in the two districts.

“Governor Scott Walker’s refusal to hold special elections is an affront to representative democracy,” Holder said in a statement. “Forcing citizens to go more than a year without representation in the general Assembly is a plain violation of their rights, and we’re hopeful the court will act quickly to order the governor to hold elections.”

➤ Andrew Cohen reports Exclusive: Rep. Adam Schiff Offers New Insight into Steve Bannon and the Democratic Memo:

Rep. Adam Schiff seems ready to acknowledge the theory that Steve Bannon is trying to run out the clock on Capitol Hill lawmakers. Speaking to Esquire.com, the California Democrat said that the House Intelligence Committee has been somewhat tougher on Bannon than it has been with other former Trump aides called to testify in the Russia probe—namely Corey Lewandowski. But Schiff believes that Bannon has spoken instead to Robert Mueller and his investigators because he thinks he’d likely lose a legal showdown over executive privilege if he were to cross the special counsel.

“Steve Bannon apparently is a man without a country, neither in with the White House nor in with Breitbart, so the majority is willing to take him on in a way they have not been willing with other witnesses,” Schiff said.

Schiff also responded to a report over the weekend that he has rattled President Trump.

“I am doing my job and clearly there is something in it that is threatening to the president, or at least he views it that way, and he’s even more alarmed at what Bob Mueller is doing,” Schiff said. “He seems to think that these playground bully tactics are going to work. They don’t work at all. They just steel people’s resolved to be more disciplined about their work.”

➤ Karin Brulliard reports A ‘one in a million’ yellow cardinal is dazzling the Internet with its sunshiny feathers:

[Photographer Jeremy] Black said in a Facebook post that he learned about the bird from a friend, Charlie Stephenson, a longtime birdwatcher who had spotted the sun-hued fellow at her feeder. At first, she told Al.com, she figured it was a species of yellow bird she had never seen before. Then she realized that the creature, with its black mask and crested head, looked just like a cardinal — just one of a different color.

This coloration is not unique, but it is aberrant, according to a 2003 research paper on what at the time was said to be the first-ever reported yellow northern cardinal in the United States. It was a specimen collected in 1989 in Baton Rouge by scientists at Louisiana State University. Researchers who studied its feathers concluded that the bird had a genetic mutation that impaired the metabolic processes that normally make red feathers out of the carotenoid-rich yellow and orange foods in a male cardinal’s diet.