Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with scattered showers and a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 15h 07m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Fire Department has a scheduled business meeting at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1895, John Harvey Kellogg files a patent application:

A patent for “Flaked Cereals and Process of Preparing Same” was filed on May 31, 1895, and issued on April 14, 1896 to John Harvey Kellogg as Patent No. 558,393. Significantly, the patent applied to a variety of types of grains, not just to wheat. John Harvey Kellogg was the only person named on the patent.[56] Will later insisted that he, not Ella, had worked with John, and repeatedly asserted that he should have received more credit than he was given for the discovery of the flaked cereal.[55]

During their first year of production, the Kelloggs sold tens of thousands of pounds of flaked cereal, marketing it as “Granose”. They continued to experiment using rice and corn as well as wheat, and in 1898 released the first batch of Sanitas Toasted Corn Flakes. A modified version with a longer shelf life was released in 1902.[4] By that time, both “Granose Biscuits” and “Granose Flakes” were available.[57]

Recommended for reading in full —

Peter Certo observes Actually, Trump Loves Chinese Goods — So Long as they Make Him Richer (“Trump rallied to save a major Chinese firm right in the middle of a trade war of his own making. Why?”):

Just 72 hours prior to Trump’s reversal on ZTE, The Huffington Post reports, the Chinese government—which, recall, also owns entities controlling at least a third of ZTE—made a $500 million loan to some Trump-branded properties in Indonesia. And Chinese banks promised another $500 million to the same. The Trump Organization has acknowledged the deal but refused to comment, while a White House spokesman asked about the deal said simply, “I’ll have to refer you to the Trump Organization.”

It also probably didn’t hurt that during the very same week, China approved seven new trademarks for Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter and White House advisor.

Viewed in this light, Trump’s ZTE deal feels like far less of a reversal. It’s perfectly consistent for a president who’s praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines — whose drug war has killed over 20,000 people, yet whose capital also hosts an upcoming Trump Tower (the developer, in turn, is Duterte’s special envoy to Trump). Or for a president with extensive potential conflicts in the United Arab Emirates, which happens to be enjoying U.S. support as it conducts (with Saudi Arabia) a devastating U.S.-backed war in nearby Yemen.

Or, for that matter, a president who signed a tax plan seemingly tailor-made to save himself billions of dollars.

(There’s not a foreign corporation or oligarch on the planet that doesn’t know Trump can be bought.)

Charles Davis asks What Happened to Jill Stein’s Recount Millions? (“The Green Party candidate last filed a form with the FEC since September 2017. And it looks likely that there won’t be a vote on how to use the unspent recount funds.):

Shortly after the 2016 election, Jill Stein raised more than $7 million from shell-shocked liberals eager to pursue a swing-state recount. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Green Party’s last candidate for president is still spending that money.

Ongoing litigation, travel costs, and staff salaries are also likely to eat up whatever is left, meaning those who donated to Stein are unlikely to receive a once-promised chance to vote on how the post-recount money would be spent. Nor have donors been given much of a window into how Stein is actually spending their donations.

Nathan Schneider suggests How to survive Trump: End the cult of the presidency:

In retrospect, the U.S. president seems like a particularly strong executive, compared with other democratic systems established since then, but at the time the prevailing urge was to minimize the office. In the spring of 1789, Congress debated what title should be used to address the first president, George Washington. Legislators considered such familiar options as “His Majesty” and “Highness.” The eventual choice, “Mr. President,” was again an affront to the norms of the period and to any urge the chief executive might harbor for self-aggrandizement.

A recent cover story in The Atlantic by John Dickerson chronicles our slippage. James Polk’s wife, Sarah, had to direct the Marine Band to play “Hail to the Chief” when he entered a room so that guests would know who the president was. Presidents as recent as Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were not expected to rush to the site of every natural disaster for photo-ops with the victims. But all along, presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt developed techniques for cultivating personal followings through the mass media of their time. The Cold War, and particularly the nuclear codes, rendered the U.S. president the “Leader of the Free World” in the eyes of some; the mandate to fight terrorism means micromanaging an endless war on every front. Meanwhile, the 24-hour cable news industry discovered that obsessive monitoring of the president serves as a cheap, convenient, news-like substitute for actual reporting.

Conservative Catholic Ross Douthat describes The Baptist Apocalypse:

Among Trump-supporting religious believers, the long odds he overcame to win the presidency are often interpreted as a providential sign: Only God could have put Donald Trump in the White House, which means he must be there for some high and holy purpose.

The trouble with this theory is that it’s way too simplistic about what kind of surprises an interventionist deity might have in mind. Such a God might, for instance, offer political success as a temptation rather than a reward — or use an unexpected presidency not to save Americans but to chastise them.

We’re a long way from any final judgment on God’s purposes in the Trump era. But so far the Trump presidency has clearly been a kind of apocalypse — not (yet) in the “world-historical calamity” sense of the word, but in the original Greek meaning: an unveiling, an uncovering, an exposure of truths that had heretofore been hidden.

(Douthat observes that this “unveiling has not been confined, as Trump’s providentialist supporters might like to imagine, to institutions and individuals that have arrayed themselves against him. It has come as well for figures whose style anticipated him (Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, that whole ménage) and for figures who have deliberately attached themselves to his populist revolt.”)

Tech Insider contends that these are the Best Dog Breeds For Apartment Living:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with occasional thundershowers and a high of seventy-seven.  Sunrise is 5:19 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 15h 06m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 99.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 takes place:

The first “500” was held at the Speedway on Decoration Day (as Memorial Day was known from its inception in 1868 to 1967 when Federal Law made Memorial Day the official name), May 30, 1911,[9] run to a 600 cu in (9,800 cc) maximum engine size formula.[6] It saw a field of 40 starters,[6] with Harroun piloting a Marmon Model 32-based Wasp racer — outfitted with his invention, the rear view mirror.[10] Harroun (with relief from Cyrus Patschke)[11] was declared the winner, although Ralph Mulford protested the official result. 80,000 spectators were in attendance, and an annual tradition had been established. Many considered Harroun to be a hazard during the race, as he was the only driver in the race driving without a riding mechanic, who checked the oil pressure and let the driver know when traffic was coming.[12]

Recommended for reading in full —

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star describes Trump’s serial lying:

Great point by @ddale8 on today’s show: “Incessant dishonesty” is “a central feature of his presidency,” yet it’s too often treated as “a side show rather than THE show, rather than the central story.” https://t.co/HyPITIYCrJ

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 27, 2018

(See also Dale’s running total of Trump’s lies – now numbering over 1,600 – since becoming president.)

 The Washington Post editorial board asks Does Maria count as a ‘real catastrophe’ now, Mr. President?:

A NEW report by independent public-health researchers estimates that at least 4,645 people died as a result of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Consider that number. Contrast it with those who died from Katrina (almost 2,000) and those killed in the 9/11 attacks (almost 3,000). Remember President Trump’s visit to the stricken island in the storm’s aftermath, tossing out paper towelsand telling Puerto Rican officials they should be “very proud” that hundreds didn’t die from Maria as in a “real catastrophe like Katrina.”

Think how many lives might have been saved if Puerto Rico’s devastation had been handled with the seriousness and urgency it deserved. Ask yourself whether Mr. Trump would have thought — or acted — differently if the American citizens who were affected had lived not in Puerto Rico but in Texas or Tennessee.

A study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine by scientists from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other institutions takes aim at the official government count of 64 dead. It suggests the actual number of deaths — many caused by interruption and delays in medical care — is more than 70 times higher than that reported by Puerto Rico officials. Researchers acknowledged their estimate, based on calculations from surveys of randomly chosen households, is imprecise and further study is needed. But the report, along with earlier reporting and analysis by the New York Times, paints a devastating picture of how people, particularly the elderly and infirm, were imperiled by long-standing losses of electricity, water and communications.

Philip Bump and Mark Berman report Federal prosecutors poised to get more than 1 million files seized from Michael Cohen’s phones:

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors investigating President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen are poised to receive on Wednesday 1 million files from three of his cellphones seized last month, according to a filing submitted to the court Tuesday night by special master Barbara Jones.

In her update to the court, Jones said investigators from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have already been given access to nearly 300,000 pieces of potential evidence seized from Cohen’s office and residences in an April raid.

Jones was appointed by U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood late last month to review the material after attorneys for Cohen and President Trump said many seized documents and communications could be protected by attorney-client privilege.

David Frum describes The Measure of Trump’s Devotion (“On Memorial Day, as the nation turned to the president to lead its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, he revealed himself unequal to the office he holds”):

Donald Trump cares enormously about national symbols—the flag, the anthem—when he can use them to belittle, humiliate, and exclude.

Trump has called for revoking the citizenship of those who burn the flag. He has suggested that NFL players who do not rise for the Star-Spangled Banner should be deported. He scored one of the greatest victories of his presidency when the National Football League submitted to his demand to punish players who did not stand at attention for the anthem. Vice President Pence ran the victory lap for Trump on this one.

But when it comes time to lead the nation in its shared rituals of unity and common purpose, Donald Trump cannot do it. He is, at most, president of slightly more than half of white America, and often not even that.

Breathe Deep: How the Antarctic Sea Spider Gets Oxygen (“Antarctic sea spiders have no lungs or gills, so how do they get oxygen into their bodies? The answer is in their pores”):

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 15h 04m 40s of daytime.  The moon is full today.

On this day in 1953, Tensing Norgay of Nepal and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand become the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

Recommended for reading in full —

McKay Coppins profiles Trump’s Right-Hand Troll (“Stephen Miller once tormented liberals at Duke. Now the president’s speechwriter and immigration enforcer is deploying the art of provocation from the White House”):

Perched on a high-backed chair, Miller looks as if he’s posing for a cologne ad in a glossy magazine—his slender frame wrapped in an elegantly tailored suit, his arm draped over the backrest, his legs crossed at the knee just so. As President Donald Trump’s top speechwriter and senior policy adviser, the 32-year-old aide has cultivated a severe public image, his narrow features forming a kind of perma-glower when he’s on television. But in person there are glimpses of something else—not charm, exactly, but a charisma-like substance. He can be funny and self-aware one moment, zealous and hostile the next. In conversation, he slides from authentic insight into impish goading and back again. It’s a compelling performance to watch—but after an hour and a half in his office, I realize I’m still straining to locate where the trolling ends and true belief begins.

In the campy TV drama that is Donald Trump’s Washington, Miller has carved out an enigmatic role. He lurks in the background for weeks at a time, only to emerge with crucial cameos in the most explosive episodes. The one where Trump signed a havoc-wreaking travel ban during his first week in office, unleashing global chaos and mass protests? Miller helped draft the executive order. The one where the federal government shut down over a high-stakes immigration standoff on Capitol Hill? Miller was accused of derailing the negotiations. (“As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we’re going nowhere,” Senator Lindsey Graham grumbled.) To watch him in his most memorable scenes—theatrically hurling accusations of “cosmopolitan bias” at a reporter; getting his mic cut in the middle of a belligerent Sunday-show appearance—is to be left mesmerized, wondering, Is this guy serious?

Miller represents a rising generation of conservatives for whom “melting the snowflakes” and “triggering the libs” are first principles.

(Miller’s circumstances are now, of course, different from Duke.  Iny any event, those in opposition and resistance are neither snowflakes, nor many of us even liberals.  We are, however, patient, and committed to delivering coldly to Miller and his ilk an indelible political retribution.)

William J. Broad and David E. Sanger report North Korea Nuclear Disarmament Could Take 15 Years, Expert Warns:

As the Trump administration races to start talks with North Korea on what it calls “rapid denuclearization,” a top federal government adviser who has repeatedly visited the North’s sprawling atomic complex is warning that the disarmament process could take far longer, up to 15 years.

The adviser, Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, and now a Stanford professor, argues that the best the United States can hope for is a phased denuclearization that goes after the most dangerous parts of the North’s program first.

The disarmament steps and timetable are laid out in a new report, circulated recently in Washington, that Dr. Hecker compiled with two colleagues at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Dr. Hecker has toured that nation’s secretive labyrinth of nuclear plants four times and remains the only American scientist to see its facility for enriching uranium, a bomb fuel. American intelligence agencies had missed the plant’s construction.

Chris Meserole and Alina Polyakova contend that The West is ill-prepared for the wave of “deep fakes” that artificial intelligence could unleash:

Russian disinformation has become a problem for European governments. In the last two years, Kremlin-backed campaigns have spread false stories alleging that French President Emmanuel Macron was backed by the “gay lobby,” fabricated a story of a Russian-German girl raped by Arab migrants, and spread a litany of conspiracy theories about the Catalan independence referendum, among other efforts.

Europe is finally taking action. In January, Germany’s Network Enforcement Act came into effect. Designed to limit hate speech and fake news online, the law prompted both France and Spain to consider counterdisinformation legislation of their own. More important, in April the European Union unveiled a new strategy for tackling online disinformation. The EU plan focuses on several sensible responses: promoting media literacy, funding a third-party fact-checking service, and pushing Facebook and others to highlight news from credible media outlets, among others. Although the plan itself stops short of regulation, EU officials have not been shy about hinting that regulation may be forthcoming. Indeed, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at an EU hearing this week, lawmakers reminded him of their regulatory power after he appeared to dodge their questions on fake news and extremist content.

The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies.

The recent European actions are important first steps. Ultimately, none of the laws or strategies that have been unveiled so far will be enough. The problem is that technology advances far more quickly than government policies. The EU’s measures are still designed to target the disinformation of yesterday rather than that of tomorrow.

To get ahead of the problem, policymakers in Europe and the United States should focus on the coming wave of disruptive technologies. Fueled by advances in artificial intelligence and decentralized computing, the next generation of disinformation promises to be even more sophisticated and difficult to detect.

  Michael Gerson writes Are these evangelicals ready to topple the idol of politics?:

If the stages of a social movement are emergence, coalescence, bureaucratization and decline, the reaction against the Trump evangelicals among other evangelicals is still in the emergence stage. But one significant act of coalescence took place recently at Wheaton College, where a group of 50?ethnically and denominationally diverse evangelical leaders met to discuss the sad state of their movement.

The setting was appropriate. Wheaton (my alma mater) was founded by abolitionist evangelicals in the mid-19th century. Its first president, Jonathan Blanchard, was an antislavery agitator and founder of radical newspapers. The college was a station on the Underground Railroad. Many Northern evangelical Christian leaders of that time were malcontents in the cause of human dignity.

[Dozens of evangelical leaders meet to discuss how Trump era has unleashed ‘grotesque caricature’ of their faith]

(Many others of us, not evangelical but of a more liturgical background, will do our part in toppling.)

 So, Are There Quakes on Mars?

Good morning.

Memorial Day in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of ninety-four.  Sunrise is 5:20 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 15h 03m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

As is traditional, Whitewater’s Memorial Day parade will begin at 10:30 AM in the center of town, near Fremont & Main Streets, with a route leading to the local posts for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion at 292 S. Wisconsin Avenue.  Memorial Day ceremonies will begin at the thereafter at 11 AM.

On this day in 1837, the first steamer, the James Madison, visits Milwaukee.

Recommended for reading in full —

Robert J. Samuelson describes Getting schooled on trade:

President Trump’s education in global trade continues. Not long ago, he declared that trade wars “are good and easy to win.” He knows better now. The administration’s performance in its latest trade talks with China has been ineffectual, instructive and (yes) humiliating.

Let’s be clear. China is the one major country where an aggressive American trade policy is warranted — unlike Trump’s decisions to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These were exercises in grandstanding, intended to impress his supporters.

In reality, these moves damaged American interests. They alienated our allies and trading partners, from Canada and Mexico (NAFTA) to Japan, Australia and Chile (TPP). Trump’s obsession with trade deficits further muddies the debate.

  Seung Min Kim writes Trump is blaming Democrats for separating migrant families at the border. Here’s why this isn’t a surprise:

In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a “horrible law” that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis.

In April, more than 50,000 migrants were apprehended or otherwise deemed “inadmissible,” and administration officials have made clear that children will be separated from parents who enter the country illegally and are detained. The surge in illegal border crossings is expected to continue as the economy improves and warmer weather arrives.

(Trump blames others, habitually, for his own reprehensible acts.  He is what he accuses others of being.)

 Natasha Bertrand writes A Timeline of Trump Associates Asking for Dirt on Clinton (“A new report that Roger Stone sought damaging information on Clinton from Julian Assange is the latest in an increasingly complicated chronology”):

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone tried to solicit information about Hillary Clinton from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in September 2016. At the time, the Journalreported, Stone wrote to Randy Credico, a New York radio host who had interviewed Assange, and asked Credico to ask Assange for “any State or HRC e-mail from August 10 to August 30, 2011.”

Like Stone, Trump seemed to believe that damaging information about Clinton could be found in the emails that she sent using her private email server, and later deleted. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a press conference in July 2016.

Stone and Trump were not alone in seeking help from WikiLeaks and Russia during the election. One of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., asked WikiLeaks via a private Twitter message in October whether a “leak” was coming and what it was about. Trump Jr. also attended a meeting at Trump Tower, along with Trump’s campaign chairman and son-in-law, after a suggestion that he’d be able to see incriminating information on Clinton from Russia’s “crown prosecutor.” [Detailed timeline follows in full article.]

  Joan Biskupic describes Trump’s sustained attacks on American rights:

Over the past 24 months, Trump has scorned judges, derided the American court system, and trampled on all manner of constitutional principles. Trump has especially ridiculed due process of law, the bedrock against government’s arbitrary denial of a person’s life, liberty or property.

Critics warn that denunciations that once seemed so aberrational may be seeping into the American psyche and influencing how government operates.

This week, Trump suggested immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without any hearing to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended. In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Trump flatly deemed the system of immigration judges “corrupt” and said, “Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from?”

The administrative system, in fact, is part of Trump’s executive branch, run by the Justice Department; the attorney general appoints immigration judges.

In the same interview, Trump responded to the NFL policy prohibiting kneeling during the “Star-Spangled Banner,” with a message for players who refuse to stand for the anthem: “Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”

Such an attitude inflames controversy over league rules for players protesting racial injustice to intimations of government rejection of its citizens – for speaking out.

Due Process. Citizenship. Racial Equality. Trump’s targets seem to merit none of these. It is not lost on Trump’s detractors that he routinely takes aim at immigrants and racial minorities.

At the same time, the President expresses outrage over what happens to the men of his world.

You’ve Been Pouring Guinness All Wrong?:

(The science is interesting, but I’ll stick with the tulip glass, thanks very much.)

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety-four.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 15h 01m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1933, producer Walt Disney and director Burt Gillett release Three Little Pigs.  The animated short, part of the Silly Symphony series, won the 1934 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Recommended for reading in full —

Josh Dawsey and Nick Miroff report The hostile border between Trump and the head of DHS:

Nielsen brings a lawyerly, technocratic approach to an issue that animates the president like no other, with a passion dyed into the blood-red MAGA caps of his supporters.

The night before Trump delivered his first speech to Congress in February 2017, he huddled with senior adviser Jared Kushner and Miller in the Oval Office to talk immigration. The president reluctantly agreed with suggestions that he strike a gentler tone on immigration in the speech.

Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.

(Nielsen wasn’t drafted; she accepted this role.  She’s culpable for membership in this administration, one where Trump spews bigotry while others laugh.)

  Michael Isikoff reports ‘Trump’s son should be concerned’: FBI obtained wiretaps of Putin ally who met with Trump Jr.:

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville, Ky., in May 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.

José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.

“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

Jennifer Rubin observes #NeverTrumpers had Trump pegged all along:

President Trump’s apologists can’t say they weren’t warned. Virtually every character flaw and policy debacle was in plain view during the campaign. Republicans then, as Republicans do now, convinced themselves and their fellow Americans that Trump was a business genius (in fact he serially failed and hid his finances to prevent any objective assessment of his success). These Republicans told us he’d find and use top-notch experts (not!), had great negotiating skills (aside from bluff and bluster, he has no finesse in presidential-level consensus-building on either the domestic or foreign policy side).

Trump really did mean all the horrible things he said about immigrants and really does not have a clue how international trade works. His self-absorption and insecurity do pose a danger to the United States when he engages with foreign leaders who know they can play him through flattery.

Yes he does have a problem with women — a dozen or more claimed improper sexual conduct and one consensual sexual partner was hushed up with a $130,000 payment. His denials about having nothing to do with Russia have proven misleading at best, if not outright false. (CNBC has compiled a helpful video examining Trump’s web of Russia connections.)

  Here’s that CNBC compilation of The Trump-Russia ties hiding in plain sight:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of ninety.  Sunrise is 5:21 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 15h 00m 17s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1805, French dictator Napoleon declares himself ruler of the Kingdom of Italy (Emperor of the French and King of Italy).

Recommended for reading in full —

  Melena Ryzik reports Weinstein in Handcuffs Is a ‘Start to Justice’ for His Accusers:

It was, the women said, a foreign feeling, a twinned sense of disbelief and hope. Often, it spilled out physically, in shaking and tears: Hope d’Amore suddenly started sobbing in the middle of a Neiman Marcus in Texas; Dawn Dunning at her kitchen table in Los Angeles. On Friday, the news of Harvey Weinstein’s arrest wound its way through the lives of the many women who stepped forward to accuse him, over and over, of harassment, assault and abuse.

Most did not believe the day would ever come when they would see him marched into a courthouse, where he was charged with two counts of rape and a criminal sex act.

It was a stark — and to some, a long-delayed — reversal of fortune for Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul whose downfall helped usher in the global #MeToo movement.

(If, at last, some measure of justice reaches even a man so powerful as Weinstein, what dark hope do institutional offenders and their apologists have within the nine square miles of this small city?)

Damian Paletta reports Trump says he’ll spare Chinese telecom firm ZTE from collapse, defying lawmakers:

President Trump said late Friday he had allowed embattled Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp. to remain open despite fierce bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill, defying lawmakers who have warned that the huge technology company should be severely punished for breaking U.S. law.

Trump said on Twitter he was allowing it to “reopen with high level security guarantees, change of management and board,” a requirement that it must purchase U.S. parts, and a $1.3 billion fine.

Sensing such a move, top Democrats and at least one Republican on Friday said the White House’s decision was tantamount to a bailout of a large Chinese company with little benefit for the United States.

The requirement that ZTE purchase U.S. parts could draw criticism on Capitol Hill, as the company relies on U.S. parts to make its products. In fact, it was the Commerce Department’s April penalty that banned ZTE from buying U.S. parts that effectively put it on the brink of closure.

The Obama administration and Trump administration have repeatedly punished ZTE for violating sanctions laws by selling products to Iran and North Korea and then lying to federal investigators.

(Trump: Make China Great Again.)

 Marwa Eltagouri reports Publix halts donations to self-described ‘NRA sellout’ amid boycott, ‘die-in’ protests by David Hogg:

The supermarket chain Publix on Friday announced that it would suspend its political contributions to Adam Putnam, a Republican candidate for Florida governor, after being faced with overwhelming pressure to cut ties with him because of his fierce support for the National Rifle Association.

“We would never knowingly disappoint our customers or the communities we serve,’’ Publix said in a statement Friday. “As a result, we decided earlier this week to suspend corporate-funded political contributions as we reevaluate our giving processes.’’

The announcement came moments before “die-in” protests organized by 18-year-old gun-control activist David Hogg began at several Publix supermarkets, forcing store managers to reroute shoppers around the protesters, who lay on the floors of the aisles. At an Orlando supermarket, store managers fetched grocery items for customers who stood to watch but mostly went on shopping, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

At two Publix supermarkets in Parkland, survivors of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shouted “USA, not NRA!” as customers navigated their shopping carts around them on the floor, according to the Associated Press. Counterprotesters supporting the NRA turned up at one of the stores, where a near-confrontation almost occurred between two men before police intervened.

(See also  The Pentagon Considers This Russian Sniper Rifle a Big Threat to US Soldiers. The NRA Helped Promote It. One can support responsible gun ownership without supporting the NRA – indeed, it’s not possible, reasonably, to support both.)

William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Mike McIntire report At Trump Tower, Michael Cohen and Oligarch Discussed Russian Relations:

Eleven days before the presidential inauguration last year, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting.

In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg. The men also arranged to see one another during the inauguration festivities, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said.

Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract, a deal that has drawn the attention of federal authorities investigating Mr. Cohen, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

Darryl Fears reports Here’s why there are so many coyotes and why they are spreading so fast:

For eons, coyotes roamed what is now the western United States, with its wide-open plains. Then came European settlers, who cut down forests for farms and ranches in a steady east-west march. Along the way, they killed large predators such as pumas and wolves to protect livestock and for their own safety.

The predators they obliterated were mortal enemies of the coyote, holding them in check, a new study in the journal ZooKeys says. As mountain lions and wolf packs disappeared from the landscape, coyotes took advantage, starting a wide expansion eastward at the turn of the last century into deforested land that continues today.

Coyotes are newly established in every state and several Canadian provinces and are rapidly moving south of Mexico into Central America, the study released Tuesday says. They have even been spotted by camera traps in Panama. They are in the District’s Rock Creek Park and New York’s Central Park, and they have been known to attack household pets and, on very rare occasions, people. Their rapid expansion into North Carolina in the past decade is a major reason a program to rehabilitate critically endangered red wolves there is on the brink of failure.

(At least readers of this publication were warned.)

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a late afternoon thunderstorm, and a high of eighty-six.  Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:21 PM, for 14h 58m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention begins in Philadelphia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Eric Gay reports on an ACLU Report: Detained Immigrant Children Subjected To Widespread Abuse By Officials:

Immigrant children in the custody of U.S. border authorities allegedly suffered pervasive abuse ranging from insults and threats to physical assaults, according to documents reviewed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

A report released this week by the ACLU is based on more than 30,000 pages of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, it says, “expose of culture of impunity” within U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security.

In response, Customs and Border Protection issued a strongly worded statement in which it called the ACLU report “unfounded and baseless.”

The documents describe hundreds of cases of alleged abuse said to have occurred between 2009 and 2014, according to Mitra Ebadolahi, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Border Litigation Project.

“These documents provide a glimpse into a federal immigration enforcement system marked by brutality and lawlessness,” Ebadolahi said in a statement.

…

Among the allegations, U.S. officials are said to have:

• Denied a pregnant minor medical attention when she reported pain, which preceded a stillbirth.
• Subjected a 16-year-old girl to a search in which they “forcefully spread her legs and touched her private parts so hard that she screamed.”
• Left a 4-lb. premature baby and her minor mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell filled with sick people, against medical advice.
• Threw out a child’s birth certificate and threatened him with sexual abuse by an adult male detainee.
• Ran over a 17-year-old with a patrol vehicle and then punched him repeatedly.

  Martin Cizmar writes Reporter perfectly explains Roger Stone’s weird dealings with Julian Assange and a radio DJ:

Roger’s Stone’s dealings with Julian Assange and a failed stand-up comedian who interviewed the Wikileaks founder is a lot to process.

The notoriously shady Stone pretty much lies about everything, which makes untangling his dealings a mess.

But the Wall Street Journal‘s Shelby Holliday has spent some time looking into Stone and Randy Credico, the DJ for WBAI, and laid out their ties to Assange in a brilliant MSNBC segment that pretty much explains the whole thing.

“There are a lot of layers here,” she says, before getting into the complex dealings.

David Frum lists Fifteen Unanswered Criminal-Law Questions About Trump:

• Trump campaign aides and associates met with Russian agents in advance of the Russian hacks and releases of Democratic internal communications. Did these meetings lead to any form of coordination between the Trump campaign, the Trump family, or Trump supporters on the one hand and Russian intelligence and its proxy, WikiLeaks, on the other?
• Russia engaged in large-scale and illegal expenditures on social media to help elect Trump. Did the Trump campaign, the Trump family, or Trump supporters coordinate or assist in any way with these violations of U.S. law?
• Trump campaign aides reportedly met with representatives of Persian Gulf governments who offered to violate U.S. law to help elect Trump. What came of those meetings? [Remaining key 12 questions listed in full article.]

 Michael Gerson asks Are Republicans abetting a demagogue — or something worse?:

Much about the future of American politics — and the historical judgment that will be visited on those associated with it — depends on the answer to one question: Is President Trump an instinctual demagogue or an instinctual authoritarian?

On most days, the evidence favors the former interpretation. Trump often acts like a desperate, self-interested politician, convinced that his enemies fight dirty and determined to out-slime them. So he pursues a strategy of character assassination against the special counsel on the model of President Bill Clinton discrediting Ken Starr. This is squalid and damaging, but at least familiar.

Then there are other days — and more and more of them — that justify the latter interpretation. Rather than a politician trying to muddy the waters, Trump seems more like a strongman probing the limits of democracy. He seems less like Clinton and more like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seeking to dismantle institutional checks on his authority. “This is what it looks like,” Sen. Jeff Flake(R-Ariz.) said, “when you stress-test all of the institutions that undergird our constitutional democracy at the same time.”

 The US Geological Survey is recording Kilauea’s volcanic activity:

At Kilauea Volcano’s summit, a nearly continuous plume of gas and steam billows out of the Overlook vent and drifts with the wind. Overflights collect visual information to quantify change and inform our assessment of hazards. https://t.co/oOL3HwFcrh pic.twitter.com/2rM4WfdKqd

— USGS Volcanoes? (@USGSVolcanoes) May 24, 2018

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five.  Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 57m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1775, John Hancock is unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress.

Recommended for reading in full —

  Denise Clifton contends Russia’s Campaign to Help Trump Win Was Just the Start (“And the next attack on US elections, warns former FBI agent Clint Watts, could come from within”):

Former FBI special agent Clint Watts was tracking ISIS terrorists and their propaganda on Twitter in 2014 when he first encountered a different kind of troll. These accounts weren’t trying to recruit fighters for jihad. They were promoting an “Alaska Back to Russia” petition on WhiteHouse.gov, pushing pro-Kremlin foreign policy views, and drumming up support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Watching this troll army inundate social media into 2015 and 2016—including rising attacks on Hillary Clinton and promotion of Donald Trump for president—Watts realized a new information war was underway. As he tracked false news stories from Russian state media that were repeated by the Trump campaign, he was surprised to see that Kremlin-linked disinformation was sometimes even driving the campaign’s own narrative. Two days before Election Day, Watts and his fellow cybersecurity analysts JM Berger and Andrew Weisburd warned that the Kremlin wasn’t just backing Trump but was seeking “to produce a divided electorate and a president with no clear mandate to govern. The ultimate objective is to diminish and tarnish American democracy.”

In the aftermath, as lawmakers struggled to contend with Russia’s role, the Senate Intelligence Committee relied on Watts’ expertise to help it understand the attack across social media networks. In his new book, Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, Watts details how Americans found themselves in a presidential election that was swirling with fake accounts and Kremlin propaganda. His work with Berger and Weisburd has also aided the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Hamilton 68 Dashboard, which tracks a network of hundreds of Twitter accounts pushing Kremlin propaganda to this day. Watts spoke to Mother Jones recently about Putin’s backing of Trump in 2016, Twitter’s bot problems, and other US tech giants’ role in the morass. And he offered a roadmap for navigating the even more sophisticated influence campaigns that may be looming for future elections—and that could originate within the US political system itself [see full article for interview with Watts].

Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen report Exclusive: U.S. Government Can’t Get Controversial Kaspersky Lab Software Off Its Networks (“The law says American agencies must eliminate the use of Kaspersky Lab software by October. U.S. officials say that’s impossible—it’s embedded too deep in our infrastructure”):

Federal agencies are so far unable to comply with a law banning Kaspersky Lab software from U.S. government networks by October, The Daily Beast has learned. Multiple divisions of the U.S. government are confronting the reality that code written by the Moscow-based security company is embedded deep within American infrastructure, in routers, firewalls, and other hardware—and nobody is certain how to get rid of it.

“It’s messy, and it’s going to take way longer than a year,” said one U.S. official. “Congress didn’t give anyone money to replace these devices, and the budget had no wiggle-room to begin with.”

…

“On May 8, DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen promised to provide senators with data on the Kaspersky purge ‘later today.’ Two weeks later: nothing.”

Peter Baker reports Trump Team’s Mueller Strategy: Limit the Investigation and Attack the Investigators:

“This is an effort by the president to distract from his legal troubles and throw as much mud into the air as he can,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “But it’s doing enormous damage to the Justice Department. If they think they can placate him, they’ll probably find that doesn’t work. That doesn’t placate a bully.”

James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, said that Mr. Trump is trying to distort standard investigatory practices to insinuate wrongdoing.

“I didn’t know about this informant,” said Mr. Clapper, whose memoir, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence,” will be published Tuesday. “No one in the White House knew. Certainly the president didn’t know. This is a routine thing that goes on all the time. We’re making a huge mountain out of a molehill. The purpose was to understand what the Russians were doing.”

Paul Wood reports Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks:

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Mr Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.

Mr Cohen denies the allegation.

The meeting at the White House was last June. Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country’s anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

A high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer in Mr Poroshenko’s administration described what happened before the visit to the White House.

  Here’s The Most Decorated Dog of WWI: