Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 7:13 AM and sunset 5:02 PM, for 9h 49m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 78.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred forty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1943, an all-American force of fifty-five bombers strikes the German port city of Wilhelmshaven. 9th Wisconsin Light Artillery Battery musters in: ” It spent most of the war in the far West guarding forts and trains in Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas. In 1864 it returned east to Missouri and Arkansas and saw limited combat. In three years it lost only six men, all to disease.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jeffrey Toobin contends The Answer to Whether Trump Obstructed Justice Now Seems Clear:

It is this question of corrupt intent that makes the Times’srecent blockbuster scoop so important. According to the article, the President tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, last June, but he stopped when Don McGahn, the White House counsel, threatened to resign if Trump insisted on the dismissal. Trump apparently offered three justifications to fire Mueller—that Mueller had left one of Trump’s golf clubs in a dispute about dues; that Mueller’s former law firm had represented Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law; and that Trump had interviewed Mueller as a possible interim replacement for Comey as F.B.I. director. McGahn’s threat to resign shows that he saw these purported reasons as pretexts. The golf-dues matter was obviously trivial; the law firm’s representation of Kushner, which did not involve Mueller at all, could only have biased the special counsel in favor of the President’s family; and Trump’s willingness to interview Mueller for the F.B.I. position showed how much the President trusted Mueller, not that he believed the former F.B.I. director harbored any animosity toward him.

McGahn recognized the key fact—that Trump wanted to fire Mueller for the wrong reasons. Trump wanted to fire Mueller because his investigation was threatening to him. This, of course, also illuminates the reasons behind Trump’s firing of Comey, which took place just a month before the President’s confrontation with McGahn regarding Mueller. Trump and his advisers have offered various tortured rationalizations for the firing of Comey—initially, for example, on the ground that Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself came clean in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. In both, Trump acknowledged that he fired Comey to stall or stop the Russia investigation—that is, the investigation of Trump himself and his campaign.

This was an improper purpose, and McGahn clearly saw that the same improper purpose underlay Trump’s determination to fire Mueller. So McGahn issued the ultimatum that prompted the President to back down.

Mueller and his team surely have evidence on obstruction of justice that has not yet been made public. But even on the available evidence, Trump’s position looks perilous indeed. The portrait is of a President using every resource at his disposal to shut down an investigation—of Trump himself. And now it has become clear that Trump’s own White House counsel rebelled at the President’s rationale for his actions.

(Yes. Perhaps one might say increasingly clear, as Trump’s own words have brought about already the foundation of a case.)

➤ Consider Trump’s many past assurances on Mueller’s job:

Before it came out that President Trump sought to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last June, Trump and his aides repeatedly said he wasn’t giving “any thought” to dismissing him.

(They lie when they speak.)

➤ Russell Brandom reports Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians.

The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data. “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations,” spokesperson Dani Bennett said in a statement. “ICE is not seeking to build a license plate reader database, and will not collect nor contribute any data to a national public or private database through this contract.”

Reached by The Verge, Vigilant declined to confirm any contract with ICE. “As policy, Vigilant Solutions is not at liberty to share any contractual details,” the company said in a statement. “This is a standard agreement between our company, our partners, and our clients.”

While it collects few photos itself, Vigilant Solutions has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups. Vigilant also partners with local law enforcement agencies, often collecting even more data from camera-equipped police cars. The result is a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting.

➤ Kim Willsher reports Paris zoo shut after 50 baboons escape:

The Paris Zoological Park has been evacuated and closed after dozens of baboons escaped their enclosure.

As zookeepers raced to round up the animals, armed police surrounded the popular attraction and sealed off nearby roads.

About 50 baboons were reported to have got out and congregated around the Grand Rocher, the fake rock centrepiece of the zoo, on Friday morning. Most had been rounded up and sent back to their shelters a few hours later, but four remained on the loose.

Officials at the zoo said the animals had not come in contact with the public as they had remained in areas inaccessible to visitors.

Members of the public had been evacuated as a precaution because baboons could be unpredictable “especially when stressed”. “They’re stronger than us,” they added.

The emergency services were called, and keepers, vets and a team carrying tranquilliser darts were on the scene in minutes and surrounded the animals.

(Stronger than people? Yes they are.)

➤ From the Aviemore Sled Dog Rally 2018:

Musher Richard Morgan with his husky during a training session at Feshiebridge ahead of the The Siberian Husky Club of Great Britain’s 35th Aviemore Sled Dog Rally being held this upcoming weekend on forest trails around Loch Morlich, in the shadow of the Cairngorm mountains.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-six.  Sunrise is 7:14 AM and sunset 5:00 PM, for 9h 46m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred forty-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On the other side of the world, Australians are celebrating Australia Day: “Celebrated annually on 26 January, it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales and the raising of the Flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip. In present-day Australia, celebrations reflect the diverse society and landscape of the nation and are marked by community and family events, reflections on Australian history, official community awards and citizenship ceremonies welcoming new members of the Australian community.” On this day in 1925, fire destroys the Whitewater Hospital.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, and Benjamin Wittes assess Trump’s Effort to Fire Mueller: Reactions to the New York Times Report:

First, the Times’s reporting demonstrates just how out of control the president had become in June, less than a month after firing James Comey as FBI director. A few of his tweets from that time offer a stark reminder that the special counsel’s investigation—and Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller—weighed heavily even in his public statements.

…

Second, Trump’s apparent willingness to fire the special counsel in a fit of rage—even after experiencing the blowback that followed his dismissal of Comey—drives home the fact that his hints about firing other senior members of federal law enforcement are far from idle. Indeed, the Times broke this story only days after Axios reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had pressured FBI Director Christopher Wray to dismiss Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. As with McGahn, Wray reportedly threatened resignation and the attorney general ultimately backed off. So when Trump hints about firing Sessions or Rosenstein, it should be clear that they may be in real danger. On the other hand, as Jack Goldsmith argued on an upcoming special edition of the Lawfare Podcast, the fact that Trump could not get his own White House counsel to execute his will on this point shows that the president really is constrained in his apparent desire to shut down the Russia investigation. Particularly in combination with the Axios story about Wray, the incident paints a picture of a president who desperately wants to corrupt the justice system but just can’t get it done: malevolence tempered by incompetence, one might call it.

…

Third, in contrast to the many valid reasons to criticize McGahn’s White House tenure, this episode illustrates—at least in this instance—the White House counsel’s deft performance of his duties under difficult circumstances, perhaps even skillful management of a particularly ornery client. McGahn has not always behaved so admirably; he reportedly was willing to carry out Trump’s earlier instruction to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from this investigation. But in this instance, he allegedly managed to ride out a presidential temper tantrum, both offering the president reasonable advice and declining to carry out a presidential order clearly not made in good faith.

…

Fourth, the story also shows rather vividly how successful Ty Cobb has been in calming the president in the months since and persuading him to take a less adversarial posture—at least publicly—toward Mueller and the Russia investigation generally. Consider the difference between Trump in June, who actually gave an order to fire Mueller, and today’s Trump, who has turned over material the special counsel wants and allowed interviews with White House witnesses and has said he is even willing to be interviewed himself. Cobb seems to have convinced Trump that the path to making the Russia investigation go away lies in cooperation. If Cobb is correct that the Mueller investigation will end well for a cooperative Trump, this is all a laudable example of excellent client management. Cobb’s strategy, however, seems to rely on convincing Trump that the investigation is going to conclude in the near future if he just plays along. If Cobb is wrong on this point, and the investigation isn’t, in fact, close to wrapping up, then he may have simply deferred the June explosion to the date when Trump realizes that the end is not in sight. Thursday night’s story shows that this explosion, whenever it happens, can be pretty big.

➤ Huib Modderkolk reports Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia’s interference in US-elections:

It’s the summer of 2014. A hacker from the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has penetrated the computer network of a university building next to the Red Square in Moscow, oblivious to the implications. One year later, from the AIVD headquarters in Zoetermeer, he and his colleagues witness Russian hackers launching an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States. The AIVD hackers had not infiltrated just any building; they were in the computer network of the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. And unbeknownst to the Russians, they could see everything.

That’s how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leaders of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won’t be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

The Dutch access provides crucial evidence of the Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party, according to six American and Dutch sources who are familiar with the material, but wish to remain anonymous. It’s also grounds for the FBI to start an investigation into the influence of the Russian interference on the election race between the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidate Donald Trump.

➤ Craig Timberg and Elizabeth Dwoskin report Russians got tens of thousands of Americans to RSVP for their phony political events on Facebook:

Russian operatives used Facebook to publicize 129 phony event announcements during the 2016 presidential campaign, drawing the attention of nearly 340,000 users — many of whom said they were planning to attend — according to a company document released by the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

It’s not possible to know how often people gathered in response to the sham announcements, but the numbers highlight how Russian operatives were successful in prompting Americans to express a willingness to act. In some cases, Russians allegedly working in an office building in St. Petersburg motivated at least some people to mobilize behind various causes, a striking accomplishment for a foreign influence campaign.

“Not only did they influence how people viewed Russian policy, they got people to take physical action. That’s unprecedented,” said Clinton Watts, a former FBI agent who studies Russian disinformation for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “They just did it persistently, and they did it well.”

➤ Watch Sean Hannity switch gears from denying Trump tried to fire Mueller to acknowledging the truth of that attempt:

Sean Hannity: The New York Times is trying to distract you. They say Trump tried to fire Mueller, but our sources aren’t confirming that!

Sean Hannity, minutes later: Alright, yeah, maybe our sources confirm Trump wanted to fire Mueller. But so what? That’s his right. Anywho… pic.twitter.com/yUIt7Un56d

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) January 26, 2018

(Note Hannity slurs his speech during these segments.)

➤ This Robot Can Walk and Swim — Inside You:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:59 PM, for 9h 44m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred forty-first 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. Whitewater’s Fire Department meets at 6:30 PM, in closed session not to reconvene.

On this day in 1945, the Battle of the Bulge ends in an Allied victory as German forces are pushed back to lines held before their offensive began. On this day in 1932, dancing on Sunday in Janesville remains prohibited as that city’s council deadlocks 3-3 on permitting that entertainment.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Steve Verburg reports Preventing ‘brown water events’ in Wisconsin not a done deal:

The Natural Resources Board approved long-awaited new rules Wednesday aimed at keeping dairy manure out of drinking water in 15 eastern Wisconsin counties.

But board members acknowledged that elected officials haven’t supplied the money needed to put the rules into action.

The board heard testimony about “brown water events” — manure- and pathogen-tainted water flowing from faucets — that have been going on for more than a decade in Kewaunee and Door counties where farms spread dairy waste on shallow topsoil.

Department of Natural Resources staff members said new limits on spreading over vulnerable aquifers would take five years to work into pollution permits of all factory farms and the department hasn’t discussed moving more quickly, said Mary Anne Lowndes, DNR runoff management section chief.

There have been reductions in financial assistance needed to ensure smaller farms follow the rules, and decreased staffing levels at the DNR and at the county level where implementation and monitoring of compliance would take place.

➤ Pema Levy and Dan Friedman report Jeff Sessions Appears to Be Meddling in the Russia and Clinton Probes He Vowed to Avoid:

Yet Sessions appears to have backtracked on his pledges, and Democrats say he is violating his recusal. This criticism comes as, last week, Sessions became the first Cabinet member to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Questions about Sessions’ recusal came early on, when he played a role in the May 2017 firing of then-FBI Director James Comey, whose ouster Trump acknowledged was directly related to the bureau’s investigation of his campaign’s contacts with Russia. But more recently, Sessions appears to have directed prosecutors to look into matters connected to Clinton’s campaign.

Sessions’ recusal infuriated Trump, and multiple White House staffers, including the president’s chief lawyer, Don McGahn, tried to talk him out of giving up oversight of the Russia investigation. Trump publicly rebuked Sessions’ decision in an interview with the New York Times. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said. Democrats say Sessions is now bowing to political pressure from the White House and Trump, who has tweeted attacks on his own Justice Department and called on Sessions to go after Clinton, and they accuse Sessions of participating in an all-out effort to politicize his agency. This week, Axios reported that Sessions had pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire his deputy, Andrew McCabe, who had also been Comey’s No. 2. Trump, and his Republican allies have relentlessly targeted McCabe, whose wife was a Democratic candidate for state Senate in Virginia, to advance a narrative of anti-Trump bias within the FBI.

➤ Jonathan Chait contends Republicans Are Using the Russian Playbook on the FBI:

Republican senator Ron Johnson highlights a text of Strzok expressing reluctance to join Robert Mueller’s team, because “my gut sense and concern is there’s no big there there.” Johnson told a conservative talk-show host that this “jaw-dropping” comment amounted to a confession that Strzok knew that Trump was innocent and joined Mueller’s investigation to smear him. But maybe Strzok simply had an open mind and thought Mueller’s probe stood a strong chance of clearing Trump. Another Strzok “scandal” grew out of a text he sent expressing the opinion that Clinton would not be charged in the email investigation. The text “suggests they knew and, in turn, believed Loretta Lynch knew, that no charges would be brought against Hillary Clinton, even before the FBI had interviewed her over her unauthorized private email server,” reports Breitbart.

They knew! The fix was in! Or maybe they simply knew that the evidence of the private email server did not amount to a plausible federal case against Clinton.

Note that a Strzok text expressing his view that Trump would not be charged over Russia became evidence of a nefarious plot against Trump, and another Strzok text expressing a view that Clinton would not be charged over the emails became evidence of a nefarious plot to help Clinton. If Strzok had expressed a belief that Clinton or Trump were guilty, those messages would become scandals, too. This is the way the game works. When you begin with a suspicious of nefarious intent, a captured expression of candid thought can be turned into devastating evidence.

➤ Denise Clifton writes Sean Hannity Is Now a Favorite Weapon of Russian Trolls Attacking America:

Hannity did not respond to a request for comment about his rising popularity among the network of Russian-linked accounts.

“Because Russian accounts promote a certain political position is not evidence of coordination” between the trolls and Trump partisans advocating for the release of the memo, Schafer notes. The key takeaway with #releasethememo, he says, “is that Kremlin-oriented trolls have used that hashtag to promote divisiveness, distrust, and to negatively influence our public discourse.”

Former FBI special agent Clint Watts pointed out Tuesday that attacks on the FBI have been increasing as the Russian investigation continues to accelerate. After reports Tuesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and James Comey had been interviewed by Mueller’s team, Watts tweeted: “Interviews are getting closer to the top & suddenly attacks by @GOP on FBI have increased.”

The 600 Kremlin-linked live Twitter accounts that Hamilton 68 monitors are separate from the 2,752 accounts Twitter revealed last fall that were operated before the 2016 presidential election by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Last Friday, Twitter updated that number to 3,814 IRA-linked accounts—plus more than 50,000 automated bot accounts linked to the Russian government. Twitter says it is sending emails to 677,000 users to notify them that they interacted with the Russian accounts.

(The Hamilton 68 dashboard is available online, as a service of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. The Alliance for Securing Democracy is currently funded by a group of American private individuals and small family foundations from across the political spectrum and housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States)

➤ What about That Time a Guy Parachuted Onto Devils Tower and No One Could Figure Out How to Get Him Down?:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with a high of thirty-two.  Sunrise is 7:15 AM and sunset 4:58 PM, for 9h 42m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred fortieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1935, the first canned beer goes on sale: “Krueger’s Cream Ale and Krueger’s Finest Beer were the first beers sold to the public in cans. Canned beer was an immediate success. The public loved it, giving it a 91 percent approval rating. Compared to glass, the cans were lightweight, cheap, and easy to stack and ship. Unlike bottles, you didn’t have to pay a deposit and then return the cans for a refund. By summer Krueger was buying 180,000 cans a day from American Can, and other breweries decided to follow.” (Draft or bottled seems – to me – preferable to canned, but the practicality of cans is understandable.)

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Jesse Garza reports Aurora Sinai suspends employees after homeless patient is left on sidewalk in Milwaukee:

An undisclosed number of employees at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in downtown Milwaukee were suspended Tuesday after reports that a mentally ill homeless patient was discharged and left on a cold, wet sidewalk outside the hospital.

A photo and video of a shoeless man – clad in pants and what appears to be a hospital gown and sitting on a sidewalk outside the hospital –began circulating on social media and television stations after the incident allegedly occurred Monday.

Eva Welch, director of Street Angels Milwaukee Outreach, said the person who took the video told her the man was rolled across the street from the hospital in a wheelchair and left on the sidewalk outside the facility, 945 N. 12th St.

Welch said the man is mentally ill and was brought to a shelter two weeks before by West Allis police after being treated at a different hospital for frostbite to his right foot.

➤ Emily Guskin reports Most Americans don’t trust President Trump with the ‘nuclear button’:

About half of Americans are concerned that President Trump might launch a nuclear attack without justification, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

This worry comes as Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continue to provoke each other on Twitter and follows a previous Post-ABC poll that found a large majority of Americans are concerned about the United States going to war with North Korea.

Overall, 38 percent of Americans trust Trump to handle the authority to order nuclear attacks on other countries, while 60 percent do not. Among those who distrust Trump, almost 9 in 10 are very or somewhat concerned the president might launch an attack.

Combining those results, the poll finds 52 percent of the public overall is concerned the president might launch a nuclear attack without reason, including one-third who say they are “very” concerned, according to the poll.

➤ Ellen Nakashima, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett report Trump asked the acting FBI director how he voted during Oval Office meeting:

Shortly after President Trump fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.

The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, Trump, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?

McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter.

Trump, the officials said, also vented his anger at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations that his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.

(There’s almost no political, ethical, or cultural norm Trump won’t violate.)

➤ Conor Friedersdorf explains  Trump and Russia Both Seek to Exacerbate the Same Political Divisions (“A country is in a precarious place when its foreign adversaries and its president are both trying to increase its political polarization along the same lines.”):

But if the share of today’s whites who regard black NFL players as uppity ingrates significantly shrinks; if fear of Muslim immigrants wanes; if native-born Americans bear less animosity toward undocumented Mexican immigrants, regardless of their views on border security or illegal immigration; then all of those wins for American unity would be blows to the political prospects of Trump, Pence, the GOP in the 2018 midterms, and the foreign adversaries who want to weaken the United States.

Thus, they divide Americans as a means to an end, and the GOP as a whole is implicated. The deal with the devil that Republicans made by embracing a charlatan birther, sticking with him through a bigoted campaign, and propelling him to a victory that thrilled the likes of Richard Spencer has a clause that does ongoing harm to our country: One of America’s two political parties now benefits politically, in the short term, from the polarization of the country along racial and ethnic lines, just as surely as the Republican Party of 1968 and 1972 benefited from that era’s tumult and division.

Not all or even most Trump supporters are racists or authoritarians, but the 2018 midterms will go better for the GOP if turnout among racists and authoritarians is strong, and it will go poorly for the party if anti-authoritarians turn out in record numbers. That is the unenviable incentive structure that Trumpism creates.

➤ This New Google App Finds Your Fine Art Doppelgänger

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy  with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 7:17 AM and sunset 4:55 PM, for 9h 38m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater School Board meets tonight in closed session beginning at 6:15 PM, and then open session at 7 PM.

On this day in 1964, the World’s Largest Block of Cheese [at the time] is made in Wisconsin: “The block of cheddar was produced from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consumed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire. A replica is displayed in Neilsville in the specially designed “Cheesemobile“, a semi-tractor trailer in which the original cheese toured. [Source: American Profile, December 16, 2001]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey write of Stephen Miller: Immigration agitator and White House survivor:

Miller’s driving obsession is immigration, an area where he has long pushed hard-line positions going back to his days as a combative conservative activist at Duke University. In Washington, as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), he was instrumental in helping to kill a bipartisan effort in 2013 for a broad immigration deal. He and Sessions helped galvanize House conservatives to block the bill passed by the Senate, including distributing a handbook of talking points aimed at undercutting the compromise.

Now working in the White House, Miller — who is known for his natty attire, long-winded conversations and distinctive heavy-lidded appearance on television — has told colleagues that his “consuming focus is to make what I know the president wants in an immigration deal a legislative reality,” a senior White House official said. He has few hobbies outside of work, and his spacious second-floor West Wing office is sparsely decorated, with a stack of “Make America Great Again” hats and invitations to inauguration events framed on the wall.

The official said Miller chats frequently with the president about immigration, both formally and informally, during scheduled meetings, on board Air Force One, after bill signings in the Oval Office and during rides in the presidential motorcade. He prizes loyalty to Trump above all else and speaks often of the president with reverence, a stark contrast with some eye-rolling aides.

➤ Jill Filipovic ponders Donald Trump and His Work Wives:

There are so many bombshells in Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury,” that smaller anecdotes are going largely unremarked upon, even if they offer disturbing insight into the presidential psyche. One of them is Mr. Trump’s penchant for hiring women into often vaguely defined but closely held roles.

“Women, according to Trump, were simply more loyal and trustworthy than men,” Mr. Wolff writes. “Men might be more forceful and competent, but they were also more likely to have their own agendas. Women, by their nature, or Trump’s version of their nature, were more likely to focus their purpose on a man. A man like Trump.” Mr. Trump, the author continued, “needed special — extra-special — handling. Women, he explained to one friend with something like self-awareness, generally got this more precisely than men. In particular, women who self-selected themselves as tolerant of or oblivious to or amused by or steeled against his casual misogyny and constant sexual subtext — which was somehow, incongruously and often jarringly, matched with paternal regard — got this.”

The term “emotional labor” gets vastly overused, but this is a textbook example. The women who work for Mr. Trump aren’t just required to perform their professional tasks; they also have to coddle and care for a volatile patriarch.

➤ Zoya Teirstein cautions Don’t Let Anyone Fool You: There ARE Environmental Conservatives:

Todd Tanner has a pretty sweet offer for his fellow Montanans: a new shotgun in exchange for science-based evidence that he’s wrong about climate change.

The conservationist uses the challenge in an attempt to raise awareness about our warming planet. A lot of people where Tanner lives in Bigfork, Montana, would probably like to take him up on his offer: The state has one of the highest rates of outdoor recreationists in the country, and Tanner is no exception. He was planning on going hunting after we finished our interview. “You wouldn’t know it,” he said over the phone, “but I’m literally walking around in a pair of wool pants.”

Tanner is sure he’ll never have to hand over that new shotgun, though he says he would love to find out that anthropogenic climate change isn’t real. “If someone shows me the error of my ways they can have their choice,” he said. “They can have any rifle, shotgun, pistol, or rod I own, and I’ll walk away feeling like I got the better end of the bargain.”

Since 2011, Tanner has harnessed his prominent position in Montana’s hunting and fishing communities to get people engaged. After wildfires incinerated forests and droughts desiccated rivers in Big Sky Country this year, agitated sportsmen and women have become easier to find. Tanner’s nonprofit, Conservation Hawks, is part of a coalition of grassroots organizations trying to pull conservatives into the conversation about rising temperatures.

➤ Sen. Ben Cardin writes Never before has a president ignored such a clear national security threat:

For the better part of 20 years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in a relentless assault against democratic institutions abroad, universal values and the rule of law. He has carried out these attacks with an asymmetric arsenal: cyberattacks; disinformation; support for fringe political groups; the weaponization of energy resources, organized crime and corruption; and even military aggression.

Putin has used such techniques because he has operated from a position of weakness, hobbled by a faltering economy, a substandard military and few followers on the world stage. And his attacks have grown in intensity and complexity over the past few years, driven by a desire to also repress democratic aspirations among his own citizens. While our European partners have taken steps to better defend themselves, the United States has done little to protect its institutions.

Despite the efforts of some in national security leadership, as well as dedicated career public servants across the executive branch, one person is preventing a strong, government-wide response that holds Russia accountable for its destabilizing activities: the president of the United States. Never before has the White House so clearly ignored a national security threat.

…

The Russian president’s rap sheet of meddling in Europe is long and sordid. Some of the most egregious examples include:

– A coup attempt in Montenegro to storm the nation’s parliament and capture or kill the prime minister ahead of that nation’s attempt to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

– Russian media propaganda, especially Internet trolls and bots, which were discovered in the public debate ahead of recent major referendums such as “Brexit” in Britain and the Catalonia independence movement in Spain, as well as national elections in France and Germany. Indications are that Italy may well be next.

– The murder of a number of Russian opposition figures and critics across Europe.

– The violation of international law by invading Russia’s neighbors, such as Georgia and Ukraine.

(See also Putin’s Asymmetric  Assault on Democracy in Russia and Europe: Implications for U.S. National Security.)

➤ So, here’s How Lucid Dreaming Works:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be occasionally foggy with a high of thirty-nine. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 4:54 PM, for 9h 36m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1976, the British-French Concorde supersonic passenger jet begins regular service. On this day in 1935, five Janesville, Wisconsin juveniles are arrested “for a string of burglaries, including the thefts of cigarettes, whisky and blankets. While in the police station, one of the boys tried to crack the safe in the chief’s office.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Craig Timberg, Rosalind S. Helderman, Andrew Roth and Carol D. Leonnig report In the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, members of Russia’s elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and Washington:

In the days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, a wealthy Russian pharmaceutical executive named Alexey Repik arrived in Washington, expressing excitement about the new administration.

He posted a photo on Facebook of a clutch of inauguration credentials arranged next to a white “Make America Great Again” hat, writing in Russian: “I believe that President Donald Trump will open a new page in American history.”

Throughout his trip, Repik had prime access. He wrote on Facebook that he got close enough to the president-elect at a pre-inaugural event to “check the handshake strength of Donald Trump.” He and his wife, Polina Repik, witnessed Trump’s swearing-in from ticketed seats in front of the U.S. Capitol. And he posed for a photo shoulder-to-shoulder with Mike Pompeo, the president’s nominee to head the CIA, although Repik later said he was not aware of Pompeo’s intended role at the time.

The attendance of members of Russia’s elite at Trump’s inauguration was evidence of the high anticipation in Moscow for a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations following a campaign in which Trump stunned U.S. foreign-policy experts by repeatedly praising Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.

➤ Jennifer Rubin, looking at Russian influence over Trump, notes Russians under every rock:

There are the Kremlin-connected campaign aides — Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos. On a single campaign. There are the Trump team members who repeatedly failed to “recall” Russia contacts — Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Jared Kushner. There is the money trail that ran through and around Trump properties, described in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson; the trail tangles up the Bayrock Group (with which the mysterious Felix Sater was associated) and the Russian oligarchs who purchased Trump properties (pp. 36-41).

What Simpson calls “a well-established pattern of surreptitious contacts that occurred [in 2016] that supports the broad allegation of some sort of an undisclosed political or financial relationship between The Trump Organization and people in Russia” (p. 54)  is what, in part, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his top-flight team of financial-crime attorneys are investigating. Mueller is trying to determine whether these were all random, innocent and coincidental (though the only campaign in history we know to have had any) or whether they establish a cooperative relationship between the official Trump campaign and the “active measures” campaign in Russia to help elect Trump (as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting — attended by Natalia Veselnitskaya, Kaveladze and Rinat Akhmetshin, among others — to relay “dirt” on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton would suggest).

The nagging question remains, however, why Trump would so vehemently deny any business dealings with Russia and why so many people would go to such lengths to disguise their assorted Russian contacts. What was it they were trying so hard to keep hidden?

➤ Katie Rogers and Kenneth P. Vogel report Congressman Combating Harassment Settled His Own Misconduct Case:

WASHINGTON — Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who has taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in Congress, used thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct complaint after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her, according to several people familiar with the settlement.

A married father of three, Mr. Meehan, 62, had long expressed interest in the personal life of the aide, who was decades younger and had regarded the congressman as a father figure, according to three people who worked with the office and four others with whom she discussed her tenure there.

But after the woman became involved in a serious relationship with someone outside the office last year, Mr. Meehan professed his romantic desires for her — first in person, and then in a handwritten letter — and he grew hostile when she did not reciprocate, the people familiar with her time in the office said.

Life in the office became untenable, so she initiated the complaint process, started working from home and ultimately left the job. She later reached a confidential agreement with Mr. Meehan’s office that included a settlement for an undisclosed amount to be paid from Mr. Meehan’s congressional office fund.

(The alleged conduct would be wrong, and the undisputed use of Congressional funds to settle the matter is wrong.)

➤ From August, Tara Isabella Burton interviews Former 700 Club producer: “I knew where the line was. But that didn’t stop us.”:

In the 1980s, TV producer Terry Heaton was at the helm of one of the most influential media properties of the decade. As executive producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)’s Pat Robertson — one of the world’s most famous televangelists — Heaton spent the 1980s and early ’90s transforming the network’s flagship show, The 700 Club, into a pioneer of conservative opinion journalism.

But decades after The 700 Club’s massive success paved the way for an alliance between the Christian right and GOP party politics, Heaton has more mixed feelings about his role in the “culture wars.” In his new book The Gospel of the Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP, Heaton reflects on his years working alongside Robertson, and how the advertising strategies he brought to CBN helped transform and politicize a generation of Christians. Heaton presents Robertson and his team as well-meaning idealists whose desire to use the power of the media to bring people to Jesus morphed into a need to hold on to power for its own sake.

…

“First of all, regarding Pat and his relationship with Donald Trump — I think that’s very, very scary. As smart as Pat Robertson is, and as good as he is at marketing, he is also highly susceptible to his own hype. In that way, Trump plays him like a piano. If you watch his most recent interview, some of the things that Trump says to Pat are really way out there in terms of manipulating Pat. He builds him up like a salesman would, and Pat is susceptible to that, I think. But he wouldn’t be susceptible if Trump didn’t speak the language that Pat wants.

There is such fear on the right about the Supreme Court. I remember one show that we were taping in which Pat prayed that God would kill the Supreme Court justices. We had to stop the tape and advise him that he couldn’t say that on TV. But that’s the way he felt. Trump really sings Pat’s tune when it comes to the Supreme Court, also on the issue of religious liberty. When Trump starts talking about how Christianity is going to be “great again,” people like Pat sit up at listen. And they’ll support him whenever necessary — even if it means blowing up North Korea!

We’re a divided people. That’s why I wonder if it’s a good thing that Donald Trump’s president — at least we’re getting it all out on the table. In my mind, that’s the only righteous reason to put a guy like Trump in the White House. We’ll go through some stuff — but I hope on the other side, it’ll be better than it is today.

(One needn’t believe that it’s a good thing Trump’s president, but yet believe getting it all out on the table is necessary. In any event, Robertson represents only a part of a much larger religious community.)

➤ It’s The Most Shocking Animal in the Kingdom:

It’s a remote control. It’s a tracking device. It can deliver shocks of up to 600 volts. You think the electric eel is shocking? You haven’t seen anything yet.

In this episode of Animalism hosted by The Atlantic science writer Ed Yong, we investigate the subtle and sinister ways of the electric eel.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:53 PM, for 9h 34m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1942, senior government officials of the Third Reich meet at the Wannsee Conference to assure administrative compliance with a policy of deportation and genocide of Jews within the borders of the Nazi state. On this day in 1865, the 25th Wisconsin Infantry reconnoiters the Salkehatchie River in South Carolina prior to battles in the first week of February in defense of the Union.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Rubin writes Republicans are fooling themselves if they think they have a shutdown leg up [Updated]:

In a vote he surely knew would fail, McConnell (R-Ky.) could not get a simple majority, let alone 60 votes to proceed on the House continuing resolution. While McConnell has not cast his vote, he will likely be compelled for procedural reasons to vote no (to bring up the bill later), thereby leaving the vote at 50-48. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is battling brain cancer, did not vote.

There are several aspects worth noting at this late hour. First, although Schumer lost five Democrats (who voted to proceed), McConnell remarkably lost four votes, making it that much harder to pin the shutdown on Democrats. The degree to which the hard-line anti-immigration crowd has divided the GOP is remarkable. Second, to put on my former labor lawyer hat, McConnell’s lack of urgency today was stunning. This situation is akin to a labor contract negotiation leading up to a strike deadline. Not to have a single joint meeting with Democrats and the president or exchange any proposals in the final day represents a stunning level of irresponsibility. Republicans control both houses and the White House; not to make every effort to initiate talks and find a solution suggests they no longer know how to cut deals. Finally, having a self-described dealmaker in the Oval Office was worthless, since the dealmaker is totally incapable of mastering policy details, expressing a policy preference (and sticking with it for more than an hour) and moving both sides to conclusion. This is what comes from electing someone entirely in over his head. It did not help that Trump reportedly whined to staff about missing his party at Mar-a-Lago. His reputation as a man-child remains intact.

The shutdown awaits, but the weekend provides time to find a solution before the start of business on Monday. Let’s hope saner and more experienced heads prevail.

➤ Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its report on Profiting from the Presidency: A Year’s Worth of President Trump’s Conflicts of Interest:

During President Trump’s first year in office, CREW worked to monitor, log, and categorize every instance in which government and special interests interacted with the president’s private businesses. The results were posted on the interactive timeline Trump Inc.: A Chronicle of Presidential Conflicts. Ultimately, CREW recorded more than 500 timeline entries related to potential conflicts of interest. While it would be almost impossible to adequately summarize the full collection, we can offer three broad takeaways from this effort:

FIRST, President Trump and other government officials have routinely visited Trump properties and promoted them throughout the past year, signaling to those seeking to influence the government that the president’s commercial properties are important new centers of power and influence.

-President Trump spent a full third of the first year of his administration—122 days—visiting his commercial properties.

-Seventy executive branch officials, more than 30 members of Congress, and over a dozen state officials visited Trump Organization properties during the first year of the Trump administration.

-President Trump and his White House staff promoted the Trump brand by mentioning or referring to one of the president’s private businesses on at least 35 different occasions during the president’s first year in office.

SECOND, far from this signaled access to power being an empty promise, those who patronize President Trump’s businesses have, in fact, gained access to the president and his inner circle. Indeed, it appears that at least some of those guests are trying to use that access to exert influence.

THIRD, the promotion of the president’s businesses as centers of power and influence appears to be paying off: During President Trump’s first year in office, a variety of industry groups, foreign governments, and political committees patronized his businesses.

-There have been more than 40 instances of special interest groups holding events at Trump properties since January 20, 2017.

-Eleven foreign governments have paid Trump-owned entities during the president’s first year in office, and at least six foreign government officials have made appearances at Trump Organization properties.

-Political groups spent more than $1.2 million at Trump properties during the president’s first year in office. Prior to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, annual spending by political committees at Trump properties had never exceeded $100,000 in any given year going back to at least 2002.

(See also the CREW timeline of Trump’s conflicts of interest.)

➤ Judd Legum observes The unrepentant racism of Tucker Carlson Tonight (“A primetime Fox News show embraces white identity politics”):

On Thursday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News’ highest rated program, the host and his guest, right-wing pundit Mark Steyn, were unrepentant in their embrace of anti-Hispanic racism.

Steyn ominously noted to an audience of about 3 million people that the “majority of grade school students in Arizona are Hispanic.” According to Steyn, this means that “Arizona’s future is as an Hispanic society.” This, Steyn says, is very bad.

“That means, in effect, the border has moved north,” according to Steyn. In other words, Steyn believes that Hispanics are not real Americans.

Carlson replies that this cultural transformation is “bewildering” for “people grew up here,” apparently unaware that millions of Americans are Hispanic and grew up here. “I don’t think you have to be motivated by hate to say maybe I should have some say in how my country evolves,” Carlson argues.

In short, Carlson believes that it is legitimate for white people to want to exclude Hispanics from the the United States to preserve the country’s white identity.

The irony of Steyn’s racist commentary on what it means to be an American is that Steyn is not an American. He is Canadian. There are 56.6 million Americans who are Hispanic. All of them are 100 percent more American than Mark Steyn.

➤ Jon Lovett contends Tucker Carlson’s political evolution reveals where our politics now stands:

Tucker Carlson’s transition from conservative seriousish writer to blustery CNN guy to Daily Caller troll to race-baiting Fox News host is like ice core data on what led to this moment in our politics.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) January 19, 2018

(Lovett’s spot on about this – anyone reviewing consistently the white supremacist publications of the alt right would see that Carlson – more than any other mainstream television personality – receives their admiration and support. By comparison, these publications scarcely care about someone like Hannity. It’s Carlson who excites them, who offers them the malevolent hope of a breakthrough in the middle of Fox’s primetime schedule. No one signals to them like Carlson does. Why, by the way, would anyone review consistently the white supremacist publications of the alt right? One does so not merely because they are the enemies of a democratic society, but because they are the enemies of a democratic society who aim to seize this day, Trump’s time, to become a mainstream movement.)

➤ Explore Portugal’s Castle of Many Colors:

Perched atop Portugal’s Sintra Mountains sits Pena National Palace, an eclectic attraction built in the late 18th century. The castle’s vibrant colors and unusual architecture were the brainchild of King Ferdinand II, who built the palace to serve as a summer home for the Portuguese royal family. Today, it holds the distinction of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, attracting visitors from around the world.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:51 PM, for 9h 32m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1939, Ernest Hausen (1877 – 1955) of Ft. Atkinson sets the world’s record for chicken plucking.  On this date in 1976, Federal District Judge John Reynolds ruled that the Milwaukee Public Schools were illegally segregated in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment rights of the students, and ordered the Milwaukee Board of School Directors to take immediate steps to desegregate the public schools.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report FBI investigating whether Russian money went to NRA to help Trump:

WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because Mueller’s investigation is confidential and mostly involves classified information.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

➤ Sarah Kendzior contends Trump’s racism is more than rhetoric – it forms policy and ruins lives:

Having failed to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his bigotry, Americans are now stuck with him as President – and the priority should not be policing his profanity, but protecting the rights of non-white and non-Christian Americans. Some callously call his racist remarks a “distraction,” ignoring that his racism underlies actual policy such as the DACA repeal and the Muslim travel ban. Mr. Trump’s racism is not mere rhetoric; backed by a GOP that abides it, his racism ruins lives.

His racism is dangerous not only for immigrants and foreigners but for any American who is not white. For decades, he has described U.S. cities with substantial black and Latino populations – in particular, Chicago – in the same derogatory language he used on Thursday. Mr. Trump sees not only non-white immigrants but also non-white, native-born U.S. citizens as people who do not belong in his America. In his mind, being American is synonymous with being white. This view came through most clearly in his years-long crusade against president Barack Obama, whom Mr. Trump insisted must be a foreigner – admitting only in 2016 that Mr. Obama was an American. But one can also witness it in his attacks on other non-white citizens he deemed either illegitimate, such as Mexican-American Judge Gonzalo Curiel, or unpatriotic, such as the numerous black celebrities he berates.

After his comments spurred an outcry on Thursday [1.11.18], CNN reported that White House staffers were pleased, as the xenophobic attacks would resonate with Mr. Trump’s base. While this is likely true and is disturbing in its own right, the broader implications are also concerning. Mr. Trump is the most unpopular president in U.S. history, with a 67-per-cent disapproval rating, and his base is small and shrinking. Only 26 per cent of Americans voted for him, and the number who remain hard-core supporters is likely much lower than that.

Mr. Trump’s base may be overwhelmingly white, but by 2020 non-whites will be the majority of America’s children. Given this shifting demographic, one would normally expect a president and his party to tone down racist rhetoric in a midterm election year and instead try to expand the voter base. That Mr. Trump remains blatantly racist shows not only personal mendacity but a lack of concern for the will of the public – a nonchalance best explained by the numerous suppression mechanisms the GOP has designed to disenfranchise voters.

Mr. Trump and his backers have abandoned the idea that America is for everyone – a fundamental precept of the United States. Though this ideal has never been fully upheld in practice, it has never been so vigorously opposed, both in rhetoric and policy, by a president. Mr. Trump’s racism is not new, but this anti-American presidency is.

➤ Frank Bruni observes Donald Trump Will Soil You. Ask Lindsey Graham:

That’s the story of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Its moral couldn’t be clearer. There’s no honor or wisdom in cozying up to Donald Trump — just a heap of manure.

Maybe more than any other figure on Capitol Hill, Graham personifies his party’s spastic, incoherent response to Trump across time and its humiliating, fatally misguided surrender.

He denounced Trump before he befriended and defended him. He graduated from the unpleasant experience of being Trump’s punching bag to the unprincipled one of being his enabler. Like the majority of his Republican colleagues in Congress, he reckoned that he could somehow get more than he was giving up, which included his dignity. He reckoned wrong.

Right now, we’re supposed to … what? Thank Graham for his candor, because he effectively confirmed that in a meeting about immigration in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump made those vulgar comments, and because Graham stood up to the president at the time, telling him that America was an idea, not a race?

Or should we instead note how far Graham had previously traveled to prop this same president up? It was Graham who recently joined Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, in undercutting the credibility of federal inquiries into Trump’s ties with Russia by recommending that the Justice Department investigate Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote that famous dossier.

➤ David Frum writes of An Exit From Trumpocracy:

Where technologies were invented and where styles were set, where diseases cured and innovations launched, where songs were composed and patents registered—there the GOP was weakest. Donald Trump won vast swathes of the nation’s landmass. Hillary Clinton won the counties that produced 64 percent of the nation’s wealth. Even in Trump states, Clinton won the knowledge centers, places like the Research Triangle of North Carolina.

The Trump presidency only accelerated the divorce of political power from cultural power. Business leaders quit Trump’s advisory boards lest his racist outbursts sully their brands. Companies like Facebook and Microsoft denounced his immigration policies. Popular singers refused invitations to his White House; great athletes boycotted his events. By the summer of 2017, Trump’s approval among those under thirty had dipped to 20 percent.

And this was before Trump’s corruption and collusion scandals begin to bite.

Whatever Trump’s personal fate, his Republican Party seems headed for electoral trouble—or worse. Yet it will require much more than Republican congressional defeats in 2018 to halt Trumpocracy. Indeed, such defeats may well perversely strengthen President Trump. Congressional defeats will weaken alternative power centers within the Republican Party. If they lose the House or the Senate or many governorships—or some combination of those defeats—then Republicans may feel all the more compelled to defend their president. The party faithful may interpret any internal criticism of Trump as a treasonable surrender to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. As the next presidential race nears, it will become ever more imperative to rally around Trump. The more isolated Trump becomes within the American political system as a whole, the more he will dominate whatever remains of the conservative portion of that system. He will devour his party from within.

➤ One can look Behind the Scenes at the Natural History Museum: