Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-six. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 20m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 36.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1933, German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.

On this day in 1865, Wisconsin troops are victorious in North Carolina: “the 21st Wisconsin Infantry, made up mostly of soldiers from the Oshkosh area, finished fighting their way through the South during Sherman’s March to the Sea and reached Goldsboro, N.C., where the campaign in the Carolinas ended. Its veterans reunited 40 years later in Manitowoc. [Source: 21st Wisconsin Infantry homepage]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Spencer Ackerman and Kevin Poulsen report EXCLUSIVE: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer:

Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft.

That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team.

…

But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation. Twitter and WordPress were Guccifer 2.0’s favored outlets. Neither company would comment for this story, and Guccifer did not respond to a direct message on Twitter.

Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow. (The Daily Beast’s sources did not disclose which particular officer worked as Guccifer.)

Security firms and declassified U.S. intelligence findings previously identified the GRU as the agency running “Fancy Bear,” the ten-year-old hacking organization behind the DNC email theft, as well as breaches at NATO, Obama’s White House, a French television station, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and countless NGOs, and militaries and civilian agencies in Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

(When Trump operative Roger Stone admitted he was talking over Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, Stone was admitting he was talking with a Russian agent.)

➤ Eduardo Porter and Guilbert Gates explain How Trump’s Protectionism Could Backfire:

Republicans could not lose in this deep red enclave in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Still, in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump carried Lee County, where Tupelo sits, by a 38-percentage-point margin over Hillary Clinton — nine percentage points more than Mitt Romney’s lead over Barack Obama four years before.

And yet it’s not working out great for the working men and women of Tupelo. Indeed, President Trump’s first big trade barrier — tariffs against steel and aluminum imports — is, again, threatening to undermine their livelihood.

For every job in Tupelo producing steel or aluminum, there are 200 jobs in industries that consume them that could be put at risk as tariffs push up the prices of these metals, according to research from Jacob Whiton and Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution.

This is true across the country. The lesson the White House has yet to figure out is that the tariffs meant to protect the businesses that make these metals will end up hamstringing the industries that rely on them.

➤ Ron Brownstein asks Has Trump Already Sealed the GOP’s Fate in 2018?:

Every time Donald Trump breaks a window, congressional Republicans obediently sweep up the glass.

That’s become one of the most predictable patterns of his turbulent presidency—and a defining dynamic of the approaching midterm elections. Each time they overtly defend his behavior, or implicitly excuse him by failing to object, they bind themselves to him more tightly.

➤ The New York Times editorial board asks Why Is Trump So Afraid of Russia?:

The former C.I.A. director John Brennan pulled no punches on Wednesday when he was asked why President Trump had congratulated his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for his victory in a rigged election, even after Mr. Trump’s national security staff warned him not to.

“I think he’s afraid of the president of Russia,” Mr. Brennan said, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, of the phone call on Tuesday between the two presidents. “The Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump and may have things they could expose.”

The possibility that Mr. Putin could have some hold on the American president has lurked in the background over the past year as Mr. Trump displayed a mystifying affection for the Russian leader and ignored or excused his aggressive behavior and nefarious activities, most important, his interference in the 2016 campaign, a subject of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

➤ So, Has There Ever Been an Actual Case of Someone Being Pelted With Tomatoes During a Performance?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:52 AM and sunset 7:10 PM, for 12h 17m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 26.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1765, Parliament imposes the Stamp Act on her American colonies:

The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a direct tax on the colonies of British America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp.^[1][2] Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.^[3] The purpose of the tax was to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years’ War and its North American theater of the French and Indian War. However, the Colonists had never feared a French invasion to begin with, and they contended that they had already paid their share of the expenses.^[4] They suggested that it was actually a matter of British patronage to surplus British officers and career soldiers who should be paid by London.

On this day in 1854, Eugene Shepard, Father of the Hodag, is born:

On this date Eugene Shepard was born near Green Bay. Although he made his career in the lumbering business near Rhinelander, he was best known for his story-telling and practical jokes. He told many tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical lumberjack, and drew pictures of the giant at work that became famous. Shepard also started a new legend about a prehistoric monster that roamed the woods of Wisconsin – the hodag. Shepard built the mythical monster out of wood and bull’s horns. He fooled everyone into believing it was alive, allowing it to be viewed only inside a dark tent. The beast was displayed at the Wausau and Antigo county fairs before Shepard admitted it was all a hoax. [Source: Badger saints and sinners, by Fred L. Holmes, p.459-474]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ ABC News reports Mueller team zeroing in on political consulting firm with Trump ties:

➤ Daniel Bice and Mary Spicuzza report Wisconsin GOP operative Mark Block helped link Steve Bannon, Cambridge Analytica:

Of course, there’s a Wisconsin connection to the Facebook scandal involving Cambridge Analytica.

And, not surprisingly to some, it involves longtime Wisconsin GOP operative Mark Block.

Block, who has a history of campaign missteps, has been named as a key player in the international uproar over Cambridge Analytica, a London-based firm that mined data from 50 million Facebook users to try to influence the 2016 presidential race.

Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower who brought the scandal to light, identified Block as the middleman between former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica.

In a story posted earlier this week, the Guardian newspaper said Wylie offered “what sounds like a tall tale, though it’s one he can back up with an email.”

“Mark Block, a veteran Republican strategist, happened to sit next to a cyberwarfare expert for the U.S. Air Force on a plane,” the newspaper said. It continued, “And the cyberwarfare guy is like, ‘Oh, you should meet SCL (Group). They do cyberwarfare for elections.’ “

SCL Group is the parent company for Cambridge Analytica.

The firm, which was hired by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been listed as having a New Berlin address in some Federal Election Commission filings. That P.O. Box has been used by Block in the past.

➤ Mary Spicuzza also reports Thousands of Milwaukee voters have been dropped from rolls, including some erroneously:

Thousands of Milwaukee voters have been dropped from voter rolls — including some erroneously — through the state’s registration system, city officials said Wednesday.

Some 44,000 voters were removed from city rolls after the state started using a new process in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), they said. It’s unclear how many of those were dropped in error.

“This is not a problem that has been caused at the local level,” Mayor Tom Barrett said at a City Hall news conference.

Barrett said problems were caused by incorrect data provided by the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the U.S. Postal Service, leading some voters who haven’t actually moved or changed addresses to be erroneously dropped from the rolls.

“We are very concerned with the number of legitimate voters whose records have been deactivated,” Barrett said.

➤ Jennifer Rubin observes Trump doesn’t bother to hide his submissiveness to Putin anymore:

Trump’s servility when it comes to Putin defies a benign explanation and takes us to the heart of the Russia scandal: What does Putin “have” on Trump, and why is Trump so reluctant to defend American interests when it comes to only this world leader? Mueller can ask Stephen K. Bannon and Michael Flynn about Trump’s mysterious passivity, but he might want to question outgoing secretary of state Rex Tillerson, too. He would no doubt be entirely candid and might have some important insights into Trump’s refusal to challenge Putin. Come to think of it, Mike Pompeo, the CIA director who has been nominated to replace Tillerson, might have something to say on this score as well.

➤ Meg Jones reports Clover, the adorable fox kit found abandoned last week, is improving at Humane Society:

A week after the shivering ball of fur was found, he has gained half a pound, is recovering from the maladies and is weaning off liquid food. His eyesight has improved and his ears, laid back when born, have now perked up.

“He’s like a true toddler now,” said Crystal Sharlow-Schaefer, wildlife supervisor at the Wisconsin Humane Society’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.

“Wild parents are good parents. For him to be in this shape, the fox family had to have been in crisis. He was a nugget of problems, but he has really rallied,” Sharlow-Schaefer said.

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 7:08 PM, for 12h 14m 30s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1918, Imperial Germany launches the Spring Offensive:

a series of German attacks along the Western Front during the First World War, beginning on 21 March 1918, which marked the deepest advances by either side since 1914. The Germans had realised that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat the Allies before the overwhelming human and matériel resources of the United States could be fully deployed. They also had the temporary advantage in numbers afforded by the nearly 50 divisions freed by the Russian surrender (the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk).

…

By late April 1918, the danger of a German breakthrough had passed. The German Army had suffered heavy casualties and now occupied ground of dubious value which would prove impossible to hold with such depleted units. In August 1918, the Allies began a counter-offensive with the support of 1–2 million fresh American troops and using new artillery techniques and operational methods. This Hundred Days Offensive resulted in the Germans retreating or being driven from all of the ground taken in the Spring Offensive, the collapse of the Hindenburg Line and the capitulation of the German Empire that November.

On this day in 1865, Battle of Goldsborough, North Carolina, ends:

The 21st, 22nd and 25th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part as three Union armies totaling 100,000 men captured the city and its railroad facilities. These were then used to supply troops moving north toward Virginia. Union forces occupied Goldsborough until April 10, 1865, the day after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ella Nilsen and Rachel Wolfe of Vox Senetences have a summary entitled Facebook status: in deep trouble:

• Facebook is in deep trouble over new revelations of how the personal data of 50 million users was accessed and used in the runup to the 2016 election. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• The problems for Facebook started when the New York Times and the UK Observer published reports this weekend revealing that Cambridge Analytica collected the data of tens of millions of users without their permission. [NYT / Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr]
• The analytics firm is owned by conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and at the time of the data leak, it was headed by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon. [UK Observer / Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison]
• Whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica, characterized the data leak as a bid to use a massive amount of Facebook data to target political ads and posts to users, to “exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.” [UK Observer / Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison]
• That’s all the more interesting because Trump’s 2016 campaign used Cambridge Analytica, paying them $5.9 million. (Ted Cruz’s campaign used the firm as well.) [Vox / Emily Stewart]
• What Wylie is saying is that Mercer, Bannon, and other right-wing figures were using data to essentially wage a new “culture war” online, targeting people’s fears in campaigns. [Guardian / Carol Cadwalladr]
• It’s important to note that this wasn’t a hack. And the news about the Facebook data breach isn’t really news; it’s been around for years. [Vox / Aja Romano]
• But with the political implications of what the firm was able to do with the data, lawmakers in the US and the EU are furious and are calling for further investigations. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
• Beyond the question of what this means for our data, there are huge implications for Facebook’s business. The company’s stock took a nosedive amid the recent reports. [Vox / Emily Stewart]

➤ Ari Berman reports Kris Kobach Just Got Humiliated in Federal Court (“The Kansas secretary of state wanted to prove his claims of widespread voter fraud. Instead, he was repeatedly embarrassed.”):

Kobach’s battle against the ACLU was supposed to be a showcase for his claims of widespread voter fraud. When he ran for Kansas secretary of state in 2010, Kobach said “the illegal registration of alien voters has become pervasive.” That led Kansas to pass the law requiring people to provide documentation including a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers to register to vote. The law prevented 35,000 Kansans from registering between 2013 and 2016.

…

Kobach, who led President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission and is now running for governor, hired Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation to support his claim that illegal votes by non-citizens had swung US elections. But under questioning from ACLU lawyer Dale Ho, von Spakovsky admitted he couldn’t name a single election where votes by non-citizens had decided the outcome.

…

Over and over, the claims of voter fraud offered by Kobach and his witnesses collapsed under scrutiny. Kobach asked Tabitha Lehman, the clerk of Sedgwick County, Kansas, to share a spreadsheet showing that 38 noncitizens in the county had registered or attempted to register. But under questioning from the ACLU, Lehman conceded that only five of them had voted over the past two decades, when 1.3 million votes were cast in the county. Kobach has often said that the evidence of fraud he’s uncovered in Kansas is only “the tip of the iceberg.” In his closing argument, Ho said, “The iceberg, on close inspection, Your Honor, it’s more of an ice cube.”

(Emphasis added.)

➤ Whistleblower [the Cambridge Analytica director of research]: We tested Trump slogans in 2014:

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the company tested Trump slogans such as “drain the swamp” and “deep state” as early as 2014, before Trump announced a presidential run.

➤ Jennifer Rubin delivers A reminder of just how wrong Trump apologists were:

The promise that he would be saved by advisers with more intellect, temperament and experience also ignored Trump’s unwillingness to hire critics who voiced their qualms during the campaign. Those who had served at senior levels in prior administrations didn’t come in. That left him with a mediocre talent pool. And now — ah, his defenders would have shuddered to know this a year or so ago — he’s resorted to hiring TV personalities.

Moreover, Trump’s insistence on bringing with him the security blanket of family members — who were neither competent nor ethically pristine — meant that whomever he officially selected for top posts would have to deal with a competing power center (Javanka). And hiring his daughter and son-in-law meant their conflicts of interest were ladled into the toxic brew of his own conflicts, nontransparent finances and foreign emoluments.

In sum, Trump could neither hire nor heed the advice of “very best people” on his staff or Cabinet. The pusillanimous Congress was never going to challenge him. But here’s the thing: By removing the GOP majority in Congress, the country can mitigate — not eliminate — Trump’s increasingly unhinged conduct. To get the institutional check that Republicans such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) promised, it seems, they need to be stripped of that majority.

➤ Explorers are Discovering Life Under Antarctica’s Ice:

Good morning.

Spring begins in Whitewater with partly sunny skies and a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:56 AM and sunset 7:07 PM, for 12h 11m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.3% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1854, the Republican Party is founded:

On this date Free Soilers and Whigs outraged by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, met in Ripon to consider forming a new political party. The meeting’s organizer, Alvan E. Bovay, proposed the name “Republican” which had been suggested by New York editor Horace Greeley. You can see eyewitness accounts of the meeting, early Republican campaign documents, and other original sources on our page devoted to Wisconsin and the Republican Party. Though other places have claimed themselves as the birthplace of the Republican Party, this was the earliest meeting held for the purpose and the first to use the term Republican. [Source: History of Wisconsin, II: 218-219]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Britain’s Channel 4 News reports Revealed: Trump’s election consultants filmed saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians:

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News reveals how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers.

(Trump’s consultants troll with the techniques that would appeal to someone like Trump.)

➤ Alexis Madrigal asks What Took Facebook So Long? (“Scholars have been sounding the alarm about data-harvesting firms for nearly a decade. The latest Cambridge Analytica scandal shows it may be too late to stop them”):

While the specifics of this particular violation [data of tens of millions in Trump’s consultants’ access] are important to understand, the story reveals deeper truths about the online world that operates through and within Facebook.

First, some of Facebook’s growth has been driven by apps, which the company found extended the amount of time that people spent on the platform, as retired users of FarmVille could attest. To draw developers, Facebook had quite lax (or, as one might say, “developer-friendly”) data policies for years.

Academic researchers began publishing warnings that third-party Facebook apps represented a major possible source of privacy leakage in the early 2010s. Some noted that the privacy risks inherent in sharing data with apps were not at all clear to users. One group termed our new reality “interdependent privacy,” because your Facebook friends, in part, determine your own level of privacy.

➤ Niraj Chokshi reports Assaults Increased When Cities Hosted Trump Rallies, Study Finds:

A study published on Friday appears to confirm what news reports suggested long ago: President Trump’s campaign rallies were associated with a rise in violence when they came to town.

A city that hosted a Trump rally saw an average of 2.3 more assaults reported on the day of the event than on a typical day, according to the study, led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the journal Epidemiology. The authors found no corresponding link between assaults and rallies for Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

“It appeared to be a phenomenon that’s unique to Donald Trump’s rally,” said Christopher Morrison, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the study.

It may come as little surprise that the rallies were associated with increased violence, as the often volcanic clashes between Mr. Trump’s supporters and opponents were widely covered at the time.

(See Assaults on Days of Campaign Rallies During the 2016 US Presidential Election.)

➤ Alan Levin reports Russian Hackers Attacked U.S. Aviation as Part of Breaches:

Russian hackers attempted to penetrate the U.S. civilian aviation industry early in 2017 as part of the broad assault on the nation’s sensitive infrastructure.

The attack had limited impact and the industry has taken steps to prevent a repeat of the intrusion, Jeff Troy, executive director of the Aviation Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said Friday. Troy wouldn’t elaborate on the nature of the breach and declined to identify specific companies or the work that was involved.

“It hit a part of our very broad membership,” Troy said. The intrusion wasn’t something that would directly harm airplanes or airlines, he said. “But I did see that this impacted some companies that are in the aviation sector.”

Troy’s comments confirmed the effects on aviation of a Russian attack that was described more broadly on Thursday by U.S. government officials. The assault was aimed at the electric grid, water processing plants and other targets, the officials said, in the first formal confirmation that Russia had gained access to some U.S. computer systems. The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation identified aviation as one of the targets, but didn’t provide specifics.

➤ Here’s Why Airplanes Still Have Ashtrays In the Bathroom:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-seven. Sunrise is 6:57 AM and sunset 7:06 PM, for 12h 05m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 4.1% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Whitewater CDA’s Seed Capital Committee meets at 5 PM and the Library Board at 6:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board meets at 6:30 PM, with its regular session beginning at 7 PM.

C-SPAN, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, launches on this day in 1979. On this day in 1865, the Battle of Goldsborough, North Carolina, begins: “The 21st, 22nd and 25th Wisconsin Infantry regiments took part in the battle at Goldsborough, North Carolina, during the Campaign of the Carolinas. Three Union armies totaling 100,000 men attacked the city in order to control its strategically important railroad lines.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, and Mark Hosenball report Exclusive: Sources contradict Sessions’ testimony he opposed Russia outreach:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.

Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.

“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia.

Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.

Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.

One person said Sessions was courteous to Papadopoulos and said something to the effect of “okay, interesting.”

The other two recalled a similar response.

“It was almost like, ‘Well, thank you and let’s move on to the next person,’” one said.

➤ Joby Warrick reports Poisoning of Russian ex-spy puts spotlight on Moscow’s secret military labs:

Since the start of Putin’s second term, a construction boom has been underway at more than two dozen institutes that were once part of the Soviet Union’s biological and chemical weapons establishment, according to Russian documents and photos compiled by independent researchers. That expansion, which includes multiple new testing facilities, is particularly apparent at secret Defense Ministry laboratories that have long drawn the suspicions of U.S. officials over possible arms-treaty violations.

Russian officials insist that the research in government-run labs is purely defensive and perfectly legal. But the effort has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of allegations of Moscow’s involvement in the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain. Both were sickened by exposure to Novichok, a kind of highly lethal nerve agent uniquely developed by Russian military scientists years ago.

“The big question is, why are they doing this?” said Raymond Zilinskas, a chemical and biological weapons expert with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. In a newly released book, “Biosecurity in Putin’s Russia,” ­Zilinskas and co-author Philippe Mauger analyze hundreds of contract documents and other records that show a surge in Russian research interest in subjects ranging from genetically modified pathogens to nonlethal chemical weapons used for crowd control.

➤ Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson, and Jeff Horwitz report Trump wildlife protection board stuffed with trophy hunters:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new U.S. advisory board created to help rewrite federal rules for importing the heads and hides of African elephants, lions and rhinos is stacked with trophy hunters, including some members with direct ties to President Donald Trump and his family.

A review by The Associated Press of the backgrounds and social media posts of the 16 board members appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke indicates they will agree with his position that the best way to protect critically threatened or endangered species is by encouraging wealthy Americans to shoot some of them.

One appointee co-owns a private New York hunting preserve with Trump’s adult sons. The oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., drew the ire of animal rights activists after a 2011 photo emerged of him holding a bloody knife and the severed tail of an elephant he killed in Zimbabwe.

➤ Clive Irving contends Elon Musk’s ‘Big F**king Rocket’ Is a Big F**ing Deal:

Elon Musk, the maestro of SpaceX, has figured out a new way to fly into deep space. In doing so he seems to have disrupted all previous proposals for returning to the moon and reaching beyond to Mars.

Musk is gambling on the success of a project that is a radical departure from anything seen before—and far simpler than any competing space program. It is centered on a 157-foot long spaceship named BFR (Big Fucking Rocket). No kidding: That’s longer than the longest version of the Boeing 737 and, with a width of 29 feet it’s eight feet wider than the Airbus A380 super jumbo’s fuselage.

It will be designed to be used in three ways: to carry three kinds of payloads—people, cargo, or fuel (playing the role of a tanker to refuel other vehicles in space).

➤ This Artist Creates Mesmerizing Moving Sculptures:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fifty-six. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 7:05 PM, for 12h 05m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.2% of its visible disk illuminated . Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1963, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, rules in Gideon v. Wainwright that the Constitution requires state courts to appoint attorneys for criminal defendants who cannot afford to retain counsel on their own.

On this day in 1953, the Boston Braves announce that they will move to Milwaukee. (They later moved to Atlanta to become the Atlanta Braves.)

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Chris Hayes explains What ‘Law and Order’ Means to Trump:

Time and again, the president denounces “illegals” and “criminals” and the “American carnage” they wreak on law-abiding Americans. He even advised an audience of police officers to rough up suspects they were arresting.

Yet this tough-guy stance disappears when the accused are in the president’s inner circle. In defending Rob Porter, the White House senior aide accused of abuse by both of his ex-wives, the president wondered whatever happened to due process while praising a man accused of giving his wife a black eye. (Mr. Porter denies the abuse.)

As tempting as it is to hammer Mr. Trump for his epic hypocrisy, it is a mistake. The president’s boundless benefit of the doubt for the Rob Porters and Roy Moores of the world, combined with off-with-their-heads capriciousness for immigrants accused of even minor crimes, is not a contradiction. It is the expression of a consistent worldview that he campaigned on and has pursued in office.

In this view, crime is not defined by a specific offense. Crime is defined by who commits it. If a young black man grabs a white woman by the crotch, he’s a thug and deserves to be roughed up by police officers. But if Donald Trump grabs a white woman by the crotch in a nightclub (as he’s accused of doing, and denies), it’s locker-room high jinks.

…

A political movement that rails against “immigrant crime” while defending alleged abusers and child molesters is one that has stopped pretending to have any universalist aspirations. The president’s moral framework springs from an American tradition of cultivating fear and contempt among its white citizens against immigrants, indigenous people and people of color, who are placed on the other side of “the law.” It’s a practice that has taken on new strength at a time when many white people fear they may be outnumbered, outvoted and out of time.

…

If all that matters when it comes to “law and order” is who is a friend and who is an enemy, and if friends are white and enemies are black or Latino or in the wrong party, then the rhetoric around crime and punishment stops being about justice and is merely about power and corruption.

➤ Matthew Rosenberg, Nicholas Confessore, and Carole Cadwalladr report How Trump Consultants Exploited the Facebook Data of Millions:

LONDON — As the upstart voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica prepared to wade into the 2014 American midterm elections, it had a problem.

The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.

So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

…

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge and worked there until late 2014, said of its leaders: “Rules don’t matter for them. For them, this is a war, and it’s all fair.”

…

But the full scale of the data leak involving Americans has not been previously disclosed — and Facebook, until now, has not acknowledged it. Interviews with a half-dozen former employees and contractors, and a review of the firm’s emails and documents, have revealed that Cambridge not only relied on the private Facebook data but still possesses most or all of the trove.

➤ Danny Hakim and Matthew Rosenberg report Data Firm Tied to Trump Campaign Talked Business With Russians:

When the Russia question came up during a hearing at the British Parliament last month, Alexander Nix did not hesitate.

“We’ve never worked in Russia,” said Mr. Nix, head of a data consulting firm that advised the Trump campaign on targeting voters.

“As far as I’m aware, we’ve never worked for a Russian company,” Mr. Nix added. “We’ve never worked with a Russian organization in Russia or any other country, and we don’t have any relationship with Russia or Russian individuals.”

But Mr. Nix’s business did have some dealings with Russian interests, according to company documents and interviews.

Mr. Nix is a director of SCL Group, a British political and defense contractor, and chief executive of its American offshoot, Cambridge Analytica, which advised the Trump campaign. The firms’ employees, who often overlap, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant.

…

Cambridge Analytica also included extensive questions about Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, in surveys it was carrying out in American focus groups in 2014. It is not clear what — or which client — prompted the line of questioning, which asked for views on topics ranging from Mr. Putin’s popularity to Russian expansionism.

➤ Jason Stein and Patrick Marley report Eric Holder, Tammy Baldwin call for action on Russian Twitter trolls’ Wisconsin meddling:

State and federal leaders from former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to members of the Wisconsin Legislature called Friday for a federal response to news that Russian Twitter trolls sought to stoke racial division in the wake of the August 2016 unrest in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday that Russia-linked accounts got thousands of retweets for their racially charged posts made only hours after the chaos in the Sherman Park neighborhood and less than three months before the 2016 presidential election won by President Donald Trump.

After a Madison campaign visit Friday on behalf of state Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet, Holder said Congress should hold hearings on the Russian interference in Milwaukee and said the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office should investigate, as well.

“If you have the connection between that kind of effort and a foreign government, yeah, that’s the basis for a federal investigation,” Holder told reporters. “I think it’s incumbent upon people both at the state level and the federal level to hold hearings, to find exactly who was behind that and what was the impact of that effort.”

(Emphasis added.)

➤ Explore the Valley Protecting Hawaii’s Ancient Plants:

For the past 1,500 years, Limahuli Valley on Kauai has been a green haven, a wilderness preserved to exist just as the native Hawaiians experienced it. It is home to plant life unlike anything found in the rest of the world, with many endangered plants thriving in the valley. The Limahuli Garden and Preserve hopes to continue their conservation efforts so these plants can survive for generations to come. Join director Kawika Winter for a tour of this lush nature preserve.

Good morning.

St. Patrick’s Day in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-nine. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 7:04 PM, for 12h 02m 48s of daytime. The moon is a new today. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred ninety-second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1776, the Siege of Boston ends as British forces evacuate the city:

The siege began on April 19 [1775] after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, when the militia from surrounding Massachusetts communities blocked land access to Boston. The Continental Congress formed the Continental Army from the militia, with George Washington as its Commander in Chief. In June 1775, the British seized Bunker and Breed’s Hills, from which the Continentals were preparing to bombard the city, but their casualties were heavy and their gains were insufficient to break the Continental Army’s hold on land access to Boston. The Americans laid siege to the British-occupied city. Military actions during the remainder of the siege were limited to occasional raids, minor skirmishes, and sniper fire.

In November 1775, Washington sent the 25-year-old bookseller-turned-soldier Henry Knox to bring to Boston the heavy artillery that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga. In a technically complex and demanding operation, Knox brought many cannons to the Boston area by January 1776. In March 1776, these artillery fortified Dorchester Heights (which overlooked Boston and its harbor), thereby threatening the British supply lifeline. The British commander William Howe saw the British position as indefensible and withdrew the British forces in Boston to the British stronghold at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 17 (celebrated today [by Bostonians] as Evacuation Day).

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Deals, of whatever kind, should not be made outside the law:

Felix Sater confirms: Trump was pursuing deal with sanctioned Russian bank during campaign pic.twitter.com/XevwrHzYRc

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) March 17, 2018

➤ David J. Lynch and Michael Birnbaum report European Union releases 10-page list of potential targets for retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products:

The European Union Friday made public a 10-page list of American products that are potential targets for retaliation if President Trump refuses to exempt the allied bloc from his new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

The list offered the most detailed glimpse to date of the likely targets for E.U. action, including products selected for maximum political impact in the United States. Among them: Bourbon, a specialty of  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky; cranberries which grow in House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s native Wisconsin; orange juice from Florida and tobacco from North Carolina, two political swing states that are rich in electoral votes.

“It’s pretty clear they’re trying to wake up American legislators, who are the only ones in government who can influence the president on this issue,” said Chad Bown, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

(Trump’s economically counter-productive tariffs will lead to retaliation that will hit Wisconsin particularly. They have maps, and copies of the U.S. Congresisonal directory, in Europe.)

➤ Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Gets Mnuchin Travel Documents:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has billed taxpayers for the most expensive flight options available at every turn, appearing to never even consider flying commercial as his predecessors did, according to previously unreleased documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Mnuchin’s flight records following a military jet trip to Fort Knox, KY with his wife, Louise Linton, which coincided with the eclipse. The Treasury Department failed to turn over any records, leading CREW to sue. Months later, CREW received records which, though heavily redacted, showed that Mnuchin apparently abused his access to military and non-commercial aircraft for both business travel and occasional personal travel.

“From the documents we obtained, it appears Secretary Mnuchin considers first and foremost his own comfort and ease, leaving the protection of taxpayer money at the bottom of his list of priorities,” CREW Chief FOIA Counsel Anne Weismann said.

The documents CREW obtained show that between the spring and fall of 2017, Mnuchin took eight separate trips on military aircraft at a total of nearly $1 million. None of the requests for White House Mission designation — needed to use the government aircraft — explicitly state or otherwise suggest how they are at the explicit direction of the president.

“The public still has no reasonable explanation for why Secretary Mnuchin apparently has never used commercial aircraft while his predecessors did, or why he needs military aircraft that can accommodate 120 passengers when his travel manifests contain far fewer names,” Weismann said.

(Read CREW’s report here.)

➤ Dan Friedman writes Trump White House Worked with Newt Gingrich on Political Purge at State Department, Lawmakers Say (“Trump officials called civil servants “turncoat” and ‘Obama/Clinton loyalists’ “):

White House and State Department officials conspired with prominent conservatives, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to purge the State Department of staffers they viewed as insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump, two top House Democrats allege in a letter released Thursday.

The letter states that an unidentified whistleblower shared documents with Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees showing that a group of White House officials pressed political appointees at the State Department to oust career civil service employees they described with terms like “Turncoat,” “leaker and a troublemaker,” and “Obama/Clinton loyalists not at all supportive of President Trump’s foreign policy agenda.”

As described in the letter, those actions would likely violate federal laws protecting federal civil servants from undue political influence.

➤ An impressive American fighter plane deserves an impressive coat of paint:

Watch this F-15E Strike Eagle receive a special paint job in this incredible time-lapse pic.twitter.com/2kOQvFK8la

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) March 16, 2018