Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a one-third chance of afternoon showers. Sunrise is 6:26 AM and sunset is 7:19 PM, for 12h 53m 18s of daytime. The moon is full today, with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundred first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1916, the first self-service grocery store – a Piggly Wiggly – opens in Memphis, Tennessee. On this day in 1864, the 25th Wisconsin Infantry leaves a fortified position at Lovejoy’s Station to rejoin Sherman’s army in Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David A. Graham reminds that Only Mueller’s Team Knows What It’s Actually Doing:

Washington sometimes comes to resemble the sitting president. Like Donald Trump, the political and media establishments of the moment have come to expect—nay, demand—instant gratification. Trump’s chaotic style have produced an unintentional experiment in unprecedented White House transparency, in which a senior aide can barely sneeze without seven colleagues telling The Washington Post about it. This in turn has created the expectation that any new development will soon be explained with detailed accounts of what the major players are thinking and what their motivations are—sometimes relayed by anonymous sources, but occasionally, as with Anthony Scaramucci, delivered in shockingly vivid terms by the principals themselves.

In this strange new normal, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation seems especially odd. Such a probe—with the power to alter or even end the path of a presidency—would always be the subject of fascination, but combined with expectation of instant answers, the secretiveness of Mueller’s team has made the few crumbs which have emerged the subject of particularly fevered speculation….

Notably, they aren’t talking. The public knows a decent amount more about the Mueller investigation now than it did two weeks ago, but most of those revelations have come when Mueller has had to work with other agencies—the FBI, which conducted the Manafort raid, the New York attorney general’s office, the IRS, or someone else. Even with all the new information, the Mueller probe remains highly opaque. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon, but neither is the importance of the probe or the desire to figure out where it’s going. That means the summer of speculation is about to give way to an equally feverish autumn of apparent augury.

(This is a sign of Mueller’s team’s discipline.)

McKay Coppins and Elaine Godfrey write, on 8.24.17, that The Republican Establishment Stands Behind Trump:

In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, The Atlantic reached out to 146 Republican state party chairs and national committee members for reaction to Trump’s handling of the events. We asked each official two questions: Are you satisfied with the president’s response? And do you approve of his comment that there were “some very fine people” who marched alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis?

The vast majority refused to comment on the record, or simply met the questions with silence. Of the 146 GOP officials contacted, just 22 offered full responses—and only seven expressed any kind of criticism or disagreement with Trump’s handling of the episode. (Those seven GOP leaders represent New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.) The rest came to the president’s defense, either with statements of support or attempts at justification.

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah writes of A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof:

….I had come to Charleston intending to write about them, the nine people who were gone. But from gavel to gavel, as I listened to the testimony of the survivors and family members, often the only thing I could focus on, and what would keep me up most nights while I was there, was the magnitude of Dylann Roof’s silence, his refusal to even look up, to ever explain why he did what he had done. Over and over again, without even bothering to open his mouth, Roof reminded us that he did not have to answer to anyone. He did not have to dignify our questions with a response or explain anything at all to the people whose relatives he had maimed and murdered. Roof was safeguarded by his knowledge that white American terrorism is never waterboarded for answers, it is never twisted out for meaning, we never identify its “handlers,” and we could not force him to do a thing. He remained inscrutable. He remained in control, just the way he wanted to be.

And so, after weeks in the courtroom, and shortly before Dylann Roof was asked to stand and listen to his sentence, I decided that if he would not tell us his story, then I would. Which is why I left Charleston, the site of his crime, and headed inland to Richland County, to Columbia, South Carolina—to find the people who knew him, to see where Roof was born and raised. To try to understand the place where he wasted 21 years of a life until he committed an act so heinous that he became the first person sentenced to die for a federal hate crime in the entire history of the United States of America….

Ashley Luthern and Gina Barton report Trust damaged between Milwaukee police and community, Department of Justice draft report says:

The Milwaukee Police Department fails the community and its own officers by not communicating clearly, making too many traffic stops and applying inconsistent standards when disciplining officers, according to a draft of a federal report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The draft report offers a particularly damning critique of Chief Edward Flynn’s reliance on data, a signature component of his strategy since he took over the department in 2008. Federal evaluators found this approach is having a damaging, if unintended, effect on police-community relations.

“MPD’s attention to crime data has distracted the department from the primary tenet of modern policing: trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve,” the draft report states.

What’s more, many officers don’t know what community policing is and don’t think it’s part of their jobs — even though Flynn promised when he was sworn in nine years ago that the department would implement it….

(Ignorance of genuine community policing is probably common in many cities & even small towns: it’s become mostly an ill-grasped slogan for poorly trained officers.)

Tech Insider introduces The Man Who Invented the Super Soaker:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a high of sixty-four and a four-in-ten chance of showers. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 7:21 PM, for 12h 56m 07s of daytime. The moon is nearly full, with 99.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}three hundredreth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Alcohol and Licensing Committee meets at 6:10 PM, and her Common Council at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia. On this day in 1864, the “12th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 24th, 25th and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery” take part in a standoff at Lovejoy Station, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Rubin observes that Ending DACA would be Trump’s most evil act:

First, let’s not think Trump — who invites cops to abuse suspects, who thinks ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio was “doing his job” when denying others their constitutional rights and who issued the Muslim ban — cares about the Constitution (any of the “twelve” articles). Trump says, “We love the dreamers. … We think the dreamers are terrific.” But in fact he loves the applause he derives from his cultist followers more than anything. Otherwise he’d go to the mat to defend the dreamers and secure their legal status.

To begin with, surely Trump could talk the nine Republicans attorneys general out of the suit they are contemplating, or at least try his hand in court (as he has done repeatedly with the Muslim ban and sanctuary city order). In any event, he could wait for a final adverse ruling that could be months or years from now rather than end the executive order on his own. Needless to say, longtime anti-immigrant extremists Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Stephen Miller have no interest in explaining any of that to the president. (When a president is as thoroughly ignorant and non-analytical as this one is, his aides have ample opportunity to lead him around by the nose.)

Moreover, if Trump really thought he had to end DACA for constitutional reasons, how can he justify a six-month extension? (Why not 12 months? Two years?) And surely, if he really wanted Congress to act, he could insist it be tied (like Harvey funding) to the debt ceiling or, alternatively, to the funding bill to keep the government operating.

No, if Trump cancels DACA, it will be one more attempt to endear himself to his shrinking base with the only thing that truly energizes the dead-enders: vengeance fueled by white grievance. And it will also be an act of uncommon cowardice. (“Should Trump move forward with this decision, he would effectively be buying time and punting responsibility to Congress to determine the fate of the Dreamers,” writes The Post.) Dumping it into the lap of the hapless Congress, he can try evading responsibility for the deportation of nearly 800,000 young people who were brought here as children, 91 percent of whom are working. (And if by chance Congress should save DACA, it will be Trump who is the villain and they the saviors, an odd political choice for a president who cares not one wit about the party.)….

Noah Lanard predicted last week that Trump Looks Likely to End Protections for Dreamers. Here’s What Would Happen Next:

The fate of roughly 800,000 immigrants who came to the United States as children has never been more precarious. President Donald Trump is likely to end protections for the young adults, known as Dreamers, who were given permission to work and study in the country in 2012 by President Barack Obama, multipleoutlets are reporting. The decision, which could come as soon as this week, could lead thousands of Dreamers to be deported and many more to stay illegally in the United States, living with the fear they faced before Obama issued his order.

Ten state attorneys general have promised to sue the federal government on September 5 to force the courts to block Obama’s order, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), if Trump doesn’t scrap it by then. That means that one way or another, the program is likely to meet its demise soon. If Trump decides not to end DACA himself, then in order to keep it alive in the face of a lawsuit, he would have to overrule his attorney general, who opposes the program, and force him to defend it in court. The lawsuit would then be heard by a federal district court judge in Texas who is unlikely to be sympathetic to DACA. The judge, Andrew Hanen, already blocked a similar executive action by Obama that protected undocumented parents of citizens and legal residents.

If the fate of DACA is coming into focus, what will happen to Dreamers is less clear. Obama’s executive action let Dreamers work in the United States, instructed immigration agents not to detain them, and changed their status to “lawfully present.” To get those protections, Dreamers have to prove they’ve been in the country since 2007, arrived before they turned 16, and have not committed serious crimes. After getting DACA, they can renew their status for two-year increments. So far, the Trump administration has approved DACA applications at about the same rate as the Obama administration.

Trump, or the courts, could opt for a quick or slow phaseout of DACA’s protections from detention and deportation. As the libertarian Cato Institute, which supports less restrictive immigration policies, recently explained, when John Kelly—then the homeland security secretary and now Trump’s chief of staff—ended protections for parents of US citizens and legal residents in June, he explicitly stated that Dreamers would not be affected. A memo ending DACA could spare current Dreamers again—until their two-year protections expire and they become eligible to be detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The last Dreamers would then lose their protections about two years from now….

Greg Sargent cautions Don’t buy the latest round of laughable Trump White House spin:

It is a truly shocking coincidence that the same advisers who are telling Trump that DACA is unconstitutional were also the ones most responsible for the disguised Muslim ban and also pushed Trump to pardon Joe Arpaio. Bannon and Miller were key drivers of the ban’s original rollout. They both reportedly favored pardoning Arpaio. My point is not just that this strongly suggests their view of DACA’s constitutionality is rooted in their hostility to immigrants, though it does.

It’s also that this hints at an amusing double standard on the part of the White House’s immigration hard-line faction when it comes to the care with which they approach Trump’s exercise of his authority. Bannon and Miller’s haste to rush out the travel ban led them to trample all over the proper legal process for such measures, which in turn helped lead to its initial blockage by the courts. Bannon and Miller also appear to have privately told Trump that pardoning Arpaio would please his base, which only underscores how cavalier they were about a major decision with serious separation-of-powers implications. While Trump’s pardon power is quasi-absolute, there is widespread agreement that this nonetheless constituted an abuse of his power, something that plainly did not concern Bannon and Miller.

Nor was Trump remotely concerned about the legal details surrounding his use of executive authority to institute the veiled ban on Muslims, or about the prospect that pardoning Arpaio might constitute an abuse of his power. And do we really need to remind you of Trump’s abuses of power and lawlessness in other areas — the emoluments clause violations; the firing of the FBI director over the Russia probe after demanding his loyalty; the rage at his attorney general for failing to protect him from that probe; and the obvious use of the Arpaio pardon to signal that more pardons on Russia may be coming?….

Glenn Thrush tweets that “Sheriff Clarke, shut out by [Chief of Staff] Kelly, going to Trump PAC, via sources.”

(There’s a dispute about the reason Clarke is stuck in secondary role with a PAC – an alternative explanation says Kelly didn’t play a dispositive role; it was Clarke’s dishonesty about his academic work that would have kept him out in any event. Either way, he’s heading to the minor leagues.)

NASA SPoRT (Short-Term Research Prediction and Transition Center) shows what Hurricane Irma looks like from above:

The eye of a category 5 hurricane. #Irma #GOES16 pic.twitter.com/eATVZspJZx

— NASA SPoRT (@NASA_SPoRT) September 5, 2017

Good morning.

Labor Day in Whitewater will bring a high of seventy-seven, with a one-third chance of isolated thunderstorms. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:22 PM, for 12h 58m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock.

Recommended for reading in full —

John Wagner observes that In action after action, Trump appeals primarily to his dwindling base:

President Trump pardoned a tough-on-immigration Arizona sheriff accused of racial profiling. He threatened a government shutdown if Congress won’t deliver border wall funding. He banned transgender people from serving in the military. And he is expected to end a program that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants who consider the United States home.

These and other moves — all since Trump’s widely repudiated remarks about the hate-fueled violence in Charlottesville less than a month ago — are being heartily cheered by many of his core supporters. But collectively, they have helped cement an image of a president, seven months into his term, who is playing only to his political base.

Trump’s job-approval numbers remain mired in the 30s in most polls, and several new findings last week gave Republicans interested in expanding the party’s appeal fresh reason to worry. A Fox News survey, for example, found that majorities of voters think that Trump is “tearing the country apart” and does not respect racial minorities….

(Trump is playing to his base, and what’s left of that lumpen band is the very worst among us: ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, excuse-making, unproductive. Trump’s glass now contains only the dregs.)

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno writes that Trump Sells Snake Oil on Opioids:

….In a number of remarks, President Trump has stressed his priorities: ramping up federal drug prosecutions, getting “very, very tough” on the southern border and targeting the “pretty tough hombres” he says are responsible for the opioid crisis. His approach is all about doubling down on the most extreme policies of the failed war on drugs. And it’s a craven betrayal of those people in New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and other states hard hit by opioid overdoses, where Trump’s preferred policies will do nothing to stem the wave of deaths he claims are his priority.

The reality is that the war on drugs — the billions of dollars that have been poured into the enforcement of laws criminalizing drug use, production, and distribution since the 1970s — has never actually prevented drug abuse. Drug use fluctuates but has largely remained steady over the decades. And far from preventing violence, the drug war has driven up drug profits, providing an endless source of wealth for international organized crime.

What the war on drugs has done very effectively is devastate black and Latino communities. Across the country, it has served as the justification for heavier policing of black neighborhoods in particular, even though black and white people use drugs at similar rates. Millions have been arrested, torn from their families, imprisoned, saddled with criminal records, deported, and even killed in the name of drug prohibition….

Nafeesa Syeed reports that Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote:

….“They haven’t stood still since 2016,” said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow in information defense at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, which tracked the activity. “People have woken up to the idea that bots equal influence and lots of people will be wanting to be influencing the midterms.”

While special counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mueller keeps investigating the 2016 race, Nimmo’s work is among a number of initiatives cropping up at think tanks, startups, and even the Pentagon seeking to grasp how bots and influence operations are rapidly evolving. Blamed for steering political debate last year, bots used for Russian propaganda and other causes are only becoming more emboldened, researchers say.

They’re preparing “and sowing seeds of discord” and “potentially laying the groundwork for what they’re going to do in 2018 or 2020,” said Laura Rosenberger, senior fellow and director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund….

Lawrence Summers contends that It’s time to balance the power between workers and employers:

….What can be done? This surely is not the moment for lawmakers to further strengthen the hand of large employers over their employees. Sooner or later — and preferably sooner — labor-law reform should be back on the national agenda, especially to punish employers who engage in firing organizers. We should also encourage union efforts to organize people in nontraditional ways, even when they do not involve formal collective bargaining. And policymakers should support institutions such as employee stock ownership plans, where workers have a chance to share in profits and in corporate governance.

In an era when the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics, the role of unions cannot go back to being what it was. But on this Labor Day, any leader concerned with the American middle class needs to consider that the basic function of unions, balancing the power of employers and employees, is as important to our economy as it has ever been….

Great Big Story shows How the Japanese Craft the World’s Hardest Food:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:22 AM and 7:24 PM, for 13h 01m 45 of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two 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 1783, representatives of the United States and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. Britain ceded land including present-day Wisconsin to the United States.

Recommended for reading in full —

Nina Burleigh reports that Trump’s Claim that Obama Wiretapped His campaign is False:  U.S. Department of Justice:

In a stunning filing last night [Friday, 9.1], the Department of Justice stated in a court case that neither the FBI nor its National Security Division ever wiretapped Trump Tower, contradicting a bombshell claim President Trump made in a series of early morning tweets on March 4.

The document is the first time the Department of Justice has officially denied the substance of the Tweets. Former FBI Director James Comey had already denied that the FBI ever wiretapped Trump.

“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.” the filing states….

Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker report that Toxic waste sites near Houston flooded by Harvey, EPA not on scene:

….The Associated Press surveyed seven Superfund sites in and around Houston during the flooding. All had been inundated with water, in some cases many feet deep.On Saturday, hours after the AP published its first report, the EPA said it had reviewed aerial imagery confirming that 13 of the 41 Superfund sites in Texas were flooded by Harvey and were “experiencing possible damage” due to the storm.

The statement confirmed the AP’s reporting that the EPA had not yet been able to physically visit the Houston-area sites, saying the sites had “not been accessible by response personnel.” EPA staff had checked on two Superfund sites in Corpus Christi on Thursday and found no significant damage….

Kimberly Kindy, Sari Horwitz and Devlin Barrett write that the Federal government has long ignored white supremacist threats, critics say:

On June 3, 2014, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. restarted a long-dormant domestic terrorism task force created after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. A former Ku Klux Klan leader had just murdered three people near a Jewish Community Center in a Kansas City suburb and yelled “Heil Hitler” as police took him into custody.

For too long, Holder said, the federal government had narrowly focused on Islamist threats and had lost sight of the “continued danger we face” from violent far-right extremists.

But three years later, it is unclear what, if anything the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee has done, despite expectations that its reanimation would better focus efforts throughout the Justice Department to disrupt and detect plots in a more centralized way, as was already being done by the department and FBI when it came to hunting Islamist terrorists.

Krishnadev Calamur considers North Korea’s Nuclear Test: What We Know and Don’t Know:

….The U.S. Geological Survey said it detected a tremor with a magnitude of 6.3 after the North’s test at 12:36 p.m., local time, at the Punggye-ri underground test site, in the northwest of the country. South Korea estimated the magnitude at 5.7—lower, but still “five to six times more powerful than” the North’s previous test in September 2016, said Lee Mi-Sun, the head of South Korea’s Meteorological Administration’s earthquake and volcano center. A second, weaker tremor, which came minutes after the first, likely indicated the “collapse” of tunnels at the test site, the USGS and South Korean officials said.

Notwithstanding North Korea’s claim that it tested a hydrogen bomb—which is far more powerful than the atomic bombs typically tested—it’s not clear if it was an actual hydrogen bomb that was detonated Sunday. The last time the North claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb was in January 2016, but many experts say that was a bomb “boosted” using tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that produces a higher yield during explosions. South Korean officials said the nuclear blast yield of Sunday’s test was between 50 and 60 kilotons, lower than the yield for a real hydrogen bomb, which can be in the range of 10,000 kilotons. This assessment would suggest that the bomb tested Sunday was not a true hydrogen bomb. But other estimates of the yield are higher.

Either way: What is known is the weapon is far more powerful than anything the Kim regime has previously tested, and that, combined with its regular ICBM tests with increasing range, makes the North a very threatening adversary. But perhaps still not an imminent one.

Today I Found Out recounts When the Beatles Were Pelted with Jelly Beans:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:26 PM, for 13h 04m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, Imperial Japan formally surrenders in ceremonies aboard the USS Missouri.

On this day in 1862, rumors of an Indian attack worry some Wisconsinites: “Manitowoc settlers were awakened to the cry of “Indians are coming.” Messengers on horseback arrived from the Rapids, Branch, Kellnersville, and other nearby communities, announcing that Indians were burning everything in their path, starting what was known as the “Indian Scare of 1862.” Fire and church bells gave warning to frightened residents. Over the next few days, people from the surrounding areas fled to Manitowoc and other city centers. Ox carts were loaded with women and children carrying their most valuable belongings. Men arrived with guns, axes, and pitchforks, anything with which to defend themselves and their community. A company of recruits from the Wisconsin 26th Regiment formed themselves into two scouting units, both of which returned to report that there was no threat of an Indian attack. Even after the excitement had subsided, many frightened farm families could not be persuaded to return home.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Nicole Perlroth, Michael Wines, and Matthew Rosenberg report that Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny:

The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.

Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.

Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before….

Jennifer Rubin asks That’s all Trump’s lawyers have?:

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on two memos President Trump’s lawyers prepared for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III:

One memo submitted to Mr. Mueller by the president’s legal team in June laid out the case that Mr. Trump has the inherent authority under the constitution to hire and fire as he sees fit and therefore didn’t obstruct justice when he fired Mr. Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May, these people said.

Another memo submitted the same month outlined why Mr. Comey would make an unsuitable witness, calling him prone to exaggeration, unreliable in congressional testimony and the source of leaks to the news media, these people said.

As legal arguments, these are pathetic. Taking the last one first, arguing to Comey’s long-time colleague Mueller that Comey is a liar won’t win the day, nor does it pass the laugh test. Comey’s testimony will be lined up against written evidence and other witness testimony and actually may come out looking even more credible as a result. This is the sort of weak assertion one would make on Sean Hannity’s show; it’s not worthy of consideration by Mueller or any other serious prosecutor.

The “he can fire at will” argument is obviously flawed for at least three reasons. The argument is so bad one wonders if the Trump team is not ready for prime time or is simply trying to provide fodder for his cult-like following to support him if he tries to fire Mueller.

Bill Buzenberg catches readers up on All the Trump-Russia News You May Have Missed:

As crises both national and international have set in this month, Trump has been on a tear, from his comments blaming “both sides” for the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, to his brazen pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey bore down on Texas. Somewhat lost in the fire and fury (literally) has been a series of consequential developments concerning the multiple ongoing investigations into Team Trump’s ties to and possible collusion with Russia.

Perhaps the biggest of the bunch: On August 27, the Washington Post reported that Trump was actively pursuing a deal to build a “massive” Trump Tower in Moscow while campaigning for the presidency. And the New York Times exposed a series of emails between Trump’s business associate Felix Sater and his lawyer Michael Cohen, in which Sater boasted about how the Moscow deal could help Trump win the White House. “Our boy can become president of the USA,” Sater wrote, “and we can engineer it.”

Here are some of the other Russia investigation-related developments you may have missed in recent weeks: [list follows]….

Ronald Brownstein writes of Why a Republican Pollster Is Losing Faith in Her Party:

Good morning.

A new month begins in Whitewater under partly cloudy skies with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 07m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 78.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two 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 1939, the Second World War begins as Nazi Germany invades Poland. On this day in 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs is born. Burroughs used the Midwest in his stories: “In chapter 27 of “Tarzan of the Apes”, Burroughs depicts Tarzan saving Jane from a forest fire in Wisconsin. ”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Chris Smith observes that Robert Mueller’s Lines of Attack Are Getting Clearer:

Robert Mueller is not ending the summer with a tan. The 73-year-old special counsel leading the sprawling Department of Justice investigation into alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia is keeping the same grueling hours he did a decade ago as director of the F.B.I. Mueller is among the first of his team to arrive in their borrowed offices inside Washington’s Patrick Henry office building every morning and one of the last to leave each night.

More of what’s going on behind Mueller’s office door is showing up in public, though, a sign of the growing momentum of his probes into possible collusion, money laundering, election hacking, and obstruction of justice. NBC News reported that Mueller has obtained notes from the phone of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, that include a cryptic reference to “donations” and “RNC.” The notes were apparently taken during a meeting with Russian nationals at Trump Tower. And Politico’s Josh Dawsey broke the news that Mueller has begun working with the office of New York state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. (The offices of Mueller and Schneiderman declined to comment.)

The special counsel’s staff had been in touch with Schneiderman’s office for months, exchanging information and discussing whether they might coordinate their efforts, because the attorney general has spent years looking into Trump’s finances. He added to that knowledge in March by hiring Howard Master, who had been deputy chief of the criminal division under former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Bharara’s office had assembled a major money-laundering case against 11 Russian companies; the scheme had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in a Moscow jail under mysterious circumstances. A defense lawyer who represented the Russian companies, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was part of the now-famous Trump Tower meeting, supposedly to discuss adoptions, during last year’s presidential campaign….

Andrew Prokop offers Paul Manafort’s central role in the Trump-Russia investigation, explained (“Why Robert Mueller appears to be zeroing in on the former Trump campaign manager”):

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation about Russian collusion has increasingly appeared to zero in on one particular Trump associate: Paul Manafort.

In July, we learned that Manafort — Trump’s former campaign manager — attended a meeting Donald Trump Jr. set up with a Russian lawyer last year to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Later that month, the FBI raided Manafort’s house for documents. His business associates, from PR firms to his former lawyer and his current spokesperson, are being slammed with subpoenas from Mueller’s team. Even Manafort’s son-in-law has reportedly been approached and asked to cooperate with the investigation.

“If I represented Paul Manafort, I would conclude that my client has significant criminal liability,” says Renato Mariotti, a partner at Thompson Coburn and a former prosecutor for a US Attorney’s office in Illinois….

David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby report Kushners’ China Deal Flop Was Part of Much Bigger Hunt for Cash: 

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, wakes up each morning to a growing problem that will not go away. His family’s real estate business, Kushner Cos., owes hundreds of millions of dollars on a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue. It has failed to secure foreign investors, despite an extensive search, and its resources are more limited than generally understood. As a result, the company faces significant challenges.

Over the past two years, executives and family members have sought substantial overseas investment from previously undisclosed places: South Korea’s sovereign-wealth fund, France’s richest man, Israeli banks and insurance companies, and exploratory talks with a Saudi developer, according to former and current executives. These were in addition to previously reported attempts to raise money in China and Qatar.

The family, once one of the largest landlords on the East Coast, sold thousands of apartments to finance its purchase of the tower in 2007 and has borrowed extensively for other purchases. They are walking away from a Brooklyn hotel once considered central to their plans for an office hub. From other properties, they are extracting cash, including tens of millions in borrowed funds from the recently acquired former New York Times building. What’s more, their partner in the Fifth Avenue building, Vornado Realty Trust, headed by Steve Roth, has stood aside, allowing the Kushners to pursue financing on their own….

Aaron Blake finds A very intriguing new subplot in the saga of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russia meeting:

The Washington Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman and Karoun Demirjian had previously reported that Manafort took notes during the [June 2016] meeting — notes that naturally were of interest to investigators — but this appears to be the first report to indicate he did so using his phone.

Why is that significant? Because Manafort being on his phone was presented by both Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, as evidence of his disinterest in the meeting. It was used to suggest that the meeting was rather insignificant — a disappointment to all involved — and didn’t go anywhere. Trump Jr. and others have said that the information promised was a bust and was never used by the Trump campaign, whatever their intent in accepting the meeting was….

Precisely what this means is up in the air. But Trump Jr.’s version of the Russia meeting has been wrong before. And it doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that maybe he misunderstood how closely Manafort was paying attention in that meeting in June 2016 — and documenting the proceedings.

NASA highlights What’s Up for September 2017:

Good morning.

Month’s end in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:29 PM, for 13h 10m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 70.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission is scheduled to meet this afternoon at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1987, Michael Jackson releases Bad, his seventh studio album. On this day in 1864, “1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 24th, 25th and 32nd Wisconsin Infantry regiments along with the 5th and 10th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries fight in the Battle of Jonesborough, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full —

Anna Nemtsova, Betsy Woodruff, and Spencer Ackerman contend that Someone’s Lying About the Money for Trump Tower Moscow:

….Reports from earlier this week indicate [Felix] Sater, a convicted felon and former business associate of Trump, claimed in November 2015 he had lined up funding from VTB—a huge Russian bank, 60 percent of whose shares are owned by the Kremlin—for a Trump Organization construction project in Moscow.

If Sater’s claim is true, it could be a key link between Trump world and the Kremlin. But the bank at issue told The Daily Beast it isn’t. The Daily Beast cannot independently determine which side is telling the truth.

“VTB never held any negotiations about financing the Trump Tower in Moscow,” a bank representative told The Daily Beast in a statement. “We’d like to underline that not a single VTB group subsidiary had any dealings with Mr.Trump, his representatives or any companies affiliated with him”….

Dan Friedman reports on The Curious Link Between Trump’s Moscow Tower Deal and a Ukraine “Peace Plan”:

A pair of Trump associates, Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, appear to be gaining significance in the Trump-Russia investigation. News broke this week that during the presidential campaign the two sought a deal for the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. And, as reported earlier this year, the pair pushed a Kremlin-backed proposal for the US to lift sanctions on Russia—part of a proposed “peace deal” between Ukraine and Russia that Cohen and Sater brought to Trump’s then national security advisor Michael Flynn.

Congressional investigators are now interested in how the Moscow tower proposal and the so-called peace deal may connect. “That is a question members will be exploring, certainly,” says an official close to the Senate Intelligence Committee. One thread running through both deals is Russia’s desire for relief from US sanctions, which the Trump presidential campaign repeatedly signaled it was interested in accommodating. How that might shed further light on the deals is a “very interesting line of inquiry,” the official adds….

Philip Allen Lacovara explains How the pardon power could end Trump’s presidency:

Almost certainly, a presidential decision to preemptively pardon any of those caught up in Mueller’s investigation, whether former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn or Donald Trump Jr., would be effective and would spare those pardoned from prosecution, at least on the federal level.

So Trump may be tempted to use this mechanism to extricate himself from what he calls derisively “the Russia thing.”

But issuing pardons to his own friends, associates and relatives could be a perilous path for Trump, creating additional exposure on two levels, criminal and political — both flowing from an important proposition that is often overlooked in the debate over presidential power. Our legal system provides mechanisms for probing the intent and motives behind the exercise of power. The president may have the power to grant effective pardons in the Russia investigation, but both Congress and the federal prosecutor are entitled to determine whether the exercise of that power violates constitutional and statutory norms….

Josh Dawsey reports that Mueller teams up with New York attorney general in Manafort probe:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The cooperation is the latest indication that the federal probe into President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is intensifying. It also could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes.

The two teams have shared evidence and talked frequently in recent weeks about a potential case, these people said. One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering….

Business Insider’s talking peanut butter:

Why oil collects at the top of some peanut-butter jars — and how to prevent it pic.twitter.com/LeMNo6y7Lk

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) August 31, 2017

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:31 PM, for 13h 12m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 61.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred ninety-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, MacArthur arrives in Japan, “and immediately decreed several laws. No Allied personnel were to assault Japanese people. No Allied personnel were to eat the scarce Japanese food. Flying the Hinomaru or “Rising Sun” flag was initially severely restricted (although individuals and prefectural offices could apply for permission to fly it). ” On this day in 1862, Wisconsin troops rest at the White House lawn: “The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run. By the end of this third day, more than 18,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded and Union forces had been pushed back to Washington, D.C. When the Wisconsin regiments arrived in Washington, they rested on the White House lawn. According to historian Frank Klement, “President Lincoln came out with a pail of water in one hand and a dipper in the other. He moved among the men, offering water to the tired and thirsty. Some Wisconsin soldiers drank from the common dipper and thanked the President for his kindness.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

April Glaser reports that Russian bots posing as regular people are trying to sow discord on Twitter after Charlottesville:

….The Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund that tracks efforts to undermine democratic governments, monitors a collection of 600 Twitter accounts that are known to be linked to Russian influence, including openly pro-Russian users, accounts that take part in Russian disinformation campaigns, and automated bot accounts that parrot Russian messaging.

They found these accounts busy at work in the days after Charlottesville. “PhoenixRally,” “Antifa,” and “MAGA” were among the most common hashtags used by these accounts this week. One of the central themes shared by the Russian-linked accounts after Charlottesville was an accusation, propagated by both the Russian news agency Sputnik and American far-right media personality Alex Jones, that the left-leaning philanthropist George Soros had supported the counterprotesters.

One example of a likely bot was an account under the name Angee Dixson, opened on Aug. 8, the Tuesday before the Charlottesville rally started, as reported by ProPublica. Described in her Twitter bio as a conservative Christian, Angee sent about 90 tweets out a day, in which she vigorously defended President Trump’s response to the rally and shared pictures that allegedly showed violence on the part of counterprotesters in Charlottesville. The account has now been shut down….

The Digital Forensic Research Lab lists Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot (“Some tricks to identify fake Twitter accounts”):

“Bots” —automated social media accounts which pose as real people — have a huge presence on platforms such as Twitter. They number in the millions; individual networks can number half a million linked accounts.

These bots can seriously distort debate, especially when they work together. They can be used to make a phrase or hashtag trend, as @DFRLab has illustrated here; they can be used to amplify or attack a message or article; they can be used to harass other users.

At the same time, many bots and botnets are relatively easy to spot by eyeball, without access to specialized software or commercial analytical tools. This article sets out a dozen of the clues, which we have found most useful in exposing fake accounts….

(It’s worth keeping in mind that Putin uses both bots and actual people – trolls who are online all day – to spread anti-American lies and pro-Trump propaganda.)

Evan Perez reports that Special counsel subpoenas Manafort’s former attorney and spokesman:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued subpoenas to a former lawyer for Paul Manafort and to Manafort’s current spokesman, an aggressive tactic that suggests an effort to add pressure on the former Trump campaign chairman.

The subpoenas seeking documents and testimony were sent to Melissa Laurenza, an attorney with the Akin Gump law firm who until recently represented Manafort, and to Jason Maloni, who is Manafort’s spokesman, according to people familiar with the matter.

Manafort is under investigation for possible tax and financial crimes, according to US officials briefed on the investigation. The allegations under investigation largely center on Manafort’s work for the former ruling party in Ukraine, which was ousted amid street protests over its pro-Russian policies….

Sean Illing interviews 10 legal experts on why Trump can’t pardon his way out of the Russia investigation [two of ten, below]:

Julie O’Sullivan, law professor, Georgetown University
If the President pardons anyone involved in the Russian investigation, it may prove to be one of the stupidest things he has yet done. If the president were to pardon Kushner or Manafort or Flynn, presumably that pardon would extend to the Russia investigation because that is what concerns Trump. If — and this is a big if — the president is shown to have pardoned them to avoid his own personal exposure in the Russia investigation, that in and of itself could constitute obstruction of justice.

Peter Shane, law professor, Ohio State University
Russiagate pardons would pose some strategic risks for Trump. No one pardoned could constitutionally withhold their testimony in either a criminal investigation or from Congress. And, unlike the pardon of Arpaio, which is a despicable blow to the rule of law, pardoning anyone who might have been a co-conspirator in misconduct involving Trump himself would much more plausibly be impeachable.

And in any event, there is no “ground to prepare.” Pardoning Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, or anyone surnamed Trump would unleash a firestorm of protest that the Arpaio pardon will not lessen in any way. In Marbury v. Madison, John Marshall said there were “political” acts for which the president “is accountable only to his country in his political character and to his own conscience.” While Trump’s “conscience” has yet to display itself, both Congress and the voters can hold him to account “in his political character.”

Allen Miller shows a monarch caterpillar going into a cocoon: