Good morning.

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

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

Recommended for reading in full —

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) January 19, 2018

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

➤ Explore Portugal’s Castle of Many Colors:

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

Good morning.

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

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

Recommended for reading in full —

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

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

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

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

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

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

A spokesman for Mueller’s office declined comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

➤ David Frum writes of An Exit From Trumpocracy:

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

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

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

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

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

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of thirty-three. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:50 PM, for 9h 30m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 7 AM.

On this day in 1911, aviator Eugene Burton Ely is the first to successfully land an airplane on a ship:

Ely landed his Curtiss pusher airplane on a platform on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay.^{[nb 2]}

Ely flew from the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, California and landed on the Pennsylvania, which was the first successful shipboard landing of an aircraft.^[16][17]This flight was also the first ever using a tailhook system, designed and built by circus performer and aviator Hugh Robinson.^[7] Ely told a reporter: “It was easy enough. I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Mark Sommerhauser reports Memo: Foxconn cost to public nearing $4.5 billion:

A newly released memo projects the public cost for a planned Foxconn manufacturing project near Racine could near $4.5 billion — nearly 50 percent more than the $3 billion cost initially cited by the project’s chief proponent at the state Capitol, Gov. Scott Walker.

The figures were compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau in a memo requested — and released Tuesday — by Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh. The individual cost figures are not new but had not previously been compiled in a single document.

They reflect costs to state government, mostly through tax credits for Foxconn over a 15-year period. They also include costs to local governments near the proposed site of the Foxconn campus, in eastern Racine County.

The breakdown of public costs from the project, according to the memo, is as follows:

State tax credits, $2.85 billion

Local government incentives, $764 million

U.S. Interstate 94 North-South project, $408 million

Utility costs, $140 million

State sales tax exemption, $139 million

Road improvements, $134 million

Worker training, $20 million

Local government grants, $15 million

➤ Denise Clifton reports Putin’s Trolls Are Targeting Trump’s GOP Critics—Especially John McCain (“Kremlin-linked accounts keep going after the ailing Arizona senator, as well as Mitt Romney, Bob Corker, and others”):

When John McCain checked into Walter Reed Medical Center in December as he continued his battle against cancer, Russian trolls seized the moment to spread a conspiracy theory that the veteran Republican senator was using his health as a pretense to dodge a rising “scandal” concerning the so-called Trump-Russia dossier. Far-right stories attacking McCain – a frequent critic of President Trump – were among the top 10 shared by Kremlin-backed Twitter accounts in the days after McCain was hospitalized, as well as later in the month after he returned to Arizona, according to recent analysis by the cybersecurity project Hamilton 68.

While the vast majority of the attacks from the 600 Twitter accounts tracked in real time by the Hamilton 68 dashboard are aimed at Democrats, the trolls also turn their sights on Republicans who sometimes stand up to Trump. Repeat targets have included Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. National security adviser H.R. McMaster has also been a target. But no Republican has faced more persistent wrath from the Russian-linked accounts than McCain, says Bret Schafer, an analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group of national-security experts behind the dashboard working to expose Kremlin meddling in US politics. And those attacks on McCain have intensified in recent weeks.

…

Schafer says that the trolls tend to spread disinformation from far-right American sites rather than content from explicitly Russian ones. “GatewayPundit.com and TruePundit.com—sites to the right of Breitbart—those are our frequent flyers,” he says. “The Russians are latching onto hyperpartisan content.”

(Trump gives Putin no reason to stop, so Putin won’t.)

➤ Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier report Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy (“US authorities are poring over hundreds of newly uncovered payments from Russian diplomatic accounts. Among them are transactions by former ambassador Sergey Kislyak 10 days after the 2016 presidential election and a blocked $150,000 cash withdrawal five days after the inauguration.”):

The transactions reveal:

One of the people at the center of the investigation, the former Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak, received $120,000 ten days after the election of Donald Trump. Bankers flagged it to the US government as suspicious in part because the transaction, marked payroll, didn’t fit prior pay patterns.

Five days after Trump’s inauguration, someone attempted to withdraw $150,000 cash from the embassy’s account — but the embassy’s bank blocked it. Bank employees reported the attempted transaction to the US government because it was abnormal activity for that account.

From March 8 to April 7, 2014, bankers flagged nearly 30 checks for a total of about $370,000 to embassy employees, who cashed the checks as soon as they received them, making it virtually impossible to trace where the money went. Bank officials noted that the employees had not received similar payments in the past, and that the transactions surrounded the date of a critical referendum on whether parts of Crimea should secede from Ukraine and join Russia — one of Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy concerns and a flash point with the West.

Over five years, the Russian Cultural Centre — an arm of the government that sponsors classes and performances and is based in Washington, DC — sent $325,000 in checks that banking officials flagged as suspicious. The amounts were not consistent with normal payroll checks and some transactions fell below the $10,000 threshold that triggers a notice to the US government.

The Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, sent more than $2.4 million to small home-improvement companies controlled by a Russian immigrant living not far from there. Between 2013 and March 2017, that contractor’s various companies received about 600 such payments, earmarked for construction jobs at Russian diplomatic compounds. Bankers told the Treasury they did not think those transactions were related to the election but red-flagged them because the businesses seemed too small to have carried out major work on the embassy and because the money was cashed quickly or wired to other accounts.

➤ Lachlan Markay and Spencer Ackerman report Team Trump Cooks Terror Stats for Bogus Immigration Argument (“The administration insists the ‘foreign born’ are responsible for most of the terror threat the U.S. faces. That’s true—if you ignore hundreds of plots, attacks, and recent trends”):

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday released a report highlighting foreign-born individuals convicted of terrorism charges here in the United States (PDF). Backed by the Department of Homeland Security, DOJ entirely omitted data on domestic terrorism incidents. And what statistics the government did produce are completely contradicted by counter-terrorism experts. The administration is trying to argue that terrorism on American soil is largely carried out by the “foreign-born”; the experts insist that it’s the other way around—that U.S. citizens have been the majority of the offenders since 9/11.

“If you’re looking at international terrorism, you’re going to see people with a more international background—that’s just common sense,” said William Braniff, the executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland.

“Whenever you’re trying to answer an analytical question, the way you frame the question directly contributes to what data you include in this analysis, and in this case, they exclude a lot of data that would present a different picture.”

What’s more, the report’s release appears to have been timed—though the White House called the timing “purely coincidental”—to tie national security to ongoing administration efforts to end two U.S. visa programs as a condition of congressional immigration negotiations.

➤ What about That Time the British Developed a Flying Jeep?

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will partly cloudy with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:2o AM and sunset 4:49 PM, for 9h 28m 33s of daytime. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Planning  Commission Housing Sub-Committee meets at 5 PM, and her Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, the Americans under under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeat British forces under Sir Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina.  On this day in 1900, one hundred Wisconsin women working in a cotton mill go on strike: “100 female employees of the Monterey mill, affiliated with the Janesville Cotton Mills, went on strike for higher wages. According to local sources, a committee of four “good-looking young ladies” was appointed to negotiate with management. Doing piece work, the women earned only $40 a month. The company said the women “don’t know how good they’ve got it…because they are paid more than at other local cotton mills and as well as some men with families.” The women argued their monthly pay only averaged $20. Within three days, all the women were hired to work by tobacco warehouses. The Monterey mill was one of three Janesville cotton mills in operation at the turn of the century. ”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Todd Richmond reports Democrat wins special election in northwestern Wisconsin:

Patty Schachtner defeated Republican state Rep. Adam Jarchow for an open state Senate seat Tuesday in an upset victory for struggling Wisconsin Democrats, signaling voter anger toward President Donald Trump that could cost the GOP more legislative seats in the fall elections.

Jarchow tweeted his concession to Schachtner late Tuesday evening, with returns nearly complete across five counties and Schachtner leading by more than 1,600 votes. Schachtner, the St. Croix County medical examiner and a Somerset school board member, had entered the race in northwestern Wisconsin’s traditionally conservative 10th Senate District as the clear underdog.

The district has trended conservative for years. Republican Sheila Harsdorf held the Senate seat for 16 years before she resigned in November to become Gov. Scott Walker’s agriculture secretary and every county in the district voted for Trump in 2016. Jarchow is in the middle of his third term representing the area in the Assembly and had built a formidable base.

But Democrats banked that anti-Trump backlash could even the playing field. Republicans sensed it, too. Conservative groups Americans for Prosperity and the Republican State Leadership Committee both ran ads supporting Jarchow, and Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir, who is running for U.S. Senate, traveled to the district to campaign for him.
It wasn’t enough.

➤ Paul Waldman asks The Trump presidency: On track to becoming the most corrupt in U.S. history?

What distinguishes Trump from all his predecessors is the fact that he barely conceals his intentions. After a lifetime spent not only manipulating the economic, legal, and political systems to increase his wealth but publicly bragging about his ability to do so, there was little doubt that he’s continue in the same vein as president. He refused to divest himself from his businesses, then held a press conference standing next to piles of what were almost certainly stacks of blank paper inside blank folders which he claimed were the “documents” he had to sign to affect the transfer of those businesses to his sons.

But as the director of revenue management for the Trump Hotel in Washington wrote to an acquaintance in an email obtained by the Daily Beast, “DJT is supposed to be out of the business and passed on to his sons, but he’s definitely still involved.” This too surprises no one.

That’s not to mention that the Republican tax bill could barely have been designed better to maximize the benefits to Trump himself, particularly the dramatic cut in taxes on pass-through companies, which will be worth many millions of dollars to the president, since the Trump Organization is essentially a collection of hundreds of pass-throughs. Of course, we don’t know exactly how much he’ll gain, because unlike every president and presidential candidate in decades, Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns. This despite the fact that there is no president in history whose finances are in more urgent need of public examination.

➤ Bess Levin writes Report: Trump Has Done a Great Job Profiting Off the Presidency (“Particularly from foreign government and lobbyists”):

According to a new report compiled by Public Citizen, a liberal-leaning watchdog organization based in Washington, over the past year 64 “politicians, interest groups, corporations and entities affiliated with foreign governments” have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at Trump-branded properties. Among them were Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and his delegation, who stayed at Trump’s D.C. hotel during a September 2017 trip to Washington; a company tied to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which paid the hotel $270,000 for rooms, catering, and parking while lobbying to overturn a law that allows terrorism victims to sue foreign governments; the Kuwait Embassy, which held a National Day celebration last February at the Trump International Hotel; and the government-linked Turkey-U. S. Business Council and the American Turkish Council, which held a conference at the hotel in May and plan to do so again this year.

And that’s not counting the conference at Trump National Doral thrown by top execs whose companies are members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a private prison company’s leadership conference at the same property, and a holiday party for the William Koch-owned Oxbow Carbon LLC at Mar-a-Lago.

While we would never suggest that any of these individuals or groups were attempting to curry favor with the president by spending lavishly at his properties, experts believe such a thing is quite possible. “The motive varies from event to event, but a number of these seem clearly for the purposes of ingratiating with the president,” Public Citizen president Robert Weissman told The Wall Street Journal. Although Trump relinquished the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization to Eric and Don Jr., he retained his financial interest in the family business through a trust that he can draw money from at any time, whether it’s for new Brioni suits or to fund his legal defense in the Russia probe. And though the Trump Organization claimed it would send any profits earned from foreign government payments by guests at its hotels to the Treasury, it declined to tell the Journal how that money is tracked, saying last month that it “expects to have information to share at the end of February.”

➤ Chris Strohm and Greg Farrell report GOP Access to FBI Files Rattles Agents Caught in Political Fight:

The Justice Department’s decision to give congressional Republicans access to documents about FBI investigations risks exposing sensitive sources or material and poses a critical early test for bureau Director Christopher Wray, current and former U.S. law enforcement officials say

Some officials view the department as capitulating to a small group of Republicans who are intent on helping President Donald Trump undermine the integrity of the FBI and, by extension, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election.

It’s the latest setback for a law enforcement agency that has long held itself out as doggedly independent and above partisan politics, only to be besieged over the last two years by questions about its handling of politically sensitive investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Trump.

One agent said he’s now concerned that forms identifying FBI informants would be handed over to Congress. If that happened, he said, it would cause him to think carefully about whether to withhold sensitive information from future reports.

Another agent said recent statements about the bureau by Trump and congressional Republicans have made it more difficult for him to get informants to open up.

➤ No one would think that FREE WHITEWATER is a site about modeling, but then Not Your Average Brazilian Model isn’t merely a video about modeling:

“When we tell people we’re from the favela, they automatically think of danger, violence, mess, or worthlessness,” says Caio Guimaraes, a model featured in Geoff Levy’s short film, Rio’s Different Face of Fashion. “Of course, there are bad things, but there are a lot of great things, too. It’s a magical world.”

Jacarezinho, one of the largest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, is home to a modeling agency that aims to challenge stereotypes and galvanize the community. Levy’s vibrant and kinetic documentary profiles Jacaré Moda’s rising models. More than just an economic opportunity—Guimaraes had less than a dollar to his name before he began attending casting calls—fashion, for these underserved youth, is a chance to bolster self-esteem, cultivate creativity, and achieve a purpose. It is a portal to self-actualization.

Many of the young models embrace their community’s resourceful ethos. “I improvise with all I have,” says model Natalia Sant’Anna. “Even if it’s disposable, it can be used—and used well. In the favela, you see things and you think, ‘Wow, look what they came up with.’ This is creativity.”

“Working as a model is an affirmation of my identity,” says Camila Reis, another model in the film. “Growing up, I always thought, ‘ Why am I not represented in media that tries to connect with the masses?’ We now have the opportunity to tell our story our way—through the eyes of the people who live in the favela.”

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see morning clouds and afternoon sunshine, with a high of twenty-three. Sunrise is 7:21 AM and sunset 4:48 PM, for 9h 26m 46s of daytime. It’s a new moon today, with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-second 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 PM, and Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1920, the Prohibition takes effect in America. On this day in 1864, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry occupies Kimbrough’s Crossroads in Tennessee.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ed Kilgore writes of William Barber II and the MLK Legacy of Church-Based Activism:

Recapturing the language of morality from conservatives remains one of Barber’s chief preoccupations. It is often jarring to progressives accustomed to a less fraught rhetoric of gradual social and economic progress to hear someone describe contemporary conservatives as deeply immoral people who are motivated by greed and who are making a mockery of their professed religious convictions. But while the Moral Movement was fully underway before Donald Trump executed his takeover of the GOP and the conservative movement, it now seems even more appropriate to describe the right as seized by a frenzy of immoral greed when it’s headed by the great narcissist and business pirate whose campaign was fueled by cultural resentments and hatred of “losers.” But Barber won’t let Republicans hide behind Trump:

“Trump is a symptom of a deeper moral malady. And if he was gone tomorrow or impeached tomorrow, the senators and the House of Representatives and Ryan and McConnell and Graham and all them would still be there. And what we have found, Amy, when we look at them, no matter how crazy they call him or names they call him or anger they get with him, it’s all a front, because at the end of the day, they might disagree with his antics, but they support his agenda.”

Even as Democrats fight to thwart Trump and his party in the 2018 midterms, the Poor People’s Campaign will be seeking to set a higher standard for what comes after Trump and how voters measure both parties. Barber calls the organization that will be running that campaign Repairers of the Breach, which aims at nothing less than “to redeem the heart and soul of our country.” That means convincing people used to thinking of “morality” as about enforcing sexual codes and keeping women under control to instead think first about how Americans treat the poor and oppressed. It’s hardly the first such effort, as we will recall during commemorations of Martin Luther King’s life and legacy. But it’s a psychological tonic for all those who read sacred texts and long for prophetic voices seeking justice for the afflicted rather than comfort for the powerful.

➤ Russ Choma reports  For Sale by President Trump: A Leaky, Polluted Warehouse Caught Up in a Lawsuit:

Anyone in the market for a polluted South Carolina warehouse that’s mired in a messy lawsuit? Did we mention it has a leaky roof?

President Donald Trump’s company, known for its glitzy real estate developments, is trying to find a buyer for just such a property, located in a North Charleston industrial park. The 157,000-square-foot warehouse is a vestige of one of Donald Trump Jr.’s biggest business blunders, a deal his father had to bail him out of four years ago and one that is still creating headaches for the Trump Organization.

In 2010, Trump Jr. and a few business partners launched a concrete company, Titan Atlas Manufacturing, and purchased the warehouse, once owned by Lockheed Martin, as the headquarters for their new venture. The company went bust after four years, leaving Trump Jr. holding a $3.65 million Deutsche Bank loan, secured by the warehouse. That was when the elder Trump stepped in, creating a new company, DB Pace Acquisition, which he used to buy the loan from the German bank (which was also Donald Trump’s biggest lender). Trump then foreclosed on the loan, taking the building into his own possession and out of the hands of his son’s failed concrete business. On his most recent personal financial disclosure, Trump listed DB Pace Acquisition as worth between $1 million and $5 million.

➤ Marcus Kolga reports Countering the growing threat of Russian disinformation in Canada (“The Russian government is paying off Canada’s largest media companies to expose unsuspecting television subscribers to regime-sponsored disinformation in what amounts to a surreal 24 hour propaganda informercial”):

As the number of reports about Kremlin election meddling and disinformation campaigns around the world continue to build, a disturbing Canadian report claims that the Putin regime has been paying millions of dollars annually to Canada’s largest cable providers to force feed Russian state propaganda into 6 million Canadian households since 2009.

The scheme represents a highly unusual reversal of the typical flow of money in the television distribution industry, where channel and content providers usually get paid by cable and satellite TV providers whose subscribers pay for content. The Russian government is paying off Canada’s largest media companies to expose unsuspecting television subscribers to regime-sponsored disinformation in what amounts to a surreal 24 hour propaganda informercial.

Russia Today, or RT as it’s known today, has been churning out pro-Putin propaganda, conspiracy theories and outright disinformation to support and advance the Russian regime’s foreign policy objectives since 2005.

➤ Michelle Cottle contends it’s The Perfect Pairing of Subject and Chronicler (“Disdain for playing by the rules, delight in shocking their audiences, and hunger for the approval of the elites they mock—there’s a lot that Michael Wolff and Donald Trump share in common”):

Love him or hate him, Michael Wolff, author of the dishy new Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury, is a good sport.

Thirteen years ago, after Wolff won his second National Magazine Award, I wrote a profile of him that was not especially flattering. In addition to deeming Wolff a mediocre political commentator, the piece noted that his journalistic m.o. was … unorthodox. He burned sources, busted embargoes, was less-than-meticulous about details, and had a penchant for gilding his actual reporting with colorful bits of what he imagined had happened in certain situations. He didn’t try to pass fiction off as fact so much as he wove both together in a swirl of style, substance, and snark. (Wolff has always been more about painting entertaining, impressionistic portraits than about sweating the nitty-gritty.) His flagrant disdain for journalistic conventions is a key reason Wolff has long been controversial among, and even loathed by, much of the Fourth Estate.

With the release of Fire and Fury—the gist of which is that even those in Trumpworld consider Trump unfit for office—Wolff is getting hammered by the president’s protectors. They aim to discredit his book by discrediting Wolff himself, and one of their pet tools has been my 2004 profile, which Trump supporters both inside and outside the White House have been peddling to reporters and political types. I have written many critical pieces. None has been half so fiercely weaponized—which is saying a lot, since I mostly cover politicians.

Despite all this, when I reached Wolff via email Saturday evening to ask how he was weathering the madness, he was nice as pie. He had just listened to a CNN podcast I had done about him and kindly observed that I had a “nice voice.” Nor was he crabby about any of my past or current critiques. “As my presumptive biographer, you get it about 55 percent right,” he quipped. “That’s not so bad.”

(A good friend kindly gave me a copy of Fire and Fury, and I’m enjoying the readable account.)

➤ Students And Researchers Built A Pavilion Out Of Carbon Fiber Using Robots:

This pavilion was built by robots and drones. Researchers and students from the University of Stuttgart are studying the use of carbon fiber and glass in construction. Typical fabrication doesn’t allow for too much creativity. The lightweight composites are strong, which allow for some impressive shapes. The structure is also based on nature. It mimics the silk hammocks spun by moth larvae which shows in its bent, winding structure. Robots created the smooth fiber weaving process, and drones were also used to cover more ground. The resulting pavilion is 39 feet long, weighs 2,200 pounds, and 112 miles of woven glass and carbon fiber were used. Who knew nature could inspire such stunning architecture?

Good morning.

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in Whitewater will see cloudy skies and snow showers, with a high of twenty-five. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:47 PM, for 9h 25m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Library Board is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1943, the United States completes construction of the Pentagon. On this day in 1967, the Packers win the first Super Bowl (35-10 over the Chiefs at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum).

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Lonnie Bruch contends This was Martin Luther King Jr.’s most ambitious dream:

King’s commitment to economic reform is often overshadowed by his broader civil rights work and his assassination. He characterized America’s socioeconomic schism as an “enormous, entrenched evil,” one analogous to “strangulation.”

What King could not know was that this economic divide would long outlive him. Though there has been a decline in the percentage of people trapped in poverty, people of color are still disproportionately affected.

There is something to be gained, then, from revisiting King’s final dream — one that cuts across borders and boundaries to illuminate the cracks in the nation’s veneer of abundant prosperity.

This month, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is exploring King’s final vision in a new exhibition, “City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.” The exhibition, bringing together rare oral histories, posters and photographs, lays bare the distance traveled, the stories shared and the history made by Americans with seemingly little in common except the dream to overcome poverty.

➤ The Fresno Bee writes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘Let us march on ballot boxes’:

Editor’s note: This year marks the 53rd anniversary of the five-day, 54-mile Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights. This is an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the conclusion of the march. We reprint it in observance of Dr. King’s birthday.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave Negroes some part of their rightful dignity, but without the vote it was dignity without strength.

Once more the method of nonviolent resistance was unsheathed from its scabbard, and once again an entire community was mobilized to confront the adversary. … There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes. …

Today I want to tell the city of Selma, today I want to say to the state of Alabama, today I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now.

Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us.

We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us.

We are on the move now. The wanton release of their known murderers would not discourage us.

We are on the move now. Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.

Let us therefore continue our triumphant march to the realization of the American dream. …

➤ The Washington Post offers Some tweetable quotations from the man we honor:

“We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’?”

“God is not interested merely in freeing black men and brown men and yellow men, but God is interested in freeing the whole human race.”

“We must act in such a way as to make possible a coming together of white people and colored people on the basis of a real harmony of interest and understanding. We must seek an integration based on mutual respect.”

“When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love. ”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

That last one is on the South Wall of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, part of a tribute to a national leader who sought to appeal to the best that is in us. Engraved in stone, maintained by the National Park Service, it is a message of hope that will long outlive the discord and disrespect of these days.

➤ Carol Giacomo contends Dutch Reporters Show How to Keep American Officials Honest:

Last week, Dutch reporters had one question they particularly wanted to press Mr. Hoekstra on: Would he admit that his 2015 claims were false, or could he cite an example of a Dutch politician who was burned in recent year.

Looking like a deer in headlights, the ambassador tried to brush off his interrogators. Maybe Mr. Hoekstra had watched President Trump spew lies and hate without apology for so long that he thought he could get away with it, too. Not in The Hague, apparently. The journalists came back repeatedly — “This is the Netherlands, you have to answer questions,” one said.

They invoked a quote from John Adams, the first American envoy to the Netherlands, about “honest and wise men.” They were probably being ironic.

The ambassador looked uncomfortable, but it was refreshing to see reporters demanding honesty from an official and not letting up in the face of resistance. It would be good to see that more often on this side of the ocean, especially since the confrontation seemed to have had a salutary effect.

➤ Go ahead, Float Along Colombia’s Rainbow River:

The Caño Cristales River is a spectacular, natural wonder located in Meta, Colombia. Every year when the conditions are just right, an endemic aquatic plant species that lives within the riverbed blooms, creating a brilliant show of colors. The river bursts to life with vibrant hues of red, yellow, orange, green and blue, earning the monikers “Liquid Rainbow” and “River of Five Colors” by local residents. Although the phenomenon is short-lived, the ephemeral splendor it brings has some referring to Caño Cristales as the most beautiful river in the world.

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of twenty-one, and an even chance of afternoon snow showers. Sunrise is 7:22 AM and sunset 4:45 PM, for 9h 23m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred thirtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1784, Congress ratifies the Treaty of Paris, formally ending war between the United States and Britain. On January 14, 1863, the 23rd Wisconsin Infantry leads an expedition to South Bend, Arkansas.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Brian Klaas asks Want to see where Trump is taking America? Look at Turkey under Erdogan:

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, authoritarian despots across the globe must be feeling pretty flattered by President Trump these days. Trump’s latest efforts to distort and discredit special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia is straight out of the despot’s playbook.

In 2013, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey — a democratically elected leader with a clearly authoritarian bent — was facing credible allegations of corruption. A truly independent investigation could threaten Erdogan’s grip on power. As arrests mounted, it became clear that the prosecutorial net was sweeping closer to the prime minister himself.

Erdogan’s political machine sprang into action. Despite overwhelming evidence of corruption among his close associates, Erdogan claimed there was none. He dismissed the investigation as a “dirty plot” by law enforcement. His supporters spoke of a “witch hunt” launched by the Turkish “deep state.” Erdogan demanded that the investigation focus not on him but on his political opponent. His supporters began to agitate about the need to “clean house” in the judiciary and law enforcement. Soon thereafter, Erdogan fired those who were investigating him.

Sound familiar? It should.

Despite evidence of at least attempted collusion with Russia, Trump declares that there was “no collusion.” Trump, like Erdogan, has repeatedly denounced the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt.” A year ago, Trump claimed that law enforcement was out to get him, comparing the FBI to “Nazi Germany.” His supporters — including Republican members of Congress — frequently refer to the Justice Department as a part of the “deep state” that needs to be “purged.” Trump has obsessively urged the FBI to turn its focus away from him and to investigate his political opponent, Hillary Clinton, instead. When Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, he openly admitted that he did so because of “the Russia thing”….

➤ Andrew Van Dam reports Trump wants to remove these immigrants. An ugly bit of history tells us what it could do to the economy:

In the United States, the clearest parallel may well be the mass repatriation of Mexicans during the Great Depression. It was an era of desperation, hyperbole and racist hysteria. Politicians of the time should sound familiar, a few hilarious archaisms aside. In his 1931 annual report, Commissioner General of Immigration Harry Hull bemoaned the “hardships inflicted upon the American citizen” by “exposure to competition in employment opportunities of the bootlegged aliens.”

[Salvadorans fear TPS decision will be a huge economic blow but pin hopes on Congress]

To solve this problem, he promised “to spare no reasonable effort to remove the menace of unfair competition which actually exists in the vast number of aliens who have in one way or another, principally by surreptitious entries, violated our immigration laws.”

Hull and his allies got their wish. Almost a third of America’s Mexican population, which amounted to almost a quarter of the entire labor force in some Texas towns, were eventually expelled.

And did it work?

Economists Jongkwan Lee, of the Korea Development Institute, Vasil Yasenov, a postdoctoral scholar at the Goldman School of Public Policy in the University of California at Berkeley, and Giovanni Peri, economics chair at the University of California at Davis, looked at decades of detailed data to see if the higher wages and lower unemployment promised by opponents of immigration had materialized.

If anything, the opposite occurred.

Like TPS beneficiaries, many Mexicans (defined by the authors as people born in Mexico and their children) had established themselves in their communities. Researchers found cities that sent away more Mexicans saw worsening unemployment and slower wage growth after repatriation, even when adjusting for effects such as extreme drought and localized New Deal policies….

(Trump’s policies are both racially discriminatory and economically counter-productive. Indeed, racially discrimnatory policies are inherenetly destructive of the optimal allocation of labor, capital, and goods. No one owes Trump either his bigotry or his economic ignorance.)

➤ Raquel Sater reports Russian hackers planning to target U.S. Senate, cybersecurity firm says:

The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said Friday.

The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.

“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc., which published the report . “They are looking for information they might leak later.”

The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment….

➤ Ben Smith of BuzzFeed writes I’m Proud We Published the Trump-Russia Dossier:

Exactly one year ago BuzzFeed published what’s now known simply as “the dossier”: a set of reports put together by a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign. The 35-page dossier suggested that the Russian government had both compromised and colluded with President-elect Donald Trump.

Our choice to publish the dossier was greeted by outrage from two sources. Journalistic traditionalists didn’t like the idea of sharing an unfiltered, unverified document with the public, whatever the caveats and context. NBC’s Chuck Todd told me on air, “You just published fake news.” Mr. Trump agreed. He described CNN’s reporting on the dossier as “fake news” and called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage.”

But a year of government inquiries and blockbuster journalism has made clear that the dossier is unquestionably real news. That’s a fact that has been tacitly acknowledged even by those who opposed our decision to publish. It has helped journalists explain to their audience the investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 election. And Mr. Trump and his allies have seized on the dossier in their efforts to discredit the special counsel leading the investigation, Robert Mueller….

(More is better than less; publishing was the right decision.)

➤ Cleve R. Wootson Jr. reports These alligators spent days trapped in swamp ice — and survived:

There’s a certain Homo sapiens arrogance that comes around every time we get a Snowmageddon or a bomb cyclone.

We assume that while we’re shivering through single-digit temperatures, gaining a better appreciation of what it truly means to be Inuit, most of the rest of kingdom Animalia is similarly struggling.

There are, of course, Discovery Channel extremophiles covered in blubber or wrapped in fur, but we humans are equipped with opposable thumbs and the unmatched ability to make complex tools to warm ourselves.

If we can’t handle the cold, who — or what — can?

So it can be disconcerting to see a group of creatures meet an icy end-of-days scenario with a coldblooded “meh”….

(Americans are by nature a strong people. Although there are dangers in icy weather, we diminish ourselves when we impressionably accept hysterical weather coverage. There are far greater dangers than snow. There is also, for those who would only look about, great beauty in winter.)

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of fourteen. Sunrise is 7:23 AM and sunset 4:44 PM, for 9h 21m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 10.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}four hundred twenty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1968, Johnny Cash performs two shows at Folsom Prison, California. The performances yielded material for Cash’s At Folsom Prison live album, released in May 1968.

On this date in 1922, Madison radio station WHA gets its call letters: “the call letters of experimental station 9XM in Madison were replaced by WHA. This station dates back to 1917, making it ‘The oldest station in the nation.’ ”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jason Noble reports Trump criticism dominates Chuck Grassley town meeting in rural Iowa:

LOGAN, Ia. — U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley faced relentless questioning about President Donald Trump’s fitness for office and his own handling of the investigation into Russian election meddling at a rural town meeting here Friday morning.

Amid a smattering of questions about trucking regulations, homeopathic medicine and pension security, a steady stream of attendees pressed Grassley to defend his handling of the ongoing Russia investigation and to offer his views on Trump’s conduct on the job.

“Are you not personally concerned about his fitness to serve? If not, why not? Because I’m very concerned,” Mary Mikels, a retired 67-year-old from nearby Portsmouth, asked Grassley.

Grassley deflected that question, saying he wasn’t qualified to make a psychiatric assessment, but Mikels persisted.

“He gets on Twitter and says the last thing that Fox News told him to say,” she said. “That’s not presidential. It’s concerning. Are you personally concerned?”….

(Admirable, truly, to hear Iowans speak directly as Americans, something that their senator can’t or won’t do. I’d almost say they’re woke, but then I’m not hip enough to use woke convincingly, and the surest proof is that I’m using hip as the measure of whether one is woke.)

Gabriel Sherman writes of “A Safe Space for Trump”: Inside the Feedback Loop Between the President and Fox News (“With Roger Ailes gone, the network’s chief de-facto programmer is the president. ‘He has the same embattled view as a typical Fox viewer.’ ”):

According to conversations in recent days with current and former Fox executives, producers, and hosts, Trump looms almost as large in the minds of employees as Ailes did. Fox hosts regularly get calls from Trump about segments he likes—or doesn’t. “When you worked at Fox, you knew that at any moment Roger Ailes was watching. Every day was like a job interview with Ailes. Now it’s the same way for Trump,” says a veteran Fox News contributor. According to sources, Trump doesn’t explicitly dictate talking points the way Ailes did, but over time, the effect can be similar. “What he usually does is he’ll call after a show and say, ‘I really enjoyed that,’” a former Fox anchor told me. “The highest compliment is, ‘I really learned something.’ Then you know he got a new policy idea.” But knowing Trump always could be tuning in means the network is being programmed for an audience of one. “He has the same embattled view as a typical Fox viewer—that ‘the liberal elites hate me; they’re trying to bring me down,’” an executive said.

This dynamic makes it extremely complicated to cover the administration’s near-constant conflagrations. “They don’t want to see stuff about Michael Wolff. It’s depressing,” one staffer said, speaking about how the network struggled to cover the frenzy around Fire and Fury. One sure strategy has been to follow Trump’s lead and continue attacking the Clintons. Since becoming president, Trump has tweeted about Hillary Clinton about 70 times. Trump brought up Hillary multiple times at a joint press conference with the Norwegian prime minister on January 10. One Fox staffer explained that the anti-Hillary segments rate almost higher than anything else the network programs. “The audience eats up anything about Hillary,” the staffer said. Fox will soon debut a new weekly documentary series called Scandalous.The subject of the first episode: the Clintons.

The hugely successful alliance is mostly transactional—privately, many at the network have a nuanced view of the president. “He’s sort of viewed as this crazy person who calls all the time,” the Fox executive said. During the early stages of the Republican primary, Fox News was one of Trump’s chief antagonists. Murdoch championed comprehensive immigration reform and was horrified by Trump’s nativist rhetoric, sources told me. I reported how, shortly before the first G.O.P. primary debate, Murdoch told Ailes to prevent Trump from getting the nomination. But once Trump became the nominee, the network quickly fell into line. It was simply a programming play. Fox producers saw ratings drop whenever something negative about Trump was said on air. Since then, Fox has shed prominent Trump critics like Megyn Kelly,George Will, and Rich Lowry, while bulking up on pro-Trump voices such as Seb Gorka,Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levin. “The network has become a safe space for Trump fans,” said an executive. Those who didn’t get on board felt the pressure. Last spring, Bob Beckel, a former co-host of The Five and vocal Trump detractor, found an unsigned note in his office telling him to back off Trump, a Fox source told me. On the news side, journalists seem to have a somewhat freer hand. Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith have been skeptical in their Trump coverage….

Michael Duff and Nancy Gibbs write of The Unpresident: Why Donald Trump Will Never Change:

With Donald Trump, the nation is seeing something new. Although he flirted with running as an independent decades ago, and as a Republican in 2012, he was never driven by a vision, an agenda or a set of goals. He gave every indication of wanting to win the presidency but not be the President.

That impression, and so much more, is brought to life in Michael Wolff’s explosive and controversial new book, Fire and Fury, a damning account of the first nine months of the Trump presidency that has Democrats salivating and studying the Constitution and Republicans fretting over its conclusions while pretending to criticize it as a hatchet job. The President was so incensed by the book and its many criticisms of his leadership style that he tried to block its publication even after Fire and Fury was widely available, thereby guaranteeing that it would sell out everywhere from Maine to Montana. So many are the questions raised in the book about his suitability for office that Trump was left to declare in a Jan. 6 tweet that he is a “very stable genius.”

For all the criticism of Wolff’s methods, much about the portrait rings true. Trump didn’t expect to win and, if he thought about it, probably didn’t want to. The campaign itself gave him the power and the glory and the profits. The office takes those away. In the terms he cares about–nuclear button notwithstanding–he is in many ways less powerful as President than he was a year ago. Candidates can say whatever they want about what they will do; Presidents are expected go out and do it. There’s more ridicule and much less freedom. Harry Truman’s “great white jail” is spartan compared with a life pinballing between Mar-a-Lago and Fifth Avenue. The rewards of the office, such as they are, aren’t rewarding to Trump, other than the pomp, the crowds, the chance to show off the Lincoln Bedroom or to see in our response an awe he does not share but likes provoking. The fuel that powers the presidency–the passion for ideas, the attachment to allies, the give and take of practical politics–gives him no energy. So this is an exhausting, even debilitating, life for a 71-year-old, much less one with little curiosity or sense of mission beyond self-interest. The most thin-skinned public figure imaginable has been exposed to the elements. And he doesn’t like them….

Mike Levine reports FBI vets: What many are missing about the infamous ‘dossier’ amid Russia probe:

In fact, even without the dossier, the U.S. intelligence community was in possession of information warranting an FBI probe.

“I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred,” former CIA Director John Brennan told the House Judiciary Committee last year.

For the FBI, the dossier was essentially just another tip.

“This particular matter was complicated by the fact that the ‘main subject’ happened to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States,” but “we still had an obligation to look at it as part of our effort to protect the Republic from foreign threats,” according to Frank Montoya, who spent more than two decades with the FBI and another two years leading U.S. counterintelligence policy under the Director of National Intelligence.

Police routinely respond to unverified “reports” of criminal activity on city streets. Border Patrol agents routinely respond to unverified reports of illegal border crossings. Similarly, the FBI routinely commits resources to a matter based on unverified reports.

In all those cases, what happens next depends on what investigators find. The FBI’s Russia-related probe is no different….

Perhaps he used Apple Pay —

Brazen daylight robbery caught on camera as a seagull allegedly enters a bakery and steals a bag of chips. https://t.co/MXH5JKtnsm pic.twitter.com/j5Kbxduy5A

— ABC News (@ABC) January 13, 2018

(I’ve seen clips like this before. Looking closely at this one, I’d say this seagull went for the Doritos® Salsa Verde. One might say that’s because it was easily within reach, but one might imagine more of this gull, that he’s a discerning consumer, as the salsa verde flavor so powerfully suggests.)