Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset is 8:21 PM, for 14h 40m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1865, after successful service in defense of the Union, the 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments muster out: “The 37th had spent its 14-month-long term of service in and around Washington D.C. It participated in the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign in pursuit of General Lee’s army. It lost 247 men during service. The 38th served in the same campaigns as the 37th but was also on duty at Arsenal, Washington, during trial and execution of President Lincoln’s assassins. It lost 113 men during service.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Patrick Marley,Rick Romell and Lee Bergquist report that a Wisconsin Foxconn deal could include $1 billion to $3 billion in taxpayer-backed incentives:

MADISON – A plan to bring a massive Foxconn Technology Group plant to Wisconsin could cost $1 billion to $3 billion in local, state and federal incentives over coming years — a stunning sum for a project that backers say could transform the state’s economy.

Foxconn’s plans are to be announced Wednesday at the White House, with a follow-up event Thursday at the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to one source. Tuesday night, the White House listed a 5 p.m. Wednesday “jobs announcement” in the East Room on President Donald Trump’s schedule.

An incentive package that reaches into the billions would be unlike anything Wisconsin has offered in the past and would require approval from state lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has said he hoped to get bipartisan support for the package.

Sandhya Somashekhar and David A. Fahrenthold report that Trump’s speech to Boy Scouts irks some in ‘nonpartisan’ organization:

Lavinia Falck had spent six days at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, getting to know teenagers from around the world. Then, she and her friends gathered on the grass to hear from a special guest: the president of the United States.

“By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?” President Trump said during a rambling speech Monday in which he used harsh language, recounted election-night victories and New York cocktail parties, and attacked his political opponents.

“Everyone around me was booing,” said Falck, 17, a member of the co-ed Venture Scout program run by the Boy Scouts. She remembered looking at her new friends and wishing she’d been allowed to stay at her bunk, noting that the booing for Obama was particularly upsetting because attendees had been directed not to jeer Trump. “Scouts are supposed to be courteous and friendly and all these things, and it was really un-Scoutlike for everyone around me to boo.”

(Trump’s a crude, ignorant man, so a speech like this should have been no surprise. It’s all he has.)

Steve Vladeck describes The Three Sessions Succession Scenarios:

President Trump took to Twitter this morning [Tuesday] ostensibly to defend his “beleaguered” Attorney General, even though at least some of that beleaguerment is, thanks to last week’s New York Times interview (and, potentially other behind-the-scenes machinations), his own doing. If, as a result, Jeff Sessions’s days as Attorney General are indeed numbered, it might be worth gaming out the three very different scenarios for his succession atop the Justice Department—given their obvious potential implications for the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III [Vladeck offers detail for each]….

Scenario I: The DOJ Succession Statute and Executive Order….

Scenario II: The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998….

Scenario III: The Recess Appointment Elephant in the Room….

Peter Beinart considers Why Trump Might Fire Robert Mueller:

Partly, it’s simple rage. Mueller threatens Trump. And when Trump sees someone as a threat, he tries to discredit and destroy them—conventional norms of propriety, decency and legality be damned.

But there’s another, more calculated, reason. Trump and his advisors may genuinely believe that firing Mueller is a smart move. And if you put morality aside, and see the question in nakedly political terms, they may be right.

The chances that Mueller will uncover something damning seem very high. Trump has already admitted to firing former FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation. Donald Trump Jr. has already admitted to welcoming the opportunity to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from people he believed were representatives of the Russian government. Even if Mueller doesn’t accuse anyone of a crime, he’s likely to paint a brutal picture. And that’s just on the question of election collusion and obstruction of justice. If Mueller uses Russia to segue into Trump’s business dealings, who knows what he might find. An all-star team of legal and financial sleuths, with unlimited time and money, and the ability to subpoena documents and people, have been let loose on the affairs of a man whose own autobiographer called him a “sociopath.” No wonder Trump is scared.

What would One Year of Flying the Airbus A320 Around Europe look like? It would look like this —

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 42m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1999, the first Brewer is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “Robin Yount became the first player inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a Brewer’s jersey. Yount entered the major leagues at the age of 18 and spent his entire career with the Milwaukee Brewers as number 19 at short stop and center field. His awards are numerous, including being selected as an all-star three times as well as American league MVP twice. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers]”

Recommended for reading in full —

Ed Pilkington observes that Jared Kushner’s explanations on Russia reveal a man wholly unsuited to his job:

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who has been drawn into the billowing inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, told congressional investigators on Monday that he hoped his appearance before them would clear his name and “put these matters to rest”.

But in his presentation to members of the Senate intelligence committee, the 36-year-old husband of Ivanka Trump might have dug himself deeper into a hole by leaning so heavily on personal ignorance as the core of his defense. By doing so he raised a slew of new questions about how the US president could have entrusted someone with such little foreign policy ballast with a powerful international portfolio.

In an 11-page statement released before his closed-door Senate appearance, Kushner essentially argued that he could not have been involved in underhand relations with the Russian government because he was so poorly versed in Russian affairs. Over the 3,700 words of the statement, he mentions that he could not remember the name of the Russian ambassador to Washington not once, but three times.

The Washington Post editorial board supports Congress’s drastic — but necessary — rebuke to Trump:

Congress at last looks ready to pass its first significant piece of legislation of the Trump administration — and it will be a major rebuke to the president. A sanctions bill covering Russia that the House is expected to take up Tuesday essentially would place President Trump’s policy toward the regime of Vladi­mir Putin in receivership, preventing him from lifting sanctions without congressional agreement. It’s a drastic but necessary response to the inexplicable affinity Mr. Trump has evinced toward the Kremlin, as well as to the continuing questions about Russia’s support for his presidential campaign.

The need for congressional action was underlined again on Sunday, when Mr. Trump’s new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci, quoted the president as saying about Russia’s interference in the election, “Maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.” For the U.S. intelligence community, there is no such doubt: Moscow did intervene with the intent to help Mr. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, on the orders of Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept those conclusions, and the possibility that he might reverse sanctions imposed on Russia for that interference and for its military invasion of Ukraine, has generated an extraordinary consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress.

Karen DeYoung reports that Cooperation with Russia becomes central to Trump strategy in Syria:

Some lawmakers and White House officials have expressed concern that the strategy is shortsighted, gives the long-term advantage in Syria to Russia, Iran and Assad, and ultimately leaves the door open for a vanquished Islamic State to reestablish itself.

Critics also say that neither Russia nor Iran can be trusted to adhere to any deal, and that the result will be a continuation of the civil war whose negotiated end the administration has also set as a goal.

U.S.-Russia negotiations are continuing even as Congress moves this week toward imposing additional sanctions on Russia and Iran. Elements of the strategy were presented in members-only briefings last week to the House and the Senate by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Conservative Conor Friedersdorf argues The Case for Impeaching Trump If He Fires Robert Mueller:

Surveyed on the Russia probe, a solid majority of Americans said they believe that Robert Mueller will conduct an impartial investigation. Sixty-four percent said “Donald Trump is more concerned about protecting his administration from being investigated” than “protecting the U.S. from Russian interference.” Most important of all, when asked, “Do you think Donald Trump should try to stop the Special Counsel’s investigation if he wants to, or shouldn’t he?” 81 percent of Americans said he should not stop it.

The will of the people does not get clearer than that.

And that poll was conducted before revelations that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort––the president’s son, son-in-law, and then-campaign manager––attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Kremlin-connected Russians after being explicitly told they would receive dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

NPR’s Skunk Bear asks What Are Those ‘Talking’ Apes Really Saying?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 5:39 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 14h 44m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1974, in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), the  United States Supreme Court handed down a “unanimous 8–0 ruling against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver presidential tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to the District Court. Issued on July 24, 1974, the ruling was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal, when there was an ongoing impeachment process against Richard Nixon. United States v. Nixon is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president to claim executive privilege.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jack Gillum and Aaron C. Davis report that Local governments keep using this software — but it might be a back door for Russia:

Local and state government agencies from Oregon to Connecticut say they are using a Russian brand of security software despite the federal government’s instructions to its own agencies not to buy the software over concerns about cyberespionage, records and interviews show.

The federal agency in charge of purchasing, the General Services Administration, this month removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from its list of approved vendors. In doing so, the agency’s statement suggested a vulnerability exists in Kaspersky that could give the Russian government backdoor access to the systems it protects, though they offered no explanation or evidence of it. Kaspersky has strongly denied coordinating with the Russian government and has offered to cooperate with federal investigators.

The GSA’s move on July 11 has left state and local governments to speculate about the risks of sticking with the company or abandoning taxpayer-funded contracts, sometimes at great cost. The lack of information from the GSA underscores a disconnect between local officials and the federal government about cybersecurity.

Eli Hager explains How Fake Cops Got $1.2 Million in Real Weapons (a federal sting reveals lax oversight in the Defense Department’s gear giveaway program):

….The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.

And in less than a week, they got it.

A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess material. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.

Lachlan Markay reports that GOP Campaigns Recall a Self-Dealing Leaker in Scaramucci:

….aides to 2016 presidential candidates whom Scaramucci endorsed before coming around to Trump say he was suspected of leaking internal information, and left out of some internal discussions for fear that he would pass along those sorts of details to reporters—or that he already had….

He threw his weight behind the Trump campaign only after his first two preferred candidates, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, dropped out. Between his stints raising money for those campaigns, he was in talks with a third, that of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Former senior aides on all three of those campaigns say Scaramucci gave the impression of a hanger-on trying to methodically get in the good graces of whichever candidate he saw as most likely to prevail. Only when Trump had the nomination all but secured did Scaramucci sign on with his campaign.

Rosie Gray writes about The Man McMaster Couldn’t Fire:

Just 24 days into his tenure as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael Flynn was forced to resign, having reportedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. When Flynn departed, the men and women he’d appointed to the National Security Council grew nervous about their own jobs, and with good reason. The new national-security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, promptly began clearing out Flynn’s people, among them Dave Cattler, the deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst on loan from the Pentagon, and KT McFarland, Flynn’s deputy, who was eased out with the ambassadorship to Singapore. Even Steve Bannon, among the most powerful people in the White House, was removed from the meetings of the NSC Principal’s Committee, where he had been installed early on in the administration.

There was one person, however, who McMaster couldn’t get rid of: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs. McMaster tried to remove him in March, but President Trump, at the urging of Bannon and Jared Kushner, told McMaster that Cohen-Watnick was staying, as first reported by Politico. According to a senior White House official, the two men had a sit-down meeting the following week in which McMaster acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to do what he wanted to do, and that they would keep things as they are and “see how they go for a while.” That was over four months ago. That Cohen-Watnick, 31 years old and largely unknown before entering the administration, has become unfireable reveals how important he has become to the Trump White House, where loyalty is prized.

Here’s a video about The Greatest Scientist of the 20th Century You’ve Probably Never Heard Of:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 45m 59s of daytime. The moon is new today. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, (Henri) Philippe Pétain goes on trial for treason for his role as leader of Vichy France. He was convicted on all counts, and lived his final years imprisoned on the Île d’Yeu, where “his memory lapses were worsening and he was beginning to suffer from incontinence, sometimes soiling himself in front of visitors and sometimes no longer recognising his wife.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Sean Illing writes President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that’s legal:

President Trump’s lawyers are exploring the potential uses of presidential pardons — including whether the president can pardon himself — as part of an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, according to a new Washington Post report.

I reached out to 15 legal experts and asked them if the president has the constitutional authority to pardon himself. As it turns out, this is something of a legal gray area. The overwhelming consensus was that Trump could make a plausible legal argument that his pardoning powers extend to himself, mostly because the Constitution isn’t clear about this — and, frankly, because this is just not a situation the framers expected.

All the experts agreed about one other fact: Even if Trump does pardon himself, that would not shield him from impeachment hearings. And most believe if he did make a move like this, it would be both an admission of guilt and a potential constitutional crisis [experts’ replies follow]….

Laurence H. Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen contend that No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so:

Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.

The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.

Jane Chong writes To Impeach a President: Applying the Authoritative Guide from Charles Black:

The most important book ever written on presidential impeachment is only 69 pages long. Charles Black, Jr.,’s Impeachment: A Handbook was published in the summer of 1974, at the height of the Watergate crisis, and reissued in October 1998, two months before Bill Clinton became the second president in U.S. history to be impeached.

If the pattern holds, the book could enjoy a third printing under the Trump presidency. But I wouldn’t want to prematurely speculate on the point. Black too persuasively urges against it….

Today marks the first time the core chapter of Black’s book—on what he called the “heart of the matter”—is available in its entirety online. We are providing this resource because amidst a tidal wave of 140-character screeds, Black’s analysis of what actually constitutes “the impeachable offense” is pure signal in the noise.

David A. Graham describes The Inadvisable President:

This demonstrates another reason why Trump is an impossible boss: He expects absolute personal loyalty from his aides, but aides cannot expect that the president will return the favor. Perhaps no humiliation is as great as Sessions—the long-time backer thrown to the wolves in an interview with the press—but Trump has repeatedly undercut other top aides.

For example, Trump has repeatedly made public statements at odds with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to broker a resolution between Qatar and several other Gulf States.

When Trump fired Comey, the administration initially claimed that he had been fired for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Comey’s approach had been widely criticized as improperly harsh, but Trump had said it was unduly easy, making the excuse nonsensical. Nonetheless, Vice President Pence went out and publicly insisted that Comey was fired because the Justice Department had recommended it in light of the Clinton case. The following day, Trump told Holt that actually he’d decided to fire Comey on his own, because of the Russia case.

Diver Craig Capehart recorded as a 40 Ton Humpback Whale Leaps Entirely Out of the Water:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with isolated afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1934, bank robber John Dillinger meets his end outside a movie theater in Chicago. On this day in 1864, the 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery continue their engagement in the Battle of Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jane Chong, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider How White House Threats Condition Mueller’s Reality:

So now put yourself in Mueller’s shoes. You are both a highly-experienced investigator (you’ve run the FBI for 12 years) and a highly-experienced prosecutor (you’ve headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, served as a U.S. Attorney, and prosecuted murder cases as perhaps the most overqualified assistant U.S. attorney in American history). You have staffed your investigation with a group of lawyers of remarkable depth and range of experience. You have on your staff Russian language capability. You have truly remarkable appellate capacity. And you have first class expertise in money laundering, campaign finance, organized crime, and other relevant areas.

But it all may not matter, because the President may decide either to issue a bunch of preemptive pardons or to try to either fire you or rein in your jurisdiction. And the talent you have collected is under attack.

How do you play it? Here are six broad areas to which Mueller may be giving some thought as he considers how to do his job under these highly unusual conditions. To be clear, the following is not based not on any communication with Mueller or his staff but on our own assessment of the law, the problems Mueller faces, and the incentives the White House’s activities create for someone in his position. We assume in everything that follows that there are serious matters under investigation. If, by contrast, L’Affaire Russe is all nonsense, the situation is far easier: Mueller can wrap up the investigation and go back to his law firm [detailed assessment follows]….

Marcin Goettig and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk report that a Polish court overhaul meets growing wave of criticism, protests:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling party on Saturday dismissed a growing wave of criticism from abroad and worries at home that an overhaul of the Supreme Court would undermine judicial independence.

In the early hours of Saturday senators of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party approved a bill that would end all the terms of Supreme Court justices except those hand-picked by the justice minister.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered in Warsaw and cities across Poland for candle-lit vigils, chanting “Free Courts” and demanding that President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the PiS, veto the bill. More protests were planned during the day on Saturday.

Mitch Smith reports that Minneapolis Police Chief Forced Out After Fatal Shooting of Australian Woman:

The Minneapolis police chief, Janee Harteau, resigned on Friday at the mayor’s request, less than a week after one of the city’s officers fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911 for help….

The fatal shooting of the Australian woman, Justine Damond, last weekend by Officer Mohamed Noor led to outpourings of grief in Minnesota and outrage in Ms. Damond’s home country, where the prime minister condemned the shooting and Ms. Damond’s family members have expressed frustration with how little they have been told about what happened.

Last Saturday, Ms. Damond, 40, called 911 twice to report a possible sexual assault near her home. Officer Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, arrived at the scene in a dark alley several minutes later. Officer Harrity told state investigators that he had been startled by a loud noise just before Ms. Damond approached their cruiser. Officer Noor then shot her through the open window.

Mike Wall reports that it’s Not Aliens: Weird Radio Signal from Star Likely Has Duller Explanation:

A strange radio signal that seemed to emanate from a small nearby star probably came from Earth-orbiting satellites, astronomers say.

Late last week, researchers announced that, on May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected a bizarre radio signal in the vicinity of Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth….

“The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites,” Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote in a statement today (July 21). (Geostationary satellites circle Earth at an altitude of about 22,300 miles, or 35,800 kilometers.)

Smokin’ Ed Currie brings the heat:

Fear the Reaper: Breeding the World’s Hottest Pepper from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

In the competitive world of hot pepper breeding, one man is smoking the competition. Meet “Smokin’” Ed Currie. He’s the man behind the world’s hottest pepper—the “Carolina Reaper.” For the past three decades, Currie has been pushing the limits of the Scoville scale—breeding hotter and hotter peppers. We went behind the scenes at his South Carolina farm, where he’s bred a number of secret, unreleased specimens that he claims are even hotter than his famous Reaper. You may want to have some milk ready for this one.

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with an even chance of afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-eight. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 49m 43s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1949, the U.S. Senate advised Pres. Truman that it favored the North Atlantic Treaty. On this day in 1921, Gen. Billy Mitchell offers confirmation of his theory that “development of military air power was not outlandish. He flew his De Havilland DH-4B fighter, leading a bombing demonstration that proved a naval ship could be sunk by air bombardment. Mitchell’s ideas for developing military air power were innovative but largely ignored by those who favored development of military sea power. Mitchell zealously advocated his views and was eventually court martialed for speaking out against the United States’ organization of its forces. [Source: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Division of Archives & Special Collections].”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Carol D. Leonnig, Ashley Parker, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger report that Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation:

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

(All of this is predictable, first as a futile effort to intimidate Robert Mueller, and if effectuated then as a lawless pardon of Trump, by Trump, for Trump.)

Congressmen Elijah E. Cummings & John Conyers contend that An unchecked presidency is a danger to the Republic:

In the absence of any meaningful investigation by House Republicans, Democratic members have sent requests for information on our own. Our efforts have been met with months of stonewalling. The Trump White House recently told government agencies “not to cooperate [with any oversight] requests from Democrats,” and issued a contrived Justice Department legal opinion that such queries are “not properly considered to be oversight requests.”

We will continue to press for answers because the information we seek goes to the central question of the Trump presidency: Is the administration acting in the public interest, or merely to benefit the private interests of President Trump?

….An unchecked presidency — such as that of Richard Nixon or Donald Trump — represents a clear and present danger to the Republic. We have taken this series of steps in an attempt to provide at least a measure of independent scrutiny and to mark how Republicans in Congress have repeatedly failed in this responsibility. We do not have the right to remain silent. Our investigations must continue separate from, and in addition to, the special counsel’s work.

James Fallows observes that Trump’s Latest Interview [NYT] Highlights Four of His Greatest Flaws (with details for each element):

And what makes this exposure to Trump’s mind and mood different from what we’ve seen over his past two years in political life and his previous decades in the public eye? For me it’s the accumulation of these elements:

A rare degree of deluded self-regard….

The unselfconscious display of gaping, consequential holes in his general knowledge….

The meaning of the Constitution….

Absolutes….

Emily Badger and Kevin Quealey write that Trump Seems Much Better at Branding Opponents Than Marketing Policies:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-seven. Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 51m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 11.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The City of Whitewater’s Finance Committee is scheduled to meet at 7 AM.

On this day in 1969, Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the moon.

Recommended for reading in full —

Rosie Gray writes that A Top Rohrabacher Aide Is Ousted After Russia Revelations:

Paul Behrends, a top aide to Representative Dana Rohrabacher, has been ousted from his role as staff director for the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that Rohrabacher chairs, after stories appeared in the press highlighting his relationships with pro-Russia lobbyists.

“Paul Behrends no longer works at the committee,” a House Foreign Affairs Committee spokesperson said on Wednesday evening.

Behrends accompanied Rohrabacher on a 2016 trip to Moscow in which Rohrabacher said he received anti-Magnitsky Act materials from prosecutors. The Magnitsky Act is a 2012 bill that imposes sanctions on Russian officials associated with the 2009 death in prison of  lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had been investigating tax fraud. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian attorney and lobbyist who met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower last year, reportedly brought up the Magintsky Act during the meeting.

Rohrabacher’s meeting in Moscow was an object of concern for embassy officials, who had warned the delegation about FSB presence in Moscow—warnings Rohrabacher brushed off.

(Behrends and Rohrabacher are at the least fellow travelers with Putinism, and at the wost – and quite possibly – fifth columnists.)

The Washington Post editorial board explains Why Trump’s chat with Putin is not just a chat:

Talk isn’t bad; what’s key is the nature of the talk. To carefully calibrate messages to world leaders, presidents usually rely on an elaborate bureaucratic machine, including the interagency process and the National Security Council staff. Mr. Trump’s dinner chat showed once again his proclivity to act alone, and he undoubtedly created headaches. With no U.S. note-taker or interpreter, the U.S. national security structure was left without a record of the exchange, except for Mr. Trump’s memory. Mr. Putin will have a better record.

But the deeper problem is the epidemic of mistrust Mr. Trump has created about his ties to Russia, which sensationalizes contacts that might otherwise be unremarkable. The doubts began during the campaign with his failure to release his tax returns, which could show the origins of his income, and grew worse when Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. Mr. Trump refused to accept U.S. intelligence community warnings of Russian interference during the election, and his family and his campaign associates have repeatedly been negligent or untruthful about their contacts with Russian officials — most recently, in the accounts of a meeting with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Ms. Clinton. In his first meeting as president with Russia’s foreign minister, Mr. Trump blurted out classified information. It’s reasonable to worry about what he might have told Mr. Putin.

Mike McIntire reports that (former Trump campaign chairman) Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show:

Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.

The money appears to have been owed by shell companies connected to Mr. Manafort’s business activities in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions. The Cyprus documents obtained by The New York Times include audited financial statements for the companies, which were part of a complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees.

(Emphasis added.)

Political scientist Brendan Nyhan explains Why Trump’s Base of Support May Be Smaller Than It Seems:

A new working paper by the Emory University political scientists B. Pablo Montagnes, Zachary Peskowitz and Joshua McCrain argues that people who identify as Republican may stop doing so if they disapprove of Trump, creating a false stability in his partisan approval numbers even as the absolute number of people approving him shrinks. Gallup data supports this idea, showing a four-percentage-point decline in G.O.P. identification since the 2016 election that is mirrored in other polling, though to a lesser extent….

When the Emory political scientists use the Gallup data to account for Republicans who have stopped identifying with the party since the election, they find that partisan support for Trump could be substantially lower than it appears. The lower bound is often from 70 percent to 80 percent instead of the 80-to-90 range that Gallup polls typically show. Given the decline in Republican identification since last November, they find, “the lower bound on Trump’s partisan approval rate is much lower” than partisan approval at a comparable point in the Obama presidency and is lower than it was even during Mr. Obama’s second term.

(A copy of the full working paper is online.  Whether Trump has many supporters or few, the principal objects of opposition will always be Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders. I’ve no doubt that Trump’s support is waning, and in the way that the working paper suggests, but in any event, when Trump meets political ruin – as he will – so will his movement.)
Tech Insider reports there’s a new theory that The T. Rex couldn’t actually sprint like it does in ‘Jurassic Park’: