Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy, a daytime high of thirty-one, and snow later this evening. Sunrise is 7:10 AM and sunset 5:06 PM, for 9h 56m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1930, the Politburo of the Soviet Union orders that a million prosperous peasant families be driven off their farms.
Recommended for reading in full —
Neil MacFarquhar reports Member of Extremist Group Pleads Guilty in Michigan Governor Kidnapping Plot:
One member of an antigovernment group accused of plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan last fall pleaded guilty on Wednesday in federal court, with documents revealing new details about the group’s plans to storm the Michigan Capitol and commit other violence.
Ty G. Garbin, a 25-year-old airplane mechanic, agreed to testify against the other five defendants charged in federal court in Western Michigan, according to the plea agreement filed by prosecutors. Eight other men have been accused in state court of cooperating with the violent plans, and Mr. Garbin will serve as a witness against them, too, it said.
Under questioning by Judge Robert J. Jonker in court, Mr. Garbin said he realized that his testimony might end up hurting people he knows. His sentencing was scheduled for July 8.
Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu report Actions by Proud Boy at Capitol show ‘planning, determination, and coordination,’ U.S. alleges:
According to prosecutors, members of the Proud Boys used walkie-talkie-style communication devices to coordinate during the attack. On [Dominic] Pezzola’s computer, [Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik] Kenerson said, FBI agents found information on making homemade firearms, poisons and explosives. Once inside the Capitol, authorities say, Pezzola and the Hughes brothers engaged in a confrontation with Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman at the foot of a staircase, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit, “advancing .?.?. in a menacing manner.” While Doug Jensen, 41, of Des Moines is identified as the “primary aggressor,” the Hughes brothers “followed immediately” behind him, the agent wrote. Pezzola, according to prosecutors, was also part of the group.
Dan Davies writes The GameStop affair is like tulip mania on steroids:
Towards the end of 1636, there was an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Netherlands. The concept of a lockdown was not really established at the time, but merchant trade slowed to a trickle. Idle young men in the town of Haarlem gathered in taverns, and looked for amusement in one of the few commodities still trading – contracts for the delivery of flower bulbs the following spring. What ensued is often regarded as the first financial bubble in recorded history – the “tulip mania”.
Nearly 400 years later, something similar has happened in the US stock market. This week, the share price of a company called GameStop – an unexceptional retailer that appears to have been surprised and confused by the whole episode – became the battleground between some of the biggest names in finance and a few hundred bored (mostly) bros exchanging messages on the WallStreetBets forum, part of the sprawling discussion site Reddit.