Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of forty-four. Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 6:16 PM, for 11h 10m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred third day.
On this day in 1782, Henry Dodge is born:
On this date Territorial Governor Henry Dodge was born in Vincennes, Indiana. The son of Israel Dodge and Nancy Hunter, Henry Dodge was the first Territorial Governor of Wisconsin. Prior to this position, he served as Marshall and Brigadier General of the Missouri Territory, Chief Justice of the Iowa County (Wisconsin) Court. During the Black Hawk War of 1832 he led the Wisconsin militia who ultimately brought the conflict to its tragic end. He served as Territorial Governor from July 3, 1836 to October 5, 1841 and again from May 13, 1845 to June 7, 1848. He also served as U.S. Territorial Senator from 1841 to 1846. When Wisconsin was admitted to the Union as a State, dodge was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate; he was reelected in 1851 and served from June 8, 1848, to March 3, 1857. He was also twice nominated for President and once for Vice President, all of which he declined. Henry Dodge died on June 19, 1867 in Burlington, Iowa.
Recommended for reading in full — A five-year-old was persuaded to sign away her rights at the U.S. border, homegrown disinformation, Georgia Republican keeps thousands of voter registrations on hold, Ukrainian Christians break from Moscow’s political control, and a video about the Apollo space program’s origins —
Sarah Stillman reports The Five-Year-Old Who Was Detained at the Border and Persuaded to Sign Away Her Rights:
Helen—a smart, cheerful five-year-old girl—is an asylum seeker from Honduras. This summer, when a social worker asked her to identify her strengths, Helen shared her pride in “her ability to learn fast and express her feelings and concerns.” She also recounted her favorite activities (“playing with her dolls”), her usual bedtime (“8 p.m.”), and her professional aspirations (“to be a veterinarian”).
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According to a long-standing legal precedent known as the Flores settlement, which established guidelines for keeping children in immigration detention, Helen had a right to a bond hearing before a judge; that hearing would have likely hastened her release from government custody and her return to her family. At the time of her apprehension, in fact, Helen checked a box on a line that read, “I do request an immigration judge,” asserting her legal right to have her custody reviewed. But, in early August, an unknown official handed Helen a legal document, a “Request for a Flores Bond Hearing,” which described a set of legal proceedings and rights that would have been difficult for Helen to comprehend. (“In a Flores bond hearing, an immigration judge reviews your case to determine whether you pose a danger to the community,” the document began.) On Helen’s form, which was filled out with assistance from officials, there is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.
Sheera Frankel reports Made and Distributed in the U.S.A.: Online Disinformation:
When Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress last month about Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault, a website called Right Wing News sprang into action on Facebook.
The conservative site, run by the blogger John Hawkins, had created a series of Facebook pages and accounts over the last year under many names, according to Facebook.
After Dr. Blasey testified, Right Wing News posted several false stories about her — including the suggestion that her lawyers were being bribed by Democrats — and then used the network of Facebook pages and accounts to share the pieces so that they proliferated online quickly, social media researchers said.
The result was a real-time spreading of disinformation started by Americans, for Americans.
What Right Wing News did was part of a shift in the flow of online disinformation, falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame. In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter to sway voters in the United States with divisive messages. Now, weeks before the midterm elections on Nov. 6, such influence campaigns are increasingly a domestic phenomenon fomented by Americans on the left and the right.
Stavros Agorakis reports Georgia’s 53,000 pending votes:
Georgia has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold, with the state’s residents fearing that voter purges and delayed registrations will affect the outcome of the upcoming elections. [AP / Ben Nadler]
Nearly 70 percent of the flagged applications are from black voters, yet black people make up about one-third of Georgia’s population. [Vox / P.R. Lockhart]
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and the Republican nominee for the open governor’s seat, is in charge of the pending list. His Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race is Stacey Abrams, the first black female governor candidate from a major party in the US. [NYT / Astead W. Herndon]
Voting rights advocates and civil rights groups have protested Kemp’s decision to stay in office until the election, saying it’s inappropriate that he controls voting systems. Abrams’s campaign has demanded his resignation. [CNN / Gregory Krieg]
Kemp has waged a years-long battle against voting rights groups and minority voter registration efforts, using an “exact match” program to approve voter IDs. [Talking Points Memo / Cameron Joseph]
Voters whose registrations are on hold will be notified via text to verify their information. Tuesday is the last day Georgians can register to vote. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Mark Niesse]
Voter ID rulings across the US could help decide which party controls the Senate come 2019. Courts issued rulings against restrictions in Missouri but in favor of them in North Dakota; both states have competitive Senate races. [Vox / German Lopez]
Gabby Deutch reports Ukraine’s Spiritual Split From Russia Could Trigger a Global Schism (“For Moscow, the crisis is geopolitical as well as religious”):
“This is a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.” That’s how Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the announcement Thursday that the Orthodox Church’s Istanbul-based leader, Patriarch Bartholomew, will grant Ukraine’s Church independence from Russia.
In televised remarks, Ukraine’s president dubbed this a “historic event,” which it undoubtedly is: For more than three centuries, Ukraine and Russia have been religiously united within the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a union Poroshenko characterized this summer as a “direct threat to the national security of Ukraine,” given his view that the Russian Orthodox Church fully supports Kremlin policy; he said then that it was “absolutely necessary to cut off all the tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state.”