Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 7:18 AM and sunset 5:59 PM, for 10h 40m 16s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred fourteenth day.
On this day in 1864, Wisconsinites serve at the Battle of Westport, Missouri:
The 9th Wisconsin Light Artillery fought in the Battle of Westport, at present-day Kansas City, Missouri. Sometimes called the “Gettysburg of the West,” this battle ended the last significant Confederate operation west of the Mississippi River. It was one of the largest battles fought west of the Mississippi River, with over 30,000 men engaged.
Recommended for reading in full — Trump’s trade war hits Wisconsin’s small businesses, DNA crime-testing backlog grows under Brad Schimel, Trump lies about ‘Middle Easterners’ in migrant caravan, former attorney for Trump admits Robert Mueller is an American hero & his investigation is not a witch hunt, and video on the evolution of Stephen King —
Rick Barrett reports As tariffs continue, panic beginning to sink in among Wisconsin manufacturers:
Across America’s heartland, small and midsize manufacturers are reeling from higher costs and lost business attributed to a breakdown in foreign trade.
While some have benefited, others have been hammered by rising tariffs — a tax on imported or exported goods — on products including boats, electronics, sporting goods, bourbon and baby cribs, to name a few.
The “handshake deals” Trump made with Canada and Mexico may have saved thousands of automaker jobs. Yet smaller companies, [president and CEO of Marquis-Larson Boat Group Rob] Parmentier said, haven’t seen much relief.
“The rest of us little guys are just getting crushed,” he said.
The tariffs that China recently placed on American ginseng and bourbon, for example, have clobbered Great Northern Distilling, in Plover, Wisconsin, which makes ginseng-infused bourbon.
It’s cost the company 25 percent of its sales.
“All of the buyers have cold feet now. They’ve said until this gets resolved, they’re not placing an order,” said Brian Cummins, co-founder of the distillery, which has 11 employees.
“Our fifth anniversary is coming up next May … and I am hoping we can make it to then,” he said.
Keegan Kyle reports DNA backlog grows to nearly 800 cases in state crime labs, new figures show:
State crime lab workers have sped up drug tests in the past year, but a backlog of months-old DNA evidence has continued to grow to nearly 800 cases.
Attorney General Brad Schimel, who oversees the state crime labs, released new figures Friday about the tests, about four weeks after USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin requested them under open records laws.
Schimel is campaigning for re-election Nov. 6 and has faced criticism from his opponent, Democrat Josh Kaul, over crime lab delays. When the Republican entered office in 2015, DNA evidence rarely took more than two months to test.
Now, about half of all DNA tests take at least two months and hundreds of cases typically take more than three months — potentially slowing police investigations or court cases that rely on DNA.
Karla Zabludovsky reports “We Would Know”: Caravan Migrants Have No Idea What Donald Trump Meant With His “Middle Easterners” Tweet (“The president’s claim that the caravan had been infiltrated was news to the Honduran migrants traveling north”):
TAPACHULA, Mexico — As the migrant caravan advanced through Mexico en route to the US on Monday, 15 days before midterm elections, President Donald Trump attempted to stoke new fears, tweeting that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in.”
“I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic],” he added.
In Tapachula, the southern Mexico town where the caravan spent the night before starting the next leg of their journey, more than a dozen people asked by BuzzFeed News hadn’t heard about the accusation. When they were informed, though, they were baffled.
“What?” Melvin Gómez, 32, exclaimed in English. “Most of us come from Honduras. It’s small, we all know each other. We would know.”
The criminals “must be the children, the women. The diapers must be the bombs,” said Irineo Mujica, director of Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the organization that coordinated a smaller caravan in April, during a press conference Monday.
“It’s a shame that such a powerful president utilizes this caravan for political means,” he added.
In a discussion on “The President, the Presidency and the Law,” former Special Counsel to President Trump Ty Cobb calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller “an American hero.” (He also admits the Mueller investigation is not a witch hunt.):
The Evolution of Stephen King: