Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-one. Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 4:34 PM, for 9h 49m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred thirty-third day.
On this day in 1863, the 33rd Wisconsin Infantry leaves for the South:
The 33rd Wisconsin Infantry left Wisconsin for The South. It would go on to serve in Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana. It participated in the sieges of Jackson and Vicksburg, the Red River Expedition, the Battle of Nashville, the siege of Spanish Fort and the capture of Fort Blakely. It would lose 202 men during service. Three officers and 30 enlisted men were killed. Two officers and 167 enlisted men died from disease.
Recommended for reading in full — ICE employees claim privilege to sex with detainees, what the blue wave in the House looks like, Trump’s beginning to lose white support, Trump shown to be so ignorant he didn’t know the difference between the Baltics and the Balkans, and video on the origins of the vacuum cleaner —
Victoria López and Sandra Park write ICE Detention Center Says It’s Not Responsible for Staff’s Sexual Abuse of Detainees:
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government impose criminal liability on correctional facility staff who have sexual contact with people in their custody. These laws recognize that any sexual activity between detainees and detention facility staff, with or without the use of force, is unlawful because of the inherent power imbalance when people are in custody. Yet, one immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse.
E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time of the assault, E.D. was 19 years old.
She filed suit against the detention center and its staff for their failure to protect her from sexual violence, even though they were aware of the risk. The record in the case, E.D. v. Sharkey, shows that her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes.
Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations. Their argument rests in part on their assessment that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because the Berks Family Residential Center is an immigration detention facility rather than a jail or prison.
(There’s Trumpism in full: a claim of privilege for the degenerate acts of government employees.)
Mark Harris writes of the House results that
If you’re tired of looking at a big red map even when Democrats win, this, from @nytimes, is what the new House of Representatives really looks like.
William H. Frey writes 2018 exit polls show greater white support for Democrats:
The 2018 exit polls indicate that a considerable share of Democratic gains came from shifts in white voting patterns, even as Democrats retained strong support from racial minorities. Moreover, in key Midwest statewide elections, Democrats lost fewer white working-class male votes while retaining support among white female college graduate voters.
….
Among those who voted, partisan differences by race remained in 2018, but shrank from their 2016 levels. Comparing the national vote for 2018 House of Representative members with the 2016 presidential vote, the white Republican vote advantage decreased by half, from a D-R margin (percent voting Democratic minus percent voting Republican) of -20 in 2016 to -10 in 2018. In contrast, positive D-R margins (favoring Democrats) remained the same or increased for non-white groups (Figure 2).
Mark Lowen writes of Trump’s ignorance:
In today’s
@lemondefr: When#Trump received the leaders of#Estonia,#Latvia and#Lithuania, he began by blaming them for the war in Yugoslavia. It took them a few moments to realise he’d mixed up the Balkans and the Baltics.@SylvieKauffmann
