Good morning. 
Tuesday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 64. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 7:11 PM, for 12h 21m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
Recommended for reading in full —
Erin Cunningham reports NIH questions AstraZeneca trial data, calls it ‘incomplete’:
British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca may have only used partial data when it announced the results from a U.S. trial of its coronavirus vaccine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said Tuesday in a highly unusual rebuke.
The agency, part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement that it was concerned AstraZeneca used outdated information from the large-scale trial when it reported the results Monday, “which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.”
It urged the company, which developed its vaccine with Oxford University, to work with the U.S. Data Safety and Monitoring Board to review the data and release the updated information “as quickly as possible.” AstraZeneca had said Monday that the vaccine was shown to be 79 percent effective against symptomatic covid-19 — and that it was 100 percent effective against severe illness.
Michael Gerson writes Ron Johnson isn’t a Republican outlier:
There have always been bigots with access to a microphone. But in this case [Johnson’s remarks on Black Lives Matter], Johnson did not face the hygienic repudiation of his party. Republican leaders preferred a different strategy: putting their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Republicans have abolished their ideological police.
The reason is simple. After four years of Donald Trump, Johnson’s sentiments are not out of the Republican mainstream. They are an application of the prevailing Republican ideology — that the “real” America is under assault by the dangerous other: Violent immigrants. Angry Blacks. Antifa terrorists. Suspicious Muslims. And don’t forget “the China virus.”
Trump did not create such views. But he normalized them in an unprecedented fashion. Under Trump’s cover, this has been revealed as the majority position of Republicans, or at least engaged, activist Republicans. A recent New York Times poll found 65 percent of people who identify with the GOP to still be Trump “die-hards,” Trump “boosters” or captive to conspiracy theories. And most of the rest find nothing disqualifying in Trump’s pathologically divisive performance as president.
(Gerson is right that Johnson is not an outlier among ordinary Republicans on race, or among other false notions he holds. He is, however, notably eager among the Senate’s GOP caucus to peddle these views at any opportunity.)
Danielle Kaeding reports Audubon Plan Aims To Restore Nearly 300K Acres Of Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands To Benefit Birds:
A new report from the Great Lakes regional arm of the National Audubon Society is outlining its plan to restore and protect a dozen areas that support region’s birds. Climate change, development and invasive species are threatening coastal areas of the Great Lakes region that is home to 350 bird species.
Great Lakes Audubon has identified 12 regions and nearly 300,000 acres of coastal wetlands for protection and restoration to benefit 14 marsh bird species that have been on the decline. Shrinking bird populations in the region are part of a larger trend as North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970.
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The 12 sites include 10 projects in Green Bay and the St. Louis River estuary in the Twin Ports where the black tern hasn’t been seen since the 1990s. The largest project prioritized in the estuary seeks to restore 850 acres of marsh in Allouez Bay in Superior that would support the species.
‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia: