Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 37m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 37.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred seventieth day.
On this day in 1865, the Appomattox Campaign begins in Virginia:
When it became clear that the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, was about to fall, Confederate leaders and troops began moving west toward the town of Appomattox Court House. Union troops, including several Wisconsin regiments, followed close on their heels in a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865, that became known as the Appomattox Campaign.
Recommended for reading in full:
Domenico Martanaro reports Poll: After Barr Letter, Overwhelming Majority Wants Full Mueller Report Released:
Days after Attorney General William Barr released his four-page summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report, overwhelming majorities of Americans want the full report made public and believe Barr and Mueller should testify before Congress, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Only about a third of Americans believe, from what they’ve seen or heard about the Mueller investigation so far, that President Trump is clear of any wrongdoing.
Ronald Brownstein writes Trump’s Opponents Have One Assignment Now:
Trump has demonstrated that there is a substantial audience in the evolving Republican electoral coalition for a message that combines open appeals to white racial resentments and unrelenting attacks on “elites” with an undiluted commitment to the traditional goals of economic and social conservatives—from cutting taxes and eliminating environmental regulations, to opposing abortion and installing conservative justices on the Supreme Court. The appeal of that formula for significant elements of the GOP base would not disappear even if Trump were forced from office by one of the many investigations still swirling around him. Perhaps the only way other Republicans might be discouraged from following Trump’s volatile path is if voters show them that it’s an electoral dead end by repudiating it in 2020.
….
The GOP’s reliance on the white voters most uneasy about a changing America ensures that there will always be a substantial constituency inside the party for the backward-looking, racially divisive populism that Trump has synthesized. But a sliver of Republicans still share the perspective of the party’s famous “autopsy” report after Barack Obama’s reelection; that analysis concluded that the GOP must seek to engage with America’s growing minority population rather than try to mobilize more white support by portraying that diversity as a threat, as Trump has done. The sheer weight of demographic change could strengthen the “autopsy” position over time, especially if, through the coming years, it becomes clear that Trump’s approach has alienated too many other voters to win elections, as was the case in 2018.
(Fundamentally, this was always the primary assignment of Trump’s opposition: to consign him and his movement to the political outer darkness.)
Kangaroo rats use lighting-fast ‘ninja-style’ kicks to avoid predators, researchers say: