Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:32 PM, for 13h 14m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 35.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred eighty-third day.
On this day in 1965, Palm Sunday tornadoes ravage the Midwest:
Six tornadoes, part of the “Palm Sunday” outbreak, ripped across Southern Wisconsin, causing 3 deaths and 65 injuries. The outbreak of 51 tornadoes was responsible for 260 deaths and over $200 million in damages throughout the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio.
Recommended for reading in full:
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig report Retiring as a Judge, Trump’s Sister Ends Court Inquiry Into Her Role in Tax Dodges:
President Trump’s older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has retired as a federal appellate judge, ending an investigation into whether she violated judicial conduct rules by participating in fraudulent tax schemes with her siblings.
The court inquiry stemmed from complaints filed last October, after an investigation by The New York Times found that the Trumps had engaged in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the inherited wealth of Mr. Trump and his siblings. Judge Barry not only benefited financially from most of those tax schemes, The Times found; she was also in a position to influence the actions taken by her family.
Judge Barry, now 82, has not heard cases in more than two years but was still listed as an inactive senior judge, one step short of full retirement. In a letter dated Feb. 1, a court official notified the four individuals who had filed the complaints that the investigation was “receiving the full attention” of a judicial conduct council. Ten days later, Judge Barry filed her retirement papers.
The status change rendered the investigation moot, since retired judges are not subject to the conduct rules. The people who filed the complaints were notified last week that the matter had been dropped without a finding on the merits of the allegations. The decision has not yet been made public, but copies were provided to The Times by two of the complainants. Both are involved in the legal profession.
Sarah Ellison and Marc Fisher report National Enquirer expected to be sold imminently as parent company faces pressure:
American Media Inc. is actively seeking to sell off the National Enquirer, according to three people familiar with the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The decision to sell came after the hedge fund manager whose firm controls American Media became “disgusted” with the Enquirer’s reporting tactics, according to one of these people.
American Media has been under intense pressure because of the Enquirer’s efforts to tilt the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, who is a longtime friend of American Media’s president and CEO, David Pecker. Pecker and his supermarket tabloid have also been embroiled in recent months in an unusually public feud with Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.