Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will see afternoon thunderstorms with a high of seventy-seven. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:45 PM, for 13h 44m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundred ninety-fourth day.
The Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM, with an open session beginning at 7 PM.
On this day in 1954, the televised portion of the Army-McCarthy hearings begins:
Chaired by Senator Karl Mundt, the hearings convened on March 16, 1954, and received considerable press attention, including gavel-to-gavel live television coverage on ABC and DuMont (April 22–June 17). The media coverage, particularly television, greatly contributed to McCarthy’s decline in popularity and his eventual censure by the Senate the following December.
Recommended for reading in full:
Abigail Tracy reports The “Red Line” Investigations that Will Haunt Trump’s Presidency:
For Donald Trump, perhaps the most chilling moment in the Mueller report occurs on page 446, where the special counsel reveals that he has referred a total of 14 potential cases to other prosecutors. Because while Robert Mueller was given a limited mandate to investigate the Trump-Russia affair, special counsel investigations have a habit of unearthing other, unrelated criminality in the process. Perhaps that is why, when Trump first learned that Mueller had been appointed, according to the report, he slumped back in his chair and exclaimed, “I’m fucked.”
What flashed through Trump’s mind in that moment—his sprawling business empire, his byzantine taxes, his hush-money payments to a porn star—is unknown. Indeed, 12 of the 14 referrals that Mueller outsourced were redacted and remain shrouded in secrecy. (The two public referred cases involve Michael Cohen, the president’s former fixer, and a false-statement case against Democratic attorney and lobbyist Gregory Craig.) But, with investigations churning in Congress, in New York, and in Washington, D.C., it is clear that Trump’s nightmare is just beginning. Below is an accounting of the known legal threats Trumpworld has yet to grapple with. [Tracy lists all 14.]
Lachlan Markay reports Russian State Media Binges on Fox Prime Time and Sean Hannity Reruns:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report implicated the Russian government in a widespread campaign of hacking and political disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Russian state media is nonetheless trumpeting the reaction of U.S. conservativesto the report, which found that the Trump campaign was not complicit in those election-meddling efforts, as evidence of a broad anti-Russian conspiracy in the U.S. And it’s using at least one prominent American conservative voice to do so.
The Russian government-owned Rossiya 1 news channel recently broadcasted excerpts from Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity’s on-air monologue, which hammered “media hysteria” over the report and allegations of campaign “collusion” with the Russian government.
In its own editorializing, Rossiya 1 described the report as “bestseller about the absence of collusion between Trump and Russia,” and blamed the political press and U.S. intelligence agencies for “hounding Trump” over the allegations, according to a translation by journalist and Daily Beast contributor Julia Davis.