Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a likelihood of afternoon rain, and a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 7:52 PM, for 14h 01m 33s. The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}one hundred seventy-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
The Downtown Whitewater board of directors is scheduled to meet at 8 AM.
A mutiny on the HMS Bounty takes place on this day in 1789, as “Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian [and] disaffected crewmen seize control of the ship from their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship’s open launch.” On this day in 1862, the 5th Wisconsin Infantry takes part in a reconnaissance at Lee’s Mill, Virginia.
Recommended for reading in full —
Jacob Carpenter and Dave Umhoefer report that 3 Milwaukee County Jail staffers point fingers at others in dehydration death: “Three Milwaukee County Jail staffers blamed each other Thursday for failing to document the shutoff of an inmate’s water seven days before he died of dehydration. A corrections lieutenant and two officers all said they believed a co-worker had noted in jail logs that staff cut off the water in inmate Terrill Thomas’ solitary confinement cell. Without the notation, other corrections officers and supervisors had no way of knowing Thomas was deprived of water. The testimony came on the fourth day of the inquest into the death of Thomas, 38, whose untreated bipolar disorder rendered him incapable of asking for help. An inquest is a rarely used legal procedure that allows prosecutors to question witnesses under oath in public before they decide whether to criminally charge anybody over a death. A jury hears the testimony and issues an advisory verdict on whether there’s probable cause to file charges.”
Thomas Kaplan and Robert Pear report that Health Bill Vote Scrapped for Now as G.O.P. Support Wanes: “The lost opportunity was perhaps the biggest blow to the future prospects of Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, who has a long relationship with Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Priebus had pushed aggressively for the House to schedule a vote this week, according to several people who spoke with him within the West Wing and on Capitol Hill. Earlier on Thursday, Mr. Ryan appeared to shy away from pushing for a fast vote. “We’re going to go when we have the votes,” he said, adding that Republicans would not be constrained by “some artificial deadline.” House Democrats, sensing an advantage, pressured Republicans to once again back away from the bill, just as they did a month ago in an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan. Democratic leaders threatened to withhold votes from a stopgap spending measure to keep the government open past Friday if Republicans insisted on trying to jam the health care bill through the House on Friday or Saturday, which is Mr. Trump’s 100th day as president.”
Brian Stelter reports an Exclusive: Federal probe of Fox News expands: “The U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Fox News has widened to include a second law enforcement agency. Financial crimes experts from the United States Postal Inspection Service are now involved, according to four sources connected to the investigation. Mail fraud and wire fraud cases are part of the USPIS purview. Investigators from both the USPIS and the Justice Department have been conducting interviews in recent weeks — including with some former Fox staffers — to obtain more information about the network’s managers and business practices, the sources said….In February the investigation was reported to be focusing on settlements made with women who alleged sexual harassment by former Fox News boss Roger Ailes, and questions about whether Fox had a duty to inform shareholders about the settlement payments. The investigators have been asking “how the shareholder money was spent; who knew; and who should have known,” one of the sources said.”
The Times considers President Trump’s Laughable Plan to Cut His Own Taxes: “the skimpy one-page tax proposal his administration released on Wednesday is, by any historical standard, a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future. Two of Mr. Trump’s top lieutenants — Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, both multimillionaires and former Goldman Sachs bankers — trotted out a plan that would slash taxes for businesses and wealthy families, including Mr. Trump’s, in the vague hope of propelling economic growth. So as to not seem completely venal, they served up a few goodies for the average wage-earning family, among them fewer and lower tax brackets and a higher standard deduction. The proposal was so empty of illustrative detail that few people could even begin to calculate its impact on their pocketbooks. Further, depending on where they live, some middle-class families might not benefit much or at all, because the plan does away with important deductions like those for state and local taxes.”
Chicago Bears fans – and the rest of humanity, really – had trouble understanding why their team would go for a quarterback when a defensive player would be so useful. They expressed their surprise:
Bears fans are absolutely devastated pic.twitter.com/hrVG7VaRvF
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) April 28, 2017