Daily Bread for 4.3.18

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a mix of rain or snow showers during the day,  a high of thirty-seven, and snow in the evening. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:23 PM, for 12h 52m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1860, the first Westbound Pony Express trip left St. Joseph, Missouri on April 3, 1860 and arrived ten days later in Sacramento, California, on April 14th.

On this day in 1865, Union soldiers take the Confederate capital:

When Petersburg, Virginia, fell on the night of April 2, 1865, Confederate leaders hastily abandoned Richmond. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry participated in the occupation of Petersburg and Richmond. The brigade containing the 19th Wisconsin Infantry was the first to enter Richmond on the morning of April 3rd. Their regimental flag became the first to fly over the captured capital of the Confederacy when Colonel Samuel Vaughn planted it on Richmond City Hall.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Deadspin shows How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media:

How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

➤ Madison’s WMSN decided to resist:

In response to the Sinclair message aired: “WMSN/FOX47 Madison did not air the Sinclair promotional announcement during our 9pm news this weekend. Rather, we stayed true to our commitment to provide our Madison area viewers local news, weather and sports of interest to them.” pic.twitter.com/MdQ568cWrH

— FOX 47 Madison (@fox47madison) April 2, 2018

(Whatever the consequences, they’ve made the right decision.)

➤ Kriston Capps considers Mapping the Threat of a Census Disaster in 2020 (“The GOP seems to be betting that damage from a major undercount will be isolated to Democratic-leaning cities. But it’s not that simple”):

At least a dozen states plan to sue the Trump administration over its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, with the attorneys general of New York and California—populous states with large immigrant populations—leading the charge. But the damage of a potential undercount won’t be confined to the coasts.

Before Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the citizenship question on Tuesday, the Democratic co-chair of the House Census Caucus had already proposed a bill to block last-minute census interference. Democrats in the Senate introduced mirror legislation to ensure that any changes to the census were properly tested before a survey. Another House Democrat from New York floated the possibility of withholding appropriations for the census.

While it’s Democrats who are erupting now, tracking populations that are hard for the census to reach reveals that the damage from an undercount could disrupt conservative-leaning states, too. Counties in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, contain some of the hardest-to-reach populations in the country, according to a mapping tool developed by the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in collaboration with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. A major census undercount could jeopardize new congressional seat pick-ups anticipated by Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and other states that have traditionally trended GOP.

(See also  Trump’s Census policy could boomerang and hurt red states as well as blue states.)

➤ Nick Miroff reports Trump administration, seeking to speed deportations, to impose quotas on immigration judges:

The Trump administration will pressure U.S. immigration judges to process cases faster by establishing a quota system tied to their annual performance reviews, according to new Justice Department directives.

The judges will be expected to clear at least 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” performance rating, a standard that their union called an “unprecedented” step that risks undermining judicial independence and opens the courts to potential challenges.

…

Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the quota system could introduce an “appealable” issue and invite legal challenges.

“It could call into question the integrity and impartiality of the court if a judge’s decision is influenced by factors outside the facts of the case, or if motions are denied out of a judge’s concern about keeping his or her job,” Tabaddor said.

“We don’t know of any other court whose judges are subject to individual quotas and deadlines as part of performance reviews and evaluations,” she said.

(There seems not a single institution Trumpism doesn’t twist.)

➤ Robotic Fish Could Revolutionize How We Study The Ocean: