Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will see a partly cloudy day with a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:28 AM and sunset 7:26 PM, for 12h 58m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with74.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred eleventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1860, a Wisconsin congressman is challenged to a duel:
[W]ith the threat of civil war hanging in the air, John F. Potter, a Wisconsin representative in Congress, was challenged to a duel by Virgina representative Roger Pryor. Potter, a Northern Republican, had become a target of Southerners during heated debates over slavery. After one exchange, Pryor challenged Potter to a duel and Potter, as the one challenged, specified that bowie knives be used at a distance of four feet. Pryor refused and Potter became famous in the anti-slavery movement. Two years later, when Republicans convened in Chicago, Potter was given a seven foot blade as a tribute; the knife hung with pride during all the sessions of the convention. Before his death, Potter remembered the duel and proclaimed, “I felt it was a national matter – not any private quarrel – and I was willing to make sacrifices.” [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners, by Fred L. Holmes]
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Philip Bump writes China’s retaliatory tariffs will hit Trump country hard:
It was inevitable that China would respond in kind to tariffs levied against it by President Trump. The president argued that the trade deficit and Chinese theft of intellectual property necessitated taking economic action. But the net effect is that China also will charge more for American products to enter its country — tariffs that are likely to affect places whose residents voted for Trump more significantly than voters in other areas.
The products to which China will add additional duties include manufactured products such as airplanes and vinyl records. (For some reason.) But they will also apply tariffs to a number of agricultural goods, according to CNBC, including:
- Yellow soybeans
- Black soybeans
- Corn
- Corn flour
- Uncombed cotton
- Sorghum
- Other durum wheat
- Other wheat and mixed wheat
- Tobacco
It won’t surprise you to learn that agricultural areas produce most of these goods. And rural areas supported Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
➤ Brian Stelter reports Sinclair producer in Nebraska resigns to protest ‘obvious bias’:
Justin Simmons gave notice at KHGI TV on March 26. This was after Sinclair’s corporate headquarters mandated that local anchors read the controversial promos warning of “fake” and biased news, but before the promos went viral and became a national topic of discussion.
Simmons told CNNMoney that he had been concerned about Sinclair’s corporate mandates for the past year and a half, and that the promos were just the final straw.
“This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers,” he said.
He said his feelings are shared by others at his station, but didn’t want to say anything that would imperil his colleagues.
Simmons’ decision to quit is a dramatic example of the tensions that exist between Sinclair-owned newsrooms and the company’s Maryland-based management. Staffers like Simmons feel that the conservative owners of Sinclair are interfering in local news coverage. (Most of Sinclair’s stations are CNN affiliates — meaning CNN shares content and resources with them and vice versa.)
(This is the right response. Sinclair is a private business, and it has a right to publish the content it wants. In reply, self-respecting employees should leave as soon as they can, and community residents who object to Sinclair’s content should organize boycotts against advertisers. That’s free society at work: the stations can publish, but residents can – and should – show advertisers how they feel about Sinclair’s views. If Sinclair sinks into the ocean, I’ll not be sorry.)
➤ Craig Gilbert writes Liberal Supreme Court victory boosted by fired-up Democratic base, Dane County landslide:
If the key takeaway from Tuesday’s state Supreme Court race is a fired-up Democratic base, then the most dazzling sign of that energy is the liberal landslide that occurred in Madison and surrounding Dane County.
Dane, the state’s fastest-growing and “bluest” county, showed once again it is on fire politically, galvanized in opposition to Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republican President Donald Trump.
The county turned out a rate 50% higher than the state as a whole.
And it voted 4 to 1 — 81% to 19% — for the more liberal candidate, Rebecca Dallet, over the more conservative one, Michael Screnock.
➤ Molly Ball contends Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job:
Even if his tenure ends tomorrow, Sessions would leave a legacy that will affect millions of Americans. He has dramatically shifted the orientation of the Justice Department, pulling back from police oversight and civil rights enforcement and pushing a hard-line approach to drugs, gangs and immigration violations. He has cast aside his predecessors’ attempts to rectify inequities in the criminal-justice system in favor of a maximalist approach to prosecuting and jailing criminals. He has rescinded the Obama Administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and reversed its stances on voting rights and transgender rights. “I am thrilled to be able to advance an agenda that I believe in,” he told a group of federal prosecutors in Lexington later that day. “I believed in it before I came here, and I’ll believe in it when I’m gone.”
Sessions’ liberal critics agree that he’s been remarkably effective. That’s why they find him so frightening. He has, they charge, put the full force of law behind Trump’s racially coded rhetoric. “The Justice Department is supposed to be protecting people, keeping people safe and affirming our basic rights,” says Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat who took the extraordinary step of testifying against a fellow Senator during Sessions’ confirmation hearings last year. “But he has rolled back the Justice Department’s efforts to do that.” The irony of Sessions’ position is that the same critics who despise his policy initiatives are adamant that Trump should not remove him. “Jeff Sessions is not acting in defense of the rights of Americans. He should not be in that job,” Booker told me. “But I do not think he should be fired for the reasons Donald Trump would fire him.”
(Sessions is effective, in the worst way.)
➤ Nathaniel Lee and Jessica Orwig write an Animated map of Mars reveals where humans should build the first Martian cities: