Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with thunderstorms and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 48m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 10 AM and Whitewater’s Park Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1780, New England’s Dark Day, an unusual darkening of the day sky, was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada.
Recommended for reading in full —
Quinta Jurecic, Molly E. Reynolds, and Benjamin Wittes write What’s in the Jan. 6 Commission Bill?:
Particularly if Congress does not adjust the composition of the commission, the effectiveness of the body will depend pervasively on the specific individuals named as commissioners and as key staff. If the commissioners want to doggedly pursue the truth and tell the story of what happened on Jan. 6, they can do so under this proposed structure. They can hire a non-partisan staff with critical and diverse expertise, and they can issue subpoenas if needed. But even if only five commissioners want to hit the breaks, they can do that too. And if a few want to use the commission as a forum for denying that the insurrection even happened, there is little to stop them. Indeed, under this legislation, the commission could act a whole lot like a congressional committee, with divided staff chosen more for political loyalty and ties than for expertise and investigative seriousness. Under this bipartisan compromise, the policy will really only be as good as the people.
Danny Hakim, William K. Rashbaum, and Ben Protess report New York’s Attorney General Joins Criminal Inquiry Into Trump Organization:
Donald J. Trump and his family came under increasing pressure from New York investigators after the attorney general’s office said Tuesday it was working alongside the Manhattan district attorney in an ongoing criminal fraud investigation.
The two offices have been conducting parallel investigations for more than a year, though the inquiry by the office of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has been a civil one, meaning it could result in a lawsuit or fines. The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has been conducting a criminal investigation, which could result in charges.
Steve Benen writes Why Trump’s new tech ‘platform’ is so hilariously underwhelming:
Jason Miller, a controversial spokesperson for Trump’s 2020 campaign, told Fox News at the time that the former president was poised to “completely redefine the game” with his new tech initiative.
It was against this backdrop that Fox News ran this report yesterday on Team Trump’s new tech rollout.
Former President Trump launched a communications platform on Tuesday, which will serve as “a place to speak freely and safely,” and will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers, after months of being banned from sites like Twitter and Facebook. The platform, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” appears on www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk.
The same report added that the former president’s project appears to be powered by Campaign Nucleus — the “digital ecosystem made for efficiently managing political campaigns and organizations,” created by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager.
For now, it’s not clear how much Trump and his team paid for this “communications platform,” though I’m awfully curious to find out just how big an investment this was — because the project is hilariously underwhelming.
In fact, to describe this as a “communications platform” is itself generous to the point of comedy. What Team Trump has created is, for all intents and purposes, a rudimentary blog for the former president.