Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 56m 40s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred twenty-seventh day.
On this day in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opens:
Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East Bay for the occasion. President Chester A. Arthur and Mayor Franklin Edson crossed the bridge to celebratory cannon fire and were greeted by Brooklyn Mayor Seth Low when they reached the Brooklyn-side tower.
Recommended for reading in full:
Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey report ‘He always brings them up’: Trump tries to steer border wall deal to North Dakota firm:
In phone calls, White House meetings and conversations aboard Air Force One during the past several months, Trump has aggressively pushed Dickinson, N.D.-based Fisher Industries to Department of Homeland Security leaders and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commanding general of the Army Corps, according to the administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions. The push for a specific company has alarmed military commanders and DHS officials.
Semonite was summoned to the White House again Thursday, after the president’s aides told Pentagon officials — including Gen. Mark Milley, the Army’s chief of staff — that the president wanted to discuss the border barrier. According to an administration official with knowledge of the Oval Office meeting, Trump immediately brought up Fisher, a company that sued the U.S. government last month after the Army Corps did not accept its bid to install barriers along the southern border, a contract potentially worth billions of dollars.
Jack Shafer observes Trump’s Walkout Hits a Wall:
Emotional terror of the Trump variety works on underlings or his fellow Republican officeholders who fear they’ll lose their positions if they defy the angry king. It also works on the preternaturally polite, who will happily fold if by folding they can cool tempers. But the more Trump puts on the fright wig, the less scary he becomes. The sight of Trump baring his teeth like a wild macaquedoesn’t seem to faze Pelosi and Schumer. Decades in Congress have inured them to this kind of political gnarling.
Tantrums don’t work very well in government as opposed to business, because there are so many more moving parts—separation of powers, political parties, scores of agencies, 50 states and 245 million eligible voters—than in Manhattan real estate. Even when Trump’s party controlled both legislative houses, his tactics couldn’t achieve his complete agenda. What makes him think he can bulldoze the Democrats now that they’re in firm hold of the House, where they’re weakening him with the power of investigation?< Like his Niagara of lies, Trump’s hysterics are just another way of forcing people to live in his factually stunted, theatrical universe. As Pelosi and Schumer have shown, the spell is easily broken.
SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Satellites on Thrice-Flown Rocket, Sticks Landing: