Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:00 PM, for 14h 18m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous, with 73.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1862 at the Battle of the Puebla, now celebrated as Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican Army is victorious over occupying French soldiers.
Recommended for reading in full —
➤ Michael D. Shear, Maggie Haberman, Jim Rutenberg, and Matt Apuzzo report Trump Is Said to Know of Stormy Daniels Payment Months Before He Denied It:
WASHINGTON — President Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer, made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.
How much Mr. Trump knew about the payment to Stephanie Clifford, the actress, and who else was aware of it have been at the center of a swirling controversy for the past 48 hours touched off by a television interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, a new addition to the president’s legal team. The interview was the first time a lawyer for the president had acknowledged that Mr. Trump had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the payments to Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels.
It was not immediately clear when Mr. Trump learned of the payment, which Mr. Cohen made in October 2016, at a time when news media outlets were poised to pay her for her story about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump in 2006. But three people close to the matter said that Mr. Trump knew that Mr. Cohen had succeeded in keeping the allegations from becoming public at the time the president denied it.
(He knew months before he denied it – again, Trump proved to be the liar we always knew him to be.)
➤ Michael Hawthorne reports EPA chief Pruitt overrules staff, gives Wisconsin’s Walker, Foxconn big break on smog:
The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted most of southeast Wisconsin from the latest federal limits on lung-damaging smog pollution, delivering a political victory to Gov. Scott Walkeras he makes a new Foxconn Technology Group factory the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
By dramatically reducing the size of the areas required to crack down on smog, Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt overruled the agency’s career staff, a move that will save Foxconn from having to make expensive improvements as it builds a sprawling new electronics plant in Racine County, just north of the Illinois border in an area with some of the state’s dirtiest air.
Pruitt also pared back the list of counties with dirty air in Illinois and Indiana, a decision that could add to Chicago’s chronic problems with pollution linked to asthma attacks, heart disease and early deaths.
Tweaking the list of counties in violation of federal smog standards is the latest attempt by Pruitt to roll back or delay environmental regulations enacted during the Obama administration. It comes as a new peer-reviewed study found that improvements in air quality across the U.S. have slowed significantly in recent years.
➤ Charles Pierce writes Scott Walker and Scott Pruitt Have Teamed Up on Something. Buckle Up:
Skipping on up to Wisconsin, well, any story in which we can mention both Scott Pruitt and Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run this particular midwest subsidiary, is a good one. Walker has hung his legacy on the massive giveaway to Taiwanese giant FoxConn in the southeastern part of the state, and Pruitt overruled his own people to give Walker and FoxConn a break on turning Racine into a poisonous fog bank. From the Chicago Tribune:
By dramatically reducing the size of the areas required to crack down on smog, Trump EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt overruled the agency’s career staff, a move that will save Foxconn from having to make expensive improvements as it builds a sprawling new electronics plant in Racine County, just north of the Illinois border in an area with some of the state’s dirtiest air.
Is this a bag job? It’s Scott Pruitt. What do you think?
The EPA did not address the last-minute changes in a news release that quoted Pruitt as saying he was “following the data and the law.” But the areas removed from the list were suggested by Republican elected officials who have sought to curb the EPA’s authority to force industries to clean up the air.
“We are working with the EPA to implement a plan that continues to look out for the best interest of Wisconsin,” Walker, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said Tuesday in a Twitter post. “We continue to search for ways to balance between environmental stewardship and a positive, pro-jobs business environment.”
Walker blames Chicago for making the air unhealthy to breathe in parts of Wisconsin. [Ed. Note: Scott Walker Discovers The Wind. Breaking!] However, an EPA staff analysis of industrial pollution, traffic patterns and weather patterns concluded Wisconsin is at least partially responsible for its own smog problems, and documentsfiled with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources show Foxconn would be a major new source of smog-forming pollution.
➤ Jacob Bogage writes Justify? Solomini? How the Kentucky Derby horses get their names:
Every thoroughbred racehorse, no matter its actual birth date, becomes a 2-year-old on the second Jan. 1 of its life, and as 2-year-olds, racehorses need names. Before that age, trainers and grooms usually give the horses nicknames, or refer to them by their mother’s name and the year they born.
American Pharaoh, for example, was once “Littleprincessemma 2012.” To choose his permanent name, the Zayat family convened in January 2014 around good food, and called out their best suggestions for the nearly 50 new horses joining their stable.
The rules for naming a racehorse are as byzantine as the horse’s job is simple. You may not:
- Name a horse using initials or numbers
- End a name with “filly,” “colt,” “stud,” “mare,” “stallion,” or any other horse-related term
- Name a horse after a living person without written permission
- Use the name of a deceased person, unless approved by the Jockey Club, one of American horse racing’s governing bodies
- Use the name of a track or stakes race
- Use names with clear commercial or artistic value
- Use names that are “obscene,” “vulgar” or “in poor taste.”
- Use names identical or nearly identical to horses within certain time frames, depending upon what the original horse accomplished
After that, you get 18 characters. Spaces and punctuation count.
➤ It’s the 2018 Kentucky Derby this afternoon: