Good morning.
Cinco de Mayo in Whitewater will see occasional afternoon thundershowers with a high of seventy. Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:00 PM, for 14h 17m 38s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred eighth day.
On this day in 1862, the Mexican Army defeats French occupying forces at the Battle of Puebla.
Recommended for reading in full:
Maria Perez writes A company tried to open an immigrant detention center in Wisconsin. A community that voted for Trump said no — again:
Plans to build the first privately-run immigration detention center in Wisconsin are off the table — at least for now — part of larger trend in which companies that build them are being encouraged by federal officials but resisted at the state and local level.
For at least a year, Virginia-based Immigration Centers of America wanted to build a 500-bed detention center in St. Croix County. The company said it would generate more than 200 full-time jobs and millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue.
However, earlier this month it withdrew its proposal to build in New Richmond. The city’s staff had issued a report recommending officials reject the application for rezoning and related ordinance changes, saying the project didn’t fit in the city’s development plan. In addition, public outcry over the plan was fierce, with residents opposing the detention of immigrants, and expressing concerns about property values and use of tax dollars.
David Frum writes Trump Attacks Facebook on Behalf of Racists and Grifters (“But unlike in previous eras, the social giant knows it can just ignore the president”):
President Donald Trump despises “fake news.” The Washington Post, The New York Times—these are “enemies of the people.” He has urged the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to force Saturday Night Live off the air to punish the comedy show for making jokes about him.
What he likes are independent and honest voices who say things such as: Vaccines cause autism. President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a “carefully crafted fake.” Democratic Party insiders organized the murder of a staffer to cover up their nefarious plan to blame Russia for the hack of their emails. Sharia police are enforcing sharia law in Minneapolis. The Sandy Hook massacre never happened; the dead children were paid actors. (These are all false claims.)
One thing at least will follow from the president’s Twitter campaign: It will become even more difficult than before for the shamefaced remains of what used to be mainstream conservatism to separate themselves from these grifters, racists, and liars. According to the president, they are now martyrs, saying things that deserve to be heard. There have been times in the past few years—especially during the hoax to shift blame from the Russians for hacking the Democratic National Committee—that Fox News and Infowars blurred into each other. Those days will now return.