Good morning. 
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 56s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 32.39% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivers his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.
Recommended for reading in full —
Miranda Bryant reports Justice department called Trump election claims ‘pure insanity,’ emails show:
Donald Trump attempted to enlist top US law enforcement officials in his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election – in an effort branded “pure insanity” – newly released emails reveal.
The documents, released by the House of Representatives’ oversight committee on Tuesday, show an increasingly desperate bid by the former president and his allies to hold on to power after he lost November’s election.
“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, said.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told justice department officials to investigate false allegations of voter fraud at least five times, according to the documents, including the conspiracy theory “Italygate”. Richard Donoghue, then acting deputy attorney general, responded to an email about the theory as “pure insanity”.
What’s the significance of the emails? They show that Trump pressured the then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to make the justice department take up election fraud claims, writes our Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith.
Republicans are trying to block a Senate inquiry into the Trump justice department’s secret data seizure from Democrats to track down leaks of classified information.
And woes are mounting for the lawyers who pushed Trump’s election conspiracies. Lawyers including L. Lin Wood and Sidney Powell face federal inquiries and defamation suits threatening their careers, writes Peter Stone.
Darrell West writes Time to make essential medicines within the United States:
Part of the current challenge is the heavy reliance on foreign manufacturers. Few medications are made in the United States and that creates domestic risks. In a world with a considerable number of geopolitical uncertainties, it is challenging to rely on nations with which America has an adversarial relationship. Right now, there are many complicating issues in the relationship with China including trade, national security, and foreign policy. As the two countries move from a relationship that emphasized cooperation to one that is either competitive or conflictual, the risk of medical drugs being made in China increases. Depending on how relations ebb and flow, there could be times where China needs to redirect drug and PPE manufacturing to domestic needs as opposed to foreign ones. Or they could use its control of drug production to reward allies and punish adversaries. Either way, it is risky for the United States to rely heavily upon China during a time of considerable tension.
William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess, and Jonah E. Bromwich report Trump Executive Could Face Charges as Soon as This Summer:
The Manhattan district attorney’s office appears to have entered the final stages of a criminal tax investigation into Donald J. Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, setting up the possibility he could face charges this summer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
In recent weeks, a grand jury has been hearing evidence about Mr. Weisselberg, who is facing intense scrutiny from prosecutors as they seek his cooperation with a broader investigation into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, the people with knowledge of the matter said. The prosecutors have obtained Mr. Weisselberg’s personal tax returns, the people said, providing the fullest picture yet of his finances.