Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset is 8:37 PM, for 15h 18m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 16.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1950, in response the communist invasion of South Korea, the United Nations Security Council adopts “S/RES/83: Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing 88% of the UN’s military personnel.” On this day in 1837, Solomon Juneau founds the Milwaukee Sentinel.
Recommended for reading in full —
Molly McKew urges readers to Forget Comey. The Real Story Is Russia’s War on America:
Since the January intelligence report, the public’s understanding of the threat has not expanded. OK, Russia meddled in the election — but so what? Increasingly, responsibility for this is borne by the White House, which in seeking to minimize the political damage of “Trump/Russia” is failing to craft a response to the greatest threat the United States and its allies have ever faced.
Even if the president and his team were correct, and the Comey testimony definitively cleared the president of potential obstruction of justice or collusion charges — even if that were true, that does not also exonerate Russia. Nonetheless, this is a line the president seems to want drawn.
So here are the real issues — about Russia; about the brutal facts we have yet to face; and about some hard questions we need to ask ourselves, and our political leaders, and our president….[listing in detail three key points…1. No matter what is true or not, we have moved toward the fractured, inward-looking, weakened America that President Putin wants to see…2. Russia has altered American policies, our relationships with our allies and our view of our place in the world…3. It will happen again; it is still happening now.
(Even considering Cold War setbacks against the Soviets, Putin’s success against America in 2016 – and dependent as it is on fellow travelers within America – is persuasively the most significant Russian victory over the United States in history.)
Ali Watkins reports that Intelligence officials worry State Dept. going easy on Russian diplomats:
Intelligence officials and lawmakers are concerned that the State Department is dragging its feet in implementing a crackdown on Russian diplomats’ travel within the U.S., despite evidence that Moscow is using lax restrictions to conduct intelligence operations.
The frustration comes amid bipartisan concern that the Trump administration is trying to slow down other congressional efforts to get tough on Russia. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a House committee last week that a new Senate sanctions package designed to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election would limit Trump’s “flexibility” and impede possible U.S. “dialogue” with Moscow.
At issue separately is a provision already signed into law, as part of Congress’ annual Intelligence Authorization Act, approved in May, which requires the State Department to more rigorously enforce travel rules for Russian diplomats inside the U.S. The Kremlin’s U.S.-based diplomatic corps, according to several U.S. intelligence sources, has been known to skip notification rules and use the lax restrictions to roam around the country, likely engaging in surveillance activities.
Elias Grol writes that House Speaker Ryan Punts on Tough Senate Sanctions Bill:
On Tuesday [6.20] Ryan fell back on a constitutional technicality to stall the measure. The bill, which significantly ratchets up sanctions on both Russia and Iran, violates the origination clause of the Constitution, he argued, referring to the requirement that any bill raising revenue originate in the House.
AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, told Foreign Policy that the bill cannot be considered by the House in its current form and that the speaker will “determine the next course of action” after consulting with the Senate.
Sarah Kendzior writes, mocking Trump’s grandiose style of speech, that Trump is the best autocrat. The best. Nobody has a better autocrat than we do:
The administration’s mix of brazenly thwarting laws and maintaining opaqueness on policy was predictable. It mirrors the structure of Trump’s campaign, which vacillated between spectacle (the rallies, the insults) and secrets (the long trail of financial and personal misdeeds left under-covered by reporters due to a mix of NDAs and reporter apathy.) In his first four months, this dynamic persisted as the Trump administration pulled the US toward autocracy through abuse of executive power.
That is, until May, when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. The President’s firing of the man investigating the President’s campaign set forth a chain of events culminating in an investigation into obstruction of justice – and raising the troubling question of whether, in an administration this corrupt, evidence of obstruction of justice will even result in repercussions.
The issues at the heart of the Russian interference crisis go beyond the standard uncertainty that arises when democracy declines. Never before has “to which country does the greatest loyalty of the president lie?” been the central question of a US federal investigation.
It is clear that the greatest loyalties of Trump’s team lie not with the constitution, but with Trump, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions made clear in a hearing in which he danced around perjury. The same holds for the rest of the GOP, who have failed to function as a check on Trump’s autocratic impulses or investigate his foreign ties.
What’s the carbon footprint of one sandwich? Adam Cole explains: