Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 48m 19s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets at 4:30 PM, and the Whitewater School Board will meet at Central Office at 7 PM.
On this day in 1903, the Ford Motor Company sells its first car, a Ford Model A. (Ford later used that same model name in 1927 to designate to a significantly more advanced vehicle.)
Recommended for reading in full —
Charlie Savage explains How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation:
WASHINGTON — When President Trump declassified a memo by House Republicans in February that portrayed the surveillance of a former campaign adviser as scandalous, his motivation was clear: to give congressional allies and conservative commentators another avenue to paint the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference as tainted from the start.
But this past weekend, Mr. Trump’s unprecedented decision, which he made over the objections of law enforcement and intelligence officials, had a consequence that revealed his gambit’s shaky foundation. The government released the court documents in which the F.B.I. made its case for conducting the surveillance — records that plainly demonstrated that key elements of Republicans’ claims about the bureau’s actions were misleading or false.
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Mr. Trump’s portrayal, which came as the administration is trying to repair the damage from his widely criticized meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, revived the claims put forward in February by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. But in respect after respect, the newly disclosed documents instead corroborated rebuttals by Democrats on the panel who had seen the top-secret materials and accused Republicans of mischaracterizing them to protect the president.
Rosalind S. Helderman reports Russian billionaire with U.S. investments backed alleged agent Maria Butina, according to a person familiar with her Senate testimony:
Maria Butina, the Russian woman charged in federal court last week with acting as an unregistered agent of her government, received financial support from Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire with investments in U.S. energy and technology companies, according to a person familiar with testimony she gave Senate investigators.
Butina told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April that Nikolaev provided funding for a gun rights group she represented, according to the person. A spokesman for Nikolaev confirmed that he was in contact with her as she was launching the gun rights group in Russia between 2012 and 2014. He declined to confirm whether Nikolaev gave her financial support.
Nikolaev’s fortune has been built largely through port and railroad investments in Russia. He also sits on the board of American Ethane, a Houston ethane company that was showcased by President Trump at an event in China last year, and is an investor in a Silicon Valley start-up.
Conservative Michael Gerson writes Trump is smashing the hopes of oppressed people everywhere:
So let us take an account of what is being smashed by Donald Trump. In viewing our European allies as a “foe” intent on exploitation, Trump is smashing an alliance that has encouraged peaceful relations within Europe and jointly resisted terrorism and Russian aggression. By questioning NATO’s Article 5 and the principle of collective security, he is smashing a system that has turned a continent prone to war and genocide into a flawed but functioning community of free nations. By ignoring and denying the moral power of American ideals and expressing a deeply un-American dictator envy, Trump is smashing our sense of national mission along with the hopes of oppressed people everywhere.
And for what? For a form of extreme nationalism that serves someone else’s nation? For a definition of strength that trades away the tremendous advantage of our defining ideals? This is a work of demolition without the inconvenience of new architecture. Yet among his Republican supporters, none dare call it idiocy.
Vladimir Kara-Murza explains What’s really behind Putin’s obsession with the Magnitsky Act:
It was then that Browder turned from investment to full-time advocacy, traveling the world to persuade one Western parliament after another to pass a measure that was as groundbreaking as it would appear obvious: a law, commemoratively named the Magnitsky Act, that bars individuals (from Russia and elsewhere) who are complicit in human rights abuses and corruption from traveling to the West, owning assets in the West and using the financial system of the West. Boris Nemtsov, then Russia’s opposition leader (who played a key role in convincing Congress to pass the law in 2012), called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign Parliament.”
It was the smartest approach to sanctions. It avoided the mistake of targeting Russian citizens at large for the actions of a small corrupt clique in the Kremlin and placed responsibility directly where it is due. It was also the most effective approach. The people who are in charge of Russia today like to pose as patriots, but in reality, they care little about the country. They view it merely as a looting ground, where they can amass personal fortunes at the expense of Russian taxpayers and then transfer those fortunes to the West. In one of his anti-corruption reports, Nemtsov detailed the unexplained riches attained by Putin’s personal friends such as Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, noting that they are likely “no more that the nominal owners … and the real ultimate beneficiary is Putin himself.” Similar suspicions were voiced after the publication of the 2016 Panama Papers, which showed a $2 billion offshore trail leading to another close Putin friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin. Some of the funds in his accounts were linked with money from the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky.
Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime. The clearest and the most convincing answer was provided, time and again, by the Putin regime itself. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin tasked his foreign ministry with trying to stop; it was the Magnitsky Act that was openly tied to the ban on child adoptions; it was the Magnitsky Act that was the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-linked lawyer; it is advocating for the Magnitsky Act that may soon land any Russian citizen in prison. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin named as the biggest threat to his regime as he stood by Trump’s side in Helsinki.
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Vladimir Putin has left no doubt: The biggest threat to his regime is the Magnitsky Act, which stops its beneficiaries from doing what has long become their raison d’être — stealing in Russia and spending in the West. It is time for more Western nations to adopt this law — and for the six countries that already have it to implement it with vigor and resolve.
Simon Whistler describes The North’s Air Force During the American Civil War: