Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of seventy-six. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 45m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand three hundred fifty-third day.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.
On this day in 1903, Ford Motor Company sells its first car.
Recommended for reading in full —
Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland:
So why is the Trump administration sending into American cities officers who aren’t appropriately trained for the mission, are acting on legal authority that will require litigation to defend, and are being deployed to address a problem that the federal government could address by means far less provocative and in a fashion far less likely to escalate disorder?
The answer is unfortunately obvious. Having given up on controlling the pandemic that has now killed more than 140,000 Americans, and faced with dimming reelection prospects, Trump is doing his best to substantiate the tough-guy vision of the presidency that has always appealed to him. During earlier stages of his administration, he played out this fantasy along the southern border of the United States by deploying troops to the American Southwest and warning about “caravans” of travelers illegally entering the country. Now, as officers typically tasked with enforcing the border have been deployed into Portland, Trump’s apocalyptic warnings about the need for a brutal response to any perceived threat have also moved from the edge of the country into American cities.
Josh Barro writes The Economy Won’t Be Recovering Anytime Soon:
Real-time data from the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker, sponsored by Harvard and Brown universities and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows that consumer spending remains far above the levels from March and April but stopped rising in mid-June and remains below last year’s levels. The recent retrenchment has been national — consumer-spending growth has stalled not just in COVID hot spots like Texas and Arizona but also in states like New York that are performing much better. That suggests consumers are looking at the big picture rather than reacting to outbreaks in their own area. And the grim outlook for schools’ reopening in the fall will serve as a further drain on the economy, making it tough for parents to resume normal work schedules.
The “V-shaped recovery” that Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow forecast as recently as July 8 is not in the cards. A double-dip recession is possible, but the most probable outcome right now looks like treading water, with the fast recovery of the late spring turning into a long, slow slog. Fewer jobs will be created, and many businesses will find themselves unable to stay afloat until conditions improve. Exactly how rough the economic recovery will be depends on many variables, but three will be key: the extent and persistence of COVID outbreaks, whether and how robustly Congress extends additional economic aid to workers and businesses, and whether and when an effective vaccine is widely distributed.
COVID19 – The big questions 6 months on: