Good morning.
Monday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:22 AM and sunset 8:36 PM, for 15h 14m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 74% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Map by Hal Jespersen, www.posix.com/CW
On this day in 1863, Union and Confederate forces fight for a third and final day at the Battle of Gettysburg:
“On the third day of battle, fighting resumed on Culp’s Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett’s Charge. The charge was repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great loss to the Confederate army.[15]
Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle, the most costly in US history.
On November 19, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address.”
Union lieutenant Frank Haskell of Madison played a key role in defeating the rebels:
July 3, 1863, is famous for Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, when 12,500 Confederate soldiers attacked the Union line. When Union generals were carried from the field wounded, their troops faltered and their line began to break. Lieutenant Frank Haskell of Madison rode into their midst, rallied them back to the fight, and then brought reinforcements that stopped the enemy attack. Iron Brigade General John Gibbon commented afterward, “I have always thought that to him, more than to any one man, are we indebted for the repulse of Lee’s assault.” It turned not only the tide of the battle but, through the Confederate defeat, the momentum of the war.
Recommended for reading in full —
Olivia Beavers reports that DOJ corporate compliance watchdog resigns citing Trump’s conduct:
A top Justice Department official who serves as a corporate compliance watchdog has left her job, saying she felt she could no longer force companies to comply with the government’s ethics laws when members of the administration she works for have conducted themselves in a manner that she claims would not be not tolerated.
Hui Chen had served in the department’s compliance counsel office until she resigned in June, breaking her silence in a LinkedIn post last week highlighted by The International Business Times, which points to the Trump administration’s behavior as the reason for her job change.
“To sit across the table from companies and question how committed they were to ethics and compliance felt not only hypocritical, but very much like shuffling the deck chair on the Titanic,” Chen wrote.
The former federal prosecutor pointed to the multiple lawsuits filed against President Trump questioning the legality of his ties to his family business empire.
Kelly Weill reports that, concerning one of Trump’s lawyers, Jay Sekulow’s Son Made Close to $1 Million From Family Charity:
Poor Christians opened their wallets to a religious nonprofit run by Donald Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow. In turn, Sekulow hired one of his own teenage sons—straight out of a Nickelodeon internship—and named him a “director” of the charity, where the son subsequently earned nearly a million dollars.
Authorities in New York and North Carolina are investigating Sekulow’s charity, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, following reports that the nonprofit doled out millions to Sekulow and his immediate family. On Tuesday, The Guardian revealed that the so-called charity led an aggressive telemarketing campaign, asking impoverished Christians to “sacrifice” their money, or warning them that “Islamic extremists are headed in your direction, and you are most likely the main target.”
Over $886,000 of those donations from CASE and its related organizations was paid out to Logan Sekulow, Jay’s son, who was first named a CASE “director” when he was just 18.
The Sekulow family has full control of CASE, which raked in $229 million in donations from 2011 to 2015 alone, The Washington Post reported. CASE solicited donations through an aggressive phone campaign. A script for CASE telemarketers, obtained by The Guardian, instructed callers to pressure the poor for money. “Could you possibly make a small sacrificial gift of even $20 within the next three weeks?” the script instructed telemarketers to ask retirees, the unemployed, and other people who said they were too poor to give. The donations would go toward preserving “our traditional Christian values,” the script said.
Morgan Brinlee writes that Trump’s Pick To Lead A Civil Rights Office Is A Lawyer Who Fought Against Civil Rights:
President Donald Trump recently nominated Eric Dreiband to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Yet despite Dreiband having once served as general counsel of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), various civil rights groups have voiced concerns over his private-sector work. According to multiple civil rights advocates, his history of defending businesses against discrimination lawsuits stands in direct opposition to the work of the Civil Rights Division….
According to The Washington Post, Dreiband argued for Abercrombie that the woman had not informed the company that her headscarf was an expression of her religious belief. The court ruled 8-1 in favor of Drieband’s former employer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which had sued on behalf of the Muslim teen.
As for Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Schwirtz, William K. Rashbaum, and Danny Hakim report that Trump Foot Soldier Sidelined Under Glare of Russia Inquiry:
“If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Mr. Cohen once said during an interview with ABC News. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”
Since Mr. Trump became president, his need for loyal foot soldiers like Mr. Cohen has never been greater. But instead of helping his longtime employer navigate F.B.I. and congressional investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, Mr. Cohen now appears to be outside the Trump inner circle, a man on the defensive.
The House Intelligence Committee has summoned him for questioning in its inquiry. (Mr. Cohen’s lawyer in Washington said his client was cooperating.) He is under scrutiny by the F.B.I., along with other Trump associates, in the Russia investigation. An unverified dossier prepared by a retired British spy and published this year said that Mr. Cohen had met overseas with Kremlin officials and other Russian operatives, which he has denied. (He once posted on Twitter, “The #RussianDossier is WRONG!”)
Macy’s will set off 60,000 fireworks this 4th of July — here’s how they set it all up: