Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-nine. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 11m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 94% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred thirty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM this evening, and the Fire Department has a business meeting at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1934, eight are injured during a riot at a Wisconsin malted milk plant:
On this day three policemen and five office employees of the Horlick Malted Milk Corp. were injured when a crowd of strike sympathizers stormed a motorcade of employees entering the plant’s main gate. Emerging from a crowd of 500 striking employees, the rioters overpowered police escorts, shattered windshields and windows, and pelted officers with rocks. Police blamed Communist influence for the incident, and former Communist congressional candidate John Sekat was arrested in the incident. Employees of the plant were demanding wage increases and recognition of the Racine County Workers Committee as their collective bargaining agent. [Source: Capital Times 7/6/1934, p. 1]
Recommended for reading in full —
Patrick Marley and Jason Stein report that Foxconn considering bringing 10,000 jobs to southeastern Wisconsin, Assembly speaker says:
MADISON – Foxconn Technology Group is considering bringing 10,000 jobs to southeastern Wisconsin, leaders of the state Assembly said Wednesday.
With their passing reference to the proposed project in a memo, the leaders became the first high-ranking state officials to acknowledge the Taiwanese company is considering a massive presence here.
The firm also is considering putting the development in Michigan or other states.
They referred to the possible project as they sought to revive stalled talks over the state budget. Disputes over transportation funding have kept Republicans, who control the Legislature, from reaching a budget deal.
“Recently, technology company, Foxconn, has indicated its desire to locate in southeastern Wisconsin with up to 10,000 jobs, and yet the (funding) of I-94 North-South through Racine and Kenosha counties continues to be delayed,” wrote Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna) and Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), the co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget committee.
(Obvious points: Foxconn is considering other states, they’re sure to ask for huge public incentives to locate here, and Vos has an incentive of a different kind to tout Foxconn’s interest as a point in favor of the additional road-construction money that he wants.)
Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie, and Nathan McDermott report on the 80 times Trump talked about Putin:
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump consistently broke from political orthodoxy in his effusive praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His glowing statements on Putin have become central in stoking the suspicion that he and his campaign were somehow connected to Russian interference in the election.
A CNN KFile review of Trump’s public statements — from the years immediately before his presidential campaign to present — reveal that Trump has contradicted himself over the years about the nature of his relationship with Putin.
Since 2013 — when Trump’s Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow — Trump has at least nine times claimed to have spoken to, met, or made contact with Putin. But as the 2016 campaign wore on and his statements on Putin began to attract more scrutiny, Trump changed course, denying having ever met the Russian president….
Brian Bennett observes that the Stakes are high for Trump’s meeting with Putin. Here’s what to expect:
Should Trump prove unprepared, that won’t be for lack of effort on the Americans’ side.
Leading up to his first face-to-face meeting with Putin, U.S. intelligence officials have prepared a detailed psychological profile of the long-serving Russian strongman, a former KGB officer who spent decades recruiting spies for the Soviet Union and mastered the art of bending people to his will.
The profile, according to two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the preparations, is part of a thick binder prepared for Trump. The president often doesn’t read the usual briefing books and relies on in-person briefings, the officials said, so aides also have written a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin.
(There’s Trump, the great leader: after a tweet-length sentence of 140 characters, he’s spent.)
Lydia Wheeler and Mike Lillis report that Trump’s supposed Voter fraud commission may have violated law:
President Trump’s voter fraud commission may have violated the law by ignoring federal requirements governing requests for information from states, several experts on the regulatory process told The Hill.
Experts say the failure to submit the request to states through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) violates a 1980 law known as the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). They also say the failure could be significant, since states could argue it means they are under no obligation to respond.
“If the commission gets heavy-handed with them, it seems to me that the states are within their right to say, ‘No, we don’t have to respond because you didn’t go through [OIRA],’” said Susan Dudley, a former OIRA administrator who is now director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia for extensive information last week on their voters, including full names and addresses, political party registration and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
Great Big Story presents If You Build It, They Will Come: A Juke Joint’s Field of Dreams:
A Juke Joint’s Field of Dreams from Great Big Story on Vimeo.
Robert “Bilbo” Walker has been playing blues music for over 60 years. Hailing from the same area of the Mississippi Delta as Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, B.B. King and others, Walker has become a legend of the genre in his own right. And for the past seven years, he’s been working on opening his own live music venue, known locally as a “juke joint.” Juke joints—or quasi-legal drinking establishments with live music—are a relic of blues music that were popular until about 50 years ago. Today, they’re nearly extinct. But Walker just celebrated the grand opening of Wonderlight City—a classic-style juke joint located in a remote rural area 20 miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi. With nothing but fields surrounding the establishment, this is one venue you’ll really have to go out of your way to find. But when you happen upon it, you’re in for a real treat.