Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with scattered morning thundershowers, and a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:23 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 12m 09s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 18% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the nine hundred seventieth day.
On this day in 1775, the Second Continental Congress issues the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms.
Recommended for reading in full:
Jeremy Raff reports What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse (‘Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas. She found evidence of infection, malnutrition, and psychological trauma’):
MCALLEN, Texas—Inside the Border Patrol warehouse on Ursula Avenue, Dolly Lucio Sevier saw a baby who’d been fed from the same unwashed bottle for days; children showing signs of malnutrition and dehydration; and several kids who, in her medical opinion, were exhibiting clear evidence of psychological trauma. More than 1,000 migrant children sat in the detention facility here, and Sevier, a local pediatrician, had been examining as many as she could, one at a time. But she wasn’t permitted to enter the area where they were being held, many of them in cages, and find the sickest kids to examine. Instead, in a nearby room, she manually reviewed a 50-page printout of that day’s detainees, and highlighted the names of children with a 2019 birth date—the babies—before moving on to the toddlers.
When it was almost time to leave, Sevier asked to see a 3-year-old girl, and then two other children. But by that point, the friendly and accommodating Border Patrol agent assisting her earlier in the day had been replaced by a dour guard, wearing a surgical mask, who claimed that he couldn’t find the toddler. “We can wait,” Sevier said, as she recalled to me in an interview. Her tone was polite but firm; she knew that she had the right under a federal court settlement to examine whomever she liked.
Paul Fahri reports Whatever happened to Breitbart? The insurgent star of the right is in a long, slow fade:
In January 2017, Breitbart.com was flying high. Donald Trump, the candidate it had backed during the 2016 campaign, was sworn in as president. Its former executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, was named chief White House strategist, seemingly auguring an era of unparalleled access and influence for the far-right, anti-establishment news and commentary site.
In hindsight, it looks like it was Breitbart’s high-water mark.
The site Bannon once described as “the platform for the alt-right” has steadily tumbled from the commanding heights it occupied just 30 months ago.
Since Trump became president, monthly traffic has virtually collapsed, plummeting nearly 75 percent. Aggressive conservative competitors have zoomed past it. At the same time, it faces a double financial whammy: the loss of its biggest donor and an ad boycott launched by a liberal group that continues to erode its revenue.
How Nathan’s Hot Dog Contest Became A Fourth Of July Favorite: