Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see occasional thundershowers with a daytime high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:57 PM, for 13h 57m 06s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.2% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the one thousand ninth day.
Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets today.
On this day in 1864, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry is among the Union forces beginning an expedition to Jasper, Georgia.
Recommended for reading in full:
Heather Long reports Trump finally acknowledges his tariffs could hit consumers:
President Trump has repeated the same mantra for months: The Chinese are paying the full price of his tariffs. It’s a line that the overwhelming majority of economists and business owners say is false, but Trump kept saying it — until Aug. 13.
The White House announced Tuesday that the president’s latest tariffs on China would be delayed on many popular items like cellphones, laptops and strollers. The 10 percent tax would not go into effect until Dec. 15, effectively ensuring retailers can import goods for the holidays before the tariffs take effect.
Trump himself told reporters the delay is to ensure consumers don’t face higher costs this Christmas. Here are his full remarks:
“We are doing this for the Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. consumers. So far they’ve had virtually none. The only impact has been that we’ve collected almost $60 billion from China, compliments of China. But just in case they might have an impact on people, what we’ve done is we’ve delayed it so they won’t be relevant for the Christmas shopping season,” Trump told reporters before he flew to western Pennsylvania.
He used qualifying phrases such as “just in case” and “might have,” but his words — and actions — are a noticeable change from his insistence that the Chinese are paying the full cost of his tariffs. (Note that the harm to American farmers comes from China’s counter-tariffs, which Trump has sought to offset with a bailout targeting farm country.)
Mary Clare Jalonick reports Analysis shows 12% could vote without paper backup in 2020:
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than one in 10 voters could cast ballots on paperless voting machines in the 2020 general election, according to a new analysis, leaving their ballots more vulnerable to hacking.
A study released by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law on Tuesday evaluates the state of the country’s election security six months before the New Hampshire primary and concludes that much more needs to be done. While there has been significant progress by states and the federal government since Russian agents targeted U.S. state election systems ahead of the 2016 presidential election, the analysis notes that many states have not taken all of the steps needed to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
See also Brennan Center study: Voting Machine Security: Where We Stand Six Months Before the New Hampshire Primary.