Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 6:01 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 13h 55m 10s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 23.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand three hundred seventy-fifth day.
On this day in 1945, Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time).
Recommended for reading in full —
Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, and Paul Kane report Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote:
President Trump on Thursday said he opposes both election aid for states and an emergency bailout for the U.S. Postal Service because he wants to restrict how many Americans can vote by mail, putting at risk the nation’s ability to administer the Nov. 3 elections.
Trump has been attacking mail balloting and the integrity of the vote for months, but his latest broadside makes explicit his intent to stand in the way of urgently needed money to help state and local officials administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic. With nearly 180 million Americans eligible to vote by mail, the president’s actions could usher in widespread delays, long lines and voter disenfranchisement this fall, voting rights advocates said.
Trump said his purpose is to prevent Democrats from expanding mail-balloting, which he has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, would invite widespread fraud. The president has also previously admitted that he believes mail voting would allow more Democrats to cast ballots and hurt Republican candidates, including himself.
In an interview Thursday with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Trump said he opposes a $25 billion emergency injection sought by the U.S. Postal Service, as well as a Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election funding to the states. Both of those requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package.
Tom Scheck, Geoff Hing, and Dee J. Hall report Postal delays, errors in Wisconsin and other swing states loom over election:
Based on its own performance measures — and the loss of hundreds of Wisconsin ballots on their way to voters this summer — the U.S. Postal Service has its work cut out for it before Election Day.
Among the 13 postal districts serving key presidential battleground states, four failed to meet any on-time service goals handling first-class mail between April 1 and June 30, and six districts achieved only one.
The laggards are in, or in parts of, five battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina — politically competitive blends of urban and rural voters that will likely determine the presidential election. The postal service district serving Arizona, also expected to be a highly competitive state but with voters who typically vote by mail, hit both delivery targets.
Denise Lu reports The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000:
Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.
Belarus: Detained protesters ‘repeatedly beaten’ and abused in post-election crackdown: