Good morning. 
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-three. Sunrise is 6:09 AM and sunset 7:46 PM, for 13h 36m 47s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the one thousand three hundred eighty-second day.
On this day in 1770, James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
Recommended for reading in full —
Justin Baragona, Maxwell Tani, and Andrew Kirell report How Fox News Helped Boost Bannon’s ‘We Build the Wall’ Fiasco:
According to federal prosecutors, Bannon and Kolfage, along with two others, defrauded the hundreds of thousands of donors who gave $25 million to their effort to privately fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The alleged wall scammers used those funds—despite publicly claiming “All money donated to the campaign goes directly to the wall!”—to line their own pockets and purchase luxury items, the indictment claimed.
Since the viral fundraiser launched in late 2018, Bannon and Kolfage separately appeared on Fox News on more than a few occasions to tout their efforts to the network’s audience and its uncritical, often credulously supportive on-air personalities. While the effort garnered some mainstream media attention, few outlets were as openly supportive of Kolfage and Bannon in their endeavor.
“A story of the can-do American spirit in action,” Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham beamed about the fundraiser before interviewing Kolfage during her Dec. 20, 2018 broadcast.
During their chat, Ingraham repeatedly praised Kolfage and teed him up to bash critics who argued against a border wall or called the fundraiser a publicity stunt. “I’d say they’re full of crap. And this is the United States and we can do anything we want,” Kolfage said. “And if people want to donate to that wall and give their money, they can do it. I mean, what’s 80 bucks for 60 million people? The common person can give that kind of money.”
Toluse Olorunnipa and Isaac Stanley-Becker report Touting conspiracy theories, Trump welcomes fringe views into the political mainstream:
Trump rose to political prominence pitching the racist and false conspiracy theory that former president Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the presidency. He sought to associate the father of one of his primary opponents, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, with the assassin who shot John F. Kennedy. And once in office, he peddled the debunked idea that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote.
“These folks — QAnon supporters and other conspiracy-minded people — brought him to the prom,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami and co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories.” “Now he has to dance with them.”
The president’s willingness to embrace fringe conspiracies has only increased as he has spent more time in office, despite his access to top-notch intelligence assessments that debunk many of his views. Trump has increasingly turned to conspiracy theories as his presidency has faced its greatest head winds yet, amid a pandemic, economic downturn and racial unrest.
Robbie Whelan reports Troubled Covid-19 Data System Returning to CDC:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is reversing course on a change to the way hospitals report critical information on the coronavirus pandemic to the government, returning the responsibility for data collection to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.