Good morning. 
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 85. Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 17m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1974, President Nixon, under orders of the US Supreme Court, releases the “Smoking Gun” tape, recorded on June 23, 1972, clearly revealing his actions in covering up and interfering investigations into the break-in.
Recommended for reading in full —
Michael Gerson writes We shouldn’t be cruel about covid deaths. We should focus on getting everyone vaccinated:
Some of America may be suffering an outbreak of schadenfreude. Many have walked past the empty vaccination sites at Walmart and Costco, in a country where only half the people have taken the full dose of a miracle medicine that could save their lives. At some point, doesn’t recklessness deserve its reward?
But God help us if everyone got the health outcomes we deserved, when we eat poorly, or refuse to exercise, or ignore symptoms of illness — any of which might eventually bring a higher risk of death than covid vaccine hesitancy. Some of us take our recklessness in smaller, extended dosages.
….
Yet it is political figures who merit the most disgust. Consider Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. His state is the epicenter of the delta outbreak, accounting for 1 of every 5 new covid infections nationwide. Yet he is not, as the Daytona Beach News-Journal points out, holding daily emergency briefings. Instead: “DeSantis sent out a campaign email accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci … of somehow scheming with the Chinese over the spread of the coronavirus — while at the same time proclaiming the economic folly of taking basic precautions against the disease.” Last month, the DeSantis campaign rolled out a line of T-shirts and beer koozies with anti-Fauci themes. “Yep,” the News-Journal concluded, “He has merch.”
This remains lethal lunacy.
CBS News reports Target to require workers to mask up in areas where Delta variant is surging:
Minneapolis-based Target said Monday that, starting August 3, it will require all store workers in counties that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says face a “substantial or high risk of transmission” to wear face coverings. The big-box retailer, which has more than 1,900 stores, also said it will continue recommending that customers wear masks in its locations, but stopped short of requiring face coverings.
Juliette Kayyem writes Unvaccinated People Need to Bear the Burden:
The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available, at least to adults. Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone. But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people. The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate—a sweeping suggestion that the Biden administration could not easily enact if it wanted to—but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take. It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel—and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.
Isaac Stanley-Becker and David A. Fahrenthold report His campaign is over. But Trump’s political groups are still spending donor money at his properties:
Save America, the leadership PAC where former president Donald Trump is asking loyalists to direct their political contributions, paid for lodging about two dozen times in the first six months of 2021.
Nine of those times, the payments went to properties owned by the former president, according to a filing made public on Saturday. All told, the PAC sent at least $68,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection, showing how the real estate mogul — long after ending his presidential campaign and leaving office — continues to use donor money at his own properties.
‘Explosive Growth’ of California’s Dixie Fire Forces 15,000 to Evacuate: