Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 10.  Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 5:18 PM, for 10h 18m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 12.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Involvement & Cable TV Commission meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4 PM.

 On this day in 1922, President Warren G. Harding introduces the first radio set in the White House.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Daphne Chen and Jordyn Noennig report A 22-year-old student leader was shot and killed near 22nd St. and Wisconsin Avenue:

Milwaukee police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old Milwaukee man just before 12:30 p.m. Saturday in the 2200 block of West Wisconsin Avenue.

Police identified the victim as Purcell A. Pearson, a recent UW-Whitewater graduate and nephew of Milwaukee City Attorney Tearman Spencer.

According to a profile of Pearson written by the university in June, the 22-year-old psychology major planned to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology and eventually open up a mental health practice to serve low-income, diverse neighborhoods.

Pearson was also a leader in the Black Student Union, according to the profile, and helped create a campus police officer liaison position to represent concerns of Black students. He also served as chapter president of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Last year, Pearson won a UW systemwide competition focused on communicating research findings to the public. His competition entry focused on the overrepresentation of Black men as criminals in the news media.

Michael S. Schmidt reports Breaking With G.O.P., Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial (‘Charles J. Cooper, a stalwart of the conservative legal establishment, said that Republicans were wrong to assert that it is unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for impeachable offenses’):

Mr. Cooper said they were misreading the Constitution.

“The provision cuts against their interpretation,” he wrote. He argued that because the Constitution allows the Senate to bar officials convicted of impeachable offenses from holding public office again in the future, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”

Mr. Cooper’s decision to take on the argument was particularly significant because of his standing in conservative legal circles. He was a close confidant and adviser to Senate Republicans, like Ted Cruz of Texas when he ran for president, and represented House Republicans — including the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California — in a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also the lawyer for conservative stalwarts like John R. Bolton and Jeff Sessions, and over his career defended California’s same-sex marriage ban and had been a top outside lawyer for the National Rifle Association.

Paulina Villegas and Hannah Knowles report After Capitol riot, desperate families turn to groups that ‘deprogram’ extremists:

Parents for Peace, a 10-person operation of mostly volunteers,says calls to its national helpline have tripled since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with a growing number of younger people being groomed in white supremacist ideology. After supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the intervention groups have experienced a deluge of calls related to the attack as well as to conspiracy theories and QAnon.

The range of extremist ideas they encounter also has widened in the past year, driven by the 2020 election and the pandemic.

With the federal government sounding some of its strongest alarms yet about the threat of domestic extremism,these groups say they offer a way forward. Often staffed in part by the formerly radicalized, they are on the front lines of the fight against right-wing extremism, a growing threat that is in the spotlight but which experts argue has long been neglected.

London’s thinnest house for sale for over a million euros:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 2.  Sunrise is 7:00 AM and sunset 5:17 PM, for 10h 16m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 19.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1904, a the Great Baltimore Fire starts: it destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Toluse Olorunnipa and Michelle Ye Hee Lee report Trump’s lie that the election was stolen has cost $519 million (and counting) as taxpayers fund enhanced security, legal fees, property repairs and more:

President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot — and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.

The total so far: $519 million.

The costs have mounted daily as government agencies at all levels have been forced to devote public funds to respond to actions taken by Trump and his supporters, according to a Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, as well as interviews with government officials. The expenditures include legal fees prompted by dozens of fruitless lawsuits, enhanced security in response to death threats against poll workers, and costly repairs needed after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. That attack triggered the expensive massing of thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington amid fears of additional extremist violence.

Although more than $480 million of the total is attributable to the military’s estimated expenses for the troop deployment through mid-March, the financial impact of the president’s refusal to concede the election is probably much higher than what has been documented thus far, and the true costs may never be known.

(Trumpism has been a pestilence on America.)

Beth Reinhard, Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, and Josh Dawsey report The cottage industry behind Trump’s pardons: How the rich and well-connected got ahead at the expense of others:

A federal judge in South Dakota was blunt last summer when she sentenced Paul Erickson, a seasoned Republican operative who had pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering.

“What comes through is that you’re a thief, and you’ve betrayed your friends, your family, pretty much everyone you know,” District Judge Karen E. Schreier told Erickson in July, before sentencing him to seven years in prison for scamming dozens of people out of $5.3 million.

But Erickson, who had advised GOP presidential campaigns and a noted conservative organization, had a way out.

He had the support of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, a member of President Donald Trump’s inner orbit. And, unrelated to his conviction, he had been caught up in the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, an inquiry much reviled by Trump.

For years, [Susan] Holden said, Erickson lied to her on a near-daily basis about the project, guaranteeing that she would not lose money. He even traveled to North Dakota to meet her and her 80-year-old mother, showing off a parcel of land he claimed had been purchased with her money.

In fact, Erickson admitted in court that he never bought any land for the project. His pardon means he no longer has to pay her or his other victims restitution.

“I was crushed,” Holden said. “All I could think of was, ‘Goddamnit, Trump, you didn’t even look into the case. Kellyanne walked into your office and said, ‘This poor guy, Russia witch hunt’ — and you did it.’?”

Find Mars, Gemini and the Winter Circle in February 2021 skywatching:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of ten.  Sunrise is 7:02 AM and sunset 5:15 PM, for 10h 13m 47s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 29.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1778, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce are signed by the United States and France signaling official recognition of the new republic

Recommended for reading in full — 

Dan Alexander reports Trump Shifted Campaign-Donor Money Into His Private Business After Losing The Election:

^Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, which never received a cent from the former president, moved an estimated $2.8 million of donor money into the Trump Organization—including at least $81,000 since Trump lost the election.

In addition, one of the campaign’s joint-fundraising committees, which collects money in partnership with the Republican Party, shifted about $4.3 million of donor money into Trump’s business from January 20, 2017, to December 31, 2020—at least $331,000 of which came after the election.

The money covered the cost of rent, airfare, lodging and other expenses. All the payments are laid out in filings the campaign submitted to the Federal Election Commission. Representatives for the Trump Organization, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Two days after the election, on November 5, the joint-fundraising committee paid $11,000 to Trump’s hotel empire. A week later—after the Associated Press, Fox News and other major media outlets had already called the race for Joe Biden—the same committee put another $294,000 into Trump’s hotel business to rent space, order catering and pay for lodging.

(The Trump campaign has been a funnel from low-income donors to Trump’s under-performing properties.)

 Ryan Mac and Rosie Gray report Donald Trump’s Business Sought A Stake In Parler Before He Would Join:

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

(The Trump Organization wanted a stake in a racist social media platform. Of course they did.)

Gabrielle Canon reports Fox News cancels Lou Dobbs Tonight:

News of the cancellation came one day after Dobbs, 75, was named as a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election technology company and voting machine maker, which accuses Dobbs and other Fox News anchors of promoting unfounded claims that Smartmatic was involved in a scheme to hand the presidency to Joe Biden.

Citing the fabricated reporting, Smartmatic sued to the tune of $2.7bn. The 285-page lawsuit, filed in New York state supreme court, claims the network launched a “disinformation campaign” against the company, whose voting machines were only used in Los Angeles county. Trump’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell who appeared as guests on the network, were also named in the defamation suit.

(Dobbs had the highest-rated program on Fox Business. Ratings aren’t what did him in.)

Yellowstone Bison Are Built for Winter Survival:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of eighteen.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:14 PM, for 10h 11m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 40.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt report Biden Signals Break With Trump Foreign Policy in a Wide-Ranging State Dept. Speech:

President Biden on Thursday ordered an end to arms sales and other support to Saudi Arabia for a war in Yemen that he called a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe” and declared that the United States would no longer be “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions.”

The announcement was the clearest signal Mr. Biden has given of his intention to reverse the way President Donald J. Trump dealt with two of the hardest issues in American foreign policy.

Mr. Trump regularly rejected calls to rein in the Saudis for the indiscriminate bombing they carried out in their intervention in the civil war in Yemen as well as for the killing of a dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, on the grounds that American sales of arms to Riyadh “creates hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the United States. And he repeatedly dismissed evidence of interference by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in American elections and Russia’s role in a highly sophisticated hacking of the United States government.

Saudi leaders knew that the move was coming. Mr. Biden had promised to stop selling arms to them during the presidential campaign, and it follows the new administration’s announcement last month that it was pausing the sale of $478 million in precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, a transfer the State Department approved in December over strong objections in Congress. The administration has also announced a review of major American arms sales to the United Arab Emirates.

Tanvi Misra reports Revealed: US citizen newborns sent to Mexico under Trump-era border ban:

At least 11 migrant women were dropped off in Mexican border towns without birth certificates for their days-old US citizen newborns since March of last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project and the Guardian has found.

Based on multiple conversations with lawyers who work with asylum seekers at the border and a review of hospital records and legal documents, multiple US citizen newborns were removed to Mexico after their mothers were subject to a Trump-era border ban that the Biden-Harris administration has been slow to rescind.

Advocates suspect the actual number of such cases could be higher because the vast majority of these fast-track “expulsions”, as the administration calls them, have occurred away from the public eye and without the involvement of lawyers.

 Inae Oh writes In Voting to Back Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP Goes Full Q:

Only eleven Republicans votedfor the Democrats’ move to oust Greene from her committees. It was mostly a powerful show of support from some of the GOP’s top officials for someone supposedly ripping their party apart. Despite all the hand-wringing over an existential crisis within the GOP, their votes to protect Greene actually appeared quite a simple task. Still, the resolution passed and Greene was stripped of committee assignments.

Exposing Government Botnets That Spread Propaganda:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be snowy with a high of thirty-three.  Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 08m 44s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 52.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

  Whitewater’s Landmarks Commisison meets via audiovisual conferencing at 3:30 PM.

 On this day in 1825, the Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Gina Barton reports ‘We fell short.’ Milwaukee police admit mistakes in rape investigation of developer, will transfer case to another agency:

The Milwaukee Police Department has admitted making mistakes in the sexual assault investigation of a prominent Milwaukee real estate developer and agreed to transfer the case to another law enforcement agency, according to a legal settlement filed this week.

The settlement, reached in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, creates a path for crime victims throughout Wisconsin to ensure their rights are protected. While state law lays out those rights, the responsibility for enforcement falls to police and prosecutors. Before now, victims had little recourse if those agencies failed.

The settlement resolves the civil rights case of a woman (identified publicly only as Jane Doe) who says Milwaukee police mishandled her rape complaint against Kalan Haywood Sr., who has received millions in taxpayer-backed incentives for city redevelopment projects.

Haywood has denied the allegations and has not been arrested or charged.

Hannah Knowles and Meryl Kornfield report Fired Ohio police officer charged with murder in shooting of Black man holding cellphone:

A former Ohio police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man while responding late last year to a noise complaint was indicted Wednesday on murder and other charges, the state’s attorney general said.

Adam Coy, now fired from the Columbus police force, shot 47-year-old Andre Hill on Dec. 22 as Hill held a cellphone inside a friend’s garage. Coy did not turn on his body camera but the incident was captured thanks to the 60-second “look back” function on the device that records video but not audio, police said.

Wednesday’s charges came amid calls for law enforcement officers to face accountability in deadly use of force against Black Americans, an issue that sparked historic protests across the country last year. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R), who acted as the special prosecutor in the Hill case, said Coy was charged with murder in the commission of a felony, felonious assault and two counts of dereliction of duty.

Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich report McKinsey Settles for $573 Million Over Role in Opioid Crisis:

McKinsey & Company, the consultant to blue-chip corporations and governments around the world, has agreed to pay $573 million to settle investigations into its role in helping “turbocharge” opioid sales, a rare instance of it being held publicly accountable for its work with clients.

The firm has reached the agreement with attorneys general in 47 states, the District of Columbia and five territories, according to five people familiar with the negotiations. The settlement comes after lawsuits unearthed a trove of documents showing how McKinsey worked to drive sales of Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin painkiller amid an opioid epidemic in the United States that has contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 people over the past two decades.

McKinsey’s extensive work with Purdue included advising it to focus on selling lucrative high-dose pills, the documents show, even after the drugmaker pleaded guilty in 2007 to federal criminal charges that it had misled doctors and regulators about OxyContin’s risks. The firm also told Purdue that it could “band together” with other opioid makers to head off “strict treatment” by the Food and Drug Administration.

Time-lapse video – Driving around Milwaukee in the snow:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of twenty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:11 PM, for 10h 06m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1959, rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson are killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs report Biden Issues Orders to Dismantle Trump’s ‘America First’ Immigration Agenda:

A trio of executive orders signed on Tuesday reflect a reimagining of America’s place in the world after four years of Mr. Trump’s “America First” vision. But administration officials and immigration advocates cautioned that will not happen immediately. Mr. Biden’s government is wary of flinging open the border until it has rebuilt an asylum and refugee system that can process potentially large influxes of people.

With thousands of migrants already living in squalor on the Mexican side of the border, a crisis could develop quickly, and that would be a nightmare for the new president this early in his term. And the effort to locate parents and children separated in the summer of 2018 will take months, if not years.

….

Mr. Biden said the orders would also begin to address “the root causes” of migration toward the southern border and begin a “full review of the previous administration’s harmful and counterproductive immigration policies.”

“There’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders that I have signed,” he added. “I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy.”

Andrea Salcedo reports L. Lin Wood spent months falsely claiming voter fraud cost Trump the election. Now Georgia is investigating whether he voted illegally:

For months, conservative attorney L. Lin Wood loudly spread former president Donald Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud had flipped the election. Wood spoke at rallies and filed unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to undo President Biden’s victory in Georgia, which Biden won by nearly 11,700 votes.

Now, Georgia officials have launched a voter fraud probe with a new target: Wood.

On Monday, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office confirmed to CNN it is investigating whether Wood was a legal resident of the state when he cast his ballot in the Nov. 3 presidential election. The news was first reported by WSB-TV.

The inquiry was prompted by an email Wood allegedly sent a WSB-TV reporter stating that he had been living in South Carolina for “several months” after buying a home there in April, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office told the Atlanta TV station.

Nick Fiorrelini reports New push to rename Donald Trump state park amid complaints:

For years, Sandy Galef has received complaints and questions from many of her constituents over the Donald J Trump state park in suburban New York.

And since Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol earlier this year, lawmakers, advocates and residents are once again pushing to rename the underdeveloped 436-acre park in hopes of sparking a dialogue on social justice and spurring much-needed private contributions to improve the space.

Galef, a New York assemblywoman who started investigating whether the park’s name could be changed at the start of Trump’s presidency, chose earlier this month to push to rename the park after the former New York governor George Pataki, who also represented the park area as an assemblyman and a state senator.

Tonight’s Sky for February:

Good morning.

Groundhog Day in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of twenty-seven.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:10 PM, for 10h 03m 45s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1846, the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin charters Beloit College.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Alex Isenstadt reports Trump pollster’s campaign autopsy paints damning picture of defeat:

The post-mortem, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, says the former president suffered from voter perception that he wasn’t honest or trustworthy and that he was crushed by disapproval of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And while Trump spread baseless accusations of ballot-stuffing in heavily Black cities, the report notes that he was done in by hemorrhaging support from white voters.

The 27-page report, which was written by Trump chief pollster Tony Fabrizio, shows how Trump advisers were privately reckoning with his loss even as the former president and many of his supporters engaged in a conspiracy theory-fueled effort to overturn the election. The autopsy was completed in December 2020 and distributed to Trump’s top political advisers just before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

….

The findings are based on an analysis of exit polling in 10 states. Five of them — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are states that Trump lost after winning them in 2016. The other five — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — are states that Trump won in both elections.

The report zeroes in on an array of demographics where Trump suffered decisive reversals in 2020, including among white seniors, the same group that helped to propel him to the White House. The autopsy says that Trump saw the “greatest erosion with white voters, particularly white men,” and that he “lost ground with almost every age group.” In the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump’s biggest drop-off was among voters aged 18-29 and 65 and older.

Suburbanites — who bolted from Trump after 2016 — also played a major role. The report says that the former president suffered a “double-digit erosion” with “White College educated voters across the board.”

The picture of the election presented in the report is widely shared by political professionals in both parties, if not by Trump and his legions of his supporters.

 Michael Gerson writes Trumpism is American fascism:

How can anyone view the trashing of our founding tradition as evidence of patriotism? Because some have adopted a very different political philosophy than the Founders held. This approach to government promises the recovery of a mythical past. It feeds a sense of White victimhood. It emphasizes emotion over reason. It denigrates experts and expertise. It slanders outsiders and blames them for social and economic ills. It warns of global plots by Jews and shadowy elites. It accepts the lies of a leader as a deeper form of political truth. It revels in anger and dehumanization. It praises law and order while reserving the right to disobey the law and overturn the political order through violence.

This is a reality that I have resisted naming. The 45th president and a significant portion of his supporters have embraced American fascism. And Trump’s buffoonery does not disprove the point. Though he probably cannot name the political theory he has embraced, his own recklessness, vanity and authoritarian instincts have led him down fascist grooves. He displays an intuitive affinity for leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. And Trump would have subverted the legitimate result of the 2020 presidential election if he could have, which would have broken a constitutional continuity that has endured over two centuries.

Panda plays in the snow at the Washington, D.C. National Zoo: