Johnson called on Republicans to run candidates at every level of public office, arguing that the GOP has spent too much time focused on federal elections while letting seats go at the local levels.
“Take back our school boards, our county boards, our city councils. We will take back our culture. We don’t have to fear this anymore,” Johnson said, advocating the concept of “trickle-up elections.”
Johnson’s call is both predictable and ironic. It’s predictable he’s likely to run for re-election despite a promise not to do so, and predictable his conservative populist supporters have an endless list of grievances.
And yet, and yet — Johnson’s cultural call to his populist supporters is ironic, too. He is speaking to a poorly acculturated horde: proud nativists who claim their rights are violated while understanding little of law or history, who traffic in ludicrous conspiracies, who are less productive than their adversaries (1, 2), and who show a lack of impulse control even in ordinary social settings.
One should not underestimate these populists, as they’re limitlessly animated in grievances and accusations, but no less intelligent than any others. (It is they who erroneously think that some groups by race or ethnicity are more or less intelligent than others; about this, it is they who are more wrong than they are about other subjects.)
Johnson knows the crowd to whom he speaks, he knows they want, and he knows what he must give them for the sake of their support next year.
If you grab binoculars and head to Central Park in New York, you may see a warbler, a robin and Robert DeCandido, also known as “Birding Bob.” If you can’t spot him, you’ll definitely hear him. Among dedicated birders, some consider his use of recorded bird calls a disturbance to birds and bird-watchers alike, while others see him as an eager advocate for the natural world.
In response to his detractors, Dr. DeCandido maintains that he’s doing his best to make bird-watching less daunting to hobbyists — and that no birds are harmed in the process. In the short documentary above, explore the sights, sounds, birds — and bird-watching drama — of the park with some of its most colorful characters.
Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with high of 78. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 18m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1994, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult release sarin gas in Matsumoto, Japan. Seven people are killed, 660 injured.
Trump issued a statement seeking to turn the GOP faithful against Vos and the Legislature’s Republican leaders by accusing them of covering up election corruption because the review was not broad enough in the former president’s view.
“Wisconsin Republican leaders Robin Vos, Chris Kapenga, and Devin LeMahieu, are working hard to cover up election corruption, in Wisconsin,” Trump said in a statement Friday evening.
“Don’t fall for their lies! These REPUBLICAN ‘leaders’ need to step up and support the people who elected them by providing them a full forensic investigation. If they don’t, I have little doubt that they will be primaried and quickly run out of office.”
A day after being attacked by former President Donald Trump, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told Wisconsin Republicans at their annual convention that former conservative state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman would oversee an investigation of the 2020 election.
Gableman, Vos said, would oversee three retired police officers who were hired by the Wisconsin Assembly. Vos said the group is “looking into the shenanigans” that happened in the 2020 election, which Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won.
“We wanted to make sure that you were the first people to know,” Vos told GOP activists. “Because you are the ones who have done everything possible to make sure that our conservative candidates win for the Legislature, from the county clerk all the way up to the presidency.”
Gableman served a single 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court before stepping down in 2018. While he promised that his work on the election probe would not be partisan, Gableman’s Republican ties run deep, and GOP activists greeted him warmly Saturday.
“I’m glad to be here — glad to see so many friends,” Gableman said. “When I fought evil every day at the state Supreme Court for 10 years, I fought for you.”
“And you didn’t just grumble about it and go back home and let it let bygones be bygones,” Gableman said. “You recognize that this one is where we draw the line.”
Democrats said the announcement of Gableman’s hiring at the state GOP convention underscored the true partisan intent of Vos’ investigation.
“Gabelman says the big problem is people not trusting the election,” tweeted Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler. “Vos & Gabelman are part of Operation Destroy Trust.”
I reported that research and development dollars had fallen off at our state’s research powerhouse, the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Happily, just the opposite has occurred. A university spokesperson e-mailed me to say, “Research dollars have increased year over year in each of the last three fiscal years, and only twice in the last ten fiscal years (FY13 and FY17) have we brought in less research funding than we did the prior fiscal year.”
Our flagship university has bounced around the $1 billion mark in R&D for a long time. It did $1.1 billion in 2017 and increased that total to $1.48 billion.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with thunderstorms and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1963, President Kennedy gives his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erects the Berlin Wall.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a vocal critic of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, announced plans Friday to hold a news conference bringing together people who claim to have had adverse reactions to the vaccine, including the wife of a former Green Bay Packer player.
Johnson, who has also advocated for alternative and unproven treatments for COVID-19, said the Monday event in Milwaukee will allow people from across the country to tell their stories and concerns he said have been “repeatedly ignored” by the medical community.
Johnson, who has no medical training or expertise, hasn’t been vaccinated, saying he doesn’t think he has to because he had the virus last year and formed natural antibodies. He has said he’s “just asking questions” and isn’t against vaccines, but doctors and other critics have blasted him for spreading misinformation.
The Natural Resources Board will meet for a second time Wednesday with the outgoing chair refusing to surrender his seat to his replacement.
Gov. Tony Evers appointed Sandy Naas and Sharon Adams to the policy board on April 28 to replace Frederick Prehn and Julie Anderson, who were appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker and whose six-year terms expired May 1.
Adams joined the board in May after Anderson stepped down. But Prehn declined to leave, citing a Supreme Court ruling that allows appointees to stay on until a replacement is confirmed by the Senate.
Without Naas, Republican appointees hold four of the board’s seven seats as they take up controversial topics including the regulation of PFAS and the DNR’s wolf management plan.
Prehn did not respond to an interview request Tuesday but previously told Wisconsin Public Radio the board “can use my leadership.”
DNR spokesperson Sarah Hoye said GOP leaders in the Senate have yet to refer either of Evers’ new appointees to a committee for a confirmation hearing.
Senate President Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, declined to comment about confirmation hearings on May 26, saying he didn’t know enough about the matter. Kapenga’s office did not respond Tuesday to questions about when the Senate would schedule a hearing.
“We’re giving tremendous endorsements,” Trump told the conservative Newsmax channel on Friday. “Fake Republicans, anybody that voted for the impeachment doesn’t get it. But there weren’t too many of them. And I think most of them are being … primaried right now, so that’s good. I’ll be helping their opponent.”
Trump’s first impeachment, for abusing his power in approaches to Ukraine, attracted one Republican vote, that of the Utah senator Mitt Romney. In his second, for inciting the deadly US Capitol attack, 10 House Republicans and seven in the Senate voted for Trump’s guilt.
This Tuesday, June 29th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of Minari @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Drama/Family
Rated PG-13
1 hour, 55 minutes (2020)
A Korean American family attempts to start a farm in 1980’s Arkansas, in search of its own American Dream. Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress (Yuh-Jung Youn).
If vaccinated, no mask required. Reservations no longer required. Free popcorn and a beverage will be re-instituted!
It’s a problem that the Bidens are set to remedy. Last week, first lady Jill Biden teased that a cat is “waiting in the wings” to join the family and their two dogs at the White House. The newcomer won’t be the first four-legged friend to knock pens off the Resolute Desk, though; here are seven notable White House cats who blazed the trail for First Kitty Biden.
Tabby and Dixie, the O.G.s
When President Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was asked if her husband had any hobbies, the first lady replied simply: “Cats.” She wasn’t kidding: Reportedly Abe loved his cats so much that he’d even feed them from the dinner table, to Mary Todd’s dismay. Lincoln was also the first president to introduce cats into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the form of Tabby and Dixie, who were a gift from his secretary of state, William H. Seward. “At one point, [Lincoln] told a friend that Dixie was ‘smarter than his entire cabinet’ and ‘didn’t talk back,’ which was a bonus,'” Andrew Hager, the historian-in-residence at the Presidential Pet Museum, told The New York Times.
Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 83. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 99% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1950, the Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea.
Retired police officers hired by Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are being paid $3,200 a month to investigate “potential irregularities and/or illegalities” in the 2020 presidential election, contracts obtained by The Associated Press show.
The investigators will be paid $9,600 each over three months to conduct the probe, according to the documents obtained Thursday. Vos, R-Rochester, signed two contracts in recent days and has said he intends to hire a third investigator and an attorney to oversee the probe.
Vos last month announced plans to have officers investigate the election results as part of the Republican response to former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in Wisconsin. Republicans have also ordered a review by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau and they have passed several bills tightening rules for absentee voting, measures Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is all but certain to veto.
In Wisconsin, local election officials identified just 27 cases of potential voter fraud out of nearly 3.3 million votes cast in the November election that they forwarded to prosecutors. No charges have been brought in any of the cases.
(Vos wants this, as he signed. And yet, and yet, if he did not want this, he would still sign these contracts – it’s what an insatiable horde wants, and he will either feed them or they will feed on him.)
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson attacked the highest-ranking officer of the military Thursday night, calling Gen. Mark Milley “stupid” for saying he reads a variety of authors and wants to understand “white rage.”
Carlson scornfully laughed after playing a clip of Milley speaking before a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this week and explaining his interest in studying white rage to better understand the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“He’s not just a pig,” said Carlson of Milley, who was appointed to his role by then-president Donald Trump. “He’s stupid.”
He told his millions of viewers, “Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He didn’t get that job because he’s brilliant or because he’s brave or because the people who know him respect him. He is not and they definitely don’t. Milley got the job because he is obsequious. He knows who to suck up to and he’s more than happy to do it. Feed him a script, and he will read it.”
Fred Wellman, a veteran who serves as executive director of conservative group the Lincoln Project, wrote on Twitter, “Remember when he was angry that kneeling during the anthem disrespected the military? Tucker Carlson is a coward who never served anything other than his own bank account.”
(Best guess on Carlson, like the former conservatives who’ve now become the intellectual defenders of the alt-right: he wants this to satisfy his own appetites and cravings. He’s not chasing rightwing opinion, he’s yielding to his own base desires. He’ll not stop, just as the writers at Taki Mag, VDare, and American Greatness did not stop. They were once conservatives, but they found rightwing extremism more satisfying.)
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with scattered thunderstorms, and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 19m 46s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM, and the Whitewater Fire Department at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1947, Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington.
The 55-page report, produced by a Michigan State Senate committee of three Republicans and one Democrat, is a systematic rebuttal to an array of false claims about the election from supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. The authors focus overwhelmingly on Michigan, but they also expose lies perpetuated about the vote-counting process in Georgia.
The report is unsparing in its criticism of those who have promoted false theories about the election. It debunks claims from Trump allies including Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former president’s lawyer; and Mr. Trump himself.
Yet while the report eviscerates claims about election fraud, its authors also use the allegations to urge their legislative colleagues to change Michigan’s voting laws to make absentee voting harder and limit the availability of drop boxes for absentee ballots, as Republicans have done in other swing states as they try to limit voting.
As Congress continues to grapple with voting rights legislation this week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has used his considerable influence as the Senate’s key swing vote to set the terms of the debate. Last week his office released a list of voting rights provisions he would support. At the top of his list: making Election Day a national holiday. Without this simple step toward turning out as many Americans as possible to vote, any reform will be incomplete.
So far this year, hundreds of bills have been introduced that could have the effect of suppressing people’s right to vote. States such as Georgia and Iowa already have passed restrictive measures and many others appear poised to do the same thing. These efforts challenge fundamental values of American democracy and constitute a serious threat to the “one person, one vote” principle.
Madison is preparing to launch the city’s first mobile unit of unarmed first responders and mental health providers who will respond to people in a nonviolent, emergency mental health crisis by bringing interventions to them.
Ald. Arvina Martin, District 11, pushed the city to create the pilot program, called Community Alternative Response for Emergency Services or CARES. She said it could be “life changing.”
“I’m really really excited that we are taking some steps in order to make our treatments and how we address mental health emergencies in the city something that will provide better outcomes for them and hopefully not to involve the criminal justice system,” Martin said at a public input session on the program Tuesday.
The $600,000 pilot program will consist of two teams that each include a Madison Fire Department community paramedic and a mental health worker from Journey Mental Health. Though the long term vision is to operate the program 24/7 throughout Dane County, the teams will initially respond to nonviolent 911 mental health calls Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. in downtown Madison.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see brief morning showers with a high of 77. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 97.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1942, Germany’s latest fighter aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales: “Oberleutnant Armin Faber was a German Luftwaffe pilot in World War II who mistook the Bristol Channel for the English Channel and landed his Focke-Wulf 190 (Fw 190) intact at RAF Pembrey in South Wales. His plane was the first Fw 190 to be captured by the Allies and was tested to reveal any weaknesses that could be exploited.”
The make-up of higher education has changed dramatically in the last decade. The new UW president will not be dealing with just bricks and mortar issues. His or her strategic plan, and those of the 13 campuses, will also have to factor in burgeoning trends and realities:
High school graduates will arrive on campus with as much as a quarter of their required baccalaureate credits – already awarded from Advanced Placement courses in high school, online courses and dual enrollment in high school and college while still in high school.
They will be debt conscious and will not want to take many courses that are non-essential to their career intentions.
They will be accustomed to working online and won’t need to be on a physical campus for parts of some courses.
The world of work will be clamoring for their services. They will be eager to get off campus for internships and for good-paying jobs. Students will be less oriented to party time.
If Republicans continue to control the Legislature, new funds for the university will be meted out conservatively.
Enrollments will continue to decline and tuition revenues will go down accordingly, even with modest tuition increases.
Research dollars at UW–Madison have been falling off sharply in recent years.
These and thousands of other videos are meant to look like unfiltered glimpses of life in Xinjiang, the western Chinese region where the Communist Party has carried out repressive policies against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
Most of the clips carry no logos or other signs that they are official propaganda.
But taken together, the videos begin to reveal clues of broader coordination — such as the English subtitles in clips posted to YouTube and other Western platforms.
A monthslong analysis of more than 3,000 of the videos by The New York Times and ProPublica found evidence of an influence campaign orchestrated by the Chinese government.
The operation has produced and spread thousands of videos in which Chinese citizens deny abuses against their own communities and scold foreign officials and multinational corporations who dare question the Chinese government’s human rights record in Xinjiang.
It all amounts to one of China’s most elaborate efforts to shape global opinion.
….
Western platforms like Twitter and YouTube are banned in China out of fear they might be used to spread political messaging — which is exactly how Chinese officials are using these platforms in the rest of the world.
They are, in essence, high-speed propaganda pipelines for Beijing. In just a few days, videos establishing the Communist Party’s version of reality can be shot, edited and amplified across the global internet.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 92.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
KENOSHA, Wis. — Daniel Berry says hewas searching for camaraderie.
The 40-year-old Army veteran yearned to forge the sort of bonds he had in the military: a brotherhood of like-minded men watching one another’s backs, holding one another up, united in a common goal.
Last year, Berry said, he remembered a guy at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall asking him if he had heard of the Proud Boys. The group was vocal in its support for then-President Donald Trump, whom Berry had voted for. They called themselves “Western chauvinists” and said they welcomed true men. That sounded about right for Berry, who considers himself a dyed-in-the-wool patriot.
He did some internet searches and sent off an email. Almost immediately, he received a link to an encrypted chat room.
Berry, along with a member of the Wisconsin Proud Boys and another former recruit, told USA TODAY the group is a den of racism and antisemitism. Moving up within the group, they said, is dependent on sadistically bullying potential members and promoting white supremacist talking points.
Berry and two other men, who asked not to be named because they fear violent repercussions from members ofthe Proud Boys, provided a unique view into an organization that has become a magnet for racists and violent extremists. They spoke and emailed with USA TODAY independently, providing screenshots of chatrooms, photos, memes and audio recordings that backed up their claims.
Their accounts reveal the face of a group that masks itself as a harmless, multiracial drinking club, one that reaches new members by preaching free speech and patriotism. At least in Wisconsin, the men said, the Proud Boys stands less for brotherhood and more for the racial hatred espoused byoutmoded organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations.
“Initially it was truly a brotherhood,” Berry said. “But what I experienced was more like a cult.”
In a memo, Manchin proposed building upon parts of the For the People Act and a narrower bill, known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, with a few amendments. His proposal would make Election Day a public holiday, require two weeks of early voting, automatically register voters through motor vehicle departments and eliminate partisan gerrymandering. It’s not everything Democrats want — and has some oversights — but it addresses most of the party’s goals for promoting free and fair elections.
Perhaps more important, from a political standpoint: Manchin’s compromise completely undercuts Republicans’ case for blocking reform.
It does this by including new requirements to safeguard election security, which is — or was — the top priority of Republicans concerned by “questions” the 2020 election supposedly raised.
(The market solution here is to reduce the cost of production and increase the cultural demand preference for digitally-produced ivory over natural products.)
Ron Johnson held up a Senate vote to make Juneteenth a holiday, and when he at last relented, he did so only begrudgingly (“While it still seems strange that having taxpayers provide federal employees paid time off is now required to celebrate the end of slavery, it is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter”).
When Johnson showed up at the Juneteenth celebration in Milwaukee, he should not have been surprised by the reception he received:
Johnson told reporters that his experience interacting with attendees had been generally positive, except for “one nasty comment.”
However, as more people recognized him, he was drowned out by a chorus of boos. Members of a growing crowd swore at him and said, “We don’t want you here.”
He should not have been surprised, and probably wasn’t, by the reception he received. Johnson wants to say what he wants, and to spread whatever conspiracy theories – foreign or domestic – he can repeat, but he whines when others aren’t demure in his presence.
If anything, his visit looks like trolling (see how those radical/socialist/communist/Marxist/progressive savages treat a decent American like me?) If Johnson runs again, one can expect that he’ll play a clip of Milwaukeeans’ predictable reaction to gain sympathy with WISGOP voters.
He’ll find no sympathy from Wisconsinites who know the state deserves better representation than his.
Monday in Whitewater will see partly sunny skies with a high of 69. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:37 PM, for 15h 20m 21s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 10 AM, and Whitewater’s Library Board meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1898, the United States captures Guam from Spain: “The few warning shots fired by the U.S. naval vessels are misinterpreted as salutes by the Spanish garrison, which was unaware that the two nations were at war.”
BRUSSELS — The United States and Europe on Tuesday agreed to put aside a 17-year dispute over aircraft subsidies for Boeing and Airbus and work together to counter China’s global ambitions to dominate key industries.
The agreement, which suspends the threat of billions of dollars in punitive tariffs on each other’s economies for five years, is a clear sign of President Biden’s seriousness in repairing relations with the European Union and getting the wealthy bloc on his side in what he regards as a generational challenge from the rise of a technologically advanced and autocratic China.
Mr. Biden sees Europe as an ally, not an economic “foe” as former President Donald J. Trump did, and he has pledged to work with the European Union to counter China’s military, economic and technological ambitions. While Mr. Trump also saw the dangers of an unbound China, he did little to try to bring Europe along, instead punishing it with tariffs. Mr. Biden is convinced that, as Asia as a whole grows in population and wealth, the democratic world that believes in the rule of law and multilateral institutions must do more to protect its economies and values.
“Europe is our natural partner, and the reason is, we’re committed to the same democratic norms and institutions, and they are increasingly under attack,” Mr. Biden said during remarks in Brussels.
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Donald Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
“The election of Joe Biden as president has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image,” the Pew report reads.
There is a better way forward, and it starts by selectively leaning into our trade and co-production relationships with friends and allies we trust—what we call “ally-shoring.”
In announcing its strategy for supply chain resilience, the Biden White House recently embraced ally-shoring as the most realistic and effective path to ensuring U.S. supply chains are never as vulnerable as was exposed by COVID-19. It also is the best way to rebuild our economy and that of our friends, which strengthens the health of all our democracies. Additionally, working together to rewire supply chains and co-produce high-tech products in emerging sectors will serve to rebuild bruised alliances and U.S. global economic and political leadership, as well as check China’s bid to extend their own authoritarian economic and political model across the globe.
