Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with thunderstorms and a high of 81. Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:16 PM, for 14h 50m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 57.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Review Committee meets at 4:45 PM and there will be a joint Common Council Meeting, Plan and Architectural Review Commission, and Community Development Authority meeting at 6 PM.

On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Craig Gilbert writes House votes to create bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, with all 5 Wisconsin Republican congressmen in opposition:

In the end, 35 Republicans broke with their party leaders and joined all 217 Democrats in supporting the establishment of the panel.

Meanwhile, 175 Republicans opposed the commission, including all five GOP lawmakers from Wisconsin: Bryan Steil, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grothman, Tom Tiffany and Mike Gallagher.

The commission would have subpoena power to call witnesses and produce a report by Dec. 31 of this year. Modeled after the independent panel that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it would be charged with scrutinizing what provoked a pro-Trump mob to assault the Capitol and what can be done to prevent another attack.

The 10 members of the commission would be equally divided between Democrats and Republicans under the legislation, which was the product of bipartisan negotiations in the House.

David Smith writes Investigate the Capitol attack? Republicans prefer to back the big lie:

Rarely has the old question “What did the president know and when he did know it?” been more applicable than to Trump on the day that a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol as his election defeat was being certified.

It was one of the greatest security failures in American history. US Capitol police were overrun. More than three hours passed before the national guard was deployed. A full investigation is surely critical for the public record.

But Republicans’ logic is ruthlessly simple. Now that they have surrendered to Donald Trump, manifest in the ousting of Liz Cheney from House leadership, they would rather recycle false claims of election fraud than talk about 6 January.

It was the spectacular culmination of Trump’s presidency, the moment when all the forces of anger and hatred he stoked for years were unleashed at the cost of five lives. Whereas 9/11 bequeathed memorials carved in granite – never forget – there is a concerted effort under way to airbrush 1/6 from history.

Kurt Bardella, a political commentator who quit the Republican party, tweeted: “Asking Republicans to investigate 1.6 is like asking Al-Qaeda to investigate 9.11. The people who helped plan/promote the attack aren’t going to be partners in the investigation.”

 Marc Stein reports For Jrue Holiday, It’s a Good Game When His Wife Says So (‘The pressure is on as the Bucks head to the N.B.A. playoffs, but Holiday has somebody at home who understands competition: his wife, Lauren, who faced high expectations on the U.S. national soccer team’):

After his productive first quarter, Jrue Holiday scored only 1 point in nearly six minutes in the second quarter. Lauren Holiday, who won two Olympic gold medals and the 2015 World Cup as a bustling midfielder with the United States women’s national soccer team, did not regard the sweep of the Nets or her husband’s play as a significant statement. She said she “felt like he took the quarter off.”

“It’s not that I think he did poorly,” Lauren Holiday said. “I just wanted to know what his thinking was — just help me understand. At first he said, ‘I took what the defense dictated,’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t agree.’ Those are the conversations he has to have just because I’m also a competitor.”

How Do You Actually Mine Bitcoin?:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with thunderstorms and a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:26 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 48m 46s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 46.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 10 AM and Whitewater’s Park Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1780, New England’s Dark Day, an unusual darkening of the day sky, was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Quinta Jurecic, Molly E. Reynolds, and Benjamin Wittes write What’s in the Jan. 6 Commission Bill?:

Particularly if Congress does not adjust the composition of the commission, the effectiveness of the body will depend pervasively on the specific individuals named as commissioners and as key staff. If the commissioners want to doggedly pursue the truth and tell the story of what happened on Jan. 6, they can do so under this proposed structure. They can hire a non-partisan staff with critical and diverse expertise, and they can issue subpoenas if needed. But even if only five commissioners want to hit the breaks, they can do that too. And if a few want to use the commission as a forum for denying that the insurrection even happened, there is little to stop them. Indeed, under this legislation, the commission could act a whole lot like a congressional committee, with divided staff chosen more for political loyalty and ties than for expertise and investigative seriousness. Under this bipartisan compromise, the policy will really only be as good as the people.

Danny Hakim, William K. Rashbaum, and Ben Protess report New York’s Attorney General Joins Criminal Inquiry Into Trump Organization:

Donald J. Trump and his family came under increasing pressure from New York investigators after the attorney general’s office said Tuesday it was working alongside the Manhattan district attorney in an ongoing criminal fraud investigation.

The two offices have been conducting parallel investigations for more than a year, though the inquiry by the office of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has been a civil one, meaning it could result in a lawsuit or fines. The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has been conducting a criminal investigation, which could result in charges.

 Steve Benen writes Why Trump’s new tech ‘platform’ is so hilariously underwhelming:

Jason Miller, a controversial spokesperson for Trump’s 2020 campaign, told Fox News at the time that the former president was poised to “completely redefine the game” with his new tech initiative.

It was against this backdrop that Fox News ran this report yesterday on Team Trump’s new tech rollout.

Former President Trump launched a communications platform on Tuesday, which will serve as “a place to speak freely and safely,” and will eventually give him the ability to communicate directly with his followers, after months of being banned from sites like Twitter and Facebook. The platform, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” appears on www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk.

 

The same report added that the former president’s project appears to be powered by Campaign Nucleus — the “digital ecosystem made for efficiently managing political campaigns and organizations,” created by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager.

For now, it’s not clear how much Trump and his team paid for this “communications platform,” though I’m awfully curious to find out just how big an investment this was — because the project is hilariously underwhelming.

In fact, to describe this as a “communications platform” is itself generous to the point of comedy. What Team Trump has created is, for all intents and purposes, a rudimentary blog for the former president.

The crazy plan to catch space trash:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with afternoon showers and a high of 72. Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:14 PM, for 14h 46m 52s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 36.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

On this day in 1863, the Siege of Vicksburg begins.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Shawn Johnson reports Advocates Rally at Capitol for Nonpartisan Redistricting Plan (‘Plan For Drawing Political Maps Is Based On A Similar System In Iowa’):

With the next round of redistricting looming, a group of lawmakers has reintroduced a long shot proposal to create a nonpartisan system for drawing the state’s political map for the next decade.

The plan, which is modeled after Iowa’s longstanding redistricting system, would require the Legislature’s nonpartisan attorneys to draw the next boundaries for Wisconsin’s state Assembly, Senate and congressional districts. Lawmakers would then have the chance to vote them up or down.

It’s largely backed by Democrats who were shut out of the last round of redistricting 10 years ago, but it’s identical to a bill from last session that had bipartisan support.

The idea is to largely depoliticize one of state government’s most political processes, one that is all but certain to spawn lawsuits, potentially for years to come.

“This bill is not about any party,” said Rep. Deb Andraca, D-Whitefish Bay, at a rally on the steps of the Wisconsin Capitol Monday. “It’s about establishing a process that gets politicians out of the map-making process altogether.”

 Douglas MacMillan reports Under Armour founder sold $138 million in stock during time period company allegedly misled investors about slowing sales:

Kevin Plank gushed about his business on a call with Wall Street analysts in October 2015.

Under Armour, the sports apparel maker Plank founded two decades earlier in the basement of his grandmother’s D.C. townhouse, had grown into a global juggernaut, he said, securing endorsements with some of the world’s biggest sports stars, amassing data on millions of fitness app users and growing sales more than 20 percent every quarter for more than five years.

The company’s track record of rapid profit and revenue growth “gives us great confidence for the future,” Plank said on the call. “We are just getting started.”

Six days later, Plank entered into a scheduled stock selling plan — a common way for public company executives to sell stock in accordance with federal regulations — that netted him $138 million over the following six months, a period when the company continued to report a fast rise in revenue.

The public comments and financial statements of Under Armour executives from late 2015 to early 2017 were the subject of a four-year accounting probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged Under Armour with violating securities laws. In its May 3 order, the SEC said the Baltimore-based company failed “to disclose material information about its revenue management practices that rendered statements it made misleading.” Under Armour agreed to pay $9 million to settle the claims without admitting or denying the charges. Neither Plank nor any other executive was charged.

Drone footage shows fire and scale of massive train derailment in US:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:13 PM, for 14h 44m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 27.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board’s Handbook Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 3:30 PM.

On this day in 1954, the United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, outlawing racial segregation in public schools

Recommended for reading in full — 

Kelly Meyerhofer reports CDC-led study finds little evidence of UW-Madison dorm outbreaks fueling community spread:

A team of scientists answered a lingering question about the ramifications of reopening UW-Madison last fall, finding little evidence that outbreaks in two dorms fueled further spread of COVID-19 into the community.

Researchers sequenced the genetic code of more than 1,200 virus samples from students and community members to examine COVID-19 strains circulating within Dane County after an explosion of cases overwhelmed UW-Madison in early September. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention led the study, the results of which were published last week in a paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

UW-Madison pathology professor David O’Connor, who was among the paper’s co-authors, said a stroke of good fortune may have been the biggest factor that prevented outbreaks in the university’s two largest dorms from spreading throughout greater Madison.

“We got lucky,” he said. “I would not want to go to the bank on repeating this scenario 10 times and getting that same outcome.”

 The Washington Post editorial board writes China’s repression of Uyghurs is not only cultural, but also physical, a new report shows:

AFTER THE Holocaust, the U.N. General Assembly, meeting in Paris on Dec. 9, 1948, approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It defined genocide as, among other things, “imposing measures intended to prevent births” within a population and said genocide is a crime under international law, whether in peace or war, to be prevented and punished. The promise was “never again.”

But it is happening again in China, a signatory to the treaty, as part of China’s crackdown since 2016 on ethnic minority Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region in the far northwest. At first, reports suggested that China was brainwashing the Uyghurs and others, who were forced into concentration camps and coerced to drop their language and traditions. China claimed the camps were for vocational education, but eyewitnesses described an archipelago of austere penitentiaries and brutal reeducation routines intended to wipe out the Uyghur identity and culture.

Evidence is emerging that China’s repression is not only cultural but also physical. In a report last year by researcher Adrian Zenz for the Jamestown Foundation, and in a new report this month by Nathan Ruser and James Leibold for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, both based on China’s own government data, a precipitous drop in Uyghur birthrates is evident in areas of southern Xinjiang. This appears to be the result of a drive by China at mass sterilization, coerced birth control and punitive family policies.

Meteorite that crashed into English driveway is now at London’s Natural History Museum:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see partly sunny skies with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:12 PM, for 14h 42m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 19% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1966, the Communist Party of China issues the “May 16 Notice,” marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Craig Gilbert writes How population growth and decline around Wisconsin are keeping the state politically balanced:

Dane County accounted for 44% of Wisconsin’s total population growth from 2010 to 2020, according to these latest numbers. The WOW [Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington] counties accounted for 17%. And the BOW [Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago] counties accounted for 23%.  Together, they generated 84% of the state’s growth over the decade.

While these three regions differ in their politics, they did have one thing in common in the 2020 election: all of them shifted away from Republican Donald Trump.

This is one of the sobering facts for Republicans in the new county-by-county population estimates for Wisconsin: of the 10 counties that added the most people over the past decade, the GOP’s performance declined in each one of them between 2016 and 2020.

Meanwhile, of the 38 mostly small Wisconsin counties where Trump gained ground in 2020, 24 of them lost population over the past decade.

….

But there are sobering facts for Democrats in the same data.

One is that ultra-blue Milwaukee, the state’s biggest county, was a population loser for the decade.

Another is that while Dane is the highest-growth county in the state, most of the other top-growing counties in Wisconsin lean Republican, which is offsetting some of Dane’s political impact.  Because of their growth, some of these red counties are delivering bigger raw vote margins for Republicans even as Republicans are getting a smaller share of their vote.

For example, Trump’s point margin in Washington County dropped from 40 to 38 points between 2016 and 2020. But because the county’s total vote grew, Trump’s raw vote margin was almost 3,000 votes bigger in 2020.  Something similar happened in St. Croix County in western Wisconsin.

Politically speaking, these population trends are a mixed bag. They aren’t uniformly helpful to one party or the other.

 Michael LaForgia and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries report How a Genetic Trait in Black People Can Give the Police Cover (‘Sickle cell trait has been cited in dozens of police custody deaths ruled accidental or natural, even though the condition is benign on its own”):

The New York Times has found at least 46 other instances over the past 25 years in which medical examiners, law enforcement officials or defenders of accused officers pointed to the trait as a cause or major factor in deaths of Black people in custody. Fifteen such deaths have occurred since 2015.

In roughly two-thirds of the cases, the person who died had been forcefully restrained by the authorities, pepper-sprayed or shocked with stun guns. Scattered across 22 states and Puerto Rico, in big cities and small towns, the determinations on sickle cell trait often created enough doubt for officers to avert criminal or civil penalties, The Times found.

….

In three cases, deaths linked to sickle cell trait that were deemed natural or of indeterminate cause were later ruled homicides — as occurred when Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died at the hands of his jailers at a northwest Florida juvenile detention camp in January 2006.

“You can’t put the blame on sickle cell trait when there is a knee on the neck or when there is a chokehold or the person is hogtied,” said Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia and now chairman of pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine. “You can’t say, ‘Well, he’s fragile.’ No, that becomes a homicide.”

How The UK’s Last Piano Factory Keeps A Centuries-Old Industry Alive:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see scattered showers with a high of 61. Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:11 PM, for 14h 40m 58s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 11.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 493, in a shocking breach of table manners, Odoacer, the first barbarian King of Italy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, is slain by Theoderic the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, while the two kings were feasting together.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Shawn Johnson reports Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Proposal To Change Redistricting Rules:

Justices on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court have rejected an effort by conservatives to change the rules for the next round of redistricting, denying a petition that would have required all redistricting lawsuits to run through them.

States redraw their political boundaries every decade after the U.S. Census to make sure districts are roughly equal in population. The high-stakes process carries huge political implications and inevitably leads to lawsuits.

That’s all but certain to happen this year, with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers unlikely to agree on a new political map for the next decade.

A petition by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty would have required any redistricting lawsuit to be handled as an “original action” before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, meaning it would bypass lower courts. The governor and Legislature could present their own redistricting plans and outside groups could also intervene.

While justices rejected the proposal, they did not rule out the possibility of hearing a redistricting case.

“Our decision in this rule matter should not be deemed predictive of this court’s response to a petition for review asking this court to review a lower court’s ruling on a redistricting challenge or a request that we assume original jurisdiction over a future redistricting case or controversy,” wrote the court. “It remains well-settled that redistricting challenges often merit this court’s exercise of its original jurisdiction.”

 Helen Sullivan reports US Target stores to stop selling Pokémon cards after rising value prompts threats to staff:

US retail giant Target will stop selling Poke?mon playing cards out of an “abundance of caution” for its staff and other shoppers. The re-sale value of the cards has increased dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic, prompting chaos and threats to staff. Target will also stop selling MLB, NFL and NBA sports playing cards.

The decision comes after man pulled a gun during a fight over trading cards in a Target parking lot in Brookfield, Wisconsin on 7 May. Police said the 35-year-old man produced the gun when he was assaulted by four men aged 23-35 as he left the store, ABC reported.

A shopper who was at the Target during the parking lot incident told Fox news at the time: “It’s just kind of sad for the kids. It just sounds kind of ridiculous that adults got into a fight in the parking lot about trading cards.”

(Emphasis added.)

 Michael Gerson writes Meet Kevin McCarthy, political hollow man:

Instead of dealing with reality, McCarthy mouths partisan pablum that the actions of his own party have rendered ridiculous. “Democrats,” he says, “are destroying this nation” — when only the GOP is actively undermining the U.S. system of government. Democrats are responsible for “the greatest expansion of government” — when Trump in power spent money like a drunken socialist. The damage done by Democrats, insists McCarthy, will be irreversible — when it is Republicans who seek to make Trump’s malignant hold on the country permanent.

Entrepreneur Builds Community of Rock Climbing Women:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 5:31 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 38m 54s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1973, Skylab, the United States’ first space station, is launched.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Craig Gilbert writes Two former congressmen from Wisconsin join group of disaffected Republicans unhappy with Trump Era GOP:

Two former Wisconsin congressmen have joined a national group of Republicans who say they’re dismayed by the GOP’s direction in the Trump era and want to either “re-imagine” their party or create a new one.

The two are Reid Ribble, who represented Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District from 2011 to 2017, and Tom Petri, who represented the 6th District from 1979 to 2015.

They are among more than 100 disaffected Republicans (and ex-Republicans), many of them former government officials or former members of Congress, who signed an open letter Thursday rejecting populism, “fear-mongering, conspiracism and falsehoods.”

“Our nation’s future should not be dictated by a single person but by principles that bind us together. That’s why we believe in pushing for the Republican Party to rededicate itself to founding ideals — or else hasten the creation of an alternative,” the letter said.

 Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti report Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government:

A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

The campaign shows the obsession that some of Mr. Trump’s allies had about a shadowy “deep state” trying to blunt his agenda — and the lengths that some were willing to go to try to purge the government of those believed to be disloyal to the president.

 Catherine Rampell writes Don’t freak out about inflation yet:

It could well be true that parts of the Biden fiscal agenda will have some inflationary effects; based on the limited data available, we don’t know yet, and I don’t want to suggest there is no risk of that outcome. But it’s also too early to freak out. So far it looks like prices are picking up not because there’s too much money sloshing around, but rather because of a bunch of temporary, idiosyncratic shocks and supply chain issues that seem unlikely to lead to self-sustaining inflation.

For instance: Among the biggest drivers of consumer price increases in April was the category for used cars and trucks, which rose a whopping 10 percent from the previous month. That was the largest month-over-month spike since the federal government began keeping track in 1953. Yet this spike is less reflective of broad-based trends in inflation than factors unique to the car market.

Would You Eat Lab-Grown Fish?:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 68. Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 36m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s  Community Development Authority meets via audiovisual conferencing at 5:30 PM and there will be a Tax Increment District Planning Town Hall via audiovisual conferencing at 7 PM.

On this day in 1862, the USS Planter [briefly the CSS Planter], a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

Recommended for reading in full — 

David Leonhardt writes Why Cheney Matters:

If even a small portion of Republicans insist that the party supports democracy, they can succeed. As several experts have pointed out — including Anne Applebaum, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt — the most successful strategy for beating back a political party’s authoritarian shift has depended on defections among people who otherwise agree with that party. That’s why Cheney, Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney and other Republicans criticizing Trump’s big lie are significant.

The same experts advise Democrats to welcome the courage of those Republicans and not obsess over their many other disagreements. Cheney’s stance matters because she is a pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-regulation, deeply conservative Republican.

“The Republican Party is sliding into authoritarianism at a terrifyingly rapid clip,” Jonathan Chait has written in New York magazine. “That fate of American democracy is the biggest issue in American politics.”

For more:

The ouster of Cheney may embolden her and allow “a household-name conservative to take her case against Trumpism far beyond a Capitol conference room,” The Times’s Jonathan Martin writes.

(The ongoing defense of liberal democracy relies, as did the defeat of Trump in 2020, on a large but disparate coalition. That Cheney and her father are not libertarians, for example, does not prevent their opposition to Trump from serving a purpose useful for those committed to a constitutional, liberal democratic order. Churchill: “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”)

 Maggie Astor reports ‘A Perpetual Motion Machine’: How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws:

Former President Donald J. Trump’s monthslong campaign to delegitimize the 2020 election didn’t overturn the results. But his unfounded claims gutted his supporters’ trust in the electoral system, laying the foundation for numerous Republican-led bills pushing more restrictive voter rules.

The bills demonstrate how disinformation can take on a life of its own, forming a feedback loop that shapes policy for years to come. When promoted with sufficient intensity, falsehoods — whether about election security or the coronavirus or other topics — can shape voters’ attitudes toward policies, and lawmakers can cite those attitudes as the basis for major changes.

The embrace of the falsehoods also showcases the continuing power of Mr. Trump inside the Republican Party, which has widely adopted and weaponized his election claims. Many Republicans, eager to gain his support, have raced to champion the new voting laws. Those who have stood up to his falsehoods have paid the price.

(Having lost decisively, these Trumpists are committed to winning dishonestly.)

Dracula’s Castle Becomes COVID-19 Vaccine Site:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 65. Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 34m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Alcohol Licensing Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 4:45 PM.

On this day in 1551, the National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Danny Hakim reports In Rebuke to N.R.A., Federal Judge Dismisses Bankruptcy Case: 

The National Rifle Association’s attempt to evade a legal challenge from New York regulators was tossed out by a federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday, in a ruling that cast further doubt on whether the group’s embattled chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, would remain at the helm after three decades in power.

The ruling was a victory for Letitia James, the New York attorney general, whose office is seeking to remove Mr. LaPierre and shut down the gun rights group amid a long-running corruption investigation.

Mr. LaPierre, the face of the American gun lobby, now battered by the N.R.A.’s internecine warfare and revelations of luxuriant personal spending, had sought to end-run Ms. James by relocating to Texas and filing for bankruptcy there. But the gambit instead proved a strategic blunder: The testimony over a 12-day trial only buttressed Ms. James’s contentions of corruption, and led the judge, Harlin D. Hale, to declare, “The N.R.A. is using this bankruptcy case to address a regulatory enforcement problem, not a financial one.”

Judge Hale, the chief of the federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, also said Mr. LaPierre’s move to file for bankruptcy without telling the group’s board of directors, or his own chief counsel or chief financial officer, was “nothing less than shocking.”

 Neil MacFarquhar reports Efforts to Weed Out Extremists in Law Enforcement Meet Resistance:

Legislators in California negotiated compromise language for the bill with the main police unions in Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco, which then endorsed the change. The settled-upon language says, “No member of a hate group should be in law enforcement and if you are a member of one of these groups don’t apply, you have no place in our profession.” Still, some police officers and unions in California reject the modified legislation because of issues of civil rights and freedom of speech.

Some legal experts agree. The proposed measures are all bound to prompt challenges on constitutional grounds, said Philip M. Stinson, a former police officer who is now a professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University. It would be preferable to prohibit certain types of behavior rather than to focus on membership in an organization, he said. “The idea that we can systematically reform policing through a bevy of legislative actions in short order, I don’t think that is possible,” he said.

Florida Keys releasing lab-engineered mosquitoes:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:07 PM, for 14h 32m 32s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Public Works Committee meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

On this day in 1990, Lithuania declares independence from the Soviet Union.

Recommended for reading in full — 

 Molly Beck reports Speaker Robin Vos, Assembly official denied immunocompromised lawmaker’s request to work virtually during COVID pandemic:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and the Legislature’s human resources director, Amanda Jorgenson, have rejected requests from Rep. Jodi Emerson, D-Eau Claire, to participate in floor sessions and committee hearings from her office.

The requests were made by Emerson and her doctor to reduce Emerson’s risk of contracting the virus until she became fully vaccinated because of a medication she takes to suppress her immune system to manage an autoimmune disease Emerson was diagnosed with years ago.

“As you are aware, COVID-19 is not an airborne transmitted disease,” Jorgenson wrote to Emerson on April 4 rejecting the request. “Therefore, protection for you is based on limiting particulate exposure.”

Jorgenson and Vos offered Emerson a portable plexiglass barrier instead.

….

Patrick Remington, a former CDC epidemiologist and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, agreed.

“I don’t know what research they are reading. But COVID-19 can clearly be transmitted via airborne spread,” Remington said. “It might not be the predominant mode of transmission, but it is clearly able to be transmitted via small particles through the air.”

James Downie writes of The big myth about Cheney, Trump and the GOP:

The reason there’s no battle is that while Cheney, Hogan and others want to argue that their vision of the Republican Party competes with Trump’s, that’s simply not the case. I’ve written previously that the GOP is still Trump’s GOP. But the reverse is also true: Trump’s GOP is the GOP as it’s ever been.

Others have noted that the distance between Cheney’s GOP and Trump’s GOP is far smaller than she’d admit. As the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd notes in a new column, Cheney’s father, Richard B. Cheney, as vice president, “spread fear, propaganda and warped intelligence” to push the United States into the disastrous Iraq War, while encouraging President George W. Bush to shred the Constitution in expanding presidential and surveillance powers. And long before Trump became president, Liz Cheney was reluctant to criticize birtherism, only describing it on CNN as “people [being] uncomfortable with having for the first time ever, I think, a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas.”

AJ Vicens and Ali Breland report How HBO Helped the Guy Hosting QAnon Dodge a Serious Accusation:

Over the course of his new six episode HBO documentary, Into The Storm, filmmaker Cullen Hoback exhaustively details the intrigue and shadowy players involved in the QAnon conspiracy theory. As CNN’s Brian Lowry explains, “Hoback appears determined not to leave any stones unturned.”

The documentary is comprehensive and does flip a lot of stones. Hoback leverages sustained access to key players in the QAnon movement to tell a story about one of the most consequential disinformation operations of the Trump era. He does, however, pass on overturning one rather large stone: chief Q-enabler Jim Watkins’ history of running an internet company that has profited off child porn themes. The omission deprives HBO’s audience of key information on Watkins’ past, especially given his prominent role in movement seeking vengeance against a supposed cabal of elite liberal pedophiles.

Is a Yukon road trip the ultimate wild ride?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see intervals of clouds and sunshine with a shower in places, and a high of 55. Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:06 PM, for 14h 30m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater School Board meets in closed session at 6 PM and open session at 6:15 PM.

On this day in 1869, the First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah with the golden spike.

Recommended for reading in full — 

Emma Brown, Aaron C. Davis, Jon Swaine, and Josh Dawsey report The making of a myth (‘Russell J. Ramsland Jr. sold everything from Tex-Mex food to light-therapy technology. Then he sold the story that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump’):

ADDISON, Tex. — Key elements of the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump took shape in an airplane hangar here two years earlier, promoted by a Republican businessman who has sold everything from Tex-Mex food in London to a wellness technology that beams light into the human bloodstream.

At meetings beginning late in 2018, as Republicans were smarting from midterm losses in Texas and across the country, Russell J. Ramsland Jr. and his associates delivered alarming presentations on electronic voting to a procession of conservative lawmakers, activists and donors.

Briefings in the hangar had a clandestine air. Guests were asked to leave their cellphones outside before assembling in a windowless room. A member of Ramsland’s team purporting to be a “white-hat hacker” identified himself only by a code name.

….

The enduring myth that the 2020 election was rigged was not one claim by one person. It was many claims stacked one atop the other, repeated by a phalanx of Trump allies. This is the previously unreported origin story of a core set of those claims, ideas that were advanced not by renowned experts or by insiders who had knowledge of flawed voting systems but by Ramsland and fellow conservative activists as they pushed a fledgling company, Allied Security Operations Group, into a quixotic attempt to find evidence of widespread fraud where none existed.

To assemble a picture of the company’s role, The Washington Post obtained emails and company documents and interviewed 12 people with direct knowledge of ASOG’s efforts, as well as former federal officials and aides from the Trump White House. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters or out of fear of retribution. Three individuals who were present in the hangar for those 2018 meetings spoke about the gatherings publicly for the first time.

 Laura Silver writes Ideological divisions over cultural issues are far wider in the U.S. than in the UK, France and Germany:

When it comes to key cultural issues, Americans are significantly more divided along ideological lines than people in the United Kingdom, France and Germany, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of surveys conducted in the four countries in fall 2020.

Across 11 questions on cultural subjects ranging from nationalism to political correctness, the gap between the ideological left and right in the United States – or liberals and conservatives, in the common U.S. parlance – is significantly wider than the ideological gaps found in the European countries surveyed. In some cases, this is because America’s conservatives are outliers. In other cases, it’s because America’s liberals are outliers. In still other cases, both the right and left in the U.S. hold more extreme positions than their European counterparts, resulting in ideological gaps that are more than twice the size of those seen in the UK, Germany or France.

Heaven or sacrilege? Italy’s pizza vending machine stirs controversy: