Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Tax Incremental Finance Joint Review Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 10 AM, and the Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6 PM.

 On this day in 1943, Allied forces capture Palermo during the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Ryan McCarthy reports “Outright Lies”: Voting Misinformation Flourishes on Facebook (‘While the social media giant says it opposes voter suppression, the data shows a stark picture: Nearly half of all top-performing posts that mentioned voting by mail were false or misleading’):

Facebook’s community standards ban “misrepresentation of who can vote, qualifications for voting, whether a vote will be counted, and what information and/or materials must be provided in order to vote.” But an analysis by ProPublica and First Draft, a global nonprofit that researches misinformation, shows that Facebook is rife with false or misleading claims about voting, particularly regarding voting by mail, which is the safest way of casting a ballot during the pandemic. Many of these falsehoods appear to violate Facebook’s standards yet have not been taken down or labeled as inaccurate. Some of them, generalizing from one or two cases, portrayed people of color as the face of voter fraud.

The false claims, including conspiracy theories about stolen elections or outright misrepresentations about voting by mail by Trump and prominent conservative outlets, are often among the most popular posts about voting on Facebook, according to a review of engagement data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool.

On Facebook, interactions — the number of comments, likes, reactions and shares that a post attracts — are a proxy for popularity. Of the top 50 posts, ranked by total interactions, that mentioned voting by mail since April 1, 22 contained false or substantially misleading claims about voting, particularly about mail-in ballots.

 Shamane Mills reports Wisconsin Cities Getting $6.3M In Grants To Help With Elections During Pandemic:

Five Wisconsin cities will get a total of $6.3 million in grants to help administer elections during the coronavirus pandemic.

The money comes from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit voting advocacy group, and will be distributed to Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha and Racine.

“We’re obviously thrilled,” said Racine Mayor Cory Mason. “The big winners in all of this are the voters who are going to be able to vote safely this year in the midst of the pandemic.”

Long lines at some Wisconsin polling places during the state’s April election, which was conducted under a statewide stay-at-home order, drew national attention as voters and poll workers weighed potential safety risks against civic duty.

Ecologists Dig Prairie Dogs, And You Should Too:

Prairie dogs are ecosystem engineers. As they go about their lives, they change their surroundings in ways that provide shelter, food and even nurseries for other species. On the grasslands of Montana, prairie dog colonies are islands of biodiversity.

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with light evening rain, and a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 49m 13s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

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

 On this day in 1921, General Billy Mitchell tests his theory of air power by flying a De Havilland DH-4B fighter in a bombing demonstration that showed a naval ship could be sunk by air bombardment.

Recommended for reading in full —

Gregory Pratt and Jeremy Gorner report Homeland Security making plans to deploy some 150 agents in Chicago this week, with scope of duty unknown:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago this week, the Chicago Tribune has learned, a move that would come amid growing controversy nationally about federal force being used in American cities.

The Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, agents are set to assist other federal law enforcement and Chicago police in crime-fighting efforts, according to sources familiar with the matter, though a specific plan on what the agents will be doing had not been made public.

Federal agents being used to confront street protesters in Portland, Oregon, has raised alarm in many circles. Chicago, too, has dealt with protests that have led to injuries in recent days.

At an unrelated news conference Monday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she has great concerns about the general possibility of President Donald Trump sending feds to Chicago based on what has happened in Portland.

If Trump wants to help, she said, he could boost federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives resources and fully fund prosecutors.

“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot said.

 Eder Campuzano reports Feds, right-wing media paint Portland as ‘city under siege.’ A tour of town shows otherwise:

One America News Network describes “violence gripping the city.” A Fox News headline blares “Portland protesters flood police precinct, chant about burning it down.” The New York Post reported Saturday that Portland “descended into violence.”

Many people who live in Portland, including Alexander, heard over the past few days from worried relatives in other states who feared that their loved ones in Portland might have been affected by fires or caught in police crossfire as they went about their day.

The images that populate national media feeds, however, come almost exclusively from a tiny point of the city: a 12-block area surrounding the Justice Center and federal courthouse.

 

And they occur exclusively during late-night hours in which only a couple hundred or fewer protesters and scores of police officers are out in the city’s coronavirus-hollowed downtown.

Those events are hardly representative of daily life, including peaceful anti-racism demonstrations that have drawn tens of thousands of protesters, in a city of 650,000 people that encompasses 145 square miles.

The vast majority of Portland residents spend quiet home-bound lives on hushed tree-lined streets with coronavirus and its resulting economic catastrophe as the greatest threat to their well-being.

Crying bear cub climbs ladder out of Eagle River basement to freedom:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:26 PM, for 14h 51m 02s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Library Board meets via audiovisual conferencing at 6:30 PM.

 On this day in 1969, Apollo 11‘s crew successfully lands on the Moon, and Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on its surface.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Marissa J. Lang reports A Navy vet asked federal officers in Portland to remember their oaths. Then they broke his hand:

PORTLAND, Ore. — He came to the protest with a question. He left with two broken bones in a confrontation with federal officers that went viral .

Christopher David had watched in horror as videos surfaced of federal officers in camouflage throwing Portland Ore., protesters into unmarked vans. The 53-year-old Portland resident had heard the stories: protesters injured, gassed, sprayed with chemicals that tugged at their nostrils and burned their eyes.

David, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former member of the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps, said he wanted to know what the officers involved thought of the oath they had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.

So, he said, on Saturday evening, he headed to downtown Portland to ask them.

….

Just as he was about to leave, David said, the federal officers emerged. They rushed a line of protesters nearby, knocking protesters to the ground. David walked toward a gap in the line, calling out to the officers.

“Why are you not honoring your oath?” he bellowed. “Why are you not honoring your oath to the Constitution?”

An officer trained his weapon on David’s chest as several agents pushed him, sending David stumbling backward. But he regained his center and tried again. Another agent raised his baton and began to beat David, who stood unwavering with his arms at his sides. Then another officer unloaded a canister of chemical irritant spray into David’s face.

….

“It’s just us normal people out there,” he said. “There were a whole group of pregnant moms standing out there linking arms and they got gassed. You hear people like [President] Trump say it’s just a bunch of wacko fringe people in liberal cities who are out there, but no way. We’re all just normal people who think what’s happening is wrong.”

 Will Sommer reports Trump Campaign Legal Adviser Appears on Kremlin-Backed TV:

RT, which was formerly known as Russia Today, has been routinely criticized as a propaganda outlet for Kremlin interests. Its programming is often hyper critical of U.S. policy and in 2016 its editorial content seemed designed for two major purposes: to foster social unrest in the United States and (perhaps relatedly) boost Trump’s candidacy.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence eventually released a report that said the network, whose videos receive millions of views online, produced content “aimed at undermining viewers’ trust of US democratic procedures.” The assessment, released in 2017, added that RT was a key part of the Russian efforts to meddle in that presidential election as part of a “Kremlin directed campaign to undermine faith in the US Government and fuel political protest.”

 7.20.1969:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:27 PM, for 14h 52m 48s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1977, the world’s first Global Positioning System signal was transmitted from Navigation Technology Satellite 2 to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 12:41 a.m. Eastern time.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, and David E. Sanger report Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus:

Unlike Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx is a strong believer in models that forecast the course of an outbreak. Dr. Fauci has cautioned that “models are only models” and that real-world outcomes depend on how people respond to calls for changes in behavior — to stay home, for example, or wear masks in public — sacrifices that required a sense of shared national responsibility.

In his decades of responding to outbreaks, Dr. Fauci, a voracious reader of political histories, learned to rely on reports from the ground. Late at night in his home office this spring, Dr. Fauci, who declined to comment for this article, dialed health officials in New Orleans, New York and Chicago, where he heard desperation unrecognizable in the more sanguine White House meetings.

Dr. Fauci had his own critics, who said he relied on anecdotes and experience rather than data, and who felt he was not sufficiently attuned to the devastating economic and social consequences of a national lockdown.

As the pandemic worsened, Dr. Fauci’s darker view of the circumstances was countered by the reassurances ostensibly offered by Dr. Birx’s data.

….

Dr. Birx began using versions of the phrase “putting out the embers,” wording that was later picked up by the press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, and by Mr. Trump himself.

….

Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami, a Republican, said that the White House approach had only one focus: reopening businesses, instead of anticipating how cities and states should respond if cases surged again.

“It was all predicated on reduction, open, reduction, open more, reduction, open,” he said. “There was never what happens if there is an increase after you reopen?”

Other nations had moved aggressively to employ an array of techniques that Mr. Trump never mobilized on a federal level, including national testing strategies and contact tracing to track down and isolate people who had interacted with newly diagnosed patients.

“These things were done in Germany, in Italy, in Greece, Vietnam, in Singapore, in New Zealand and in China,” said Andy Slavitt, a former federal health care official who had been advising the White House.

“They were not secret,” he said. “Not mysterious. And these were not all wealthy countries. They just took accountability for getting it done. But we did not do that here. There was zero chance here that we would ever have been in a situation where we would be dealing with ‘embers.’ ”

Living in the Valley of the Moon:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of ninety.  Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:28 PM, for 14h 54m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 5.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

  On this day in 1968, Intel is founded in Mountain View, California.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson report Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets:

Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.

The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.

Steve Vladeck writes What the Heck Are Federal Law Enforcement Officers Doing in Portland?:

Today marks the 50th straight day of protests in Portland, Oregon—which have been ongoing since shortly after the May 25 murder of George Floyd. The protests have been largely peaceful, but there have been several well-documented episodes of violence, vandalism and property damage. In the past few days, however, the protests have been met with what appears to be a significant federal law enforcement response—the contours of (and legal authorities for) which are, at best, unclear.

By all appearances, there are now at least 100 federal law enforcement officers on the ground in Portland. But media reports suggest that many of those officers (a) are not wearing identifiable uniforms or other insignia, (b) are not driving marked law enforcement vehicles, and (c) are not identifying themselves either publicly or even to those whom they have detained and arrested. Making matters worse, local authorities—from the mayor to the sheriff to the governor—have repeatedly insisted not only that they don’t want federal assistance but that the federal response is aggravating the situation on the ground. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, in contrast, has repeatedly taken to Twitter to claim that local authorities are refusing to restore order—albeit with only vague references to which federal laws are not being enforced (and repeated allusions to “graffiti” and other property damage by “violent anarchists”).

In all of these respects, what’s happening in Portland appears to be a reprise of much of what happened in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of June, when Attorney General William Barr called upon a wide array of statutory authorities to commandeer hundreds of federal law enforcement officers in order to “restore order” in the nation’s capital. At the time, many who both criticized and defended Barr’s actions pointed to the federal government’s unique legal authority over the District of Columbia—implying (whether as a feature or a bug) that the same authorities wouldn’t be available, at least to the same extent, in the 50 states. But if nothing else, the events in Portland appear to underscore that the federal government sees no such distinction—and that it believes it has the power to similarly deploy federal law enforcement authorities across the country, even (if not especially) over the objections of the relevant local and state officials.

(Vladeck continues with answers to six questions. It’s a quick-but-solid analysis confined to questions of federal and state law.)

Russia accused of trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research: