Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-three.  Sunrise is 5:48 AM and sunset 8:14 PM, for 14h 26m 04s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 2.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1832, Black Hawk meets defeat on the second and final day of the Battle of Bad Axe.

Recommended for reading in full:

Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose report U.S. retailers blast new China tariffs, say move will raise prices further, hurt jobs:

President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion of Chinese imports from Sept. 1 will hurt consumer purchases, raise prices further and limit hiring, four large retail trade groups warned on Thursday.

Trump on Thursday moved to impose fresh tariffs after U.S. and Chinese negotiators failed to kick-start trade talks between the world’s two largest economies.

The National Retail Federation, which counts Walmart Inc (WMT.N) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) among its members, called the decision to impose new tariffs a flawed strategy that will hurt American consumers.

“We are disappointed the administration is doubling-down on a flawed tariff strategy that is already slowing U.S. economic growth, creating uncertainty and discouraging investment,” Senior Vice President for Government Relations David French said in a statement.

Another influential trade lobby, The Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), which counts retailers like Walmart, Target Corp (TGT.N) and Home Depot (HD.N) among its members, said the tariffs will raise prices for everyday items like clothing, toys, home goods and electronics.

Rachel Siegel reports Former top economic adviser Gary Cohn says Trump’s trade war is hurting the U.S. economy:

Gary Cohn, who left the administration last year amid an internal clash over Trump’s protectionist trade policies, told the BBC that the trade battle was having a “dramatic impact” on American manufacturing and that it offered a “convenient excuse” for China to slow down its economy. Cohn said the Chinese economy “is driven by credit and credit availability,” which is determined by the central government.

“They can turn credit on and they can turn credit off,” Cohn said. “They needed to slow down an overheated economy where prices and real estate prices and everything were getting out of hand. I think President Trump provided that excuse for the Chinese.”

….

Cohn emphasized that “everyone loses in a trade war.” Constant uncertainty about tariffs stops businesses from investing, he said, and tariffs drive up the cost of importing crucial products from China, negating the intended benefits of Trump’s tax cuts. And the U.S. isn’t creating manufacturing jobs, he added.

“When you build plant equipment, you’re buying steel, you’re buying aluminum, you’re buying imported products and then we put tariffs on those, so literally the tax incentive we gave you with one hand was taken away with the other hand,” Cohn said.

Perseid Meteor Shower and Moon in August 2019 Skywatching:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty.  Sunrise is 5:46 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 28m 19s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s Employee Handbook Committee meets at 3:30 PM, and Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1832, the armed steamboat Warrior blocks the retreat of Black Hawk and the British Band across the Mississippi.

Recommended for reading in full:

Hailey BeMiller reports Nine people in Wisconsin criminally charged after thousands of rape kits tested:

Nine people, including two men accused of sexually assaulting children, have so far been criminally charged after an analysis of thousands of previously untested rape kits, the state Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The charges come after department officials in 2014 learned that over 6,000 untested rape kits sat in police and hospital storage rooms across Wisconsin for decades, preventing survivors from getting justice. Trained medical professionals collect samples of skin, fingernails and more for these kits that can be analyzed for DNA if a victim consents to testing.

The Department of Justice has since analyzed over 4,300 kits, with 101 remaining that still need to be tested in cases where someone was already convicted. Nearly 500 DNA results have matched offender profiles in the FBI’s national database, and over 1,000 profiles were uploaded to the system.

Laura Reiley reports Trump’s $16 billion farm bailout will make rich farmers richer, report says:

The Trump administration last week revealed details of a $16 billion aid package for farmers hit in the U.S.-China trade war, with key provisions meant to avoid large corporations scooping up big payouts at the expense of small farmers.

According to a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), most of the $8.4 billion given out so far in last year’s farm bailout went to wealthy farmers, exacerbating the economic disparity with smaller farmers.

An EWG analysis found that the top one-tenth of recipients received 54 percent of all payments. Eighty-two farmers have each so far received more than $500,000 in trade relief.

One farm, DeLine Farm Partnership of Charleston, Mo., has so far received $2.8 million.

The top 1 percent of recipients of trade relief received, on average, $183,331. The bottom 80 percent received, on average, less than $5,000, EWG said.

Ilya Arkhipov and Josh Wingrove report Trump Offered Putin U.S. Help Fighting Wildfires, Kremlin Says:

Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to offer U.S. help fighting Siberian wildfires, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Wildfires in the U.S. haven’t always drawn sympathy from the American president.

Trump sparked outrage last year as wildfires devastated parts of California by insisting that poor forest management by the state’s Democratic leaders was to blame. He threatened to withhold federal money for maintaining the forests even as the fires raged through Butte County north of Sacramento, effectively destroying the town of Paradise and killing dozens of people.

Tonight’s Sky for August 2019:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-eight.  Sunrise is 5:45 AM and sunset 8:16 PM, for 14h 30m 31s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1777, Congress commissions Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, as a major general.

Recommended for reading in full:

Ruth Coniff reports GOP could dodge Gov. Evers to gerrymander Wisconsin again:

Advocates on both sides of recent redistricting battles in Wisconsin have told the Examiner they believe that the Republican-controlled legislature might draw new, gerrymandered voting maps after the 2020 census, using a process that would avoid sending the plan to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers for his signature or veto.

Democrats and advocates for a fair map hoped that the election of a Democratic governor would prevent Republican legislators from gerrymandering Wisconsin again.

Wisconsin already has one of the most skewed voting maps in the nation, according to a federal court. Under the current map, created by the Republican legislature and signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, Republicans were able to win a majority of seats in the state Assembly in 2012, even though Democratic candidates received more votes, overall, in that year’s Assembly races. In 2018, despite losing his re-election bid, Gov. Scott Walker carried 63 of the state’s 99 Assembly districts because of Republican gerrymandering.

….

“We believe that the legislative Republicans are already working with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and they are geared up to do reapportionment in 2021 by means of a joint resolution,” said attorney Lester Pines, who has challenged the constitutionality of laws enacted by the state legislature on voter I.D., abortion restrictions, executive power and other issues. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has already held that redistricting by joint resolution is unconstitutional, but the current court, dominated by Republican-backed justices, might be willing to overturn that 54-year-old precedent, Pines added. “And the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty will be geared up to argue that it is constitutional.” 

“I’ve heard about it,” Rick Esenberg, executive director of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), said of the plan. WILL, a legal institute that backs conservative causes, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gill v Whitford redistricting case, siding with the Republican state lawmakers who drew the current map.  

WILL is not currently working with Republican legislators on the joint-resolution plan, Esenberg said: “Whether we would have anything to do with it, I can’t say.”

(Esenberg’s I can’t say truly means you bet we will: if Esenberg didn’t want to participate, he’d disclaim the project. Vos & Fitzgerald want another ten years of gerrymandering to stay in power, and if that’s what they want, Esenberg will help them.  WILL’s funding would slow to a trickle if it said no to the WISGOP.)

Why Toyota Killed The FJ Cruiser:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:44 AM and sunset 8:17 PM, for 14h 32m 41s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971, the Apollo 15 mission lands astronauts, and a lunar rover, on the moon.

Recommended for reading in full:

Julia Brookins writes Trump’s immigration plan endangers America’s ability to integrate foreigners (“It’s family reunification, not highly skilled workers, that allows the U.S. to form a cohesive national identity”):

President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden speech on immigration Thursday [5.16.19] proposed an eye-catching but ultimately short-sighted approach to immigration: the notion that we should strongly favor highly educated, highly skilled visa-seekers over those with family ties to people in the United States.

As a historian of U.S. immigration, I have seen such notions floated many times over the years because they promise to improve the economy by recruiting better talent. But the politicians and policymakers who promote them don’t seem to notice or appreciate how central prioritizing family-based migration has been to our phenomenal, long-term success in integrating foreigners into the fabric of American life.

When declarations about America’s “broken” immigration system ring out from all political quarters, we should take stock of what is not broken within the system, and resolve not to break it. I’m resigned to the fact that most policymakers’ measures of success focus on narrowly defined economic needs and less on the full range of costs and benefits large-scale immigration has for the country. But I still hope that someone, somewhere is concerned about the needs of our democratic republic and wants to perpetuate the best ideas that have sustained it for nearly 250 years.

Rachel Maddow reviews the family history of Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller, as told by Miller’s uncle, to highlight how the openness of the United States to immigrants saved Miller’s family from poverty and allowed it to thrive – a policy Miller hopes to end through Donald Trump:

How Far Back in Time Could an English Speaker Go and Still Communicate Effectively?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see morning showers on a partly cloudy day with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 8:18 PM, for 14h 34m 49s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1958, Pres. Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA.

Recommended for reading in full:

Laura Reiley reports President tweets American farmers ‘starting to do great again’ — except they’re not:

President Trump began his Tuesday with a congratulatory tweet to new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a shout-out to the military and a rosy assessment of U.S. agriculture: “Farmers are starting to do great again, after 15 years of a downward spiral. The 16 Billion Dollar China ‘replacement’ money didn’t exactly hurt!”

….

Before the trade war even began, farmers and ranchers struggled with falling farm income and commodity prices, rising debt, historic floods through the Midwest and rain that delayed, and in many cases prevented, spring planting.

In May, the president announced a $16 billion aid package, the second bailout for farmers since 2018. The bulk of the money was allocated for row crops such as soy, wheat and oats. Niche crops, including tree nuts, sweet cherries, cranberries and grapes, were also eligible for relief, and so were dairy and pork. But farmers say the payments won’t even start to make up for their losses.

“While America’s farmers and ranchers are grateful for the administration’s agriculture assistance package, it only begins to relieve the great difficulty the agriculture industry is currently facing, ranging from extreme weather conditions to depressed markets,” says Dale Moore, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The U.S. Soybean Export Council reports that shipments of U.S. beans to China were down 19.2 million metric tons, or 705.2 million bushels, in the first 10 months of the current marketing year compared with the 2017-2018 marketing year. Falling sales and lower prices for soybeans have led to a historic carry-over stock of unsold U.S. beans, up 47 percent over the past year, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Lawrence Andrea reports Wisconsin and local officials beef up voting security ahead of the presidential election:

Wisconsin’s second most populated county relies on one computer locked in Madison’s City-County Building to program every municipality’s voting machine. It’s one step one county has taken to try to ensure Wisconsin’s elections are secure as the nation prepares for the next big test of its voting systems — the 2020 presidential election.

In July 2016, “Russian government cyber actors” scanned Wisconsin’s online defenses twice, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Russians attempted to hack 20 other states during the 2016 election.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller in his two-year investigation found the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in “sweeping and systematic fashion.” Numerous Russian officials have been indicted on charges including computer hacking and identity theft.

Police arrest 1,000 in Moscow during protest over exclusion of opposition candidates in city elections:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered morning showers on an otherwise partly cloudy day with a high of eighty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 36m 55s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 16.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1868, Secretary of State William Seward certifies the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Recommended for reading in full:

Toluse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker report Trump campaign sees political advantage in a divisive appeal to working-class white voters:

President Trump launched another broadside Saturday on a Democratic political opponent, calling a prominent black congressman’s Baltimore district a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and saying “no human being would want to live there.”

That Twitter attack on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) plunged the nation into yet another anguished debate over the president’s divisive rhetoric. And it came just two weeks after Trump called out four minority congresswomen with a racist go-back-to-your-country taunt.

….

But Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020.

This has prompted them to find ways to fuse Trump’s nativist rhetoric with a love-it-or-leave-it appeal to patriotism ahead of the 2020 election, while seeking to avoid the overtly racist language the president used in his tweets about the four congresswomen.

Ronald Brownstein writes Will Trump’s Racist Attacks Help Him? Ask Blue-Collar White Women (‘His strategy rests on a bet: that these voters will respond just as enthusiastically to his belligerence as working-class white men’):

Donald Trump’s turn toward more overt racism in his “go back” attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color rests on an unspoken bet: that the women who are part of his core constituencies will respond to his acrimony as enthusiastically as the men.

But polling throughout Trump’s presidency has indicated that his belligerent and divisive style raises more concern among women voters than men in one of his most important cohorts: the white working class. And a new set of focus groups in small-town and rural communities offers fresh evidence that the gender gap over Trump within this bloc is hardening.

….

Trump must maximize his margins—and turnout—among the groups that have been most receptive to his exclusionary racist and cultural messages: older, nonurban, evangelical-Christian, and non-college-educated white voters.

….

But Trump’s strategy faces a huge obstacle if working-class women don’t buy in to his message as much as working-class men. That’s for a simple reason: Every data source—from the exit polls to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of voter files to studies by Catalist, a Democratic voter-targeting firm—shows that these women reliably cast slightly more than half of all the votes from the white working class.

(Quite the bet, but then Trump has nowhere else to turn.)

The Birdman of Idaho Has Built Homes for Over 40,000 Bluebirds: