Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:32 AM and sunset 8:10 PM, for 14h 38m 21s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets this evening at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1796, Edward Jenner successfully tests a smallpox vaccine, the world’s first vaccine.

Recommended for reading in full —

The Hill reports on a shift to overseas production:

Harley Davidson to open plant in Thailand after closing one in Kansas City https://t.co/o2d1XpguzB pic.twitter.com/lSneY8QEkE

— The Hill (@thehill) May 11, 2018

Rick Barrett reports In Washington, union rips Harley-Davidson for closing Kansas City plant while opening in Thailand:

A labor union for Harley-Davidson Inc. employees was in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, complaining about Harley’s plan to close its factory in Kansas City, Mo., while opening an assembly plant in Thailand.

The world’s largest manufacturer of heavyweight motorcycles has said it will close the Kansas City factory despite pleas from some members of Congress to keep it open and retain about 800 jobs.

Harley says it’s moving the Kansas City work to the company’s plant in York, Pa., creating about 400 additional jobs in York.

Drew Harwell and Tony Romm report Facebook suspends 200 apps following Cambridge Analytica scandal:

Facebook said Monday morning it had suspended roughly 200 apps amid an ongoing investigation prompted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal into whether services on the site had improperly used or collected users’ personal data.

Facebook did not immediately provide detail on which apps were suspended or how many people had used them. The company said in an update, its first look since the social network announced the internal audit in March, that the apps would now undergo a “thorough investigation” into whether they had misused user data.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company will examine tens of thousands of apps that could have accessed or collected large amounts of users’ personal information before the site’s more restrictive data rules for third-party developers took effect in 2015.

(“Tens of thousands” of apps yet to be examined.)

Greg Sergeant relates Alarming new revelations about Trump’s addiction to Fox News:

The New York magazine piece reports that former White House advisers Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus sought to deliberately drive Trump deeper into the Fox News bubble, because he was getting overly agitated by criticism on MSNBC and CNN. They did this by talking up Fox’s high ratings and importance to Trump’s base until Trump’s television diet became, as one former official put it, “mainly a complete dosage of Fox.”

But this has created its own alarming problems, officials now say. Fox gets Trump riled up about topics that weren’t supposed to be on that day’s agenda, forcing White House staff to scramble to refocus. And Trump’s addiction to Sean Hannity — who has become a kind of walking security blanket for the president — is having a deep impression on his view of the Mueller investigation:

Regardless of the news of the day, the overarching narrative of the show is the political persecution of Trump, and by extension of Hannity and Hannity’s viewers, at the hands of the so-called deep state and the Democratic Party, and the corrupt mainstream media, a wholly owned subsidiary of both. Everything comes back to … Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, a phony, petty diversion from what should be the real focus: prosecuting Hillary Clinton.

Now over to The Post’s new piece. The big takeaway is that the Mueller probe, as the piece puts it, is “secretive and methodical,” a “steaming locomotive” that is racking up indictments and guilty pleas — the real action in the background, even as Hannity rails about the Deep State and Rudy Giuliani rails about Mueller’s “stormtroopers” while pummeling himself about the face with seemingly endless rake-stepping.

NASA ScienceCasts describes New Science from Jupiter:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-four.  Sunrise is 5:33 AM and sunset 8:09 PM, for 14h 36m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of Resaca, Georgia begins:

The Battle of Resaca was part of the Union’s Atlanta Campaign. From May 13-16, 1864, more than 150,000 soldiers clashed outside Georgia’s capital city, including 10 Wisconsin regiments. On May 13, the Union troops reconnoitered the Confederate lines to prepare for the next day’s combat.

Recommended for reading in full —

 Lee Bergquist reports EPA investigates possible groundwater contamination in central Wisconsin as worries grow:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigated potential groundwater contamination in central Wisconsin this week after longstanding complaints over the health impact farms may pose to drinking water.

On Monday, workers from the EPA began a large-scale project to drill wells in Juneau County near a large dairy farm to test for elevated levels of nitrates and other contamination, according state and federal officials.

The visit underscores growing concerns in rural areas over the impact manure spreading and other farming practices may have on groundwater, lakes and streams. Manure as fertilizer is a source of nitrogen. In water, it becomes nitrate.

Nick Penzenstadler, Brad Heath, and Jessica Guynn report We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians. Here’s what we found:

USA TODAY Network reporters reviewed each of the 3,517 ads, which were released to the public this week for the first time by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The analysis included not just the content of the ads, but also information that revealed the specific audience targeted, when the ad was posted, roughly how many views it received and how much the ad cost to post.

Among the findings:

• Of the roughly 3,500 ads published this week, more than half — about 1,950 — made express references to race. Those accounted for 25 million ad impressions — a measure of how many times the spot was pulled from a server for transmission to a device.
• At least 25% of the ads centered on issues involving crime and policing, often with a racial connotation. Separate ads, launched simultaneously, would stoke suspicion about how police treat black people in one ad, while another encouraged support for pro-police groups.
• Divisive racial ad buys averaged about 44 per month from 2015 through the summer of 2016 before seeing a significant increase in the run-up to Election Day. Between September and November 2016, the number of race-related spots rose to 400. An additional 900 were posted after the November election through May 2017.
• Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton. A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.

Interactive Graphic: Explaining Russia’s Facebook campaign aimed at Americans

Young Mie Kim, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who published some of the first scientific analysis of social media influence campaigns during the election, said the ads show that the Russians are attempting to destabilize Western Democracy by targeting extreme identity groups.

Loren Grush writes With the landing of SpaceX’s powerful new Falcon 9, a new era of rocket reusability takes off:

This afternoon, SpaceX landed the most powerful version yet of its Falcon 9 rocket, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The so-named Block 5 upgrade took off from the company’s launchpad at Kennedy Space Center, sending a communications satellite into orbit for Bangladesh and then touched down on one of the company’s drone ships in the Atlantic. It was the 25th successful rocket landing for SpaceX, and the 14th on one of the company’s drone ships.

It also marks the first launch of the Block 5, the vehicle that will carry humans to space for NASA. The Block 5 is meant to be SpaceX’s most reusable rocket yet, with many upgrades put in place that negate the need for extensive refurbishment between flights. In fact, the first Block 5 rockets will eventually be able to fly up to 10 times without the need for anymaintenance after landings, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said during a pre-launch press conference. Ideally, once one of these rocket lands, SpaceX will turn it horizontal, attach a new upper stage and nose cone on top, turn it vertical on the launchpad, fill it with propellant, and then launch it again. Musk noted that the vehicles would need some kind of moderate maintenance after the 10-flight mark, but it’s possible that each rocket could fly up to 100 times in total.

It’ll be a while before SpaceX is that efficient, though. Since this is the first launch and landing of the Block 5, the company will still deconstruct the vehicle and do inspections to see if it can indeed fly again without refurbishment. “Ironically, we need to take it apart to confirm that it does not need to be taken apart,” Musk said. He noted that this particular rocket probably won’t fly again for a couple months.

Gillian Brockell writes of Abraham Lincoln’s ‘angel mother’ and the second ‘mama’ who outlived him:

Lincoln would later tell Herndon, “God bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.” Where Lincoln’s father was short, his mother was tall; where his father was dull and aimless, his mother was smart and motivated; where his father’s face was round, his mother’s had the sharp angles Lincoln inherited.

And as for Lincoln’s well-documented propensity for “melancholy,” he may have gotten that from her, too. Herndon says that, though she was kind and friendly, neighbors told him she was often “beclouded by a spirit of sadness.”

When Lincoln was seven, the family moved from Kentucky to a new settlement in Indiana, where the boy’s days were filled with farming chores and mischief with neighbor kids in the wilderness. Two years in, tragedy struck. His mother consumed milk poisoned unintentionally with white snakeroot; seven days later, at the age of 34, she was dead.

…

The following year, Thomas Lincoln went back to his home town, where an old crush was recently widowed. Within days, he and Sarah Bush Johnston were married. She arrived at the cabin with a wagon loaded with nice furniture, comfortable bedding and three children from her first marriage.

Young Abraham Lincoln — filthy, hungry and starved for affection — immediately began calling his new stepmother “Mama.” The good feelings were mutual. Bush soaped down her new stepchildren and outfitted them with her own kids’ clothes. She also insisted her husband install a floor, a proper door and windows to their home.

Lincoln later described his “joyous, happy boyhood,” largely due to his stepmom’s love. At 11, Herndon says, Lincoln “began that marvelous and rapid growth in stature for which he was so widely noted.” Despite being illiterate herself, she acquired books for him and encouraged his intellectual side, securing for him what little formal schooling he had.

Look Inside A Warehouse Where Thousands Of Robots Pack Groceries: 

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see intermittent rain with a high of fifty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:34 AM and sunset 8:08 PM, for 14h 34m 06s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 11% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1949, the Berlin Blockade ends:

During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies’ railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche mark from West Berlin.

In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin airlift (26 June 1948–30 September 1949) to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city’s population.[1][2] Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the British Royal Air Force, the French Air Force,[3] the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force[4]:338 flew over 200,000 flights in one year, providing to the West Berliners up to 8,893 tons of necessities each day, such as fuel and food.[5] The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict.[6]

By the spring of 1949, the airlift was clearly succeeding, and by April it was delivering more cargo than had previously been transported into the city by rail. On 12 May 1949, the USSR lifted the blockade of West Berlin. The Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Robert Pear reports Trump’s Plan to Lower Drug Prices Diverges From Campaign Promise:

WASHINGTON — President Trump vowed on Friday to “bring soaring drug prices back down to earth” by promoting competition among pharmaceutical companies, and he suggested that the government could require drugmakers to disclose prices in their ubiquitous television advertising.

But he dropped the popular and populist proposals of his presidential campaign, opting not to have the federal government directly negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare. And he chose not to allow American consumers to import low-cost medicines from abroad.

He would instead give private entities more tools to negotiate better deals on behalf of consumers, insurers and employers.

Speaking in the sun-splashed Rose Garden of the White House, Mr. Trump said that a “tangled web of special interests” had conspired to keep drug prices high at the expense of American consumers.

(Americans should be able to buy medicines from abroad, as they should be able to freely trade in goods, generally; private entities cannot negotiate truly better deals if they do not have access to all possible sources of a medicine.  As for breaking his campaign promise, well, Trump said what he knew some wanted to hear.)

➤ John Santucci, Matthew Mosk, Katherine Faulders, and Soo Rin Mim report EXCLUSIVE: Special counsel probing donations with foreign connections to Trump inauguration:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has questioned several witnesses about millions of dollars in donations to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee last year, including questions about donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, sources with direct knowledge told ABC News.

…

According to a source who has sat with the Mueller team for interviews in recent weeks, the special counsel is examining donors who have either business or personal connections in Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Several donors with those ties contributed large sums to the non-profit fundraising entity – gifts that topped out at $1 million dollars, according to public records.

➤ Conor Friedersdorf contends It’s Time for Trump Voters to Face the Bitter Truth (“Republicans elected a president who promised to take on D.C.—instead, Trump has presided over an extraordinary auction of access and influence):

Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” while running for office. Voters gave him the opportunity to follow through when they propelled him to the White House. Instead, he surrounded himself with people who saw his victory as an opportunity to enrich themselves by selling the promise of access or influence.

This betrayal of the American public warrants more attention. Trump voters who wanted to rid Washington of sellouts should be most upset, but no one wants to admit that the person they voted for was misrepresenting his intentions. And those who rely on commentators like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, and Tucker Carlson for information lack many relevant facts.

Here’s what Trump voters should know. Michael Cohen was the president’s personal attorney. He stepped up when someone was needed to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the election, even using a shell corporation created under a pseudonym to hide the matter.

But that corporation wasn’t just for paying off the pornography actress. He also used it to receive huge sums of money from folks with powerful interests in influencing the U.S. government. “A Korean defense company competing for a U.S. contract said it paid him $150,000 to advise it on accounting practices,” The Washington Post reported earlier this week. “A global pharmaceutical company said it paid him $1.2 million to provide insight into health-care policy—money it said it was required to keep paying even after concluding that Cohen had little to offer. A telecommunication company said it turned to him simply to better understand the Trump administration.”

➤ Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman report E.P.A. Emails Show an Effort to Shield Pruitt From Public Scrutiny:

WASHINGTON — It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where Iowa ranchers could ask questions directly of Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But when the agency learned that anyone would be free to ask anything, they decided to script the questions themselves.

“My sincere apologies,” an E.P.A. official wrote to the rancher who would be moderating the event. “We cannot do open q&a from the crowd.” She then proposed several simple questions for him to ask Mr. Pruitt, including: “What has it been like to work with President Trump?”

Details about the December event, and dozens of other official appearances from Mr. Pruitt’s scandal-plagued first year at the E.P.A., have until now been hidden from public view as a result of an extraordinary effort by Mr. Pruitt and his staff to maintain strict secrecy about the bulk of his daily schedule.

But a new cache of emails offer a detailed look inside the agency’s aggressive efforts to conceal his activities as a public servant. The more than 10,000 documents, made public as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the Sierra Club, show that the agency’s close control of Mr. Pruitt’s events is driven more by a desire to avoid tough questions from the public than by concerns about security, contradicting Mr. Pruitt’s longstanding defense of his secretiveness.

➤ Mallorca in 4K:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:35 AM and sunset 8:07 PM, for 14h 31m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 17.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1943, the Battle of Attu begins:

The Battle of Attu, which took place on 11–30 May 1943, was a battle fought between forces of the United States, aided by Canadian reconnaissance and fighter-bomber support, and the Empire of Japan on Attu Island off the coast of the Territory of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during the American Theater and the Pacific Theater and was the only land battle of World War II fought on incorporated territory of the United States. It is also the only land battle in which Japanese and American forces fought in Arctic conditions.

The more than two-week battle ended when most of the Japanese defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat after a final banzai charge broke through American lines.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Philip Bump writes Suddenly, Pence suggests, investigations into the president have expiration dates:

What Pence is really saying is that a politically inconvenient thing should go away. There’s not much more to it than that, and one need not read too far into things to get that message. What’s striking, though, is how far that deviates from recent Republican attitudes toward investigations into their political opponents.

There’s the Benghazi investigation, of course, which extended from the attacks in Libya in 2012 until about a month after the 2016 election. It was instrumental in affecting the 2016 election, not because it implicated Hillary Clinton in her role as secretary of state but because it exposed the private email server she used during that period, leading to the FBI investigation that reemerged right before Election Day.

But it wasn’t just Benghazi. There was also the investigation into a failed 2009-2010 ATF program nicknamed Fast and Furious, which involved selling guns to criminals in an effort to uncover trafficking networks but resulted in putting guns into criminals’ hands with tragic results.

➤ George Will contends Trump is no longer the worst person in government:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

Last June, a Trump Cabinet meeting featured testimonials offered to Dear Leader by his forelock-tugging colleagues. His chief of staff, Reince Priebus, caught the spirit of the worship service by thanking Trump for the “blessing” of being allowed to serve him. The hosannas poured forth from around the table, unredeemed by even a scintilla of insincerity. Priebus was soon deprived of his blessing, as was Tom Price. Before Price’s ecstasy of public service was truncated because of his incontinent enthusiasm for charter flights, he was the secretary of health and human services who at the Cabinet meeting said, “I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me.” The vice president chimed in but saved his best riff for a December Cabinet meeting when, as The Post’s Aaron Blake calculated, Pence praised Trump once every 12?seconds for three minutes: “I’m deeply humbled. .?.?. ” Judging by the number of times Pence announces himself “humbled,” he might seem proud of his humility, but that is impossible because he is conspicuously devout and pride is a sin.

…

There will be negligible legislating by the next Congress, so ballots cast this November will be most important as validations or repudiations of the harmonizing voices of Trump, Pence, Arpaio and the like. Trump is what he is, a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities and not-at-all compensating vanities, which is pathetic. Pence is what he has chosen to be, which is horrifying.

➤ Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report Giuliani’s Law Firm Undercuts His Statements as They Part Ways:

Firm partners had chafed over Mr. Giuliani’s public comments about payments that another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Michael D. Cohen, made to secure the silence of a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The president has denied her allegations.

Mr. Giuliani suggested that such payments were common at his firm, even without the knowledge of the clients. “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” he said on Fox News. He added, “Michael would take care of things like this like I take care of this with my clients.”

The New York Times asked Greenberg Traurig about those remarks early this week. Shortly after Mr. Giuliani’s resignation was announced, the firm responded.

“We cannot speak for Mr. Giuliani with respect to what was intended by his remarks,” said a spokeswoman, Jill Perry. “Speaking for ourselves, we would not condone payments of the nature alleged to have been made or otherwise without the knowledge and direction of a client.”

➤ Aaron C. Davis and Shawn Boburg report At Sean Hannity properties in working-class areas, an aggressive approach to rent collection:

For years, Fox News host Sean Hannity has poured his fortune into a surprising side venture: a vast portfolio of rental properties in working-class neighborhoods. He described those holdings in compassionate terms when they came to light last month, saying he invests in places that “otherwise might struggle to receive such support.”

But a Washington Post analysis shows that managers at Hannity’s four largest apartment complexes in Georgia have taken an unusually aggressive approach to rent collection. They have sought court-ordered evictions at twice the statewide rate — in a state known for high numbers of evictions and landlord-friendly laws — and frequently have done so less than two weeks after a missed payment.

Property managers at the complexes sought to evict tenants more than 230 times in 2017, court records show. At one, a 112-unit subdivision in a suburb west of Atlanta, 94 eviction actions were filed last year, records show.

➤ Here’s How This Invention Could Save Natural Disaster Victims:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-nine.  Sunrise is 5:36 AM and sunset 8:06 PM, for 14h 29m 44s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 26.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, a traitor to America, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is captured:

The 1st Wisconsin Cavalry was one of the first units sent to search for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee. A Michigan unit, also sent to find Davis, accidentally attacked the cavalry before dawn. A few hours later, both units captured the Confederate president in Irwinville, Georgia.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Mike McIntire, Kenneth P. Vogel, Katie Thomas, and Cecilia Kang report How Michael Cohen, Denied Job in White House, Was Seen as Its Gatekeeper:

After paying off a pornographic film actress and doing other tasks to help his boss win the presidency, Michael D. Cohen was surprised to find that the doors to the White House were mostly closed to him.

Mr. Cohen did not land a hoped-for job in President Trump’s administration — he imagined himself as chief of staff — and in January last year he left the Trump Organization, where he had long served as the in-house fixer without a clear portfolio. But he managed to turn what looked like an exile into a lucrative opportunity.

Armed with the self-appointed title of “personal attorney” to the president, Mr. Cohen, who had served as a personal-injury lawyer and owned a taxi business, became seen as the man who could help others gain access to the seat of power that had been denied to him. Major corporations including AT&T, Novartis and the law firm Squire Patton Boggs collectively paid him over $2 million for advice about navigating the suddenly foreign terrain of Mr. Trump’s Washington.

Most of the arrangements remained a secret until Tuesday, when details first appeared in an account released by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the actress who was paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump and is now suing to be released from the agreement. The New York Times confirmed many of Mr. Avenatti’s disclosures through a review of financial records.

➤ Greg Sargent has A taxonomy of Michael Cohen and potential Trump corruption:

What did President Trump know about Michael Cohen’s quasi-shakedown operation, and when did he know it? That’s an important question, but in this particular case, we need to add a second one: Whether or not Trump knew about Cohen’s efforts, to what degree did he personally benefit from them?

Thanks to major new investigative pieces by The Post and the New York Times, we now have real insight into how Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, set up a company in October 2016 called Essential Consultants, which paid off the hush money to Stormy Daniels and subsequently took in millions of dollars in fees from corporations looking for “insight” into how the Trump administration functioned.

The story is straightforward enough. After Trump’s shocking win, corporations suddenly realized they couldn’t rely on traditional lobbying channels for access, and Cohen raced to capitalize on it. He overtly marketed himself as the president’s “fixer” to potential clients, and presented himself to companies as someone who was knowledgeable about Trump’s, er, thinking on questions important to their bottom line.

➤ Nicholas Fandos and Michael Wines report Russia Tried to Undermine Confidence in Voting Systems, Senators Say:

WASHINGTON — Russia was preparing to undermine confidence in the United States’ voting process when its hackers surveilled around 20 state election systems in the run-up to the 2016 elections, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a brief report released on Tuesday.

But the committee said it saw no evidence that the Russians had ultimately changed vote tallies or voter registration information. In a few states, however, Russian hackers were “in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data,” the committee said.

“These activities began at least as early as 2014, continued through Election Day 2016, and included traditional information-gathering efforts as well as operations likely aimed at preparing to discredit the integrity of the U.S. voting process and election results,” the senators wrote.

The Intelligence Committee has been investigating Russia’s election interference campaign for well over a year now. The findings and earlier recommendations related to election security amount to its first public conclusions based on that work.

➤ Jessica Guynn, Elizabeth Weise, and Erin Kelly report Thousands of Facebook ads bought by Russians to fool U.S. voters released by Congress:

SAN FRANCISCO — Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released thousands of Russian Facebook ads on Thursday, offering the public its first in-depth look at the troubling messages used to heighten tensions among Americans during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The release of the ads, which Facebook says were purchased by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to sway public sentiment, comes as the giant social network races to tighten restrictions on political ads to head off manipulation of upcoming elections, including this fall’s hotly contested midterms.

Pressure has intensified since the Justice Department charged 13 Russians and three companies in February, exposing a wide-ranging effort to subvert the election and to support the Trump campaign.

➤ So, Is Honey Vegan?

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of seventy-three.  Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:04 PM, for 14h 27m 29s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent, with 35.6% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Police & Fire Commission is scheduled to meet at 7:45 PM.

On this day in 1864, the Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia rages:

The Battle of Spotsylvania, Virginia, lasted from May 8-21, 1864, and pitted 100,000 Union troops against 52,000 Confederates. When the two weeks were over, about 11,000 Union soldiers had been killed or wounded without any clear victory for either side. The 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fought at Spotsylvania on May 8, 1864, and during the entire Spotsylvania Campaign (May 8-21, 1864). The 36th Infantry fought at Spotsylvania May 18-21, 1864.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Mike McIntire, Ben Protess, and Jim Rutenberg report Firm Tied to Russian Oligarch Made Payments to Michael Cohen:

A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions adding up to at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.

Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch. A lawyer for Columbus Nova, in a statement on Tuesday, described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.

Other transactions described in the financial records include hundreds of thousands of dollars Mr. Cohen received from Fortune 500 companies with business before the Trump administration, as well as smaller amounts he paid for luxury expenses like a Mercedes-Benz and private club dues.

➤ On November 27th, Damian Paletta reported that Trump had hundreds of limited liability companies like Essential Consultants L.L.C. See Trump could personally benefit from last-minute change to Senate tax bill:

Trump has become the first president in 40 years to refuse to release his tax returns, making it hard to know exactly how much he would gain from his tax policy. But a letter from Trump’s lawyers last year said nearly all his companies count as pass-through entities.

“You hold interests as the sole or principal owner in approximately 500 separate entities,” Morgan Lewis attorneys Sheri Dillon and William Nelson wrote in a letter released by the Trump campaign. “Because you operate these businesses almost exclusively through sole proprietorships and/or closely held partnerships, your personal federal income tax returns are inordinately large and complex for an individual.”

➤ Alexis C. Madrigal considers The Strange Case of AT&T’s Payments to Michael Cohen (“Why did AT&T pay the same company used to funnel hush money to Stormy Daniels?”):

If AT&T paid a monthly fee of $50,000, Essential Consultants would have received more money in the year than AT&T’s highest-paid lobbying firms, Mayer Brown and Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, and Feld, which were paid $420,000 and $400,000 respectively. In 2017, AT&T paid 14 firms at least $200,000 to work Washington for the telecommunications giant. AT&T didn’t immediately respond to a request about the total amount they paid Essential Consultants.

Essential Consultants does not appear in the public disclosures that AT&T filed about who they paid for lobbying, and AT&T says Essential did no lobbying or legal work for the telecom giant—but AT&T certainly had important issues before the government. Not only was net neutrality under reconsideration, but the company has a prospective merger with Time Warnerbefore the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. Net neutrality was repealed in December 2017; the merger has had a rockier path.

Among the more charitable interpretations of AT&T’s payments to Essential Consultants is that they were a pay-for-play scheme to get access to the newly elected president. Less charitable interpretations go well beyond the baseline level of corruption that Americans have come to expect from their government. People know that powerful interests pay for access to American politicians, but they likely do not expect the president’s personal lawyer to commingle the money of corporations, adult-film actresses, and Russian oligarchs.

➤ Ricardo Torres reports [Racine] County to borrow $68 million for Foxconn land purchases:

RACINE COUNTY — Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave said when he was elected three years ago, asking to borrow $3 million “would keep me up at night,” and now the county is talking about a $68 million loan.

“The world has changed quite a bit in three years,” Delagrave said to the county Finance and Human Resources Committee on Tuesday.

The county plans to borrow $68 million to help finance the land purchases in Area I and II related to the Foxconn Technology Group project in Mount Pleasant. In December, the county borrowed $79.2 million to help buy the land in Area I.

The committee recommended approval of three resolutions that would allow the county to borrow the money. The proposal to borrow the money is scheduled to go to the full County Board for consideration on May 8.

(Even after billions in public money from the state, local and county governments spill tens of millions more red ink. See also 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers,  Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, and A Sham News Story on Foxconn, and Another Pig at the Trough. )

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