Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-two.  Sunrise is 5:28 AM and sunset 8:14 PM, for 14h 46m 22s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 13% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1863, the Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, begins:

After nearly three weeks spent encircling Vicksburg, Mississippi, Union forces had bottled up their enemy inside the city and prepared to attack it. Seventeen different Wisconsin regiments were involved in the assault that began the next day (8th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 27th, 29th and 33rd Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 1st, 6th and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries as well as the 2nd Wisconsin Cavalry).

Recommended for reading in full —

Robert Shapiro writes Trump lags behind his predecessors on economic growth:

In recent months, President Trump has tweeted that economic growth under his presidency “is better than it has been in many decades,” “the Economy is raging at an all-time high, and is set to get even better,” and “It has been many years that we have seen these kind of (economic) numbers.”

While some hyperbole is a matter of opinion, Trump’s claim that his stewardship of the economy puts his predecessors to shame can be checked by public information that is readily available to all. In fact, the data show that compared to his predecessors, Trump’s record so far falls somewhere between unremarkable and substandard. Moreover, other economic data suggest that the current expansion will likely wind down before his term ends, and his boasting will ring hollow once the economy slips into recession.

It is commonly said that a President deserves some credit or blame for the economy’s performance only after he’s been in office about six months. On those terms, let’s measure Trump’s words against the record for real GDP growth over the last three quarters (July 2017 through March 2018). Over those quarters, GDP has grown at an annual rate of 2.6 percent. Comparing that pace to his last nine predecessors over comparable periods in their first terms,  Trump here bests the four presidents who faced recessions in their first year in office (Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon). Trump’s other five predecessors came to office, as he did, during economic expansions. Among them, he’s tied for last place: Real GDP growth under Trump over the three quarters has lagged Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, and tied George H.W. Bush, as the data in the following table shows [see full article for table and additional analysis].

Alison Frankel reports Experts bash Giuliani claim that Mueller can’t subpoena Trump:

He told Fox News Thursday morning not just that the special counsel cannot indict President Trump but that Mueller’s team cannot even subpoena the president to appear before a grand jury. Giuliani’s theory is that if the president cannot be prosecuted, he cannot be called to testify in an investigation of his conduct.

“We’re pretty comfortable, in the circumstances of this case, they wouldn’t be able to subpoena him personally,” Giuliani said. “They could probably require documents to be produced. That’s what was required of Nixon. We’ve provided 1.4 million documents. They probably could require you to testify in a civil case, possibly even as a witness in a criminal case, but they can’t require you to testify in what would be your own case.”

…

I talked Thursday to eight lawyers who’ve been involved in previous probes of U.S. presidents. Every one of them said Giuliani’s theory is incorrect.

Some of them had quite strong words.

George Conway wrote the Supreme Court briefs for Bill Clinton accuser Paula Jones in the case that led to a unanimous ruling from the justices that the Constitution does not shield presidents from testifying in certain civil suits. He said Giuliani’s assertion that President Trump cannot be subpoenaed is “drivel.”

Lawrence Robbins, who represented White House officials in the Whitewater investigation, said Giuliani’s theory is “facially preposterous.”

Solomon Wisenberg, who worked on the Whitewater probe of Clinton, called the theory “delusional.”

(Giuliani goes on news programs that don’t check or question his claims, and so he says any false thing he wants to say and low-information viewers erroneously think he might be right.)

Michael Gerson contends The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance:

In West Virginia, Republican Senate candidate Don Blankenshipaccused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of creating jobs for “China people” and getting donations from his “China family.” (McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan.) In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams drives around in a bus he promises to fill with “illegals” who will be deported to Mexico. On the rear is stamped: “Murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molestors [sic], and other criminals on board.” In Arizona, Republican Senate candidate (and former Maricopa County sheriff) Joe Arpaio is a proud “birther” with a history of profiling and abusing Hispanic migrants. Vice President Pence recently called Arpaio “a great friend of this president, a tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law.” In Wisconsin, Republican House candidate Paul Nehlen runs as a “pro-white Christian American candidate.”

Yes, these are fringe figures. But they are fringe figures in a political atmosphere they correctly view as favorable. In the Republican Party, cranks and bigots are closer to legitimacy than at any time since William F. Buckley banished the John Birch Society.

…

Whatever else Trumpism may be, it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. Trump’s record is rich in dehumanization. It was evident when he called Mexican migrants“criminals” and “rapists.” When he claimed legal mistreatment from a judge because “he’s a Mexican.” (Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel was born in Indiana.) When he proposed a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” When he attacked Muslim Gold Star parents. When he sidestepped opportunities to criticize former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. When he referred to “very fine people” among the white-supremacist protesters in Charlottesville. When he expressed a preference for Norwegian immigrants above those from nonwhite “shithole countries.”

Greg Sargent observes Republicans are betting it all on aging white Trump voters:

Driving this appears to be a hard-headed calculation about demographics. Ron Brownstein reports that House Republicans are basically betting their majority on a “generational” gamble:

The Republican bet is that the party can mobilize elevated turnout among their older and blue-collar white base without provoking the young and racially diverse voters who personify the emerging next America to show up on Election Day to defend it. Few things are likely to shape November’s outcome more than whether that bet pays off.

Most indications are that congressional Republicans are genuinely divided on immigration, with many supporting evolution on the issue while many others either don’t want to act or are in sync with Trump’s views. As Brownstein notes, polls show that large majorities of older white voters agree with Trump on most issues, and because Trump is pulling the GOP in a “nativist” direction, this is prioritizing the views of that latter camp.

(Those of us in opposition and resistance, including so many of that number who are white, are combined into a multiracial, multi-ethnic coalition in support of America’s centuries-long democratic and legal tradition. Those before us faced Tories, Know Nothings, Confederates, Klansmen, and the Bund.  Our forebears prevailed against these threats in their time; we will prevail against Trumpism in ours.  A party of aged nativists, no matter how strident, has no hope against us.)

Here’s advice on How to Survive a Snake Bite:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine.  Sunrise is 5:29 AM and sunset 8:13 PM, for 14h 44m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1954, the United States Supreme Court hands down its unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Recommended for reading in full —

Gregory Korte and John Fritze report Trump Jr. told investigators he can’t recall if he discussed Russian meeting with his father:

WASHINGTON — After setting up a meeting with Russian agents to discuss what he thought would be incriminating information on Hillary Clinton in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. made an 11-minute phone call to a blocked phone number, according to a transcript of his interview with Senate investigators released Wednesday.

Trump Jr. says he can’t remember who he spoke to that night. But his father, now President Trump, used a blocked phone number at his home at the time, according to former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. 

At a rally the next day, the presidential candidate alluded to information his campaign was gathering on Hillary Clinton. He said he was planning to give a “major speech” the following week “discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” he said.

“I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting,” Trump said. “I wonder if the press will want to attend, who knows.”

Aaron Blake finds 54 things Donald Trump Jr. couldn’t ‘recall’ or ‘remember’ in his testimony:

If there’s one thing Donald Trump Jr. cleared up with his congressional testimony, it’s that he doesn’t remember a lot of things.

In a newly released transcript of his testimony, Trump repeatedly couched his answers about that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting by saying he did not “remember” or that he didn’t “recall” certain things. Even when he was pretty sure, he’d say “not that I recall” or something like that. The result was a pretty cagey piece of testimony.

Below is a list of 54 substantive issues on which Trump cited his lack of a memory [list follows in full article].

(Bet he can remember his favorite escort service’s phone number…)

Christine Emba writes The GOP is quietly crafting work requirement waivers — for white people:

In January, the Trump administration released new guidelines that would allow states to begin imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. It was a kindness, really: According to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meaningful work is essential to “economic self-sufficiency, self-esteem, wellbeing and … health.”

Well, for some of us.

Since the announcement, states have raced to implement new work requirements, which will have the effect of bumping hundreds of thousands of their poorest citizens off the Medicaid rolls. But in more recent months, a number of GOP-controlled states have been quietly crafting waivers that would end up shielding rural, white residents from this new scheme for self-esteem.

It seems an unusually transparent move, even for a party that tends toward the blatant in its disdain for those not seen as “real Americans.” But most of all, it’s an example of how much-touted moral policy stances — such as solicitude for the “dignity of work,” or “zero tolerance” for drugs, or “extreme” immigration vetting — often give shelter to less attractive tribal loyalties.

Gregory Korte and Alan Gomez report Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: ‘These aren’t people. These are animals.’:

WASHINGTON — President Trump used extraordinarily harsh rhetoric to renew his call for stronger immigration laws Wednesday, calling undocumented immigrants “animals” and venting frustration at Mexican officials who he said “do nothing” to help the United States.

“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them, but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are,” Trump said.

“These aren’t people. These are animals.”

Wisconsin man encounters rare white deer fawn:

Zimmerman pulled out his cellphone and began taking video of the encounter.

The fawn tottered on its spindly legs as Maggie, a 1-year-old Labrador retriever, walked over to investigate.

Zimmerman can be heard on the video telling his dog to back off, an order to which Maggie promptly complied.

…

How rare are white deer? It’s difficult to determine the frequency, according to scientists, but some estimates put it at 1 in 20,000 or 30,000.

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-one.  Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:12 PM, for 14h 40m 25s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets today at 7 AM, and her Parks & Rec Board at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1913, band leader Woody Herman is born in Milwaukee:

On this date Woody Herman was born in Milwaukee. A child prodigy, Herman sang and tap-danced in local clubs before touring as a singer on the vaudeville circuit. He played in various dance bands throughout the 20s and 30s and by 1944 was leading a band eventually known as the First Herd. In 1946, the band played an acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall but disbanded at the end of the year. The following year, Herman returned to performing with the Second Herd that included a powerful saxophone section comprised of Herbie Steward, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Serge Chaloff. He died in 1987.

Jennifer Rubin writes The gullible Trump finally finds out Kim Jong Un isn’t ‘honorable’:

The Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon observes that a “no more Mr. Nice Guy” stance actually is “more reassuring than the love fests that were happening previously, because they seemed surreal.” There are a couple of ways to read this shift in tone. “Either Kim is now nervous about the whole détente process, given the clear U.S. goals, and wants to shut it down entirely, in which case the summit may not happen at all,” says O’Hanlon. “Or, more likely, he is beginning the bargaining process in earnest, since the Trump administration was misinterpreting what he really meant and really was offering with all his talk of peace and denuclearization. It’s not going to be that easy, or unilateral on his part, and most of us didn’t think it would be.”

If it is the latter, Trump may be particularly susceptible to Pyongyang’s posturing. Trump’s reliance on “chemistry” with world leaders and penchant for interpreting other countries’ moves — be it the “nice” release of three Americans held in North Korea or a red-carpet welcome in China (the biggest ever!) — in personal terms are counterproductive when dealing with a methodical, aggressive regime. Instead of winning favor, Trump’s childish rhetoric merely confirms adversaries’ belief that they can manipulate him with a few superficial moves.

Nicholas Eberstadt warned in early March: “A good North Korean negotiating team seizes immediate control of the agenda. Typically it will suddenly stop talks, or unexpectedly demand resumption, to throw the other side off its game. If Team North does not take control of the agenda, talks get shut down until Team North says it is time to start talking again.” In short, if they did not see Pyongyang’s latest maneuver coming, Trump and his team are more gullible than we imagined.

Christopher Ingraham reports Satellite data strongly suggests that China, Russia and other authoritarian countries are fudging their GDP reports:

China, Russia and other authoritarian countries inflate their official GDP figures by anywhere from 15 to 30 percent in a given year, according to a new analysis of a quarter-century of satellite data.

The working paper, by Luis R. Martinez of the University of Chicago, also found that authoritarian regimes are especially likely to artificially boost their gross domestic product numbers in the years before elections, and that the differences in GDP reporting between authoritarian and non-authoritarian countries can’t be explained by structural factors, such as urbanization, composition of the economy or access to electricity.

Noah Lanard writes This Man Was Trump Before Trump. He Just Won Pennsylvania’s Senate Primary:

Nearly a decade before Donald Trump launched his campaign by accusing Mexico of sending “rapists” to the United States, Lou Barletta vowed to make the small city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, “the toughest place on illegal immigrants in America.” With Barletta as mayor, Hazleton became the first city in the country to pass a law that fined landlords who rented to undocumented immigrants and stripped employers of their business licenses if they hired unauthorized workers. On Tuesday, Republican voters chose Barletta, who is now one of Congress’ foremost immigration hawks, to be the party’s nominee in Pennsylvania’s US Senate race.

…

As mayor, Barletta capitalized on the resentment among the city’s aging white population of the new immigrants, who were mostly from the Dominican Republic. “What I’m doing here is protecting the legal taxpayer of any race,” Barletta said in 2006. “And I will get rid of the illegal people. It’s this simple: They must leave.” He fulfilled his pledge to crack down on immigrants in 2006 when the city passed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, the ordinance that punished people who rented to or hired undocumented immigrants. The law also made English Hazleton’s official language and required all city business to be conducted in English unless federal law prohibited it. Barletta wore a bulletproof vest to the meeting where the measure passed to emphasize his claim that undocumented immigrants were driving up crime.

The law was so sweeping that the right-wing Federation for American Immigration Reform, which aggressively supports Trump’s immigration agenda, argued it was too broad. A federal judge temporarily blocked the law before it went into effect, and the Supreme Court later allowed it to be permanently struck down. But the fight established the anti-immigrant credentials that underpinned Barletta’s second bid for Congress in 2008. He lost again, but two years later he won the seat.

(A part of that which paved the way: a politician trafficking in racial resentment.)

Heather Long writes Just about everything is odd about Trump’s support of Chinese firm ZTE:

It’s odd that Trump, who campaigned on saving millions of U.S. jobs, suddenly says he cares about a few thousand Chinese jobs.

It’s odd that Trump, who championed “America First,” is worried about a single Chinese firm.

It’s odd that Trump, who has spent months berating the Chinese for stealing U.S. intellectual property, is coming to the rescue of a Chinese telecom firm that’s trying to compete with American companies such as Apple.

It’s odd that Trump, who wants a strong U.S. military and business climate, is ignoring a House Intelligence Committee report from 2012 that concluded that ZTE “cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus [poses] a security threat to the United States and to our systems.”

It is odd that Trump, who has put extensive sanctions on Iran and North Korea, seems to be willing to forgive ZTE, a company that admitted it illegally shipped telecom equipment to Iran and North Korea. Trump’s own Commerce Department punished ZTE in April for “egregious behavior,” including repeatedly lying to the U.S. government. (The department banned U.S. companies from selling critical microchips and other products to ZTE for seven years.)

How Do You Move a Shark? Very Carefully:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-six.  Sunrise is 5:30 AM and sunset 8:11 PM, for 14h 40m 25s of daytime.  The moon new today.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets this evening at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1928, Mickey Mouse makes his debut in Plane Crazy:

Plane Crazy is an American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The cartoon, released in 1928 by the Walt Disney Studios, was the first creation of the character Mickey Mouse. It was made as a silent film and given a test screening to a theater audience on May 15, 1928, but failed to pick up a distributor. Later that year, Disney released Mickey’s first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, which was an enormous success. Following this, Plane Crazy was released as a sound cartoon on March 17, 1929. It was the fourth Mickey film to be released after Steamboat Willie, The Gallopin’ Gaucho, and The Barn Dance (1928).

Recommended for reading in full —

Scott Bauer reports Foxconn selects company with close ties to Walker:

MADISON, Wis. — Foxconn Technology Group on Monday selected a company led by a Republican megadonor with close ties to Gov. Scott Walker to develop the master plan for its massive campus in Wisconsin.

The Taiwan-based electronics giant said it chose Hammes Company to be the lead developer on the $10 billion project that will house a display-screen factory on a campus spread over 2,900 acres (1173.61 hectares) not far from the Illinois border. Foxconn could qualify for up to $4.5 billion in state and local taxpayer incentives if it employs 13,000 workers as envisioned.

Hammes is led by Jon Hammes, Walker’s campaign finance chairman for his re-election bid this year. Hammes is part owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans, including more than $15,000 to Walker, and GOP causes over the years.

Hammes said in a statement that he was “delighted” to have his Milwaukee-based company selected and it will provide “planning, strategic advisory and development related services.”

(Foxconn knows a crony when they see one.)

 Josh Rogin reports China gave Trump a list of crazy demands, and he caved to one of them:

After top Trump officials went to Beijing last month, the Chinese government wrote up a document with a list of economic and trade demands that ranged from the reasonable to the ridiculous. On Sunday, President Trump caved to one of those demands before the next round of negotiations even starts, undermining his own objectives for no visible gain.

The Chinese proposal is entitled, “Framework Arrangement on Promoting Balanced Development on Bilateral Trade,” and I obtained an English version of the document, which is the Chinese government’s negotiating position heading into the next round of talks. That round begins this week when Xi Jinping’s special economic envoy Liu He returns to town.

Bullet point 5 is entitled, “Appropriately handing the ZTE case to secure global supply chain.”

“Having noted China’s great concern about the case of ZTE, the U.S. will listen attentively to ZTE’s plea, consider the progress and efforts ZTE has made in compliance management and announce adjustment to the export ban,” the document states.

Trump took a big step in that direction Sunday when he tweeted that he had instructed the Commerce Department to help get ZTE “back into business, fast,” only weeks after the Commerce Department cut off its supply of American components because it violated U.S. sanctions on sales to North Korea and Iran. Trump’s tweet set off a panic both inside and outside the administration among those who worry that Trump is backing down from his key campaign promise to stand up to China’s unfair trade practices and economic aggression.

(Even Trump’s own staff can’t make sense of his erratic, self-contradictory behavior.)

Benjamin Mueller, Robert Gebeloff, and Sahil Chinoy report the Surest Way to Face Marijuana Charges in New York: Be Black or Hispanic (“The police explanation that more black and Hispanic people are arrested on marijuana charges because complaints are high in their neighborhoods doesn’t hold up to scrutiny”):

There are many ways to be arrested on marijuana charges, but one pattern has remained true through years of piecemeal policy changes in New York: The primary targets are black and Hispanic people.

Across the city, black people were arrested on low-level marijuana charges at eight times the rate of white, non-Hispanic people over the past three years, The New York Times found. Hispanic people were arrested at five times the rate of white people. In Manhattan, the gap is even starker: Black people there were arrested at 15 times the rate of white people.

With crime dropping and the Police Department under pressure to justify the number of low-level arrests it makes, a senior police official recently testified to lawmakers that there was a simple reason for the racial imbalance: More residents in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods were calling to complain about marijuana.

[Read how we crunched the numbers to reveal the racial disparity in arrests.]

An analysis by The Times found that fact did not fully explain the racial disparity. Instead, among neighborhoods where people called about marijuana at the same rate, the police almost always made arrests at a higher rate in the area with more black residents, The Times found.

(One doesn’t have to smoke – as I don’t – to think that low-level marijuana arrests are a waste of publicly-funded resources, and – more importantly – to reject the racially disproportionate arrests the Times describes on moral grounds.)

Preet Bharara states the obvious about Trump’s complaints of White House leaks:

You hired them https://t.co/YXMZ26PUQn

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) May 14, 2018

Sarah Lewin reports Yes, NASA Is Actually Sending a Helicopter to Mars – Here’s What It Will Do:

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: