Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a mix of rain or snow showers during the day,  a high of thirty-seven, and snow in the evening. Sunrise is 6:31 AM and sunset 7:23 PM, for 12h 52m 18s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1860, the first Westbound Pony Express trip left St. Joseph, Missouri on April 3, 1860 and arrived ten days later in Sacramento, California, on April 14th.

On this day in 1865, Union soldiers take the Confederate capital:

When Petersburg, Virginia, fell on the night of April 2, 1865, Confederate leaders hastily abandoned Richmond. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry participated in the occupation of Petersburg and Richmond. The brigade containing the 19th Wisconsin Infantry was the first to enter Richmond on the morning of April 3rd. Their regimental flag became the first to fly over the captured capital of the Confederacy when Colonel Samuel Vaughn planted it on Richmond City Hall.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Deadspin shows How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media:

How America’s largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump’s war on the media: https://t.co/iLVtKRQycL pic.twitter.com/dMdSGellH3

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) March 31, 2018

➤ Madison’s WMSN decided to resist:

In response to the Sinclair message aired: “WMSN/FOX47 Madison did not air the Sinclair promotional announcement during our 9pm news this weekend. Rather, we stayed true to our commitment to provide our Madison area viewers local news, weather and sports of interest to them.” pic.twitter.com/MdQ568cWrH

— FOX 47 Madison (@fox47madison) April 2, 2018

(Whatever the consequences, they’ve made the right decision.)

➤ Kriston Capps considers Mapping the Threat of a Census Disaster in 2020 (“The GOP seems to be betting that damage from a major undercount will be isolated to Democratic-leaning cities. But it’s not that simple”):

At least a dozen states plan to sue the Trump administration over its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, with the attorneys general of New York and California—populous states with large immigrant populations—leading the charge. But the damage of a potential undercount won’t be confined to the coasts.

Before Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the citizenship question on Tuesday, the Democratic co-chair of the House Census Caucus had already proposed a bill to block last-minute census interference. Democrats in the Senate introduced mirror legislation to ensure that any changes to the census were properly tested before a survey. Another House Democrat from New York floated the possibility of withholding appropriations for the census.

While it’s Democrats who are erupting now, tracking populations that are hard for the census to reach reveals that the damage from an undercount could disrupt conservative-leaning states, too. Counties in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, contain some of the hardest-to-reach populations in the country, according to a mapping tool developed by the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in collaboration with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. A major census undercount could jeopardize new congressional seat pick-ups anticipated by Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, and other states that have traditionally trended GOP.

(See also  Trump’s Census policy could boomerang and hurt red states as well as blue states.)

➤ Nick Miroff reports Trump administration, seeking to speed deportations, to impose quotas on immigration judges:

The Trump administration will pressure U.S. immigration judges to process cases faster by establishing a quota system tied to their annual performance reviews, according to new Justice Department directives.

The judges will be expected to clear at least 700 cases a year to receive a “satisfactory” performance rating, a standard that their union called an “unprecedented” step that risks undermining judicial independence and opens the courts to potential challenges.

…

Judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said the quota system could introduce an “appealable” issue and invite legal challenges.

“It could call into question the integrity and impartiality of the court if a judge’s decision is influenced by factors outside the facts of the case, or if motions are denied out of a judge’s concern about keeping his or her job,” Tabaddor said.

“We don’t know of any other court whose judges are subject to individual quotas and deadlines as part of performance reviews and evaluations,” she said.

(There seems not a single institution Trumpism doesn’t twist.)

➤ Robotic Fish Could Revolutionize How We Study The Ocean:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see a morning wintry mix of rain or snow showers and a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:22 PM, for 12h 49m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 95.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey has its world premiere in Washington, D.C.

On this day in 1865, final Battle of Petersburg, Virginia heralds the Confederacy’s doom:

The final Battle of Petersburg brought about the fall of Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. The 5th, 6th, 7th, 19th, 36th, 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in the final assault on Petersburg. The 5th Wisconsin Infantry was in front at the charge and their flag was the first one planted on the rebel works.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Erica Bernstien explains What Bananas Tell Us About Trade Wars:

➤ Annysa Johnson reports Federal investigation found 100-plus examples of racial disparities in MPS suspensions:

A federal investigation into alleged racial disparities in the way Milwaukee Public Schools disciplines students uncovered more than 100 instances over a two-year period in which black students were punished more severely than their white peers for the same or similar misconduct, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Education.

The document, obtained by the Journal Sentinel through an open records request, details the 3½ year investigation, which became public in January when MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver informed board members that she had entered into a settlement agreement with the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

RELATED: MPS agrees to settle U.S. civil rights complaint over discipline of black students

The report, dated Jan. 31, 2018, describes the extensive investigation, which included a massive collection of data and documentation, as well as multiple interviews with teachers, students and principals at 17 MPS schools. And it offers the first specific examples of disparities, beyond the statistical data that showed black students were suspended and expelled at far higher rates than their white peers.

➤ Ifeoma Ajunwa contends Facebook users aren’t the reason Facebook is in trouble now:

After news broke this week of Cambridge Analytica’s unauthorized siphon of millions of Facebook users’ data for political targeting, one particularly troubling reaction emerged: Some commentators implied that Facebook users themselves are also to blame for not being more discerning about or questioning how their data might be used. Coincidentally, this reaction echoed past comments by the social network’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who had derided Facebook users for giving up their personal data.

As a law and organizational scholar who studies platforms, I find the idea that users should bear any of the blame for the unauthorized exploitation of their data on Facebook outrageous. This notion goes against legal concepts that maintain that platforms to which we entrust our personal data should be expected to protect that data and not use it to manipulate us. Yes, there is always some onus on consumers to make informed choices about products and services they consume, but Facebook’s business model of ever-changing terms of service, riddled with the indecipherable legalese used by most platforms, and its general lack of information about data governance mean that consumers are often left in the dark about Facebook’s data collection practices.

[ Why Facebook users’ data obtained by Cambridge Analytica has probably spun far out of reach ]

And ultimately, after all, harvesting user data for targeted advertising was part of Facebook’s business strategy. Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain Facebook users’ data precisely because Facebook itself was already collecting and allowing third-party app developers to access that data. Facebook has extracted ever-more personal information as part of the bargain for using its platform; Cambridge Analytica may have done it in a way Facebook now says it shouldn’t have, but the firm was using the platform exactly as intended.

➤ Tom Haudricourt reports Zach Davies is eager to start the Brewers’ home opener after a year of adjustments:

To take that step forward, Davies is determined to put behind him those first-inning woes (6.27 ERA in 2017, highest of any inning he pitched) as well as crazy home-away splits. Counsell dismissed those facts and figures as mere paperwork but it was impossible to dismiss how much better Davies pitched away from Miller Park, which has favored hitters since opening in 2001.

In 17 starts at home, Davies went 8-7 with a 5.82 ERA, compared to 9-2, 2.04 in 16 games on the road. But, as an indication that he started to figure out what he was doing wrong, home or away, Davies posted a 4.90 ERA in the first half and 2.87 ERA after the break.

Live and learn.

“Early on, I kind of shot myself in the foot by throwing way too many pitches, not going deeper into ball games,” said Davies, who averaged 5 1/3 innings per start in the first half and 6 1/3 innings afterward. “So, I should have been over 200 innings, in my mind.

➤ (If) This Is the End of the Silicon Chip, Here’s What’s Next:

Good morning.

Easter in Whitewater will be chilly with a mix of clouds & sunshine, and a high of thirty-seven. Sunrise is 6:35 AM and sunset 7:21 PM, for 12h 46m 32s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 98.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, the Battle of Okinawa, the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of during the Second World War, begins.

The Milwaukee Brewers are founded on this day in 1970:

On this date the Milwaukee Brewers, Inc., an organization formed by Allan H. “Bud” Selig and Edmund Fitzgerald, acquired the Seattle Pilots franchise. The team was renamed the Milwaukee Brewers, a tribute to the city’s long association with brewing industry.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Dr. William Barber II ponders America’s Moral Malady (“The nation’s problem isn’t that we don’t have enough money. It’s that we don’t have the moral capacity to face what ails society”):

While a thorough analysis of America’s moral malady may tempt us to despair, it also brings us face-to-face with the ethical challenge that inspired the first Poor People’s Campaign. The children in Marks [Mississippi] made King weep, just as pictures of children burned by napalm in Vietnam had brought him to tears, because he knew that their cruel reality wasn’t inevitable. As James Baldwin wrote: “We made the world we’re living in and we have to make it over.” To King, the Poor People’s Campaign was about America’s need for another Reconstruction—for an acknowledgment that a system of race-based slavery had created the inequality that had been passed down to the present day.

This confluence of troubles may seem overwhelming. It suggests, however, that the only way out is for people directly harmed by the economic and political system to fight as one against the few who benefit from it.

In 1968, the idea—a Poor People’s Campaign to unite activists from across the nation and bring them to Washington to shut down the government, to bring the issue of poverty compellingly to the fore—looked impossible. Except there was no other way. The tent city in Washington was snuffed out after six weeks by riot police and tear gas. Even so, the campaign had a lasting influence on national policies, as seen in the additional spending for Head Start, subsidized school lunches and food programs in poverty-stricken counties, and the creation of the Children’s Defense Fund, which has pushed legislation to help poor children and families for the past half century.

➤ Kori Schake contends Immigrants Give America a Foreign-Policy Advantage:

It has often been thought that the composition of the American public, consisting as it does of immigrants from so many lands, is a vulnerability in foreign policy—that, for example, German immigrants would harbor affinities for their land of origin and become disloyal during the world wars. The argument was taken to a shameful extreme with the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. What has received less attention is the extent to which America’s immigrant fabric can be a foreign-policy advantage, even a threat to other countries. That is what British Prime Minister Palmerston feared, and what President Lincoln stoked, to forestall British recognition of the Confederacy during the Civil War. The result was an important inhibition on Great Britain, then the most powerful state of the international order.

…

Ultimately, the Palmerston government remained neutral throughout the American Civil War because of the way Americans of British origin could affect domestic politics in Britain. Those immigrants had political rights their British relatives envied and were agitating to attain for themselves via the franchise in England, and in hopes for self-determination in Scotland and Ireland. Being an immigrant society could well be credited with saving the nation by forestalling British support to the Confederacy.

During the most dangerous time in American history, its values served to constrain the choices of its international adversaries by using the aspirations of their own citizens against them. The political liberties and economic opportunities afforded European immigrants in the United States turned out to be a powerful and unique foreign-policy advantage: Who the United States was as a domestic political culture effectively limited the foreign-policy choices of the hegemon of the international order.

➤ Anna Flagg tackles The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant:

Immigrant populations in the United States have been growing fast for decades now. Crime in the same period, however, has moved in the opposite direction, with the national rate of violent crime today well below what it was in 1980.

In a large-scale collaboration by four universities, led by Robert Adelman, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, researchers compared immigration rates with crime rates for 200 metropolitan areas over the last several decades. The selected areas included huge urban hubs like New York and smaller manufacturing centers less than a hundredth that size, like Muncie, Ind., and were dispersed geographically across the country.

According to data from the study, a large majority of the areas have many more immigrants today than they did in 1980 and fewer violent crimes. The Marshall Project extended the study’s data up to 2016, showing that crime fell more often than it rose even as immigrant populations grew almost across the board.

In 136 metro areas, almost 70 percent of those studied, the immigrant population increased between 1980 and 2016 while crime stayed stable or fell. The number of areas where crime and immigration both increased was much lower — 54 areas, slightly more than a quarter of the total. The 10 places with the largest increases in immigrants all had lower levels of crime in 2016 than in 1980.

➤ Clive Irving ponders How to Kill Democracy in Four Easy Steps: Lessons on the Gestapo at 85:

The first was a disdain for elites of any kind, stirred up deliberately to encourage a sense of grievance in the masses of people who had suffered in the economic collapse of the 1920s and who viewed the flagrant decadence of Weimar Berlin as evidence of an urban elite (often portrayed as heavily influenced by Jews) that held too much sway.

The second was an understanding of the importance of a well-orchestrated propaganda machine. In the person of Joseph Goebbels Hitler discovered one of the great geniuses of modern political propaganda and, gaining control immediately of the national radio network, Goebbels infused the most pervasive new arm of the national media with the Nazi narrative of national rebirth under Hitler’s guiding vision of the Fatherland.

The third was putting into place all the apparatus of a police state in which the tasks of surveillance, intelligence and punishment were divided between the Gestapo and the state security service, the Reichsfuhrer-SS.

All this prepared the ground for the fourth and final step that would enforce total and unquestioning loyalty to the Fatherland: war.

Those four stages in the death of German democracy do not have any exact modern equal, either in the degree of their fanaticism or in the scale of the final catastrophe they produced, but there are elements that should be disturbingly familiar to us as precursors.

➤ A 36-Year-Old Accountant Steps Into NHL Game As Emergency Backup Goalie, Makes 7 Saves:

Scott Foster played college hockey at Western Michigan… but that was over a decade ago. These days he’s an accountant in Chicago, but he also serves as an emergency backup goalie at Blackhawks games, ready to stand in in the (exceedingly rare) occasions both Blackhawks’ goalies are injured during the game.

One of those exceedingly rare occasions happened on Thursday night, and Foster was called in to protect a 6-2 Chicago lead in the third period against Winnipeg ….

And defend it he did, making 7 saves to preserve the win.

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be windy with showers, and a high of fifty. Sunrise is 6:36 AM and sunset 7:20 PM, for 12h 43m 39s of daytime. The moon is full today. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1958, Chess Records releases Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode.

On this day in 1998, the Brewers go National:

[T]he Milwaukee Brewers played their first game as a National League Team, losing to the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. The Brewers’ transfer, the first since the American League was formed at the turn of the century, was necessary to create a 16-team National League and a 14-team American League. [Source: “Brewer’s Timeline” on the team’s official Web site].

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Robert Shapiro writes Trump’s Census policy could boomerang and hurt red states as well as blue states:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision this week to “reinstate” a question on citizenship status in the 2020 decennial Census (it was last asked in 1940), almost certainly will vastly increase the number of people who ignore or evade the 2020 decennial Census. The policy will certainly discourage undocumented immigrants from filling out a Census form, and so lower the official population count of nearly every state. Those states that would be most disadvantaged, however, are not those with simply the most undocumented people, such as New York and Illinois, but those 12 states whose undocumented populations account for more than the national average of 3.5 percent. That group is led, in order, by Nevada, Texas, California, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and Maryland. For those states, the results could well mean fewer seats in Congress, fewer electoral votes, and smaller shares of more than $800 billion in annual federal funds allocated based in part on Census population data.

(Ross and Sessions explicitly tied the collection of 2020 Census information to federal law enforcement. That’s what makes his directive so remarkable and so dangerous.)

But the damage would be much more far-reaching. When Ross announced this decision, he said he did it at the behest of the Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, so DoJ could better enforce the Voting Rights Act by more accurately measuring how many people in each of the nation’s 72,000 Census tracts are eligible to vote. In so doing, Ross and Sessions explicitly tied the collection of 2020 Census information to federal law enforcement. That’s what makes his directive so remarkable and so dangerous.

My analysis, detailed below, suggests that some 24.3 million people would have good reason to skip the 2020 Census if they believe their names and addresses could be shared with law enforcement. Moreover, because most of them are not concentrated in the big blue states, and most of the federal funding tied to the Census involves programs like Medicaid, Section 8 housing assistance, and support for school lunches, the new Ross-Sessions policy could cut federal funding to the 23 mainly red states with poverty rates above the national average.

➤ Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg report Behind the chaos: Office that vets Trump appointees plagued by inexperience:

An obscure White House office responsible for recruiting and vetting thousands of political appointees has suffered from inexperience and a shortage of staff, hobbling the Trump administration’s efforts to place qualified people in key posts across government, documents and interviews show.

At the same time, two office leaders have spotty records themselves: a college dropout with arrests for drunken driving and bad checks and a Marine Corps reservist with arrests for assault, disorderly conduct, fleeing an officer and underage drinking.

The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is little known outside political circles. But it has far-reaching influence as a gateway for the appointed officials who carry out the president’s policies and run federal agencies.

Under President Trump, the office was launched with far fewer people than in prior administrations. It has served as a refuge for young campaign workers, a stopover for senior officials on their way to other posts and a source of jobs for friends and family, a Washington Post investigation found. One senior staffer has had four relatives receive appointments through the office.

➤ CBS News reports Concern over Russian ships lurking around vital undersea cables:

Russian ships are skulking around underwater communications cables, causing the U.S. and its allies to worry the Kremlin might be taking information warfare to new depths. Is Moscow interested in cutting or tapping the cables? Does it want the West to worry it might? Is there a more innocent explanation?

Unsurprisingly, Russia isn’t saying.

But whatever Moscow’s intentions, U.S. and Western officials are increasingly troubled by their rival’s interest in the 400 fiber-optic cables that carry most of world’s calls, emails and texts, as well as $10 trillion worth of daily financial transactions.

“We’ve seen activity in the Russian navy, and particularly undersea in their submarine activity, that we haven’t seen since the ’80s,” Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command, told Congress this month.

➤ Lt. Col. Ralph Peters describes his departure in Why I left Fox News:

You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points.

This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents.

As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.

(As he served his country well for decades in the U.S. Army, he serves it well again by turning firmly away from Trumpism.)

➤ How ‘Bout The French Cake That’s Cooked on a Spit?:

Good morning.

Good Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:38 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 40m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution takes effect:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.^[1]

On this day in 1865, Wisconsinites defend the Union at the Battle at Gravelly Run, Virginia:

The Battle at Gravelly Run erupted east of Petersburg, Virginia. The 6th, 7th and 36th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in this battle, which was one of a series of engagements that ultimately drove Confederate forces out of Petersburg. Wisconsin’s Iron Brigade regiments fought at Gravelly Run, and when ordered to fall back before the enemy, they were the last to leave the field.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ John Santucci, Matthew Mosk, and Stephanie Ebbs report EXCLUSIVE: More Cabinet trouble for Trump? EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’:

For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show.

Neither the EPA nor the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, would say how much Pruitt paid to live at the prime Capitol Hill address, though Hart said he believed it to be the market rate. The price tag on Pruitt’s rental arrangement is one key question when determining if it constitutes an improper gift, ethics experts told ABC News.

“I think it certainly creates a perception problem, especially if Mr. Hart is seeking to influence the agency,” said Bryson Morgan, the former investigative counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics. “That’s why there is a gift rule.”

➤ Betsy Woodruff reports ICE Now Detaining Pregnant Women, Thanks to Trump Order:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is ending its practice of automatically releasing pregnant women from detention, according to internal communications reviewed by The Daily Beast.

This is because of President Donald Trump’s executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” which requires stricter enforcement of immigration laws. Previously, the agency’s general practice was to release women from detention who were pregnant.

Now, pregnant women will only be able to get released if an ICE officer determines so on a case-by-case basis.

Pregnant women were still sometimes detained under the previous internal guidelines. Immigrants’ rights advocates say the practice is dangerous to women and to their unborn children, and that pregnant women are more likely to miscarry if they’re in detention than if they are free. This new policy means more pregnant women will spend time in detention.

➤ Conservative Michael Gerson contends This madness [Trumpism] will pass. Conservatives can’t give up:

If Trump were merely proposing a border wall and the more aggressive employment of tariffs, we would be engaged in a debate, not facing a schism. Both President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush played the tariff chess game. As a Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney endorsed the massive “self-deportation” of undocumented workers without the rise of a #NeverRomney movement.

But it is blind, even obtuse, to place Trumpism in the same category. Trump’s policy proposals — the details of which Trump himself seems unconcerned and uninformed about — are symbolic expressions of a certain approach to politics. The stated purpose of Trump’s border wall is to keep out a contagion of Mexican rapists and murderers. His argument is not taken from Heritage Foundation policy papers. He makes it by quoting the racist poem “The Snake,” which compares migrants to dangerous vermin. Trump proposes to ban migration from some Muslim-majority countries because Muslim refugees, as he sees it, are a Trojan-horse threat of terrorism. Trump’s policy ideas are incidental to his message of dehumanization.

…

Trump defines loyalty to conservatism as contempt for many of our neighbors. One might as well have proposed a fusion between popular sovereignty and Abraham Lincoln’s conception of inherent human rights. They were not a dialectic requiring a synthesis. They were alternatives demanding a choice.

…

For elected leaders to remind Americans who they are and affirm our common bonds. For conservative policy experts to define an agenda of working-class uplift, not an agenda of white resentment — which will consign Republicans to moral squalor and (eventually) to electoral irrelevance. For principled conservatives to hear the call of moral duty and stand up for their beliefs until this madness passes. As it will.

➤ Paul Waldman writes Republicans are reviving all their worst ideas right now. Here’s why:

As The Hill recently reported: “Republicans in the House are pivoting to messaging bills and away from the hot-button issues that have dominated the first two months of the year.” In case you’re wondering, “messaging bills” are those that are practically meaningless, but are meant to fool voters into thinking they’re doing something when they aren’t.

Not to be outdone, the administration has some idiotic, discredited ideas of his own. Last weekend, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told “Fox News Sunday” that the administration wanted a line-item veto, which would allow the president to veto individual parts of bills he doesn’t like. It was left to host Chris Wallace to inform him that the Supreme Court has already ruled a line-item veto unconstitutional, which seemed to leave the secretary confused but still allowed him to pretend that the president is peeved about all the spending he’s been forced to support.

(The end of Trumpism is a condition for a return to normality.)

➤ Last Sunday, CBS 60 Minutes interviewed Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks’ ‘Greek Freak’ (“Most people can’t pronounce his name, but he’s one of the best players in the NBA. And he has quite the story about how he got there”):

Good morning.

Maundy Thursday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 6:40 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 37m 51s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fourth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1865, the Appomattox Campaign begins in Virginia:

When it became clear that the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, was about to fall, Confederate leaders and troops began moving west toward the town of Appomattox Court House. Union troops, including several Wisconsin regiments, followed close on their heels in a series of battles fought March 29 – April 9, 1865, that became known as the Appomattox Campaign.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Mark Mazzetti reports Trump Aide Spoke During Campaign to Associate Tied to Russian Intelligence:

WASHINGTON — A top Trump campaign official had repeated communications during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential race with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a document released on Tuesday by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the election.

The campaign official, Rick Gates, had frequent phone calls in September and October 2016 with a person the F.B.I. believes had active links to Russian spy services at the time, the document said. Mr. Gates also told an associate the person “was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the G.R.U.,” the Russian military intelligence agency.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is investigating numerous contacts between President Trump’s advisers and Russia-linked individuals and entities leading up to and after the November 2016 election. The document, filed in Mr. Mueller’s name, stated that the communications between Mr. Gates and the individual were “pertinent to the investigation.”

The individual is identified only as “Person A,” and the document describes him as someone who worked for Mr. Gates and Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, as part of their earlier representation of Russia-aligned parties and politicians in Ukraine, including the former president of Ukraine. A person with knowledge of the matter identified Person A as Konstantin V. Kilimnik, who for years was Mr. Manafort’s right-hand man in Ukraine.

➤ Michael S. Schmidt, Jo Becker, Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, and Adam Goldman report Trump’s Lawyer Raised Prospect of Pardons for Flynn and Manafort as Special Counsel Closed In:

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for President Trump broached the idea of Mr. Trump’s pardoning two of his former top advisers, Michael T. Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers last year, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.

The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, who resigned last week, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.

The talks suggest that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were concerned about what Mr. Flynn and Mr. Manafort might reveal were they to cut a deal with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in exchange for leniency. Mr. Mueller’s team could investigate the prospect that Mr. Dowd made pardon offers to thwart the inquiry, although legal experts are divided about whether such offers might constitute obstruction of justice.

➤ Sharon LaFraniere reports Lawsuit Over Trump’s Ties to His Businesses Is Allowed to Advance:

WASHINGTON — A lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution by refusing to divorce himself from his businesses cleared a critical hurdle Wednesday when a federal judge in Maryland refused the Justice Department’s plea to dismiss it.

In a 47-page opinion, Judge Peter J. Messitte rejected the federal government’s claims that the plaintiffs had not shown that they had suffered injuries that a court could address.

The suit, filed by Washington, D.C., and the State of Maryland, accuses Mr. Trump of violating constitutional anticorruption clauses intended to limit his receipt of government-bestowed benefits, or emoluments. The local jurisdictions claim that in hopes of currying presidential favor, government officials are patronizing Trump-owned properties instead of hotels or convention centers that the District of Columbia or Maryland own or have some financial interest in.

Although the case could still be thrown out on other grounds, the judge’s ruling adds to the president’s growing legal troubles.

➤ Sophie Tatum reports that Presidential misspellings create spike in dictionary searches:

President Donald Trump is known for his Twitter feed, often posting seemingly off-the-cuff messages or providing commentary on the news of the day.

But his seeming lack of a filter on the social media platform has also led to several misspellings. And it’s not always the President tapping away, he often dictates messages to an aide who ultimately presses send.

According to a report by Dictionary.com, when the President’s account has tweeted misspelled words, it has corresponded with a spike in searches of the same words spelled incorrectly on the website.

➤ Look toward The Hopeful Face of Middle America:

“I think that youth should be heard—and not only heard, but listened to,” says a teenager in the short documentary My America. As the reverberations from last weekend’s Marches for Our Lives continue to make headlines, Barnaby Roper’s film offers a galvanizing portrait of youth in America’s heartland.

Roper traversed middle America in search of answers after the 2016 election. “People would always say to me, ‘It was middle America’s fault,’” Roper told The Atlantic. “But I never understood this. So I wanted to go and see for myself. I wanted to make a film about the next generation of Americans—the generation that would inherit our successes and failures, our strengths and weaknesses.”

The production team, led by Cadence Films, encountered young people as diverse as the country in which they live. From teenagers fighting gun violence to extreme sports champions to misfits escaping homophobic families, the subjects of My America seem to have one thing in common: a disinclination to repeat the mistakes of an America past. “The American Dream is a total figment of the imagination,” says one young woman. “It died with history.”

Despite the fact that it was born of election results, Roper insists that “this is not a political film. It’s about hope. It’s about strength of the youth of our country. The youth of world need to be listened to.”

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-seven. Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 34m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred third day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Parks & Recreation Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1898, the United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, rules that

A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution,

All person born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

On this day in 1933, a national group posthumously honors  C. Latham Sholes:

On this date a group of women paid thanks to the inventor of the typewriter, Milwaukee’s C. Latham Sholes, in a national radio program. Amelia Earhart, Anna Boettinger (Franklin Roosevelt’s daugher), Mrs. Robert E. Speer, the president of the National Young Women’s Christian Association, all participated in the program. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred Holmes, p. 316-328]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ David A. Graham sees  A Cabinet of Conspicuous Corruption (“Wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars by several secretaries follows a tone set by the president”):

For spring cleaning this year, President Trump is looking at his Cabinet. The Associated Press reported Monday that Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is near to being removed. When Trump fired H.R. McMaster as national-security adviser, that torpedoed a plan to dismiss McMaster, Shulkin, and Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, at once, according to Politico’s Eliana Johnson.

Shulkin and Carson face the same problem: dubious use of taxpayer dollars in their duties as secretaries. They can console themselves knowing that they’re in good company. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been caught in extravagant expenditures, too. Less heartening is the sixth example, Tom Price, who was unceremoniously forced out as secretary of health and human services in September 2017.

This extravagant spending around public displays of status—call it, with apologies to Thorstein Veblen, conspicuous corruption—has become a trademark of the Trump administration. There are so many cases of huge spending of taxpayer dollars by Cabinet secretaries that it’s easy to lose track of them all—or simply to become desensitized—so here’s a few of the lowlights [summary follows in article].

➤ The Committee to Investigate Russia writes that  NRA Admits Accepting Foreign Funds:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is admitting it does receive funds from foreign sources but claims it does not spend that money on U.S. elections, an assertion that is difficult for outsiders to evaluate.

NPR:

Pressure on the organization has also been increased by a McClatchy report which suggested that the FBI had been investigating whether a top Russian banker with Kremlin ties illegally funneled money to the NRA to aid President Trump’s campaign for president. The Federal Election Commission has also opened a preliminary investigation into this question.

The NRA is not required to be transparent about how money moves between its various political entities, and this leaves questions unanswered about how these foreign funds were ultimately spent.

In the context of ongoing investigations, Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the National Rifle Association earlier this month asking, “Can you categorically state that your organizations have never, wittingly or unwittingly, received any contributions from individuals or entities acting as conduits for foreign entities or interests?”

The NRA said that in fact they do receive foreign money, but not for election purposes.

(…)

The NRA’s response was not sufficient for Wyden. In a letter dated March 27, the senator demanded that the organization provide a detailed accounting of how foreign funds were used over the past three years, whether they were targeted at particular American audiences, and what its measured impact was.

Wyden also demanded to know whether any Russian nationals or foreign individuals had been members of the NRA’s donor programs, and whether the NRA received any money from sanctioned individuals.

(…)

The NRA has a variety of accounts, and the NRA Political Victory Fund is their official political action committee and must report all of its spending to the Federal Election Commission.

It also has other accounts that require less transparency, and do not report spending to the FEC — and in those funds, the NRA told Wyden, they “receive funds from foreign persons only for purposes not connected to elections, as permitted by federal law.”

However, the NRA acknowledges that money moves between those accounts: “transfers between accounts are made as permitted by law,” the NRA’s general counsel wrote.

➤ Joshua Matz contends Trump is running on animus autopilot:

President Trump is hard at work making animus the law of the land. Justice Department lawyers revealed his latest effort Friday night, announcing a revised plan to exclude nearly all transgender soldiers from the armed forces.

As many commentators have observed, the reasoning offered to support Trump’s policy is riddled with empirical errors and anti-trans stereotypes. It comes nowhere close to disproving the comprehensive study in 2016 that recommended allowing transgender people to serve openly. Like so many other missives from this White House, it makes only a token effort to conceal the disdain and disgust that underlie it.

Trump’s original “transgender ban” was blocked by four federal courts. After two of those rulings were affirmed on appeal, the administration decided against seeking Supreme Court review. It’s therefore safe to assume that Trump’s latest order will not go into effect unless it survives constitutional challenges.

And in thinking about that litigation, it’s hard to escape a feeling of deja vu. A little more than 14 months into Trump’s presidency, a pattern has emerged in cases challenging some of his most despicable decisions [list of steps in Trump’s pattern follows in article].

➤ Rhonda Garelick contends Stormy Daniels’s Boring Interview Was Actually Brilliant (“Once again, she proves she’s a worthy adversary for Trump”)

In fact, Stormy was entirely credible in every way. Calm, clear-eyed, and direct, she telegraphed competence and clarity of purpose. She answered questions quickly and without hesitation, never averting her gaze, lowering her eyes, or even pausing. Her words were simple and devoid of rhetorical flourishes. When asked, for example, whether she understood the $130,000 she’d accepted was “hush money,” Daniels’s firm “yes” flew from her mouth nearly before Cooper could finish his question. She offered this kind of swift, emphatic, and monosyllabic response several times.

Everything about this interview screamed legitimacy. 60 Minutes is the 50-year-old doyenne of broadcast journalism, a network show watched by grandparents and Trump supporters (and apparently even Trump himself). This was Stormy’s chance to take her case to the widest American public, to clear her name and tell her truth, even at the risk of being penalized for breaching her non-disclosure agreement (and possibly even at risk to her personal safety).

(I saw this interview last night. Trump’s conduct toward Daniels isn’t the worst of his offenses, but I agree that in her matter-of-fact presentation, Daniels did well for herself, all things considered.)

➤ NASA ScienceCasts describes Earth’s Magnetosphere:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see a morning  shower and a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 6:43 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 32m 01s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 80.2% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred second day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1794, Congress passes and Pres. Washington then signs an Act to Provide a Naval Armament of “six frigates at a total cost of $688,888.82. These ships were the first ships of what eventually became the present-day United States Navy.”

On this day in 1920, the nation’s first tank company is established in Janesville:

On this date Janesville was chosen as home base for the National Guard’s first tank company in the United States, the 32nd. When activated for duty during WWII, the unit was called Company A, 192nd Tank Battalion. This company fought in the Philippines during World War II. Many of the ninty-nine Janesville men who became prisoners of war and were tortured during the infamous Bataan Death March, were affiliated with this tank company.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Michael Gerson contends We are not ‘globalists.’ We’re Americans:

At one haunted moment in American history — early in 1939, not long after Kristallnacht — Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers (R-Mass.) introduced a bill that would have allowed 20,000 unaccompanied Jewish refugee children into the United States. Opponents argued that Congress should focus on the welfare of American children and that German refugees were a Trojan horse. “Twenty thousand charming children,” said President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cousin, “would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”

The legislation died in committee. And most of the children, presumably, did not grow up at all. At the time, some 80 percent of Americans opposed increasing the quota of European refugees.

Six years later, journalist Marguerite Higgins was among the first to enter the Dachau death camp as it was being liberated by the 42nd Infantry. She found the main yard empty. But then “a jangled barrage of ‘Are you Americans?’ in about 16 languages came from the barracks 200 yards from the gate. An affirmative nod caused pandemonium. Tattered, emaciated men, weeping, yelling and shouting ‘Long live America!’ swept toward the gate in a mob. Those who could not walk limped or crawled.”

…

An extraordinary group of leaders — politicians, military commanders, diplomats — defined a practical and moral role for America in the global defense of free governments and institutions. “In natural abilities and experience,” writes historian Paul Johnson , “in clarity of mind and in magnanimity, they were probably the finest group of American leaders since the Founding Fathers.” Harry S. Truman lent his defiant moral sensibilities to the enterprise. Dwight D. Eisenhower matched humility with power. John F. Kennedy gave poetry to the struggle. “For it is the fate of this generation,” he said, “to live with a struggle we did not start, in a world we did not make. .?.?. And while no nation ever faced such a challenge, no nation has ever been more ready to seize the burden and the glory of freedom.”

This is what some now dismiss as “globalism” — the combination of America’s founding purpose with unavoidable international responsibilities. The postwar preeminence of the United States has been sustainable, not only because of our military power but also because the global order we shaped is not a zero-sum game. Both America and our allies benefit from American security commitments in Europe and East Asia. Both America and our trading partners can benefit from relatively free global markets.

➤ Ari Berman writes GOP Declares War on the Courts After Rulings That Threaten Its Majorities (“In crucial swing states, Republicans are trying to nullify court orders they don’t like”):

On Thursday, a judge ruled that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker must hold special elections this spring to fill two vacant state legislative seats that some Republicans fear could flip to the Democrats. But instead of scheduling new elections, Wisconsin Republicans came up with a different plan: They would convene a special legislative session to change the law governing special elections so they wouldn’t have to hold them before November.

Walker had a “plain and positive duty” to hold the elections, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Josann Reynolds, who was appointed by Walker in 2014, ruled on Thursday. She instructed Walker to issue an order within a week scheduling the elections.

But the next day, Walker threw his support behind the plan to change the election law. “It would be senseless to waste taxpayer money on special elections just weeks before voters go to the polls when the Legislature has concluded its business,” Walker said in a statement. “This is why I support, and will sign, the Senate and Assembly plan to clarify special election law.”

Democrats immediately denounced the move, saying Republicans were going to extraordinary lengths to avoid holding an election for two legislative seats previously held by Republicans that have been vacant since December. “Even for Republicans in Wisconsin, this would be a stunning action to keep citizens from exercising their right to vote,” said former Attorney General Eric Holder, who leads a Democratic group that sued Walker on behalf of Wisconsin voters in the two districts. “They appear to be afraid of the voters of Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin Republicans’ refusal to follow the court’s order is part of a broader trend among Republicans at the state level to nullify legal rulings they don’t like and attack judges who rule contrary to their positions.

➤ David Frum writes Trump’s Legal Threats Backfire (“The president is used to getting his way by bluster and intimidation, but the strategy that once worked for him is now working against him”):

Minutes after the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes, Team Trump fired off a heavy-breathing lawyer’s letter, bristling with phrases like “cease and desist” and “retract and apologize.”

This is exactly the approach by which Donald Trump inadvertently made millions for Michael Wolff. Having so spectacularly backfired the first time, why do it again? The short answer is: Team Trump knows nothing else.

Back when he was a private businessman, Trump learned how to use law as a weapon. The lesson he took from that is that if your pockets are deep enough—and your conscience dull enough—it doesn’t matter that you are wrong. The other party will go broke before you will lose.

…

A heavy-breathing lawyer’s letter from Team Trump does not frighten a Stormy Daniels. She can release it to The New York Times and watch it dominate the next day’s news cycle. With news domination come economic opportunities for her—and unremitting political damage for the presidency.

(Trump’s too small-minded to see that he now has more to lose than Daniels and other counter-parties.)

➤ Jay Michaelson contends Stormy Daniels’ Legal Strategy Strongly Suggests She Has Photos of Donald Trump (“The hush money and the alleged affair aren’t confidential anymore—she told ‘60 Minutes’ everything—so what is the fight about? Look at the fine print”):

If Daniels has retained copies of pictures or texts, then she is in clear violation of the central parts of the confidentiality agreement. Not only does the agreement explicitly forbid her from keeping copies of images or texts, it actually defines them as Trump’s – oh, sorry, David Dennison’s – personal, copyrighted property.

Incidentally, that, too, is quite unusual. Normally, that kind of provision appears in a consultancy or employment agreement. Here, however, it’s been grafted into a confidentiality agreement. If that DVD has pictures of Trump, it is literally Trump’s copyrighted property.

Unless, of course, the agreement is null and void.

Now the pieces come together. Avenatti wants to void the agreement because that way, Daniels can keep that DVD, or, if you want to be cynical about it, auction it off to the highest bidder.

That DVD could be the stained blue dress of this whole scandal: proof positive that the affair took place, that the coverup took place, and that Cohen and Trump are liars.

Then again, it might just be a blank DVD in a safe.

(Like many plaintiffs’ lawyers, Michael Avanetti is theatrical, flamboyant, but Michaelson’s description of Avanetti’s underlying strategy is plausibile: condidentiality has long ago evaporated with countless press accounts, but evidence of specific conduct may yet await disclosure if a court deems the agreement void.)

➤ James Gorman describes The Amazing Metabolism of Hummingbirds:

Hummingbirds have long intrigued scientists. Their wings can beat 80 times a second. Their hearts can beat more than 1,000 times a minute. They live on nectar and can pack on 40 percent of their body weight in fat for migration.

But sometimes they are so lean that they live close to caloric bankruptcy. At such times, some hummingbirds could starve to death while they sleep because they’re not getting to eat every half-hour or so. Instead they enter a state of torpor, with heartbeat and body temperature turned way down to diminish the need for food.

Kenneth C. Welch Jr. at the University of Toronto, Scarborough has studied the metabolisms of hummingbirds for more than a decade. His most recent research with Derrick J. E. Groom, in his lab, and other colleagues is on the size and energy efficiency in hummingbirds. By using data on oxygen consumption and wing beats to get an idea of how much energy hummingbirds take in and how much work they put out, the scientists found that during strenuous hovering flight, bigger hummingbirds are more efficient energy users than smaller ones.