Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:43 AM and sunset 8:19 PM, for 14h 35m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.7% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixty-first day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1914, the First World War begins: “Over nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents’ technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved and to the Second World War twenty-one years later.”

On this day in 1934, two are killed and dozens injured in a Kohler riot: “On this day, the “model industrial village” of Kohler became an armed camp of National Guard cavalrymen after deadly strike-related rioting. The July 27th violence, which killed two Sheboygan men and injured 40 others, prompted the summoning of 250 Guardsmen to join the 200 special deputy village marshals already present. After striking workers became agitated and began to destroy company property, deputies turned to tear gas, rifles, and shotguns to quell the stone-throwing crowd, resulting in the deaths and injuries. Owner Walter Kohler blamed Communists and outside agitators for the violence, while union leaders blamed Kohler exclusively. Workers at the Kohler plant were demanding better hours, higher wages, and recognition of the American Federation of Labor as their collective bargaining agent. Not settled until 1941, the strike marked the beginning of what was to become a prolonged struggle between the Kohler Company and organized labor in Wisconsin; a second Kohler strike lasted from 1954 to 1965.”

Recommended for reading in full —

James Hohlman writes that Trump’s hardball tactics backfire as ‘skinny repeal’ goes down:

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump’s attacks on Republican senators are finally catching up with him, and Lisa Murkowski will not be bullied….

Trump, who won Alaska by 15 points, ripped the state’s senior senator on Twitter Wednesday after she opposed a key procedural motion to open debate on health care….

Later that day, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and the state’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, to threaten that the Trump administration may change its position on several issues that affect the state to punish Murkowski, such as blocking energy exploration and plans to allow the construction of new roads. “The message was pretty clear,” Sullivan told the Alaska Dispatch News….

This demonstrated the degree to which Zinke’s ham-handed phone call was political malpractice. The secretary, or whoever at the White House ordered him to make the calls, clearly doesn’t understand the awesome power that comes with being the chairman of a Senate committee. Only an amateur would threaten the person who has oversight over his agency! If she wants, Murkowski can make Zinke’s life so unbelievably miserable. He has no idea. (The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.)

Thomas Kaplan offers 5 Takeaways From the Failed Senate Effort to Repeal Obamacare:

The process matters.
Republicans grumbled about the secretive manner in which the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, put together his repeal bill. There were no public hearings or formal bill-drafting sessions, and Republicans used a fast-track procedure meant for budget matters as they tried to enact complex health policy and avoid a filibuster….

The final hours of the repeal effort seemed worse than ever: Republican leaders unveiled their bill and then expected their members to vote for it hours later, and in the middle of the night, no less….

President Trump was no help.

Without the election of Mr. Trump last year, putting a Republican in the White House, the repeal effort would have been an academic exercise, ending in a certain veto. But Mr. Trump did not prove persuasive in recent days.

In public, he did not show much fluency in the basics of health policy, let alone the ability to persuade Republicans on complicated issues like the growth rate of Medicaid payments. And he did himself no favors by changing his demands about exactly what he wanted the Senate to do….

David A. Graham asks How Long Can This Go On?:

No one can be surprised by the antipathy between top Trump advisers—for months, the press has been full of reports about skirmishes between various, rotating cliques—but such fights have not been not discussed this openly. This was true even in the early days of the Clinton White House, the previous gold standard for early-term dysfunction. Though staffers were frequently stabbing each other in the back, including undercutting the then-chief of staff (sound familiar?), they were not calling up The New Yorker to speak about it on the record. (They were also living in a pre-internet era, though that would change by the second term, when Drudge Report first revealed the Monica Lewinsky scandal.)

But Scaramucci put it best on CNN Thursday morning: “The fish stinks from the head down.” President Trump has set the tone for making these fights public with his own bizarre, cruel treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In two newspaper interviews and in a series of tweets, Trump has lambasted Sessions—one of his earliest and most loyal supporters—as weak and ineffective, and has complained about his decision to recuse himself from investigations of Trump’s relations with Russia, calling it “unfair” to the president. Not since the Andrew Johnson administration has a president so viciously attacked one of his own Cabinet members.

(I’d answer Graham by saying that this will go on as long as Trump and his ilk hold power – they are manifestly unfit and their inadequacies are irremediable.)

Danielle Paquette calculates that Foxconn deal to build massive factory in Wisconsin could cost the state $230,700 per worker:

On the table is up to $3 billion in state tax breaks. The state legislature could approve the economic incentive package as early as August.

These payouts, Wisconsin officials said, come with lofty expectations. As long as Foxconn keeps hiring  U.S. workers at the new flat-screen manufacturing facility, Wisconsin would cut the company $200 million to $250 million a year for up to 15 years.

That works out to a rough cost to the state of about $230,700 per worker, assuming the factory goes on to generate 13,000 jobs.

(I’ll compile a post for next week with Wisconsin press coverage of the proposal, most of it positively gushing and credulous. It’s worth keeping in mind Foxconn’s sketchy pst promises: How Foxconn’s broken pledges in Pennsylvania cast doubt on Trump’s jobs plan.)

One reads with much sadness that June Foray, the voice of so many memorable animated characters, has passed away at the age of ninety-nine. Hers was a life well-lived, bringing happiness to so many people:

June Foray, the famed “first lady of voice actors” whose repertoire of characters include Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Pottsylvanian spy Natasha Fatale, Tweety Bird’s owner Granny and a sinister talking doll, has died. She was 99.

Foray, who worked alongside such animated legends as Mel Blanc, Chuck Jones, Stan Freberg and Jay Ward during her unseen yet spectacular eight-decade career, died Wednesday according to close friend Dave Nimitz who posted a notice of her passing on Facebook.…

When asked in a 2000 interview with the Archive of American Television to name her favorite cartoon character, she said: “I love the [Rocky and] Bullwinkle show because it’s so mordantly witty. … But I love everything I do with all of the parts that I do because there’s a little bit of me in all of them.

“We all have anger and jealousy and love and hope in our natures. We try to communicate that vocally with just sketches that you see on the screen and make it come alive and make it human.”

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 5:42 AM and sunset 8:20 PM, for 14h 38m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 20.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred sixtieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

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

On this day in 1940, Warner Bros. releases the Merrie Melodies short A Wild Hare, in which Bugs Bunny has his first starring role:

A Wild Hare is considered by most film historians to be the first “official” Bugs Bunny cartoon.^[1][2] The title is a play on “wild hair”, the first of many puns between “hare” and “hair” that would appear in Bugs Bunny titles. The pun is carried further by a bar of I’m Just Wild About Harry playing in the underscore of the opening credits. Various directors at the Warner Bros. cartoon studio had been experimenting with cartoons focused on a hunter pursuing a rabbit since 1938, with varied approaches to the characters of both rabbit and hunter.^[3]

As well as being the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon, A Wild Hare is remembered for settling on the classic voice and appearance of the hunter, Elmer Fudd.^[2] Although the animators continued to experiment with Elmer’s design for a few more years, his look here proved the basis for his finalized design.^[4] The design and character of Bugs Bunny would continue to be refined over the subsequent years, but the general appearance, voice, and personality of the character were established in this cartoon. The animator of this cartoon, Virgil Ross, gave his first-person account of the creation of the character’s name and personality in an interview published in Animato! Magazine, #19.^[5]

Bugs is unnamed in this film, but would be named for the first time in his next short, Elmer’s Pet Rabbit, directed by Chuck Jones. The opening lines of both characters—”Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits” for Elmer, and “Eh, what’s up Doc?” for Bugs Bunny—would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.

Recommended for reading in full —

Todd Frankel reports on How Foxconn’s broken pledges in Pennsylvania cast doubt on Trump’s jobs plan:

In 2013, Foxconn’s chairman sent a jolt through this state capital when he said his company — best known for making Apple iPhones in China — would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a new high-tech factory in central Pennsylvania.

Locals were giddy. Foxconn had a small office here, but this seemed like the start of an entire new industry. Pennsylvania’s governor boasted about the deal. The Brookings Institution think tank hailed Foxconn’s decision as a sign of U.S. manufacturing’s strength.

But the factory was never built. The jobs never came. “It just seemed to fade to black” after the announcement, recalled a local official. It was the start of a mystery, created by a chief executive known to promise projects all over the world that never quite pan out. Yet few people seem to notice. Foxconn and others continue to get credit for deals that never take place. In December, Pennsylvania’s economic development staff was still touting the $30 million factory that never was.

Paul Waldman observes that Trump and Republicans treat their voters like morons:

….as The Post reports, Trump addressed a big crowd of his voters yesterday in Youngstown, Ohio:

Here in the heart of the industrial Midwest, Trump promised to refill lost manufacturing jobs in factories or to “rip ’em down and build brand-new ones.”

“That’s what’s going to happen,” Trump said at a campaign rally in a packed hockey arena that holds 7,000 people … Trump said: “They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back. They’re coming back. Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”

In fairness, many people in the area, even Republicans, understand that’s a complete crock. Those jobs aren’t coming back, and the region’s future won’t be built on factories that employ huge numbers of people who can move into high-wage, high-benefit jobs with little preparation. Yet they still show up at his rallies and cheer while he lies right in their faces.

Andy Kroll and Russ Choma contend that Trump Has Turned America’s Reputation for Fighting Corruption Into a Joke:

Jessica Tillipman was recently leading an anti-­corruption training in Washington, DC, to a roomful of visiting bureaucrats from Latin America when something odd happened. As she described various measures the United States has in place to guard against self-dealing and conflicts of interest by government officials, she heard snickering.

In the past, she recalls, foreign guests “would look on kind of in awe” as she described the federal government’s elaborate system for preventing graft and corruption. That has all changed since the election of Donald Trump. Now, her international colleagues are quick to point out that the United States can’t even get its own president to abide by the nation’s ethical standards. “It was almost a bit of a joke,” Tillipman, an expert on government ethics and an assistant dean at the George Washing­ton University Law School, says of the recent training. “To have countries with their own distinct corruption issues laughing at our current issues—it’s embarrassing.”

David Leonhardt believes that G.O.P. Support for Trump Is Starting to Crack:

None of this is meant to suggest that congressional Republicans have been profiles in courage. They haven’t been. They have mostly stood by as Trump has lied compulsively, denigrated the rule of law and tried to shred the modern safety net. But they have put up just enough resistance to keep him from doing far more damage than he otherwise would have.

In the months ahead, unfortunately, that level of resistance is unlikely to be sufficient. Trump has made clear that he isn’t finished trying to take health insurance away from millions of people or trying to hide the truth about his Russia ties. “The constitutional crisis won’t be if Trump fires Mueller,” as the A.C.L.U.’s Kate Oh put it. “The constitutional crisis is if Congress takes no real action in response.”

(Perhaps Leonhardt is right about declining support but I’d contend it’s neither soon enough nor decisive enough.)

Tech Insider shows how You can take a seat anywhere with this wearable chair:

Good morning.

Midweek in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-five. Sunrise is 5:41 AM and sunset is 8:21 PM, for 14h 40m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-ninth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1865, after successful service in defense of the Union, the 37th and 38th Wisconsin Infantry regiments muster out: “The 37th had spent its 14-month-long term of service in and around Washington D.C. It participated in the Siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox Campaign in pursuit of General Lee’s army. It lost 247 men during service. The 38th served in the same campaigns as the 37th but was also on duty at Arsenal, Washington, during trial and execution of President Lincoln’s assassins. It lost 113 men during service.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Patrick Marley,Rick Romell and Lee Bergquist report that a Wisconsin Foxconn deal could include $1 billion to $3 billion in taxpayer-backed incentives:

MADISON – A plan to bring a massive Foxconn Technology Group plant to Wisconsin could cost $1 billion to $3 billion in local, state and federal incentives over coming years — a stunning sum for a project that backers say could transform the state’s economy.

Foxconn’s plans are to be announced Wednesday at the White House, with a follow-up event Thursday at the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to one source. Tuesday night, the White House listed a 5 p.m. Wednesday “jobs announcement” in the East Room on President Donald Trump’s schedule.

An incentive package that reaches into the billions would be unlike anything Wisconsin has offered in the past and would require approval from state lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) has said he hoped to get bipartisan support for the package.

Sandhya Somashekhar and David A. Fahrenthold report that Trump’s speech to Boy Scouts irks some in ‘nonpartisan’ organization:

Lavinia Falck had spent six days at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, getting to know teenagers from around the world. Then, she and her friends gathered on the grass to hear from a special guest: the president of the United States.

“By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?” President Trump said during a rambling speech Monday in which he used harsh language, recounted election-night victories and New York cocktail parties, and attacked his political opponents.

“Everyone around me was booing,” said Falck, 17, a member of the co-ed Venture Scout program run by the Boy Scouts. She remembered looking at her new friends and wishing she’d been allowed to stay at her bunk, noting that the booing for Obama was particularly upsetting because attendees had been directed not to jeer Trump. “Scouts are supposed to be courteous and friendly and all these things, and it was really un-Scoutlike for everyone around me to boo.”

(Trump’s a crude, ignorant man, so a speech like this should have been no surprise. It’s all he has.)

Steve Vladeck describes The Three Sessions Succession Scenarios:

President Trump took to Twitter this morning [Tuesday] ostensibly to defend his “beleaguered” Attorney General, even though at least some of that beleaguerment is, thanks to last week’s New York Times interview (and, potentially other behind-the-scenes machinations), his own doing. If, as a result, Jeff Sessions’s days as Attorney General are indeed numbered, it might be worth gaming out the three very different scenarios for his succession atop the Justice Department—given their obvious potential implications for the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III [Vladeck offers detail for each]….

Scenario I: The DOJ Succession Statute and Executive Order….

Scenario II: The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998….

Scenario III: The Recess Appointment Elephant in the Room….

Peter Beinart considers Why Trump Might Fire Robert Mueller:

Partly, it’s simple rage. Mueller threatens Trump. And when Trump sees someone as a threat, he tries to discredit and destroy them—conventional norms of propriety, decency and legality be damned.

But there’s another, more calculated, reason. Trump and his advisors may genuinely believe that firing Mueller is a smart move. And if you put morality aside, and see the question in nakedly political terms, they may be right.

The chances that Mueller will uncover something damning seem very high. Trump has already admitted to firing former FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation. Donald Trump Jr. has already admitted to welcoming the opportunity to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from people he believed were representatives of the Russian government. Even if Mueller doesn’t accuse anyone of a crime, he’s likely to paint a brutal picture. And that’s just on the question of election collusion and obstruction of justice. If Mueller uses Russia to segue into Trump’s business dealings, who knows what he might find. An all-star team of legal and financial sleuths, with unlimited time and money, and the ability to subpoena documents and people, have been let loose on the affairs of a man whose own autobiographer called him a “sociopath.” No wonder Trump is scared.

What would One Year of Flying the Airbus A320 Around Europe look like? It would look like this —

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:40 AM and sunset 8:22 PM, for 14h 42m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 6.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-eighth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1999, the first Brewer is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame: “Robin Yount became the first player inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a Brewer’s jersey. Yount entered the major leagues at the age of 18 and spent his entire career with the Milwaukee Brewers as number 19 at short stop and center field. His awards are numerous, including being selected as an all-star three times as well as American league MVP twice. [Source: Milwaukee Brewers]”

Recommended for reading in full —

Ed Pilkington observes that Jared Kushner’s explanations on Russia reveal a man wholly unsuited to his job:

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who has been drawn into the billowing inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, told congressional investigators on Monday that he hoped his appearance before them would clear his name and “put these matters to rest”.

But in his presentation to members of the Senate intelligence committee, the 36-year-old husband of Ivanka Trump might have dug himself deeper into a hole by leaning so heavily on personal ignorance as the core of his defense. By doing so he raised a slew of new questions about how the US president could have entrusted someone with such little foreign policy ballast with a powerful international portfolio.

In an 11-page statement released before his closed-door Senate appearance, Kushner essentially argued that he could not have been involved in underhand relations with the Russian government because he was so poorly versed in Russian affairs. Over the 3,700 words of the statement, he mentions that he could not remember the name of the Russian ambassador to Washington not once, but three times.

The Washington Post editorial board supports Congress’s drastic — but necessary — rebuke to Trump:

Congress at last looks ready to pass its first significant piece of legislation of the Trump administration — and it will be a major rebuke to the president. A sanctions bill covering Russia that the House is expected to take up Tuesday essentially would place President Trump’s policy toward the regime of Vladi­mir Putin in receivership, preventing him from lifting sanctions without congressional agreement. It’s a drastic but necessary response to the inexplicable affinity Mr. Trump has evinced toward the Kremlin, as well as to the continuing questions about Russia’s support for his presidential campaign.

The need for congressional action was underlined again on Sunday, when Mr. Trump’s new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci, quoted the president as saying about Russia’s interference in the election, “Maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.” For the U.S. intelligence community, there is no such doubt: Moscow did intervene with the intent to help Mr. Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, on the orders of Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s refusal to accept those conclusions, and the possibility that he might reverse sanctions imposed on Russia for that interference and for its military invasion of Ukraine, has generated an extraordinary consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress.

Karen DeYoung reports that Cooperation with Russia becomes central to Trump strategy in Syria:

Some lawmakers and White House officials have expressed concern that the strategy is shortsighted, gives the long-term advantage in Syria to Russia, Iran and Assad, and ultimately leaves the door open for a vanquished Islamic State to reestablish itself.

Critics also say that neither Russia nor Iran can be trusted to adhere to any deal, and that the result will be a continuation of the civil war whose negotiated end the administration has also set as a goal.

U.S.-Russia negotiations are continuing even as Congress moves this week toward imposing additional sanctions on Russia and Iran. Elements of the strategy were presented in members-only briefings last week to the House and the Senate by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph F. Dunford Jr. and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Conservative Conor Friedersdorf argues The Case for Impeaching Trump If He Fires Robert Mueller:

Surveyed on the Russia probe, a solid majority of Americans said they believe that Robert Mueller will conduct an impartial investigation. Sixty-four percent said “Donald Trump is more concerned about protecting his administration from being investigated” than “protecting the U.S. from Russian interference.” Most important of all, when asked, “Do you think Donald Trump should try to stop the Special Counsel’s investigation if he wants to, or shouldn’t he?” 81 percent of Americans said he should not stop it.

The will of the people does not get clearer than that.

And that poll was conducted before revelations that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort––the president’s son, son-in-law, and then-campaign manager––attended a meeting in Trump Tower with Kremlin-connected Russians after being explicitly told they would receive dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

NPR’s Skunk Bear asks What Are Those ‘Talking’ Apes Really Saying?:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of seventy-five. Sunrise is 5:39 AM and sunset 8:23 PM, for 14h 44m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.9% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-seventh day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1974, in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), the  United States Supreme Court handed down a “unanimous 8–0 ruling against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver presidential tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to the District Court. Issued on July 24, 1974, the ruling was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal, when there was an ongoing impeachment process against Richard Nixon. United States v. Nixon is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president to claim executive privilege.”

Recommended for reading in full —

Jack Gillum and Aaron C. Davis report that Local governments keep using this software — but it might be a back door for Russia:

Local and state government agencies from Oregon to Connecticut say they are using a Russian brand of security software despite the federal government’s instructions to its own agencies not to buy the software over concerns about cyberespionage, records and interviews show.

The federal agency in charge of purchasing, the General Services Administration, this month removed Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab from its list of approved vendors. In doing so, the agency’s statement suggested a vulnerability exists in Kaspersky that could give the Russian government backdoor access to the systems it protects, though they offered no explanation or evidence of it. Kaspersky has strongly denied coordinating with the Russian government and has offered to cooperate with federal investigators.

The GSA’s move on July 11 has left state and local governments to speculate about the risks of sticking with the company or abandoning taxpayer-funded contracts, sometimes at great cost. The lack of information from the GSA underscores a disconnect between local officials and the federal government about cybersecurity.

Eli Hager explains How Fake Cops Got $1.2 Million in Real Weapons (a federal sting reveals lax oversight in the Defense Department’s gear giveaway program):

….The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency — complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot — and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.

And in less than a week, they got it.

A GAO report issued this week says the agency’s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles and pipe bomb equipment from the Defense Department’s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess material. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.

Lachlan Markay reports that GOP Campaigns Recall a Self-Dealing Leaker in Scaramucci:

….aides to 2016 presidential candidates whom Scaramucci endorsed before coming around to Trump say he was suspected of leaking internal information, and left out of some internal discussions for fear that he would pass along those sorts of details to reporters—or that he already had….

He threw his weight behind the Trump campaign only after his first two preferred candidates, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, dropped out. Between his stints raising money for those campaigns, he was in talks with a third, that of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Former senior aides on all three of those campaigns say Scaramucci gave the impression of a hanger-on trying to methodically get in the good graces of whichever candidate he saw as most likely to prevail. Only when Trump had the nomination all but secured did Scaramucci sign on with his campaign.

Rosie Gray writes about The Man McMaster Couldn’t Fire:

Just 24 days into his tenure as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael Flynn was forced to resign, having reportedly misled Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian officials. When Flynn departed, the men and women he’d appointed to the National Security Council grew nervous about their own jobs, and with good reason. The new national-security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, promptly began clearing out Flynn’s people, among them Dave Cattler, the deputy assistant to the president for regional affairs, Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst on loan from the Pentagon, and KT McFarland, Flynn’s deputy, who was eased out with the ambassadorship to Singapore. Even Steve Bannon, among the most powerful people in the White House, was removed from the meetings of the NSC Principal’s Committee, where he had been installed early on in the administration.

There was one person, however, who McMaster couldn’t get rid of: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence programs. McMaster tried to remove him in March, but President Trump, at the urging of Bannon and Jared Kushner, told McMaster that Cohen-Watnick was staying, as first reported by Politico. According to a senior White House official, the two men had a sit-down meeting the following week in which McMaster acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to do what he wanted to do, and that they would keep things as they are and “see how they go for a while.” That was over four months ago. That Cohen-Watnick, 31 years old and largely unknown before entering the administration, has become unfireable reveals how important he has become to the Trump White House, where loyalty is prized.

Here’s a video about The Greatest Scientist of the 20th Century You’ve Probably Never Heard Of:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thundershowers and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:38 AM and sunset 8:24 PM, for 14h 45m 59s of daytime. The moon is new today. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-sixth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1945, (Henri) Philippe Pétain goes on trial for treason for his role as leader of Vichy France. He was convicted on all counts, and lived his final years imprisoned on the Île d’Yeu, where “his memory lapses were worsening and he was beginning to suffer from incontinence, sometimes soiling himself in front of visitors and sometimes no longer recognising his wife.”

Recommended for reading in full — 

Sean Illing writes President Trump is considering pardoning himself. I asked 15 experts if that’s legal:

President Trump’s lawyers are exploring the potential uses of presidential pardons — including whether the president can pardon himself — as part of an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, according to a new Washington Post report.

I reached out to 15 legal experts and asked them if the president has the constitutional authority to pardon himself. As it turns out, this is something of a legal gray area. The overwhelming consensus was that Trump could make a plausible legal argument that his pardoning powers extend to himself, mostly because the Constitution isn’t clear about this — and, frankly, because this is just not a situation the framers expected.

All the experts agreed about one other fact: Even if Trump does pardon himself, that would not shield him from impeachment hearings. And most believe if he did make a move like this, it would be both an admission of guilt and a potential constitutional crisis [experts’ replies follow]….

Laurence H. Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen contend that No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so:

Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.

The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.

The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.

Jane Chong writes To Impeach a President: Applying the Authoritative Guide from Charles Black:

The most important book ever written on presidential impeachment is only 69 pages long. Charles Black, Jr.,’s Impeachment: A Handbook was published in the summer of 1974, at the height of the Watergate crisis, and reissued in October 1998, two months before Bill Clinton became the second president in U.S. history to be impeached.

If the pattern holds, the book could enjoy a third printing under the Trump presidency. But I wouldn’t want to prematurely speculate on the point. Black too persuasively urges against it….

Today marks the first time the core chapter of Black’s book—on what he called the “heart of the matter”—is available in its entirety online. We are providing this resource because amidst a tidal wave of 140-character screeds, Black’s analysis of what actually constitutes “the impeachable offense” is pure signal in the noise.

David A. Graham describes The Inadvisable President:

This demonstrates another reason why Trump is an impossible boss: He expects absolute personal loyalty from his aides, but aides cannot expect that the president will return the favor. Perhaps no humiliation is as great as Sessions—the long-time backer thrown to the wolves in an interview with the press—but Trump has repeatedly undercut other top aides.

For example, Trump has repeatedly made public statements at odds with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to broker a resolution between Qatar and several other Gulf States.

When Trump fired Comey, the administration initially claimed that he had been fired for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Comey’s approach had been widely criticized as improperly harsh, but Trump had said it was unduly easy, making the excuse nonsensical. Nonetheless, Vice President Pence went out and publicly insisted that Comey was fired because the Justice Department had recommended it in light of the Clinton case. The following day, Trump told Holt that actually he’d decided to fire Comey on his own, because of the Russia case.

Diver Craig Capehart recorded as a 40 Ton Humpback Whale Leaps Entirely Out of the Water:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with isolated afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM, for 14h 47m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred fifty-fifth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1934, bank robber John Dillinger meets his end outside a movie theater in Chicago. On this day in 1864, the 1st, 12th, 16th, 17th, 22nd, 25th, 26th, 31st Wisconsin Infantry regiments and the 5th Wisconsin Light Artillery continue their engagement in the Battle of Atlanta.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jane Chong, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes consider How White House Threats Condition Mueller’s Reality:

So now put yourself in Mueller’s shoes. You are both a highly-experienced investigator (you’ve run the FBI for 12 years) and a highly-experienced prosecutor (you’ve headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, served as a U.S. Attorney, and prosecuted murder cases as perhaps the most overqualified assistant U.S. attorney in American history). You have staffed your investigation with a group of lawyers of remarkable depth and range of experience. You have on your staff Russian language capability. You have truly remarkable appellate capacity. And you have first class expertise in money laundering, campaign finance, organized crime, and other relevant areas.

But it all may not matter, because the President may decide either to issue a bunch of preemptive pardons or to try to either fire you or rein in your jurisdiction. And the talent you have collected is under attack.

How do you play it? Here are six broad areas to which Mueller may be giving some thought as he considers how to do his job under these highly unusual conditions. To be clear, the following is not based not on any communication with Mueller or his staff but on our own assessment of the law, the problems Mueller faces, and the incentives the White House’s activities create for someone in his position. We assume in everything that follows that there are serious matters under investigation. If, by contrast, L’Affaire Russe is all nonsense, the situation is far easier: Mueller can wrap up the investigation and go back to his law firm [detailed assessment follows]….

Marcin Goettig and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk report that a Polish court overhaul meets growing wave of criticism, protests:

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s ruling party on Saturday dismissed a growing wave of criticism from abroad and worries at home that an overhaul of the Supreme Court would undermine judicial independence.

In the early hours of Saturday senators of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party approved a bill that would end all the terms of Supreme Court justices except those hand-picked by the justice minister.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered in Warsaw and cities across Poland for candle-lit vigils, chanting “Free Courts” and demanding that President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the PiS, veto the bill. More protests were planned during the day on Saturday.

Mitch Smith reports that Minneapolis Police Chief Forced Out After Fatal Shooting of Australian Woman:

The Minneapolis police chief, Janee Harteau, resigned on Friday at the mayor’s request, less than a week after one of the city’s officers fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman who had called 911 for help….

The fatal shooting of the Australian woman, Justine Damond, last weekend by Officer Mohamed Noor led to outpourings of grief in Minnesota and outrage in Ms. Damond’s home country, where the prime minister condemned the shooting and Ms. Damond’s family members have expressed frustration with how little they have been told about what happened.

Last Saturday, Ms. Damond, 40, called 911 twice to report a possible sexual assault near her home. Officer Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, arrived at the scene in a dark alley several minutes later. Officer Harrity told state investigators that he had been startled by a loud noise just before Ms. Damond approached their cruiser. Officer Noor then shot her through the open window.

Mike Wall reports that it’s Not Aliens: Weird Radio Signal from Star Likely Has Duller Explanation:

A strange radio signal that seemed to emanate from a small nearby star probably came from Earth-orbiting satellites, astronomers say.

Late last week, researchers announced that, on May 12, the 1,000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected a bizarre radio signal in the vicinity of Ross 128, a red dwarf star that lies just 11 light-years from Earth….

“The best explanation is that the signals are transmissions from one or more geostationary satellites,” Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, wrote in a statement today (July 21). (Geostationary satellites circle Earth at an altitude of about 22,300 miles, or 35,800 kilometers.)

Smokin’ Ed Currie brings the heat:

Fear the Reaper: Breeding the World’s Hottest Pepper from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

In the competitive world of hot pepper breeding, one man is smoking the competition. Meet “Smokin’” Ed Currie. He’s the man behind the world’s hottest pepper—the “Carolina Reaper.” For the past three decades, Currie has been pushing the limits of the Scoville scale—breeding hotter and hotter peppers. We went behind the scenes at his South Carolina farm, where he’s bred a number of secret, unreleased specimens that he claims are even hotter than his famous Reaper. You may want to have some milk ready for this one.