Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
???...
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- President Trump News Conference (C-SPAN) "President Trump held a news conference to announce Alexander Acosta as his new labor secretary nominee following Andrew Puzder’s decision to withdraw from the process. Before taking questions, the president spoke at length about topics such as the first few weeks of his administration, jobs, his Supreme Court nominee, military spending, the margin of his Electoral College victory, and his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He said he would introduce a new executive order the following week that would 'comprehensively protect our country.' He also criticized the media, saying 'the level of dishonesty' in the press 'is out of control.' Question topics included Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser, leaks within his administration of classified information, and reported contacts between his advisers and Russia, which he called 'fake news.' Several times, he brought up his presidential contest with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."
- Fox News Anchor Shep Smith Rips Into Trump For "Crazy" Press Conference (BuzzFeed) "'It’s crazy what we are watching every day,' he [Smith] said. 'He [Trump] keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all…' Smith then said he is tired of Trump treating the press corps like 'fools' for asking questions. 'We have a right to know, we absolutely do,' he said, 'and that you call us fake news and put us down like children for asking these questions on behalf of the American people, it is inconsequential.' He added: 'The people deserve that answer, at the very least.'" and Fox host Shepard Smith slams president, Trump supporters call for his head (USA Today) "Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is under fire for criticizing President's Trump's treatment of CNN reporter Jim Acosta and his refusal to answer questions about his campaign's ties to Russia."
- Rush Limbaugh is exactly right about how Donald Trump can fix his problems (WaPo) "'Make tracks,' Limbaugh counsels Trump. 'Do it obviously.' That should be the most natural thing in the world for Trump, whose greatest gift is as a salesman and marketer of, well, himself. But he has lost his way. He'd do well to listen to Limbaugh on how to find it again."
- Limbaugh on Trump: 'This Was One of the Most Effective Press Conferences I Have Ever Seen' (Breitbart) "Don’t misunderstand. When I [Limbaugh] say effective, I’m talking about rallying people who voted for him to stay with him."
HEALTHCARE:
- Republican Health Proposal Would Redirect Money From Poor to Rich (NYT) "I wrote a few weeks ago about how all health policy decisions involve trade-offs, and it will be hard for President Trump to honor his promise of coverage that is 'far less expensive and far better' than Obamacare. This plan is a good illustration of those challenges. It’s a simpler, potentially cheaper plan than Obamacare. But it’s far less generous to the poor, and unlikely to provide the health insurance for 'everybody' that President Trump envisions."
- Republican Health Care Proposal Would Cover Fewer Low-Income Families (NPR) "Lawmakers who attended the meeting said the plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act with a bill similar to one that passed in 2015 but was vetoed by President Obama. That proposal would have repealed all the taxes and subsidies associated with the health care law and would have killed the mandate for individuals to buy health insurance by getting rid of the tax penalty used to enforce it. The major difference between the two is that the Obamacare subsidies increase as premiums rise so that consumers are responsible for the same premium amount, which is tied to their income. The tax credits proposed by Ryan are not tied to income but rise as a person ages and insurance rates increase."
NEWS:
- White House Plans to Have Trump Ally Review Intelligence Agencies (NYT) "President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials... The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president." and Trump just escalated his war with the intelligence community — bigly (WaPo) "But it’s nonetheless important to pinpoint exactly what is noteworthy about what Trump is doing here. Trump is calling for an investigation into seemingly illegal leaking, but he’s doing more than this. He’s calling for an investigation into leakers and whistleblowers who are undermining Trump himself. Such investigations presumably could lead to prosecutions." and Trump downplays possibility of a New York billionaire reviewing U.S. spy agencies (WaPo)
- Ex-CIA Chief Tells Us What's Next After Michael Flynn (Ozy) "I do not think they [intelligence services] are feuding with him [Trump]; they are just doing their jobs. It may be that what they produce runs against the grain of his beliefs and is therefore displeasing to him — but we don’t really know that. Again Wednesday, he accused them of 'illegally' leaking — but we don’t know that the leaks came from intelligence services either. Indeed, most of the press stories refer merely to 'officials' — who could come from anywhere, including from inside the White House. In my personal experience, it is seldom the intelligence agencies that initiate leaks of their material. It is usually someone else with access to that material who sees some gain in making it public. I keep thinking that this will have to clear up eventually, probably when a real crisis shows the president how important intelligence can be to him. I’m thinking of my favorite inscription by a president on a photo of himself that hangs in the hallway at the CIA. It’s by Harry Truman and all he wrote was, 'To the CIA: A necessity to the president of the United States — from one who knows.' Sooner or later, President Trump will know the same thing."
TECHNOLOGY:
- A Computer to Rival the Brain (New Yorker) "Early in the history of artificial intelligence, researchers came up against what is referred to as Moravec’s paradox: tasks that seem laborious to us (arithmetic, for example) are easy for a computer, whereas those that seem easy to us (like picking out a friend’s voice in a noisy bar) have been the hardest for A.I. to master. Computers are often likened to brains, but they work in a manner foreign to biology. Now companies want to endow our personal devices with intelligence, to let our smartphones recognize our family members, anticipate our moods, and suggest adjustments to our medications. To do so, A.I. will need to move beyond algorithms run on supercomputers and become embodied in silico."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- NASA’s ‘space poop challenge’ is over, and it went boldly beyond the diaper (WaPo) "'There’s a turd floating through the air.' Nearly 50 years later the matter of space pooping is not completely solved. Enter the Space Poop Challenge..."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- President Trump News Conference (C-SPAN) "President Trump held a news conference to announce Alexander Acosta as his new labor secretary nominee following Andrew Puzder’s decision to withdraw from the process. Before taking questions, the president spoke at length about topics such as the first few weeks of his administration, jobs, his Supreme Court nominee, military spending, the margin of his Electoral College victory, and his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He said he would introduce a new executive order the following week that would 'comprehensively protect our country.' He also criticized the media, saying 'the level of dishonesty' in the press 'is out of control.' Question topics included Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser, leaks within his administration of classified information, and reported contacts between his advisers and Russia, which he called 'fake news.' Several times, he brought up his presidential contest with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."
- Fox News Anchor Shep Smith Rips Into Trump For "Crazy" Press Conference (BuzzFeed) "'It’s crazy what we are watching every day,' he [Smith] said. 'He [Trump] keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all…' Smith then said he is tired of Trump treating the press corps like 'fools' for asking questions. 'We have a right to know, we absolutely do,' he said, 'and that you call us fake news and put us down like children for asking these questions on behalf of the American people, it is inconsequential.' He added: 'The people deserve that answer, at the very least.'" and Fox host Shepard Smith slams president, Trump supporters call for his head (USA Today) "Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is under fire for criticizing President's Trump's treatment of CNN reporter Jim Acosta and his refusal to answer questions about his campaign's ties to Russia."
- Rush Limbaugh is exactly right about how Donald Trump can fix his problems (WaPo) "'Make tracks,' Limbaugh counsels Trump. 'Do it obviously.' That should be the most natural thing in the world for Trump, whose greatest gift is as a salesman and marketer of, well, himself. But he has lost his way. He'd do well to listen to Limbaugh on how to find it again."
- Limbaugh on Trump: 'This Was One of the Most Effective Press Conferences I Have Ever Seen' (Breitbart) "Don’t misunderstand. When I [Limbaugh] say effective, I’m talking about rallying people who voted for him to stay with him."
HEALTHCARE:
- Republican Health Proposal Would Redirect Money From Poor to Rich (NYT) "I wrote a few weeks ago about how all health policy decisions involve trade-offs, and it will be hard for President Trump to honor his promise of coverage that is 'far less expensive and far better' than Obamacare. This plan is a good illustration of those challenges. It’s a simpler, potentially cheaper plan than Obamacare. But it’s far less generous to the poor, and unlikely to provide the health insurance for 'everybody' that President Trump envisions."
- Republican Health Care Proposal Would Cover Fewer Low-Income Families (NPR) "Lawmakers who attended the meeting said the plan is to repeal the Affordable Care Act with a bill similar to one that passed in 2015 but was vetoed by President Obama. That proposal would have repealed all the taxes and subsidies associated with the health care law and would have killed the mandate for individuals to buy health insurance by getting rid of the tax penalty used to enforce it. The major difference between the two is that the Obamacare subsidies increase as premiums rise so that consumers are responsible for the same premium amount, which is tied to their income. The tax credits proposed by Ryan are not tied to income but rise as a person ages and insurance rates increase."
NEWS:
- White House Plans to Have Trump Ally Review Intelligence Agencies (NYT) "President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials... The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president." and Trump just escalated his war with the intelligence community — bigly (WaPo) "But it’s nonetheless important to pinpoint exactly what is noteworthy about what Trump is doing here. Trump is calling for an investigation into seemingly illegal leaking, but he’s doing more than this. He’s calling for an investigation into leakers and whistleblowers who are undermining Trump himself. Such investigations presumably could lead to prosecutions." and Trump downplays possibility of a New York billionaire reviewing U.S. spy agencies (WaPo)
- Ex-CIA Chief Tells Us What's Next After Michael Flynn (Ozy) "I do not think they [intelligence services] are feuding with him [Trump]; they are just doing their jobs. It may be that what they produce runs against the grain of his beliefs and is therefore displeasing to him — but we don’t really know that. Again Wednesday, he accused them of 'illegally' leaking — but we don’t know that the leaks came from intelligence services either. Indeed, most of the press stories refer merely to 'officials' — who could come from anywhere, including from inside the White House. In my personal experience, it is seldom the intelligence agencies that initiate leaks of their material. It is usually someone else with access to that material who sees some gain in making it public. I keep thinking that this will have to clear up eventually, probably when a real crisis shows the president how important intelligence can be to him. I’m thinking of my favorite inscription by a president on a photo of himself that hangs in the hallway at the CIA. It’s by Harry Truman and all he wrote was, 'To the CIA: A necessity to the president of the United States — from one who knows.' Sooner or later, President Trump will know the same thing."
TECHNOLOGY:
- A Computer to Rival the Brain (New Yorker) "Early in the history of artificial intelligence, researchers came up against what is referred to as Moravec’s paradox: tasks that seem laborious to us (arithmetic, for example) are easy for a computer, whereas those that seem easy to us (like picking out a friend’s voice in a noisy bar) have been the hardest for A.I. to master. Computers are often likened to brains, but they work in a manner foreign to biology. Now companies want to endow our personal devices with intelligence, to let our smartphones recognize our family members, anticipate our moods, and suggest adjustments to our medications. To do so, A.I. will need to move beyond algorithms run on supercomputers and become embodied in silico."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- NASA’s ‘space poop challenge’ is over, and it went boldly beyond the diaper (WaPo) "'There’s a turd floating through the air.' Nearly 50 years later the matter of space pooping is not completely solved. Enter the Space Poop Challenge..."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Thursday, February 16, 2017
ONE AFTERNOON, 3 INVESTIGATIONS? THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE'S OMINOUS DAY
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- One afternoon, 3 investigations? The Trump White House’s ominous day (WaPo) "First came the independent Office of Government Ethics's recommendation that the White House should investigate Kellyanne Conway's plug of Ivanka Trump's fashion line and 'consider taking disciplinary action.' A half-hour later, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), announced a letter probing Trump's apparent discussion of sensitive information out in the open this weekend at Mar-a-Lago. Finally, a little after 3 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was 'highly likely' the Senate would deepen its Russia investigation after now-former national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation and questions about whether his December discussion of sanctions with Russia's ambassador broke the law. Three separate controversies, all coming to a head at once, and all potentially becoming investigative headaches for the White House. Meet the Trump administration. Trump supporters will gladly dismiss much of this as politics and the price of Trump doing big things/rocking the boat/Draining The Swamp. But in two of these cases, it's Republicans inching toward broader investigations. The pressure on Chaffetz and McConnell is too much, and the concern is too great to simply ignore these episodes. In both cases, national security is at issue."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Trump's vow to scrap the Paris climate change accord faces skepticism from corporations, GOP moderates (LA Times) "Now the landmark agreement, signed under President Obama, is fast becoming a nuisance for President Trump’s White House. It is putting the president under increasing pressure from places he may not have expected. His own secretary of State appears to see little upside in the president following through on the signature campaign vow to scrap it. His ambassador to the United Nations is hedging. And titans of industries that Trump promised would be unleashed to create new jobs once freed from the agreement’s constraints are openly hostile to Trump’s plan to put it through the shredder. CEOs have grown more panicked about the impact global warming will have on business stability than the cost of confronting it. Outside the confines of Trump campaign rallies, the offices of a few free market think tanks and the tea party stalwarts in Congress, the broader consensus is that abandoning Paris won’t save trillions of dollars, as Trump promised, but hurt the economy. Many Republican heavyweights are meanwhile sending a clear signal to the White House that their dislike of the Clean Power Plan — the Obama administration’s blueprint for meeting America’s obligations under the climate pact — should not be confused with support for Trump’s repudiation of all climate action. The Paris accord doesn’t set particularly onerous standards on U.S. emissions. The boom in natural gas production, plunging prices of wind and solar power and evolution of energy-efficient technologies — along with the embrace of sustainability by American businesses — has the U.S. well on its way to meeting its goals under the pact."
NEWS:
- What Trump Is Doing Is Not O.K. (NYT) "What is going on between Donald Trump and the Russians? Every action, tweet and declaration by Trump throughout this campaign, his transition and his early presidency screams that he is compromised when it comes to the Russians. But Trump’s willingness to attack allies like Australia...cannot be explained away by his mere desire to improve relations with Moscow to defeat the Islamic State. We need to know whom Trump owes and who might own him, and we need to know it now. Save for a few patriotic Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the entire Republican Party is complicit in a shameful act of looking away at Trump’s inexplicable behavior toward Russia. Trump and his senior aides have spent their first weeks in power doing nothing more than telling us how afraid we should be of Muslim immigrants who have not been properly vetted by our intelligence and immigration authorities. Well, Putin was vetted by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., and they concluded that he attacked our country’s most important institution — and Trump has acted as if he could not care less."
- On the Road to Another Watergate? (NYT) "Meanwhile, the president is preoccupied with another issue. 'The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?' he tweeted on Tuesday. It’s been a long time, but remember this: The road to Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon began in April 1969, three months after his inauguration, when the president ordered Mr. Kissinger to wiretap members of his own staff in an effort to stop embarrassing leaks of secret information. One thing led to another until the commander in chief was athwart the Constitution. It’s been barely three weeks since the Trump team took office, and a distinct aroma has started wafting out of Washington, what Mr. Kissinger is said to have called 'the odious smell of truth.'"
- Trump's Russia Connection Has Been Under Your Nose All Along (Ozy) "But you don’t have to wait until more news breaks, or be a conspiracy theorist, to be rightly suspicious that President Trump has not been coming clean with what he really knew about the Russian hacks, and when. ...you merely have to go back to the record itself — to Trump’s own public statements and tweets, which have been leaving a remarkably clear trail of breadcrumbs leading right up to the Kremlin’s door all along."
- Two explosive reports on Trump and Russia. Zero on-the-record sources (WaPo) "Predictably, the use of anonymous sources opened the door for Trump to call the reports 'nonsense' and 'fake news,' though he might have inadvertently lent credence to the stories by tweeting that 'information is being illegally given...by the intelligence community.' Which is it? Is the media making up fake nonsense? Or is the intelligence community leaking real information? Both things can't be true. Unnamed sources are often critical contributors to important news reports and, as I have noted before, Trump has no problem with them, when he finds their disclosures helpful. But anonymity invariably promotes skepticism about sources' motives. The bottom line is there is no proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the presidential election. Absent such proof, the significance of communication between the campaign and Russian intelligence officials is unclear."
- Donald Trump is suddenly looking like a very weak autocrat (WaPo) "Indeed, the lashing out is beginning to look less and less fearsome, and more and more impulsively buffoonish and self-defeating. And there’s a broader pattern developing here, one that undermines a key narrative about the Trump presidency, in which Trump is pursuing strategic disruption and breaking all the old rules and norms to further an unconventional presidency that is designed to render the old way of doing business irrelevant. It’s obvious that all of this is now actively undermining his own designs, on multiple fronts."
- Washington is boiling. Here’s why (WaPo) "It’s no secret the Trump administration has a highly adversarial relationship with the press, and I won’t make excuses for that, nor will I argue that his disdain for the mainstream media is completely unfounded. But I do think it’s worth remembering how we got here, and the Democrats should take the lion’s share of the blame."
- In Michael Flynn’s Resignation, Some in Moscow See ‘Russophobia’ (NYT) "The Moscow elite was shocked by the Trump victory, and ever since there has been quiet drumbeat in this capital — where conspiracy theories are never far below the surface — that the American establishment would never really allow him to hold power. That was voiced a little louder in some of the lawmakers’ reactions to Mr. Flynn’s resignation. Mr. Flynn was perceived as a great friend of Russia."
- Trump Voters Show President They Can Complain on Twitter, Too (NYT) "Complaints like these are being logged by a Twitter account called @Trump_Regrets. Since November, the account, managed by Erica Baguma, a 23-year-old Canadian college student, has climbed to more than 220,000 followers by curating some 1,500 messages, mostly from exasperated people who claimed to have voted for Mr. Trump. The New York Times reached out to a dozen people whose messages were shared by the account, and checked their names against public records, including activity on other social media platforms. Interviews with several of them suggested that their disappointment is real, but that they also would not have voted for Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton."
- Why More Democrats Are Now Embracing Conspiracy Theories (NYT) "Political psychology research suggests that losing political control can make people more vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories. But the shift in vulnerability to conspiracy theories may have deeper psychological roots. Research suggests that people embrace conspiracy beliefs as a way to cope with perceived threats to control."
- Trump Is Showing How the Deep State Really Works (Foreign Policy) "Here we have to leave the realm of reasonable conjecture, but the best explanation might be the easiest: incompetence or ineffectiveness from the White House counsel, and an inability to foresee the real world consequences of their own decisions by White House principles. The country’s intelligence agencies, by contrast, were far-more clear-sighted in the use of their prerogatives and power."
- Trump Needs a Russia Policy, or Putin Will Force One on Him (Foreign Policy) "In the meantime, however, the United States needs a policy towards Russia — fast. Why fast? Because Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin are expecting cooperation, and possibly a deal from President Trump, and they probably see it as a matter of some urgency. Specifically, they need it before the 2018 Russian elections, when any rapprochement is liable to be chucked in favor of anti-Americanism, a complement to Russian nationalism, which is a tried and true vote-getter. If Trump is slow in offering a deal, Moscow will likely create a crisis to force the issue, and thus test the White House’s commitment to cooperation. What most Americans don’t understand is that the Kremlin believes it is already in what I would call a soft war with the United States and major democracies."
- It’s bigger than Flynn. New Russia revelations widen Trump’s credibility gap (WaPo)
- Trump Condemns Leaks to News Media in a Twitter Flurry (NYT)
- Michael Flynn is gone. Here’s where the National Security Council should go next (WaPo)
THE FLYNN AFFAIR:
- Trump says Flynn was treated unfairly, a day after Spicer said he was fired because of a lack of trust (WaPo) "Trump’s ire over the insider tips to journalists also contrasted with his indirect praise of disclosure of leaked internal emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign made public by WikiLeaks during the campaign."
- The Missing Pieces in the Flynn Story (NYT) "That Mr. Trump clung to such a compromised person in such a sensitive position is at best an abysmal failure of judgment."
- Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence (NYT) "On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that the news surrounding Mr. Flynn in recent days underscored 'how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when.' Mr. Warner said that Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee 'from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election.'"
- Michael Flynn’s star burns out (WaPo) "His appointment to head the DIA in 2012 was the culmination of what had been a charmed rise to the top. Then bad things began to happen, some involving Russia, and Flynn’s path began to veer toward Monday’s catastrophe. After Flynn was forced out [of DIA] in 2014, he complained that his ouster reflected disagreements about Middle East strategy. Colleagues at the time say it was simply a story of management failure — a good officer in the wrong job. An embittered Flynn continued to advocate closer cooperation with Russia — and began issuing strident denunciations of the Obama administration. He told the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2015 that U.S. military operations in Iraq and Libya had been a 'mistake and a 'strategic failure.' These became major themes for Donald Trump, whose campaign Flynn informally began advising in late 2015. Flynn’s fall is a painful story, with many unanswered questions."
SCIENCE:
- Ethicists advise caution in applying CRISPR gene editing to humans (WaPo) "The latest iteration of this ongoing CRISPR debate is a report published Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. The report, a series of guidelines written by 22 experts from multiple countries and a variety of academic specialties, presents a kind of flashing red light for CRISPR. But the new report takes a slightly more permissive, forward-thinking position, saying that, if and when such interventions are proved safe — which could be in the near future — and if numerous criteria are met to ensure that such gene editing is regulated and limited, it could potentially be used to treat rare, serious diseases. For example: The intervention would have to replace the defective, disease-causing gene with a gene already common in the human species. There would also have to be no simpler alternative for parents wishing to have a healthy child."
READ THIS:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig) "The book describes, in first person, a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to Northern California by the author and his son Chris. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Spanner, the Google Database That Mastered Time, Is Now Open to Everyone (Wired) "Google can change company data in one part of this database without contradicting changes made on the other side of the planet. What’s more, it can readily and reliably replicate data across multiple data centers in multiple parts of the world—and seamlessly retrieve these copies if any one data center goes down. For a truly global business like Google, such transcontinental consistency is enormously powerful. No one else has ever built a system like this. Google believes this can provide some added leverage in its battle with Microsoft and Amazon for supremacy in the increasingly important cloud computing market, just because Spanner is unique."
- Android apps on Chrome OS arrive, disappoint (Re/code) "If you buy the Chromebook Plus and intend to use it mainly as a Chromebook, I expect you’ll have a good experience. But if you plan to rely heavily on Android apps, you’re basically buying into the start of a journey, replete with odd-looking presentations of familiar apps, bugs and crashes."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- One afternoon, 3 investigations? The Trump White House’s ominous day (WaPo) "First came the independent Office of Government Ethics's recommendation that the White House should investigate Kellyanne Conway's plug of Ivanka Trump's fashion line and 'consider taking disciplinary action.' A half-hour later, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), announced a letter probing Trump's apparent discussion of sensitive information out in the open this weekend at Mar-a-Lago. Finally, a little after 3 p.m., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was 'highly likely' the Senate would deepen its Russia investigation after now-former national security adviser Michael Flynn's resignation and questions about whether his December discussion of sanctions with Russia's ambassador broke the law. Three separate controversies, all coming to a head at once, and all potentially becoming investigative headaches for the White House. Meet the Trump administration. Trump supporters will gladly dismiss much of this as politics and the price of Trump doing big things/rocking the boat/Draining The Swamp. But in two of these cases, it's Republicans inching toward broader investigations. The pressure on Chaffetz and McConnell is too much, and the concern is too great to simply ignore these episodes. In both cases, national security is at issue."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- Trump's vow to scrap the Paris climate change accord faces skepticism from corporations, GOP moderates (LA Times) "Now the landmark agreement, signed under President Obama, is fast becoming a nuisance for President Trump’s White House. It is putting the president under increasing pressure from places he may not have expected. His own secretary of State appears to see little upside in the president following through on the signature campaign vow to scrap it. His ambassador to the United Nations is hedging. And titans of industries that Trump promised would be unleashed to create new jobs once freed from the agreement’s constraints are openly hostile to Trump’s plan to put it through the shredder. CEOs have grown more panicked about the impact global warming will have on business stability than the cost of confronting it. Outside the confines of Trump campaign rallies, the offices of a few free market think tanks and the tea party stalwarts in Congress, the broader consensus is that abandoning Paris won’t save trillions of dollars, as Trump promised, but hurt the economy. Many Republican heavyweights are meanwhile sending a clear signal to the White House that their dislike of the Clean Power Plan — the Obama administration’s blueprint for meeting America’s obligations under the climate pact — should not be confused with support for Trump’s repudiation of all climate action. The Paris accord doesn’t set particularly onerous standards on U.S. emissions. The boom in natural gas production, plunging prices of wind and solar power and evolution of energy-efficient technologies — along with the embrace of sustainability by American businesses — has the U.S. well on its way to meeting its goals under the pact."
NEWS:
- What Trump Is Doing Is Not O.K. (NYT) "What is going on between Donald Trump and the Russians? Every action, tweet and declaration by Trump throughout this campaign, his transition and his early presidency screams that he is compromised when it comes to the Russians. But Trump’s willingness to attack allies like Australia...cannot be explained away by his mere desire to improve relations with Moscow to defeat the Islamic State. We need to know whom Trump owes and who might own him, and we need to know it now. Save for a few patriotic Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the entire Republican Party is complicit in a shameful act of looking away at Trump’s inexplicable behavior toward Russia. Trump and his senior aides have spent their first weeks in power doing nothing more than telling us how afraid we should be of Muslim immigrants who have not been properly vetted by our intelligence and immigration authorities. Well, Putin was vetted by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., and they concluded that he attacked our country’s most important institution — and Trump has acted as if he could not care less."
- On the Road to Another Watergate? (NYT) "Meanwhile, the president is preoccupied with another issue. 'The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?' he tweeted on Tuesday. It’s been a long time, but remember this: The road to Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon began in April 1969, three months after his inauguration, when the president ordered Mr. Kissinger to wiretap members of his own staff in an effort to stop embarrassing leaks of secret information. One thing led to another until the commander in chief was athwart the Constitution. It’s been barely three weeks since the Trump team took office, and a distinct aroma has started wafting out of Washington, what Mr. Kissinger is said to have called 'the odious smell of truth.'"
- Trump's Russia Connection Has Been Under Your Nose All Along (Ozy) "But you don’t have to wait until more news breaks, or be a conspiracy theorist, to be rightly suspicious that President Trump has not been coming clean with what he really knew about the Russian hacks, and when. ...you merely have to go back to the record itself — to Trump’s own public statements and tweets, which have been leaving a remarkably clear trail of breadcrumbs leading right up to the Kremlin’s door all along."
- Two explosive reports on Trump and Russia. Zero on-the-record sources (WaPo) "Predictably, the use of anonymous sources opened the door for Trump to call the reports 'nonsense' and 'fake news,' though he might have inadvertently lent credence to the stories by tweeting that 'information is being illegally given...by the intelligence community.' Which is it? Is the media making up fake nonsense? Or is the intelligence community leaking real information? Both things can't be true. Unnamed sources are often critical contributors to important news reports and, as I have noted before, Trump has no problem with them, when he finds their disclosures helpful. But anonymity invariably promotes skepticism about sources' motives. The bottom line is there is no proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the presidential election. Absent such proof, the significance of communication between the campaign and Russian intelligence officials is unclear."
- Donald Trump is suddenly looking like a very weak autocrat (WaPo) "Indeed, the lashing out is beginning to look less and less fearsome, and more and more impulsively buffoonish and self-defeating. And there’s a broader pattern developing here, one that undermines a key narrative about the Trump presidency, in which Trump is pursuing strategic disruption and breaking all the old rules and norms to further an unconventional presidency that is designed to render the old way of doing business irrelevant. It’s obvious that all of this is now actively undermining his own designs, on multiple fronts."
- Washington is boiling. Here’s why (WaPo) "It’s no secret the Trump administration has a highly adversarial relationship with the press, and I won’t make excuses for that, nor will I argue that his disdain for the mainstream media is completely unfounded. But I do think it’s worth remembering how we got here, and the Democrats should take the lion’s share of the blame."
- In Michael Flynn’s Resignation, Some in Moscow See ‘Russophobia’ (NYT) "The Moscow elite was shocked by the Trump victory, and ever since there has been quiet drumbeat in this capital — where conspiracy theories are never far below the surface — that the American establishment would never really allow him to hold power. That was voiced a little louder in some of the lawmakers’ reactions to Mr. Flynn’s resignation. Mr. Flynn was perceived as a great friend of Russia."
- Trump Voters Show President They Can Complain on Twitter, Too (NYT) "Complaints like these are being logged by a Twitter account called @Trump_Regrets. Since November, the account, managed by Erica Baguma, a 23-year-old Canadian college student, has climbed to more than 220,000 followers by curating some 1,500 messages, mostly from exasperated people who claimed to have voted for Mr. Trump. The New York Times reached out to a dozen people whose messages were shared by the account, and checked their names against public records, including activity on other social media platforms. Interviews with several of them suggested that their disappointment is real, but that they also would not have voted for Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton."
- Why More Democrats Are Now Embracing Conspiracy Theories (NYT) "Political psychology research suggests that losing political control can make people more vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories. But the shift in vulnerability to conspiracy theories may have deeper psychological roots. Research suggests that people embrace conspiracy beliefs as a way to cope with perceived threats to control."
- Trump Is Showing How the Deep State Really Works (Foreign Policy) "Here we have to leave the realm of reasonable conjecture, but the best explanation might be the easiest: incompetence or ineffectiveness from the White House counsel, and an inability to foresee the real world consequences of their own decisions by White House principles. The country’s intelligence agencies, by contrast, were far-more clear-sighted in the use of their prerogatives and power."
- Trump Needs a Russia Policy, or Putin Will Force One on Him (Foreign Policy) "In the meantime, however, the United States needs a policy towards Russia — fast. Why fast? Because Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin are expecting cooperation, and possibly a deal from President Trump, and they probably see it as a matter of some urgency. Specifically, they need it before the 2018 Russian elections, when any rapprochement is liable to be chucked in favor of anti-Americanism, a complement to Russian nationalism, which is a tried and true vote-getter. If Trump is slow in offering a deal, Moscow will likely create a crisis to force the issue, and thus test the White House’s commitment to cooperation. What most Americans don’t understand is that the Kremlin believes it is already in what I would call a soft war with the United States and major democracies."
- It’s bigger than Flynn. New Russia revelations widen Trump’s credibility gap (WaPo)
- Trump Condemns Leaks to News Media in a Twitter Flurry (NYT)
- Michael Flynn is gone. Here’s where the National Security Council should go next (WaPo)
THE FLYNN AFFAIR:
- Trump says Flynn was treated unfairly, a day after Spicer said he was fired because of a lack of trust (WaPo) "Trump’s ire over the insider tips to journalists also contrasted with his indirect praise of disclosure of leaked internal emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign made public by WikiLeaks during the campaign."
- The Missing Pieces in the Flynn Story (NYT) "That Mr. Trump clung to such a compromised person in such a sensitive position is at best an abysmal failure of judgment."
- Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence (NYT) "On Tuesday, top Republican lawmakers said that Mr. Flynn should be one focus of the investigation, and that he should be called to testify before Congress. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that the news surrounding Mr. Flynn in recent days underscored 'how many questions still remain unanswered to the American people more than three months after Election Day, including who was aware of what, and when.' Mr. Warner said that Mr. Flynn’s resignation would not stop the committee 'from continuing to investigate General Flynn, or any other campaign official who may have had inappropriate and improper contacts with Russian officials prior to the election.'"
- Michael Flynn’s star burns out (WaPo) "His appointment to head the DIA in 2012 was the culmination of what had been a charmed rise to the top. Then bad things began to happen, some involving Russia, and Flynn’s path began to veer toward Monday’s catastrophe. After Flynn was forced out [of DIA] in 2014, he complained that his ouster reflected disagreements about Middle East strategy. Colleagues at the time say it was simply a story of management failure — a good officer in the wrong job. An embittered Flynn continued to advocate closer cooperation with Russia — and began issuing strident denunciations of the Obama administration. He told the German magazine Der Spiegel in November 2015 that U.S. military operations in Iraq and Libya had been a 'mistake and a 'strategic failure.' These became major themes for Donald Trump, whose campaign Flynn informally began advising in late 2015. Flynn’s fall is a painful story, with many unanswered questions."
SCIENCE:
- Ethicists advise caution in applying CRISPR gene editing to humans (WaPo) "The latest iteration of this ongoing CRISPR debate is a report published Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. The report, a series of guidelines written by 22 experts from multiple countries and a variety of academic specialties, presents a kind of flashing red light for CRISPR. But the new report takes a slightly more permissive, forward-thinking position, saying that, if and when such interventions are proved safe — which could be in the near future — and if numerous criteria are met to ensure that such gene editing is regulated and limited, it could potentially be used to treat rare, serious diseases. For example: The intervention would have to replace the defective, disease-causing gene with a gene already common in the human species. There would also have to be no simpler alternative for parents wishing to have a healthy child."
READ THIS:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig) "The book describes, in first person, a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to Northern California by the author and his son Chris. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Spanner, the Google Database That Mastered Time, Is Now Open to Everyone (Wired) "Google can change company data in one part of this database without contradicting changes made on the other side of the planet. What’s more, it can readily and reliably replicate data across multiple data centers in multiple parts of the world—and seamlessly retrieve these copies if any one data center goes down. For a truly global business like Google, such transcontinental consistency is enormously powerful. No one else has ever built a system like this. Google believes this can provide some added leverage in its battle with Microsoft and Amazon for supremacy in the increasingly important cloud computing market, just because Spanner is unique."
- Android apps on Chrome OS arrive, disappoint (Re/code) "If you buy the Chromebook Plus and intend to use it mainly as a Chromebook, I expect you’ll have a good experience. But if you plan to rely heavily on Android apps, you’re basically buying into the start of a journey, replete with odd-looking presentations of familiar apps, bugs and crashes."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
THE ROOF! THE ROOF! ...IS ON FIRE!...
TOP OF THE NEWS:
"It has been a busy day for Presidential statements divorced from reality." CBS’s Scott Pelley
- In the early weeks of the new administration, the humbling of a president (WaPo) "Trump’s campaign was never entirely smooth, but instincts that served him so well then appear to be less helpful now that he is in office. As president, Trump’s early moves — with some exceptions — have been marked by poor judgment, botched execution, hubris among some advisers, and a climate of fear and disorder all around. The complexities of governing have quickly caught up with a politician determined to shake up Washington as quickly as possible. The president gets credit from many Americans for keeping his campaign promises, but government by chaos is not a known recipe for success. What Trump takes away from all this will determine the future of his tumultuous presidency. The Russia issue will continue to dog Trump’s presidency until more answers are forthcoming. The powers of the president are vast, but they are not unlimited. Trump has come face to face with the checks and balances built into the Constitution and with the difficulty of commanding a huge bureaucracy of federal workers who value their role as public servants. He has seen anew the power of a free press to dig and report and hold those in power accountable. He has felt the power and sting of leaks from inside the government. There’s nothing new about any of this. It has been true for past presidents. Trump is learning the lesson painfully. The country is divided over Trump’s presidency, but a majority of Americans say they consider him a strong and decisive leader. Trump nation is standing behind him. The same is true, at least on the surface, for Republican elected officials, although their tolerance for mistakes and turmoil will be limited."
- In the early weeks of the new administration, the humbling of a president (WaPo) "Trump’s campaign was never entirely smooth, but instincts that served him so well then appear to be less helpful now that he is in office. As president, Trump’s early moves — with some exceptions — have been marked by poor judgment, botched execution, hubris among some advisers, and a climate of fear and disorder all around. The complexities of governing have quickly caught up with a politician determined to shake up Washington as quickly as possible. The president gets credit from many Americans for keeping his campaign promises, but government by chaos is not a known recipe for success. What Trump takes away from all this will determine the future of his tumultuous presidency. The Russia issue will continue to dog Trump’s presidency until more answers are forthcoming. The powers of the president are vast, but they are not unlimited. Trump has come face to face with the checks and balances built into the Constitution and with the difficulty of commanding a huge bureaucracy of federal workers who value their role as public servants. He has seen anew the power of a free press to dig and report and hold those in power accountable. He has felt the power and sting of leaks from inside the government. There’s nothing new about any of this. It has been true for past presidents. Trump is learning the lesson painfully. The country is divided over Trump’s presidency, but a majority of Americans say they consider him a strong and decisive leader. Trump nation is standing behind him. The same is true, at least on the surface, for Republican elected officials, although their tolerance for mistakes and turmoil will be limited."
- As Flynn Resigns, Priebus Future In Doubt As Trump Allies Circulate List of Alternate Chief of Staff Candidates (Breitbart) "These sources with inner workings of the White House and others independently confirm that President Trump has been privately critical of Priebus in many settings, asking questions about his performance in the position. That’s not all: Others say that Priebus is having a seriously difficult time communicating with all sides of the Republican Party, and cannot effectively build relationships across the divide to unite the Trump coalition. All of this could derail Trump’s presidency if he doesn’t fix it soon, and quickly bring in someone new as Chief of Staff who can smooth out the rocky start and get things back on track sooner rather than later."
- ‘Unbelievable Turmoil’: Trump’s First Month Leaves Washington Reeling (NYT) "'If you had no-drama Obama, you’ve got all-drama, all-the-time Trump,' said John Feehery, a veteran Republican strategist, who compared the last several weeks to the chaotic start to Newt Gingrich’s tenure as speaker of the House in 1995. As a candidate, Mr. Trump promised to move quickly to stop illegal immigration, bring jobs back, end trade deals and reduce crime. Central to his campaign agenda was his pledge to be a disruptive force in Washington — and he has certainly done that. Yet the disruptions have come at a cost: the president has so far made little progress on legislation that would repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. The White House has not proposed a promised infrastructure bill to repair deteriorating roads, bridges and tunnels. And the president’s aides have not yet drawn up plans for an overhaul of the nation’s tax code."
- Upheaval is now standard operating procedure inside the White House (WaPo) "The chaos and competing factions that were a Trump trademark in business and campaigning now are starting to define his presidency, according to interviews with a dozen White House officials as well as other Republicans. 'None of this is normal,' said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and top official in President George W. Bush’s White House, who has been highly critical of Trump and ticked through controversies that included false White House statements and the administration’s halted travel ban targeting seven majority-Muslim countries. 'The incompetence, the sloppiness and the leaking is unprecedented.' 'The real problem here is you have a bunch of people who were pretty much unknown four months ago, and now they’re all characters on ‘Saturday Night Live,’' Rollins said."
- Trump, like Nixon, is incapable of change (WaPo) "Trump’s genius as a manager is apparent only to himself. He is inattentive and dishonest. He insults rather than consults and has spent an inordinate amount of time at his golf courses. Already he has reversed himself on the one-China policy and has sent mixed signals about Russia. He trashes trade agreements as if ending them will reverse globalization, and he responds to complexity with tweets."
- The Embarrassment of President Trump (New Yorker) "This can’t go on much longer, can it? Trump himself looks out of place (that squinty-eyed frown, meant to bespeak firmness, or serious purpose, doesn’t succeed), and it’s easy to understand why he looks that way. He’s living a bachelor’s life in an unfamiliar house, in a so-so neighborhood far from his home town, surrounded by strangers who have been hired to protect him but cut him off from any sort of real privacy. After little more than three weeks, Trump’s behavior is no more erratic than it used to be, but in the context of the Presidency it seems so. CBS’s Scott Pelley recently began his evening broadcast in a way that no evening news in this nation has ever begun: 'It has been a busy day for Presidential statements divorced from reality.'"
- A White House where no one is in charge (WaPo) "In early January, House Speaker Paul Ryan met on the issue of tax reform with a delegation from the president-elect. Attending were future chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon, future chief of staff Reince Priebus, future senior adviser Jared Kushner, future counselor Kellyanne Conway and future senior policy adviser Stephen Miller. As the meeting began, Ryan pointedly asked, 'Who’s in charge?' Silence. It is still the right question. The president may thrive in chaos, but the presidency does not. A president needs aides who will give him honest information and analysis, not compete for his favor. This may even involve checking a president’s mistaken instincts. For whatever reason, Trump sees benefits in surrounding himself with a swarm of disorder and disruption. So far, that has helped produce relatively small, self-made crises. But what about the big ones caused by the relentless flow of events? The president will face challenges of amazing complexity that must be addressed in real time, without do-overs. Will the president be able to act swiftly, on the best information and the best advice?"
- Trump’s poll numbers keep dropping. How low can he go? (WaPo) "Fifty-four percent of the people didn't vote for Trump, and now 55 percent disapprove of him. ...it's hard to say that Trump's really in trouble right now, relatively speaking. And a big reason is that the only party he really needs to appeal to — his own — is still onboard, as it has been for a while."
THE FLYNN AFFAIR:
- Trump knew Flynn misled officials on Russia calls for ‘weeks,’ White House says (WaPo) "Trump was briefed by White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador 'immediately' after McGahn was informed that Flynn had misled Pence, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday. 'We've been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to Gen. Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks, trying to ascertain the truth,' Spicer said. The comments contradict the impression given by Trump on Friday aboard Air Force One that he was not familiar with a Washington Post report that revealed that Flynn had not told the truth about the calls. 'I don't know about that. I haven't seen it. What report is that? I haven't seen that. I'll look into that,' Trump told the plane."
- Michael Flynn quits over secret contacts with Russia (Economist) "As Washington, DC absorbs the news, just before midnight on February 13th, that Michael Flynn has quit as National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump after less than a month in office, an ominous note lingers in the air. There is something unhealthy about the way this new government operates. When trusted by a president, the national security adviser holds an immensely powerful job, as gatekeeper, referee, enforcer and co-ordinator whenever questions of defence, foreign policy and national security reach the White House for a presidential decision. Pessimists will worry that Mr Flynn’s departure is not enough to cure what ails this administration." and The Questionable Account of What Michael Flynn Told the White House (New Yorker)
- 10 unanswered questions after Michael Flynn’s resignation (WaPo) "1. What, if anything, did Trump authorize Flynn to tell the Russians before his inauguration? 2. Why was Trump planning to stand by Flynn? 3. What did White House counsel Donald McGahn do after the then-acting attorney general notified him last month that Flynn was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail? 4. What is the status of the FBI investigation into possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia? 5. Will Spicer and Pence apologize for making false statements to the American people? 6. Will Flynn face prosecution under the Logan Act? 7. What will the Senate Intelligence Committee uncover about contacts Flynn and others affiliated with Trump had with Russia before the election? 8. Who replaces Flynn? 9. Who else leaves the White House because Flynn is gone? 10. Who exactly is in charge at the White House?"
- F.B.I. Interviewed Flynn in Trump’s First Days in Office, Officials Say (NYT) "The interview raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal that cost Mr. Flynn his job. If he was not entirely honest with the F.B.I., it could expose Mr. Flynn to a felony charge."
HEALTH:
- Lessons on Aging Well, From a 105-Year-Old Cyclist (NYT)
NEWS:
- How Should One Resist the Trump Administration? (NYT) "It could be that the primary Trump threat is authoritarianism. If that’s the threat, then Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the model for the resistance. If we are in a Bonhoeffer moment, then aggressive nonviolent action makes sense: marching in the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting town halls, vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition. On the other hand, it could be that the primary threat is stagnation and corruption. If that’s the threat, St. Benedict is the model for resistance. If we are in a Benedict moment, the smart thing to do is to ignore the degradation in Washington and make your contribution at the state and local levels. The third possibility is that the primary threat in the Trump era is a combination of incompetence and anarchy. The model for the resistance is Gerald Ford, a decent, modest, experienced public servant who believed in the institutions of government, who restored faith in government, who had a plan to bind the nation’s wounds and restored normalcy and competence. Personally, I don’t think we’re at a Bonhoeffer moment or a Benedict moment. I think we’re approaching a Ford moment. If the first three weeks are any guide, this administration will not sustain itself for a full term. We’ll need a Ford, or rather a generation of Fords to restore effective governance."
- Trump’s Big Mouth Has Already Weakened America (Foreign Policy) "In fairness to Trump, it’s true that Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day, and it will take him more than three weeks to undo 70 years of American foreign policy and trade relations. It is quite possible, even likely, that he will move to implement more of his campaign pledges as more political appointees join the executive departments. But for the time being the 54 percent of Americans who didn’t vote for Trump — and the roughly 95 percent of the world that was horrified by his campaign — should be breathing a sigh of relief that his actions are not turning out to be quite as radical as his rhetoric. Yet that is not the sentiment of the day. Americans and the rest of the world continue to be as alarmed about Trump as if he had actually implemented his whole deranged agenda on day one. Why is it that no one is giving Trump any credit for his (relative) moderation in action? Because his words are so immoderate. He continues to engage in fraudulent rhetoric and unhinged personal attacks...that create an unsettled environment of crisis, uncertainty, and concern. His own babble and bluster does more than any critic to discredit him."
- Shulkin unanimously confirmed to head Veterans Affairs (WaPo) "No senators dissented on Shulkin’s nomination in a rare show of bipartisanship following contentious battles over other Trump Cabinet selections. Shulkin’s approval makes him the 11th high-ranking Trump official to be confirmed by the Senate."
- Kim Jong-un’s Half Brother Is Reported Assassinated in Malaysia (NYT) "There also was speculation that Kim Jong-un might have ordered Kim Jong-nam killed because China might have been planning to support him as a replacement for Kim Jong-un, who has angered Chinese leaders with his provocative weapons and missile tests."
- Republicans railed against Clinton’s ‘extremely careless’ behavior. Now they’ve got a Trump problem (WaPo)
- Everything You Need to Know About Tom Price (Ozy)
- The United States needs a new strategy for North Korea (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- ‘Data-Driven’ Campaigns Are Killing the Democratic Party (Politico) "For four straight election cycles, Democrats have ignored research from the fields of cognitive linguistics and psychology that the most effective way to communicate with other humans is by telling emotional stories. Instead, the Democratic Party’s affiliates and allied organizations in Washington have increasingly mandated “data-driven” campaigns instead of ones that are message-driven and data-informed. And over four straight cycles, Democrats have suffered historic losses."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Why AWS has such a big lead in the cloud (TechCrunch) "The competition simply didn’t believe there was enough of a market to worry about it."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- 'Playboy' Snaps Out Of Its Never-Nude Phase "Naked is normal."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
- ‘Unbelievable Turmoil’: Trump’s First Month Leaves Washington Reeling (NYT) "'If you had no-drama Obama, you’ve got all-drama, all-the-time Trump,' said John Feehery, a veteran Republican strategist, who compared the last several weeks to the chaotic start to Newt Gingrich’s tenure as speaker of the House in 1995. As a candidate, Mr. Trump promised to move quickly to stop illegal immigration, bring jobs back, end trade deals and reduce crime. Central to his campaign agenda was his pledge to be a disruptive force in Washington — and he has certainly done that. Yet the disruptions have come at a cost: the president has so far made little progress on legislation that would repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. The White House has not proposed a promised infrastructure bill to repair deteriorating roads, bridges and tunnels. And the president’s aides have not yet drawn up plans for an overhaul of the nation’s tax code."
- Upheaval is now standard operating procedure inside the White House (WaPo) "The chaos and competing factions that were a Trump trademark in business and campaigning now are starting to define his presidency, according to interviews with a dozen White House officials as well as other Republicans. 'None of this is normal,' said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist and top official in President George W. Bush’s White House, who has been highly critical of Trump and ticked through controversies that included false White House statements and the administration’s halted travel ban targeting seven majority-Muslim countries. 'The incompetence, the sloppiness and the leaking is unprecedented.' 'The real problem here is you have a bunch of people who were pretty much unknown four months ago, and now they’re all characters on ‘Saturday Night Live,’' Rollins said."
- Trump, like Nixon, is incapable of change (WaPo) "Trump’s genius as a manager is apparent only to himself. He is inattentive and dishonest. He insults rather than consults and has spent an inordinate amount of time at his golf courses. Already he has reversed himself on the one-China policy and has sent mixed signals about Russia. He trashes trade agreements as if ending them will reverse globalization, and he responds to complexity with tweets."
- The Embarrassment of President Trump (New Yorker) "This can’t go on much longer, can it? Trump himself looks out of place (that squinty-eyed frown, meant to bespeak firmness, or serious purpose, doesn’t succeed), and it’s easy to understand why he looks that way. He’s living a bachelor’s life in an unfamiliar house, in a so-so neighborhood far from his home town, surrounded by strangers who have been hired to protect him but cut him off from any sort of real privacy. After little more than three weeks, Trump’s behavior is no more erratic than it used to be, but in the context of the Presidency it seems so. CBS’s Scott Pelley recently began his evening broadcast in a way that no evening news in this nation has ever begun: 'It has been a busy day for Presidential statements divorced from reality.'"
- A White House where no one is in charge (WaPo) "In early January, House Speaker Paul Ryan met on the issue of tax reform with a delegation from the president-elect. Attending were future chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon, future chief of staff Reince Priebus, future senior adviser Jared Kushner, future counselor Kellyanne Conway and future senior policy adviser Stephen Miller. As the meeting began, Ryan pointedly asked, 'Who’s in charge?' Silence. It is still the right question. The president may thrive in chaos, but the presidency does not. A president needs aides who will give him honest information and analysis, not compete for his favor. This may even involve checking a president’s mistaken instincts. For whatever reason, Trump sees benefits in surrounding himself with a swarm of disorder and disruption. So far, that has helped produce relatively small, self-made crises. But what about the big ones caused by the relentless flow of events? The president will face challenges of amazing complexity that must be addressed in real time, without do-overs. Will the president be able to act swiftly, on the best information and the best advice?"
- Trump’s poll numbers keep dropping. How low can he go? (WaPo) "Fifty-four percent of the people didn't vote for Trump, and now 55 percent disapprove of him. ...it's hard to say that Trump's really in trouble right now, relatively speaking. And a big reason is that the only party he really needs to appeal to — his own — is still onboard, as it has been for a while."
THE FLYNN AFFAIR:
- Trump knew Flynn misled officials on Russia calls for ‘weeks,’ White House says (WaPo) "Trump was briefed by White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador 'immediately' after McGahn was informed that Flynn had misled Pence, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday. 'We've been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to Gen. Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks, trying to ascertain the truth,' Spicer said. The comments contradict the impression given by Trump on Friday aboard Air Force One that he was not familiar with a Washington Post report that revealed that Flynn had not told the truth about the calls. 'I don't know about that. I haven't seen it. What report is that? I haven't seen that. I'll look into that,' Trump told the plane."
- Michael Flynn quits over secret contacts with Russia (Economist) "As Washington, DC absorbs the news, just before midnight on February 13th, that Michael Flynn has quit as National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump after less than a month in office, an ominous note lingers in the air. There is something unhealthy about the way this new government operates. When trusted by a president, the national security adviser holds an immensely powerful job, as gatekeeper, referee, enforcer and co-ordinator whenever questions of defence, foreign policy and national security reach the White House for a presidential decision. Pessimists will worry that Mr Flynn’s departure is not enough to cure what ails this administration." and The Questionable Account of What Michael Flynn Told the White House (New Yorker)
- 10 unanswered questions after Michael Flynn’s resignation (WaPo) "1. What, if anything, did Trump authorize Flynn to tell the Russians before his inauguration? 2. Why was Trump planning to stand by Flynn? 3. What did White House counsel Donald McGahn do after the then-acting attorney general notified him last month that Flynn was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail? 4. What is the status of the FBI investigation into possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia? 5. Will Spicer and Pence apologize for making false statements to the American people? 6. Will Flynn face prosecution under the Logan Act? 7. What will the Senate Intelligence Committee uncover about contacts Flynn and others affiliated with Trump had with Russia before the election? 8. Who replaces Flynn? 9. Who else leaves the White House because Flynn is gone? 10. Who exactly is in charge at the White House?"
- F.B.I. Interviewed Flynn in Trump’s First Days in Office, Officials Say (NYT) "The interview raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal that cost Mr. Flynn his job. If he was not entirely honest with the F.B.I., it could expose Mr. Flynn to a felony charge."
HEALTH:
- Lessons on Aging Well, From a 105-Year-Old Cyclist (NYT)
NEWS:
- How Should One Resist the Trump Administration? (NYT) "It could be that the primary Trump threat is authoritarianism. If that’s the threat, then Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the model for the resistance. If we are in a Bonhoeffer moment, then aggressive nonviolent action makes sense: marching in the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting town halls, vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition. On the other hand, it could be that the primary threat is stagnation and corruption. If that’s the threat, St. Benedict is the model for resistance. If we are in a Benedict moment, the smart thing to do is to ignore the degradation in Washington and make your contribution at the state and local levels. The third possibility is that the primary threat in the Trump era is a combination of incompetence and anarchy. The model for the resistance is Gerald Ford, a decent, modest, experienced public servant who believed in the institutions of government, who restored faith in government, who had a plan to bind the nation’s wounds and restored normalcy and competence. Personally, I don’t think we’re at a Bonhoeffer moment or a Benedict moment. I think we’re approaching a Ford moment. If the first three weeks are any guide, this administration will not sustain itself for a full term. We’ll need a Ford, or rather a generation of Fords to restore effective governance."
- Trump’s Big Mouth Has Already Weakened America (Foreign Policy) "In fairness to Trump, it’s true that Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day, and it will take him more than three weeks to undo 70 years of American foreign policy and trade relations. It is quite possible, even likely, that he will move to implement more of his campaign pledges as more political appointees join the executive departments. But for the time being the 54 percent of Americans who didn’t vote for Trump — and the roughly 95 percent of the world that was horrified by his campaign — should be breathing a sigh of relief that his actions are not turning out to be quite as radical as his rhetoric. Yet that is not the sentiment of the day. Americans and the rest of the world continue to be as alarmed about Trump as if he had actually implemented his whole deranged agenda on day one. Why is it that no one is giving Trump any credit for his (relative) moderation in action? Because his words are so immoderate. He continues to engage in fraudulent rhetoric and unhinged personal attacks...that create an unsettled environment of crisis, uncertainty, and concern. His own babble and bluster does more than any critic to discredit him."
- Shulkin unanimously confirmed to head Veterans Affairs (WaPo) "No senators dissented on Shulkin’s nomination in a rare show of bipartisanship following contentious battles over other Trump Cabinet selections. Shulkin’s approval makes him the 11th high-ranking Trump official to be confirmed by the Senate."
- Kim Jong-un’s Half Brother Is Reported Assassinated in Malaysia (NYT) "There also was speculation that Kim Jong-un might have ordered Kim Jong-nam killed because China might have been planning to support him as a replacement for Kim Jong-un, who has angered Chinese leaders with his provocative weapons and missile tests."
- Republicans railed against Clinton’s ‘extremely careless’ behavior. Now they’ve got a Trump problem (WaPo)
- Everything You Need to Know About Tom Price (Ozy)
- The United States needs a new strategy for North Korea (WaPo)
POLITICS:
- ‘Data-Driven’ Campaigns Are Killing the Democratic Party (Politico) "For four straight election cycles, Democrats have ignored research from the fields of cognitive linguistics and psychology that the most effective way to communicate with other humans is by telling emotional stories. Instead, the Democratic Party’s affiliates and allied organizations in Washington have increasingly mandated “data-driven” campaigns instead of ones that are message-driven and data-informed. And over four straight cycles, Democrats have suffered historic losses."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Why AWS has such a big lead in the cloud (TechCrunch) "The competition simply didn’t believe there was enough of a market to worry about it."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- 'Playboy' Snaps Out Of Its Never-Nude Phase "Naked is normal."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
WORST. START. EVER.
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Worst. Start. Ever. (Foreign Policy) "The White House is leaking like the Lusitania, with the press receiving chapter and verse about who is responsible for each and every screw-up. Career officials, including roughly 1,000 Foreign Service officers, are protesting the president’s ill-advised initiatives. The White House staff is feuding with each other and with cabinet secretaries. Trump, in turn, is feuding with the president of Mexico and the 'president' of Australia, while the European Union is coming to regard the United States of Trump as a foe on a par with Russia, China, and 'wars, terror and anarchy in the Middle East and Africa.' Yet while attacking American allies, Trump is defending Vladimir Putin from the charge that he is guilty of killing a lot of innocent people. 'We have a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?' Trump told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, thus engaging in the kind of moral equivalence that Republicans once criticized. Nixon ranted and raved about his 'enemies' in the privacy of the Oval Office; Trump does it on Twitter for the whole world to see."
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- AI and Bitcoin Are Driving the Next Big Hedge Fund Wave (Wired) "Now, Tarrant says hedge funds are moving beyond the quants. As a prime example, he cites Numerai, a San Francisco hedge fund that makes trades using machine learning models built by thousands of anonymous data scientists paid in bitcoin."
- The Major Blind Spots in Macroeconomics (NYT)
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- A Rare Republican Call to Climate Action (NYT) "The most important thing about a carbon tax plan proposed last week may be the people behind it: prominent Republicans like James Baker III, George Shultz and Henry Paulson Jr. Their proposal would tax carbon emissions at $40 a ton to start and would be paid by oil refineries and other fossil fuel companies that would pass costs on to consumers with higher gas and electricity prices. The money raised would be returned to Americans through dividend checks; a family of four would get about $2,000 a year to start. This would help people adjust to higher energy prices and give them an incentive to reduce consumption or switch to renewable sources of energy. To avoid placing American industry at a disadvantage, imports from countries that do not impose a comparable tax would be subject to a per-ton tax on the carbon emitted in the production of their products, while exports to those nations would not be. The new Climate Leadership Council argues that conservatives should support a carbon tax because it is a more market-friendly approach than Mr. Obama’s regulations. Neither President Trump nor Republicans in Congress have embraced the proposal. Their dismissal of the council’s proposal is myopic and puts their party out of step with the country."
NEWS:
- Reality check: After three weeks, Trump has hit a Washington wall (USA Today) "But he's [Trump] discovering how the Constitution's structure, federal laws and rival power centers — from state governments to federal bureaucrats to foreign capitals and the news media — make leadership in the Oval Office a more complicated calculation than in the corporate suite. But Trump's impatience, his combative persona and his preference for unilateral action — characteristics that may have served him well in the real estate business — have brought more confrontations with a sharper edge than other modern presidents in the early days of their tenure."
- The Utterly Insufficient Efforts to Separate Trump from His Businesses (New Yorker) "It’s difficult to keep track of the ways in which the norms and ethical standards that have long governed the personal financial interests of the President have been breached in only a short time. The Trump Organization has not gone out of its way to assuage concerns about overt profiteering: Trump’s Palm Beach golf club is moving ahead with plans to double its membership prices; the President is using his Mar-a-Lago golf club as a venue for hosting foreign leaders; the head of Trump Hotels has discussed plans for a massive domestic expansion; and the company continues to own the Trump hotel in Washington, which is located in the Old Post Office, in violation of a lease prohibiting federally elected officials from benefitting from it financially."
- Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down (NYT) "Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an 'insider threat' program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks. This account of life inside the council...is based on conversations with more than two dozen current and former council staff members and others throughout the government. There is always a shakedown period for any new National Security Council... But what is happening under the Trump White House is different... A number of staff members who did not want to work for Mr. Trump have returned to their regular agencies, leaving a larger-than-usual hole in the experienced bureaucracy. Many of those who remain, who see themselves as apolitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisanship."
- Americans are more split on the Trump travel ban than you might think (WaPo) "The dynamic is clear...with net support for the ban (support minus opposition) rising along with net job approval for Trump. While only nine polls are included in the analysis, the correlation of 0.91 is nearly as high as it can get (1.0 is the highest)."
- Police Chiefs Say Trump’s Law Enforcement Priorities Are Out of Step (NYT) "Mr. Trump has abruptly shifted the focus from civil rights to law and order, from reducing incarceration to increasing sentences, from goading the police to improve to protecting them from harm. Last week, he swore in a new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who has said that the government has grown 'soft on crime,' and helped block a bipartisan bill to reduce sentences. Mr. Sessions said at his swearing-in that a recent uptick in crime in some major cities is a 'dangerous, permanent trend,' a view that is not supported by federal crime data, which shows crime remains near historical lows."
- Losing Hope in U.S., Migrants Make Icy Crossing to Canada (NYT) "Emerson’s 700 inhabitants have long known 'border hoppers,' often offering them lifts to the nearby Canadian Border Services Agency office. But they have never seen them coming in these numbers. Noting a worrying trend, Emerson officials convened an emergency meeting on Thursday with the police and border agents to figure out a protocol for the next wave of arrivals — which they feared would be soon. While an agreement between Canada and the United States makes it impossible for them to simply present themselves at the border and claim asylum, those who make it into the country and then present themselves to border guards can do so."
- Top Wall Street Journal Editor Defends Trump Coverage (NYT) "During the meeting, which lasted more than an hour and a half, Mr. Baker addressed the unease among some in the newsroom who feared that the paper was holding them back from aggressively covering Mr. Trump — and that he might be playing a role in shaping more favorable coverage"
- Trump reviews top White House staff after tumultuous start (Politico)
- Data shows a downward demographic spiral for Republicans (TechCrunch)
- With billions at stake, a federal judge just nullified the GOP's most cynical attack on Obamacare (LA Times)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tony Stark Has Jarvis. And Now IBM Has Havyn (Wired) "Think of Havyn, instead, as a highly specific analog to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. Instead of connecting users to Spotify or online shopping carts, it helps fight cyberthreats."
- Amazon’s Living Lab: Reimagining Retail on Seattle Streets (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- How to Get Ketchup From a Bottle Without the Wait, Watery Goo and Splatter (NYT) "Shake the bottle (with the cap on). Turn the bottle upside down. Remove the cap, tilt and pour."
- What Makes a Woman a Good Dancer? Watch the Hips, a Study Says (NYT) "A few features stood out as contributing to higher-quality dance: big hip swings, and the right and left limbs moving independently of one another (which the researchers describe as asymmetric arm and thigh movements)."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- AI and Bitcoin Are Driving the Next Big Hedge Fund Wave (Wired) "Now, Tarrant says hedge funds are moving beyond the quants. As a prime example, he cites Numerai, a San Francisco hedge fund that makes trades using machine learning models built by thousands of anonymous data scientists paid in bitcoin."
- The Major Blind Spots in Macroeconomics (NYT)
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- A Rare Republican Call to Climate Action (NYT) "The most important thing about a carbon tax plan proposed last week may be the people behind it: prominent Republicans like James Baker III, George Shultz and Henry Paulson Jr. Their proposal would tax carbon emissions at $40 a ton to start and would be paid by oil refineries and other fossil fuel companies that would pass costs on to consumers with higher gas and electricity prices. The money raised would be returned to Americans through dividend checks; a family of four would get about $2,000 a year to start. This would help people adjust to higher energy prices and give them an incentive to reduce consumption or switch to renewable sources of energy. To avoid placing American industry at a disadvantage, imports from countries that do not impose a comparable tax would be subject to a per-ton tax on the carbon emitted in the production of their products, while exports to those nations would not be. The new Climate Leadership Council argues that conservatives should support a carbon tax because it is a more market-friendly approach than Mr. Obama’s regulations. Neither President Trump nor Republicans in Congress have embraced the proposal. Their dismissal of the council’s proposal is myopic and puts their party out of step with the country."
NEWS:
- Reality check: After three weeks, Trump has hit a Washington wall (USA Today) "But he's [Trump] discovering how the Constitution's structure, federal laws and rival power centers — from state governments to federal bureaucrats to foreign capitals and the news media — make leadership in the Oval Office a more complicated calculation than in the corporate suite. But Trump's impatience, his combative persona and his preference for unilateral action — characteristics that may have served him well in the real estate business — have brought more confrontations with a sharper edge than other modern presidents in the early days of their tenure."
- The Utterly Insufficient Efforts to Separate Trump from His Businesses (New Yorker) "It’s difficult to keep track of the ways in which the norms and ethical standards that have long governed the personal financial interests of the President have been breached in only a short time. The Trump Organization has not gone out of its way to assuage concerns about overt profiteering: Trump’s Palm Beach golf club is moving ahead with plans to double its membership prices; the President is using his Mar-a-Lago golf club as a venue for hosting foreign leaders; the head of Trump Hotels has discussed plans for a massive domestic expansion; and the company continues to own the Trump hotel in Washington, which is located in the Old Post Office, in violation of a lease prohibiting federally elected officials from benefitting from it financially."
- Turmoil at the National Security Council, From the Top Down (NYT) "Three weeks into the Trump administration, council staff members get up in the morning, read President Trump’s Twitter posts and struggle to make policy to fit them. Most are kept in the dark about what Mr. Trump tells foreign leaders in his phone calls. Some staff members have turned to encrypted communications to talk with their colleagues, after hearing that Mr. Trump’s top advisers are considering an 'insider threat' program that could result in monitoring cellphones and emails for leaks. This account of life inside the council...is based on conversations with more than two dozen current and former council staff members and others throughout the government. There is always a shakedown period for any new National Security Council... But what is happening under the Trump White House is different... A number of staff members who did not want to work for Mr. Trump have returned to their regular agencies, leaving a larger-than-usual hole in the experienced bureaucracy. Many of those who remain, who see themselves as apolitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisanship."
- Americans are more split on the Trump travel ban than you might think (WaPo) "The dynamic is clear...with net support for the ban (support minus opposition) rising along with net job approval for Trump. While only nine polls are included in the analysis, the correlation of 0.91 is nearly as high as it can get (1.0 is the highest)."
- Police Chiefs Say Trump’s Law Enforcement Priorities Are Out of Step (NYT) "Mr. Trump has abruptly shifted the focus from civil rights to law and order, from reducing incarceration to increasing sentences, from goading the police to improve to protecting them from harm. Last week, he swore in a new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who has said that the government has grown 'soft on crime,' and helped block a bipartisan bill to reduce sentences. Mr. Sessions said at his swearing-in that a recent uptick in crime in some major cities is a 'dangerous, permanent trend,' a view that is not supported by federal crime data, which shows crime remains near historical lows."
- Losing Hope in U.S., Migrants Make Icy Crossing to Canada (NYT) "Emerson’s 700 inhabitants have long known 'border hoppers,' often offering them lifts to the nearby Canadian Border Services Agency office. But they have never seen them coming in these numbers. Noting a worrying trend, Emerson officials convened an emergency meeting on Thursday with the police and border agents to figure out a protocol for the next wave of arrivals — which they feared would be soon. While an agreement between Canada and the United States makes it impossible for them to simply present themselves at the border and claim asylum, those who make it into the country and then present themselves to border guards can do so."
- Top Wall Street Journal Editor Defends Trump Coverage (NYT) "During the meeting, which lasted more than an hour and a half, Mr. Baker addressed the unease among some in the newsroom who feared that the paper was holding them back from aggressively covering Mr. Trump — and that he might be playing a role in shaping more favorable coverage"
- Trump reviews top White House staff after tumultuous start (Politico)
- Data shows a downward demographic spiral for Republicans (TechCrunch)
- With billions at stake, a federal judge just nullified the GOP's most cynical attack on Obamacare (LA Times)
TECHNOLOGY:
- Tony Stark Has Jarvis. And Now IBM Has Havyn (Wired) "Think of Havyn, instead, as a highly specific analog to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. Instead of connecting users to Spotify or online shopping carts, it helps fight cyberthreats."
- Amazon’s Living Lab: Reimagining Retail on Seattle Streets (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- How to Get Ketchup From a Bottle Without the Wait, Watery Goo and Splatter (NYT) "Shake the bottle (with the cap on). Turn the bottle upside down. Remove the cap, tilt and pour."
- What Makes a Woman a Good Dancer? Watch the Hips, a Study Says (NYT) "A few features stood out as contributing to higher-quality dance: big hip swings, and the right and left limbs moving independently of one another (which the researchers describe as asymmetric arm and thigh movements)."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Monday, February 13, 2017
POLITICS OF RESISTANCE
TOP OF THE NEWS:
- Is the Anti-Trump 'Resistance' the New Tea Party? (Atlantic) "The parallels are striking: a massive grassroots movement, many of its members new to activism, that feeds primarily off fear and reaction. Misunderstood by the media and both parties, it wreaks havoc on its ostensible allies, even as it reenergizes their moribund political prospects; they can ride the wave, but they cannot control it, and they are often at the mercy of its most unreasonable fringe. It’s too soon to tell if the current resistance movement will follow the Tea Party’s pattern. But there are already many parallels. It has arisen spontaneously and en masse. Second, Trump’s election appears to have galvanized a lot of people who weren't previously Democratic activists or politically minded at all. Third, while Trump’s Cabinet, executive actions, and Supreme Court nominee are sharply and traditionally right-wing, he has an agenda his team believes is truly cross-partisan. But the movement is already urging Democrats to massively resist, and they are listening."
- How a Fractious Women’s Movement Came to Lead the Left (NYT) "That it happened on the day after his inauguration was not surprising. What was striking was that all these people had come together under the auspices of a march for women. In this moment, it happened that 'women' was the one tent large enough to contain almost every major strain of protest against Trump. Clinton’s loss on Nov. 8 was a pivotal, identity-shifting moment in the course of the American women’s movement. In an evening, the would-be first female president was shoved to the side by what a sizable chunk of the nation saw as that classic historical figure: the male chauvinist pig. In parts of the popular imagination, it wasn’t just a loss for Clinton or for the Democratic Party. It was a repudiation of feminism itself. When Clinton lost, pop feminism suffered a crisis. Ninety-four percent of black women voted for Clinton, but 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, perhaps more likely to see themselves in his vision of the world than in the pop feminism that fed Clinton’s campaign. There has never been one women’s movement. But for the moment, at least, Trump appears to be the great uniter. In the days and weeks since the march, its energy spilled into spontaneous actions across the country..."
- A blueprint for resistance to Trump has emerged. Here’s what it looks like. (WaPo) "1) Have (guarded) faith in our system. 2) Keep pressuring Republicans to exercise real oversight on Trump. 3) Fight hard in the Senate with all available procedural weapons. 4) Keep looking to civil society and try to fortify it where possible. 5) Keep Trump distracted and off balance, to minimize the damage he can do."
- Swarming crowds and hostile questions are the new normal at GOP town halls (WaPo) "Angry constituents swarmed events held by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). They filled the rooms that had been reserved for them; in Utah and Tennessee, scores of activists were locked out. What was less clear was where it would all go. If nothing else, the size and tone of the crowds fed Republicans’ worries and Democrats’ view that the GOP agenda, coupled with the president’s tone and missteps, have activated voters who may have sat out previous elections."
- A gift and a challenge for Democrats: A restive, active and aggressive base (WaPo) "Less clear is how Democrats will convert political action into electoral results. Much has been said about the failures of 2016 — chief among them the flawed belief that bashing Trump was enough, and the absence of a coherent economic message. Yet even now, at every level of national Democratic politics, the discussion of how the party can win back voters it lost is subsumed by the argument about how to oppose Trump. The answer is always: As much as possible."
- D.N.C. Contenders Agree on One Thing: Resistance to Trump (NYT)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Trump’s Economic Cabinet Is Mostly Bare. This Man Fills the Void (NYT) "People with knowledge of his new role said that Mr. Cohn, a Democrat, is summoned to the Oval Office for impromptu meetings with the president up to five times a day — and that he reaches out to the president on other occasions. Mr. Trump, said one of these people, is oriented toward the bottom line when it comes to shaping policy, often asking Mr. Cohn, 'What do you want to do?' Topping Mr. Cohn’s current to-do list: corporate and individual tax reforms, to be carried out at the same time; improvements to infrastructure to create new jobs; and regulatory relief in general. Mr. Cohn collaborates frequently with Mr. Kushner, who is now a senior adviser to Mr. Trump. Along with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, Mr. Cohn recently helped persuade the president not to pursue an executive order that would have rolled back rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- A group of prominent Republicans has an excellent plan to fight climate change (WaPo) "Instead of indulging in the fiction that carbon emissions will take care of themselves with minimal government intervention, these veteran Republican hands endorsed what economists insist is the best approach to dealing with the sprawling carbon emissions issue: a carbon tax. The council’s plan would initially peg the tax at $40 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions — which, the group’s experts say, equates to about 36 cents per gallon of gasoline — and set it to rise at a steady rate year after year. The total picture, then, is a policy that would defuse the climate issue for Republicans, without growing government revenue, while rolling back energy regulations and sending Americans a regular check in the mail. The council reckons that those checks would make the vast majority of Americans, and particularly those with lower incomes, whole or better, after subtracting out what they paid in carbon taxes. These dyed-in-the-wool Republicans have proposed an elegant climate policy that addresses an issue of widespread concern and poses no threat to conservative ideology. The rest of their party should listen."
IN (OR OUT) LIKE FLYNN...?
- National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say (WaPo) "Pence also made a more sweeping assertion, saying there had been no contact between members of Trump’s team and Russia during the campaign. To suggest otherwise, he said, 'is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.' Neither of those assertions is consistent with the fuller account of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak provided by officials who had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. All of those officials said Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit. Two of those officials went further, saying that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama, making clear that the two sides would be in position to review the matter after Trump was sworn in as president. Official concern about Flynn’s interactions with Kislyak was heightened when Putin declared on Dec. 30 that Moscow would not retaliate after the Obama administration announced a day earlier the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies and the forced closure of Russian-owned compounds in Maryland and New York. Putin’s reaction cut against a long practice of reciprocation on diplomatic expulsions, and came after his foreign minister had vowed that there would be reprisals against the United States."
- Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office (NYT) "Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the conversation involved sanctions."
- Flynn holds call with Pence amid calls for probes of contacts with Russian ambassador (WaPo) "National security adviser Michael Flynn spoke privately with Vice President Pence on Friday in an apparent attempt to contain the fallout from the disclosure that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with that country’s ambassador and then allowed Pence and other White House officials to publicly deny that he had done so, an administration official said."
- Just how much trouble is Michael Flynn in? (WaPo) "This story isn't going away, however. And it's hard to see how Flynn or Trump will be able to simply dismiss it as 'fake news' produced by a biased media given the depth and breadth of the sourcing on the Post story. ...things look to be getting worse, not better, for Flynn."
- America’s So-Called National Security Adviser (NYT) "Now we have learned that in the weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Flynn discussed American sanctions on Russia, and areas of possible cooperation, with Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. They spoke a day before President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for hacking the Democrats’ computers, probably in an effort to sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. Mr. Flynn’s underhanded, possibly illegal message was that the Obama administration was Russia’s adversary, and that would change under Mr. Trump and that any sanctions could be undone. The result seems to be that Russia decided not to retaliate with its own sanctions. By consorting with the Kremlin after it interfered in the election, Mr. Flynn may have violated the Logan Act, which prohibits citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government. The episode has also showed that Mr. Flynn has utter disregard for the truth. On Wednesday, he twice told The Post 'no' when asked if he discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. But the next day, a spokesman said Mr. Flynn 'couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.'"
- Does the White House stand by Michael Flynn? ‘That’s a question for the president’ (WaPo) "'Once again, I am calling on the FBI to investigate the financial, political and personal ties between President Donald Trump and Russia. The American people deserve the truth,' she said in a statement. 'President Trump’s kowtowing to Vladimir Putin is endangering our national security and emboldening a dangerous tyrant. What do the Russians have on President Trump that he would flirt with lifting sanctions and weakening NATO?' On ABC, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) agreed that suspending Flynn’s clearance be 'an appropriate action.' Cummings added that any investigation of Flynn would have to also account for whether Trump authorized his top security adviser to discuss sanctions with Russian officials."
- Michael Flynn’s truly horrible week in Washington (WaPo) "The truth always comes out. That reporting, which emanated from nine intelligence sources, ran directly counter to Flynn's assertion that sanctions had never come up during his various in-person, text and phone conversations with Kislyak during the presidential transition in December. Michael Flynn, for forgetting the coverup is always worse, you had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats, or something."
NEWS:
- Trump vexed by challenges, scale of government (Politico) "In interviews, nearly two dozen people who’ve spent time with Trump in the three weeks since his inauguration said that his mood has careened between surprise and anger as he’s faced the predictable realities of governing, from congressional delays over his cabinet nominations and legal fights holding up his aggressive initiatives to staff in-fighting and leaks. Yet it has become apparent, say those close to the president...that the transition from overseeing a family business to running the country has been tough on him. Trump often asks simple questions about policies, proposals and personnel. And, when discussions get bogged down in details, the president has been known to quickly change the subject — to 'seem in control at all times,' one senior government official said — or direct questions about details to his chief strategist Steve Bannon, his son-in-law Jared Kushner or House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump has privately expressed disbelief over the ability of judges, bureaucrats or lawmakers to delay — or even stop — him from filling positions and implementing policies. The interviews paint a picture of a powder-keg of a workplace where job duties are unclear, morale among some is low, factionalism is rampant and exhaustion is running high. In Washington circles, talk has turned to whether a staff shake-up is in the works. Those closest to the president are unnerved by that prospect, which they say would be a tacit acknowledgment that their team is struggling."
- Trump friend says Priebus is ‘in way over his head’ (WaPo) "'I think there’s a lot of weakness coming out of the chief of staff,' Ruddy told anchor Brian Stelter in a live interview from Miami. 'I think Reince Priebus [is a] good guy, well-intentioned, but he clearly doesn’t know how the federal agencies work. He doesn’t have a really good system. He doesn’t know how the communications flow.' Ruddy — who is chief executive of Newsmax Media and a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. — spoke to The Post shortly after appearing on CNN, where he threw Priebus under the proverbial bus."
- U.S. investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier (CNN) "None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given U.S. intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say. Until now, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have said they could not verify any parts of the dossier." and White House goes authoritarian on CNN scoop about Russia dossier (WaPo) "So what did White House press secretary Sean Spicer say? 'We continue to be disgusted by CNN’s fake news reporting.'"
- Stephen Miller Is a ‘True Believer’ Behind Core Trump Policies (NYT) "The ascent of Mr. Miller from far-right gadfly with little policy experience to the president’s senior policy adviser came as a shock to many of the staff members who knew him from his seven years in the Senate. A man whose emails were, until recently, considered spam by many of his Republican peers is now shaping the Trump administration’s core domestic policies with his economic nationalism and hard-line positions on immigration." and Stephen Miller: A key engineer for Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda (WaPo) "He produced a canon of searing columns on race, gender and other hot-button issues and, at Duke, became known to Fox News viewers as a leading defender of the white lacrosse players wrongfully accused of raping a black stripper. By his late 20s, Miller was a key aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), helping to torpedo a long-sought goal of immigrant advocacy groups to put millions of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants on a path to citizenship."
- Trump Foreign Policy Quickly Loses Its Sharp Edge (NYT) "On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump fell back into line. In a call with President Xi Jinping of China, he pledged fealty to One China, a 44-year-old policy under which the United States recognized a single Chinese government in Beijing and severed its diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Mr. Trump has also tacked to the center on Israel. And on Iran, where Mr. Trump threatened as a candidate to rip up the nuclear deal struck by President Barack Obama, advisers to the new president told the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Federica Mogherini, that the United States would fully carry out the agreement. As Mr. Trump begins to shape his foreign policy, he is proving to be less of a radical than either his campaign statements or his tempestuous early phone calls with foreign leaders would suggest."
- Andrew Sullivan: The Madness of King Donald (NY Mag) "Trump’s lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality — and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission. I think this is a fundamental reason why so many of us have been so unsettled, anxious, and near panic these past few months. It is not so much this president’s agenda. That always changes from administration to administration. It is that when the lynchpin of an entire country is literally delusional, clinically deceptive, and responds to any attempt to correct the record with rage and vengeance, everyone is always on edge."
- The Media’s Risky Love Affair With Leaks (NYT) "Leaks are most often an outsider’s tool, and they look different from a vantage of power. As a candidate, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks frequently and approvingly at rallies, in interviews and in two out of three presidential debates. Now that Trump is president, his public flirtation with leaks has given way to his deeper and longer-held instincts for secrecy — his early presidency, like his campaign, has used sweeping nondisclosure agreements to an unusual degree. The media’s relationship to leaks is, likewise, under construction. The dangers presented by leaks are clearly not lost on the Trump administration, but neither are the opportunities." and Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll (The Hill)
- Congressman: Rarely used law could make Trump tax returns public (USA Today) "The 1924 law gives congressional committees that set tax policy the power to examine tax returns. It was used in 1974 when Congress looked at President Richard Nixon's returns, and in 2014 when the Ways and Means Committee released confidential tax information as part of its investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of applications for nonprofit status. 'If I get a ‘no’ answer on this, I’ll be very honest with you: If these guys think I’m walking away from this, they’re absolutely nuts,' Pascrell said. 'The calls we’re getting, the calls other congressmen are getting, it’s unbelievable, we never expected this.'"
- Backing Into World War III (Foreign Policy) "History shows that world orders do collapse, however, and when they do it is often unexpected, rapid, and violent. Are we three years away from a global crisis, or 15? That we are somewhere on that path, however, is unmistakable. The American-led system of political and military alliances, especially in the two critical regions of Europe and East Asia, has presented China and Russia with what Dean Acheson once referred to as 'situations of strength' that have required them to pursue their ambitions cautiously and, since the end of the Cold War, to defer serious efforts to disrupt the international system. The greatest check on Chinese and Russian ambitions has been the military and economic power of the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia. When united, these U.S.-led alliances present a daunting challenge to a revisionist power that can call on few allies of its own for assistance. So long as the United States was perceived as a dependable ally, Chinese and Russian leaders feared that aggressive moves would backfire and possibly bring their regimes down. The United States stepped up, and Russia and China largely backed down — or were preempted before acting at all. Now, the question is whether the United States is willing to continue upholding the order that it created and which depends entirely on American power or whether Americans are prepared to take the risk — if they even understand the risk — of letting the order collapse into chaos and conflict. The weakness at the core of the democratic world and the shedding by the United States of global responsibilities have already encouraged a more aggressive revisionism by the dissatisfied powers. It remains true today as it has since World War II that only the United States has the capacity and the unique geographical advantages to provide global security and relative stability. There is no stable balance of power in Europe or Asia without the United States."
- Bernie Sanders calls Trump a ‘pathological liar'; Al Franken says ‘a few’ Republicans think Trump is mentally ill (WaPo)
- The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins (Observer)
TECHNOLOGY:
- The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class (Wired) "But the researchers at Asilomar were also concerned with more immediate matters: the effect of AI on the economy. At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs in the years to come, as well. The problem isn’t immigration—far from it. The problem isn’t offshoring or taxes or regulation. It’s technology. ...newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle class job creation since the 1980s. Now, most new jobs are either at the very low end of the pay scale or the very high end. He also argued that these trends are reversible, that improved education and a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship and research can help feed new engines of growth, that economies have overcome the rise of new technologies before."
- How Silicon Valley Can Take Down Trump (Vanity Fair) "On the morning of January 18, 2012, millions of Americans started their day just like any other... But when they checked their e-mail, scrolled through the news, or searched for a new bicycle on Craigslist, the Web was largely covered in black. Google had placed a black rectangle over its polychromatic logo; Wikipedia’s Web site was turned black; and Craigslist was shuttered. This was all a response to two proposed congressional laws—the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA—which would have had devastating effects on the way we all use the Web. This was the first time that tech companies had used their considerable tools and influence to retaliate against the government in such a broad manner. And boy, did it work. This moment, four years ago, provided a powerful and collective epiphany for Silicon Valley. Technology companies were largely astounded by their ability to wield power over lawmakers. Yet since that day in 2012, there has not been any similar outcry..."
- How Canada is trying to capitalize on Trump’s immigration executive order (WaPo) "Tech companies that keep satellite offices in Vancouver, just a two-hour flight from San Francisco, are exploring whether to move more jobs over the border. Immigration lawyers are reporting a steep uptick in inquiries. And a start-up is offering to smooth the way, for $6,000 a person, for foreign-born tech workers worried their U.S. visas may disappear."
- How Google Chromebooks conquered schools (WaPo) "Chromebooks use a lightweight operating system designed to get people online faster, without having to wait around for the computer to start up. They’re easier for classrooms to share; just sign in with a Google account, and a student’s apps and documents instantly appear. Teachers also have online tools to lock down what apps and sites students can use."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Is the Anti-Trump 'Resistance' the New Tea Party? (Atlantic) "The parallels are striking: a massive grassroots movement, many of its members new to activism, that feeds primarily off fear and reaction. Misunderstood by the media and both parties, it wreaks havoc on its ostensible allies, even as it reenergizes their moribund political prospects; they can ride the wave, but they cannot control it, and they are often at the mercy of its most unreasonable fringe. It’s too soon to tell if the current resistance movement will follow the Tea Party’s pattern. But there are already many parallels. It has arisen spontaneously and en masse. Second, Trump’s election appears to have galvanized a lot of people who weren't previously Democratic activists or politically minded at all. Third, while Trump’s Cabinet, executive actions, and Supreme Court nominee are sharply and traditionally right-wing, he has an agenda his team believes is truly cross-partisan. But the movement is already urging Democrats to massively resist, and they are listening."
- How a Fractious Women’s Movement Came to Lead the Left (NYT) "That it happened on the day after his inauguration was not surprising. What was striking was that all these people had come together under the auspices of a march for women. In this moment, it happened that 'women' was the one tent large enough to contain almost every major strain of protest against Trump. Clinton’s loss on Nov. 8 was a pivotal, identity-shifting moment in the course of the American women’s movement. In an evening, the would-be first female president was shoved to the side by what a sizable chunk of the nation saw as that classic historical figure: the male chauvinist pig. In parts of the popular imagination, it wasn’t just a loss for Clinton or for the Democratic Party. It was a repudiation of feminism itself. When Clinton lost, pop feminism suffered a crisis. Ninety-four percent of black women voted for Clinton, but 53 percent of white women voted for Trump, perhaps more likely to see themselves in his vision of the world than in the pop feminism that fed Clinton’s campaign. There has never been one women’s movement. But for the moment, at least, Trump appears to be the great uniter. In the days and weeks since the march, its energy spilled into spontaneous actions across the country..."
- A blueprint for resistance to Trump has emerged. Here’s what it looks like. (WaPo) "1) Have (guarded) faith in our system. 2) Keep pressuring Republicans to exercise real oversight on Trump. 3) Fight hard in the Senate with all available procedural weapons. 4) Keep looking to civil society and try to fortify it where possible. 5) Keep Trump distracted and off balance, to minimize the damage he can do."
- Swarming crowds and hostile questions are the new normal at GOP town halls (WaPo) "Angry constituents swarmed events held by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). They filled the rooms that had been reserved for them; in Utah and Tennessee, scores of activists were locked out. What was less clear was where it would all go. If nothing else, the size and tone of the crowds fed Republicans’ worries and Democrats’ view that the GOP agenda, coupled with the president’s tone and missteps, have activated voters who may have sat out previous elections."
- A gift and a challenge for Democrats: A restive, active and aggressive base (WaPo) "Less clear is how Democrats will convert political action into electoral results. Much has been said about the failures of 2016 — chief among them the flawed belief that bashing Trump was enough, and the absence of a coherent economic message. Yet even now, at every level of national Democratic politics, the discussion of how the party can win back voters it lost is subsumed by the argument about how to oppose Trump. The answer is always: As much as possible."
- D.N.C. Contenders Agree on One Thing: Resistance to Trump (NYT)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY:
- Trump’s Economic Cabinet Is Mostly Bare. This Man Fills the Void (NYT) "People with knowledge of his new role said that Mr. Cohn, a Democrat, is summoned to the Oval Office for impromptu meetings with the president up to five times a day — and that he reaches out to the president on other occasions. Mr. Trump, said one of these people, is oriented toward the bottom line when it comes to shaping policy, often asking Mr. Cohn, 'What do you want to do?' Topping Mr. Cohn’s current to-do list: corporate and individual tax reforms, to be carried out at the same time; improvements to infrastructure to create new jobs; and regulatory relief in general. Mr. Cohn collaborates frequently with Mr. Kushner, who is now a senior adviser to Mr. Trump. Along with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, Mr. Cohn recently helped persuade the president not to pursue an executive order that would have rolled back rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."
CLIMATE CHANGE:
- A group of prominent Republicans has an excellent plan to fight climate change (WaPo) "Instead of indulging in the fiction that carbon emissions will take care of themselves with minimal government intervention, these veteran Republican hands endorsed what economists insist is the best approach to dealing with the sprawling carbon emissions issue: a carbon tax. The council’s plan would initially peg the tax at $40 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions — which, the group’s experts say, equates to about 36 cents per gallon of gasoline — and set it to rise at a steady rate year after year. The total picture, then, is a policy that would defuse the climate issue for Republicans, without growing government revenue, while rolling back energy regulations and sending Americans a regular check in the mail. The council reckons that those checks would make the vast majority of Americans, and particularly those with lower incomes, whole or better, after subtracting out what they paid in carbon taxes. These dyed-in-the-wool Republicans have proposed an elegant climate policy that addresses an issue of widespread concern and poses no threat to conservative ideology. The rest of their party should listen."
IN (OR OUT) LIKE FLYNN...?
- National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say (WaPo) "Pence also made a more sweeping assertion, saying there had been no contact between members of Trump’s team and Russia during the campaign. To suggest otherwise, he said, 'is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.' Neither of those assertions is consistent with the fuller account of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak provided by officials who had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. All of those officials said Flynn’s references to the election-related sanctions were explicit. Two of those officials went further, saying that Flynn urged Russia not to overreact to the penalties being imposed by President Barack Obama, making clear that the two sides would be in position to review the matter after Trump was sworn in as president. Official concern about Flynn’s interactions with Kislyak was heightened when Putin declared on Dec. 30 that Moscow would not retaliate after the Obama administration announced a day earlier the expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies and the forced closure of Russian-owned compounds in Maryland and New York. Putin’s reaction cut against a long practice of reciprocation on diplomatic expulsions, and came after his foreign minister had vowed that there would be reprisals against the United States."
- Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office (NYT) "Federal officials who have read the transcript of the call were surprised by Mr. Flynn’s comments, since he would have known that American eavesdroppers closely monitor such calls. They were even more surprised that Mr. Trump’s team publicly denied that the conversation involved sanctions."
- Flynn holds call with Pence amid calls for probes of contacts with Russian ambassador (WaPo) "National security adviser Michael Flynn spoke privately with Vice President Pence on Friday in an apparent attempt to contain the fallout from the disclosure that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with that country’s ambassador and then allowed Pence and other White House officials to publicly deny that he had done so, an administration official said."
- Just how much trouble is Michael Flynn in? (WaPo) "This story isn't going away, however. And it's hard to see how Flynn or Trump will be able to simply dismiss it as 'fake news' produced by a biased media given the depth and breadth of the sourcing on the Post story. ...things look to be getting worse, not better, for Flynn."
- America’s So-Called National Security Adviser (NYT) "Now we have learned that in the weeks before the inauguration, Mr. Flynn discussed American sanctions on Russia, and areas of possible cooperation, with Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. They spoke a day before President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for hacking the Democrats’ computers, probably in an effort to sway the election in Mr. Trump’s favor. Mr. Flynn’s underhanded, possibly illegal message was that the Obama administration was Russia’s adversary, and that would change under Mr. Trump and that any sanctions could be undone. The result seems to be that Russia decided not to retaliate with its own sanctions. By consorting with the Kremlin after it interfered in the election, Mr. Flynn may have violated the Logan Act, which prohibits citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in disputes involving the American government. The episode has also showed that Mr. Flynn has utter disregard for the truth. On Wednesday, he twice told The Post 'no' when asked if he discussed sanctions with Mr. Kislyak. But the next day, a spokesman said Mr. Flynn 'couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.'"
- Does the White House stand by Michael Flynn? ‘That’s a question for the president’ (WaPo) "'Once again, I am calling on the FBI to investigate the financial, political and personal ties between President Donald Trump and Russia. The American people deserve the truth,' she said in a statement. 'President Trump’s kowtowing to Vladimir Putin is endangering our national security and emboldening a dangerous tyrant. What do the Russians have on President Trump that he would flirt with lifting sanctions and weakening NATO?' On ABC, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) agreed that suspending Flynn’s clearance be 'an appropriate action.' Cummings added that any investigation of Flynn would have to also account for whether Trump authorized his top security adviser to discuss sanctions with Russian officials."
- Michael Flynn’s truly horrible week in Washington (WaPo) "The truth always comes out. That reporting, which emanated from nine intelligence sources, ran directly counter to Flynn's assertion that sanctions had never come up during his various in-person, text and phone conversations with Kislyak during the presidential transition in December. Michael Flynn, for forgetting the coverup is always worse, you had the Worst Week in Washington. Congrats, or something."
NEWS:
- Trump vexed by challenges, scale of government (Politico) "In interviews, nearly two dozen people who’ve spent time with Trump in the three weeks since his inauguration said that his mood has careened between surprise and anger as he’s faced the predictable realities of governing, from congressional delays over his cabinet nominations and legal fights holding up his aggressive initiatives to staff in-fighting and leaks. Yet it has become apparent, say those close to the president...that the transition from overseeing a family business to running the country has been tough on him. Trump often asks simple questions about policies, proposals and personnel. And, when discussions get bogged down in details, the president has been known to quickly change the subject — to 'seem in control at all times,' one senior government official said — or direct questions about details to his chief strategist Steve Bannon, his son-in-law Jared Kushner or House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump has privately expressed disbelief over the ability of judges, bureaucrats or lawmakers to delay — or even stop — him from filling positions and implementing policies. The interviews paint a picture of a powder-keg of a workplace where job duties are unclear, morale among some is low, factionalism is rampant and exhaustion is running high. In Washington circles, talk has turned to whether a staff shake-up is in the works. Those closest to the president are unnerved by that prospect, which they say would be a tacit acknowledgment that their team is struggling."
- Trump friend says Priebus is ‘in way over his head’ (WaPo) "'I think there’s a lot of weakness coming out of the chief of staff,' Ruddy told anchor Brian Stelter in a live interview from Miami. 'I think Reince Priebus [is a] good guy, well-intentioned, but he clearly doesn’t know how the federal agencies work. He doesn’t have a really good system. He doesn’t know how the communications flow.' Ruddy — who is chief executive of Newsmax Media and a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. — spoke to The Post shortly after appearing on CNN, where he threw Priebus under the proverbial bus."
- U.S. investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier (CNN) "None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given U.S. intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say. Until now, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have said they could not verify any parts of the dossier." and White House goes authoritarian on CNN scoop about Russia dossier (WaPo) "So what did White House press secretary Sean Spicer say? 'We continue to be disgusted by CNN’s fake news reporting.'"
- Stephen Miller Is a ‘True Believer’ Behind Core Trump Policies (NYT) "The ascent of Mr. Miller from far-right gadfly with little policy experience to the president’s senior policy adviser came as a shock to many of the staff members who knew him from his seven years in the Senate. A man whose emails were, until recently, considered spam by many of his Republican peers is now shaping the Trump administration’s core domestic policies with his economic nationalism and hard-line positions on immigration." and Stephen Miller: A key engineer for Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda (WaPo) "He produced a canon of searing columns on race, gender and other hot-button issues and, at Duke, became known to Fox News viewers as a leading defender of the white lacrosse players wrongfully accused of raping a black stripper. By his late 20s, Miller was a key aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), helping to torpedo a long-sought goal of immigrant advocacy groups to put millions of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants on a path to citizenship."
- Trump Foreign Policy Quickly Loses Its Sharp Edge (NYT) "On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump fell back into line. In a call with President Xi Jinping of China, he pledged fealty to One China, a 44-year-old policy under which the United States recognized a single Chinese government in Beijing and severed its diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Mr. Trump has also tacked to the center on Israel. And on Iran, where Mr. Trump threatened as a candidate to rip up the nuclear deal struck by President Barack Obama, advisers to the new president told the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Federica Mogherini, that the United States would fully carry out the agreement. As Mr. Trump begins to shape his foreign policy, he is proving to be less of a radical than either his campaign statements or his tempestuous early phone calls with foreign leaders would suggest."
- Andrew Sullivan: The Madness of King Donald (NY Mag) "Trump’s lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality — and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission. I think this is a fundamental reason why so many of us have been so unsettled, anxious, and near panic these past few months. It is not so much this president’s agenda. That always changes from administration to administration. It is that when the lynchpin of an entire country is literally delusional, clinically deceptive, and responds to any attempt to correct the record with rage and vengeance, everyone is always on edge."
- The Media’s Risky Love Affair With Leaks (NYT) "Leaks are most often an outsider’s tool, and they look different from a vantage of power. As a candidate, Trump mentioned WikiLeaks frequently and approvingly at rallies, in interviews and in two out of three presidential debates. Now that Trump is president, his public flirtation with leaks has given way to his deeper and longer-held instincts for secrecy — his early presidency, like his campaign, has used sweeping nondisclosure agreements to an unusual degree. The media’s relationship to leaks is, likewise, under construction. The dangers presented by leaks are clearly not lost on the Trump administration, but neither are the opportunities." and Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media: poll (The Hill)
- Congressman: Rarely used law could make Trump tax returns public (USA Today) "The 1924 law gives congressional committees that set tax policy the power to examine tax returns. It was used in 1974 when Congress looked at President Richard Nixon's returns, and in 2014 when the Ways and Means Committee released confidential tax information as part of its investigation into the Internal Revenue Service's handling of applications for nonprofit status. 'If I get a ‘no’ answer on this, I’ll be very honest with you: If these guys think I’m walking away from this, they’re absolutely nuts,' Pascrell said. 'The calls we’re getting, the calls other congressmen are getting, it’s unbelievable, we never expected this.'"
- Backing Into World War III (Foreign Policy) "History shows that world orders do collapse, however, and when they do it is often unexpected, rapid, and violent. Are we three years away from a global crisis, or 15? That we are somewhere on that path, however, is unmistakable. The American-led system of political and military alliances, especially in the two critical regions of Europe and East Asia, has presented China and Russia with what Dean Acheson once referred to as 'situations of strength' that have required them to pursue their ambitions cautiously and, since the end of the Cold War, to defer serious efforts to disrupt the international system. The greatest check on Chinese and Russian ambitions has been the military and economic power of the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia. When united, these U.S.-led alliances present a daunting challenge to a revisionist power that can call on few allies of its own for assistance. So long as the United States was perceived as a dependable ally, Chinese and Russian leaders feared that aggressive moves would backfire and possibly bring their regimes down. The United States stepped up, and Russia and China largely backed down — or were preempted before acting at all. Now, the question is whether the United States is willing to continue upholding the order that it created and which depends entirely on American power or whether Americans are prepared to take the risk — if they even understand the risk — of letting the order collapse into chaos and conflict. The weakness at the core of the democratic world and the shedding by the United States of global responsibilities have already encouraged a more aggressive revisionism by the dissatisfied powers. It remains true today as it has since World War II that only the United States has the capacity and the unique geographical advantages to provide global security and relative stability. There is no stable balance of power in Europe or Asia without the United States."
- Bernie Sanders calls Trump a ‘pathological liar'; Al Franken says ‘a few’ Republicans think Trump is mentally ill (WaPo)
- The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins (Observer)
TECHNOLOGY:
- The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class (Wired) "But the researchers at Asilomar were also concerned with more immediate matters: the effect of AI on the economy. At a time when the Trump administration is promising to make America great again by restoring old-school manufacturing jobs, AI researchers aren’t taking him too seriously. They know that these jobs are never coming back, thanks in no small part to their own research, which will eliminate so many other kinds of jobs in the years to come, as well. The problem isn’t immigration—far from it. The problem isn’t offshoring or taxes or regulation. It’s technology. ...newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle class job creation since the 1980s. Now, most new jobs are either at the very low end of the pay scale or the very high end. He also argued that these trends are reversible, that improved education and a greater emphasis on entrepreneurship and research can help feed new engines of growth, that economies have overcome the rise of new technologies before."
- How Silicon Valley Can Take Down Trump (Vanity Fair) "On the morning of January 18, 2012, millions of Americans started their day just like any other... But when they checked their e-mail, scrolled through the news, or searched for a new bicycle on Craigslist, the Web was largely covered in black. Google had placed a black rectangle over its polychromatic logo; Wikipedia’s Web site was turned black; and Craigslist was shuttered. This was all a response to two proposed congressional laws—the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA—which would have had devastating effects on the way we all use the Web. This was the first time that tech companies had used their considerable tools and influence to retaliate against the government in such a broad manner. And boy, did it work. This moment, four years ago, provided a powerful and collective epiphany for Silicon Valley. Technology companies were largely astounded by their ability to wield power over lawmakers. Yet since that day in 2012, there has not been any similar outcry..."
- How Canada is trying to capitalize on Trump’s immigration executive order (WaPo) "Tech companies that keep satellite offices in Vancouver, just a two-hour flight from San Francisco, are exploring whether to move more jobs over the border. Immigration lawyers are reporting a steep uptick in inquiries. And a start-up is offering to smooth the way, for $6,000 a person, for foreign-born tech workers worried their U.S. visas may disappear."
- How Google Chromebooks conquered schools (WaPo) "Chromebooks use a lightweight operating system designed to get people online faster, without having to wait around for the computer to start up. They’re easier for classrooms to share; just sign in with a Google account, and a student’s apps and documents instantly appear. Teachers also have online tools to lock down what apps and sites students can use."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- Kellyanne Conway’s Battle for Trump’s Favor (New Yorker) "Bannon and Priebus represent well-defined camps in the White House, but Conway has attempted to straddle the divide. 'Kellyanne is more of a floater,' one Republican close to the White House said. 'She’s more for the party of Kellyanne, most of the time.' Her ultimate source of power comes from Trump. What he would say in front of the large group was more important than what Spicer said from the podium."
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Sign up for email distribution of the Day's Most Compelling News below or by visiting Top of the News
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)