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."

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