- 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
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