- Trump’s Wiretap Allegation Was a Self-Inflicted Wound (National Review) "Maybe during his decades as a star of the New York tabloids, Trump came to believe that he could get out of trouble by making outrageous counter-accusations against his tormentors. But the rules are different when you’re president. The commander in chief cannot publicly accuse anyone, much less his predecessor, of criminal wrongdoing and expect that the accusation won’t be investigated. The White House press secretary cannot suggest that an allied intelligence agency spied on American citizens for political reasons and expect that the rest of the world won’t sit up, take notice, and demand proof."
BUSINESS:
- The days of owning a car could be fading away, thanks to these alternatives (WaPo) "No longer the domain of magazines or newspapers, the subscription model now supports everything from streaming music to clothing shipments. Now, that approach is increasingly coming to the automobile."
HEALTH:
- Yes, Your Sleep Schedule Is Making You Sick (NYT) "The reason we don’t all walk around in a state of perpetual jet lag, waking and sleeping at random, is that our circadian rhythm evolved to be tied to the solar day. In other words, our internal clock is easily influenced and kept in check by the daylight cycle. So now you know the fix for jet lag: Travel east and you’ll need morning light and evening melatonin; go west and you’ll need evening light and morning melatonin."
NEWS:
BUSINESS:
- The days of owning a car could be fading away, thanks to these alternatives (WaPo) "No longer the domain of magazines or newspapers, the subscription model now supports everything from streaming music to clothing shipments. Now, that approach is increasingly coming to the automobile."
HEALTH:
- Yes, Your Sleep Schedule Is Making You Sick (NYT) "The reason we don’t all walk around in a state of perpetual jet lag, waking and sleeping at random, is that our circadian rhythm evolved to be tied to the solar day. In other words, our internal clock is easily influenced and kept in check by the daylight cycle. So now you know the fix for jet lag: Travel east and you’ll need morning light and evening melatonin; go west and you’ll need evening light and morning melatonin."
NEWS:
- In One Rocky Week, Trump’s Self-Inflicted Chaos on Vivid Display (NYT) "But it has also become clear that Mr. Trump, an agitator incapable of responding proportionately to any slight, appears hellbent on squandering his honeymoon. Mr. Trump is not bothered by turf battles in his administration. He believes they foster competition and keep any one aide from accumulating too much power. He is even more enthusiastic about waging war publicly, believing that it fires up his white working-class base. The problem for Mr. Trump...is that the self-destructive behavior, if it continues, threatens to overshadow everything else. 'He has a tremendous number of ingredients at his disposal to be a very successful president,' Mr. [Ari] Fleischer added, 'but he might not even get credit for it if he is so red-hot controversial.'"
- Inside Trump’s White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion (WaPo) "Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues. On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has become closer to chief of staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers. An unexpected political marriage has formed between Bannon and his network of anti-establishment, conservative populists, and Priebus, who represents a wing of more traditional Republican operatives. They are often at odds with the New Yorkers, led by Cohn and Powell, who are close to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, arguably the most powerful White House aide. Still, many people inside and outside the White House frequently note the growing visibility of Cohn and Powell and wonder if they might eventually gain influence over Trump’s message and moderate it from Bannon-style populism, especially if the president’s popularity wanes further."
- ‘People are scared’: Paranoia seizes Trump’s White House (Politico) "Another Republican who is close to the White House said junior-level staffers were simply 'mimicking what they’re seeing at the top … Everyone at the top is so suspicious that it trickles down the org chart, so everyone has become paranoid and suspicious.'"
- The dangerous trajectory of Rex Tillerson’s tenure (WaPo) "It’s still early days, but a few things can be gleaned from Tillerson’s swing through Asia. Unfortunately, they’re not terribly positive. There are already a mess of stories about Tillerson losing the confidence of State Department officials. Not bothering to visit the embassy in Tokyo is just Dumb Diplomacy 101. Then there was Tillerson’s decision to give only one seat to a journalist during his trip..."
- White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump’s eyes and ears (WaPo) "Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration. This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request. These aides report not to the secretary, but to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. The arrangement is unusual. It wasn’t used by Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it’s also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House’s political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency — especially as new department heads build their staffs."
READ THIS:
- A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (Ben Macintyre and John le Carré) "This is a story of intimate duplicity; of loyalty, trust and treachery, class and conscience; of an ideological battle waged by men with cut-glass accents and well-made suits in the comfortable clubs and restaurants of London and Washington; of male friendships forged, and then systematically betrayed. With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen family papers, and with the cooperation of former officers of MI6 and the CIA, this definitive biography unlocks what is perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Meet The Man Whose Site Mark Zuckerberg Reads Every Day (BuzzFeed) "Techmeme may be a niche site compared to the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world, but the tech-news aggregator influences the people who make the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world. Without writing a word himself, Rivera is shaping tech’s story for the legion of reporters and editors tasked to tell it.
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A major New York hospital recommends Hanson, Missy Elliot, and Lynyrd Skynyrd for timing CPR (Quartz) "'Staying Alive' by the BeeGees is a classic example of a song that hits that 100 bpm benchmark (and has obvious connotations to the task at hand). Ditto Gloria Gaynor’s breakup anthem, 'I Will Survive.' Looking for something a little less on the nose? Try Hanson’s mega-hit 'MMMBop.' All of those tracks appear on a 100-bpm playlist released this week by New York Presbyterian Hospital."
SONG OF THE DAY:
- Inside Trump’s White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion (WaPo) "Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues. On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has become closer to chief of staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers. An unexpected political marriage has formed between Bannon and his network of anti-establishment, conservative populists, and Priebus, who represents a wing of more traditional Republican operatives. They are often at odds with the New Yorkers, led by Cohn and Powell, who are close to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, arguably the most powerful White House aide. Still, many people inside and outside the White House frequently note the growing visibility of Cohn and Powell and wonder if they might eventually gain influence over Trump’s message and moderate it from Bannon-style populism, especially if the president’s popularity wanes further."
- ‘People are scared’: Paranoia seizes Trump’s White House (Politico) "Another Republican who is close to the White House said junior-level staffers were simply 'mimicking what they’re seeing at the top … Everyone at the top is so suspicious that it trickles down the org chart, so everyone has become paranoid and suspicious.'"
- The dangerous trajectory of Rex Tillerson’s tenure (WaPo) "It’s still early days, but a few things can be gleaned from Tillerson’s swing through Asia. Unfortunately, they’re not terribly positive. There are already a mess of stories about Tillerson losing the confidence of State Department officials. Not bothering to visit the embassy in Tokyo is just Dumb Diplomacy 101. Then there was Tillerson’s decision to give only one seat to a journalist during his trip..."
- White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump’s eyes and ears (WaPo) "Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration. This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request. These aides report not to the secretary, but to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. The arrangement is unusual. It wasn’t used by Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it’s also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House’s political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency — especially as new department heads build their staffs."
READ THIS:
- A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal (Ben Macintyre and John le Carré) "This is a story of intimate duplicity; of loyalty, trust and treachery, class and conscience; of an ideological battle waged by men with cut-glass accents and well-made suits in the comfortable clubs and restaurants of London and Washington; of male friendships forged, and then systematically betrayed. With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen family papers, and with the cooperation of former officers of MI6 and the CIA, this definitive biography unlocks what is perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War."
TECHNOLOGY:
- Meet The Man Whose Site Mark Zuckerberg Reads Every Day (BuzzFeed) "Techmeme may be a niche site compared to the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world, but the tech-news aggregator influences the people who make the Facebooks and the YouTubes of the world. Without writing a word himself, Rivera is shaping tech’s story for the legion of reporters and editors tasked to tell it.
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- A major New York hospital recommends Hanson, Missy Elliot, and Lynyrd Skynyrd for timing CPR (Quartz) "'Staying Alive' by the BeeGees is a classic example of a song that hits that 100 bpm benchmark (and has obvious connotations to the task at hand). Ditto Gloria Gaynor’s breakup anthem, 'I Will Survive.' Looking for something a little less on the nose? Try Hanson’s mega-hit 'MMMBop.' All of those tracks appear on a 100-bpm playlist released this week by New York Presbyterian Hospital."
SONG OF THE DAY:
- Beautiful Day (U2)
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