The absurdity of Trump trying to distance himself from Giuliani’s work on Ukraine

The absurdity of Trump trying to distance himself from Giuliani’s work on Ukraine

Philip Bump writes: President Trump certainly wouldn’t be the first employer to retroactively try to designate a staff member as an independent contractor, but he might be the first to do so to aid his fight against being impeached and removed from the White House. His assertion to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly that his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani was acting independently on Ukraine, perhaps for other clients, has an obvious goal. Giuliani was the point of contact…

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Giuliani privately pursued business in Ukraine while publicly pushing for inquiries for Trump

Giuliani privately pursued business in Ukraine while publicly pushing for inquiries for Trump

The New York Times reports: As Rudolph W. Giuliani waged a public campaign this year to unearth damaging information in Ukraine about President Trump’s political rivals, he privately pursued hundreds of thousands of dollars in business from Ukrainian government officials, documents reviewed by The New York Times show. Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, has repeatedly said he has no business in Ukraine, and none of the deals were finalized. But the documents indicate that while he was pushing Mr….

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‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates

‘There’s something terribly wrong’: Americans are dying young at alarming rates

The Washington Post reports: Death rates from suicide, drug overdoses, liver disease and dozens of other causes have been rising over the past decade for young and middle-aged adults, driving down overall life expectancy in the United States for three consecutive years, according to a strikingly bleak study published Tuesday that looked at the past six decades of mortality data. The report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was immediately hailed by outside researchers for its comprehensive…

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World heading to climate catastrophes, UN report warns

World heading to climate catastrophes, UN report warns

The New York Times reports: Four years after countries struck a landmark deal in Paris to rein in greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to avert the worst effects of global warming, humanity is headed toward those very climate catastrophes, according to a United Nations report issued Tuesday, with China and the United States, the two biggest polluters, having expanded their carbon footprints last year. “The summary findings are bleak,” the report said, because countries have failed to halt the…

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Ruthless quotas at Amazon are maiming employees

Ruthless quotas at Amazon are maiming employees

The Atlantic reports: When Candice Dixon showed up for her first day of work at an Amazon warehouse in Eastvale, California, she stepped into a wonder of automation, efficiency, and speed. Inside the sprawling four-story building in Southern California’s Inland Empire, hundreds of squat orange robots whizzed across the floor, carrying tall yellow racks. As a stower, her job was to stand in a spot on the floor, like hundreds of others in that million-square-foot warehouse, and fill an unending…

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The inside story of Christopher Steele’s Trump dossier

The inside story of Christopher Steele’s Trump dossier

Jane Mayer writes: For nearly three years, President Trump has spun an alternate reality in which he was not helped and tainted by Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign but, rather, his political opponents and his accusers were. During a rambling fifty-three-minute live phone interview with “Fox & Friends” on Friday, Trump insisted again that the plot to block his election and bring him down once he was installed in the White House was “perhaps the biggest scandal in the…

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Inside Iran’s plot to attack Saudi Arabia

Inside Iran’s plot to attack Saudi Arabia

Reuters reports: Four months before a swarm of drones and missiles crippled the world’s biggest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, Iranian security officials gathered at a heavily fortified compound in Tehran. The group included the top echelons of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of the Iranian military whose portfolio includes missile development and covert operations. The main topic that day in May: How to punish the United States for pulling out of a landmark nuclear treaty…

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Chief rabbi’s criticism of Labour strikes a chord among many Jews in UK

Chief rabbi’s criticism of Labour strikes a chord among many Jews in UK

The Guardian reports: Plenty of Jews in the UK would say the chief rabbi does not speak for them. They may be from different traditions in Judaism – progressive or ultra-Orthodox – or they may be secular. But many, probably most, agree with the thrust of his unprecedented intervention in next month’s general election. Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s most senior Jewish leader who represents Orthodox Judaism, accused Jeremy Corbyn of allowing a “poison sanctioned from the top” to take root…

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Thoreau, the scientist

Thoreau, the scientist

Curt Stager writes: Much more has been said and written about Thoreau’s philosopher-poet side than his naturalist side, but as a scientist I am more interested in the latter. The journals that he kept from 1837 to 1861 were so full of natural history observations that they might have become a major scientific work if he had not died of a lung ailment at age 44. He probably thought so, too. Two months before his death in 1862 he wrote…

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What makes a polymath?

What makes a polymath?

David Robson writes: If it weren’t for an actress and a pianist, GPS and WiFi might not exist. In the late 1930s and early 40s, Hedy Lamarr was already the toast of Hollywood, famed for her portrayals of femme fatales. Few of her contemporaries knew that her other great passion was inventing. (She had previously designed more streamlined aeroplanes for a lover, the aviation tycoon Howard Hughes.) Lamarr met a kindred spirit in George Antheil, however – an avant-garde pianist,…

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Why Giuliani singled out two Ukrainian oligarchs to help look for dirt on Biden

Why Giuliani singled out two Ukrainian oligarchs to help look for dirt on Biden

The New York Times reports: They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I. And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President…

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Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe

Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe

The Washington Post reports: The federal investigation into two associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani is exploring a wide range of potential crimes — includingwire fraud and failure to register as a foreign agent — as prosecutors dig into the pair’s interactions with the president’s personal lawyer and the main pro-Trump super PAC, according to people familiar with the investigation. Giuliani’s dealings with the two men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are being investigated by federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s…

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Don McGahn must testify about time as White House lawyer, judge rules

Don McGahn must testify about time as White House lawyer, judge rules

Politico reports: Don McGahn must testify to Congress about his time as the White House’s top lawyer, a federal judge ruled Monday — a decision that will put pressure on other reluctant Trump administration witnesses to testify about President Donald Trump’s actions. In a ruling that could reshape the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled that McGahn, who spent 30 hours talking to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team,…

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In firing Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, Trump recklessly crosses another line

In firing Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, Trump recklessly crosses another line

David Ignatius writes: ​President Trump’s attempt to manipulate military justice had a sorry outcome Sunday with the firing of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer. For the past nine months, Spencer had tried to dissuade Trump from dictating special treatment for Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher — but in the end Spencer was sacked for his efforts to protect his service. ​With Spencer’s firing, Trump has recklessly crossed a line he had generally observed before, which had exempted the military from his…

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