“Conversations are happening that people would want to be happening.”

This is a preview of our pop culture newsletter The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, written by senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox each week, sign up for it here. 

This week: 

Adele shocked the world when she posted a photo on her birthday thanking fans for their nice messages and also taking the opportunity to honor front-line workers. In the photo, she had lost a significant amount of weight, and looked great. As if it was going to be left at that.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

On Thursday, the Professional Beauty Federation of California published a press release to the “Hot Topics” section of their website. It was titled: “Time to Sue Governor Newsom.” 

The release came in response to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement that the following morning, California would officially enter “Phase Two” of the “Safer at Home” order. Select businesses, from florists to clothing retailers to toy stores, would be able to resume operations in a limited capacity. But absent from the list of acceptable businesses: beauty salons. Newsom placed businesses like nail salons and barbershops in “Phase Three”—a stage he believes to be “months, not weeks” away. 

“This whole thing spread in the state of California—the first community spread—was in a nail salon,” Newsom said in a press conference last week, without providing details about the date or location of the case. “Many of the practices that you would otherwise expect of a modification were already in play in many of these salons, with people that had procedure masks on, were using gloves, and were advancing higher levels of sanitation.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Look, I’m not above finishing an entire bag of Zapp’s Voodoo Chips in one sitting, and that’s on a normal day. But these are abnormal days, which means stress eating is high on my to-do list. Rather than going to town on a box of Ritz and American cheese (don’t judge me), I’ve been trying to reeducate my palette and eat “healthier” snacks. I’m not talking nuts and seaweed here, though they are tasty. These are the snacks that are just a slight upgrade from the everyday salty/sweet sustenance. Here are the pantry snacks that are helping me stress eat better.

Scouted selects products independently and prices reflect what was available at the time of publish. Sign up for our newsletter for even more recommendations. Don’t forget to check out our coupon site to find deals from Wayfair, Target, Kohls, and more. If you buy something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Appearing in an Instagram live chat with soccer star Megan Rapinoe on April 30, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden made a spontaneous, vague statement about how he’s been “speaking to a lot of Republicans,” including “former colleagues, who are calling and saying Joe, if you win, we’re gonna help.”

Then he showed his hand: “Matter of fact, there’s some major Republicans who are already forming ‘Republicans for Biden,’” the former vice president said. “Major officeholders.”

The comment hardly received any attention at the time. But in declaring it, Biden ended up tipping off the earliest stages of a brewing effort that’s starting to get underway in certain Republican circles behind-the-scenes. 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

A white sheriff’s deputy in North Carolina is facing criminal charges after allegedly leading an armed mob to the home of a black teenager and trying to force their way inside as part of a botched vigilante mission.

New Hanover & Pender County District Attorney Ben David on Friday announced the charges against Jordan Kita, a New Hanover Sheriff’s Office detention officer accused of wearing his uniform while leading the group of people—one of whom was allegedly packing an AR-15—to confront a high school student at his home. Kita has since been fired from the sheriff's office.

The teenager, Dameon Shepard, was playing video games late one evening when the group of men arrived at his door, demanding to know the whereabouts of a 15-year-old girl named Lekayda Kempisty who had been reported missing. Three in the group were said to be armed, carrying a shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, and a handgun. Kita wore his New Hanover County Sheriff’s deputy uniform and gun, though he had not come to Shepard’s house on official business.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Saturday Night Live season finales tend to be elaborate, star-studded affairs. And they managed to make that the case even this year with all of the cast members still broadcasting from their respective homes, along with guests stars like Kristen Wiig, Martin Short and more.

Two weeks after Brad Pitt debuted his effortlessly charming Dr. Anthony Fauci impression, the final—with any luck—episode of SNL at Home opened with a Zoom graduation featuring a commencement address from Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump, who somehow got ahold of a “Make America Great Again” hat at his Hamptons house.

“I’m so honored to be your vale-dictator,” he told the students. “But today’s not about me. It’s about you. Although I should spend a little time on me first, because I’ve been treated very poorly, even worse than they treated Lincoln.” 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong was portraying Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as an out-of-control drunk long before the real Jeanine Pirro appeared to actually be drunk during a live broadcast from home during the coronavirus pandemic. 

So the season finale of SNL at Home was the perfect time for Strong’s Pirro to join “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost from her home to talk about the lockdown protests happening across America. 

“Good evening, Colin, I hope you’ll forgive me,” Pirro began. “I had to do my own makeup while looking into a spoon.” Asked how she’s holding up under quarantine, she said, “I’m perfectly fine. Although I’ll admit that it’s been tough for all of us. For what seems like forever, I’ve been sitting at home, drinking and complaining to whoever would listen. Then this whole coronavirus thing happened!” 

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Shoes continue to drop in the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible connections to Russia. Yesterday, speculation that the FBI was looking into the Trump family was confirmed by reports that Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior advisor, is under scrutiny. More details are emerging about the investigation.

Enter the Washington Post:

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, then President-elect Trump’s son-in-law and confidant, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

This story hasn't been confirmed by other publications, so take it with the weight of a single report based on anonymous sources, but having said that: Yikes.

Go read the whole thing.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was seen taking refuge on the roof of his office building in Vista, California, Tuesday, taking photos of angry constituents who had gathered below to protest the congressman's voting record. The incident comes before a much-anticipated town hall meeting this Saturday at San Juan Hills High School, where the nine-term congressman is expected to face a hostile crowd because of his support for various Trump administration policies, including the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Democrat Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer who recently announced his bid to challenge Issa in 2018, shared an image of the congressman appearing to avoid demonstrators on social media, where it was roundly mocked.

Others saw his retreating to a rooftop as reminiscent of Michael Scott, Steve Carrell's character in The Office who memorably took to the roof in the episode titled "Safety Training."

Issa, on the other hand, described his trip to the roof a bit differently. Shortly after the criticism, he took to Twitter to offer this narrative. We recommend zooming in to take a closer look at the signs:

For more on Levin and the fight to defeat Issa, the richest man in Congress, head to our profile here.

Donald McGahn, like all White House counsels who have served before him, has a broad portfolio but one fundamental charge: to keep his boss, the president of the United States, out of trouble. To say McGahn hasn't fared well in this department is an understatement. President Donald Trump and his administration have been besieged by scandal from the outset. And lawyers who worked in past administrations, Democratic and Republican, have questioned whether McGahn has the judgment or the clout with his client to do the job.

Four months in, despite having yet to confront a crisis not of its own making, the Trump administration faces a growing list of controversies, legal and otherwise. The FBI is reportedly investigating retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, who for 22 days served as Trump's national security adviser, for his lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests and for his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office. There are two congressional probes examining Flynn's actions and two more looking at whether anyone connected with the Trump campaign interacted with Vladimir Putin's regime when it was interfering with the 2016 presidential race. And the Justice Department recently appointed a special counsel to oversee the FBI's probe into Moscow's meddling and the Trump-Russia connections. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a close adviser; former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort; and Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, face FBI or congressional scrutiny.

All presidents, Democratic and Republican, experience their share of scandals. But the pace and magnitude of the controversies engulfing the Trump White House are on a different level and pace. (Recall that Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre—when he fired the special prosecutor investigating Watergate—didn't happen until nearly five years into his presidency.) And each leak and drip of new information raises more questions about McGahn, the man whose job is to steer Trump clear of potential land mines before they explode into breaking-news bombshells.

An election lawyer who served five contentious years on the Federal Election Commission, McGahn first met Trump in late 2014 and was one of the mogul's first hires when he launched his presidential run. He endeared himself to Trump by fending off an effort to remove Trump from the New Hampshire primary ballot and coordinated the campaign's well-timed release of a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, a move that helped to attract ambivalent evangelical and conservative voters.

Shortly after winning the presidency, Trump rewarded McGahn's loyalty by picking him to be White House counsel.

About six weeks later, on January 4, according to the New York Times, McGahn spoke with Michael Flynn, the retired general whom Trump had selected as his national security adviser a week before he hired McGahn, about a sensitive matter. In August 2016, Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, had signed a $600,000 contract to lobby on behalf of Turkish interests; Flynn's client was a Dutch company run by a Turkish businessman who is an ally of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At the time, however, Flynn did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbyists and advocates working for foreign governments to disclose their work.

Now, with Trump's inauguration almost two weeks away, Flynn reportedly told McGahn that he was under federal investigation for failing to disclose his lobbying on behalf of foreign interests.

What McGahn did with this information is unclear—but it's nonetheless revealing to former White House lawyers that Flynn went on to receive a top White House post, arguably the most sensitive job in the White House. (McGahn, through a White House spokesperson, declined to comment for this story.) Alums of the counsel's office in previous White Houses say it was unimaginable to hire a national security adviser who faced legal questions regarding foreign lobbying, let alone one who was under federal investigation. "In the White House counsel's office I was working in, the idea that somebody was under investigation was a big red flag and it would be doubtful that we would go forward with that person," says Bill Marshall, a former deputy counsel in the Clinton White House. "That's not even saying it strong enough."

Flynn remained on the job and, during the transition, reportedly told the outgoing Obama administration that it should delay a joint American-Kurdish military strike on an ISIS facility in the Syrian city of Raqqa—a move that conformed with the desires of the Turkish government.

In a short ceremony at the White House on January 22, Flynn was sworn in as national security adviser and McGahn as chief counsel. Four days later, Sally Yates, the acting US attorney general, and a senior official in the Justice Department's national-security division met with McGahn at the White House. Yates informed McGahn of a troubling development: the US had credible information to suggest that Flynn had not told the truth when he denied that he had discussed sanctions during conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Yates added that Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI.

Flynn had lied. What's more, his mention of sanctions was potentially illegal under an obscure law known as the Logan Act. (Since the law's creation in 1799, not one person has been convicted under the Logan Act.) Yates warned McGahn that the discrepancy between Flynn's public statements and what he said to the Russian ambassador left him vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.

"If Sally Yates had come to me with that information, I would've run down the hall like my hair was on fire," Rob Weiner, another former counsel in the Clinton White House, told me. Because the messenger in this case was a holdover from the Obama administration, Weiner added, the Trump White House "might not have had a lot of trust in Yates at that point. Even so, that should've been something to cause alarm bells to go off." Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, echoed Weiner's observation. Writing at the website Lawfare, Goldsmith weighed in: "Especially coming against the background of knowing (and apparently doing nothing) about Flynn's failure to report his foreign agent work, the information Yates conveyed should have set off loud alarm bells."

Flynn, with two federal investigations hanging over his head, remained on the job for another 18 days. He joined Trump in the Oval Office for calls with foreign dignitaries, including the leaders of Australia and Russia. He presumably sat in on daily intelligence briefings and had unfettered access to classified information. It was only after the Washington Post on February 13 reported on Yates' warning to McGahn about Flynn's susceptibility to blackmail that Trump fired Flynn.

The question looming over the entire debacle was this: How had Flynn been allowed to stay on the job? At the media briefing on the day after Flynn's dismissal, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, addressed McGahn's role in the Flynn controversy. McGahn had conducted his own review after meeting with Yates, Spicer explained, and "determined that there is not a legal issue, but rather a trust issue."

It was a mystifying answer, especially given the facts that later emerged: Flynn was allegedly the target of active investigations. "It is very hard to understand how McGahn could have reached these conclusions," wrote Goldsmith, the former Bush administration lawyer. McGahn, Goldsmith noted, could not know all the details of the investigations targeting Flynn. (Indeed, Yates later testified that McGahn appeared to have not known that the FBI had interviewed Flynn about his calls with the Russian ambassador.) "Just as important, the final word on the legality of Flynn's actions was not McGahn's to make," Goldsmith went on. "That call in the first instance lies with the FBI and especially the attorney general."

The steady stream of revelations about the Trump White House and its various legal dramas has only cast a harsher light on McGahn and the counsel's office. After the Post reported that White House officials had pressured the director of national intelligence and the National Security Agency chief to downplay the FBI's Russia investigation, Goldsmith tweeted, "Asking again: Is WH Counsel 1) incompetent or 2) ineffective because client's crazy and he lacks access/influence?"

Lawyers who have represented Democrats and Republicans agree that Trump is about as difficult a client as they can imagine. "One gets the sense that Mr. Trump has people talking to him, but he doesn't either take their advice, ask for their advice, or follow their advice," says Karen Hult, a Virginia Tech political-science professor who has studied the White House counsel's office. C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel for President George H.W. Bush, said few, if any, presidents have had more financial and ethical entanglements than Trump. "I didn't have anywhere near the complexities that Don McGahn had," he told me earlier this year. Bob Bauer, a former counsel in the Obama White House, recently questioned whether any lawyer could rein in Trump: "Is the White House counsel up to the job of representing this president? We may find out nobody is." There is some indication that Trump does trust McGahn. When Trump wanted to release statements of support for Flynn and Kushner after the naming of a special counsel to oversee the Trump-Russia investigation, it was reportedly McGahn who convinced Trump not to do so.

But part of the job, former lawyers in the counsel's office say, is giving the president unwelcome advice and insisting that advice be followed. "It's always very hard to say no to the president and not do what the president of the United States wants," says Bill Marshall, the former Clinton White House lawyer. "But the long-term interests of the president of the United States can often be not doing something he might want to do, and if you do, it can come back and hit you from a direction that you never anticipated."

In 1994, Marcus Robinson, who is black, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1991 killing of Erik Tornblom, a white teenager, in Cumberland County, North Carolina. He spent nearly 20 years on death row, but in 2012 his sentence was changed to life without a chance of parole. He was one of four death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by a judge who found that racial discrimination had played a role in their trials.

The reason their cases were reviewed at all was because of a 2009 North Carolina law known as the Racial Justice Act, which allowed judges to reduce death sentences to life in prison without parole when defendants were able to prove racial bias in their charge, jury selection, or sentence.

"The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state's harshest punishment to our most heinous criminals," former Gov. Bev Perdue said when she signed the bill into law, "the decision is based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice."

At 21, Robinson was the youngest person sentenced to death in North Carolina. When he was three, he was hospitalized with severe seizures after being physically abused by his father and was diagnosed with permanent brain dysfunction. However, those weren't the only troubling aspects of his case.

Racial discrimination in jury selection has been prohibited since it was banned by the Supreme Court in its 1986 Supreme Court decision Batson v. Kentucky, but Robinson's trial was infected with it. The prosecutor in the case, John Dickson, disproportionately refused eligible black potential jurors. For example, he struck one black potential juror because the man had been once charged with public drunkenness. However, he accepted two "nonblack" people with DWI convictions. Of the eligible members of the pool, he struck half the black people and only 14 percent of the nonblack members. In the end, Robinson was tried by a 12-person jury that included only three people of color—one Native American individual and two black people.

Racial discrimination in jury selection was not uncommon in the North Carolina criminal justice system. A comprehensive Michigan State University study looked at more than 7,400 potential jurors in 173 cases from 1990 to 2010. Researchers found that statewide prosecutors struck 52.6 percent of eligible potential black jurors and only 25.7 percent of all other potential jurors. This bias was reflected on death row. Of the 147 people on North Carolina's death row, 35 inmates were sentenced by all-white juries; 38 by juries with just one black member.

Under the Racial Justice Act, death row inmates had one year from when the bill became law to file a motion. Nearly all the state's 145 death row inmates filed claims, but only Robison and three others—Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin, and Christina Walters—obtained hearings. In 2012, Robinson's was the first. At the Superior Court of Cumberland County, Judge Gregory Weeks ruled that race had played a significant role in the trial and Robinson was resentenced to life without parole. North Carolina appealed the decision to the state's Supreme Court.

An immediate outcry followed the decision. The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys issued a statement saying, "Capital cases reflect the most brutal and heinous offenders in our society. Whether the death penalty is an appropriate sentence for murderers should be addressed by our lawmakers in the General Assembly, not masked as claims (of) racism in our courts."  

The ruling attracted lots of publicity from across the country and North Carolina lawmakers were outraged. "There are definitely signs in the legislative record that there were some [lawmakers] that really wanted to see executions move forward," Cassandra Stubbs, the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project who also represents Robinson, says. Legislative staffers circulated talking points for lawmakers with arguments that the RJA turns "district attorneys into racists and convicted murderers into victims," describing the law as "an end-run around the death penalty and an indefinite moratorium on capital punishment."

The day Judge Weeks resentenced Robinson, the Senate president pro tempore for the state Legislature, Phillip Berger, expressed concern that Robinson could be eligible for parole. He suggested Robinson—who had just turned 18 when he committed the crime and would not have been considered a juvenile—would be ineligible for life in prison without a chance of parole, citing a US Supreme Court ruling that prohibited juveniles from receiving life sentences without parole. "We cannot allow cold-blooded killers to be released into our community, and I expect the state to appeal this decision," he said. "Regardless of the outcome, we continue to believe the Racial Justice Act is an ill-conceived law that has very little to do with race and absolutely nothing to do with justice."

The state Legislature took on the challenge and voted to repeal the Racial Justice Act in 2013. This made it impossible for those on death row to even attempt to have their sentences reviewed for racial bias, but it left the fates of the four who had been moved to life imprisonment unclear. "The state's district attorneys are nearly unanimous in their bipartisan conclusion that the Racial Justice Act created a judicial loophole to avoid the death penalty and not a path to justice," Gov. Pat McCrory said in a statement at the time.

Even though the law was still in effect when the four inmates' sentences were reduced, they weren't safe from death row just yet. Robinson's sentenced had been legally reduced, but the legal battle was just beginning.

In 2015, after nearly two years from the initial hearing, the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered the Superior Court to reconsider the reduced sentences for Robinson, Augustine, Golphin, and Walters, saying the judge failed to give the state enough time to prepare for the "complex" proceedings.

This past January, Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour ruled that because the RJA had been repealed, the four defendants could no longer use the law to reduce their sentences. "North Carolina vowed to undertake an unprecedented look at the role of racial bias in capital sentencing," says Stubbs. But now, "the state Legislature explicitly turned from its commitment and repealed the law."

Robinson is back on death row at Central Prison in the state's capital of Raleigh. In the petition to the state Supreme Court, Robinson's lawyers point out that the Double Jeopardy Clause—the law that prevents someone from being tried twice for the same crime—bars North Carolina from trying to reimpose the death penalty because the 2012 RJA hearing acquitted him of capital punishment.

"He's never been resentenced to death," Stubbs says. "They have no basis to hold him on death row."

Hillary Clinton appeared at Recode Wednesday in conversation with founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, and to steal a headline from myself, she is out of fucks.

It was fascinating to watch. She didn't hold back. You can watch the full thing below or continue on for some highlights.

Here are some good bits, courtesy of the recode live blog:

On emails!!!

"The over riding issue that affected the election that I had any control over — because I had no control over the Russians. Too bad about that — was the use of my emails. The way that it was used was very damaging. The New York times covered it like Pearl harbor.

On Goldman Sachs speeches

"I have to say, Walt I never thought someone would throw out my entire career...because I made a couple of speeches…Men got paid for the speeches they made...I got paid for the speeches I made…I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that's not why I lost”

On the vast right-wing conspiracy
"What is hard for people to accept, although now after the election there's greater understanding, is that there are forces in our country...who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I've been alive…We were on a real roll as a country despite assassinations, despite setbacks, expanding rights to people who never had them in any country was frankly thrilling. I believe then as I believe now that we're never done with this work. Part of the challenge is to maintain the focus and energy to move forward but you have to understand the other side is never tired either."

On fake news
"Fake news...lies that's a good word too...The other side was using content that was just flat out false and delivering it in a very personalized way. Above the radar screen and below."

On the DNC

"I inherit nothing from the Democratic party. It was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. I had to inject money into the [DNC] for it to keep going."

On the RNC

"They raised...best estimates are close to $100 million...to build this data foundation. They beta tested it. They ran [hundreds of thousands of surveys]. Trump becomes the nominee and is [given] this tried and true...platform."

On Russia collusion
"I think it's fair to ask how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know what messages to deliver. Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding with?…The Russians in my opinion could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided by Americans."

"Within one hour of the Access Hollywood tapes being leaked, the Russians or say Wikileaks—same thing—dumped the John Podesta emails. They were run of the mill emails. "Stuff that were so common. Within one hour they dumped them and then began to weaponize them. They had their allies like Infowars say the most outlandish, absurd lies you could imagine. They had to be ready for that."

On Putin

"It's important that Americans...understand that Putin wants to bring us down. He was an old KGB agent."

On Obama

"Barack Obama saved the economy and he doesn't get the credit he deserves, I have to say that [because people don't know that.]" Clinton re: democrats not investing in creating content.

This post is being updated.

It seems clear now why the Trump administration fought so hard to avoid making public the details of the waivers it granted to White House staffers who might otherwise have been in violation of the president's self-imposed ethics rules. They show that President Donald Trump, who made "drain the swamp" a campaign battle cry, has enlisted numerous swamp-dwellers—former lobbyists, consultants, corporate executives—to staff key positions in his White House and has granted them broad exemptions to work on issues directly related to their former jobs and clients.

After repeatedly slamming DC lobbyists during the campaign, Trump used one of his first executive orders to lay out ethics rules for his new administration. The January 28 order barred Trump officials from working on issues related to their former employers for at least two years, and these rules applied not only to lobbyists, but to anyone who worked for a business or organization potentially affected by federal policy decisions. The prohibitions were not absolute: Waivers would be available in certain cases.

The Trump administration initially balked when the Office of Government Ethics demanded the White House hand over the waivers it had granted. But after a standoff the administration relented late Wednesday and released about 14 waivers covering White House staffers. They make clear that Trump's ethics rules are remarkably flexible and that his top staffers don't need to worry too much about staying on the right side of them. On paper, Trump's rules are similar to those imposed by President Barack Obama, but it appears that Trump is far more willing to hand out exemptions. At this point in the Obama administration, just three White House staffers had been granted ethics waivers. So far, Trump has granted 14, including several that apply to multiple people.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and adviser Kellyanne Conway were both granted waivers to deal with issues involving their previous employers. In the case of Priebus, this narrowly applies to the Republican National Committee. But Conway is now free to work on issues involving her ex-clients from her previous life as an operative and pollster—clients that included political campaigns, nonprofit activist groups, and corporations.

Conway's relationships with these clients were murky to begin with; she was never required to disclose who she worked for. We do know that she repped virulently anti-immigration and anti-Muslim groups. The names of some of her corporate clients also have trickled out, including Major League Baseball, Hasbro, American Express, and Boeing. The waiver may have been granted to help smooth the way for Conway after evidence emerged that she continued to operate own her polling and consulting company even after she'd gone to work in the White House—a possible violation of conflict-of-interest laws that drew the attention of congressional Democrats who have begun probing her relationship with the company.

Conway's waiver was not retroactive, but there is another that specifically allows White House employees to communicate freely with former employers and coworkers at media organizations—and applies back to January 20. Trump's executive order didn't simply prohibit any of his hires from working on matters relating to a former employer—it specifically covered "any meeting or communication relating to the performance of one's official duties." This means at least two of Trump's top aides, former Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon and his assistant Julia Hahn, would be prohibited from chatting with their former colleagues at Breitbart about anything work-related—a rule that Bannon appears not to have followed. While not named, it seems likely that protecting the Breitbart alums from ethics complaints was the aim.

Another takeaway from Trump's waivers is that they appear to be far less restrictive than Obama administration waivers. Many Obama waivers (there were only 10 total granted to White House employees during his administration) were very narrowly tailored. For example, James Jones, Obama's national security adviser, was granted a waiver to allow him to introduce Bill Clinton at an event for the Atlantic Council, even though Jones had previously worked for the group. John Brennan, at the time one of Obama's deputy national security advisers, had previously worked for The Analysis Company, and he was granted a waiver to use the company's data while investigating the so-called "Underwear Bomber" incident. Brennan was not cleared to talk to any of the company's employees, however.

Trump's waivers, on the other hand, are broad.

For instance, Trump granted a waiver to Michael Catanzaro, who is the president's most senior energy policy aide, allowing him to work freely on "broad policy matters and particular matters of general applicability relating to the Clean Power Plan, the WOTUS [Waters of the United States] rule, and methane regulations." Catanzaro worked as a registered lobbyist for several oil and gas companies as recently as January, which made the waiver necessary. On his most recent lobbying disclosure form—filed on behalf of one of his clients, natural gas company Noble Energy—Catanzaro wrote that he was working on "EPA and BLM's proposed and final regulations covering methane emissions from new and existing oil and gas facilities." Nearly identical language appears in his most recent lobbying disclosure on behalf of another natural gas company, Encana. In other words, Catanzaro is now making policy on the very issues he was paid by corporations to lobby on. There are no restrictions in Catanzaro's waiver relating to his previous clients.

Another lobbyist turned Trump aide is Shahira Knight, who was previously employed as vice president of public policy for mutual fund giant Fidelity and now serves as Trump's special assistant for tax and retirement policy. Her waiver grants her permission to work on "matters of general applicability relating to tax, retirement and financial services issues." Fidelity's most recent lobbying report—filed while Knight ran its lobbying shop—lists the main issue areas targeted by the company's lobbyists: finance, retirement, banking, and taxes.

While the Obama administration reluctantly granted waivers for narrow sets of circumstances, the Trump waivers appear to be written to carefully exempt the previous lobbying work done by White House aides.

And this is just the beginning. The administration released only the waivers granted to White House employees—the release does not include waivers granted to administration officials who work for federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Treasury Department. The White House will turn those waivers over to the Office of Government Ethics on Thursday, but it's not clear when they will be made public.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) won his first election to the House of Representatives in 1988 with 64 percent of the vote. He's been reelected 13 times since then. And even though he walloped his most recent challenger by nearly 17 percentage points, some Democrats now think that this could be the final term for the Southern California conservative Politico has dubbed "Putin's favorite congressman."

Protesters, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, assemble outside Rohrabacher's office every Tuesday at 1 p.m. "He has been our congressman for a long time," laments Diana Carey, vice chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County. "But because the district was predominantly Republican, my view is he's been on cruise control." Thanks to changing demographics in Orange County and newly fired-up liberal voters, Carey doesn't think Rohrabacher's seat is safe anymore. 

Recently, Rohrabacher has been swept up in the scandal over the possible collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia. Like Trump, Rohrabacher, who claims to once have lost a drunken arm-wrestling match with Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, believes the Russian government is being unfairly demonized. (During the 1980s, Rohrabacher was a staunch anti-communist who hung out with the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan.) He has shrugged off allegations of Moscow's meddling in the 2016 presidential election by pointing out that the United States is guilty of similar actions. In May, the New York Times reported that in 2012 the FBI warned Rohrabacher that Russian spies were trying to recruit him. Two days earlier, the Washington Post reported on a recording from June 2016 in which House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, "There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump." (McCarthy assured Rohrabacher the remarks were meant as a joke.)

But of all the issues where Rohrabacher and Trump align, Russia may be the least pressing concern for the constituents who are rallying against him. So far, Rohrabacher has voted in line with Trump's positions more than 93 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, including voting in favor of the GOP health care bill that would effectively end Obamacare. Rohrabacher pushed hard for the bill, warning his GOP colleagues that letting Trump's first major legislative effort die would stunt the president's momentum. "If this goes down," he said in March, "we're going to be neutering our President Trump. You don't cut the balls off your bull and expect that's he's going to go out and get the job done." Health care is a hot-button issue in the 48th District, Carey says. "I've had conversations with people who are absolutely beside themselves, scared that they're going to lose coverage."

While Rohrabacher won his last race in a near-landslide, his district went for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. She won by a slim margin, but it was enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to flag the district as a top target to flip in 2018. If the Democrats hope to best Rohrabacher in the midterms, they have a lot of work to do, says Justin Wallin, an Orange County-based pollster who runs an opinion research firm. "I don't think Dana has carved out a position as a fire-breathing supporter for any political personality except for Ronald Reagan," says Wallin, referring to Rohrabacher's early days working in the Reagan White House. "He tends to align quite naturally with that district in his perspectives, his persona, and his political views. His district views him as being independent, and when Dana takes a position on something that seems to be outside the mainstream, that can actually buttress his favorable regard."

Two Democrats have announced bids to run against Rohrabacher. One is first-time candidate Harley Rouda, a businessman and attorney who gave $9,200 to Republican congressional candidates and nothing to Democrats between 1993 and 2007. The other is Boyd Roberts, a Laguna Beach real estate broker who has vowed to work to impeach Trump and who finished last among five candidates running for a school board seat in Hemet, California, in 2012. Both are attacking Rohrabacher over his sympathetic stance toward Russia. "The district will vote [Rohrabacher] out because i think there is something with the Russia thing. I think I can raise money off it," Roberts told the Los Angeles Times. In an online ad, Rouda calls Rohrabacher "one of the most entrenched members of Washington's establishment" and vows to get "tough on Russia" if he is elected.

"They're both kind of waving the flag of the Russia thing, and I just don't think that's gonna get them over the line," says Wallin. Carey declined to comment on either candidate, though she says a third challenger will be announcing a bid this summer. Meanwhile, the DCCC hasn't thrown its backing behind anyone yet. "Barring something dramatic happening, I'd say he is far more safe than a number of other districts in the area," says Wallin.

Yet Carey thinks that so long as the Democrats continue organizing with the same intensity they've shown so far, they can turn the district blue. "We have a lot of folks who said they never paid attention before, a lot of no-party-preference people who are really concerned about democracy," she says. When asked whether people in the district continue to be engaged, she responds, "So far I think the energy is staying. I tell people, 'This is not a sprint, it's a marathon.' But I think as long as Trump keeps tweeting, we'll keep having interest!"

A Honduran immigrant held at a troubled detention center in California's high desert died Wednesday night while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Vincente Caceres-Maradiaga, 46, was receiving treatment for multiple medical conditions while waiting for an immigration court to decide whether to deport him, according an ICE statement. He collapsed as he was playing soccer at the detention facility and died while en route to a local hospital.

Caceres-Maradiaga's death is the latest in a string of fatalities among detainees held at the Adelanto Detention Facility, which is operated by the GEO Group, the country's largest private prison company. Three people held at the facility have died in the last three months, including Osmar Epifanio Gonzalez-Gadba, a 32-year-old Nicaraguan found hanging in his cell on March 22, and Sergio Alonso Lopez, a Mexican man who died of internal bleeding on April 13 after spending more than two months in custody.

Since it opened in 2011, Adelanto has faced accusations of insufficient medical care and poor conditions. In July 2015, 29 members of Congress sent a letter to ICE and federal inspectors requesting an investigation into health and safety concerns at the facility. They cited the 2012 death of Fernando Dominguez at the facility, saying it was the result of "egregious errors" by the center's medical staff, who did not give him proper medical examinations or allow him to receive timely off-site treatment. In November 2015, 400 detainees began a hunger strike, demanding better medical and dental care along with other reforms.

Yet last year, the city of Adelanto, acting as a middleman between ICE and GEO, made a deal to extend the company's contract until 2021. The federal government guarantees GEO that a minimum of 975 immigrants will be held at the facility and pays $111 per detainee per day, according to California state Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), who has fought to curtail private immigration detention. After that point, ICE only has to pay $50 per detainee per day—an incentive to fill more beds.

Of California's four privately run immigration detention centers, three use local governments as intermediaries between ICE and private prison companies. On Tuesday, the California senate voted 26-13 to ban such contracts, supporting a bill that could potentially close Adelanto when its contract runs out in 2021. The Dignity Not Detention Act, authored by Lara, would prevent local governments from signing or extending contracts with private prison companies to detain immigrants starting in 2019. The bill would also require all in-state facilities that hold ICE detainees, including both private detention centers and public jails, to meet national standards for detention conditions—empowering state prosecutors to hold detention center operators accountable for poor conditions inside their facilities.

An identical bill passed last year but was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. "I have been troubled by recent reports detailing unsatisfactory conditions and limited access to counsel in private immigration detention facilities," Brown wrote in his veto message last September. But he deferred to the Department of Homeland Security, which was then reviewing its use of for-profit immigration detention. In that review, the Homeland Security Advisory Council rejected the ongoing use of private prison companies to detain immigrants, citing the "inferiority of the private prison model." Yet since President Donald Trump took office, the federal government has moved to expand private immigration detention, signing a $110 million deal with GEO in April to build the first new immigration detention center under Trump.

Nine people have died in ICE custody in fiscal year 2017, which began October 1. Meanwhile, private prison stocks have nearly doubled in value since Election Day.

President Donald Trump began the week with a barrage of early-morning tweets blasting the courts for blocking his travel ban executive order. But in doing so, he may have just made it more likely that the courts will keep blocking the ban.

People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017

These tweets followed upon several from over the weekend about the ban and the terrorist attack in London, including this one from Saturday evening:

We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2017

In January, Trump signed an executive order banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days, as well as halting the refugee resettlement program for 120 days (and indefinitely for Syrian refugees). When the courts blocked it, rather than appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump signed a modified version of the order. The new ban repealed the old one, reduced the number of banned countries from seven to six, and added exceptions and waivers. Still, federal courts in Maryland and Hawaii blocked it, and now the Justice Department has appealed to the Supreme Court to have this second version of the ban reinstated.

The biggest question in the litigation over the ban is whether the courts should focus solely on the text of the order or also consider Trump's comments from the campaign trail, and even during his presidency, to determine whether the order uses national security as a pretext for banning Muslims from the country. The president's lawyers argue that the courts should focus on the text of the order and defer to the president's authority over national security. Trump's tweets Monday morning and over the weekend make it harder for the courts to justify doing that.

The travel ban is supposed to be a temporary remedy until the government can review its vetting procedures. But Trump's tweets make it appear that the ban itself is his goal. Trump repeatedly and defiantly uses the word "ban" when his administration has instead sought to call it a pause. 

The tweets "undermine the government's best argument—that courts ought not look beyond the four corners of the Executive Order itself," Stephen Vladeck, an expert on national security and constitutional law at the University of Texas School of Law, says via email. "Whether or not then-Candidate Trump's statements should matter (a point on which reasonable folks will likely continue to disagree), the more President Trump says while the litigation is ongoing tending to suggest that the Order is pretextual, the harder it is to convince even sympathetic judges and justices that only the text of the Order matters." And once the courts start looking at the president's statements, it's not hard to find ones that raise questions about anti-Muslim motivations.

Even the president's allies acknowledge his tweets are a problem. George Conway, the husband of top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, responded to Trump on Twitter by pointing out that the work of the Office of the Solicitor General—which is defending the travel ban in court—just got harder.

These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won't help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad. https://t.co/zVhcyfm8Hr

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

Conway, who recently withdrew his name from consideration for a post at the Justice Department, then followed up to clarify his position.

2) ... and of course, my wonderful wife. Which is why I said what I said this morning. Every sensible lawyer in WHCO and every political ...

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

3) ... appointee at DOJ wd agree with me (as some have already told me). The pt cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters ...

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

4) ... seriously undermine Admin agenda and POTUS--and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that pt and not be shy about it.

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) June 5, 2017

Trump may soon see his tweets used against him in court. Omar Jadwat, the ACLU attorney who argued the case before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, told the Washington Post this morning that the ACLU's legal team is considering adding Trump's tweets to its arguments before the Supreme Court. "The tweets really undermine the factual narrative that the president's lawyers have been trying to put forth, which is that regardless of what the president has actually said in the past, the second ban is kosher if you look at it entirely on its own terms," Jadwat told the Post.

On Monday, the Intercept published a classified internal NSA document noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year's presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document provides details of how one such operation occurred.

According to the Intercept:

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA's understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying "raw" intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into US voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

Go read the whole thing.

साल 2002 में फेमिना मिस इंडिया का खिताब जीतने वाली नेहा धूपिया और बॉलीवुड एक्टर अंगद बेदी ने 10 मई 2018 को दिल्ली में गुपचुप तरीके से शादी करके सभी को चौंका दिया था।

There were nine new cases and one death related to COVID-19 reported Saturday by the Windsor Essex County Health Unit. The health unit update said a female in her 90s died Friday. She was a resident of a long-term care facility. As of Saturday, there have been 694 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 263 cases are […]

वैश्विक महामारी कोरोना वायरस से निपटने के लिए लगाया गया लॉकडाउन जारी है। आज लॉकडाउन 3.0 का सातवां दिन है। वहीं, देशभर में संक्रमित मरीजों की संख्या में लगातार बढ़ोतरी हो रही है

हिमाचल प्रदेश में कोरोना वायरस के दो और पॉजिटिव मामले आए हैं। दोनों ही हिमाचल के निवासी नहीं हैं।

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The City of Toronto partners with tech giants to provide free temporary internet access for vulnerable Torontonians, Elon Musk is under fire for recent Tweets, and a bizarre conspiracy involving Bill Gates is circulating online.   The City of Toronto is partnering with technology and telco companies to provide free temporary internet access for residents…

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Facebook is rolling out a tool that lets users in the US and Canada transfer photos and videos from its platform to Google Photos, Amazon says it plans to spend all of its profit for the second quarter, an estimated $4 billion, on its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and NVIDIA’s chief scientist rolls out…

Email scam targets executives, NSA rates conferencing tools and get ready for COVID tracing apps Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday May 4th. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com. To hear the podcast, click on the arrow below: Senior executives of companies around the world should always be careful clicking on…

Anti-quarantine protesters jumped onto other social platforms after being shut down by Facebook, Amazon Vice President Tim Bray said Amazon is designed to create a climate of fear and quits the company, Apple releases new MacBook 13 with an improved keyboard and more storage.   Anti-quarantine protesters are being kicked off Facebook and quickly finding…

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WeWork’s ex-chief sues SoftBank, a popular children’s computer game gets hacked, and IBM’s Think conference goes virtual this week. WeWork cofounder and former chief executive Adam Neumann has filed a suit against Japanese conglomerate SoftBank for abandoning a $3 billion tender offer to the startup’s shareholders. The money is part of a $9.6 billion rescue…

World Password Day advice, GoDaddy hosting accounts hacked and WordPress sites under attack. Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday May 6th. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com. Tomorrow is World Password Day. So follow safe password practices so you don’t help criminals steal data. How bad are you? Here’s are few…

Today Shopify’s latest earnings call turns heads; Airbnb says it’s cutting a quarter of its staff; and a hacker buys old Tesla equipment and finds them full of user data.   After reporting that adjusting earnings tripled to 19 cents a share from 6 cents a year ago, social media is again buzzing about the…

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Ontario lawyers have been warned to learn to live with videoconferencing for pre-trial hearings as the COVID-19 pandemic restricts people from in-person sessions. A judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ordered the parties in a civil lawsuit to do the pre-trial questioning of a witness — usually held in a law office…

ZYUS Life Sciences is working with VIDO-InterVac to see if proteins produced by plants can be made into a working COVID-19 vaccine. 

The SHA is hoping a novel harm reduction program can help the northern village of La Loche win its battle against COVID-19. 

Authorities have confirmed they are looking into a new video related to the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the Georgia man who was allegedly shot by a father and son in February. The video, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shows someone who appears to be Arbery on a home surveillance camera down the block from a construction site just minutes before the 25-year-old was shot on the afternoon of Feb. 23. Two police cars can be seen in the video minutes later traveling down the street in the direction Arbery ran and was later shot.

Marcus Arbery Sr says Ahmaud’s death at the hands of two white men, while he was out for a run, was an act of racismMarcus Arbery Sr says his son was just like him, fit and athletic.Nearly everyone who talks about his youngest son, Ahmaud Arbery, remembers him running. Neighbors saw him jogging nearly every day. Ahmaud’s route would take him along the flat, curved road outside the home he shared with his mother, then into the unincorporated community of Satilla Shores on the Georgia coast just outside of Brunswick. Ahmaud would wave to the regulars on his route.“He just loved to work out and he just loved people,” his father told the Guardian.When the 25-year-old left for a run on a sunny February afternoon, he passed, for the last time, neighbors whose Ring alerts would go off as he raced by their homes. He would eventually meet Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis, 34. Shortly afterwards, Ahmaud was shot at least twice.He was dead before officers arrived.For more than two months, Marcus Sr – along with his son’s siblings and mother – demanded answers. But as the case went through three district attorneys after the first two had to recuse themselves due to ties with Gregory McMichael, no one was charged in his son’s death.Ahmaud’s family was devastated.“We can’t have two different justice systems in America: one for black America and one for white America,” Ben Crump, the lawyer representing Marcus Sr, told the Guardian.That day in February, the McMichaels told police that Ahmaud matched the description of someone caught on a security camera committing a burglary in the neighborhood. This week, a leaked video appeared to contradict the elder McMichael’s statement to police insisting Ahmaud violently attacked his son.Gregory McMichael’s story also contradicts Marcus Sr’s memories of his son. “He was just a lovable young man and he would give you the shirt off of his back,” he said of the youngest of his three children, who would have turned 26 on Friday.“We’re talking about doing a celebration for him during the weekend,” Marcus Sr says. Thousands of people in Glynn county and across America also celebrated Ahmaud on Friday by doing something he loved: running. Near his mother’s house, people took the same route Ahmaud would run, walking or jogging 2.23 miles, representing the last day of Arbery’s young life.> He was just a lovable young man and he would give you the shirt off of his back> > Marcus Arbery Sr“We’re going to keep running for you, bro, until justice is served,” one of his friends posted on Facebook while jogging.Within two days of the release of the video of his death, after 10 weeks of local law enforcement failing to investigate, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made arrests and promised to continue the investigation. The McMichaels were charged with murder and aggravated assault on Thursday, the day before Ahmaud would have turned 26.His father calls the shooting an act of racism by the McMichaels, who are white. The Arbery family is black. “I’ve dealt with racism my whole life here,” Marcus Sr says of the community. “Everybody’s supposed to be equal.”Though he doesn’t think that’s the way justice works in Glynn county, he hopes the shooting of his youngest child may be the catastrophic event that changes how this corner of Georgia operates.Even if that change does come, he says, it will be in exchange for his son’s life.“I got to live without my son and they lynched him. It’s just hard,” he said. “He didn’t deserve that.”

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