MHI NextDraft

1 OMGODFATHER “Raiding lawyers’ offices isn’t unheard of—but is generally used for lawyers who work with alleged members of organized crime, or for lawyers who are involved themselves in elaborate criminal schemes.” The Daily Beast on the highly unusual and largely unexpected FBI raid on Michael Cohen that has everyone in Washington talking (and at least one, Tweeting). “It’s a tactic generally used against organized crime, against very serious, very serious criminals and lawyers who are operating outside of the protections of the law,” said Alan Dershowitz, a liberal attorney and frequent critic of Mueller’s tactics. + Rod Rosenstein personally signed off on the raid. Here’s the NYT on what the agents were looking for.The F.B.I. agents who raided the office of President Trump’s personal lawyer on Monday were looking for records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump as well as information related to the role of the publisher of The National Enquirer in silencing one of the women, according to several people briefed on the investigation. The search warrant carried out by the public corruption unit of the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan sought information about Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claims she carried on a nearly yearlong affair with Mr. Trump shortly after the birth of his youngest son in 2006. Ms. McDougal was paid $150,000 by American Media Inc., The Enquirer’s parent company, whose chief executive is a friend of Mr. Trump’s. + The president argued once again that this is all part of a “witch hunt.” The fact that the feds greenlit a raid on a personal lawyer suggests exactly the opposite: “Whatever evidence federal prosecutors have collected concerning Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime attorney, it is most likely extraordinarily strong.” The Atlantic: Michael Cohen Has a Big Problem. “These things are not anonymized, so you know you’re talking about Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney for the person who is now president of the United States, so you know you’re in very deep water,” John Q. Barrett, a former associate special counsel in the Iran-Contra affair and a law professor at St. Johns, said. “Any law-enforcement official would proceed very carefully.” + The president also tweeted that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” The truth is that it may not apply here. “If a client is using a lawyer’s services for the purpose of engaging in crime or fraud, there is no privilege.” “The attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this and when recused himself or he certainly should have let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have put a different attorney general in,” Trump said Monday, reprising previous comments about Sessions. “So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. But you’ll figure that out.” + Surround by military leaders and with his armed crossed, the president explained that the raid on Cohen is “an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for.” David Graham on Trump’s assault on the rule of law. + WaPo: Trump’s tirade after the Michael Cohen raid, annotated.President Trump’s full remarks on April 9 after FBI agents raided the office of Michael Cohen, his personal attorney.

2 LET’S GET REAL Mark Zuckerberg will get his much anticipated privacy-related tongue lashing from Congress. But while online privacy is a big deal, it’s the not the real technology problem. When you go out to dinner with a group of friends and the subject of the internet comes up, the focus isn’t on social media’s invasion of privacy. No one is getting a little buzzed and saying, “My profile is being unethically shared to target me with ads that purport to know what I want. Now give me another drink.” The truth is, Facebook could go away tomorrow and it wouldn’t change a thing. From the recesses of my wheelhouse, I report on The Real Technology Problem. + We know there will be a lot of responsibility-taking and apology-faking. The big question is whether or not Mr. Zuckerberg’s trip to Washington will lead to any regulation-making. + Buzzfeed: Facebook has had lots of scandals. See if you can guess when its CEO actually apologized.In a statement to Congress released yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg apologized for Facebook’s role in the large-scale misuse of customer data by Cambridge Analytica. He wrote, “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”Can you guess which times Zuck explicitly said he was sorry? This is not the first time Mark Zuckerberg has apologized. But he’s also been notably silent about various other controversies and scandals befalling his company over the years.such as :  1. News Feed, which people hated when it was first launched in 2006. 2. Making Beacons, a user-tracking feature, opt-out, rather than opt-in. 3. Deceiving users about privacy back in 2011, which caused an Federal Trade Commission charge (and settlement by Facebook). 4. Doing a psychological test in which Facebook fed 700,000 users either more positive or more negative posts, in an effort to see if it had an effect on the sentiment of their own posting. 5.Violent content being   livestreamed on Facebook, including suicides and the 2017 murder of Robert Godwin, which over 1,000 people watched before the video was taken down.6. Creating a tool that “divided people.” 7. Russian meddling in the election (at first). 8. That ~whole~ Cambridge Analytica thing. 9. Taking credit for Facebook’s “systems” stopping incitement of violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar — when really it was NGOs that were reporting problematic posts.

3 CHEMICAL REACTION Chemical weapons are a bad thing. But it always seems a little strange that killing 70 people with a chemical crosses a line that killing thousands of people by more traditional means does not. It turns out that it even matters which specific chemicals were used. “If the US finds that a nerve agent such as sarin was used instead of chlorine, or if nerve agents were mixed in with chlorine, retaliatory attacks against Assad regime targets may be bigger and more severe.” + Deciding to remain in the White House to plan a response to the Syrian chemical attack, Trump has canceled his first trip to Latin America as president.The White House announced on Tuesday that Donald Trump will not travel to South America this week as planned.The president had been due to attend the Summit of the Americas in Lima and travel to Bogotá, Colombia, as well. Vice-president Mike Pence will make the trip in his stead. It would been Trump’s first visit to Latin America as president. A statement issued by the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said: “At the president’s request, the vice-president will travel in his stead. The president will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world.”Speaking to reporters at the White House, he said: “We’re making decisions as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus. And it will be met. And it will be met forcefully. When I will not say because I don’t like talking about timing.”At the White House press briefing on Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump’s “national security team thought it was best he stay in the United States”.

4 BEEN THERE Most startlingly, since 1990, 21 states have seen an increase in the death rate among people aged 20 to 55. In five states—Kentucky, Oklahoma, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming—the probability of early death among young adults rose by more than 10 percent in that time frame. Meanwhile, in New York and California, young and middle-aged people became much less likely to die in the same time period.”The authors note that opioids, alcoholism, suicide, and kidney disease—which can be brought on by diabetes and alcoholism—were the main factors leading to the increases in early deaths.” Olga Khazan on the states where people die young. + On the flipside, Miami’s Fisher Island tops the list of America’s richest zip codes.The richest zip code in America is just as exclusive and elite as the people who live there. Fisher Island, located just off the coast of Miami, is accessible only by ferry or water taxi and is a haven for the world’s richest.

5 THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE “If someone breaks into your home, you’re going to immediately call police. You’re not going to let someone break in 10 times. But with domestic violence, it’s unique in that way, that the call could represent something that’s been percolating over time.” That reality leads us to a stat that might surprise you. “In 2017, more officers were shot responding to domestic violence than any other type of firearm-related fatality.” A special report from USA Today: Domestic abusers: Dangerous for women — and lethal for cops.

6 TICK TOCK “In the last quarter of the 20th century, a delicate array of natural forces indisputably tipped – were tipped, more accurately – to transform Lyme disease from an organism that lingered quietly in the environment for millennia to what it is today: the substance of painful stories shared between mothers; a quandary for doctors who lack good diagnostic tests and clear direction; the object of rancour over studies that discount enduring infection while acknowledging persisting pain.” From moose to humans, ticks are taking a higher toll on those they bite. And the reason for their rise is all too familiar. Mary Beth Pfeiffer in Aeon: In a warming world, ticks thrive in more places than ever before, making Lyme disease the first epidemic of climate change.

7 CAR SEATS FOR DUMMIES “Accidents are the No. 1 killer of American children, and car accidents are the most common kind of lethal accidents. It makes sense that health officials focus on making car accidents less common and less dangerous.” They might want to start by taking a road trip to Sweden. NYT Upshot: Better Car Seats Are Just the Start: Road Safety Lessons From Sweden.

8 RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE Running for office means risking your career, your reputation, and your pride. But in Mexico, it also means risking your life. “It’s an average of one murder of a candidate every four or five days. We are very worried.” LA Times: Widespread killings of candidates cast shadow over Mexican elections.

9 GONE HANCOCK They’ve been silly and pretty worthless for a long time. And “as of later in April, four of the biggest credit card networks (AmEx, Discover, Mastercard and Visa) will no longer require” them. Engadget: You won’t have to sign for credit card purchases much longer. Now if I could just universally opt out of getting a paper receipt…

10 BOTTOM OF THE NEWS “LAX officials are teaming up with two technology companies — Infax and Tooshlights — to install lights and digital gadgets that keep track of how often bathrooms are cleaned and let travelers know when a stall is in use or vacant.” (And Zuck is the one getting grilled about privacy?) LAX to launch bathroom technology that lets you know when you can go. + “Carolina Reaper appears to have narrowed the arteries in the competitive eater’s brain, causing a series of thunderclap headaches.” Chili pepper eating contests might not be a great idea. MHI NextDraft