What We’re Following
National Inquiry: The publisher of the National Enquirer admitted to paying the former Playboy model Karen McDougal to kill a story about her account of an affair with Donald Trump, signing a non-prosecution agreement with New York prosecutors. The bones of the story have already been reported on since before the 2016 election, but new this time around is the link to questions of campaign-finance violation.
The president, meanwhile, has been masterfully using “executive time” to deflect media attention. On Friday at 5:18 p.m., he named Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney as acting White House chief of staff, to replace John Kelly, tweeting that Kelly was a “GREAT PATRIOT and I want to personally thank him for his service!”
Yemen: In a rebuke of the Trump administration’s stance on the ongoing war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s involvement there, the U.S. Senate voted to end U.S. support for the war. It’s a historic challenge, given the decades-long robust partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Except that it won’t actually get the U.S. out of the war, after a House maneuver. So what was the Senate hoping to achieve?
One More Thing: Why are chores, even low-lift ones like taking out the recycling, so easy for some people to procrastinate on? According to a psychology professor, these people commonly fall into two types: the task delayers and the chronic procrastinators. Which are you?
