How Lyft Is Capitalizing on Uber’s Scandals - TIME Business

How Lyft Is Capitalizing on Uber’s Scandals Posted: 28 Mar 2017 03:00 AM PDT For the companies that believe that touting their values can be a path to profits, these are heady days. Customers have not only come to expect that companies stand for something, in addition to selling whatever they’re selling, but many Americans are more attuned to expressing beliefs through how they spend. And one company posed to reap benefits from that zeitgeist is ride app company Lyft. “We’re woke. Our community is woke, and the U.S. population is woke,” Lyft President John Zimmer tells TIME, sitting in his five-year-old company’s San Francisco headquarters. “There’s an awakening … Our vote matters, our choice matters, the seat we take matters.” Many of the millions who have used ride apps live in urban markets where residents were left feeling like their votes didn’t matter in the last election and have turned to their wallets to feel a sense of agency. So when Lyft’s massive rival Uber started becoming the subject of a relentless stream of bad headlines in late January, some users started questioning Uber’s values as a company — and looking around for an alternative. “We’re not the nice guys,” Zimmer says. “We’re a better boyfriend.” Lyft did its best to demonstrate that behavior during the final weekend in January. President Trump had just issued his first controversial immigration order, which temporarily banned refugees and limited travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, and taxi drivers were striking in protest at New York City’s JFK airport on a Saturday, along with crowds of angry locals. That evening, Uber sent out a tweet noting that the company was still offering rides to the airport and there would no surge pricing, hikes that typically take effect in times of low supply and high demand. Though Uber later explained that the move was meant to let riders know they still had a way to catch their flights and to show respect for the taxi drivers — by making sure the company was not profiting off the strike, much like the company limits surge prices during disasters — Internet critics were fast to interpret the move as heartless strike-breaking behavior. A #DeleteUber hashtag started trending Saturday night into Sunday morning, as people shared screen shots of flushing the app off their phones on social media. By some counts, more than 200,000 users left Uber as January gave way to February, an exodus that Lyft employees started noticing in the form of an influx — one boosted by the fact that Zimmer and Lyft CEO Logan Green decided to make a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union that same weekend. Some of the company’s employees cautioned against the donation, suggesting that taking a political stance might alienate some users. “There was risk,” says Zimmer, whose wife is in the U.S. on a green card from Spain, “and that was part of the reason we wanted to take action. It should be more okay to stick your neck out.” The executives scheduled an email on Saturday night that would announce the donation on Sunday morning, as Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that he would maintain a position on Trump’s business advisory council despite the “unjust” order. “In our minds, there’s been a contrast in the values, there’s been a contrast in the type of business we’re building,” says Zimmer. “And so we weren’t shocked that there was a contrast. There’s been that contrast.” As media stories about the rival companies swirled that weekend, Lyft saw a 40% increase in installations of the app, the company says, and more than a 60% increase in activations of the app (meaning people put in their credit card details so they can actually hail a ride), compared to what might normally be a low single-digit increase week over week. The pop happened in New York first, says VP of operations Woody Hartman, before spreading to nearby cities like Boston and Philadelphia, and then to the West Coast, “where the ACLU investment, or donation, really resonated.” Hartman says they questioned whether they’d see defectors in more conservative markets like the areas surrounding Atlanta and Dallas, but downloads ticked up there too. Employees scrambled to alert drivers through emails and texts — both active ones and those that had lapsed— that there would be increased demand, knowing the company had one shot to deliver sufficient supply to new users if they were to keep them around. The operations team offered bonuses to get drivers on the road, and Hartman says that in major markets, Lyft was generally able to hit three-minute-or-less wait times as Sunday evening rides gave way to Monday morning commutes. That weekend marked a turning point for the company, employees say, one the company has been able to stick to in part because Uber has had so many tough PR days since then. Some Lyft employees sat in disbelief as a female engineer who left Uber wrote a viral memo alleging sexism and mismanagement at the company; as Uber weathered allegations that it had deceived local government regulators through so-called “greyballing”; as CEO Travis Kalanick was caught lashing out at an Uber driver on a dash cam and made promises that he would “grow up”; and as Uber’s president left after less than a year on the job and early investors wrote an open letter criticizing “toxic patterns” in the company’s culture. Under pressure from riders and company employees alike, Kalanick resigned from Trump’s advisory group. On a March 21 conference call, Uber board member Arianna Huffington and other company representatives said the company “must change,” as reporters repeatedly asked whether the board was considering asking Kalanick to step down. They acknowledged that relationships with many drivers are “frayed” and that the company was working to engage those workers in a “more human” way. An investigation into company practices by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm is ongoing, they said, expected to be concluded in April, when those findings will be made public and shared with the press. The ride-app market, including Lyft, has been blasted for plenty as a whole. Both Lyft and Uber have been criticized for their employment practices, including how they deal with worker status. Drivers for both companies have been accused of racially discriminating. Both have been challenged for not releasing reports on company diversity — though both say those are forthcoming. But Lyft has had a reputation as a more welcoming, friendly company than “other rideshare programs,” as one survey commissioned by the company put it, since the ride-app war began. From early days, Uber and Lyft positioned themselves as different services, even though they provide essentially the same function for customers. Lyft, founded in 2012, was all fist bumps and fluffy pink mustaches, advertising ride-sharing as a way to build community and encouraging drivers to invite riders to sit in the front seat. Uber, launched in 2009, was all black-cars and cool factor, advertising the promise that everyone deserves their own private driver, the type of employee with whom one has little obligation to chitchat. Lyft’s feel-good vibes certainly didn’t stop Uber from growing into the most valuable startup in the world, worth more than $60 billion, 10 times the valuation that Lyft reportedly is chasing. And Zimmer says it took time for Lyft to realize that a reputation for warmth wouldn’t mean much until the company’s wait times and prices were as just as good as “the other guys.” He says they are competitive on both those factors in U.S. markets now and believes cultural “contrasts are becoming more and more important.” Lyft has tried to play up those contrasts in the recent past, as in ads released late last year that featured a thinly-veiled “Ride Corp” and painted Lyft as the bright-side alternative to callous guys hatching evil plans in a board room. But Zimmer says the company is done with such attacks. “Let’s be Lyft and let’s focus on our customer,” Zimmer says. “That’s what we can control and that’s what ultimately is going to enable us to win. Honestly. That’s how we are.” On Sunday, Lyft announced a new feature called “Round Up & Donate” with a splashy ad in the New York Times. In the app, the ad explains, users will have the option to round up their fare to the nearest dollar and donate that money to a specified charity. The ad does not mention Uber by name but says “treating people better” is part of how Lyft does business. There can be big drawbacks to overtly going after No. 1 in a marketplace when a company is No. 2. “It’s often a thin line in a consumer’s mind between attacking the competitor,” says Rohit Bhargava, who teaches marketing at Georgetown University and runs a firm called the Non-Obvious Company, “and attacking them as a consumer for buying from that competitor.” That’s the kind of strategy better suited to a “very distant” No. 2 or a No. 3 trying to establish itself, he says. Lyft is still a pretty distant No. 2. After the #DeleteUber hashtag started trending, about 5% of Uber’s market share shifted to Lyft (“It may have been a little more than that,” Zimmer says), according to TXN Solutions, which tracks debit and credit card spending. Still, that meant Lyft was capturing about 20% of the ride app market to Uber’s nearly 80%. On the conference call, amid the mea culpas, the Uber representatives said the company has still experienced faster growth in the first quarter of 2017 than it did the previous year. Though Lyft now covers areas where more than 70% of the U.S. population lives, Uber reached that point about two years ago. But both have room to grow: though two-thirds of U.S. adults had heard about ride apps by the beginning of last year, according to Pew, only 15% had actually used them. Georgetown’s Bhargava believes that Uber has benefitted from what he calls passive loyalty, the kind that exists out of convenience and can quickly evaporate when a consumer is given a reason and opportunity to go elsewhere. “And the cost to switch in the case of Uber versus Lyft is pretty low,” he says. “You press a different button and you get your ride.” Zimmer tells TIME that Lyft now has 40% of the market share in multiple U.S. markets and that however ambitious it may seem, the company is serious about plans to be the top ride-app in the U.S. eventually. When asked how he would characterize the historically fraught relationship between the two companies these days, with headquarters about 15 minutes apart, the talkative Zimmer goes quiet. He pauses for a full twenty seconds. “We’re out to win,” he says. “And they’re our competition.”

What Cold War Intrigue Can Tell Us About the Trump-Russia Inquiry - New York Times

What Cold War Intrigue Can Tell Us About the Trump-Russia Inquiry
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By JAMES RISEN
MARCH 29, 2017
WASHINGTON — It began with evidence of a breach of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and has now evolved into a sprawling counterintelligence investigation to determine whether there was any coordination between members of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign staff and the Russian government, perhaps even influencing the 2016 election.
When James B. Comey, the F.B.I.director, went before Congress on March 20 and confirmed the existence of the Trump-Russia investigation, it echoed of the Cold War investigations in which the bureau and the C.I.A. searched for agents hidden in the government who had spied for Moscow.

A look back at those Cold War cases may reveal lessons for today’s investigators. Above all, those past cases show it could take years before the new investigation uncovers any answers.

It starts with an unexplained incident.
Spy hunts usually begin with an unexplained incident. In the Trump-Russia case, there was the hacking of the D.N.C.’s computers. In 1985, there was an arrest on the streets of Moscow.
In June 1985, Burton Gerber, the chief of the Soviet-East European division of the Central Intelligence Agency, was about to sit down to dinner at his home in Washington when he received devastating news. Paul Stombaugh, a C.I.A. case officer, had just been arrested by the K.G.B. in Moscow. Mr. Stombaugh had been caught while he was on a clandestine mission to meet the C.I.A.’s most important Russian spy, Adolf Tolkachev, a scientist at a secret military design facility who had been providing the Americans with top-secret information about Soviet weapons systems. Mr. Gerber knew that Mr. Stombaugh’s arrest meant that Mr. Tolkachev, an agent the C.I.A. had code-named GTVANQUISH, had certainly been arrested as well.
The arrest and subsequent execution of Mr. Tolkachev was the most damaging of a series of mysterious spy losses suffered by the C.I.A. in 1985. In fact, there was so much espionage activity between the C.I.A. and the K.G.B. that burst into public view in 1985 that it became known as the Year of the Spy.
But why?
Debate swirled inside the cloistered world of American counterintelligence. Could all the spy losses be blamed on C.I.A. incompetence? Or had they resulted from something more sinister, like a Russian mole inside the agency?
That 1985 debate has in some ways been mirrored in the public debate about the hacking of the D.N.C. during the 2016 presidential campaign. Did some hacker simply take advantage of the committee’s cyber-incompetence, or was an American political party the specific and premeditated target of Russian intelligence?
It took years for counterintelligence officials at the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to put the pieces together and finally solve the puzzle of 1985. Eventually, they realized that they had been confused because there were so many investigative threads to try to follow at once. For example, in August 1985 — just two months after Mr. Stombaugh’s arrest — a K.G.B. officer, Vitaly Yurchenko, defected to the United States, and identified a C.I.A. officer, Edward Lee Howard, as a Russian spy. Mr. Howard escaped to Russia, and Mr. Yurchenko then redefected to Moscow.
American officials were left to wonder whether Mr. Howard had been responsible for the spy losses — and if Mr. Yurchenko’s defection had been genuine or whether he had been ordered by the K.G.B. to defect in order to point them toward Mr. Howard and confuse the Americans.
Ultimately, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. discovered that it had been difficult to determine what was causing all of the losses because the Russians had more than one mole hidden in the United States government. Both Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. case officer, and Robert Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent, began spying for the Soviets in 1985. Both gave Moscow the names of Soviets working for the United States, but Mr. Ames and Mr. Hanssen didn’t give the Russians the same exact information.
It was only after Mr. Ames was arrested in 1994 that counterintelligence officials realized there had to be another mole, because Mr. Ames had not known certain things that had been compromised, including the existence of an espionage investigation of a State Department official, Felix Bloch. After Mr. Ames was arrested, the United States secretly began a new mole hunt, which ultimately led to the arrest of Mr. Hanssen in 2001.
Thus, the counterintelligence investigations into the 1985 losses lasted 16 years.
Like their Cold War predecessors, American counterintelligence investigators today face the daunting task of trying to unravel myriad business and personal connectionsbetween the Russian government and other Russian entities and people associated with the Trump campaign. It is certain to take officials time to determine which connections are the most significant to their investigation.
Counterintelligence investigations are conducted jointly by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., with support from other agencies like the National Security Agency. Today, the new Trump-Russia investigation is being conducted by a joint interagency task force, as were the spy hunts of the Cold War.

But interagency counterintelligence operations are often bogged down by competition over jurisdiction, which can lead to frustrating bureaucratic delays and sometimes missed opportunities.

Turf wars badly slowed the investigation of Mr. Hanssen and allowed him to continue to spy until long after the Cold War.
For years, the F.B.I. was convinced that the mole they were hunting was another C.I.A. officer like Mr. Ames, and refused to believe it was possible that an F.B.I. agent was a traitor.
Their fixation on the C.I.A. led investigators to focus on Brian J. Kelley, a longtime C.I.A. counterintelligence officer. The F.B.I.’s obsession with Mr. Kelley was reinforced because of a series of incredible similarities between his life and Mr. Hanssen’s.
Mr. Kelley, like Mr. Hanssen, had known about the investigation of Mr. Bloch. Mr. Kelley lived on a street in Vienna, Va., where Mr. Hanssen had once lived while he was a Russian spy, and Mr. Kelley jogged in Nottoway Park in Vienna, the same park where Mr. Hanssen arranged a series of dead-drops with the K.G.B. An F.B.I. team covertly broke into Mr. Kelley’s house and found a map of Nottoway Park with X’s marked on it, which the F.B.I. was convinced was Mr. Kelley’s spy map.
When they later confronted Mr. Kelley with the map, he asked them, “Where did you get my jogging map?” It turned out that he liked to time his runs from point to point in the park.
Defectors play a key role.
Almost every major spy case is finally solved thanks to defectors from the other side. The lengthy counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Ames was aided by a Russian spy, code-named AVENGER, who provided critical information that pointed toward Mr. Ames. The Hanssen case was also finally solved with the help of a Russian spy who brought out K.G.B. files that helped identify Mr. Hanssen.
The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. do not like to admit that they rely so heavily on defectors to solve their cases. But it is possible that the Trump-Russia case may not be cracked until the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. persuades a Russian intelligence officer to change sidesand provide incriminating information.
But in such a highly politicized case that has the potential to change history, a Russian defector will be met with enormous skepticism, even inside the counterintelligence world. Probably the closest Cold War parallel is the bitter case of Yuri Nosenko.
Mr. Nosenko was a K.G.B. officer who defected to the C.I.A. in 1964 and brought with him the answer to one of the biggest mysteries of modern times: Was the Soviet Union responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? At the time, the C.I.A. was not certain, since Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to Russia and then returned to the United States before killing Mr. Kennedy.
Mr. Nosenko told the C.I.A. that the K.G.B. was not behind the Kennedy assassination. In fact, he said that the K.G.B. had been so alarmed after the Kennedy assassination that it searched its own files and could not find any evidence that Mr. Oswald had ever worked for the K.G.B.
But C.I.A. officials, led by the counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, were convinced that Mr. Nosenko was a double agent sent by Moscow to muddy the waters. An earlier K.G.B. defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, had convinced Mr. Angleton that every K.G.B. defector after him would be a double agent. As a result, Mr. Nosenko was held incommunicado for three years in a secret prison at “the Farm,” the C.I.A.’s training center at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Va. After the C.I.A. finally realized Mr. Nosenko was telling the truth, he was released in 1967, given $80,000 by the C.I.A. and resettled under a new name.

It ends with damage assessments, political posturing and untold secrets.
Even after an arrest is made, counterintelligence officials can spend several more years trying to determine exactly how much damage was inflicted. Often that damage assessment takes on a political tinge, because officials want to either inflate the damage or play it down, depending on what an official or an agency or a department stands to win or lose. That will almost certainly be true with the Trump-Russia investigation.

Frequently, the damage assessment reports remain classified, and the American public is never told how the story really ends.


NYT

Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia - Washinton Post

Trump administration sought to block Sally Yates from testifying to Congress on Russia

By Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous March 28 at 7:28 PM 

The Trump administration sought to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying in the House investigation of possible links between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s campaign, according to letters provided to The Washington Post. The effort to keep Yates from testifying has further angered Democrats, who have accused Republicans of trying to damage the inquiry. 

According to the letters, the Justice Department notified Yates earlier this month that the administration considers her possible testimony — including on the ouster of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for his contacts with the Russian ambassador — to be off-limits in a congressional hearing because the topics are covered by attorney-client privilege or the presidential communication privilege.

[Read the letters on Sally Yates testifying before Congress]

The issue of Yates’s testimony adds to the political controversy surrounding the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in last year’s election and any possible coordination between Trump associates and Moscow.

David O’Neil, an attorney for Yates, met at the Justice Department to discuss the issue with government officials on Thursday. At the meeting, O’Neil presented a letter in which he said the Justice Department had “advised” him that Yates’s official communications on issues of interest to the House panel are “client confidences” that cannot be disclosed without written consent. O’Neil challenged that interpretation as “overbroad” in the letter.

O’Neil, the Justice Department responded with another objection: that Yates’s communications with the White House are probably covered by “presidential communications privilege,” and referred him to the White House.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

O’Neil then wrote to White House Counsel Donald McGahn, saying that he believed any privilege had been waived as a result of past White House statements and that Yates planned to testify unless he heard back from McGahn.

But that same day, the hearing, which also would have included former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., was canceled by the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and any White House decision on Yates’s testimony became moot.

In his Tuesday briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer said that the White House did not weigh in on whether Yates could testify. “To suggest in any way, shape or form that we stood in the way of that is 100 percent false,” he said.

Nunes has said he canceled the hearing to first hear from FBI Director James B. Comey in a classified setting. That session was also canceled.

Democrats charge that Nunes has aligned himself too closely with the White House to conduct an independent probe.

Then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates at the Justice Department on May 15, 2015. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

“You see the unraveling of this committee happening overnight for no good reason,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a committee member. “We have a responsibility to do this investigation.”

O’Neil’s meeting at the Justice Department and the exchange of letters came to light as the House GOP leadership continued to stand by Nunes. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) rejected demands that Nunes recuse himself. Nunes said Tuesday that he had no plans to step aside.

Yates was the deputy attorney general in the final years of the Obama administration and served as the acting attorney general in the first days of the Trump administration.

Trump fired Yates in January after she ordered Justice Department lawyers not to defend his first immigration order temporarily banning entry to the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world.

As acting attorney general, Yates played a key part in the investigation surrounding Flynn, who was ousted after revelations that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Yates and Brennan had made clear to government officials by Thursday that their testimony to the committee would probably contradict some statements that White House officials had made, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

O’Neil and Ken Wainstein, a lawyer for Brennan, declined to comment.

During his press briefing Tuesday, Spicer said of Yates: “I hope she testifies. I look forward to it.’’

Spicer said the White House did not seek to have the House hearing canceled.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the panel was aware that Yates “sought permission to testify from the White House. Whether the White House’s desire to avoid a public claim of executive privilege to keep her from providing the full truth on what happened contributed to the decision to cancel today’s hearing, we do not know. But we would urge that the open hearing be rescheduled without delay and that Ms. Yates be permitted to testify freely and openly.’’

[Chairman and partisan: The dual roles of Devin Nunes raise questions about House investigation]

In January, Yates warned McGahn that statements White House officials, including Vice President Pence, had made about Flynn’s contact with the ambassador were incorrect and could therefore expose the national security adviser to future blackmail by the Russians.

In his March 23 letter — addressed to acting assistant attorney general Samuel Ramer — O’Neil noted that Yates was willing to testify and that she would avoid discussing classified information and details that could compromise investigations. The correspondence was later shared with the House Intelligence Committee.

O’Neil went on to memorialize the government’s position:

“The Department of Justice has advised that it believes there are further constraints on the testimony Ms. Yates may provide at the [House Intelligence Committee] hearing. Generally, we understand that the department takes the position that all information Ms. Yates received or actions she took in her capacity as Deputy Attorney General and acting Attorney General are client confidences that she may not disclose absent written consent of the department,’’ he wrote.

O’Neil continued: “We believe that the department’s position in this regard is overbroad, incorrect, and inconsistent with the department’s historical approach to the congressional testimony of current and former officials.

“In particular, we believe that Ms. Yates should not be obligated to refuse to provide nonclassified facts about the department’s notification to the White House of concerns about the conduct of a senior official. Requiring Ms. Yates to refuse to provide such information is particularly untenable given that multiple senior administration officials have publicly described the same events.’’

The following day, Scott Schools, a senior Justice Department lawyer, replied to O’Neil, writing that Yates’s conversations with the White House “are likely covered by the presidential communications privilege and possibly the deliberative process privilege. The president owns those privileges. Therefore, to the extent Ms. Yates needs consent to disclose the details of those communications to [the intelligence panel], she needs to consult with the White House. She need not obtain separate consent from the department.’’

That letter, in essence, marked Justice Department officials backing away from their earlier strictures, saying that although they thought executive privilege probably applied to Yates’s discussions, that was a conversation she would have to have with lawyers at the White House.

In response, O’Neil sent a letter Friday to McGahn, the White House counsel, saying that any claim of privilege “has been waived as a result of the multiple public comments of current senior White House officials describing the January 2017 communications. Nevertheless, I am advising the White House of Ms. Yates’ intention to provide information.’’

He closed the letter by saying that if he did not hear back from the White House by 10 a.m. Monday, he would assume that it “does not exert executive privilege over these matters with respect to the hearings or other settings.’’

The cancellation of the hearing made O’Neil’s deadline moot, although Spicer said the lack of a response to the lawyer’s letter showed the administration had no problem with Yates testifying.

Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China - New York Times

Mysterious Buyer of Trump’s Childhood Home Said to Be From China

By SARAH MASLIN NIR
MARCH 28, 2017
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.

But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.

“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.
They first arrived in late January, caravans of black Escalades driving along a small street in Jamaica Estates, an upscale neighborhood in Queens, and stopping in front of a modest Tudor-style house that had just been sold at auction: the home where President Trump lived as a boy. Out stepped a stream of people in business suits, according to a neighbor, all speaking Chinese.
The visits spiked between the auction and the closing of the sale last week, according to the neighbor, who did not want to be identified because of concerns about her privacy. It was revealed last week that the home had been bought by Trump Birth House, a limited liability company that obscured the identity of the person behind it.

But while the buyer’s identity remained unknown, a person with knowledge of the deal said that the new owner, who spent over $2 million for the childhood home of the current president of the United States, is a woman from China.

“Why is there an influx of Chinese people interested in this house, of all people?” the neighbor said she recalled wondering. “What do they want?”
The house on Wareham Place has become another curiosity in the vast orbit of properties connected to Mr. Trump, even though he last lived in the five-bedroom home, built by his father, Fred C. Trump, when he was 4. The house’s intrigue lies not just in the price it fetched in an auction by Paramount Realty USA — $2.14 million, more than double the price of comparable houses in the area — but also in the mystery surrounding the buyer. She remains unknown, shrouded behind the limited liability company.


A thin trail of documents associated with the sale led first to a second-story office on Main Street in Flushing, Queens, of Michael X. Tang, a lawyer who represents Trump Birth House. In the cramped and bustling office, which, according to its website, specializes in facilitating Chinese purchases of American real estate, a woman at a desk welcomed visitors.
“Oh, about the Trump house,” she said. She continued: Mr. Tang declined to comment.
Documents show that Mr. Tang was also the lawyer for a seemingly unrelated transaction on a palatial home in Old Westbury, N.Y., which sold for more than $3.6 million in 2014 to a person named Jiying Wei. The redbrick mansion, tucked at the end of a cul-de-sac and abutted by a private tennis court, is a far cry from the modest butter-colored childhood home of Mr. Trump. But, according to a person with knowledge of the sale, the mansion’s owner is a relative of the woman from China who bought the Trump family home.
Standing in the collonaded entryway of her home a few doors down in Old Westbury, a neighbor, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, deepened the mystery: The only person who lives in the mansion, she said, is the family’s son, a local college student; the rest of the family lives in China.
The trail dead-ended at the cul-de-sac: The house was empty and the owner could not be reached.
“I did have some expectation that the purchaser would be a huge Trump supporter from within America,” Misha Haghani, principal of Paramount Realty USA, said of the Jamaica Estates home. He declined to reveal the identity of the buyer. “But it is entirely possible that the purchaser is a huge Trump supporter from outside of America,” he said.
Cathy Han, a real estate agent in New York who specializes in marketing high-end properties to Chinese buyers — including apartments in Trump-owned buildings — said she was not surprised that the home had been purchased by a Chinese buyer.
“When I saw it was Trump’s birth house property for sale, I knew immediately it would get a lot of attention from Chinese buyers,” Ms. Han said. “I know he is a controversial figure in the States, but among Chinese people, Trump is a very popular kind of character in China.”
She said the image that Mr. Trump liked to promote of himself as a successful businessman resonated in China.
“The whole thing about Trump is he has no experience in politics, but now he is the president of the U.S.A.,” she said. “The story is like a movie: It’s kind of inspiring, in a way, that a person can rise up to that position. And I think most Chinese people kind of respect that journey.”
The home had been owned by Isaac Kestenberg, purchased with his wife, Claudia, in 2008 for $782,500. On Election Day last year, as Mr. Trump’s ascendancy seemed possible, Michael Davis, a real estate investor, made an offer on the house, he said, ultimately purchasing it for about $1.4 million. Neither Mr. Kestenberg nor Mr. Davis knows who bought it this time, they said.

The sale to Trump Birth House closed on March 23. “I hope that the broader economy has as much lift from the president’s policies as the president’s childhood home got,” Mr. Davis said.

On Tuesday, rain pelted the crocuses popping up outside the home on Wareham Place. The house appeared to have been emptied. Around 1 p.m. a worker arrived in a National Grid van.
The new owner couldn’t be found, he said, so he had come to turn off the power.
Eli Rosenberg and Nate Schweber contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

The Stock Market Barely Recovered After Losses From the GOP’s Health Care Failure - TIME Business

The Stock Market Barely Recovered After Losses From the GOP’s Health Care Failure Posted: 27 Mar 2017 02:24 PM PDT (NEW YORK) — Worries that Washington may not be able to help businesses as much as once thought knocked stock indexes down hard early Monday, but they clawed back most of their losses and ended the day mixed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.39 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,341.59 for its seventh drop in the last eight days. The Dow Jones industrial average sank 45.74, or 0.2 percent, to 20,550.98, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 11.64, or 0.2 percent, to 5,840.37. When trading opened for the day, it looked as if losses would be much worse. The S&P 500 sank from the start and was down as much as 0.9 percent. The weakness followed last week’s failure by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, something they’ve been pledging to do for years, which raised doubts that Washington can push through promises to help businesses. Investors have been anticipating that President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress will cut taxes, loosen regulations for companies and institute other corporate-friendly policies. Indexes recovered most of their losses in the afternoon, largely thanks to gains in hospital and other health care stocks. Tax cuts, deregulation and other business-friendly moves could still happen, but even if they don’t, the stock market has several pillars of support, said John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Funds Management. “Trump lucked out when he got elected president, because it was just as earnings were coming out of a two-year slumber,” he said. “I think it’s been as much, if not more, about earnings as it’s been him” behind the 9.4 percent rise for the S&P 500 since Election Day. An improving economy is translating into bigger profits for businesses, which are set to report their first-quarter results in the coming weeks. The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is moving very slowly in raising interest rates and is loath to apply the brakes to the economy too quickly. “Investors have to acknowledge that a 5 percent correction can happen at any time, and the fact that we haven’t had a 1 percent down day for so long is extraordinary,” Manley said. “But the things that are usually responsible for a major market decline just don’t seem to be in place.” The S&P 500 has lost 1 percent in a day just once since mid-October. Interest rates fell Monday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 2.37 percent from 2.41 percent late Friday. Just a couple weeks ago, it was above 2.60 percent. Bank stocks have tracked the movements of Treasury yields recently, because higher interest rates would allow them to charge more for loans and reap bigger profits. Investors also expected financial companies to be some of the biggest beneficiaries of easier regulations with a Republican-led White House. Financial stocks in the S&P 500 dropped 0.5 percent, one of the larger losses among the 11 sectors that make up the index. Morgan Stanley fell 88 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $41.58, and Capital One Financial lost $1.67, or 2 percent, to $82.13. Hospital stocks were among the strongest performers. The Republican health care plan would have resulted in 24 million additional uninsured people in a decade, according to a tally by the Congressional Budget Office. And hospitals take care of patients, whether they’re insured or not. HCA Holdings jumped $4.45, or 5.2 percent, to $90.49 for the biggest gain in the S&P 500. Universal Health Services rose $4.08, or 3.3 percent, to $125.97. Also demonstrating the swing from nervousness in the morning to a more measured mood in the afternoon was the VIX index, which tracks how much traders are paying to protect against upcoming drops in the S&P 500. Early Monday, the VIX jumped nearly 17 percent and was close to its highest level since mid-November. It calmed through the day and was down by the afternoon. The price of gold rose $7.20 to settle at $1,255.70 an ounce. Silver rose 36 cents to $18.11 per ounce. Copper was close to flat at $2.63 per pound. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 24 cents to settle at $47.73 per barrel. Brent crude, used to price international oils, fell 5 cents to $50.57 a barrel. Natural gas fell 2 cents to $3.05 per 1,000 cubic feet, wholesale gasoline rose a penny to $1.62 per gallon and heating oil was close to flat at $1.50 per gallon. The dollar fell to 110.57 Japanese yen from 110.80 late Friday. The euro rose to $1.0868 from $1.0808, and the British pound rose to $1.2566 from $1.2500. Stocks were weak around the world. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 1.4 percent, South Korea’s Kospi index lost 0.6 percent and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 0.7 percent. In Europe, the German DAX lost 0.6 percent, the French CAC 40 fell 0.1 percent and the FTSE 100 in London dropped 0.6 percent.

Sean Spicer Tells A Grown Woman To Stop Shaking Her Head - Huffington Post

Sean Spicer Tells A Grown Woman To Stop Shaking Her Head
😐
 29/03/2017 5:23 AM AEDT | Updated 11 hours ago
* 
Paige Lavender

Senior Politics Editor, The Huffington Post



White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday demanded a journalist stop shaking her head while he answered a question during the daily press briefing.
April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked Spicer how the administration would work to revamp its image amid investigations of potential ties to Russia, mentioning a report that Trump officials tried to stop former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying on links between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday demanded a journalist stop shaking her head while he answered a question during the daily press briefing.
April Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, asked Spicer how the administration would work to revamp its image amid investigations of potential ties to Russia, mentioning a report that Trump officials tried to stop former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying on links between Trump’s campaign staff and Russian officials.
Spicer accused Ryan of having an agenda, arguing “if the president puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that’s a Russian connection.”
“It seems like you’re hell-bent on trying to make sure that whatever image you want to tell about this White House stays,” Spicer argued later.
Ryan interrupted to further question Spicer, and as their exchange continued, the press secretary ordered Ryan to stop shaking her head while they talked.
Ryan tweeted after the briefing ended:
She also appeared on MSNBC to discuss the moment, saying “you cannot ignore as a reporter” the issues she questioned Spicer about.
“Sean is being the White House press secretary, talking about and trying to make this administration look better than what it does right now, and unfortunately I was road kill today,” Ryan said.

‘Fearless Girl’ of Wall Street Faces Uncertain Future - TIME Business

‘Fearless Girl’ of Wall Street Faces Uncertain Future Posted: 26 Mar 2017 01:44 PM PDT NEW YORK — Should the “Fearless Girl” stand up to Wall Street’s charging bull forever? That’s the question New York City officials are facing after a statue of a ponytailed girl in a windblown dress went up in front of the bronze bull early this month and immediately became a tourist draw and internet sensation. What was intended as a temporary display to encourage corporations to put more women on their boards is now getting a second look in light of its popularity, which has spawned an online petition seeking to keep it. But does keeping the girl past her scheduled April 2 deadline forever alter the meaning of the bull? After all, the 11-foot-tall, 7,100-pound bull has been hugely popular in its own right; it was placed in a lower Manhattan traffic median in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash as a symbol of Americans’ financial resilience and can-do spirit. Some fans of the bronze girl already see the bull much differently. “The bull represents men and power,” says Cristina Pogorevici, 18, a student from Bucharest, Romania, who visited the statues this past week. “So she is a message of women’s power and things that are changing in the world right now.” Holli Sargeant, 20, a visitor from Queensland, Australia, says the 4-foot-tall, 250-pound bronze girl “is standing up against something and we see her as powerful image. She represents all the young women in the world that want to make a difference.” Such shifting perceptions of the bull — from American hero to villain of sorts — outrage bull sculptor Arturo De Modica, who wants the girl gone. He dismissed Kristen Visbal’s statue as nothing more than an “an advertising trick,” noting the bronze was a marketing effort on the eve of the March 8 International Women’s Day by Boston-based State Street Global Advisors and its New York advertising firm, McCann. As for his bull, “I put it there for art,” the Italian-born sculptor told MarketWatch, which first reported his anger. “My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.” The girl’s sculptor has no hostile feelings toward the bull. “I love Charging Bull!” Visbal told The Associated Press on Sunday, speaking from her home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. “But women are here, and we’re here to stay.” She was commissioned to create a 36-inch-tall girl with hands on hips and chin up. “Then we thought, this is a really big bull and we should increase the height to 50 inches,” she said. “But I made sure to keep her features soft; she’s not defiant, she’s brave, proud and strong, not belligerent.” The sculptor based her work on two Delaware children — a friend’s daughter she said had “great style and a great stance, and I told her to pretend she was facing a bull.” The second was a “beautiful Latina girl, so everyone could relate to the Fearless Girl.” Visbal, who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, while her American father was in the foreign service, is to be honored Monday along with State Street on the steps of New York’s City Hall by a group of prominent bipartisan women who are asking that the statue be made permanent. A spokesman for New York City, which controls public art in the area, did not say when a decision would be made. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said only that he would try to prolong the girl’s presence. David Levi Strauss of Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, known for his writings about the impact of art on society and politics, says he is excited by the dynamics the girl statue has brought to the space and agrees the overall meaning has shifted. “The girl has changed the meaning of the bull forever,” he says. “With public art like this, you never know what’s going to happen; it’s a Rorschach test onto which people are projecting their own opinions and feelings.” A similar point-counterpoint was played out at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, erected in 1982 in Washington, with three soldiers in bronze added two years later, seemingly interacting with the stark marble wall bearing the names of the dead. The result prompted debate; some said the soldiers infused life onto the wall, while protesters blasted the statue as a tasteless intrusion. When it comes to the girl facing the bull, Strauss said, “the bull’s stature diminishes. She’s the individual standing up to the beast of power. … She’s frozen in a sort of dream of winning, and that’s what appeals to people. She’s irresistible.”

Syrians in Turkey - New York Times

Syrians in Turkey: The Human Smuggler and the Young Refugee

By
PATRICK KINGSLEY
MARCH 24, 2017
After earning $800,000 in 2015 by sneaking migrants out of Turkey, a smuggler says he has left the guilt and complications of his business behind — mostly. And a Syrian refugee boy, homeless and out of school, must keep roaming the country to find farm work and help his family survive. This is the third part in the State of Emergency series, in which our correspondent takes us behind the scenes of today’s Turkey, a nation in crisis.
Abu Mohammed is bored. He estimates that two years ago he earned more than $800,000 from smuggling thousands of migrants into Greece from Turkey. He rented an office in Aksaray, an area of Istanbul popular with Syrians, to serve as his headquarters. At one point, he had more than 80,000 missed calls from prospective customers.

Today, his phone doesn’t ring so often. He no longer rents the office. Occasionally he gazes at it from the street below.
Migration between Turkey and Greece has fallen by more than 95 percent since the peak of the refugee crisis in late 2015. And with it, Abu Mohammed’s business has collapsed.
Since early 2016, Balkan countries have made it harder for people to migrate through Europe, lowering the demand for Abu Mohammed’s services. Turkey has also made it harder for smugglers to work, detaining men like Abu Mohammed for several weeks last year. For this article, he agreed to talk only if his face was obscured in photographs and he was identified by his nickname alone.

I have interviewed more than a dozen smugglers on three continents. Like most of them, Abu Mohammed is more complex than journalists and politicians usually suggest in their portrayal of the human-smuggling industry.

He grew up in Syria, and became a surgeon’s assistant — someone who once saved lives instead of, as some say, endangering them. He turned to smuggling only once he had fled to Turkey, after he himself almost drowned trying to reach Europe as a passenger. Later, his own passengers were not simply his customers: They included relatives, and even his young son. Sending them to sea, he says, was stressful and sometimes frightening.

It was also shameful, he says. Though he acknowledges a quiet pride in his role in such an extraordinary flow of people, which was “not an ordinary thing,” it’s now not something he wants to be associated with. “It’s a dirty business,” he says. “It’s hard to find someone who’s honest in this work.”
Like many smugglers, Abu Mohammed saw himself as the one honest broker among a crowd of liars — acknowledging the wider moral problems within his industry, but skirting his own personal agency. Today, he says he avoids the places where he used to close his deals.

We stroll through Aksaray, Istanbul’s main smuggling hub, and Abu Mohammed points out cafes where he no longer meets clients. Shops that no longer sell life jackets. A small park where refugees no longer sleep rough.
Life is slower for Abu Mohammed now, but it is less stressful. He says he does not miss the late-night calls from panicked customers, who sometimes phoned him from the sea itself. In fact, it is Abu Mohammed who now badgers his onetime clients. Of the roughly $800,000 he said he earned in 2015, around a quarter has yet to be paid by refugees who promised to pay once they reached Europe.

Still, he has made enough to change jobs for the third time in his life. Now he plans to use his profits to buy a cafe. He has started scouting potential places.
But does a smuggler ever really leave smuggling? A few days after we met, Turkish politicians threatened to encourage a new wave of migrants to reach Europe — and I wondered if Abu Mohammed thought he might soon be back in business.

If Turkey can “at least turn a blind eye to those who are trying to get smuggled,” he replied, “we will take care of the rest.” He giggled as he said it.

Kamal Shoumali contributed reporting.

Donald Trump's team 'wiping their electronic devices' in case they have to give evidence - Independent

Donald Trump's team 'wiping their electronic devices' in case they have to give evidence
Allegations come just weeks after government lawyers ordered president’s aides to preserve materials that could be connected to Russian interference in 2016 election
* Lucy Pasha-Robinson

White House officials and members of Donald Trump’s transition team are reportedly “purging” their electronic devices to avoid being compromised by subpoenas, it has been claimed.
The accusation comes just weeks after government lawyers ordered the President’s aides to preserve any materials that could be connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
One legal expert told MSNBC - the channel that first reported the allegations based on testimony from an inside source - there could be “legal ramifications” for staff who destroyed crucial evidence relating to ongoing investigations.
The Trump administration is currently under FBI investigation for possible collusion between Russian operatives and presidential aides.
The House Intelligence Committee is also investigating alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia based on a series of allegations that pre-date the election, including Mr Trump publicly urging Russia to hack Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's emails.
Mr Trump’s former election campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was accused of once working to further the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is now a leading focus of the investigation by American intelligence.
Mr Manafort volunteered to testify as part of the investigation and he is expected to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee, the panel’s chairman has said.
It came as a former National Security Agency (NSA) analystwarned the President could be forced to leave office over the investigations.
John Schindler, a security expert and former counterintelligence officer, said that if the US President was to face an indictment over allegations his campaign team colluded with Russia to disrupt the presidential election, it could put an end to his presidency.
Speaking to CBC radio, Mr Schindler said: "If, not just people around him, but the president himself is facing possible indictment down the road, that could be a game changer. He could be removed from office for that, whether he wants to be or not."

Trump Is Dragging Us Into Another War... And No One Is Talking About It - Huffington Post

Trump Is Dragging Us Into Another War... And No One Is Talking About It

Quietly, while Americans have been focused on the ongoing drama over repealing the Affordable Care Act and the new revelations about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Trump has been busy dramatically expanding the American troop presence inside Syria. And virtually no one in Washington has noticed. Americans have a right to know what Trump is planning and whether this will lead to an Iraq-style occupation of Syria for years to come.

Without any official notification, Trump sent 500 new American troops into Syria, ostensibly to take part in the upcoming assault on the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. News reports suggest this deployment may just be the tip of the iceberg, with some saying that the plan is for hundreds more American troops to be added to the fight in the coming weeks. No one actually knows how many troops are inside Syria now, because the administration has largely tried to keep the build-up a secret.

This deployment poses a significant, potentially catastrophic risk for the United States and the future of Syria and the Middle East. Congress cannot be silent on this matter. I have long been against putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria—I opposed the idea during the Obama administration and I oppose it now, because I believe we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the Iraq War if we try to force political stability simply through the barrel of a gun. I would urge my colleagues who have not focused on the question of U.S. troop presence in Syria to, at the very least, demand the administration answer two basic questions before signing off on the money to fund this dangerous escalation.

First, what is our mission and what is our exit strategy?

The public explanation of the military escalation has been to prepare for the assault on Raqqa. Taking Raqqa is a necessary and long-desired objective. The problem lies in making U.S. troops an indispensible part of the invasion force, which likely will require us to stay and become an indispensible part of the occupation force as well. This is what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I see no reason why we wouldn’t face the same trap in Syria. But if this is not the administration’s plan, they should be explicit about this. They should assure Congress and the American public that we are in Syria simply until Raqqa falls, and no longer.

There are other important questions to ask. Recently, Trump sent a small group of Special Forces operators to Manbij to keep the peace between Kurdish and Turkish-backed forces fighting for control of this remote section of northern Syria. This suggests our military mission is much broader—and more complicated—than simply helping to retake Raqqa.

Many Syria experts agree that once Raqqa is taken from ISIS, the fighting is just beginning. The contest then begins between the various proxy forces (Saudi, Iranian, Russian, Turkish, Kurdish) over who ultimately controls the city. Will U.S. forces leave at that point, or does Trump’s plan envision that we will stay to mediate future control of large portions of the battlespace? This would be a mirror of Iraq, in which thousands of Americans died trying to figure out the post-Saddam settlement of accounts between the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds. And it could result in just as much American bloodshed.

Second, do we have a political strategy or just a military strategy?

This past Thursday, I joined other members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee for lunch with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. I was glad that Tillerson was willing to open the doors of the State Department to a bipartisan group of Senators, and our discussion was honest and frank. In the meeting, Tillerson showed admirable candor in admitting that the military strategy was far ahead of the diplomatic strategy in Syria.

But this was actually a dramatic understatement. Unless a secret plan exists that Trump is keeping from U.S. Senators and his own Secretary of State, there is absolutely no plan for who controls post-ISIS Raqqa, or post-Assad Syria.

The obstacles to a political plan for the future of Raqqa increase by the week. U.S. military leaders want to rely on Kurdish and Arab fighters to retake Raqqa, but hope that the Kurds will then abandon the city after they lose hundreds or thousands of their soldiers in the assault. Even if this fantasy were to become reality, it would come at a price – the Kurds would expect something in return for their effort. And today, we have no idea how to execute this two-step without having peace undermined by the Turks, who remain violently opposed to giving territory the Kurds. To add complications, the Russian and Iranian-backed forces, sitting just outside Raqqa today, are not going to allow for a U.S.-backed Arab or Arab/Kurdish government to be peacefully installed inside the city. They will want a piece of the action, and we have no credible plan to accommodate them today.

Without a political plan for the future of Raqqa, a military plan is practically useless. Yes, getting ISIS out of Raqqa is a victory in and of itself, but if we set into motion a series of events that simply prolongs the broader conflict, ISIS will easily pick up the pieces and use the ongoing turmoil to regroup and reemerge. We should have learned in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that a military victory without a plan for what comes next is really not a victory at all. But unbelievably, we seem on the verge of making this mistake again, because of (understandable) enthusiasm for taking the fight to a vicious enemy.

I want ISIS gone. I want them destroyed.  But I want it done the right way. I do not want to Americans to die and billions of dollars to be wasted in a war that makes the same mistakes as the disastrous American invasion of Iraq. And I certainly don’t want the war to start in secret, without Congress even noticing that it’s starting. Congress needs to get in the game and start asking questions - before it’s too late.

Trump Son-in-Law Jared Kushner to Oversee Government Overhaul - NBC News

NEWS MAR 27 2017, 3:51 AM ET
Trump Son-in-Law Jared Kushner to Oversee Government Overhaul
by PETER ALEXANDER  and ALEX JOHNSON
President Donald Trump will name his son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, to lead a new office responsible for streamlining and overhauling the federal government on Monday, the White House told NBC News on Sunday night.


Jared Kushner, senior adviser to President Donald Trump, will lead a new office seeking to streamline the federal government, the White House confirmed. Ron Sachs-Pool/Getty Images / Getty Images
"All Americans, regardless of their political views, can recognize that government stagnation has hindered our ability to properly function, often creating widespread congestion and leading to cost overruns and delays," according to a statement issued Sunday in Trump's name.
"I promised the American people I would produce results, and apply my 'ahead of schedule, under budget' mentality to the government," the statement said.
Plans for the new structure, to be called the White House Office of American Innovation, were first reported Sunday by The Washington Post. The Post reported that Trump's chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, a highly controversial figure, would have no formal role in the operation.
"We should have excellence in government," Kushner told The Post in an interview Sunday. "The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens."
Kushner, 36, is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka. He was an influential figure in the presidential campaign and was appointed as a senior adviser to the new president in January.
Before his White House appointment in January, Kushner was a successful real estate developer in New York City and owner of The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper.
Kushner divested himself of many of his businesses and worked closely with the Office of Government Ethics to ensure that he wouldn't run afoul of federal ethics regulations, according to emails obtained last month by MSNBC.
The Associated Press reported that National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, senior counselor to the president for economic initiatives and deputy national security adviser, Chris Liddell, assistant to the president for strategic initiatives, and Reed Cordish, assistant to the president for intragovernmental and technology initiatives would also be involved in the effort.
Federal anti-nepotism laws prevent relatives from being appointed to government positions. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel recently said the president's "special hiring authority" allowed him to appoint Kushner to the West Wing staff.

Donald Trump printed out made-up £300bn Nato invoice and handed it to Angela Merkel

Donald Trump printed out made-up £300bn Nato invoice and handed it to Angela Merkel
President estimated Germany’s underspend on alliance over the past 12 years, then added interest
 Angela Merkel will reportedly ignore Donald Trump’s attempts to extricate £300bn from Germany for what he deems to be owed contributions to Nato.
The US President is said to have had an “invoice” printed out outlining the sum estimated by his aides as covering Germany’s unpaid contributions for defence.
Said to be presented during private talks in Washington, the move has been met with criticism from German and Nato officials.
While the figure presented to the Germans was not revealed by either side, Nato countries pledged in 2014 to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence, something only a handful of nations – including the UK, Greece, Poland and Estonia – currently do.
But the bill has been backdated even further to 2002, the year Mrs Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, pledged to spend more on defence.
Mr Trump reportedly instructed aides to calculate how much German spending fell below two per cent over the past 12 years, then added interest.
Estimates suggest the total came to £300bn, with official figures citing the shortfall to be around £250bn plus £50bn in interest added on.
The Times quoted a German government minister as saying the move was “outrageous”.
The unnamed minister said: “The concept behind putting out such demands is to intimidate the other side, but the Chancellor took it calmly and will not respond to such provocations.”
And the paper quoted a source close to Mrs Merkel saying she has “ignored the provocation”.
The bill follows a disastrous meeting between the pair earlier this month, characterised by Mr Trump’s refusal to shake his peer’s hand.
A day after the meeting, Mr Trump tweeted: “Despite what you have heard from the FAKE NEWS, I had a GREAT meeting with the Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Nevertheless, Germany owes ... vast sums of money to NATO & the United States must be paid more for the powerful, and very expensive, defense it provides to Germany!”
In response to the claims, German defence minister Ursula Von der Leyen rejected the notion the European nation owed the US or Nato.
She issued a statement saying: “There is no debt account at Nato.

Art of the deal - which is not working for Trump in Washington - Huffington Post

Art Of The Ordeal
Donald Trump discovers that in Washington, the construction company doesn't work for you.
 24/03/2017 8:48 AM AEDT | Updated 25/03/2017 8:34 AM AEDT
WASHINGTON ― If this was The Art of the Deal in action, then Donald Trump needs to write a new book.
In his first, and therefore crucial, foray into presidential negotiating, the prince of New York real estate failed miserably because he was dealing with a world and a way of doing things he never faced when he was buying and building.
In Washington, legislating, and leading the country as president, require more than simply bullying people or buying them off with borrowed cash. As a result, Trump had to postpone a vote Friday on the GOP health care plan he tried to bully through Congress, after it became clear that the legislation could not secure enough votes.

As a harbinger of the future, the situation could not have been more devastating.
“At the end of the day, this isn’t a dictatorship,” Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, said as the bill was sliding to oblivion. He sounded resigned to the reality of legislating in a democracy. Whether his boss agrees – and learns – is the key question.
WASHINGTON ― If this was The Art of the Deal in action, then Donald Trump needs to write a new book.
In his first, and therefore crucial, foray into presidential negotiating, the prince of New York real estate failed miserably because he was dealing with a world and a way of doing things he never faced when he was buying and building.
entry_paragraph_1_ad

In Washington, legislating, and leading the country as president, require more than simply bullying people or buying them off with borrowed cash. As a result, Trump had to postpone a vote Friday on the GOP health care plan he tried to bully through Congress, after it became clear that the legislation could not secure enough votes.
As a harbinger of the future, the situation could not have been more devastating.
“At the end of the day, this isn’t a dictatorship,” Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, said as the bill was sliding to oblivion. He sounded resigned to the reality of legislating in a democracy. Whether his boss agrees – and learns – is the key question.

Among other things, President Trump has to learn that in Washington, you can’t simply build your own design. You have to build what other people want. Your job is to find consensus and entice others – many others ― into thinking that your vision is theirs. Projects get “built” here more with rewards than threats. It is not a brutal game of “the last man standing.” It’s “we’re all in this together,” even when the “we” is just your own party.
entry_paragraph_4_ad

This first crash-and-burn effort at legislating is not a good sign. Presidencies often are defined, for better or worse, by their first big legislative move. Like first impressions in everyday life, they count bigly, and they establish political dynamics that can last.
And with the rise and aging of the baby boomers, those defining initial moves often have tended in recent decades to focus on health care and pensions. The inter-generational battle is inferred, but explosive.
In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton got his new presidency off on the wrong foot on health care. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and a small group of aides developed a sweeping plan behind closed doors and then sprung it on the Congress. It was a political disaster, and led directly to the GOP takeover of the House, and the rise of a proto-tea party led by Newt Gingrich.
President George W. Bush decided at the start of his second (and in some ways first domestic) term in 2005 to propose a fundamental change to Social Security: the creation of private accounts rather than government payments. Democrats hammered him for it, and won back the House and Senate the next year.
President Barack Obama followed the pattern. He placed his major bet early in his first term in 2009-2010 on what came to be known as Obamacare. He pushed it through Congress with only Democratic votes – and greatly expanded coverage – but it cost his party massively in the 2010 midterm elections and, though he won re-election, it limited his reach from then on.
Clinton and Bush, both former governors, and Obama, essentially a novice in 2009, all learned the hard way that the presidency is indeed a powerful job, but that in oddly paradoxical ways, the occupant of the Oval Office has less power than everyone else in Washington when it comes to actually enacting legislation.
“Presidential power is the power to persuade,” the late Harvard professor Richard Neustadt wrote in what is still considered the classic study. To do so, Neustadt wrote, presidents must be careful and anticipatory, listening and adapting while appearing collegial, not dictatorial. And they must carefully nurture and guard their public image of wisdom, probity, patience and smarts.
Whether he wants to or not, Trump must learn how acquire those qualities if he is to succeed. He got his first on-the-job lesson this week, as he tried to herd Republican cats.
In his first effort, he made numerous mistakes.
Like the Clintons, Trump (or rather Speaker Ryan) sprang the Obamcare “reform and replace” bill on Congress and his own party without notice and with little input. A law is not like a construction blueprint. The builders don’t work for you.
Second, his first meeting with recalcitrant House conservatives in the Freedom Caucus devolved into a bullying session, with the new president threatening to “come after” GOP members who defied him. Well, it’s hard enough for a president to bully members, even of his own party. It is even harder when he has the lowest job-approval rating on record for a new president, and when the bill itself isn’t popular with voters.
Last, and most important, Trump’s image as an enfant terrible – which he rightly thinks had a lot to do with his winning the election – is exactly the wrong role to play as a new (or any) president.
President Ronald Reagan, who as a candidate struck terror in the hearts of liberals, and with good reason, understood the need to play the new role he had won when he came to Washington in 1981.
Even before taking the oath of office, he reached out to the late publisher of The Washington Post, Katharine Graham, and set up a dinner party with longtime power players in the city. He would have to defeat them, he knew, but he wanted to both get to know them and reassure them that he would respect them.
It worked, and in later years, Reagan did deals not only with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, but also with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Trump has roared into D.C. like the leader of a motorcycle gang, and that is fine – if you think that everyone else in town is afraid of you and that your supporters are all riding Harleys.
But that is the way for a new president to fail, and to set up a dynamic that will cost him for the rest of his term. Trump can listen to the nihilistic anarchism of, say, Steven Bannon, and “deconstruct” a good bit of the “administrative state” through lawlessness, administrative neglect and pure human fear.
Or he could actually build something.

Mar-A-Largo Act to hold Trump accountable - Indy100.com - Independent

Mar-A-Largo Act to hold Trump accountable
Whoever came up with this acronym is a genius
American law-makers love a good acronym, there's the Prevention of Emotional Neglect and Childhood Endangerment (PENCE) bill aimed at making gay conversion therapy illegal named after the Vice-President who approves it.
The Puppies Assisting Wounded Service members act (PAWS), the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM act) and the famous USA PATRIOT act aka the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.
Now Democrats want to introduce the MAR-A-LAGO act to make Trump publicly release visitor logs for the White House.
The act shares a name with the Florida golf resort Trump has spends a lot of time in (about a quarter since taking his Presidency). He even refers to it as the 'Southern White House'.
The bill in full is called the 'Make Access Records Available t Lead American Government Openness Act' - and is being lead by New Mexico Senator Tom Udall.
It demands the Trump publish records for the White House “or any other location where Donald Trump regularly conducts official business.” He said
 By refusing to release the White House visitor logs, President Trump is only validating the rampant concerns about who may be pulling the levers in his administration.
The President should end his administration’s disturbing pattern of stonewalling information and immediately reinstate the previous administration’s policy of publishing White House visitor logs.
Representative Mike Quigley, co-founder and co-chair of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, added
Effective government is dependent on public trust, but unfortunately, the Trump Administration is missing that key ingredient
With each passing day, the American people’s confidence in our President decreases, and it is no surprise given the administration’s efforts to roll back productive policies that increase openness and improve transparency.

More: President Trump has gone to a golf course for the 9th time in 7 weeks
More: Donald Trump is holidaying in Mar-a-Lago every weekend and it costs the US taxpayer $3m a time

Uber’s Leadership Says the Company ‘Must Change’ After Scandals - TIME Business

Uber’s Leadership Says the Company ‘Must Change’ After Scandals

Posted: 21 Mar 2017 03:05 PM PDT

Uber representatives vowed Tuesday that the company was in the midst of an overhaul, following a pile-up of scandals and shake-ups that have plagued the company for the past several weeks — including allegations of sexism and mismanagement, the departure of the company’s president and a flare-up by CEO Travis Kalanick caught on an Uber driver’s dash camera.
“Uber must change,” said board member Arianna Huffington, “if it is to be as successful in the next decade as it has in the last seven years.” The sole woman on Uber’s board repeatedly emphasized that, going forward, there would be “zero tolerance for anything but totally respectful behavior in an equitable workplace environment.”

Huffington hosted a call with reporters along with the company’s new chief HR officer, Liane Hornsey, and Rachel Holt, who heads Uber’s business in the U.S. and Canada. All three issued full-throated admissions that the company has big problems that are being rooted out in various areas, including Kalanick’s leadership, the way the company operates internally and how the company treats its drivers.
When asked repeatedly if the board had considered asking Kalanick to step down — and whether he would step down if asked — Huffington dismissed that as a hypothetical, saying “It hasn’t come up and we don’t expect it to come up.” The Uber representatives also said that Kalanick, who has been as famous for his brash style as for spearheading the growth of the ride app industry, is changing “almost week by week.”
“Going through what we’ve gone through over the last few weeks,” said Hornsey, who was a longtime Google employee before taking up the HR reins at Uber, “it’s absolutely something that would cause individual and personal change. So I think Travis is going to be hugely collaborative going forward.”
Hornsey added that Kalanick has accepted responsibility for bringing company to this point and has acknowledged his mistakes. Earlier in March, Kalanick admitted he had to “grow up” after a heated argument with a driver was caught on video.
Among the changes that they floated as cures for what ails the company was a search for a new chief operations officer. While the search is ongoing — Kalanick, they said, was not on the call because he was interviewing COO candidates — they described the position as one that would provide balance to Kalanick in a “true partnership.”
Though Huffington said that she had personally spoken to hundreds of employees who demonstrated “real appetites for change internally,” she said she is not formally investigating the company’s problems. The ultimate judgment of whether issues such as sexism and lack of diversity are “systemic problems,” she said, would be revealed through an investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.
His team is collecting information through interviews and anonymous tip lines, with findings expected at the end of April. Huffington vowed that the company would honor the report from Holder’s law firm, whatever it might contain, and make those findings public.
The Uber representatives said that the company is meanwhile using other means to oust any toxic elements of the company culture: holding one hundred listening sessions, training employees on “how to be a good ally,” updating recruiting descriptions to eliminate “unconscious bias” and pushing back against a “cult of the individual” that had come to define the working environment. Hornsey promised that the company’s first report on diversity would be forthcoming.
Holt, the operational expert on the call, described steps the company is taking to be more responsive and fair to drivers — given that many of those relationships are “frayed” — such as communicating with that vast network in a “more human” manner. She also emphasized that despite the PR problems and loss of riders who chose to #DeleteUber earlier this year, Uber has continued to experience growth: both attracting new riders and seeing existing riders take more trips.
Still, she repeated the overarching theme of the call along with her colleagues. “We know we have a long way to go, she said. “Everyone at Uber, including Travis, knows that we must change.”