Over the last six months or year I’ve had a handful of conversations with people who have iPhone 7s like i do. As I’ve been, they’re fascinated by Apple’s claim that the current iPhone is water resistant. Not waterproof but water resistant. The idea is that you’re not supposed to take it in the pool with you or scuba dive with it. But if you dropped it in the water and fished it out a minute or two later, it should be fine. Not surprisingly, no one is willing to test this out to see if it’s really true.

If this is you, you’re in luck. Because this afternoon I conducted an unscheduled test. And I’m now going to share the results with you.  Read More

A couple days ago, before yesterday’s grand jury revelations, I got an email from TPM Reader RV flagging a story on Paul Manafort in a Kentucky alt-weekly by Kurt X. Metzmeier, a law librarian at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law. The article is builds off Metzmeier’s earlier life as a graduate student and researcher interested in the late 20th century superpower confrontation in Africa and some of the unlovelier dimensions of US foreign policy. Read More

You probably saw the news this week that the Trump Justice Department is launching a highly dubious new project targeting discrimination against white students in university admissions policies. A pretty straight-up attack on affirmative action in admissions. But what you may not have seen was the troubling way DOJ was going about staffing the project, which is sounding the alarm bells for a new round of politicization of the Civil Rights Division, a disturbing echo of the department’s low point in the George W. Bush years. Allegra Kirkland has the story.

Mueller impanels a federal grand jury in DC and reportedly issues subpoenas about the June 16 meeting among Kushner, Manafort and Trump Jr., and that Russian lawyer. At the same time, Mueller probe is reportedly pushing deeper into President Trump’s business dealings.

The Senate is done for the summer, but as GOP senators we’re racing to get out of town they saved a few parting shots for Donald Trump for lashing out at them over the Russia sanctions bill. Too early to call this a sea change in how congressional Republicans are treating Trump, but these quotes are pretty damn entertaining.

I guess we can say that the lesson of the day is that when private conversations are released willy nilly to the public it can be damaging to the parties involved.  Read More

With the big news this evening that Gen. H.R. McMaster was finally allowed to fire Flynn protege Ezra Cohen-Watnick, let me refer you back to what I explained back in April: Cohen-Watnick likely had dirty hands in the Russia cover-up. Specifically, his ‘review’ of intelligence which led to the ‘un-masking’ charade was likely an effort to monitor and perhaps interfere with the on-going Russia probe. Read More

Over almost twelve months in which “Trump/Russia” has been a catchword for a confusing and troubling series of relationships between the now President and the Russian government, President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted he has ‘no business’ in Russia. We know this is demonstrably not true if we are talking about business deals with individual Russians or citizens of the successor states of the former Soviet Union. We also know it is not true if we mean investments of Russian nationals in various Trump owned or branded real estate properties. It is with major cash investments to build new properties (as opposed to selling units of buildings) and potential building projects in Russia where the picture becomes murkier and more opaque. Read More

Despite all the denials, during the early months of his run for President, Donald Trump had Felix Sater still working on putting together a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow.