Our team uncovered that Jared Kushner was the part owner of an Obamacare-dependent company that hired lobbyists to lobby against Obamacare repeal. I’m sure Freedom Caucus, right-wing types still smarting over the failure of repeal will be overjoyed.

Buzzfeed has now published an article on the “Nicole Mincey” story. It addresses a few of the points we’ve been discussing. One key point is that it suggests that what got Twitter to act was the unauthorized use of photos reported by the company behind the Placeit Mockup Tool, something we discussed here. But the really interesting part is the new explanation by the woman in New Jersey who originally claimed her identity had been stolen for the effort.

Here’s the new story she told Buzzfeed .. Read More

This morning I said our team was digging into the “Nicole Mincey” story. Here’s Matt Shuham’s first look at information available as of earlier today. (For a brief background on this story, see my overview from this morning.) The Post just moved a story suggesting that “Nicole Mincey” may actually be a Russian bot. At least that’s what the headline suggests. But there doesn’t seem to be anything in the article that really backs up that suggestion. Read More

We’re working on more reporting on this as we speak. But I wanted to introduce the topic here in the Editors’ Blog to get us started. You may have heard of this, probably not. Over the weekend, President Trump RT’d a shout-out of praise from a woman on Twitter named Nicole Mincey. Read More

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.