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The Unconventional Diplomatic Dynamics Shaping Global Relations: Trump, Musk, and Covert Negotiations 
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Crisis Within the Kremlin: The Fall of Russia’s Gas Giant Gazprom 
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It’s Friday, March 29.
‣ Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive and the current head of the Small Business Administration, will reportedly resign from her position to chair President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action.
Here’s what else we’re watching:
Will the Public Ever See the Mueller Report?: Attorney General William Barr said he plans to share with Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by mid-April, if not sooner. In his letter to Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Jerry Nadler, heads of Congress’s two judiciary committees, Barr also said that he will not share the contents of the report with the White House before releasing it, and noted that his summary of the findings from last week was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long.
But that doesn’t mean the public will see the review in full, reports Natasha Bertrand. “Between the withholding of grand-jury and privileged material and the redaction of classified information, the public could be left with a shell of the original report.”
Listen to this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, in which the staff writers Edward-Issac Dovere and McKay Coppins discuss what all this means for 2020.
Remember the Pee Tape?: Many of the president’s critics were disappointed last week when Barr declared that Mueller’s investigation all but cleared the president of wrongdoing. But the “seeds of the disappointment” were planted two years ago, when BuzzFeed News first published an unverified—and unverifiable—dossier compiled by the British-intelligence operative Christopher Steele, argues David Graham. The salacious document “set the stage for the political response to investigations to come—inflating expectations in the public, moving the goalposts for Trump in a way that has fostered bad behavior, and tainting the press’s standing.”
Call Me a Socialist!: Joe Sanberg, a multimillionaire investor, might be running for president. Sanberg supports Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increased regulation, and expanding the social safety net. He has no name recognition, but in an election where Trump has painted the Democrats as radical socialists, Sanberg thinks he has an edge: “Good luck to them if they want to call me a socialist, because businesspeople aren’t socialists,” he told Edward-Isaac Dovere.
— Elaine Godfrey and Madeleine Carlisle
Three-year-old Ailianie Hernandez waits with her mother, Julianna Ageljo, to apply for the nutritional-assistance program at the Department of Family Affairs in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The island’s government says it lacks sufficient federal funding to help people recover from Hurricane Maria amid a 12-year recession. (Carlos Giusti / AP)
Barbara Bush’s Long-Hidden ‘Thoughts on Abortion’ (Susan Page)
“In 1980, when George H. W. Bush was making his first bid for the presidency, Barbara Bush covered four sheets of lined paper with her bold handwriting, then tucked the pages into a folder with her diary and some personal letters. She was trying to sort out what she believed about one of the most divisive issues of the day.” → Read on.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Is Confusing Taxpayers (Mark Mazur)
“Although the most recent IRS data show that average income-tax refunds are closely tracking the average refund from last year, taxpayers have been complaining in interviews with journalists and on social media that their refund is smaller than expected or that they unexpectedly owe additional tax. Given that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was all about tax cuts, how can this be?” → Read on.
Quit Harping on U.S. Aid to Israel (James Kirchick)
“U.S. assistance to Israel demands far less—in both blood and treasure—than many other American defense relationships around the world.” → Read on.
‣ An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden (Lucy Flores, New York)
‣ Our President of the Perpetual Grievance (Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker) (? Paywall)
‣ Former Trump Family Driver Has Been in ICE Custody for 8 Months (Miriam Jordan, The New York Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Is Pete Buttigieg a Political Genius? (Alex Shephard, The New Republic)
‣ The Blue State Trump Thinks He Can Flip in 2020 (Alex Isenstadt, Politico)
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With sports betting legal in eight states, NCAA tournament brackets are more than a hobby for fantasy league fun, bragging rights and office pools. NCAA officials are now renewing efforts to address how sports gambling may affect game integrity, as ESPN reports.
March is also Problem Gambling Awareness Month. The National Council on Problem Gambling, a nonprofit that advocates for programs for problem gamblers, notes that calls to their hotline increase by an average of 40 percent in March over previous months. Fans are expected to bet more than $10 billion on March Madness games, with 3 percent of wagers made legally through Nevada’s sports books.
But would legalizing sports betting dry up those office pools? Maybe not. The Daily Herald’s Burt Constable argued in a recent column that “it’s more fun losing money to a co-worker than to a giant gambling institution.”
In Illinois, Cubs and Sox fans may soon have something in common: placing a legal bet on the games. During an interview with WBEZ, the chief architect of the state’s sports gambling package shared some early makings of a bill, which could include a “lottery-based” ticket approach (i.e., anywhere that a retailer would sell lottery tickets, they could sell sports betting tickets), mobile betting and even an option at stadiums.
A finished proposal could be shared with Gov. J.B. Pritzker as early as May. And momentum for gambling expansion continues elsewhere. Legislators in West Virginia approved online casino gambling, and the bill awaits the governor’s signature. West Virginia is one of the two states that legalized video gambling outside of casinos without tracking the rate of gambling addiction. The other is Illinois.
But some states are reluctant to expand gambling. Lawmakers in Florida recently advanced legislation to ban online lottery sales. The bill could also mandate that lottery tickets and ads carry warnings about the risks of compulsive gambling.
A Minnesota legislative committee cleared a sports betting bill that even its chief sponsor doesn’t think will pass this time around, and reports note it won’t raise much money for the state. Arkansas’ State Racing Commission adopted rules that would block a casino in Pope County, about 80 miles northwest of Little Rock, KATV reported. The casino faced heavy opposition from residents.
Iowa is already seen as a national leader in addressing issues around problem gambling, and officials there are preparing consumer protections if sports betting bills become law, WHO-TV reports. A vote is expected next month.
Meanwhile, the New York state comptroller’s office recently released the results of an audit that found the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, or OASAS, has not assessed its gambling addiction services since 2006, even though the state allowed four new commercial casinos to open in 2013. OASAS officials say they don’t have enough money to conduct a social-impact study.
At St. Louis Public Radio, the multi-state news project “Fixed Odds” has examined how gambling addiction affects communities of color, along with state-by-state spending on prevention and treatment. Overall, studies estimate that roughly 2 percent of the general population experiences gambling addiction.
A few highlights, based on 2016 data:
Lyft became a public company on Friday with an eye-popping $24 billion valuation—yet the company lost nearly a billion dollars last year. So why are Wall Street bigwigs pouring money into the company? Alongside Uber, Lyft is one of two ride-sharing behemoths—and with about 40 percent of the market, it’s quickly gaining on its archrival. The company is accumulating users, but attaining profitability is a much trickier proposition. A large part of its revenue goes to drivers, and if it takes a larger slice of the pie, drivers and riders could both defecting back to Uber.
The Islamic State is on the decline, but the group’s founder has so far eluded capture. ISIS’s leadership has been hallowed out, but does getting Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—the man sitting at the top of the food chain—really matter? The decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden might give some insight; after he was killed in a dramatic raid in 2011, the group still survived without its figurehead. Though capturing Baghdadi would of course be a PR victory, it might not do all that much to hasten ISIS’s demise: To protect himself, Baghdadi scampers between safe houses and eschews communications equipment, which has limited his effectiveness as a leader.
? New estimates find that the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis—or Bd—has caused the decline of upwards of 500 amphibian species. This many types of species attacked by Bd have been either wiped out entirely or close to it. (“Never in recorded history has a single disease burned down so much of the tree of life,” said one of the researchers who compiled these new figures.)
? The last time any human walked on the moon was 1972, and the Trump administration has signaled frequently just how eager it is to return. The latest NASA budget, the largest in years, is this many billions of dollars (though that’s still a fraction of what it was in the Apollo era).
? The ride-sharing company Lyft, which beat its primary competitor, Uber, to become a public company on Friday isn’t profitable: It reported a loss of this many millions of dollars in 2018, and so far neither Lyft nor Uber have shown that their core service—ride-sharing—can be a sustainable business.
(Jonathan Prime / Amazon Studios)
Watch: Amazon’s new series Hanna, which centers on a 15-year-old girl trained as a killer, is “worth sticking through for the performances from its three principals,” Sophie Gilbert writes. Or try Dumbo, the latest Disney remake that insistently got David Sims choked up, and is “just different enough to stick out amid the studio’s backwards-looking slate.”
Listen: Revisit the music of the legendary singer Scott Walker, who died this week at age 76, and whose voice “was a prime model in a great American line stretching through lounge legends and Andrew Lloyd Webber hambones,” writes Spencer Kornhaber.
Why is American education so centered around the idea of assigning homework?
The 21st century has so far been a homework-heavy era, with American teenagers now averaging about twice as much time spent on homework each day as their predecessors did in the 1990s. Even little kids are asked to bring school home with them. A 2015 study, for instance, found that kindergarteners, who researchers tend to agree shouldn’t have any take-home work, were spending about 25 minutes a night on it.
But not without pushback. As many children, not to mention their parents and teachers, are drained by their daily workload, some schools and districts are rethinking how homework should work—and some teachers are doing away with it entirely.
Heading into National Poetry Month, here’s an excerpt from “Samson in Love,” by Elizabeth Cox, from our June 2006 issue:
This is the first time he has killed a lion.
Inside the ribs a swarm of bees lies
nested there, and honey comes.
He reaches down inside the ribs
to where a sweetness runs,
and he thinks of the woman he has seen today.
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Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s pro-Second Amendment Kyle Kashuv has been accepted into Harvard.
Tyler R. Barriss, 26, pled guilty to 51 federal charges — some of which led to the 2017 death ofRead More
The City of Chicago on Thursday warned “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett that he could be prosecuted for lying if heRead More
BOSTON (AP) — A procession of wealthy parents, from a Napa Valley vineyard owner to a Hot Pockets heiress, areRead More
“Will & Grace” actor Sean Hayes targeted Vice President Mike Pence for mockery at the GLAAD Media Awards Thursday.
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