Odds and Ends — 31 May 2023
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Team Behind Offshore Yuan, Hong Kong Dollar Stablecoins Detained by Chinese Police
Twitter Now Worth Just 33% of What Elon Musk Paid
Twitter is now worth just one-third of what Elon Musk paid for the social-media platform, according to Fidelity, which recently marked down the value of its equity stake in the company.
Bitcoin selling for $5K cheaper on Binance Australia as fiat ramp closes
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
COVID-19 Can Cause New Cholesterol Problems.
Florida Man:
Florida elections officials quietly made it easier for Ron DeSantis to fund his 2024 bid
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has quietly changed state guidelines, essentially giving its blessing for a state-level political committee he previously ran to move millions of dollars to a super PAC helping his presidential campaign.
For years, elections officials said such a transfer to federal super PACs would not be allowed. But in March — just months before DeSantis formally launched his bid for president — officials at the Florida State Department, the DeSantis administration entity that regulates state elections, changed its handbook to assert that such moves are allowed.
Politics:
Trump’s Lawyer Was Waved Off During Search
Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property.
The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited.
Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room. He then asked whether he should search anywhere else but was steered away, he told associates. Corcoran never searched Trump’s office and told prosecutors that the 38 papers were the extent of the material at Mar-a-Lago.
Chinese Spies Tried to Infiltrate Alaska Military Bases
Tara Reade, the American who accused President Joe Biden of sexual assault, has moved to Russia.
Reade made the announcement from Russia, joined by Maria Butina, a Russian-born woman convicted of spying for the Kremlin.
How Paul Gosar Became An Icon To Those In The Modern Fascist Movement
Trump Staffer Questioned About Surveillance Footage
A Mar-a-Lago employee who helped move boxes of documents last June has been questioned about his conduct weeks later related to a government demand for surveillance footage from Donald Trump’s property.
The employee’s actions in June and July have caught the attention of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators as they try to determine whether Trump or people close to him sought to obstruct justice in the face of a grand jury subpoena to return all documents marked classified, or lied about what happened
Ex-Trump White House official Peter Navarro to go on trial in September in Jan. 6 contempt case
China, India Kick Out Each Other’s Journalists
India and China have ejected each other’s journalists in recent weeks, virtually wiping out mutual media access and deepening a rift between the world’s two most populous nations.
The reciprocal moves are likely to add to acrimony between the two neighbors, whose relationship has deteriorated since a deadly brawl on the contested Sino-Indian border in June 2020.
Trump apparently thinks that Executive Orders can override the Constitution.
Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert
The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted baseless claims by the former president that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.
It Took Alito Barely a Month to Violate the Supreme Court’s New Ethics Rules
GOP Work Requirement Actually Costs More Money
A CBO score on the deal released last night threw a last-minute curveball into Republican messaging, finding that new work requirement changes would actually expand spending on federal nutrition programs.
Tennessee Lawmaker Seeks to Defund the ATF
In 2022, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) ripped Democrats for the ‘Defund the Police’ movement.
But on Tuesday, he proposed doing just that to the law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice. Just two months after a mass shooting at a Nashville school in his very own Congressional district, Ogles made the puzzling proposal to defund the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives through 2025.
Prosecutors Spar Over Where Trump Will Stand Trial
Ten months before Donald Trump is scheduled to stand trial in his historic New York City criminal case, Manhattan prosecutors are turning the former president’s words against him in a tug of war over precisely where he will be tried.
Trump’s lawyers have spent weeks angling to have the hush money case moved to federal court. The Manhattan district attorney’s office responded Tuesday that the case should remain in the state court where it originated, citing old Trump tweets that they say undermine his lawyers’ jurisdictional challenge.
Serendipity:
A family in the Netherlands has a rare and perplexing brain condition that helps explain how we recognize color.
No kidding: California overtime law threatens use of grazing goats to prevent wildfires
”Significant global ecological disruption”: Plastic is destroying Earth — and recycling won’t help
A new report analyzed previous studies and reached sobering conclusions about the plastic pollution crisis
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