Day: September 30, 2019

Attorney General Bill Barr has been personally urging foreign governments to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe during trips abroad — and President Donald Trump himself asked the prime minister of Australia to help Barr out, several news outlets reported Monday.

Though this is being breathlessly mentioned in the same context as Trump’s request that the Ukrainian president investigate Joe Biden, it’s a somewhat different situation, one that raises its own concerns about whether Barr is politicizing the Justice Department to serve Trump’s electoral needs.

What Trump is talking about here is a …

Cooperation between the US government and tech giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter has improved somewhat in recent years, Senator Mark Warner says — but there’s a snowball’s chance in hell they’re going to be able to continue to regulate themselves.

“There have never been companies of this size and this power that haven’t had some level of oversight,” Warner said on a recent episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. “The old ceiling [for regulation] is going to become the new floor.”

On the podcast, Warner — a Democrat and the senior US Senator from Virginia — told …

In the course of just two weeks, a previously unknown scandal sprawled to imperil Donald Trump’s presidency.

News broke that the Trump administration was withholding a mysterious whistleblower complaint from Congress on September 13. The chaotic days afterward were filled with leaks, revelations, document releases, and a new Democratic consensus in favor of an impeachment push.

So you’d be forgiven for feeling a bit of whiplash … and for having some questions.

Where did this whole thing come from? Why does this scandal, rather than so many other Trump scandals, appear to be catching on? Could it really …

Forever 21 is filing for bankruptcy, the company announced Sunday night. The fast-fashion retailer — which operates around 800 stores worldwide with more than $3 billion in estimated annual sales — had faced months-long speculation about its plan to pursue a Chapter 11 filing. The company was reportedly in talks with advisers and lenders to restructure its debt in June. It will reportedly close up to 178 stores in the US and up to 350 overall, according to the New York Times, and cease operations in 40 countries.

Forever 21 said it’s planning a global restructuring strategy and …

In this week’s Succession, “Dundee,” the Roys travel to Scotland, where Logan Roy grew up birdwatching and pooping outside, a reportedly hardscrabble childhood.

Logan’s being honored for 50 years of Waystar-Royco — by the town of Dundee itself, the family, the business, and, most of all by erstwhile PGM CEO Rhea Jarrell, who organized the whole affair (and whose affair with Logan is looking pretty damn real). But it’s actually just another excuse for the whole gang to be in the same fancy and uncomfortable room, so that the chess pieces can go flying off the board once again.…