James Risen and Glenn Greenwald sat down to debate the Trump-Russia investigation -- its meaning, the media response to it and everything in between. It's a substantive back and forth that doesn't end with everybody agreeing, but I think does leave people more informed than when they started, which is kind of the opposite of cable news. The video of it is here. Enjoy.
If you prefer it in chopped-down podcast form, that's here.
Programming note: We're hiring in DC. We're looking for a senior politics editor, which would give you all the joy and misery of working with me every day. If you know anybody, send them this job listing, or tell me who they are and I'll reach out.
Robert Mueller is now reportedly looking into Jared Kushner's attempts to get financing for his family's underwater property on Fifth Avenue, particularly looking at his entreaties to Qatar. He was rebuffed, and shortly thereafter backed a blockade against the small country. So of course I took a victory lap, rehashing the story I originally broke with Clayton Swisher and Ben Walsh last summer.
Public attention may have moved away from Puerto Rico, but Wall Street's interest in picking its bones certainly hasn't. On Monday, Dave Dayen reported that Yale University is the first school to have been shown to have been profiting from Puerto Rican debt directly in its endowment, all while Puerto Rico is slashing spending on education to meet the debt payments.
And Kate Aronoff today reported that Citigroup, which helped drive the country into debt, now stands to profit from the mass privatization underway. Her story nicely explains how investment bankers persuaded the island to take on evermore complicated financial products, with ever-growing interest rates. The island, essentially, was conned by Wall Street. Her story is here.
Betsy DeVos book update: Readers have contributed more than $3,000 to get this book, School House Wreck, published, which is truly amazing. (You can still participate here if you like.) Part of the thinking behind publishing a book this way is that it demonstrates that there's public interest in a book like this, and that can help get media attention, which can then drive more public interest, and so on. And that's apparently what happened here: A reporter at Washingtonian magazine, Benjamin Freed, is a reader of this august newsletter, saw the crowdpublishing effort, and wrote a great story about it. You can read that here. Thank you to everybody who chipped in!
No promises, but the book should be out next week. Don't worry, I'll let you know when it is.
This email grows by word of mouth. If you enjoy getting it, please forward this note to friends and tell them to sign up to start getting their own copy here. I'm the Washington bureau chief at The Intercept, and I send this several times a week. If you want to contribute directly to help keep the thing running, you can do so here, though be warned a donation comes with no tote bags or extra premium content or anything. Or you can support it by buying a copy of Out of the Ooze: The Story of Dr. Tom Price or Wall Street's White House, the first two books put out by Strong Arm Press, a small progressive publishing house I cofounded.
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