Shooting at Pearl Harbor Investigators are searching for motive after a sailor opened fire at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard on Wednesday, killing two civilian workers and injuring one other before killing himself. The identities of those who died have not yet been released, according to the latest reporting by Hawaii News Now staff. Food or the Camry, choose one There’s a lot going on, but you should know that yesterday, the Trump administration formalized work requirements for recipients of food stamps, a move that will cause nearly 700,000 people to lose access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (561,000+ shares), as Phil McCausland reports for NBC News. And Jon Collins highlights the fact that it’s “...the first of three rules that are ultimately expected to cut 3 million from the food stamp rolls.” 
“Terrific. ‘This work requirement rule would save the government $5.5 billion over five years, the USDA said.’ So this is, what? A few Pentagon bombers?” Mike Sacks wonders. Heidi Moore thinks, “This is unspeakably dismal. Trump, who would never pay his own money for a meal for himself, won’t allow the very poorest to buy their own food.” Here’s how it works, says Nick Confessore: “1. Give lavish trade-war subsidies for agribusiness, sometimes more than growers were financially hurt. 2. Cut off food stamps to poor people, who are told to be self-reliant.” Makes a lot of sense. Because as Hamilton Nolan tweets, “As a taxpayer I am sick of these disabled people who have $3,501 in assets, such as a dented 2005 Toyota Camry, who also want to be able to eat food. Food or the Camry, choose one. That’s the American dream.” Covering impeachment With Speaker Pelosi asking House committee chairs to proceed with articles of impeachment, as John Wagner reports at The Washington Post, the paper’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, notes that since the public impeachment hearings began, “Americans’ positions seem to have hardened on whether President Trump should be impeached and removed from office. So, is the media coverage pointless? Are journalists merely shouting into the void?” Her latest column explores how journalists can reach the undecided, and as Will Bunch says, “No one has done a better job covering the challenges that impeachment has posed for journalists than @sulliview. Her new one on coverage for the undecideds (yes, they exist!) is a must-read, Cameo by @BGrueskin.” Adds Edward Wong, “Journalists often use the word ‘partisan’ to signal both-sides-bickering. Is it an abdication of journalistic duty, when one side says facts don’t matter and the other side deploys facts? @Sulliview argues we should stop using the word in reports.” Jay Rosen agrees, calling it “A suggestion by @Sulliview that I endorse.” Reality programming 
Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, Rudy Giuiliani has been in Budapest and Kyiv this week to talk with former Ukrainian prosecutors for a documentary series intended to debunk the impeachment case. Kenneth Vogel and Benjamin Novak report at The New York Times that the trip was organized around the filming of a multipart television series that is being produced and aired by a conservative cable channel, One America News (OAN). Julia Barton puts it this way: “During the impeachment an old man's reality TV roams ex-Soviet Socialist Republics in search of purity.” You are correct in thinking, “You cannot make this stuff up,” as Daniel Froomkin tweets. Welp! Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post are reporting that Barr’s handpicked prosecutor has told the inspector general he can’t back the right-wing theory that the Russia case was a U.S. intelligence setup. Kara Swisher explains, “It’s called there is no there there.” “Welp!” as Christopher Hayes tweets. But just you wait. “Pretty soon William Barr will be releasing a ‘summary’ of John Durham’s findings, one imagines,” tweets Greg Sargent. Unravelling the enduring mysteries of the Trump era Here’s one you don’t want to miss. David Fahrenthold sets it up as “The Upstairs/Downstairs world of @realdonaldtrump and his undocumented employees: they ironed his clothes, replenished his face makeup, kept his family secrets. Then Trump called them criminals. So two housekeepers decided to take on a president.” He links to his piece at The Washington Post with Joshua Partlow that explores how two undocumented housekeepers took on the president - and revealed Trump’s long-term reliance on illegal immigrants. 
And it’s quite a story. Karen Tumulty highlights, “Trump loved Tic Tacs. But not an arbitrary amount. He wanted, in his bedroom bureau at all times, two full containers of white Tic Tacs and one container that was half full. (FLASHBACK: ‘I've got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her.’).” “Also, buried in the piece, The Post appears to have unravelled one of the enduring mysteries of the Trump era: Why he is so orange,” tweets Garance Franke-Ruta. As Michelle Goldberg says, “You might think from the headline that you’ve read stories like this before but trust me you haven’t.” Chilling stuff Adam Kredo says, “This huge @carolrosenberg scoop is wow: ‘An Illustrated 1st Person Guide to the CIA’s Torture Program -- Sketches by the first prisoner known to undergo ‘enhanced interrogation’ portray his account of what happened to him in vivid and disturbing ways.’” The artist is Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, and in a piece co-produced by The New York Times and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Carol Rosenberg writes that the illustrations “are gritty and highly personal depictions that put flesh, bones and emotion on what until now had sometimes been portrayed in popular culture in sanitized or inaccurate ways: the so-called enhanced interrogations techniques used by the United States in secret overseas prisons during a feverish pursuit of Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” “More important accountability reporting by @carolrosenberg. Chilling stuff,” tweets Eric Lipton. Time to turn off the internet Archie Bland links to this “Fantastically interesting work by @jimwaterson: have a look at how people really use their phones to consume political news and memes, and how it's made chaos of this election.” That’s Uncovered: reality of how smartphones turned UK election news into chaos, by Jim Waterson of The Guardian, who explains, “In a first-of-its-kind election monitoring project conducted by the Guardian and research agency Revealing Reality, a group of voters have allowed their phone use to be recorded for three days – and the results from each individual’s phone show how the traditional media ecosystem is changing and disintegrating.” As Jim Pickard says, looks like it’s “time to turn off the internet.” 
Martin Belam highlights a part that...doesn’t seem all that surprising to us? “Several participants were observed sharing articles on Facebook without clicking the links, and excitedly diving into comment sections for an argument before looking at the articles. Most showed a tendency to read news that confirmed their existing views.” Maybe it’s as Steve Busfield says: “Terrifying, depressing, we already know it in our hearts but haven't fully admitted it.” Alex Hern urges, “Read the whole piece but if you don’t, just read this excerpt and see if you can suppress the involuntary scream when you reach the last line.” Crazier and crazier “While the world was looking for Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor who allegedly delivered word of Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails to Donald Trump's campaign, his passport and wallet sat for 17 months in a lost and found office in a Portuguese airport.” For the rest of that story, read the latest from Alberto Nardelli and Christo Grozev of BuzzFeed News on The Curious Case Of Joseph Mifsud’s Lost Passport And Wallet, and you’ll wonder, as Miriam Elder does, “How does the Mifsud story continue to get crazier and crazier??” What else is there to say about this one except, “Imagine killing an unarmed child and then suing his parents.” Phillip Atiba Goff links to the story by Joe Burbank and Douglas Hanks of the Miami Herald, who report that George Zimmerman is suing the family of Trayvon Martin, publisher Harper Collins and prosecutors for $100 million (81,000+ shares). “There was just so much competition this year, folks, but George Zimmerman again comes through as Vile Racist Murdering Scumbag of the Year,” tweets Steve Silberman. And then Katie Drummond links to this “Huge and crazy scoop,” from Ben Makuch, Mack Lamoureux, and Zachary Kamel of Vice, who have discovered that a U.S.-based neo-Nazi terrorist group is currently harbouring a missing ex-soldier from Canada. Craig Silverman notes, “Important to recognize the threats journalists like @MackLamoureux @BMakuch @ZacharyKamel and others face when reporting on violent domestic extremists like The Base. Their latest scoop resulted in one of them receiving a public death threat.” A few 2020 updates At Politico, Alex Scott Thompson, Holly Otterbein and Alice Ollstein write about what they call the most consequential moment of the 2020 primary. Astead Herndon praises the “smart insidery story here. Harris joined Sanders M4A bill and all the other 2020ers followed suit partly because they were so scared of Harris -- it’s a decision they are all, non Bernie, still wrestling with.” Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times reports that Warren and Biden have lost ground in California’s shifting 2020 Democratic race as Sanders moves ahead in polling. Meanwhile, here’s CNN’s Abby Phillip with a “Scooplet: Three former Obama officials endorse Pete Buttigieg today. Reggie Love, Obama’s former personal aide, former CEA chair Austan Goolsbee and Linda Douglass, former comms director for the WH office for health reform.” Read that piece, Pete Buttigieg scores endorsements from former Obama officials. More Thursday reads Here’s why Derek Mead is tweeting, “Uber enters the ‘Schrodinger's Toilet’ phase of labor law exploitation.” Edward Ongweso Jr of Vice found out that, as part of its long standing commitment to misclassifying drivers, Uber has in at least one office created separate bathrooms for drivers and “employees.” “ah yes the two genders,” notes Will Oremus. “Uber but for worker class-segregated bathrooms,” as Mark Milian tweets. Gordon Lubold and Nancy Youssef of The Wall Street Journal report that the Trump administration is considering a deployment of 14,000 more troops for the Mideast, which is “So weird, I have been reliably told that the troops are coming home,” tweets Alex Wayne. From BuzzFeed News, Here’s The Draft Report Revealing How US Border Officials Pressured Asylum Officers To Deny Entry To Immigrants. Hamed Aleaziz explains, “BuzzFeed News is publishing a draft DHS report that details how border officials apparently pressured asylum officers to deny immigrants entry. To protect sources, BuzzFeed News has retyped the draft to resemble the original.” The Jewish Labour Movement’s closing submission to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has been leaked, and you can read that Redacted JLM Closing Submission to the EHRC here. “The whole report is utterly damning -on the deep institutional failings by the party and the leadership’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism. Labour is lying when it says it is doing everything possible to tackle racism in its ranks,” tweets Sebastian Payne. “Pretty f*cked up this is happening in the year 2019, and even more f*cked up that this time it's from the left. Conclusion: #antisemitism is real, alive, and not going anywhere anytime soon!” adds Stephen Robert Morse. “What started as a simple road-raising study in the Florida Keys has become a much bigger debate: Which places don’t make sense to save?” Christopher Flavelle links to his piece with Patricia Mazzei of The New York Times on the impact of climate change, Florida Keys Deliver a Hard Message: As Seas Rise, Some Places Can’t Be Saved. “Helluva hoax!” as Travis Nichols says. Literally bananas 
And finally today, as Rory Sullivan reports at CNN, a banana, duct-taped to a wall, went on sale at Art Basel Miami Beach this week -- priced at $120,000. And, according to art market website Artnet, two of the three editions have already sold, with the last now going for $150,000. But before you say this is some kind of commentary on the art world, James Dennin points out, “art basel has always felt like more of a douchebag thing than an art world thing to me.” Anyway, Ciara O’Brien urges, “Please visit my art exhibition where you can spend €€€€ on an apple core taped to a light switch that represents the constant struggle between darkness, light and the onward march of time and mortality.” Compelling! Take our money, Ciara! | 
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