Aug 30, 2017

The swamp won

Corey Lewandowski boards Air Force One at Youngstown airport in Ohio on July 25 (AP's Carolyn Kaster)

Corey Lewandowski, Trump's first campaign manager, is on the cover of the forthcoming N.Y. Times Magazine ... "The Bucks Start Here: How to Get Rich in Trump's Washington ... His presidency has changed the rules of influence in the nation's capital — and spawned a new breed of lobbyist," by Nick Confessore:

"One person offered Lewandowski $250,000 just to get the president to tweet about him."
Then, "the Trump guys [learned] the downsides of proximity to the president... [T]he Trump administration was being swallowed by its own chaos."
"[T]he traditional lobbying shops were doing just fine ... [D]espite Trump's campaign pledges, many of the agencies he now oversaw had proved more than friendly to the legions of longtime Beltway lobbyists..."
"In July, he founded a new firm, Lewandowski Strategic Advisors. ... He hadn't yet landed that White House job, but he was in the West Wing often, and he had a new Twitter avatar: a picture of himself standing on the stairs to Air Force One. ... Lewandowski had absorbed the swamp's most essential trait: adaptability."

Go deeper

Axios

China tries to contain coronavirus, as Apple warns of earnings impact

Data: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins, the CDC, and China's NHC; Note: China refers to mainland China and the Diamond Princess is the cruise ship offshore Yokohama, Japan. Map: Danielle Alberti/Axios

As China pushes to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus — placing around 780 million people under travel restrictions, per CNN — the economic repercussions continue to be felt globally as companies like Apple warn of the impact from the lack of manufacturing and consumer demand in China.

The big picture: COVID-19 has now killed at least 1,775 people and infected more than 70,000 others, mostly in mainland China. There are some signs that new cases are growing at a slower rate now, although the World Health Organization said Monday it's "too early to tell" if this will continue.

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Ina Fried

Apple will miss quarterly earnings estimates due to coronavirus

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Apple issued a rare earnings warning on Monday, saying it would not meet quarterly revenue expectations due to the impact of the coronavirus, which will limit iPhone production and limit product demand in China.

Why it matters: Lots of companies rely on China for production, but unlike most U.S. tech companies, Apple also gets a significant chunk of its revenue from sales in China.

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Orion Rummler

America's dwindling executions

The Trump administration wants to reboot federal executions, pointing to a 16-year lapse, but Pew Research reports the government has only executed three people since 1963.

The big picture: Nearly all executions in the U.S. are done by states. Even those have been steadily dropping for two decades, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) — marking a downward trend for all executions in the country.

Go deeper4 hours ago - Politics & Policy