It’s funny how things change. It now appears that Cohen, not Clinton, will be the one headed to prison. On Tuesday, Cohen reached a plea deal in the Southern District of New York, pleading guilty on charges that include campaign finance violations from his time working on the campaign of President Donald Trump.
According to the Associated Press, Cohen could spend between four and five years in jail.
Between news that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty of tax fraud and Cohen’s plea, news fiends’ attention was divided on Tuesday. Still, the internet found time to craft some five-star memes, GIFS, and tweets about Trump’s right-hand man.
It’s all so deeply satisfying.
Michael Cohen should be sentenced to be Hillary Clinton’s butler for 10 years
There’s a new Tinder in town. It’s a feature called Tinder U, made specifically for users of the dating app who are in college. And the company is rolling it out just in time for the start of the new school year.
To set up Tinder U on an account, users must have an active .edu email address and be geolocated on their college campus. At launch, Tinder U will be available to iOS users who attend a four-year, accredited, not-for-profit school.
Tinder U functions just like regular old Tinder, with swiping and all. You can even toggle back and forth between the Tinder U feature and the original. When toggled on, users will see their school logo depicted as a badge on their profile image. Using this feature brings up college students in the same area, including students on Tinder who attend nearby universities.
Reaching out directly to college-aged students is a sensible move by Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, Inc., which recently said users between the ages of 18 and 24 make up the single largest age group on the app.
As Facebook readies its own dating feature, it’s interesting to see Tinder deploy the same strategy Facebook used, albeit in reverse order. In the early years of Facebook, users needed an .edu email address to sign up and use the service.
Tinder U is also a potential win for the future growth of the service. In addition to tens of millions of free users, Tinder has almost 3.8 million users paying a $14.99 per month subscription for a premium version of the app. If the youngest age group becomes invested early, they could very well grow up to become paying subscribers.
Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Smith’s discipline is for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.
The Athletic’s Jeff Zrebiec reported Aug. 20 that Smith violated the league’s personal conduct policy. Zrebiec added the nature of the violation was unknown but pointed to a report by the Baltimore Sun‘s Jeff Barker in November 2017 outlining “allegations of illegal drug use and domestic violence.”
Micaela Sanchez, the mother of Smith’s three-year-old son, alleged he had gotten physical with her and used drugs with his son present. Smith denied the allegations.
“There’s no truth to it,” he said. “I’m not going to give the story any legs.”
According to Zrebiec, the Ravens had been “bracing for a multiweek suspension,” so Tuesday’s news won’t come as a massive surprise to the team. Smith will be eligible to return for the Ravens’ Week 5 matchup with the Cleveland Browns on Oct. 7.
This is the second straight season in which the NFL suspended Smith. He served a four-game ban starting in December 2017 for a performance-enhancing drug violation. The suspension came shortly after Smith suffered a season-ending Achilles injury.
Smith appeared in 12 games last year, making 28 combined tackles and intercepting three passes.
The 30-year-old ranked second in Bleacher Report’s NFL1000 year-end ranking of the best outside cornerbacks.
“Injures have limited his top-level speed, but few defenders in the NFL have a better sense of route recognition, and Smith has the mental edge to succeed in any defense,” Bleacher Report’s Doug Farrar wrote. “If health is a skill, it’s the only one he hasn’t fully shown in his pro career.”
Baltimore allowed the 10th-fewest passing yards in the NFL a year ago (213.8 yards per game). In the final four games of the regular season—when Smith was out injured/suspended—the Ravens surrendered 1,038 yards and six touchdowns through the air.
While Smith’s injury wasn’t solely to blame, the Ravens went 2-2 to close the year, losing out on the playoffs via a tiebreaker with the Buffalo Bills.
The pressure will be on Tavon Young and Marlon Humphrey to help Baltimore get off to a good start in 2018 in Smith’s absence.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Tuesday he opposed the timing of the White House’s strategy, which comes as GOP leaders are leaning on Democrats to help avoid a government funding cliff Sept. 30.
Several leading senators, including the GOP appropriations chief, are casting doubt on the White House’s plan to trigger fresh cuts to the State Department just ahead of next month’s government’s funding deadline.
Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Tuesday he opposed the timing of the White House’s strategy, which comes as GOP leaders are leaning on Democrats to help avoid a government funding cliff Sept. 30, at the height of campaign season.
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“This is probably not, in my judgment, a good time to deal with it, because we’re trying, in a bipartisan way, to do something that hasn’t been done in 25 years — to make the Senate work, not to divide it,” Shelby said, weighing in on the strategy for the first time.
The Trump administration has proposed using an obscure budget tool — the power of a presidential rescission — to effectively force between $3 billion and $5 billion in foreign aid to expire without input from lawmakers. The cuts would largely come from U.S. funding for the United Nations.
The idea has enraged Senate Democrats, who say it sets a dangerous precedent for future funding bills.
“I think that should worry every member,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the panel’s ranking Democrat, said Monday. “Today it’s about foreign aid. Tomorrow it could be about defense, or health care or anything else they care about.”
Democratic fury over the White House’s spending cuts package could blow up the Senate’s careful plan to avoid a late-September funding debacle this year.
This week, the Senate is on the cusp of approving its eight and ninth spending bills of the year — a pace that lawmakers say is the most productive in decades. It’s a direct result of an agreement by leaders of both parties not to force hyperpartisan votes this year to drag out the process.
Shelby fears that pact could be jeopardized if the Trump administration moves ahead with its efforts to cut foreign aid.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he sees the White House’s move as an attempt to renege on this spring’s budget caps agreement, which Trump himself signed.
“We did a budget deal, and he chose not to veto it, so we gotta be spending that money,” Kaine said. “ I don’t think we can do line-item vetoes, and I don’t think he can take away our appropriations power.”
In a closed-door GOP luncheon, several senators stood up to tell Vice President Mike Pence that they oppose the plan, according to Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), who was in the room. Those who raised concerns outnumbered those who voiced support of the idea, Kennedy said.
Pence did not say whether the Trump administration planned to move ahead with the plan, which has also drawn criticism from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
Corker and Menendez have planned to send OMB Director Mick Mulvaney a joint letter this week urging him to drop the plan to cancel the foreign aid.
“Vice President Pence listened carefully with an astute poker face,” Kennedy said after the closed-door GOP luncheon. “He’s very good at his job.”
In an effort to better manage how its users flag content they object to, the social media giant is planning to rate the trustworthiness of its users on an individual basis. However, the initiative comes at a time when Facebook has lost the confidence of the American people on numerous fronts ranging from its ability to protect users’ private data to the veracity of the information promoted by the platform on News Feed, surveys show.
The Washington Post reports the company “has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1.” The score, which was reportedly developed this year, is used for internal calculations by Facebook and does not appear to be displayed in any public capacity.
Ostensibly, the scores are used to determine which users provide correct feedback about the accuracy of articles shared on the site. Which, if you’re a half-trillion dollar company looking to outsource vital labor to its users, sounds like an OK idea.
However, a lot about just what the so-called trustworthiness score is remains unknown. The Post writes that in addition to a lack of clarity on how they are calculated, we also don’t know all the specific ways in which the scores are used. We don’t even know if everyone on Facebook has a trustworthiness rating, or whether that potentially ignominious ranking is reserved for a lucky few.
There are some things we do know, however. In March of this year, the Pew Research Center published survey data showing that “[while] a substantial share of Americans get news from Facebook and other social media sites, very few people express much trust in information on these sites.”
Specifically, continues Pew, “[only] 5% of online Americans say they have ‘a lot’ of trust in the information they get from social media sites.”
But the fun doesn’t stop there. The Business Insider Intelligence’s 2018 Digital Trust survey found that 81 percent of those surveyed had “little to no confidence that Facebook will protect their data and privacy.”
Essentially, people neither trust Facebook as company nor as a service. With Facebook now looking to surreptitiously quantify whether or not the people who spend their lives on its site are liars, it seems like the distrust goes both ways.
Facebook, which has credibly been accused of misleading regulators, electedofficials, and the press before, disputes the Washington Post’s reporting. When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson claimed this was all much ado about nothing.
“The idea that we have a centralized ‘reputation’ score for people that use Facebook is just plain wrong and the headline in the Washington Post is misleading,” wrote the spokesperson. “What we’re actually doing: We developed a process to protect against people indiscriminately flagging news as fake and attempting to game the system. The reason we do this is to make sure that our fight against misinformation is as effective as possible.”
Which, if accurate, sounds fine. If only there was some sort of way to determine whether or not Facebook is trustworthy.
Portland-based writer and artist Michael James Schneider posted a series of engagement photos to Twitter of him and his wine-box boyfriend, and of course, they went viral. You know what they say…rosé is bae.
In an official statement from the team, general manager Kevin Colbert announced Rogers violated the NFL’s substance abuse policy:
“We are disappointed that Eli Rogers has been suspended for Week 1 of the regular season as part of the NFL Policy and Program for Substances of Abuse.
“The suspension will begin following the final roster cutdown on September 1. He will be allowed to continue his rehabilitation and attend meetings at team’s headquarters, but he will not be permitted to practice with the team during his suspension or attend the Week 1 game.”
In the announcement, an NFL spokesperson said Rogers will be eligible to return to Pittsburgh’s active roster following the Sept. 9 game against the Cleveland Browns.
He remains eligible to participate in the Steelers’ practices and preseason games.
Since signing with the Steelers as an undrafted free agent in 2015, Rogers has been used sparingly. He had a breakout season in 2016 with 594 yards and three touchdowns when Martavis Bryant was suspended.
Between Bryant returning to the team last season and the addition of JuJu Smith-Schuster, Rogers had only 18 receptions for 149 yards in 2017. Hetore his ACLduring Pittsburgh’s 45-42 playoff loss against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
With Bryant having been traded to the Oakland Raiders, Rogers will likely be in the mix for snaps as a slot receiver when he returns.
Paul Manafort, US President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, has been found guilty of eight financial crimes in the first trial victory of the special counsel investigation into the president’s associates.
A judge declared a mistrial on 10 other counts the jury could not agree on.
The jury returned the decision on Tuesday after deliberating four days on the charges of tax evasion and bank fraud against the former Trump campaign chairman.
The outcome almost certainly guarantees years of prison for Manafort and established the ability of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team to persuade a jury of average citizens despite months of partisan attacks – including from Trump – on the investigation’s integrity.
The charges against Manafort were among the first resulting from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Tuesday’s verdict raised immediate questions of whether the president would seek to pardon Manafort, the lone American charged by Mueller to opt for trial instead of cooperate. The president has not revealed his thinking but spoke sympathetically throughout the trial of his onetime aide.
Trump and his campaign were only a small part of Manafort’s trial, as jurors instead heard days of testimony about Manafort’s finances and what prosecutors say was a years-long tax-evasion and fraud scheme.
Manafort decided not to put on any witnesses or testify himself in the trial. His attorneys said he made the decision because he didn’t believe the government had met its burden of proof.
Michael Cohen’s guilty plea wedges the special counsel’s investigation right into the President Donald Trump’s private life and family. | Richard Drew/AP Photo
The statement came as part of a plea deal that Cohen struck Tuesday afternoon with federal prosecutors in New York.
Updated, 5:25 p.m.: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, stated Tuesday that Trump directed him to pay women to stay silent about damaging stories during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The statement came as part of a plea deal that Cohen struck Tuesday afternoon with federal prosecutors in New York.
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“I participated in the conduct for the purposes of influencing the election,” Cohen said in court.
Original story: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s combative former personal lawyer, said in federal court in New York on Tuesday that he will plead guilty to federal charges, which include campaign finance fraud from payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to The Associated Press.
Cohen is pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, false statement to financial institution, willful cause of unlawful corporate contribution, and excessive campaign contribution.
Cohen agreed in his plea deal to not challenge any sentence from 46 to 63 months, according to the AP.
Both Daniels and McDougal have claimed they had affairs with Trump, which the president has denied.
A source close to Cohen said prior to the plea that Cohen agreed to a plea deal “to save millions of dollars, protect his family, and limit his exposure,” the source said.
Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating Cohen for months over allegations of tax fraud, bank fraud and campaign finance violations stemming from hush payments he arranged to women, including Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election. The probe was fueled in part by a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Cohen’s apartment and Manhattan office, as well as a hotel room, were raided by federal investigators in April.
Mueller’s team has been pursuing legal action against Trump associates for months. The special counsel has already secured indictments against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has been on trial in Virginia, where a jury is deliberating on multiple counts of bank and tax fraud. Former campaign aides Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, as well as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, are among those who have pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe.
But Cohen’s plea brings the investigation squarely into the realm of the president’s private life and family.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that federal authorities investigating whether Cohen committed bank and tax fraud were focusing on more than $20 million in loans secured by taxi businesses that he or his family owned. Those investigators are also examining whether Cohen violated campaign finance laws or other statutes by facilitating financial deals to buy the silence of women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, according to the report.
Cohen’s plea agreement marks the most formal break yet between the president and one of his most vocal, visible and forceful defenders.
For years, Cohen boasted that he would do anything to protect Trump, his reputation and his business empire, once saying he would take a bullet for Trump. The relationship began to fray after Trump’s surprise election, when the president decided not to offer his trusted attorney a position in his administration. Cohen had told acquaintances that he had expected such a position, perhaps even White House chief of staff or counsel.
Cohen’s loyalty was tested after FBI agents raided several locations and seized literally millions of documents and digital records that provided investigators with a roadmap of his — and Trump’s — myriad financial dealings. Some of those documents presumably relate to Trump Organization business deals and proposals, potentially including one that Cohen was trying to negotiate for a Trump property in Moscow during the early stages of the presidential campaign.
FBI agents also recovered numerous recordings of phone calls between Cohen and Trump that legal experts have said could be a gold mine for prosecutors.
The classic Thunder Road race scene from Grease shows us that racing for pinks is risky business. But rerecording the sound effects with shitty mouth noises shows us not only how sound is an important aspect in visual storytelling, but also how easily it can ruin everything.
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we didn’t start the fire
(@juliareinstein) August 21, 2018
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Daily Trends Hunter 