Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Heavy opening. May 2017 — Trump in the Oval Office, day after he fires the FBI director investigating Russian election interference. He tells Russian officials he isn't worried about interference because the US does the same thing in other countries. American press was locked out. A Russian state photographer was inside. That memo got classified, leaked to the press, ran hard for weeks, then disappeared. Two years later, one outlet reported what Trump actually said. It contradicted the entire stated basis of the Mueller investigation.

KELI The counter-read here is straightforward. Most coverage treated the firing and the Comey testimony as separate stories — obstruction questions on one track, Russian interference on another. What gets buried is the mechanism: Trump telling a foreign adversary he views their election attack the same as American covert action overseas. That's not just a messaging problem. That's the sitting president, in his first year, establishing with Moscow that he doesn't treat their interference as a threshold violation. The prediction — and you can check this in the coming weeks — is whether any congressional or DOJ inquiry circles back to that actual exchange. If it doesn't, you've got your answer about what the institution was willing to press.

HAST Sticking with power and money. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton raised eighteen million dollars in the third quarter for his U.S. Senate race. That more than doubled what he pulled in the second quarter. Problem is, Democrat James Talarico — Paxton hasn't said he's running yet, and Talarico has raised more in his July-to-September haul. We don't have Talarico's exact number yet, but the Tribune reports Paxton is still short of what past Senate candidates in the state have posted.

KELI On a different front — federal judges are pushing back hard against the Department of Health and Human Services in the Medicare Advantage audits case. From the bench, they're skewerering the government's legal arguments. The case turns on whether HHS can order audits of overpayments to private insurers running Medicare Advantage plans. The judges' skepticism suggests the government's got thin ground here. That ruling could shift what HHS can demand from insurers, and it'll ripple through how much money flows back into the program.

HAST Hollywood's putting tech executives on screen this fall. Four films — one on Sam Altman's time at OpenAI, one on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook's role in amplifying violence and hate, a full-scale Elon Musk documentary. None of it's friendly. The studios are betting audience interest in how tech power works, or breaks. Whether that translates to pressure on actual regulation is another question.

KELI Before we close, a history note. Hast.

HAST In 1936, the Jarrow March set off for London — two hundred unemployed men from a shipyard town in northeast England, walking two hundred sixty miles to put the Depression in front of Parliament.

KELI That's the Independent News Drop. For race night setup tools, racer.wiki. Lawz bodycam explainers on the channel. Cards and shirts at inkwell.wiki slash cards, slash bible-shirts, slash art-shirts. Full script at inkwell.wiki slash news. From Inkwell.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. If you've ever wondered what Gil's Intelligent Version actually is — a chronological retranslation of the Bible with its full scholarly workings left visible — there's now a plain overview.

HAST No author, only method. Start at inkwell dot wiki, slash giv, slash about.