LETTER

It’s finally Friday! In top news, hurricane season kicks off this weekend, with Hurricane Harvey projected to hit the coast of Texas and make by land late tonight or early Saturday. The storm is expected to bring up to three feet of rain along with 125 mile per hour winds, leading to large evacuations in cities like Corpus Christi. Meanwhile, President Trump continued to excoriate Congress for not approving a budget or raising of the federal debt ceiling.
In other news, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., approved the Justice Department’s request to review the record of visitors to a website organizing Inauguration Day protests; President Trump issued a memo to the Defense Department setting guidelines for the president’s ban on transgender troops; and the Detroit Tigers got into a good old fashion basebrawl with the New York Yankees during an afternoon game.
As always, have a great weekend and thanks for reading the newsletter.
Cheers,
The Wonks Team
Politics and Public Policy
- The U.S. Interior Department recommended for a reduction of the borders of designated national monuments in a move that would ease fishing and hunting on federally maintained lands, the Washington Post reports.
- The New York Times reports on the changes to White House office procedure instituted by John Kelly, contrasting Kelly’s approach in the chief of staff position to his predecessors and the ultimate limits on his authority to control the president’s behavior.
- The Atlantic assesses the prevalence of the name “Robert Lee,” counting the number of individuals nationwide with that name and how ESPN mishandled the situation by assuming that the public singularly associated the name with the Confederate general.
Business, Science, and Health
- The New York Times profiles the syphilis outbreak in Oklahoma, detailing its relationship with the opioid addiction and how public health workers engage in outreach to addicts about carrying the disease.
- Quartz charts out the decline of coal as an energy source in the U.S. along with other fossil fuels according to a controversial new report from the Department of Energy.
Sports and Culture
- Football Outsiders and Deadspin present an all-32 team preview of the 2017 NFL season, including a paragraph description for each team’s expected results, new offensive and defensive schemes, and more.
- Jen Chaney of Vulture reflects on the changing archetypes of TV protagonists, arguing that main characters have transitioned from being antiheroes to unquestionably heroic in the past five years and how it fits into broader debates on diversity on TV.

