After George W. Bush turned the White House over to President Obama, he learned to paint and mostly stayed quiet on his successor. Obama has urged America and foreign leaders to give his successor, President-elect Donald Trump, a chance to outline a vision and grow into the job, but he also is making clear that he won't stay silent if Trump goes too far. If a Trump policy or action "goes to core questions about our values and our ideals, and if I think that it's necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, then I'll examine it when it comes," Obama said at the end of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on Sunday. In private, he's reportedly more direct.
"I'm going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen," he said last week to a meeting of Organizing for Action, the group that maintains his political movement, according to The New York Times. "But that's not so far off." Obama had planned to retire from partisan politics if Hillary Clinton had been elected, devoting his efforts to redistricting reform, confronting systemic racism, and promoting technology to improve society. But in his remarks to the liberal activists, Obama reportedly urged them to quickly land on a plan to oppose Trump, adding, "You're going to see me early next year, and we're going to be in a position where we can start cooking up all kinds of great stuff to do."
Obama was a strident critic of Trump when he was on the campaign trail for Clinton, and resuming his critique after leaving office carries some risk. Currently, Obama's approval rating is 56 percent, according to Gallup; Trump's favorability rating is 42 percent, Gallup says, which is an improvement from 34 percent before he won election but much lower than Obama (68 percent), George W. Bush (59 percent), and Bill Clinton (58 percent) right after they were elected. Pew found that only 30 percent of voters give Trump an A or B grade, the lowest mark since at least 1988 (Clinton, was graded an A or B by 43 percent of voters, the first time the losing candidate outscored the winner). Peter Weber
Facebook is in hot water once again.
The social media giant on Thursday acknowledged having stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text when they should have been encrypted. This followed a report from journalist Brian Krebs on Facebook not encrypting passwords, which said this has been happening "in some cases going back to 2012."
Krebs quoted a Facebook source as saying "between 200 million and 600 million" users have been affected by this. In a blog post, Facebook didn't provide an exact number but said it would notify "hundreds of millions" of affected Facebook Lite users, as well as "tens of millions" of other Facebook users and "tens of thousands" of Instagram users.
These unencrypted passwords were searchable in a database that could be accessed by 20,000 Facebook employees, Krebs reports. Facebook says it discovered this during a security review in January but found "no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed the passwords."
This is only the latest bit of bad press for the scandal-plagued Facebook, which The New York Times reported last week is under criminal investigation over deals made with other companies over its user's data. Facebook told the Times it is "cooperating with investigators and take those probes seriously." After the company's Thursday revelations, the Times' Mike Isaac quoted a Facebook employee as saying, "working at Facebook is like living the Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes GIF." Brendan Morrow
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway would very much like everyone to stop paying so much attention to her husband's tweets calling her boss, President Trump, mentally unstable.
Conway spoke with Fox Business on Thursday after Trump went after her husband, George Conway, as a "stone cold loser," "husband from hell," and a "whack job." It's "unusual" and "new" for her husband not to support "the agenda of the president and my work there," she said, also saying it's "surprising" to see "grievances" aired in public. Still, "I appreciate the president defending what he thinks is unfairness," she said, later saying that Trump is "protective" of her and has "never" made her feel like she has to "choose between my marriage and my job."
She went on to say that she has "certainly" had "conversations" with her husband about not wanting him to tweet attacks on her boss, but she argued the media is "getting into a very dangerous area" by covering this story, in particular going after what she called "self-designated marriage experts." She also suggested her husband's tweets aren't really that important since he can't "act on" them and that reporters only care about him because of their marriage. "I don't know when the feminists are going to write the story about the unusual situation about a man getting power through his wife, but that's what we have here," she said.
Later, Conway said her husband "certainly" wants her to step down, but asked, "what message would that send to the feminists everywhere who pretend they're independent thinkers, and men don't make decisions for them? They can talk it, and I can walk it. I can live it." Brendan Morrow
At least 55 people are dead after a ferry sank in Iraq's Tigris river, officials tell Al Jazeera.
The ferry was carrying more than 80 people celebrating the Kurdish new year when it sank due to a technical problem near Mosul on Thursday, a civil defense official tells The Associated Press. Those dead include 33 women, 12 children, and 10 men, an Iraqi health ministry spokesman added. At least 30 people had been rescued but search operations are ongoing.
The river had seen high, fast-moving waters recently after the nearby Mosul dam was opened, BBC notes. Water authorities told boat operators to stay off the river, meaning there weren't many boats around to aid the sinking vessel. Many of those onboard were women and children who could not swim, the civil defense official told AP.
Some sources have said there could've been up to 200 people onboard the ferry as it traveled to a tourist island, per Al Jazeera. Photos and videos showing people floating in the water appeared on social media following the incident. Kathryn Krawczyk
Republicans estimate President Trump needs $1 billion to win in 2020 — and that he needs some unlikely donors to make that happen.
With several Democrats' fundraising totals already leaping into the tens of millions, the GOP knows it needs its wealthy party members who fought Trump in 2016 to change allegiances this time around. And to make that happen, Vice President Mike Pence — the less abrasive of America's executive duo — is taking to the golf course, Politico reports.
On Monday, Pence spoke to several big-dollar GOP donors, including billionaire investor Paul Singer, at a surf and turf dinner at California's Pebble Beach golf course. Singer donated millions to an anti-Trump PAC in 2016, but that wasn't apparent from the way Pence "thanked him for his years of financial support to the party and conservative causes" on Monday, Politico says. Pence also brought Singer to the White House to share "detailed briefings on the administration's legislative agenda," Politico continues, perhaps because Singer did reportedly end up giving $1 million to Trump's inauguration committee.
The Pebble Beach dinner was just one example of how Pence can "translate Trump" into a language conservatives want to hear, says David McIntosh, who heads a former anti-Trump group that's more anti-Beto O'Rourke this time around. Still, Pence's dinner party didn't completely convince 2016 anti-Trumper Art Pope to donate to Trump in 2020. He may "remain on the sidelines" this time instead of publicly opposing Trump, though, and he expects more former anti-Trumpers to do the same, Politico notes.
Read more about Pence's mission at Politico. Kathryn Krawczyk