It's a wonder no one figured this out sooner.
Marcus Epstein has a history of associating with far-right groups and white nationalists while writing racially provocative pieces across conservative sites. Yet over the past two years, he seemingly dropped that history as he adopted the name "Mark Epstein" and wrote op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Forbes, and other publications — and the Journal has a very odd explanation for how it happened, BuzzFeed News reports.
Epstein previously worked for former Colorado congressmember Tom Tancredo, who espoused xenophobic views himself, and founded what BuzzFeed News calls a "nativist political club" with white supremacist Richard Spencer in the mid-2000s. Under his full name, Epstein also wrote a series of provocative, race-related op-eds for the anti-immigration website VDare.
But on the Journal's website, Mark Epstein is only identified as an "antitrust attorney and freelance writer" and largely writes in opposition to big tech regulation. Epstein gets that designation because that's the way "we know Mark Epstein," the Journal said in a statement to BuzzFeed News, adding that "we are not aware that he has written under any other byline." A spokesperson for The Hill said "we would never knowingly post material from a racist writer and have no information identifying this writer as such." Forbes, meanwhile, said Epstein's byline appeared "without permission as a co-author on one of our contributor’s posts" and that it would take Epstein's post down for further review.
Epstein explained the pseudonym to BuzzFeed News as a way to "move past the media-internet driven outrage culture" surrounding his past actions, including a dismissed 2007 misdemeanor assault charge. He also said he has "never been white nationalist nor held their beliefs." Read more at BuzzFeed News. Kathryn Krawczyk
The Justice Department announced Tuesday it will open a broad antitrust review into tech giants and how they acquired so much power.
The DOJ said in a statement the review will "consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online." The Federal Trade Commission and Congress have both already started similar inquiries, and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called for the breakup of these massive companies.
The DOJ said the goal of the review is to identify antitrust issues so they can be fixed, The Wall Street Journal reports. In after-hours trading on Tuesday, shares for Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook were all down. Catherine Garcia
A businessman who remembers what it was like to rely on free lunches as a child approached the Wyoming Valley West School District in Pennsylvania with an offer he didn't think they would refuse.
Todd Carmichael, CEO and co-founder of La Colombe Coffee, said he told the school board president, Joseph Mazur, that he wanted to give the district $22,000 to wipe out all student lunch debt. Carmichael proposed the gift after learning that the district was sending letters to parents warning them that if they didn't pay the lunch money owned, they could be "sent to dependency court for neglecting your child's right to food," possibly leading to children being removed from their homes and put in foster care.
Mazur rejected his offer, Carmichael's spokesman Aren Platt told The Associated Press, saying the money is owed by parents who can afford to pay up. "The position of Mr. Carmichael is, irrespective of affluence, irrespective of need, he just wants to wipe away this debt," Platt said. Mazur did not return AP's phone calls.
A lawyer for the school board said he doesn't know what they plan on doing regarding lunch debt; previously, there had been talk of placing liens on properties and filing complaints in a district court. As for the foster care threat, Luzerne County child welfare agency officials said it's false to claim that parents who don't pay lunch debt could be sent to court, AP reports, and the school district needs to stop making this threat. Catherine Garcia
Special Counsel Robert Mueller will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday with one of his longtime aides, Aaron Zebley, by his side, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times on Tuesday.
At the last minute, Mueller requested Zebley be sworn in as a witness, but instead, he will be there as Mueller's counsel, offering guidance on how to answer questions about the two-year investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and obstruction of justice.
Zebley was a deputy special counsel with "day-to-day oversight of the investigations conducted by the office," Mueller spokesman Jim Popkin said. Zebley was also Mueller's chief of staff when he served as FBI director. Mueller is also appearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, but it's unclear if he made the same request to the panel. Catherine Garcia
Snap is finally on the upswing again after its disastrous 2018 redesign.
On Tuesday, Snapchat's parent company revealed the app gained 13 million new users in the second quarter, its largest boost since it went public in 2017. It also reported a boosted revenue of $388 million up 48% from a year earlier, sending stocks up 11% in post-market trading, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Snapchat had been either losing users or remaining stagnant from when it posted its IPO until the first quarter of 2019. It also saw a year of falling stock numbers, hitting a record low of $4.99 at the end of last year. Shares have since rebounded 180% to hit $16.50 after Snap shared its Q2 earnings Tuesday, though that's still below its debut price of $17, CNBC notes.
Snap's 203 million total user base exceeds the 192 million expectation analysts predicted for this quarter, Snap said on Tuesday. That's largely thanks to popular gender-swapping filters that apparently even helped one college student catch an alleged predator cop. An updated Android interface also helped retain and add users, Snap said. Snap expects its revenue and user base to continue growing in the third quarter, with an anticipated Q3 revenue of between $410 million and $435 million. Kathryn Krawczyk
You might want to get the tissues out for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's eulogy for her former colleague, the late former Justice John Paul Stevens, who died last week at 99.
Ginsburg kept her remarks short and sweet, but they lent credence to reports that Stevens was not only a well-respected judicial mind, but a man of high character — with a sense of humor to go along with it.
Stevens was laid to rest in a private ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, but CNN obtained a transcript of Ginsburg's eulogy. She spoke of how Stevens was actively playing sports and traveling across the Atlantic well into his 90s. In fact, the two of them saw each other at a conference in Lisbon, during what turned out to be the last week of Stevens' life.
On their last evening there, Ginsburg said she told Stevens that it was her dream to remain on the bench as long as he did. (Stevens, who served for 35 years, has the third longest Supreme Court tenure in U.S. history). Stevens' response? Stay longer.
At the end of the day, Ginsburg said, "in a capital city with no shortage of self-promoters" the "genuinely genial, unpretentious, and modest" Stevens "set a different tone." Read the full remarks at CNN. Tim O'Donnell