Understanding and repairing the power supply from a 1969 analog computer
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Kim Jong-un: fragile and under pressure but he won’t give up
The Observer The North Korean leader’s surprise freeze of his nuclear programme is less a genuine move than a diplomatic manoeuvre,...
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
How to do a data detox when you're super lazy
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again? Only the wind is the internet, and the plastic bag is a flurry of confetti exposing every detail of your personal life? If so, it may be time for a data detox.
Though we unbox our tech with optimism shining in our hearts as bright as our brand new phones, inescapable digital ephemera is quick to accumulate. No matter how careful you are, a clean, secure digital life is nearly impossible to maintain.
Practically every website, service and appliance now comes bundled with an app or account, all of which demand you hand over your name, birth date, credit card details and social security number. Tech companies mercilessly track our interests, location, age, gender, ethnicity, and anything else that can be used to categorise and advertise to people. No matter who you are or where you’re from, big tech is watching. Read more...
More about Data, Passwords, Data Privacy, Data Protection, and Data Securityfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/data-detox-for-lazy-people/
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New top story on Hacker News: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
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Vox Sentences: Trump wins some, loses some
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Trump’s legal battles against House Democrats continue; Yemen sees dengue fever outbreak.
Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.
Trump and House Dems trade blows in court
- President Donald Trump’s week began with a court loss and a court win: a federal judge ruled a former White House official cannot ignore a congressional subpoena, as Trump instructed him to do; while the Supreme Court said Trump’s accounting firm doesn’t have to turn over the president’s tax returns to Congress. [Lawfare / Gordon Ahl]
- Monday, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson ruled former White House counsel Don McGahn must testify before Congress. McGahn was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee in May to testify and submit evidence regarding allegations he’d been instructed to fire special counsel Robert Muller. [New York Times / Charlie Savage]
- The Trump administration argued McGahn did not have to submit to the subpoena because he has “absolute testimonial immunity” as a former presidential aide, but Jackson rejected this argument. [Politico / Darren Samuelsohn]
- But this decision doesn’t mean McGahn — or other White House officials who have ignored congressional subpoenas — will be testifying anytime soon: The Trump administration announced Tuesday it’s appealing the decision, leaving the matter in the hands of the Supreme Court. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
- In a Supreme Court action that has already gone Trump’s way, justices granted the president a stay in his ongoing battle with the House Oversight Committee over his financial records. [Roll Call / Todd Ruger]
- The stay means that although a federal appeals court ruled in October that Trump has to turn over his financial records — which likely include his tax returns — the documents must remain with his accounting firm. For now. [Wall Street Journal / Brent Kendall]
- The stay also mandated Trump’s lawyers file paperwork for the justices to hear the case by December 5, essentially fast-tracking it — the Supreme Court could issue a final ruling on the matter as early as next June. [Vox / Ian Millhiser]
Dengue fever breaks out in Yemen
- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says Yemen is experiencing a severe dengue fever outbreak. [Al Jazeera]
- Monday, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid organization counted 10 dead from the disease in the last week in the governorate of Taiz. [AP News / Edith Lederer]
- Dengue fever is a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, in a manner similar to the way the insects spread the parasite that causes malaria. Overall, 7,970 cases of dengue have been reported in Taiz alone; there are 3,215 confirmed cases there, with 103 patients under hospital observation. [Asharq Al-Awsat]
- ICRC UN observer Robert Mardini noted that this newest outbreak had compounded an already intense cholera epidemic that began ravaging the country last year, as well as an ongoing malaria epidemic. [Washington Post]
Miscellaneous
- Four Google employees say they were fired for protesting the company’s involvement with US Border Patrol. [The Guardian / Julia Carrie Wong]
- Streaming platform competition will cost companies like Netflix and Disney a collective $16 billion. [Vox / Peter Kafka]
- Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, a World Anti-Doping Agency panel recommended Russia should be banned from global sports competitions for the next four years for ignoring doping rules. [New York Times / Tariq Panja]
- Trump has Thanksgiving dinner plans in his new home state of Florida. [Miami Herald / David Smiley]
- A “bleak” UN report: Countries are far off course in reducing emissions and fighting climate change. [Vox / Umair Irfan]
Verbatim
“The ugliness my jokes help reveal is why I’m so worried about our pluralistic democracies. Demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream, fueled in part by President Trump.” [An excerpt from actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s op-ed in the Washington Post]
Watch this: How stop animation began
Vox Almanac explores the winged and many-legged beginnings of stop-motion animation. [YouTube / Phil Edwards]
Read more
New polls show a slight increase in support for impeachment
Martin Scorsese has spent his entire career searching for God
9 questions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embarrassed to ask
What to know before posting a photo of your kids on social media
from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/vox-sentences/2019/11/26/20984659/trump-court-tax-returns-yemen-dengue
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Monday, 25 November 2019
6 tweets for International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women that help you help others
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This ginormous device turns wave energy into electricity
This 826-ton buoy was developed by OceanEnergy to turn wave energy into electricity. IEEE Spectrum reported that "OE Buoy" was towed from Oregon to Hawaii, where it will undergo a series of tests that will prove whether it can withstand the battering waves while generating electricity. Read more...
More about Mashable Video, Ocean, Energy, Renewables, and Electricityfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/video/ginormous-device-turns-wave-energy-to-electricity/
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Best Black Friday air fryer deals today: Ninja, Chefman, and more
Shopping when you're hungry can cause you to buy a lot of unnecessary thingsAn air fryer is not one of those things.
If you've had an air fryer on your list of items to grab this holiday season, you don't have to wait until the clock strikes Black Friday. Best Buy decided it was starting Black Friday a week early and now has all the air fryers in its Black Friday ad at their Black Friday prices. Walmart has been dropping pre-Black Friday sales for a minute, and though not everything from the ad scan is at its Black Friday price yet (like the 6-quart Instant Vortex), other big-name items that rarely see a discount are on sale (like the 10-quart Instant Vortex Plus). Read more...
More about Cooking, Black Friday, Kitchen, Mashable Shopping, and Air Fryerfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/shopping/nov-25-best-black-friday-air-fryer-deals/
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Can you match Billie Eilish's high notes?
Can you hit the same notes as iconic singers?
Hit the High Notes, a game from Vole.wtf, mostly involves shrieking into your computer's poor, overworked mics. The game is entirely browser-based, so there's no need for add-ons. It starts with a warm-up note, and challenges players with progressively higher notes from history's groundbreaking artists to pop stars, each one more difficult to hit.
"You get to scream at your browser and feel a bit silly," game designer Matt Round said in a Twitter DM. "Whether you're a good or terrible singer, you're probably going to hit your limit, start making weird noises, and feel ridiculous." Read more...
More about Games, Singers, Culture, and Web Culturefrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/hit-the-high-note-game/
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Somehow Facebook's facial recognition was even creepier than we thought
In case we needed another reminder of Facebook's mass surveillance capabilities, we now know the company once built an app entirely for real-time facial recognition.
The social media giant experimented with a camera app that could identify people using Facebook's facial-recognition tech, according to a new report from Business Insider. The app was reportedly tested internally with Facebook employees between 2015 and 2016, and was "an example of future innovations" at the company.
According to BI, the app was fairly rudimentary, with a "basic camera interface" that could identify individuals and show their Facebook name and profile photo. You know, sort of like a dystopian version of Snapchat. Read more...
More about Tech, Facebook, Facial Recognition, Social Media Companies, and Techfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/facebook-facial-recognition-app-privacy/
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Absolutely humongous data breach exposes more than a billion records
Well, this is certainly not great: An unprotected database of more than a billion users' records from across the internet — including "social media accounts, email addresses, and phone numbers" — was discovered on an unidentified Elasticsearch server that could be accessed by anyone with the server's web address.
What's even weirder is, according to Bloomberg, no one is exactly sure how it got there.
The discovery was made in October by cybersecurity experts Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia; the 4 terabytes of data they found also included Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profile information. All told, the server contained information on four billion user accounts and 650 million unique email addresses, affecting 1.2 billion people. Read more...
More about Cybersecurity, Data Breach, Tech, and Cybersecurityfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/one-billion-users-data-unprotected/
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Watching these Fox News hosts deflate while listening to Trump is oddly satisfying
The president phoned into Fox & Friends for a rambling nearly hour-long interview on Friday morning. During the call he ranted about the ongoing impeachment hearings, called Adam Schiff a "sick puppy," and once again, pushed a debunked conspiracy theory.
The Fox & Friends hosts didn't correct or stop the president's rant, but did appear to lose their composure the longer Trump's monologue went on. At one point, Trump complained that former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch wouldn't display his photo in the embassy. He also complained that he has to deal with "Crazy Nancy" — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and questioned former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's mental health. Read more...
More about Trump, Conspiracy Theories, Fox And Friends, Culture, and Web Culturefrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/trump-conspiracy-theory-fox-and-friends-reaction/
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Uber wants to deliver drugs to your home. (Prescription drugs, calm down.)
Big tech companies like Google and Facebook are aggressively moving into the world of healthcare. But Uber?! We didn't see that one coming.
Uber already has a two-year-old Uber Health arm that allows doctors' offices to arrange rides for patients to get to their appointments. But there's much more to come.
Over the past six weeks, the head of Uber Health, Dan Trigub, has been making the rounds with lawmakers, analysts, and reporters about expanding Uber Health's offerings. He gave the example of prescription delivery in October, and reiterated Uber's interest in that area while in Washington, D.C. this week. Read more...
More about Privacy, Uber, Healthcare, Tech, and Healthfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/article/uber-health-prescription-delivery/
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Hate Tesla's Cybertruck? Here are some other electric pickup trucks.
It's been less than 24 hours since Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's first electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck, and Twitter is already roasting it.
Yes, it boasts 250 miles of range (which can be upgraded to 500), can tow 7,500 pounds, and can go from 0 to 60 mph in under 6.5 seconds. But it's so pointyBlade Runner is great, but not everybody wants to drive a truck from an '80s sci-fi film.
If you want to go electric, but want something a little less futuristic, there are some great options scheduled to come out over the next few years.
1Bollinger B2
Good luck paying it off.
Image: Bollinger motors Read more...
from Mashable https://mashable.com/article/cybertruck-alternatives-electric-pickup-truck/
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This smart robot could become your cat’s new BFF — Future Blink
This smart robot gives your cat companionship — and exercise —while you're away by rolling around, spinning, and dancing. Read more...
More about Tech, Cats, Mashable Video, Future Blink, and Ebofrom Mashable https://mashable.com/video/smart-robot-cat-ebo/
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Here’s where your electric vehicles sounds come from
The quiet vehicles have prompted regulations in the U.S. and Europe, requiring vehicles to make warning sounds to alert pedestrians. Read more...
More about Tech, Cars, Transportation, Mashable Video, and Electric Carsfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/video/electric-car-sounds/
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Make your smartphone a microscope with this device — Future Blink
A small, compactable kit, DIPLE converts your phone camera into an essential scientific tool in the easiest way. Read more...
More about Tech, Smartphone, Mashable Video, Microscope, and Future Blinkfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/video/smartphone-microscope-diple/
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Where to find a Keurig on sale before Black Friday
TL;DR: All sorts of Keurig coffee machines are on sale at Target, Walmart, and Amazon ahead of Black Friday, saving you as much as 50%.
A strong cup of coffee (or five) is an important part of every Black Friday shop-a-thon — after all, those early-bird deals and doorbusters wait for no one. It's do or die out there, dammit, and you need to be wide awake for this thing.
If you happen to need a new coffee maker to ensure you stay caffeinated on the big day, your timing is excellent: Walmart, Target, and Amazon are all offering deals on quick-brewing Keurig coffee machines this weekend as part of their pre-holiday sales. Read more...
More about Keurig, Black Friday, Kitchen, Mashable Shopping, and Techfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/shopping/nov-22-keurigs-black-friday-amazon-walmart-target/
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Attention adrenaline junkies! Here’s a checklist for choosing your next adventure
There are few better places around the world for adventure tourism than the land down under. Our unique landscape, deadly friendly* animals, and fearless locals makes Australia the true land of opportunity when it comes to wild, adrenaline-fuelled experiences
However, there is almost too much adventure to be had in Australia – especially for international travelers with limits on time and budget. Should you bungee jump on the far-north coast? Or pound down the white-water rapids on Queensland's Tully? How about 4WD-ing sand dunes in Port Stephens?
Choosing the right experience can be hard. On one hand, you don’t want to spend a pile of money on something that turns out to be subpar. On the other, you don’t want to overestimate your limits, and waste your precious travel budget only to chicken out at the last minute Read more...
More about Watercooler, Supported, Brand X, Lifestyle, and Otherfrom Mashable https://mashable.com/ad/feature/how-to-choose-your-next-adventure/
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Vox Sentences: A fight over a pin — and war crimes
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer resigns; Iran protests are making their way online after the government ends a national shutdown.
Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.
Trump official resigns in dispute over Navy SEAL
- Defense Secretary Mark Esper asked for Navy Secretary Richard Spencer’s resignation on Sunday. Esper said he’d lost confidence in Spencer over a deal he allegedly struck that would have seen Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher face military discipline while also ensuring President Donald Trump received the outcome he desired in Gallagher’s case. [AP News / Robert Burns]
- Gallagher was acquitted of the majority of war crime charges against him in July, but was demoted after being found guilty of posing with ISIS captive’s dead body in a photo. [Vox / Zeeshan Aleem]
- Trump took interest in Gallagher’s case; he ordered his rank be restored and tweeted that the Navy should halt a review into whether the SEAL ought to be removed from the elite unit. [New York Times / Helene Copper and Thomas Gibbons-Neff]
- This led to concerns Trump was improperly interfering with Navy discipline, and Spencer reportedly threatened to resign if the president forced military leaders to forgo the review. (Spencer later claimed these reports were false.) [Defense News / Joe Gould and Carl Prine]
- Ultimately, Spencer resigned — or was asked to resign — making whether he threatened to quit moot; Esper claims he asked for Spencer’s resignation because, without informing Esper, the former secretary promised the White House Gallagher would be allowed to remain a SEAL (and to keep his coveted gold Trident pin) if Trump allowed the review to continue. [NPR / Vanessa Romo]
- Spencer claims he resigned because he had been given “an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and he felt he could not comply with the request to nix the review. [Vox / Alex Ward]
- And Trump said Gallagher was only one factor in his desire to dismiss Spencer — he claims Esper fired him for a failure to keep naval spending under control. [Washington Post / Ashley Parker and Dan Lamothe]
- Despite these differing narratives, Spencer is out as navy secretary. Trump says he will nominate the ambassador to Norway, Rear Adm. Ken Braithwaite, to replace him. Gallagher will remain a SEAL and retain his pin, but congressional Democrats have signaled they would like to investigate both Trump’s meddling in Gallagher’s case and Spencer’s ouster. [Vox / Alex Ward]
Iranian protest footage makes its way online
- Violent videos of Iranians protesting a 50 percent increase in gas prices are surfacing as Iran comes back online after a government-mandated internet shutdown. [ABC News / Jon Gambrell]
- In an attempt to limit the protests and to keep documentary evidence of what transpired during them under wraps, the Iranian government shut off internet access nationally last week after protests erupted in cities all over the country. [Vox / Hannah Brown]
- Amnesty International estimates that over 100 Iranians died during the protests, and that around 1,000 were arrested in demonstrations that left vehicles burned and buildings destroyed. [Los Angeles Times / Melissa Etehad and Ramin Mostaghim]
- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blamed foreign powers, such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US for the protests: “The Iranian people have again succeeded in an historic test and shown they will not let enemies benefit from the situation, even though they might have complaints about the country’s management,” Rouhani said during a cabinet meeting. [BBC]
Miscellaneous
- The iconic balloons of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade might not float down the streets of New York this year. A forecast of strong winds is to blame. [CNN / Allison Chinchar and Haley Brink]
- Food grown for foreign countries’ animals by Nile Delta farmers is damaging the river, and the region’s prospects for self-sustainability. [Wall Street Journal / Justin Scheck and Scott Patterson]
- How charitable are American billionaires? One economist created a chart to lay out their contributions. Several of the richest appear to give .01 percent of their wealth each year. [Vox / Dylan Matthews]
- Anti-government protesters in Lebanon skirmished with Shiite groups supporting Hezbollah and Amal. [Reuters]
- Our dogs might not be as smart as we think they are, but they do have an incredible capacity for love. [New York Times / James Gorman]
Verbatim
“We’re on the front line of what is happening with sea-level rise. It has now changed how we live life down here. We haven’t come to grips with where we are and where we’re headed.” [Key Largo resident George Smyth on the danger that the now near-constant flooding of the Florida Keys poses]
Watch this: Brazil’s indigenous land is being invaded
Brazil’s indigenous land is in danger — from the country’s president. [YouTube / Sam Ellis]
Read more
How to spend money to squeeze more joy out of life
The Supreme Court is about to hear the biggest guns case in over a decade
Noise pollution is everywhere. And the health effects are real.
Pro-democracy candidates dominate Hong Kong’s local elections in a rebuke to China
from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/vox-sentences/2019/11/25/20982944/navy-secretary-seal-trump-iran
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Google fired an employee who questioned its work with Customs and Border Protection
About 200 Google employees and other protesters rallied in front of the search giant’s San Francisco offices on Friday, demanding that the company reinstate two employee activists who were put on administrative leave. One of those employees, Rebecca Rivers, said she was fired today. | Shirin Ghaffary
Rebecca Rivers, a former engineer, said on Monday that the company terminated her employment.
A former Google employee who helped organize a petition against Google working with US immigration agencies has been fired from the company in what some are viewing as an attack on worker activism within the search giant’s rank and file.
Rebecca Rivers, a former Google software engineer, announced on her personal Twitter account that her employment had been terminated. According to Bloomberg, Google announced today that it fired four employees for what it called “clear and repeated violations” of its data-security policies, in a note sent to its staff and confirmed by a spokesperson for the company.
The move comes after Google placed Rivers and another employee also involved in organizing, Laurence Berland, on administrative leave earlier this month. The company alleged the employees violated company policies about accessing sensitive internal documents and monitoring employees’ calendar events. But Rivers and Berland have objected to those claims, saying the documents in question were not sensitive and that monitoring public calendar events does not break any corporate rules.
Around 200 Google employees and protestors rallied outside the search giant’s San Francisco office on Friday, demanding the company reinstate Rivers and Berland. The company’s firings today are viewed as a serious escalation of an increasing crackdown on Google’s historically permissive culture around sharing information — and what some employees are saying is an effort to silence workers’ concerns about controversial decisions.
In a note sent to staff by Google’s Security and Investigations Team, the company stated that a “thorough investigation” found the individuals fired “were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work,” and that they were found to be “repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies.” The note also alleged that some employees reported feeling unsafe because their calendar events were being monitored. Some screenshots of those calendar entries “made their way” outside the company, according to the note. Several Google employees on Friday told Recode that colleagues regularly look up each others’ calendar events, and that in their view, this shouldn’t be grounds for such punishment.
Rivers and Berland did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Google, Jenn Kaiser, said the company is not confirming the names of the employees fired today and declined to comment about workers’ allegations of retaliation.
At the rally on Friday, Rivers spoke about the actions she believes led to management taking action against her.
“I’m proud of what I did, and I believe everyone has a right to know what their work is being used for,” said Rivers about her criticism of Google’s work with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a government agency that has come under fire from human rights organizations for its enforcement of Trump’s controversial family separation policies. In August, it was revealed that Google was offering a free pilot of one of its cloud products to CBP. “Instead of listening to me or thousands of my coworkers, Google has punished me by putting me on administrative leave.”
Rivers said she was questioned by Google’s investigations team about her involvement organizing a petition against the company’s work with CBP, as well as her personal social media usage.
Rivers isn’t the first employee to claim that the company has retaliated against her for political reasons. Two of the leaders of the 2018 Google walkout against sexual harassment, Meredith Whittaker and Claire Stapleton, have publicly said the company pushed them out because of their organizing. And several other prominent former internal activists, such as Liz Fong-Jones and Irene Knapp, have made similar claims. A handful of employees on the other side of the political spectrum, who are removed from Google’s core group of largely left-leaning activists, have claimed they were terminated for sharing conservative political beliefs at work. One of those employees, Kevin Cernekee, posted comments on internal Google forums seemingly defending white nationalist figure Richard Spencer and the hate group Golden State Skinheads.
In September, Google agreed to publicly remind its employees about their legal rights to talk about and engage in workplace organizing, as part of a settlement with the US National Labor Relations Board over claims that the company was suppressing workers’ protected speech.
In the past two years, Google has drawn criticism from its employees about ethical concerns around topics ranging from sexual harassment to government contracts. In particular, the company’s hiring of a former US Department of Homeland Security official, Miles Taylor, who helped defend President Trump’s controversial family separation policy and Muslim ban, recently raised ire within the company’s rank and file. Some employees alleged that the company was deleting internal questions that were critical of Taylor’s hiring.
At the same time that internal activism has been growing, the company has been limiting its famously open culture. In the past year, it has placed new rules on acceptable speech on internal forums, eliminated opportunities to question management on ethical concerns in weekly all-hands meetings, and instituted a “need-to-know” policy for viewing many company documents that were previously more widely accessible to employees.
In its note to employees today, Google made a case that its actions to restrict employees’ access to sensitive information is not a limitation of its open culture.
“We have always taken information security very seriously, and will not tolerate efforts to intimidate Googlers or undermine their work, nor actions that lead to the leak of sensitive business or customer information,” read the note. “This is not how Google’s open culture works or was ever intended to work.”
from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/25/20982649/google-fired-rebecca-rivers-employee-questioned-work-customs-and-border-protection
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The Supreme Court lets Trump keep his tax returns secret — for now
President Trump smiles as he delivers the State of the Union address on January 30, 2018. | Win McNamee/Getty Images
Trump’s legal arguments against House Democrats are weak. We’ll soon find out if that matters to this Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court just handed Trump a significant — but potentially very temporary — victory in his legal battle with House Democrats.
In October, a federal appeals court held in Trump v. Mazars that President Trump’s accounting firm must turn over many of Trump’s financial records — including, most likely, his tax returns — to the House Oversight Committee. Trump asked the Supreme Court to stay that decision, and the justices granted that stay on Monday.
Yet, while the Court stayed the lower court’s decision, it also ordered the case to move forward at an unusually fast pace. Trump’s lawyers must file a petition formally asking the Court to hear the case by noon on December 5.
There were no public dissents from the Court’s order, although it is possible that one or more justices voted not to grant the stay but decided to keep that vote private.
The stay will last until the Supreme Court disposes of the case, either in an order announcing that the Court will not hear Mazars on the merits or in an eventual decision reviewing the lower court’s opinion. If Trump’s lawyers do not make the December 5 deadline, the stay will also terminate in that event.
As a practical matter, that means the Supreme Court is likely to agree to give the case a full merits hearing and that a decision is likely by this June. Should Trump lose in the Supreme Court, in other words, the House Oversight Committee will get to see his financial records well before the presidential election.
Trump’s legal arguments, it should be noted, are exceedingly weak.
As the Court explained in Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund (1975), Congress’s investigatory power is broad, and it extends to subpoenas “intended to gather information about a subject on which legislation may be had.” The lower courts that heard Mazars agreed that the House subpoena was properly issued because the House is considering legislation that would impose stronger financial disclosure requirements on the president.
Because the requested documents could inform the House’s decision about whether such legislation is necessary, they concerned “a subject on which legislation may be had.”
Moreover, as the Supreme Court explained in Clinton v. Jones (1997), “we have never suggested that the President, or any other official, has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.” Thus, because the House seeks records unrelated to Trump’s actions as president, Trump’s argument that he can resist this particular subpoena is especially weak.
from Vox - All https://www.vox.com/2019/11/25/20972469/supreme-court-trump-presidential-immunity-mazars
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