WASHINGTON

Daily Trump Tracker: A pipeline of Trump’s very own

The president okays Keystone XL and watches Trumpcare hopes fade, as his money man puts off the robot revolution

What now, boss?
Speaker Paul Ryan “rushed” to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. this morning to tell the president that he couldn’t get the American Health Care Act over the line. Uncooperative Republican congressfolk have left the party’s recent raison d’être, repealing Obamacare, at risk of an embarrassing failure. Ryan reportedly looked to Trump for direction, and the boss ordered a vote be scheduled anyway. The fate of the bill—and, lest we forget, tens of thousands of the most vulnerable in American society—hangs in the balance. Update: the bill has since been withdrawn, reportedly at the president’s instruction.

Let’s get pumping
The president signed off on Keystone XL, removing a major blockage to the continent-spanning project. The pipeline, which Trump is describing as “the greatest technology known to man, or woman”—even more excellent, apparently, than “the cyber,” at which he believes the U.S. should be “better than anybody else”—still needs to be approved by the state government of Nebraska.

I do not think it means what you think it means
The Donald is giving daughter Ivanka an advisory role, security clearance and a West Wing office, but she doesn’t work there, the administration insists. If she acts like an employee and influences policy like an employee, she’s an employee, counters a group of former White House lawyers and ethics advocates. Trump fille is being given the power of a staffer without the conflict rules that normally come with the job, they charge.

2015 called, they want their jobs announcement back
In what’s becoming something of a habit, Trump sounded the presidential trumpets for a hiring initiative that’s already in progress. Charter Communications plans to bring on 20,000 workers over four years, and has been saying so for about two years. But to hear the president tell it, the cable company has “just committed” to the new hires and a few billions in additional investment. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge, whose company may have been acting to pacify regulators when it originally made the promises, was happy to stand beside Trump and nod along.

2076–2117: A Space Odyssey
It’ll be “50–100 more years” before artificial intelligence starts taking jobs from large numbers of workers, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told an audience hosted by nascent media outlet Axios. The former investment banker and film financier, whose signature is scrawled across all new notes, also proposed a currency change, suggesting his boss’s smirking face adorn the “the thousand dollar bill.”

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