Link Roundup July 2018

Gina Haspel, Trump's Pick for CIA Director, Ran a Black Site for Torture

Today, as BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold noted, CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced that Haspel was selected by Trump to be deputy director of the CIA. This should not come as much of a surprise given that Pompeo himself has said he is open to resurrecting Bush-era torture techniques (indeed, Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, was forced to withdraw from the running in late 2008 because of his support for some of those tactics only to be confirmed in 2013). That’s part of why it was so controversial that 14 Democrats — including their Senate leader Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Tim Kaine — voted to confirm Pompeo.

Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says

The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.

They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants

Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.

Where are the migrant child facilities? Scattered across America

Across the United States, the federal government is responsible for the care of about 12,000 migrant children in about 100 shelters, which includes the 2,500 removed from their parents in the past five weeks. The rest are youngsters who came across the border alone. It’s a billion-dollar industry that has grown rapidly under the Trump administration’s push to close the border.

How to persuade a robot that you should get the job

HireVue is just one of a slew of new companies selling AI as a replacement for the costly human side of hiring. It estimates the “pre-hire assessment” market is worth $3bn (£2.2bn) a year. A study in the UK last year found an average of 24 applicants per low-wage job. Tesco, the country’s largest private employer, received well over three million job applications in 2016. With applications rising, employers have automated as much of the process as possible. This started more than a decade ago with simple programs that scanned text CVs for key words. It has now expanded to include quizzes, psychometric tests, games and chatbots that can reject applicants before a human ever glances at their CV.

If Trump Gets His Way, These Will Be the First Places to Ban Abortion

She was especially concerned about an obscure 40-year-old provision in Illinois’ criminal code, one of a number of measures in 10 states across the country, that anticipate a time when the Supreme Court reverses itself on abortion. They are often referred to as “trigger laws,” because even though each state’s provision works a bit differently, the measures are “triggered” by the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Should that occur, these states commit to making abortion illegal in all cases, except to protect a mother’s life, just as it was before the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling. (In four states, the trigger law makes the switch back to illegal abortion automatic.)

Why Norway's prison system is so successful

In Norway, fewer than 4,000 of the country's 5 million people were behind bars as of August 2014. That makes Norway's incarceration rate just 75 per 100,000 people, compared to 707 people for every 100,000 people in the US.

Blue Dogs eye comeback in 2018

Blue Dog and DCCC staffers now meet on a weekly basis, and leaders of the centrist coalition say the campaign arm is working hand in hand with them on recruitment. It’s a remarkable turnaround for a group whose members have been known in the past to boast about not paying annual membership dues.