Your Thursday Evening Briefing

Jeff Sessions, Hawaii, Reality Winner | View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, August 23, 2018 [NYTimes.com »]( [Your Thursday Evening Briefing]( By JOUMANA KHATIB AND HIROKO MASUIKE Good evening. Here’s the latest. Eric Thayer for The New York Times 1. It’s been another day of many headlines related to President Trump. His frequent punching bag over the Russia investigation, Jeff Sessions, [pushed back firmly](. “While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Mr. Trump expressed support for his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on bank and tax fraud charges on Tuesday. And he derided his former fixer, Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations the same day, for “flipping,” saying it “almost ought to be illegal” to do so. He also found time to [tweet a false claim]( that South Africa’s white farmers were being killed on a “large scale.” _____ Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times 2. And in intriguing news: David Pecker, a tabloid executive close to President Trump, has been [granted immunity by prosecutors]( our reporters learned. Mr. Pecker would presumably have a great deal of information useful to them. He is the chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes The National Enquirer, a tabloid that quashed stories damaging to the Trump campaign. “The agreement,” our reporters write, “adds another unusual aspect to a case never seen before in the annals of presidential campaign finance history. It means that a company that operates as a news organization is cooperating with federal authorities on an investigation that involves its work with a campaign.” _____ Katie Currid for The New York Times 3. False alarm: The attempted hacking the D.N.C. reported to the F.B.I. this week was [just a security test](. Turns out the Michigan Democratic Party hired hackers to simulate an attack on the committee’s voter database, but failed to inform the national committee. The cybersecurity firm Lookout detected the attack. The state party chairman called the situation a “misstep,” but defended efforts to improve cybersecurity defenses “especially as the Trump administration refuses to crack down on foreign interference in our elections.” _____ Michael Holahan/The Augusta Chronicle, via Associated Press 4. Reality Winner, the 26-year-old former N.S.A. linguist who leaked a classified report about Russian election interference to The Intercept news site, was [sentenced to more than five years in priso](. Prosecutors said her sentence was the longest ever imposed in federal court for such an act. Ms. Winner was fresh out of the Air Force and a few months into her N.S.A. job when she leaked the report. She said she took “full responsibility” for the “undeniable mistake I made,” and asked to “apologize profusely.” _____ Tom Brenner/The New York Times 5. The Education Department is weighing whether to allow schools to [buy]( with federal funding]( that had been set aside for enrichment in the country’s poorest schools. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos would be able to approve state or district plans to use the grant funding for firearms and firearm training. We got 3,200 reader comments when we posted [the article on Facebook](. In one hour. _____ Mario Tama/Getty Images 6. Hurricane updates in Hawaii: Hurricane Lane is nearing Hawaii, bringing lashing rain and powerful wind gusts. Even if it does not make landfall, the National Weather Service warned, the Category 4 storm could have “life-threatening impacts.” We’re watching the storm and [posting live updates here](. One site on the Big Island has already recorded more than 18 inches of rain. Beyond flooding, federal emergency officials warned of the possibility of landslides and damaged infrastructure. _____ Jamie Sabau/Getty Images 7. Promiscuous and embarrassing sexual behavior. Drug abuse. A lengthy police investigation into allegations of criminal domestic violence and cybercrimes. [We parsed the Ohio State report]( that outlined the problems of one of the closest assistants to the university’s football coach, Urban Meyer. Still, the report found no unassailable evidence of a cover-up or that Meyer “deliberately lied” about his knowledge. He’s been [suspended for six weeks]( and will miss the season opener on Sept. 1. _____ Frances F. Denny for The New York Times 8. Steve Jobs’s daughter wants you to know: She’s absolved him, and you should too. In [Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s new memoir, “Small Fry,”]( her father emerges as a distant, and sometimes cruel, parent. The details — he long denied paternity — run counter to the glowing mythology surrounding Mr. Jobs and his legacy. “I felt ashamed to be the bad part of a great story,” Ms. Brennan-Jobs told our reporter in one of a series of interviews. “And I felt unresolved.” _____ J. Wilds/Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images 9. Overlooked no more: [Doria Shafik]( the activist who helped lead Egypt’s women’s liberation movement. She was one of the most influential women in Arab history, but few today know her name. She earned a doctorate at the Sorbonne, took on the editorship of two feminist magazines — and led scores of women to storm Egypt’s Parliament in 1951. “No one will deliver freedom to the woman except the woman herself,” wrote Shafik, who died in 1975. “I decided to fight until the last drop of blood to break the chains shackling the women of my country.” _____ Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for MTV 10. Finally, you may remember social media challenges in the past: The Ice Bucket Challenge comes to mind, or even the Mannequin Challenge. But 2018 is taking them to a new level. Pet owners are hiding behind a sheet and running away, to the astonishment of their animals. People imitate a classic scene from the movie “Matilda,” when they pretend to have telekinesis. And the Instagram star Shiggy, above, created the InMyFeelings Challenge — which will surely be the dominant one of the summer. Words are failing me. [Check out the videos](. Enjoy your evening. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing. [Sign up here]( to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning. Want to catch up on past briefings? [You can browse them here](. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at [briefing@nytimes.com](mailto:briefing@nytimes.com?subject=Evening%20Briefing%20Feedback). LIKE THIS EMAIL? 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