A Water Crisis, An Exhumation and Massive Military Drills: Weekend Reads

(Bloomberg) --

President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office for an interview on Thursday with Bloomberg News conducted by Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait and White House reporters Margaret Talev and Jennifer Jacobs – here’s  everything he said.

Also in today’s weekly round-up of some of our best political stories: the latest egalitarian disaster of Venezuela’s socialist government, efforts to create an anti-immigration front in Europe, and the exhumation of a dictator.

Soup Kitchen Lines Swell on Eve of Election in Sputtering Brazil
Raymond Colitt, Mario Sergio Lima and Rachel Gamarski take the pulse in Brasilia, where a recovery from the country’s worst recession has run aground as investors and consumers are whipsawed by the prospect that either the far right or far left will win next month’s election, the most unpredictable since the return to democracy in 1985.

Russia to Stage Biggest Military Exercises Since Cold War
Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov report on the plans to mobilize in September about 300,000 troops, as well as thousands of soldiers from China, with 36,000 tanks and armored personnel carriers all moving at the same time.

What Does a Chinese Superpower Look Like? Nothing Like the U.S.
Trump launched a trade war with China, worried previous administrations have unwittingly been helping Beijing to overtake the U.S. Marc Champion analyses whether that’s even possible in this dataviz setting out what it takes in terms of economic, military, and soft power.

Democrats Focus on Governors Races as Last Line of Defense
Since Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Democrats have lost 12 governorships and more than 900 state legislature seats, putting them in their weakest position since the 1920s. Arit John examines their hopes to reverse a decade of losses.

Last-Minute Twitter Endorsements Are a Winning Strategy for Trump
Last Fall, almost every candidate Trump endorsed on Twitter lost their subsequent election. Yet, he’s still been rolling the dice and some of his last-minute Twitter endorsements may have even helped put candidates over the top in close races. Lauren Leatherby looks at the president’s successes and failures in this dataviz.

Spain’s Exhumation of Dictator Franco Seeks to Repair the Past
Charlie Devereux reports from Francisco Franco’s tomb, a pilgrimage destination for those harboring sympathy for his fascist regime. That is until the Socialist government issued a decree allowing for his body to be removed and transferred to a place of his family’s choosing – a decision that threatens a backlash in a country whose political fault-lines reach back to the civil war.

Orban and Salvini Seek to Rally Europe’s Anti-Immigrant Forces
Maria Ermakova and Andras Gergely report on efforts by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italy’s Matteo Salvini to create a united front of Europe’s anti-immigrant forces ahead of May’s European Parliament elections – which are shaping up as a clash of “illiberal” nationalist politics with the liberal establishment.

Nationalism Is Bringing Together Israel and Eastern Europe
David Wainer and Milda Seputyte examine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s courting of leaders in Eastern Europe, looking past a history of anti-Semitism and focusing on a new alliance with Trump.

As Macron Champions Europe, a Nationalist School Opens in France
Helene Fouquet dives into the ambitions of Marion Marechal (granddaughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen) to train the next generation of anti-establishment, anti-European French leaders. She’s setting up her own private post-graduate school, based in Lyon, and has enrolled 70 students to date for September.

And finally … Dairy.milk.chocolates; reform.speech.debate; orchestra.grapeseed.sergeants – these aren’t nonsensical phrases but places in Nebraska, the U.K. and South Africa in a mapping system that replaces streets and house numbers with three-word designations. It’s especially handy in locations lacking addresses, and is already being used by postal services, fire and police departments, and pizza drivers. David Rocks and Nate Lanxon profile What3words, the startup that’s slicing the globe into 57 trillion squares.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Halpin at thalpin5@bloomberg.net

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