Our picksRussia sanctions fight; nuclear reckoning; extreme digital vetting, and more

Exclusive: What Trump really told Kislyak after Comey was canned (Howard Blum, Vanity Fair)
During a May 10 meeting in the Oval Office, the president betrayed his intelligence community by leaking the content of a classified, and highly sensitive, Israeli intelligence operation to two high-ranking Russian envoys, Sergey Kislyak and Sergey Lavrov. This is what he told them—and the ramifications.

Congress braces for Russia sanctions face-off with White House as new deadline looms (Andrew Desiderio, Daily Beast)
Lawmakers are furious that the White House has put enforcing sanctions against Russia on the backburner.

The ‘huge’ hole in the government’s Russian software ban (Eric Geller, Poliico)
DHS’ ban on Kapersky software doesn’t cover networks that contractors operate, even though employees may use them to discuss government work.

A nuclear reckoning: Senators ponder the president’s power to launch Armageddon (Alexandra Bell, War on the Rocks)
Congressional hearings happen all the time. If you inadvertently stumble across a C-SPAN channel, you will find any number of relatively unexciting discussions of public policy minutiae. These necessary, but often dull, proceedings end up like trees falling in a forest. If no one is watching, did they even happen?

“We are not recommending you give to Texas per se”: GiveDirectly’s bold disaster-relief experiment (Dylan Matthews, Vox)
Why a charity focused on giving cash to East Africa started working near Houston.

Extreme digital vetting of visitors to the U.S. moves forward under a new name (George Joseph, ProPublica)
ICE officials have invited tech companies, including Microsoft, to develop algorithms that will track visa holders’ social media activity.