U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt resigned after months of ethics controversies. Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, will act as the agency’s leader until President Trump nominates a new administrator. Pruitt is the seventh person to leave a cabinet-level post in the Trump administration. Meanwhile, Bill Shine, who was co-president of Fox News after the ouster of Roger Ailes, officially joined the administration as deputy chief of staff for communications. [Jeremy Diamond, Eli Watkins and Juana Summers / CNN]
Recode Daily: EPA chief Scott Pruitt is the seventh cabinet-level person to leave the Trump administration
Plus, Day One of Trump’s trade war with China; Elon Musk’s companies may help rescue the trapped Thai soccer team; nap pods at the office.
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It’s trade war day: The Trump administration has started to impose tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese products. Beijing has reportedly retaliated with its own. The dispute is expected to ripple through global supply chains, raise costs for businesses and consumers and roil global stock markets. [Ana Swanson / The New York Times]
Elon Musk’s team is in talks with Thai authorities about aiding in the rescue of a boys’ soccer team stuck in a cave. Musk’s companies could help by trying to locate the boys’ precise location (Space Exploration Technologies), excavating and pumping water (tunneling startup Boring Co.) or providing heavy-duty battery packs (Tesla’s Powerwalls). It’s unclear whether Thai officials will accept the offer. The 12 boys and their coach, who had been missing since last month, were found by a pair of British cave divers late Monday. Efforts to rescue them are hampered by narrow passageways and rising waters in the cave system. [Sarah McBride / Bloomberg]
U.S. global IPO fundraising is on pace for one of the best years on record. Tech IPOs raised more than $12 billion in 28 deals in the first half of 2018, nearly double the volume from the same period last year. That total doesn’t include Spotify, which went public without raising any money through a so-called direct listing. Bankers and lawyers expect the rapid IPO pace to continue for the rest of the year. [Maureen Farrell / The Wall Street Journal]
A French startup called Tagwalk is the latest to want to be the Google of fashion. By using more than 2,800 keywords, users can search by brand, season, city, trend, color, fabric or style through 128,000 pictures. Founder Alexandra Van Houtte funded the venture by putting her Paris apartment on Airbnb, and initially tagged every image by hand. [Elizabeth Paton / The New York Times]
Top stories from Recode
On the latest episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Renée DiResta, the head of policy at Data for Democracy, talks with Kara Swisher about how disinformation is spread on social media platforms and what can be done about it.
This is cool
Why the landline phone will never go away. And treadmill desks are so yesterday. Today, it’s all about nap pods at the office.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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