promoearn: Yes, we heard Stormy Daniels' story. For Trump, that $130K could be an even bigger problem

Monday, March 26, 2018

Yes, we heard Stormy Daniels' story. For Trump, that $130K could be an even bigger problem

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels attends the 2018

What could matter in the Stormy Daniels scandal has a $130K price tag

Adult film star Stormy Daniels' highly anticipated 60 Minutes interview Sunday offered salacious details about her alleged tryst with Donald Trump, including her account of playfully spanking him with a magazine . The potential legal jeopardy for Trump and his allies surrounds the $130,000 payment she received from Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen 11 days before the 2016 election to keep silent. "The payment of the money just creates an enormous legal mess for, I think, Trump, for Cohen and anyone else who was involved in this in the campaign," Trevor Potter, a veteran campaign-finance lawyer and former Federal Election Commission chairman, said on the CBS program. USA TODAY's Fredreka Schouten looks at the areas of potential legal risk.

•	Daniels said she was threatened in front of her baby, and other things we learned from the interview.
•	The lawyer for Trump's lawyer (yep) sent Daniels a cease-and-desist letter Monday over her "defamatory statements."
•	But that's not all: Twitter had fun waiting for the interview to air because a March Madness game went into overtime. No. 1 seed Kansas and No. 2 seed Duke played perhaps the best game of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. (Spoiler alert: Jayhawks are headed to the Final Four.)
•	Despite the delay, 60 Minutes had its best ratings in nearly a decade, with 22 million people tuning in.

Doctors are mad about Rick Santorum's advice that students learn CPR

In short: CPR would not help victims of gun violence. "As a surgeon, I've operated on gunshot victims who've had bullets tear through their intestines, cut through their spinal cord, and pulverize their kidneys and liver," tweeted Eugene Gu, a resident physician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "Rick Santorum telling kids to shut up and take CPR classes is simply unconscionable." Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, made the provocative comments about CPR and "phony gun laws" Sunday on CNN, a day after the March for Our Lives . The nationwide rallies drew hundreds of thousands of people demanding safer schools and tighter gun laws in response to the Feb. 14 shooting spree that left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Trump boots 60 Russians over the poisoning of a former spy in the U.K.

Trump took a hard line Monday and expelled 60 Russian diplomats and suspected spies for the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, earlier this month in the city of Salisbury in southern England. The United Kingdom and nations have accused the Kremlin of orchestrating the nerve-agent attack, which Russia has denied. The case has drawn comparisons to the 2006 poisoning death in London of another former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko.

Other stories we're reading:

• How incredibly sad. An Iowa family of four was vacationing in Mexico when they died of toxic gas inhalation in a condominium, probably from a gas stove or water heater. Their relatives say they feel "overwhelming support."

• More than rolling the dice. A guy who loved playing Dungeons and Dragons told himself he wasn't trying to hack the lottery for the money. Over time, a secret code snippet allowed him to hijack at least five winning drawings totaling more than $24 million in prizes in Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma — the biggest lottery scam in U.S. history. This is the untold story of how he pulled it off.

• After the weekend rallies. Remington, America's oldest gun manufacturer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, just days after the March for Our Lives rallies against gun violence, Also worth a read: The March for Our Lives could be the biggest single-day protest in Washington, D.C., history.

You've heard about yellow snow. How about orange snow? Dust blowing in from the Sahara Desert caused weekend snow in several Eastern European countries to turn a strange, orange color.

The Short List is a compilation of stories from across USA TODAY.