Donald Trump is in our heads. I traveled halfway around the world to try to get out, and he keeps pulling me back in. The story that never stops is on our minds, around our dinner tables, in our social media, and (ironically, given Trump's reading aversion) lining our bookshelves. Consider this: Every top New York Times best-seller this year has been about Trump. (I look at it this way. If he's not going to read them, I'm not going to read them.)

+ The Atlantic: "Genuinely stunning moments are hard to come by these days, but one arrived on Monday in a courtroom in New York City." Michael Cohen tried to keep the name of one of his clients secret. The judge said no. And it turned out to be Sean Hannity. (This is the first time Hannity has ever been linked with an actual news story...)

+ A lot has happened in Trumpworld in the last week. The New Yorker's Adam Davidson does a great job summing up where we are now. The collusion case might not make it all the way to the top, but as Davidson writes: "However, I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump's business who doesn't believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality." Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency.

+ Meanwhile, from the NYT: "President Trump rejected, for now at least, a fresh round of sanctions set to be imposed against Russia on Monday, a course change that underscored the schism between the president and his national security team."

"What we are hoping to do is use this enzyme to turn this plastic back into its original components, so we can literally recycle it back to plastic. It means we won't need to dig up any more oil and, fundamentally, it should reduce the amount of plastic in the environment." The Guardian: Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles. (Stay tuned for the discovery that this stuff eats human flesh too.)

"I saw with my own eyes the people's reactions — everyone rushed to the rooftops or watched from the windows of their houses. We expected military action to be much stronger, but it was much less than expected. This is why many people feel sad — when they felt great joy at the start of the strike." While Americans debate the missile strikes and US policy, in Syria the message is clear: Assad stays in power. Buzzfeed: Syrians Are Worried Trump's Airstrikes May Actually Cause More Attacks On Civilians.

+ Syria has become a proxy war for many world powers. The Atlantic on How Syria Came to This. "Seven years of horrific twists and turns in the Syrian Civil War make it hard to remember that it all started with a little graffiti."

In a year filled with massive challenges and enormous stories, from natural disasters to unnatural behavior, journalists stepped up to the task in a big way. From WaPo and the NYT to the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, here's a look at this year's Pulitzer Prize winners. (With the current news pace, they should give out a Pulitzer a week.)

+ The prize everyone has been rapping about is Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer for his studio album DAMN. "It's the first time the music category has recognized a body of work that is not from the jazz or classical genre." (While everyone else is celebrating, Kendrick Lamar has to come up with something that rhymes with Pulitzer...)

+ Poynter: This photojournalist won a Pulitzer for an image he made on his last day in the newsroom.

"If the courage of young men and women in battle truly does depend on the nature and quality of our civic society, we should be very worried. We should expect to see a sickness spreading from our public life and into the hearts of the men and women who continue to risk their lives on behalf of a distracted nation. And when we look closely, that is exactly what we see." The excellent Phil Klay: Two Decades of War Have Eroded the Morale of America's Troops. "After nearly 17 years of war, service members have seen plenty of patriotic displays but little public debate about why they're fighting."

+ And a good companion piece from Klay in the NYT: The Warrior at the Mall.

"It might seem confounding that Netflix's market value is about 90 percent of Disney's, considering that Disney does many things profitably while Netflix has one specialty, internet video, and hardly makes a dime on it. But investors and young people agree: The future of entertainment will be streamed. And that means Netflix, with its nearly 120 million global video subscribers, has an early lead in the race to become the next generation's showbiz colossus." But don't think Disney is giving up. And they have plenty of firepower in this fight. Derek Thompson: Disneyflix Is Coming. And Netflix Should Be Scared.

Really unbelievable and troubling stats in this piece from the NYT Magazine: Why America's Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis. "Black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants ... a racial disparity that is actually wider than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery, when most black women were considered chattel. In one year, that racial gap adds up to more than 4,000 lost black babies. Education and income offer little protection. In fact, a black woman with an advanced degree is more likely to lose her baby than a white woman with less than an eighth-grade education."

"The research linking alcohol to breast cancer is deadly solid: Alcohol, regardless of whether it's in Everclear or a vintage Bordeaux, is carcinogenic." Stephanie Mencimer in MoJo: Did Drinking Give Me Breast Cancer? "When the evidence of alcohol's cancer risks emerged, public health advocates sought to spread the word. In 1988, California added alcohol to its list of cancer-causing chemicals that required a warning label ... Fearing health advocates would do to alcohol what they had done to tobacco, the industry fought back with an audacious marketing campaign."

"Police said the 31-year-old, who was wanted for economic crimes, was 'shocked' when he was caught." There were 60,000 people at the concert. Facial recognition cameras with a little AI on the backend picked out the one individual they were looking for.

Reminder that I'm (way) on the road with the fam for the rest of the week. I'll try to squeeze in another edition as news dictates (and you know it will...).

+ Desiree Linden became the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in three decades. And she did it after waiting for a competitor to use a port-a-potty. And they say no one remembers who came in second. In this case, no one even knew who she was in the first place. Which makes her race all the more amazing. Boston Globe: Who the heck is Boston Marathon runner-up Sarah Sellers, anyway?

+ "People trying to bet on this going on forever strikes me as risky. At the end of the day, you speculate on a house and the house price drops, you still have a house." If you speculate on these vehicles, at the end of the day, you could just be left with a golf cart. Bloomberg takes you Hong Kong where these $250,000 golf carts are pricier than a Tesla or Porsche.

+ Esquire: We Did It, America: Mayochup is Coming Stateside.