Putting the highly anticipated hearing on the calendar would force Mr. Trump to decide whether to invoke executive privilege and try to prevent Mr. Comey from testifying.
Trump’s move marks the second time in two decades that the United States has negotiated, signed but then spurned a major international climate pact following a change of party control in the White House.
“Despite the constant negative press covfefe,” the tweet read. That was it. It ended abruptly, as if someone stopped him, or he stopped himself, or perhaps he never meant to send it.
Once upon a time, a child was born into wealth and wanted for nothing, but he was possessed by bottomless, endless, grating, grasping wanting, and wanted more, and got it, and more after that, and always more.
The Missile Defense Agency launched a ground-based interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to intercept a US-launched mock ICBM target over the Pacific Ocean
One of President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, has now become a focus of the expanding congressional investigation
Trump is “very pleased” with his staff ... Trump’s relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “fairly unbelievable” ... Trump is “frustrated” by the pace of legislation
Trump has taken to occasionally dissecting Spicer's words on specific questions, pointing out mistakes and giving him tips on how to respond in the future
Gianforte’s assault is a glaring display of toxic masculinity in an environment made particularly toxic by the man in the White House and his media bullying. But more telling and more ominous is the degree to which Republicans no longer seem to care
Stressing the potential dangers of airborne terrorist acts utilizing in-flight electronics, Kelly said deliberations over whether to impose such a ban are ongoing.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany ... has concluded ... that the United States of President Trump is not the reliable partner her country and the Continent have automatically depended on in the past.
...the Trump Organization took Mr. Davies’s coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment — replacing the word “Integritas,” Latin for integrity, with “Trump.”
“My handshake with him was not innocent,” Macron said. “We need to show that we won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, while not overhyping things either.”
“Every time we talk about a country, he remembered the things he had done. Scotland? He said he had opened a club. Ireland? He said it took him two and a half years to get a license and that did not give him a very good image of the European Union.”
Beleaguered White House aides ... had hoped the trip would offer a much-needed change of subject. And to some degree, it did, if only because the White House engineered the itinerary to keep Mr. Trump far away from reporters who could ask him questions.
They walked the 700 yards from the traditional G7 group photo, taken at a Greek amphitheatre, to a piazza in the hilltop town, but Mr Trump stayed behind until he could take a seat in the electric vehicle.
While the declaration included remarkable language highlighting that the U.S. stood apart, the other G7 members expressed some relief that Trump had not outright rejected the accord
Now that Trump’s current and former aides and allies officially know a probe exists, they’re responsible for preserving all available information that might be relevant.
"Would you in this case say we are going to overrule and you cannot discriminate, whether it be on sexual orientation, race, or special needs in our voucher programs?" Clark added. "Will that be a guarantee from you to our students?" DeVos sidestepped the question.
Roger knew it was easy to manipulate fear and loathing in an elderly audience raised on 3 broadcasting channels (CBS, NBC & ABC plus PBS). They grew up trusting the news and Walter Cronkite.
Part of the backlash stemmed, perhaps, from a poor translation: In its German-language editions, Spiegel used the word “böse” — which can mean “bad” but is closer to the English word “evil.”
The men kicked people lying on the ground and put a woman in a chokehold just a mile from the White House. They outnumbered the protesters nearly two to one.
“People feel like, if the president of the United States can say anything to anybody at any time, then I guess I can too. And that is a very dangerous phenomenon.”
But if nothing else, the Republican's win demonstrates that a candidate’s hostility toward the media is no deal-breaker for voters -- and it might even be helpful.
...the Trump Organization wasn't willing to track the origin of the payments it receives because it would be "impractical" to ask people paying it money to state whether they were acting on behalf of a government, and doing so would "diminish the guest experience of our brand."
Researchers have discovered an extensive, international hacking campaign that steals documents from its targets, carefully modifies them and repackages them as disinformation aimed at undermining civil society and democratic institutions
...the U.S. bomb triggered secondary explosions from devices clandestinely planted there by ISIS fighters. ...the secondary blasts caused the concrete building to collapse.
After all of the hoops summit organizers reportedly jumped through to accommodate President Trump and his anemic attention span, he definitely was not on his best behavior.
“Trump has done something I thought was impossible,” tweeted Josh Dawsey, Politico White House reporter. “He has made everyone empathize with/defend Spicer.”
Asked about Spicer not being included in the group that met the Pope, a source close to the White House said: "Wow. That's all he wanted," adding it should "very much" be seen as a slight.
...when the CBO released its score late Wednesday afternoon, it reignited a heated debate in Washington over the ongoing GOP effort to ditch big provisions in President Obama’s health-care law
“I’m sick and tired of you guys!” Gianforte says. “The last guy that came in here did the same thing. Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here!”
Sessions failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials when he applied for security clearance because he was told not to do so by advisers and the F.B.I.
...states should have the right to decide whether private schools that accept publicly funded voucher students should be allowed to discriminate against students for whatever reason they want.
The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter.
The Trump administration is asking Congress to make it illegal for any law enforcement officer not to comply “with any lawful request” from federal immigration agents
It was not immediately clear whether the expanded FBI director search was due to dissatisfaction with those interviewed, hurdles related to specific candidates, or several candidates taking themselves out of contention.
For the new far-right movement, “irony has a strategic function. It allows people to disclaim a real commitment to far-right ideas while still espousing them.”
The appointment of a private attorney may indicate that Trump is seriously considering the impact the federal investigation could have on him personally
The leaks come at a time when trust between the US intelligence services and others has been strained by the behavior of President Donald Trump, who shared classified details with Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting earlier this month.
“I won’t call them monsters, because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them, from now on, losers. They’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers. Just remember that.”
...a "19% Trump surcharge will be baked into 2018 premiums," which are being proposed in coming weeks because insurers will factor the uncertainty about the subsidies into their plan prices.
In the image, Trump, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi have their hands on an orb that lit up upon their touch
Sessions on Monday clarified President Trump’s executive order on so-called sanctuary cities, narrowly defining such jurisdictions ... in a way that appeared to fall far short of Mr. Trump’s previous threats
"The attacker, I can confirm, died at the arena. We believe the attacker was carrying an improvised explosive device which he detonated causing this atrocity."
...leading to federal explosive charges against Brandon Russell — a Florida National Guardsman and admitted neo-Nazi who kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh on his dresser.
Trump made separate appeals to the director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, and to Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, urging them to publicly deny the existence of any evidence of collusion
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry on Monday summoned the U.S. ambassador in Ankara to lodge a formal protest days after Washington police intervened to stop Turkish security officials from beating up protesters.
...members of the Trump administration already have tried to dupe the New York Times on several occasions — presumably with tips that seem plausible and are not easily dismissed as “crazy.”
An administration official who spoke to the president said he "seemed down more than angry," even though Trump defiantly tweeted that he was facing a “witch hunt.”
The summoning of the ambassador, John Bass, marked a sharp escalation in a diplomatic rift between Turkey and the United States over a violent confrontation between protesters and Turkish security guards
But the health care reform battle is now squarely in McConnell’s court: He will decide the contents of the Senate’s plan, most likely behind closed doors.
Kim Jong Un’s regime has been pressing ahead at a relentless pace to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which would be capable of reaching the mainland United States.
Excerpts from President Donald Trump’s speech ... do not include the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” a phrase that is considered offensive to Muslims and that McMaster has been trying — and failing — to delete from the president’s vocabulary for months.
The kingdom signed tentative agreements ... including fighter jets, ships and missiles, as well as energy technology, health-care expertise, job training and a $40 billion joint infrastructure investment fund.
The administration’s refusal to guarantee payment of subsidies to health insurance companies, the murky outlook for the Affordable Care Act in Congress and doubts about enforcement of the mandate for most people to have insurance are driving up insurance prices for 2018
...is the first known example under the Trump administration of an accused polluter — which has admitted violating the law — backing away from a proposed environmental settlement.
The reemergence of the conspiracy theory this week, which did not lack for real news, revealed plenty about the fake news ecosystem ... in the Trump era.
From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources.
Trump, the only U.S. president to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign visit, exchanged greetings with Saudi King Salman as a military brass band played
...the White House began reviewing the Code of Federal Regulations, which restricts newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm’s clients for one year after their hiring
Mueller's former law firm, WilmerHale, represents Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner ... and the president's former campaign manager Paul Manafort
Breaking its silence amid mounting criticism ... the embassy Wednesday night released an unrepentant statement that shamelessly tried to blame the protesters.
“My worry is that this story still dominates the headlines and provides cloud cover for Republicans who are rewriting the American healthcare system with nobody watching”
It has left White House officials and outside advisers perplexed: Why is Trump so determined to defend a man at the center of a federal investigation that is damaging his administration
The mere threat that Obamacare will be dismantled or radically changed ... has persuaded several big insurance companies to stop selling policies or significantly raise premiums.
Mr. Comey — who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and was wearing a dark blue suit that day – told Mr. Wittes that he tried to blend in with the blue curtains in the back of the room, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would not spot him and call him out.
If passed by Congress, the proposal could channel billions of public dollars to working class families to help them pay for private schools, including religious schools.
The FCC's action Thursday doesn't repeal the rules yet but instead launches a lengthy proceeding that will pit ISPs and conservative groups, which back Pai's efforts, against left-leaning digital activists and leading tech companies
“What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command,”
With the stroke of a pen, Rod Rosenstein redeemed his reputation, preserved the justice system, pulled American politics back from the brink — and, just possibly, saved the Republican Party and President Trump from themselves.
Aides are now urging Trump to tweet and speak cautiously. "I think he actually understands what a mess this is," one person said. "He has lawyers telling him nonstop what the stakes are here."
One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey
In the unlikely event that Trump is removed from office, Pence would assume the presidency amid a constitutional crisis. He could also be considered tainted by his past devotion to Trump.
Even as Mr. Trump reassured advisers like Mr. Spicer that their jobs were safe on Monday, he told other advisers that he knew he needed to make big changes but did not know which direction to go, or whom to select.
The Syrian government forcefully rejected on Tuesday accusations by the United States that the bodies of thousands of political prisoners had been disposed of in a crematory at a prison near Damascus
Comey previously declined a request to testify on Tuesday in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee, but The New York Times reported Comey would be willing to testify in an open session.
Both leaders find themselves in tricky spots: Trump is mired in an endless wave of gaffes and scandals, while Erdogan faces deepening opposition at home and has seen his aggressive plans for regime change in Syria implode.
Conservative media and pro-Trump zealots have begun flooding the internet with a conspiracy theory tied to the July 2016 murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer
...over reported comments by an American diplomat describing the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City -- one of Judaism's holiest sites -- as being in the West Bank.
The most direct and immediate impact may be to jeopardize a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State, thereby making it more difficult to detect and thwart terrorist plots.
“I think that this was a serious compromise situation, that the Russians had real leverage. He also had lied to the vice president of the United States,” Yates said
..they spoke for a president who less than a week ago said publicly that his aides and surrogates can’t be expected to give accurate statements, because they don’t always know what’s going on.
It has long been clear that Donald Trump would be an incompetent president. But over the past week he has proven himself to be a dangerously incompetent president.
“When you weigh the evidence across the different studies that have looked at this, it really does pretty strongly point the finger that organophosphate pesticides as a class are of significant concern to child neurodevelopment”
The pattern has become clear: A foreign official comes to President Trump. They speak. The official leaves with what he or she wants, and Trump emerges chastened, having reversed a major policy, or both.
“Individuals who are 'extremely careless,' close quote,” Ryan said, using the term then-FBI director James B. Comey used to describe Clinton's email practices, “should be denied further access to information.”
Finally, Trump’s alleged screw-up with the Russians reveals yet again what we have learned many times in the last four months: The successful operation of our government assumes a minimally competent Chief Executive that we now lack.
The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government
Anyone with even a remedial understanding of politics and public relations understands that Trump is bungling the White House reaction to the ongoing investigation
The president rarely surfs the web on his own, but his staff have made a habit of slipping news stories on to his desk—including the occasional internet hoax.
Over the past week, Trump stretched a variety of facts on trade, taxes and economic theory. But his firing of FBI Director James Comey was far and away the source of the most tumult.
...the new FBI director must be apolitical and sensitive to the law-enforcement mission, not someone with a long record of reflexive partisanship or commentary on the very investigative issues that will come before the bureau.
Clapper said on Sunday that he found the firing “very disturbing” and that the country’s systems of checks and balances was “under assault” by the White House.
It’s an axiom of Washington scandals that the cover-up tends to be worse than the crime—and it’s lower- or mid-level people who wind up getting caught in the worst legal trouble
Trump keeps a stack of color-coded maps of the United States representing the results of the 2016 election. ... Trump sometimes hands the maps out to visitors as a kind of parting gift
A real surprise that’s out of the White House’s control — not a situation of President Donald Trump’s own making that spins out of control because the president and his inner circle sprung a decision on an unprepared staff. But what if there’s a real crisis?
Leaked alleged NSA hacking tools appear to be behind a massive cyberattack disrupting hospitals and companies across Europe, Asia, with Russia among the hardest-hit countries.
Trump’s fascination with recording his conversations reaches back to the early years of his real estate career, when he installed in his 26th-story office in Trump Tower a “system for surreptitiously tape recording business meetings”
“one of the biggest targets for Republicans has been eliminating preventative care for women and maternity care and so having no woman there is stunning”
The past four months have seen the food industry seize onto President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda, arguing for the delay or suspension of rules that Mrs. Obama encouraged.
Democrats demanded on Friday that President Donald Trump turn over to Congress any tapes he might have made of his conversations with ousted FBI Director James Comey.
The agreement will allow Pebble Limited Partnership to apply for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for the mine before EPA continues any work reviewing water issues in the area.
Sessions is withdrawing a 2013 directive ... that instructed federal prosecutors not to specify the amount of drugs involved when charging low-level and non-violent drug offenders.
Throughout his career, Mr. Trump has made loyalty from the people who work for him a key priority, often discharging employees he considers insufficiently reliable.
“It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said—and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, ‘What system are you going to be—‘ ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.’”
“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”
He confirmed that these discussions with Mr. Comey about his legal status did take place, one in person and two by phone. He also stated that he had initiated at least one of these exchanges.
...the President has opened himself up to a line of inquiry into whether in this call, perhaps in conjunction with other actions, represents attempted obstruction of justice.
...following through on his unsubstantiated claim that several million “illegals” voted for his Democratic rival and robbed him of a victory in the national popular vote.
“Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just … I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do”
“Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters,” he said. “Oh, at some point I'll release them. Maybe I'll release them after I'm finished because I'm very proud of them actually. I did a good job.”
Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe and other top U.S. intelligence officials are scheduled to testify before a congressional committee in a public hearing Thursday
I don’t quite get it – if I’m going to do a job with the lowering taxes, better health care, take care of people, take care of hospitalization, all the things we’re doing, because there’s no plan now. You would think that people would like that. And they don’t.
James B. Comey, Sally Yates and Preet Bharara were all law enforcement officials until President Trump fired them — and they were all investigating Trump or his administration at the time of their firing.
Trump had “essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI,” one official said. “I think there will be a concerted effort to respond over time in kind.”
Yet even if we accept the White House’s stated rationale that the Director was fired because of his controversial conduct surrounding the Clinton email investigation, this might still fall within the scope of Sessions’ expansive pledge to recuse himself from “any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.”
Only hours after dismissing James B. Comey as director of the F.B.I., amid an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, the president is scheduled to see Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, at the White House.
So he did the reasonable thing and shouted the news to reporters who happened to be hanging out outside his office at the time, then immediately retreated to his office and locked the door.
Trump received letters from Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, calling for Comey's dismissal
But several other people familiar with the events said Trump had talked about the firing for over a week, and the letters were written to give him rationale to fire Comey.
...gone also is his famous statement on “COMPELLING MEXICO TO PAY FOR THE WALL”; and the less-famous one comparing refugees to car payments; and the write-up of “TRUMP'S 'VERY GOOD' ECONOMIC SPEECH.”
What Spicer appears to be saying is that the Trump White House didn’t trust or believe Yates when she first came to raise concerns about Flynn for no other reason than that she was an “Obama appointee”
The stunning development ... raised the specter of political interference by a sitting president into an existing investigation by the nation’s leading law enforcement agency.
This database is an evolving piece of journalism. We will continue to update it with the latest information, and will correct any errors in the data as soon as we become aware of them.
A GOP lawmaker just off a tough vote gets so frustrated he walks out of an interview he agreed to do, on a week where his main job is to go home and explain why he supported the controversial health-care bill
The 17 veterans argue that climate change poses a critical national security risk and say the U.S. must remain engaged in the international effort to fight it
Moreover, she took the opportunity to drop the news bomb that the administration ordered the Office of Legal Counsel to not even tell the acting attorney general the ban was in the works.
...detailing how she had informed Trump administration officials that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail from Russia, only to watch President Donald Trump take 18 days to fire him.
...a quintet of critical deadlines in the early fall will force either a furious round of deal-making or brinkmanship that could have dire effects on the economy.
"President Trump publicly committed himself to an indefensible goal: banning Muslims from coming to the United States," wrote lawyers for the International Refugee Assistance Project.
"He said, 'Well, we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We've got some guys that really, really love golf, and they're really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.'"
“That's how 2018 is shaking out,” he added. “We owned the unintended consequences of Obamacare, and House Republicans will own the unintended consequences of Trumpcare”
The problems we are seeing now are due to the uncertainties injected into the market by the Trump administration’s actions to undermine the ACA’s success.
“Intervening in the last hour of an official campaign, this operation clearly seeks to destabilize democracy, as already seen in the United States’ last president campaign”
“They kept saying, ‘You need to vote! You need to call the vote!’ But we were trying to give this space and time to develop as opposed to a pressure cooker”
The president’s pitch was simple: If we don't pass this, we're going to be hurt down the road.
“We’re just starting down the path of taxes. And unlike health care, we are out talking to all the groups that are gonna be interested in our tax plan”
"Korean-style anti-terrorist attack will be commenced from this moment to sweep away the intelligence and plot-breeding organizations of the U.S. imperialists and the puppet clique"
In one moment, Trump jovially denied the presence of tensions in his now-infamous January phone call with Turnbull, accusing the media of “fake news.” In another, he copped to the tense exchange, calling it “testy.”
“How am I doing? Am I doing OK? I'm president. Hey, I’m president,” Trump said in a Rose Garden victory lap that was unusually elaborate for a bill still so far from becoming law. “Can you believe it?”
When the president or the administration have made a mistake, Spicer has succeeded in deflecting attention by making himself the story, often at the expense of his own image and credibility.
Most controversially, the American Health Care Act would allow insurance companies to charge people with pre-existing conditions higher premiums than healthy people
Trump will direct the Internal Revenue Service to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion” so that religious organizations and other nonprofit groups are not subject to punishment for expressing political views during campaign seasons.
Rosselló asked for a court-supervised restructuring of part of the commonwealth's $70 billion in bond debt, in what amounts to the largest local government bankruptcy in U.S. history.
Republicans are making a dubious case that their updated bill provides similar coverage for those who are less healthy, while Democrats are overstating claims about how many are affected.
Trump’s insistence that some deal could have prevented the Civil War has plenty in common with the anti-democratic wheeling and dealing of big bankers and slaveholders
In the Trumpian psyche, it can’t be Trump’s personal failure or a failure of strategy. So who’s to blame? ... The problem is the constitution or more generally, democracy.
Trump is prepared to welcome Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House on Wednesday, putting a renewed focus on prospects for peace with Israel
As Mulvaney attempted to answer questions, open phone lines featuring a crying baby, an intermittent hacking cough, and patriotic hold-music quickly drowned him out.
But rarely in the annals of White House palace intrigue have all the president’s anonymice stabbed more backs or spilled more blood than at Donald Trump’s 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The White House is quietly starting to pull the plug on its shadow Cabinet of Trump loyalists who had been dispatched to federal agencies to serve as the president’s eyes and ears.
"It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history," said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian. "It was all just surreal disarray and a confused mental state from the president."
But what we don’t need — and can’t afford — is another round of huge, unpaid-for tax reductions that saddle us with large amounts of new debt without producing the growth levels being predicted.
What we ended up with, from Bill Clinton onward, is a status-quo party and an “undo the system” party, where the Democrats became the status-quo party and the Republicans became the “undo the system” party.
“I don't stand by anything. I just — you can take it the way you want. I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it. And frankly, it should be discussed”