“After the recent tragedies, lawmakers have shown a great deal of interest in a proposal that’s been circulating to sit back and do jack shit until the next entirely preventable massacre goes down on U.S. soil,”

The departure of Keith Schiller, a longtime security guard and body man, was a blow to the president, as is Hicks’ departure. Both were viewed as deeply loyal aides who understood the president’s whims, the rhythms of his day and his wishes.

Trump suggested that law enforcement authorities should have the power to seize guns from mentally ill people or others who could present a danger without first going to court. “I like taking the guns early,” he said, adding, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Apollo, the private equity firm, and Citigroup made large loans last year to the family real estate business of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser.

The calligrapher's office plays a key role in White House diplomacy. The East Wing, which oversees the calligrapher's office, declined to comment on the role of the chief calligrapher or why a top secret clearance is necessary.

Ms. Hicks, 29, a former model who joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign without any experience in politics, became known as one of the few aides who understood Mr. Trump’s personality and style and could challenge the president to change his views.

Despite a recent shift in the national conversation around mass shootings, and tentative signals of support for an assault weapons ban from several Republican lawmakers, no GOP lawmakers have yet offered a full-throated endorsement of a specific piece of legislation on assault weapons.

In moments when members of the Trump administration appear embattled or targeted in some way, someone in the press typically stands up for them. Yet, in the midst of another bad news cycle for Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser finds himself with few, if any, media allies.

The reliance on Jared Kushner as the primary negotiator for everything from Middle East peace to trade deals to the United States' relationships in Asia has been dying a slow death over the last year due to a combination of his lack of experience, lack of respect from world leaders and the actions of his boss and father-in-law

The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson would put Manafort on trial at the height of the midterm campaign season, a potentially unwelcome distraction for Republicans as they try to maintain majorities in Congress.

The charges in the US District Court for the District of Columbia include allegations of money laundering, conspiracy and making false statements about his foreign lobbying.

"Javanka and Kelly are locked in a death match. Two enter. Only one survives." — A White House official

One of the nation’s largest sports retailers, Dick’s Sporting Goods, said Wednesday morning it was immediately ending sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores.

Kushner ... is unlikely to obtain the full clearance as long as the special counsel's probe is ongoing

The contravening consonant was perhaps the most unusual victim of a crackdown targeting words, phrases and even solitary letters censors feared might be used to attack Beijing’s controversial decision to abolish constitutional term limits for China’s president.

Glenn Haab ... has admitted that he altered words in an email sent by a CNN producer, ultimately producing the illusion the news network had demanded his son only ask their pre-written questions at a televised forum on guns last week.

The purchase of the custom hardwood table, chairs and hutch came a month after a top agency staff member filed a whistle-blower complaint charging Mr. Carson’s wife, Candy Carson, with pressuring department officials to find money for the expensive redecoration of his offices, even if it meant circumventing the law.

A federal judge whom President Donald Trump railed against as biased during the 2016 campaign issued a broad ruling Tuesday upholding the administration's legal authority to build a wall along the southern border.

She also pointedly and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the presidential transition or her time in the White House ... telling investigators that she had been asked by the White House to discuss only her time on the campaign.

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience

Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded — a move that will prevent him from viewing many of the sensitive documents to which he once had unfettered access.

The state House Appropriations Committee passed a stripped-down gun control bill, but the meatier Senate bill is scheduled to be taken up by the Senate Appropriations Committee later Tuesday.

But she refused to answer any questions about events and conversations that occurred since Trump took office

The court did not rule ... that ICE may do so; it's a much more specific ruling that a particular argument the 9th Circuit used to resolve this quickly in Rodriguez's (the prisoner's) favor is complete nonsense, and that the 9C should deal with the core Constitutional issue directly

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said immigrants held by the government and facing deportation are not entitled to a bond hearing even after months or years of detention.

The supplies from North Korea include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons and missile facilities inside Syria

"The president of the United States has now moved beyond live-tweeting Fox to tweeting "highlights" from the last few days of programming."

Hicks is a pivotal witness in the examination of whether any Trump campaign associates aided the Russian effort to interfere in the election. She’s been a confidante of President Donald Trump's for years and was by his side during moments in the campaign and early months in the White House that have become of interest to investigators

While 9 million Americans served in the military during the Vietnam War — 1.8 million were drafted — the future president was given five deferments from the draft: four related to his college studies and one for bone spurs in his heel, though the problem was not severe enough to prevent him from playing sports such as football, tennis and golf as a young man.

How much was donated? Which Trump properties were included in this accounting? Which foreign entities had paid money to Trump’s businesses?

"I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA. Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back."

There was a time, not so long ago, when a Chinese leader setting himself up as ruler for life would have stirred international condemnation for bucking the global trend toward greater democracy. Now, such an action seems fully in keeping with moves by many countries in the other direction.

"You know, I really believe — you don't know until you test it, but I think — I really believe I'd run into — even if I didn't have a weapon."

“I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting. How come some people always make the four-footer and some people under pressure can’t even take their club back, right? They can’t even take their club back.”

Temperatures may have soared as high as 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) at the pole ... which is more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) above normal.

"Do you believe your father's accusers?" "I think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he's affirmatively stated there's no truth to it."

Trump said he believes he would have intervened in the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, almost two weeks ago.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the administration’s appeal was expected, as no appeals court has yet ruled on the issue.

And it’s not the first time the Russian government has inserted video-game footage to purportedly show combat in Syria.

The chief of staff is unlikely to grant the president's son-in-law a permanent clearance, but isn't likely to quit over the issue, either.

South Korea’s presidential office said on Sunday that Kim is willing to hold talks with the U.S.

John Dunkin, Trump’s longtime pilot, who flew him around the country on a Boeing 757 during the 2016 campaign, is on the Trump administration’s shortlist to head the FAA, which regulates civil aviation in the United States.

China’s Communist Party has cleared the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely, by announcing Sunday that it intends to abolish term limits on the presidency, a momentous break with decades-old rules meant to prevent the country from returning to the days when Mao was shown cultish obedience.

Several sellers said they were on track to double their normal sales for a weekend. “It’s sad to say, but whenever there’s a shooting, business only goes up because people are afraid of losing their right to own a certain weapon”

For traditional conservatives, the past two years have felt like a Twilight Zone episode. Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters.

The trillions fly by so fast these days, we can’t even see them anymore. And afterwards we wonder: What was that? Where did it go?

The majority owner of President Trump’s only hotel in Latin America abruptly ordered Trump employees out of the property on Thursday, triggering a confrontation in which Trump employees refused to leave and asked police to intervene

At other times, Pirro's camera showed her, mouth agape, trying to get in a word but unable to halt the monologuing president.

The committee posted the heavily redacted 10-page document Saturday after weeks of wrangling between the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, and Justice Department officials over the contours of classified material he hoped to release.

One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper.” But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall.

Two of the nation's biggest airlines on Saturday joined a growing list of companies that have publicly distanced themselves from the National Rifle Association amid a social media backlash in the wake of a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

"Hey @FLOTUS you say that your mission as First Lady is to stop cyber bullying," 14-year-old Lauren Hogg tweeted Friday. "Well then, don't you think it would have been smart to have a convo with your step-son @DonaldJTrumpJr before he liked a post about a false conspiracy theory which in turn put a target on my back."

Democrats even made a point of running candidates in the 2006 midterms who could pick up NRA support.

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates has agreed to cooperate with investigators in their prosecution of Gates’ longtime mentor Paul Manafort.

Kushner’s inability to obtain a final clearance has frustrated and vexed the White House for months.

And Trump’s CPAC speech was filled with such moments — moments that would be blockbuster news from a normal president but that are largely irrelevant given Trump’s marginal role in the Trump administration. He’s a Potemkin president who riles up crowds at rallies but has no real role in governing the country.

So here’s the essence of what went wrong for Manafort and Gates, according to Mueller’s investigation: Manafort allegedly wanted to falsify his company’s income, but he couldn’t figure out how to edit the PDF. He therefore had Gates turn it into a Microsoft Word document for him, which led the two to bounce the documents back-and-forth over email.

The new measures target 56 vessels, shipping companies and other entities that Trump administration officials believe are used by North Korea to conduct trade prohibited under previous sanctions, creating an economic lifeline for the isolated regime.

"The strategic logic of the gun lobby's response to these massacres is generally to deflect, delay, and wait for public attention to turn elsewhere. (hence "thoughts and prayers/now is not the time.")"

A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign indicted by the special counsel was expected to plead guilty as soon as Friday afternoon ..., a move that signals he is cooperating with the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Two major companies, Enterprise Holdings Inc. and First National Bank of Omaha ended co-branding partnerships with the National Rifle Association Thursday

@ArmMeWith school supplies. Literally. I should not be single-handedly keeping Target in business.

The U.S. is no longer devoted to securing "America's promise as a nation of immigrants."

“You give them a little bit of a bonus, so practically for free, you have now made the school into a hardened target,” Mr. Trump said. The president estimated that 10 percent to 40 percent of school employees would be qualified to handle a weapon — he offered no data for the claim — and said he would devote federal money to training them.

—Sarah Chadwick, student survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Security videos showed School Resource Deputy Scot Peterson was armed and in uniform on the school campus when the shooting started... But he stood by as the violence unfolded.

In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.

“If we ever pulled our ICE out, if we ever said, ‘Hey, let California alone, let them figure it out for themselves,’ in two months they'd be begging for us to come back,” Trump said... “They would be begging. And you know what, I'm thinking about doing it.”

Even as he was managing Donald J. Trump’s campaign for president, Paul Manafort lied to banks to secure millions of dollars in cash loans as part of a decade-long money laundering scheme, according to charges unsealed by the special counsel on Thursday.

Turnbull arrived in Washington Wednesday evening for his four-day visit to the United States, anchored by a one-on-one Oval Office meeting with Trump on Friday.

Today, nearly every Democrat considering a run for the White House in 2020 has endorsed the idea of universal coverage.

“Watching a teenager fundamentally challenge Rubio’s talking points feels like watching a generation call B.S. on a whole form of politics”

Tenney, who is running for reelection in a hotly contested congressional district in Central New York, did not provide any evidence to back up her claim.

Washington has recently begun moving gradually to reinforce its ties to Taiwan

Government officials are routinely denied clearance for reasons that look minor next to concerns about Jared Kushner and Rob Porter

In fact, no federal appeals court has ever held that assault weapons are protected.

In subsequent tweets, the president doubled down on his support for concealed carry in schools.

He said he would favor raising the minimum age to purchase an assault rifle from 18 to 21. And he said he would consider restricting the size of magazines for firearms.

At issue is an annual provision in appropriations bills that states, "None of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control.”

The social-media service Twitter is believed to have suspended thousands of accounts for being automated bots or for other policy violations, drawing outcry from fringe conservative media figures who lost followers in the move.

After what appear to be four questions he planned to ask those assembled, No. 5 is an apparent reminder for Trump to tell people, “I hear you.”

In Tuesday's session, which opened with prayer for the community of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 students and staff were killed last week, Florida House lawmakers declined to open debate on a bill that would ban assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

The lack of clarity about when and how Viktor and Amalija Knavs obtained their legal residencies raises questions about whether the couple secured their residency through family-based immigration, which President Trump calls chain migration and has said he wants to restrict.

In other words, it's a power struggle with personal suspicions lying just beneath the surface. Kelly is trying to take away some of Kushner's authority, which is, at best, ill-defined. ... But Kushner feels Kelly, who apparently has never had much regard for Kushner, is taking advantage of the situation to undercut him.

New charges have been filed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's criminal case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and aide Rick Gates, but the charges were put under seal by the court, obscuring the nature and import of the development.

Such displays have given gun-safety advocates fresh hope that the violence in Parkland — and the widespread response to it among youths — could create new momentum across the country to enact firearms restrictions.

Experts say Junior is selling access to himself — and by proxy, to the president of the US — in exchange for buying his products.

In fuller context, it’s a little less ridiculous than that. Belcher had previously represented this district in the state legislature, lost a very narrow 50.4-49.6 race in 2016; then the man who defeated her, Dan Johnson, killed himself while under a cloud of sexual assault allegations.

Jared Kushner and John Kelly, White House chief of staff, are at the center of a row over whether President Donald Trump’s son-in-law should have security clearance.

Trump on Tuesday signaled an openness to modest gun-control measures following what he called an “evil massacre” at a South Florida high school last week that left 17 dead

Students who survived the Florida school shooting began a journey Tuesday to the state Capitol to urge lawmakers to prevent another massacre, but within hours the gun-friendly Legislature had effectively halted any possibility of banning assault rifles like the one used in the attack.

A Florida legislator’s aide was fired Tuesday after claiming two survivors of the Parkland high school shooting were not students, but instead “actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.”

In these baseless accounts, which by Tuesday had spread rapidly on social media, the students are described as “crisis actors,” who travel to the sites of shootings to instigate fury against guns.

Alex van der Zwaan admitted making false or misleading statements regarding email communications with Richard Gates.

It also adds a remarkable coda to the strange tableau during the opening ceremony of Mr. Pence sitting in a reviewing stand less than 10 feet away from Kim Yo-jong, the sister of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, as the two stared fixedly ahead without acknowledging each other.

The Trump administration took another swipe at the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, proposing new rules that would make it much easier for consumers to buy less expensive health insurance policies that do not comply with coverage requirements of the law.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a request from gun rights activists to examine California’s 10-day waiting period for firearm sales, prompting Justice Clarence Thomas to say his colleagues are turning the Second Amendment into a “disfavored right.”

He is accused of making false statements regarding communications he had with Rick Gates, the former Trump campaign aide, about work done in Ukraine

Trump took to Twitter Tuesday to deny accusations of sexual harassment from one of the 19 women who have accused him of misconduct.

Moscow and American officials were quick to clarify that those killed in the Feb. 7 incident were private Russian mercenaries and there was no risk of “direct conflict between United States and Russian forces.”

Their strained relationship was on rare public display over the weekend when the president chastised his national security adviser for telling a crowd at the Munich Security Conference that evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”

More than 6 in 10 Americans fault Congress and President Trump for not doing enough to prevent mass shootings ... with most Americans continuing to say these incidents are more reflective of problems identifying and addressing mental health issues than inadequate gun laws.

"Thank you Mr. President for the support. I hope that over the course of the campaign I also earn the support and endorsement of the people of Utah."

The special counsel just made it harder for the president to fire him. Maybe that helps explain this weekend’s fusillade of angry tweets from Mar-a-Lago.

Mr. Cohen cautioned that the bill still was not particularly popular, and opposition among Democrats remained strong. Still, support has grown even among Democrats, from 8 percent just before the bill passed in December to 19 percent this month.

The original Republican-drawn map had become the butt of national jokes due to its reliance on strange, sprawling shapes to create a balance of electoral power heavily tilted toward the GOP.

...it tied in the failure of the FBI in reacting to warnings about the Florida mass shooter, who killed at least 17 people, and used that to challenge the credibility of the Mueller investigation.

One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.

This Trump accuser keeps asking herself that. But she plans to keep talking about that day in 2006.

But as the rebels have lost ground and no clear threats to Mr. Assad’s rule remain, Iran and its allies have stayed, shifting their focus to creating an infrastructure to threaten Israel, analysts say.

Donald J. Trump makes his ranking debut at the very bottom of the list.

Mueller's interest in Jared Kushner has expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition

This is the latest push for gun legislation in Trump’s tenure. The first came after a shooter in Las Vegas killed 58 people in October. There was bipartisan outcry and calls to more stringently regulate bump stocks, which the shooter used to increase his rate of fire, but the effort went nowhere.

Multiple reports today from journalists covering the White House paint a picture of a president who spent the weekend seething with rage — at Mueller, at the media, at members of his administration, at the fact that he couldn’t play golf because it would have been unseemly in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting — and lashing out at everyone in sight, up to and including Oprah Winfrey.

The former chief executive of ExxonMobil for months has defended his plans to "redesign" the State Department, saying he did not intend to hollow out the organization.

It’s on tape, in tweets, and in transcripts.

Here’s a quick guide to his many misstatements and misleading claims in this Twitter barrage.

...sending off a stream of tweets attacking the FBI, CNN, the Democratic Party, his own national security adviser, former President Barack Obama and the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“As you can see with FBI indictment, the evidence is incontrovertible and available in the public domain”

I arrived there, and I immediately felt like a character in the book “1984” by George Orwell — a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line.

In a letter on Friday, all 17 Democrats on the House Education Committee urged Representative Virginia Foxx, the committee’s chairwoman, to convene hearings on school shootings, describing them as a “public health epidemic.”

The social network, more than any other technology tool, was singled out on Friday by the Justice Department when prosecutors charged 13 Russians and three companies for executing a scheme to subvert the 2016 election and support Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Operating from St. Petersburg, they churned out falsehoods on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. They promoted Donald J. Trump and denigrated Hillary Clinton. They stole the identities of American citizens. They organized political rallies in several states, and hired a Clinton impersonator for one event, in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“Incredible job, and everybody is talking about it,” Trump said of the response

The indictment ... only compounds fears in the White House that Trump will attack the FBI in the wake of a school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead, and revelations that the bureau mishandled a tip about the alleged shooter it received in January. Senior staffers are actively urging Trump to avoid attacking the FBI

"Those 35 thousand people aren't going to change their minds," wrote one member, mocking those who would read the press coverage he and his friends concocted. "They're lemmings. ... They will go to the grave convinced that the shooter was a white nationalist."

Mueller’s office has told a federal judge it has found evidence that Paul Manafort ... committed bank fraud not addressed by the indictment last October in which he was charged with money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.

The indictment, in fact, says nothing about whether there was collusion, nor did Rosenstein rule it out during a news conference.

According to the indictment, Mr. Prigozhin, 56, controlled the entity that financed the troll factory, known as the Internet Research Agency, which waged “information warfare against the United States” by creating fictitious social-media personas, spreading falsehoods and promoting messages supportive of Donald J. Trump and critical of Hillary Clinton.

The hackers, he suggested, may have been Chinese. Or some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed. Again and again, he insisted, Russian interference was a hoax — a fiction created by Democrats as an excuse for losing an election they should have won.

—John O. Brennan, CIA Director during 2016 election

The indictment charges that the foreigners falsely posed as American citizens, stole identities and otherwise engaged in fraud and deceit in an effort to influence the U.S. political process, including the 2016 presidential race.

Kelly ... has approved an overhaul of how the White House manages security-clearance investigations, acknowledging missteps but putting the onus on the FBI and the Justice Department to now hand-deliver updates and provide more information.

The Federal Communications Commission’s inspector general office launched an investigation into allegations that chairman Ajit Pai had improperly coordinated with a conservative local television company to allow for greater consolidation in the industry.

Tillerson, who had little to show after his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, expressed “serious concerns” at the continued detention of American citizens under the crackdown.

On November 4, 2016, four days before the election, the Wall Street Journal reported that American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, had paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to McDougal’s story, which it never ran.

“I have a lot of memories of going back and forth on whether accepting all this money from the NRA made me complicit in all of these deaths. ... but nowadays, I just fire off my ‘thoughts and prayers’ tweet without thinking about it and just keep going about my day.”

The judge criticized both sides Wednesday for failing to set a trial date in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecution of the two co-defendants.

A worldwide shortage of thoughts and prayers may leave us with no choice but to actually do something by as early as January 2019, researchers are warning, after a recent study revealed the popular refrain is now fueling 93% of government inaction globally.

The Senate's drive to clinch an immigration deal sputtered to an end on Thursday, with a bipartisan and White House-blessed proposal both defeated and the Dreamers left in limbo once again.

By a vote of 16-5 ... the Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system.

The decision, from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., will have no immediate practical impact. The Supreme Court agreed last month to hear an appeal from a broadly similar decision from the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's office, indicating he's poised to cooperate in the investigation

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s security team decided last year he should fly first class to avoid confrontations with angry individuals on planes and in airports

Bannon spent a total of some 20 hours in conversations with the team led by Mueller

We rarely have such strong evidence a politician’s claim is false. Contrary to what Pence said, U.S. intelligence agencies did not evaluate whether Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election. It remains an open question whether that interference had an impact on the race.

“I am deeply sorry for thinking you would all react the way I’m accustomed to and simply disregard all misconduct claims made against someone in such a powerful position”

This American ritual does not end with a sheriff’s announcement of the number of dead and wounded. Other parts are acted out in an ever-running play whose plot turns on the national paralysis over the Second Amendment.

The vote was part of a larger suite of Congressional Review Act measures that passed early in the Trump administration.

They have gathered information from people who lent money and assembled investors for some Kushner Cos. real estate projects in New York and New Jersey, the person said. Those projects involve deals dating back to 2010.

Everytown, the gun-control group backed by Michael Bloomberg, says this is the 18th school shooting of 2018. We are seven weeks into the year. That means there’s a school shooting every 2.5 days. There have been 30 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

"In my opinion, if passed in its current form, this legislation would be a grave error," Sessions added.

This is the third time in recent months the Rye Song Gang 1 has been caught engaging in alleged ship-to-ship transfers at sea.

A heavily armed young man barged into his former high school about an hour northwest of Miami on Wednesday, opening fire on terrified students and teachers and leaving a death toll of 17

Trump broke days of silence on the matter of spousal abuse, saying on Wednesday he was opposed to all manner of domestic violence.

Gowdy’s probe encompasses the larger question of whether more White House officials are working with temporary security clearances, indicating potential vetting problems.

Trump on Wednesday called on lawmakers to oppose a series of bipartisan efforts to address immigration and resolve the fate of the so-called “Dreamers,” demanding fealty to his hard-line approach

And it's unlikely to change soon, observers say, leaving President Trump without a science adviser as the administration wrestles with a severe outbreak of the flu, lead-poisoned drinking water and record-breaking disasters that many scientists say are sharpened by rising temperatures.

Rather than simply fighting judicial rulings, elected officials in some states across the country — largely Republicans, but Democrats as well — are increasingly seeking to punish or restrain judges who hand down unfavorable decisions, accusing them of making law instead of interpreting it.

Schiff said Democrats didn’t intend to revise the memo beyond making redactions requested by intelligence leaders. He accused the White House of wanting to redact information that isn’t sensitive but reflects badly on the administration.

While Cohen was probably trying to put Trump in the clear by saying he had nothing to do with it, his very explanation paints a picture very similar to that of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

Last week, a 25-minute video published by Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny alleging a new link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign made headlines around the world. Now the Russian government wants it scrubbed from the internet

But the email nonetheless indicates that officials in the personnel security office — and perhaps others in the White House — were aware as far back as last year of the potential pitfalls of overreliance on interim security clearances

Trump has favored bills that would severely restrict so-called chain migration, including the granting of immigration visas to the parents of U.S. citizens. So naturally, readers have wondered whether the president is being hypocritical.

Here at the New York Times, we believe that all sides of the story should be tolerated and explored... Because everyone, no matter how intellectually lazy their conservatism, deserves a column in our newspaper.

In a year of controlling power in Washington, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have run up federal spending, approved deficit-swelling tax cuts and presided over a marked increase in “policy uncertainty” in the economy. They still talk about the importance of fiscal discipline, but they have yet to enforce it.

FBI Director Chris Wray said Tuesday that the bureau completed its background investigation of former White House staff secretary Rob Porter last year, contradicting the White House's assertion that the FBI “process” was ongoing.

“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” said Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence.

The chief of staff has been left to shoulder the blame over the failure to remove the former staff secretary, who held only an interim security clearance.

"...the insurgent-like features of the Trump campaign and the relatively small campaign staff limited the pool of experienced applicants. While it created new opportunities for many individuals who had not previously worked in the White House, such inexperience may have led to poor performance and a slew of first-year departures."

Major transportation projects in blue states may be in jeopardy in President Donald Trump’s 10-year infrastructure plan, which critics say favors little-populated rural areas to the detriment of urban America.

The company’s fortunes took a hit after the election of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed “true friend” of the gun industry, because Hillary Clinton’s defeat erased fears among gun enthusiasts about losing access to weapons. Sales plummeted, and retailers stopped re-ordering as they found themselves stuffed with unsold inventory.

He may be unpopular, but among Republicans he’s still viewed positively. But if there are fewer Republicans now than there were when he took office, that Trump maintained their support seems less impressive.

"Does it balance? No it doesn't," Mulvaney told reporters on Monday. "I couldn't tell you using solid numbers that we could balance the budget in 10 years."

Congress has final say over spending — but Monday’s budget proposal is seen as an important sign of Trump’s priorities.

"From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming [Trump] team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia."

There really is a tweet for everything.

"Before reporters sloppily imply nefarious meaning behind the term, we would suggest that they read any number of the Supreme Court opinions that use the term."

“Are Republicans going to embrace any kind of funding plan besides stealing from Peter to pay Paul within the federal government?”

Under the existing map, Democratic House candidates have routinely received roughly 50 percent of the statewide popular House vote but only five of the state's 18 House seats. The new map is unlikely to change that.

"In the context of the President's then-precarious financial position, I believe that the Palm Beach property sale warrants further scrutiny"

Resembling a local, conservative news site, “The California Republican” is classified on Facebook as a “media/news company” and claims to deliver “the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis.” But the website is paid for by Nunes’ campaign committee, according to small print at the bottom of the site.

As staff secretary, Porter held one of the most important, and under-appreciated, positions at the White House. The staff secretary normally is responsible for managing all information that flows to the president – usually including the secrets known only to a small handful of people

If you look up "situational ethics" in the dictionary, this is it. When men who he likes or who agree with his political leaning are accused of this sort of behavior, Trump is quick to note their denials -- and to slough off the very real evidence many of these women have to back up their claims. When the man is a political opponent, Trump has no problem taking the word of the women.

So much for all that sanctimony about fiscal responsibility.

“He says he's innocent, and I think you have to remember that,” said Trump. “He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent, but you'll have to talk to him about that.”

The F-16, one of at least eight Israeli planes despatched in response to what Israel said was an Iranian drone’s incursion into its airspace earlier in the day, was hit by a Syrian anti-aircraft missile and crashed in northern Israel

And amid the tumult, the man whose mission had been to enforce order in the West Wing, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, was focused instead on a more personal goal — to save his job — as Trump seriously sounded out confidants about possible replacements.

A White House speechwriter resigned Friday after his former wife claimed that he was violent and emotionally abusive during their turbulent 2½ -year marriage — allegations that he vehemently denied, saying she was the one who victimized him.

He said the president would again consider making the memo public if the committee, which had approved its release on Monday, revised it to “mitigate the risks.”

Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

Trump’s signature came quickly after the House gave final approval early Friday to the deal, h ours after a one-man blockade by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky delayed the votes and forced the government to briefly close.

Navalny published a video Thursday in which he accuses one of Russia’s richest men of bribing a top government official by entertaining him on his yacht with several women described as escorts.

Republicans propelled themselves to power in Washington by promising an end to fiscal recklessness. They are now embracing the kind of free spending and budget deficits they once claimed to loathe.

The workers will be erecting a physical barrier to separate the cubicles of aides who serve Republican members of the committee from those who serve Democrats.

Kelly was told several weeks ago that multiple White House aides who had been working in the West Wing on interim security clearances would not qualify for permanent clearances.

People familiar with the security-clearance process said one of those White House officials with an interim approval is Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law and one of his most influential advisers.

“There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled. Whether they affected the outcome is another question,” the 43rd president said at a summit in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. He added: “It’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”

Both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats were balking in the hours after the deal was unveiled Wednesday — the former angry about the spending jolt, the latter fuming about the lack of protections for young immigrants at risk for deportation under the Trump administration.

Usually held in April, the parade took place this year on the eve of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics being staged in the South Korean mountain resort of Pyeongchang, just across the heavily fortified border.

"It’s in their countries right now.”

In other words, the latest “bombshell” is that the Democratic president wanted information about the Russian attack while it was happening, which is neither new nor surprising.

U.S. forces targeted the pro-government troops with airstrikes and artillery after they launched an attack against a base belonging to the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour

A Border Patrol agent whose death last November fueled President Trump’s calls for a border wall appears to have died in an accident, according to FBI findings released Wednesday.

Mr. Pence’s threat, delivered in Tokyo, came two days after he had signaled openness to meeting with North Korean officials at the Games, somewhat muddying the harsh message he had been sent to project.

Her marathon monologue — highly unusual for the House, which has no equivalent to the Senate filibuster — appears to have set the record for the longest continuous speech in the chamber, dating to at least 1909, according to the House historian.

His troubles were not a complete secret at the White House: Two people close to the White House said that the allegations against him made by his former wives, Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby, had contributed to a delay in granting him a permanent security clearance.

For Democrats to take control of the chamber, they must keep all of their seats and win two of the Republican seats in play. It is numerically possible, but there is little room for error.

“The point is, if it's their intention to interfere, they are going to find ways to do that. We can take steps we can take, but this is something that, once they decide they are going to do it, it's very difficult to pre-empt it”

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Tuesday suggested that some young immigrants eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program failed to apply for the legal protections because they were too afraid — or “too lazy to get off their asses.”

Top Republicans may end up shielding the president’s son and son-in-law from facing tough questions on-camera from Democrats eager to press them over their contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign.

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA’s solicitation required “self-heating meals.”

"We essentially got it today, the teams are doing exactly the same thing on this one that we did on the first one," Kelly said. "This one's more lengthy, but anyway, drop-dead date, they need to get back to me by close of business Thursday, then ... we'll go in and brief the President on it"

Trump officials had discussed Memorial Day on May 28, and July 4, but the Pentagon prefers Veterans Day on Nov. 11 — in part because it would coincide with the 100th anniversary of the victorious end of World War I and therefore be less associated with the president and politics.

Two and three decades ago, Mr. Trump spoke to David Letterman and Rona Barrett in the quietly composed phrasing we expect of public figures expressing serious thoughts. So why does the same man now toss off word salad?

“Even on positive news like that, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American,” Trump said at a manufacturing plant outside Cincinnati. “Somebody said ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Shall we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

Low-quality, extremist, sensationalist and conspiratorial news published in the US was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by rightwing social network users, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.

The case, which was initially three separate lawsuits before being consolidated by Curiel, represents a substantial legal challenge to the construction of Trump’s potential border wall.

Trump now has five days to decide whether the information will become public.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let a court-ordered redrawing of congressional districts in Pennsylvania proceed, raising Democratic hopes that a revamped map might yield them several more seats this fall.

Jones also told the newspaper that he was once a leader in the American Nazi Party and now leads the America First Committee — an organization whose membership “is open to any white American citizen of European, non-Jewish descent.”

Former top diplomat Victoria Nuland tells the story of how she pushed the Obama administration to do more to stop Russian hacking.

—Adam Schiff, Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

The UK government's health secretary Jeremy Hunt took on the president directly, and in public, standing up for the NHS and rebuking his claims. "I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m peopel have no cover."

The President claimed that a demonstration on Saturday, where thousands marched on Downing Street calling on the Government to give the NHS the funding it needs, was an argument against the US adopting a similar system.

Trump in October appointed Ms. White, a former Texas environmental regulator who has said that carbon dioxide should be considered the “gas of life” rather than a pollutant, to be the White House senior environmental adviser.

"There is a little bit of sweet revenge in it for me and certainly probably the family in a sense that if they wouldn't have done this, this stuff would be going on."

With a special counsel investigating whether his campaign collaborated with Russia in 2016 and whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice in 2017, the president has engaged in a scorched-earth assault on the pillars of the criminal justice system in a way that no other occupant of the White House has done.

...citing a Pennsylvania woman whose paycheck went up by $1.50 a week as a success of the recently passed GOP tax-reform bill.

The bureau is under fire not from those on the left but rather conservatives who have long been the agency’s biggest supporters, as well as the president who handpicked the FBI’s leader.

"There is a Russia investigation without a dossier. So to the extent the memo deals with the dossier and the FISA process, the dossier has nothing to do with the meeting at Trump Tower."

Trump, who appointed his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner to senior White House roles, has made a habit of appointing people with close ties to his family or businesses rather than experienced policymakers or political hands.

Manafort alleged in his civil suit that "the Acting Attorney General’s order directing the Special Counsel to investigate certain matters exceeds the authority provided by the Department of Justice’s Special Counsel regulations."

The remark came on the heels of Trump’s latest verbal attack on the Department of Justice and the FBI, with the president using an early-morning tweet to accuse them of politicizing their inquiries.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Friday that the release of a controversial memo by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee does not discredit nor undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

He’s got money, charisma and a presidential pardon. Now he thinks—and local Republicans fear—he can win the GOP Senate primary in Arizona.

The four-page document was compiled by staff of the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and released against strong opposition from the Justice Department, FBI and Democratic lawmakers.

Wray addressed the “talk on cable TV and social media,” and said that “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”

“I required the journalists who broke the 2013 domestic spying stories (as a condition of access) to talk with gov in advance of publication as an extraordinary precaution to prevent any risk of harm. Turns out our standard of care was higher than the actual Intel committee.”

The memo is the most explicit Republican effort yet to discredit the FBI's investigation into Trump and Russia, alleging that the investigation was infused with an anti-Trump bias under the Obama administration and supported with political opposition research.

“It’s taking the lessons and transgressions noted on the part of this administration and preventing those things from happening again in the future.”

Trump says the ratings for his first State of the Union address this week are "the highest number in history," but that is not true.