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Gabrielle Canon (now), Lauren Gambino and Adam Gabbatt (earlier)

Trump ordered officials to give Kushner security clearance despite concerns, report says – as it happened

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner during a press conference at the White House in Washington, 17 March 2017.
Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner during a press conference at the White House in Washington, 17 March 2017. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Thursday evening summary

Thanks for following along tonight! Here’s what happened Thursday in politics:

  • Michael Cohen is heading back to the House Intelligence Committee next week for another closed-door session, followed soon-after by other close Trump associates. Felix Sater, a Russian-born former FBI spy with connections to the mob is scheduled for questioning on March 14, and Trump’s children are expected to be scheduled soon along with Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.
  • The New York Times reported that a memo from top members of the Trump administration reveals that the president ordered top-secret security clearance for his son-in-law Jared Kushner, overriding concerns from intelligence officials. Trump had previously denied he had any involvement in Kushner’s clearance process. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called the reports “a serious abuse that endangers our security”.
  • Beto O’Rourke has officially made a decision on 2020, he said today, but hasn’t yet announced what that decision is. Speculation is that he’s running, especially after reports that he’s begun courting political strategists.

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In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Donald Trump discussed his meeting with Kim Jong-un, explaining their failure to reach a deal: “They wanted to de-nuke certain areas and I wanted everything,” he said. “They’re not ready for that and I understand that fully, I really do.”

He also took the opportunity to praise Kim as “sharp”, noting that he was “mercurial”, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

“He’s a different kind of a guy, and I just said, look, this isn’t going to be working,” he said. But “I have feeling something down the line will happen”.

Responding to the New York Times report that Trump pushed through Jared Kushner’s security clearance House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement that the issue is “the latest indicator of the President’s disregard for our national security”.

Congressman Eric Swalwell, who chairs the Intelligence Modernization and Readiness Subcommittee added in the statement with Schiff that Trump has “jeopardized our national security by putting clearances in the hands of unscrupulous people, and against the recommendations of background investigators.”

Here are their comments in full:

Chairman Adam Schiff:

“The revelation that President Trump personally intervened to overrule White House security officials and the Intelligence Community to grant a Top Secret security clearance to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is the latest indicator of the President’s utter disregard for our national security and for the men and women who sacrifice so much every day to keep us safe. There is no nepotism exception for background investigations.

“Worse still was the White House’s oft-repeated lie that Kushner had been granted the clearance at the conclusion of a normal process. Reports indicate, moreover, that Kushner’s access to the nation’s most tightly held secrets, which require separate adjudication by the Intelligence Community, was restricted. This is a clear indication of the deep unease that national security officials have about Kushner’s suitability.

“As part of its oversight of the Intelligence Community, the House Intelligence Committee will be working closely with the Oversight and Reform Committee to support their investigation into the White House’s security clearance process.”

Chairman Eric Swalwell:

“As chair of the Intelligence Modernization and Readiness Subcommittee, I’m concerned the President has jeopardized our national security by putting clearances in the hands of unscrupulous people, and against the recommendations of background investigators. To ensure our deepest secrets are protected, we will work to ensure clearances are granted based on trust, not by blood or bond.”

A standoff has erupted between Health and Human Services officials and House Ethics Committee chair Ted Deutch over comments the Chairman made alleging that HHS staff had sexually abused migrant children in their custody, Politico reports.

Heads of the agency refused to meet with Congressman Deutch until he issues an apology. Deutch has meanwhile refused to backdown on the remarks, which he made during a hearing on Trump’s family separation policy.

“Our job is to conduct oversight” Deutch told Politico. “I’ve never seen a response like this, that simply refuses to come talk to members of Congress”.

Beto O’Rourke has not yet officially announced his bid for the presidency, but AP reports he’s already courting political strategists:

A person with direct knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press on Thursday that O’Rourke’s team is having early, formal staffing discussions. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal the discussions before a campaign announcement.

The development comes a day after O’Rourke announced he had made a 2020 decision and would let everyone know his plans ‘soon’”.

Felix Sater is scheduled for open-testimony at House Intelligence Committee

Former Trump associate Felix Sater will come before the House Intelligence Committee on March 14, Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters today following a closed-door hearing with Michael Cohen.

The Russia-born business executive, who has a past as an American spy tracking terrorists and members of the mob, worked with Cohen on the Trump Tower Moscow project that was ongoing through the 2016 election.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) crowds did not show up at the main stage this evening to hear Congressman Paul Gosar talk about “how the Left is destroying families” and the Arizona Representative was left to give his impassioned speech to empty seats.

Report: Trump ordered senior officials to grant Kushner top-secret security clearance despite concerns

Despite pushback from intelligence officials and top members of his own administration last year, the president ordered top-secret security clearance for his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the New York Times is reporting.

Per the New York Times:

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been ‘ordered’ to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance”.

Updated

Gabrielle Canon here, taking over for Lauren Gambino.

Michael Cohen will be back in front of the House Intelligence Committee early next month, he told reporters today as he left a closed-door session this afternoon.

In an explosive testimony yesterday, Cohen told the committee the president, his former boss, was “racist” and a “conman”, and was involved directly in the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign.

Summary

  1. House oversight committee chair Elijah Cummings said he will seek interviews with Trump’s children, Don Jr and Ivanka, as well as some of the president’s closest allies after Michael Cohen’s explosive testimony on Wednesday.
  2. Conservative congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows have referred Cohen to the Department of Justice, alleging that the former Trump aide committed perjury during his hearing yesterday. Cohen’s lawyer said he was truthful.
  3. Senate Republicans urge Trump to rescind his national declaration, which he announced after an impasse with Congress resulted in far less money to build his border wall than he initially requested. The Senate will vote soon on a resolution passed by the House that would block it. Trump has said he would veto the measure if it passed the Senate, which appears increasingly likely.
  4. Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist has been confirmed by the Senate to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Wheeler has been running the agency since his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy, is a controversial choice.

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New polling out of the University of New Hampshire has neighboring senator Bernie Sanders in first place, trailed closely by Joe Biden, who still has no decided whether he will run for president.

Polling in the single digits is another neighboring senator, Elizabeth Warren.

After Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act despite having full control of Congress and an ally in the White House, they appear to be moving on from a promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law.

Democrats regained control of the House in 2018 with a message focused squarely on lowering healthcare costs and improving the ACA, known as Obamacare.

In a floor speech on Thursday, Republican senator Lamar Alexander asked Donald Trump to reconsider his emergency declaration, which faces bipartisan opposition in Congress.

“I support what the president wants to do on border security, but I do not support the way he has been advised to do it,” he said in a speech on the chamber floor, according to the LA Times.

Three Senate Republicans have already said they would support a resolution to block Trump’s national emergency declaration on the border. Democrats need only one more Republican to join the effort for it to pass.

Earlier this week, the Democratic-controlled House easily approved the measure in a vote of 245-182. Trump has said he would veto the measure if it reaches his desk and it does not appear that the resolution has enough support in either chamber to override a veto.

“I think that really it’s a very dangerous thing for people to be voting against border security,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “I think they put themselves at great jeopardy.”

Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman has said in a statement: “We must remember Otto, and we should never let North Korea off the hook for what they did to him.”

Portman has been in contact with Warmbier’s family since the suburban Cincinnati youth was imprisoned in early 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster.

Warmbier died in June 2017 after being returned home in a vegetative state. His parents say he was tortured.

The University of Virginia student had been visiting North Korea with a tour group when he was detained. A court there sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor for the alleged offense.

Last year, a US judge ordered North Korea to pay more than $500m in a wrongful death suit filed by Warmbier’s parents.

US district judge Beryl Howell in Washington harshly condemned North Korea for “barbaric mistreatment” of Warmbier, awarding punitive damages and payments covering medical expenses, economic loss and pain and suffering to parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier.

Trump has claimed credit for freeing American prisoners abroad and had used Warmbier’s death as a rallying cry against the North Korea’s human rights abuses before softening his rhetoric ahead of talks with Kim.

Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr wanted for interviews by House committee

House oversight committee chairman Elijah Cummings has said he will seek interviews with Donald Trump’s children and some of his closest allies after public testimony by the president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. Among those the committee will call in for testimony are Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump, as well as Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.

“All you have to do is follow the transcript. If there are names that were mentioned or records that were mentioned during the hearing, we want to take a look at all of that,” Cummings told reporters, according to Politico.

Meanwhile, Politico also reports that financial services chairwoman Maxine Waters says Democrats should focus on Trump foundation and potential Trump tax evasion.

Updated

House Democrats are escalating their long-promised investigations into Donald Trump, according to a new report in Bloomberg.

“House Democrats are opening an investigation into what they say are abuses of power by President Donald Trump through his attacks on the courts, the Justice Department, the FBI and the media, according to a House official familiar with the plans.”

Topics for the inquiry will include Trump’s public humiliation of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his attacks on actions by the liberal Ninth Circuit Court and his abuse of reporters as “dishonest” and “enemies of the people,” said the person, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Footage has emerged of Mark Meadows, the Republican congressman who during yesterday’s Cohen hearing furiously denied being racist, engaging conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama’s country of birth.

Specifically Meadows, who played a prominent role in Wednesday’s committee hearing, promised supporters during the 2012 election campaign that he and Republican colleagues would send Obama home “to Kenya or wherever”.

Meadows was accused of carrying out a racist stunt during the Cohen hearing. He invited Lynne Patton, a black Trump administration official and Trump family friend, with him to the hearing and gestured to her when asking Cohen if a black woman would work for a racist.

Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said later in the hearing that using a black woman as “a prop” was “racist in itself”.

A little inside baseball for those keeping score at home:

Bryce Harper, the former Washington Nationals star, has reportedly decided to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies after a lengthy decision-making process that has stretched into Spring training.

The news came as the political world awaits decisions from two big fish who are taking their time deciding whether to run for president: former Vice President Joe Biden and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke.

Updated

"Cohen testified truthfully," attorney says

Lanny J. Davis, attorney for Michael Cohen, has issued a statement in response to Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows accusing Cohen of committing perjury during his testimony yesterday. Davis said:

Mr Cohen testified truthfully before the House Oversight Committee. He took full responsibility for his guilty pleas. He also backed up much of his testimony with documents. It may not be surprising that two pro-Trump Committee members known have a baseless criminal referral. In my opinion, it is a sad misuse of the criminal justice system with the aura of pure partisanship.

A key tactic of Republicans on the House committee yesterday was to discredit Cohen and lessen the impact of his testimony.

Former Maine governor Paul LePage has said any elimination of the electoral college would hurt white people.

LePage, a Republican, told WVOM radio that allowing the popular vote – which Trump lost in 2016, but was still elected president – to choose the executive would give minorities more power and mean “white people will not have anything to say.”

Proposals to eliminate the electoral college are sometimes floated but have mostly failed to gain traction. A Maine legislative committee plans to discuss a proposal this week.

But LePage, who was governor of Maine from 2011 until 2019, said cutting the Electoral College would mean there is never another presidential candidate from small states like “Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wyoming, Montana, Rhode Island.”

“What would happen – if they do what they say they’re going to do – is white people will not have anything to say,” LePage said.

“It’s only going to be the minorities that would elect. It would be California, Texas, Florida [...] We’re gonna be forgotten people.”

While governor, LePage blamed out-of-state, minority dealers for bringing drugs into Maine and added that they often impregnate “young, white” girls while in Maine.

The government is buying new planes, Trump says.

“And all of the generals, I hope you’re going to give them to the best pilots.”

He says the military will always have the tools needed to fight America’s enemies.

“Thank you for doing such a fantastic job,” he tells the military members attended.

Then his team plays the Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want, which is a bit weird because that’s how he ends his campaign rallies end, and this is the president addressing the troops.

Updated

Trump is speaking in Alaska while Air Force One refuels, following his Vietnam summit with Kim Jong-un.

He’s addressing members of the military and praises “everyone here today who fights for our flag across the globe”.

But, as so often happens, he then reproduces his campaign speech.

Trump claims the military is being rebuilt at “a rapid pace” and says “black unemployment” is at its lowest level in history. “Women, lowest in 60 years,” he adds.

The stock market is doing well, he continues, adding:

“We’re just doing great.”

Updated

Here’s a little respite from that early-afternoon buzz. I got 19 out of 22, but I watched every minute of Cohen’s testimony yesterday. (Poor me.)

Senate confirms former coal industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as EPA administrator

Andrew Wheeler has been confirmed by the Senate to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

The former coal lobbyist, who has been running the agency since his predecessor Scott Pruitt resigned after months of controversy, is a controversial choice.

In January, during his confirmation hearing, Wheeler said he was carrying out the president’s “regulatory reform agenda”. Donald Trump has repeatedly said he does not believe in manmade climate change.

Wheeler called the US the “gold standard for environmental progress”.

The Guardian’s Emily Holden reported that when Wheeler was during that January hearing if he agreed with the president’s past statements that climate change is a Chinese “hoax”, Wheeler said he would “not use the hoax word, myself”:

But Wheeler said he would “not call it the greatest crisis”.

“I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally,” Wheeler added.

Wheeler also told the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, a likely presidential contender, that he is “still examining” a November report from US government scientists showing the country will suffer from heat-related deaths, coastal flooding and infrastructure damage.

Republican congressmen report Cohen for perjury

Jim Jordan, the Republican ranking member of the House oversight committee, and Mark Meadows, have reported Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice, alleging that the former Trump aide committed perjury during his hearing yesterday.

In a public letter to new Trump-appointed attorney general William Burr, Jordan and Meadows said Cohen had made “numerous willfully (sic) and intentionally false statements of material fact” during the hearing.

The pair said:

Mr Cohen’s testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Reform on February 27 2019 was a spectacular and brazen attempt to knowing (sic) and willfully (sic) testify falsely and fictitiously to numerous material facts.

Jordan and Meadows said Cohen had lied when he said in the hearing: “I never defrauded any bank.”

They claim that statement is false as Cohen had “pleaded guilty to five counts of income tax evasion [and] one count of making false statements to a banking institution”.

They also said that Cohen was lying when he told the committee he did not seek employment in the Trump White House.

Jordan and Meadows cited court filings made by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, which said Cohen had “privately told friends and colleagues, including in seized text messages, that he expected to be given a prominent role and title in the new administration”.

Updated

Last week Roger Stone was ordered not to comment about his upcoming trial – including post on social media.

The judge, Amy Berman Jackson, said it was a final warning. (Stone had previously posted an Instagram photo showing her next to some crosshairs). Stone faced his bond being revoked if he carried on posting.

But it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact because:

Former federal prosecutor Ken White has written an interesting analysis of yesterday’s hearing in the Atlantic. He was, er, unimpressed with the GOP line of questioning:

House Republicans needed a trial lawyer—or even a moderately bright junior-high mock-trial participant—to tell them how to do anything.

“Republicans could have marshaled Cohen’s many sins of the past to undermine his statements today. Instead they returned repeatedly to lies and misdeeds he’d already admitted, wallowed in silly trivialities like the ‘Women for Cohen’ Twitter account, and yelled,” White says.

“The effect was to make an unsympathetic man modestly more sympathetic.”

Summary

•Donald Trump’s decision to side with North Korea over the death of American Otto Warmbier has prompted outrage. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have expressed upset after Trump said he believed Kim Jong-Un when the North Korean dictator said he “didn’t know about” the imprisonment and torture of Otto Warmbier.

•The backing Trump gave to Kim Jong-un has brought comparisons to his support for Vladimir Putin and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump had previously sided with Putin over Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and said Saudi Arabia’s explanation over the killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi “credible”.

•Michael Cohen is testifying before the House intelligence committee at a closed door hearing. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who has shown a knack for getting under Donald Trump’s skin, is leading the grilling for the Democrats.

•Trump has reacted to Cohen’s testimony yesterday by claiming that Cohen lied about almost everything during yesterday’s congressional hearing – but told the truth by saying he had no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia.

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Updated

Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens are staunch Trump supporters and controversial right-wing activists. It would be fair to say that lot of people don’t see Trump-like politics as the way for the Republican party to win elections in the future.

Clearly GOP chair Ronna McDaniel disagrees.

Owens, a climate change denier who has criticized feminism, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter is director of communications at Turning Point USA, a right-wing activist group founded by Kirk. The group has been accused of racism and potentially illegal campaign activity.

Beto O’Rourke has decided not to run for Senate again in 2020 – and “likely will announce a campaign for president soon”, according to the Dallas Morning News.

According to the Morning News O’Rourke offered this:

Amy and I have made a decision about how we can best serve our country [...] We are excited to share it with everyone soon.

That tallies with the former Congressman telling CNN reporter Leyla Santiago, while unlocking his bike, that he had an incoming announcement.

Listen to the end for this exchange:

“Fixie?”

“It was, I just put a freewheel on it.”

I’m with O’Rourke on this. Fixed gear bicycles just aren’t practical in the city.

“We achieved nothing, but we’d already paid for that Game of Thrones-esque music”:

Updated

Meanwhile, at CPAC, National Rifle Association president Ollie North is requesting thoughts and prayers for the multi-million dollar gun lobbying organization.

For better or worse, (better) the NRA is not in a good place right now. According to the Guardian’s Peter Stone, the NRA is “currently facing a bevy of political, regulatory and financial headaches”.

“Gun issue lobbyists, both pro and con, and firearms experts say the group’s legendary clout is being challenged on multiple fronts and its longstanding image of invulnerability and power is encountering tougher opposition,” Peter reports.

Updated

Donald Trump has reacted to Michael Cohen’s testimony by claiming that Cohen lied about almost everything during yesterday’s congressional hearing – but told the truth by saying he had no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, writes my colleague Jon Swaine:

Speaking in Vietnam after meeting the North Korean leader Kim Jong un, Trump said Cohen, his former legal fixer, lied “95% instead of 100%” of the time during a hearing of the House oversight committee on Wednesday. “I was impressed,” said Trump.

Trump falsely claimed several times that Cohen had testified that there had been “no collusion”. In fact, Cohen said he did not know any “direct evidence” of collusion. “But I have my suspicions,” he told members of congress.

Trump said of Cohen: “He lied a lot, but it was very interesting, because he didn’t lie about one thing. He said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, ‘I wonder why he didn’t just lie about that too, like he lied about everything else’.”

Updated

Trump’s explanation-free statement that he believed Kim Jong-Un when the North Korean dictator said he “didn’t know about” the imprisonment and torture of Otto Warmbier has baffled many – at both ends of the political spectrum.

Adam Schiff, California Democrat, is among those to point out that Trump’s acceptance of foreign dictator’s claims – sometimes over the intelligence of his own government – is nothing new.

Even Rick Santorum, former Republican senator for Pennsylvania, and a man usually very happy to defend Trump, voiced his concerns.

As Adam Schiff said, there is a precedent here.

When Trump met Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last year he stunned observers when he took the Russian leader’s word over his own intelligence agencies on Russia influencing the 2016 election.

“I have President Putin he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.

And in October he said he found Saudi Arabia’s explanation over the killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi “credible”.

Senators disagreed: Bob Corker, a Republican, later said that if Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman “went in front of a jury he would be convicted in 30 minutes”.

Reporter Shimon Prokupecz has spotted Michael Cohen:

Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who has shown a knack for getting under Donald Trump’s skin, is the chair of the house Intelligence committee. He will lead the grilling of Cohen.

Some members of the committee also sit on the House oversight committee, where Cohen appeared yesterday. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Peter Welch, both Democrats, will get a second run at Trump’s former aide.

The ranking Republican is Devin Nunes, a strident Trump defender who as chair of the intelligence committee sought, clumsily, to muddy the waters around the investigation into potential Russia collusion.

So what exactly happened in North Korea this morning? My colleague Julian Borger was in Hanoi, and reports that the breakdown came with an insight into the central disagreements that have dogged the negotiations.

According to Trump, the summit collapsed because Kim Jong-un wanted sanctions on North Korea lifted completely in exchange for dismantling the main nuclear complex at Yongbyon.

The US wanted other nuclear facilities, including covert sites, disabled as well, and Kim disagreed:

“We know the country very well, every inch of that country,” Trump said Yongbyon, “while very big, wasn’t enough”.

“We had to have more than that, because there were other things that we haven’t talked about, that we found, that we found a long time ago, but people didn’t know about,” he went on, making clear that one of the sites he was talking about was a second covert uranium enrichment programme. “We brought many points up that I think they were surprised that we knew.”

He said relaxing all sanctions in return for Yongbyon would been meant giving up leverage “that has taken so long to build” .

As well as failing in talks that Trump had spent a longtime touting, the president exculpated Kim over the 2017 death of US student Otto Warmbier, in a move that Julian says is “likely to draw sharp criticism from both sides of the aisle in Congress, where there is persistent outrage over Warmbier’s treatment”.

Otto Warmbier
Otto Warmbier during his trial in North Korea in 2016. Photograph: KCNA/HANDOUT/EPA

Warmbier died in the US in 2017 after being imprisoned and tortured in North Korea. He had visited North Korea on a study trip and was arrested as he returned to the US, for allegedly trying to take home a propaganda poster.

“Some really bad things happened to Otto,” Trump said. “But Kim tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”

Updated

After that testimony yesterday

  • After that testimony yesterday, Michael Cohen is back in front of a House committee. Today the former Donald Trump confidante turned ... non-Donald Trump confidante is appearing before the intelligence committee. But it won’t be the roller-coaster ride that Cohen treated us to on Wednesday. This hearing is behind closed doors.
  • Trump isn’t having a great time of it. As if being accused of various criminal conspiracies wasn’t bad enough, Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un collapsed overnight. The Hanoi meeting was abruptly cut short by several hours – leaving a planned signing ceremony and cancelled. Trump said North Korea had wanted all sanctions lifted. “Sometimes you have to walk,” the US president said.
  • The Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual Republican bonanza, kicks off today. The speaking list for the get together, held just outside Washington DC, is a veritable who’s who of right-wing figures. Fox News angry person Laura Ingraham, professional mouth Glenn Beck and a host of Republican politicians will address the conference. Donald Trump will speak on Saturday.
  • In Democratic primary news – just 11 months to go until the first vote – Kamala Harris is in Nevada today. The Nevada caucus is the third vote in 2020. Joe Biden, who said on Tuesday he was in the “final stages” of deciding whether to run for president, is appearing in Omaha, Nebraska, for a forum on global leadership.

Updated

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