Donald Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, has been subpoenaed to testify before the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee over his contacts with Russia, sparking the latest drama in Washington surrounding that investigation.
The subpoena comes as the White House remains at odds with Congress after the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to hold attorney general William Barr in contempt of Congress over his failure to release the full, unredacted Mueller report into alleged ties between the Trump administration and the Kremlin.
Democrats have demanded the unredacted version of that report, but also the underlying evidence so they can weigh whether charges are warrant further legal action.
That action may one day mean impeachment for Mr Trump — as some Democrats like presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren have demanded — but House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday that she does not believe the time has come for that effort.
Ms Pelosi said that she plans on waiting for House committees to finish their investigations, and then she would be open to considering further actions.
The president himself meanwhile addressed a rowdy rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, on Wednesday evening, where he pledged to deliver $448m (£344m) in disaster relief funding seven months after the Panhandle was devastated by Hurricane Michael. While delivering that good news, the president also laughed and joked when a member of the crowd yelled about shooting Central American migrants, who he said constituted an “invasion”.
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Donald Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr, has been subpoenaed to testify before the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee over his contacts with Russia.
Lawmakers want to ask the younger Trump about his 2017 testimony regarding its probe into Russian election interference in 2016.
It's the first known subpoena for a member of Trump's immediate family. Whether the boy will comply isn't clear.
FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian hacking notes some contradictions in what Trump Jr previously told the Senate committee and what some witnesses told his investigators.
The committee chairman is Republican senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. The subpoena puts him at odds with some of his party colleagues, who want to move the narrative on from the special counsel's report and focus on policy issues ahead of 2020.
The White House blocked ex-adviser Don McGahn from speaking to the House as part of its current stonewalling and could potentially stop the president's son appearing too.
Don Jr, almost as busy and irritating a presence on Twitter as his old man, has yet to comment but did retweet this unflattering caricature of Senator Burr.
Here's Harry Cockburn with more.
Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold attorney general William Barr in contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by chairman Jerrold Nadler asking him to release the full, unredacted Mueller report.
Voting to hold the attorney general in contempt lays the foundation for Congress to file a civil lawsuit, as well as a criminal referral to be sent to the US attorney’s office in Washington.
Rather than comply with the Democrats' request, Barr asked President Trump to invoke his executive privilege to block the move on Tuesday night, which he duly did.
The committee voted along party lines in yesterday's session, 24-16, to recommend the House of Representatives hold Barr in contempt, but only after some five hours of heated and, at times, emotional testimony.
Democrats made their case that Congress was at a historic juncture as it confronts what they consider Trump's stonewalling of lawmakers' ability to conduct oversight of the administration. Republicans meanwhile portrayed the majority as angry and lashing out at Barr after the special counsel did not find that Trump colluded with Russia to swing the 2016 election.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was equally heated in her response afterwards, accusing Nadler of "a blatant abuse of power".
"We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice," Nadler said after the vote, but the White House's blockade, "is an attack on the ability of the American people to know what the executive branch is doing. This cannot be."
House speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the next step will be consideration by the full House. Nadler said that will happen soon.
If approved by the House, where the Democrats hold a solid majority, the contempt resolution would almost certainly move to an unusual, and potentially protracted, multi-pronged court battle with the Trump administration.
The contempt finding could be referred to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, a Justice Department official who would be likely to defend rather than oppose Barr. Democratic House leaders could also file a lawsuit, though the case could take months or even years to resolve. Some committee members have suggested they also could fine Barr as he withholds information.
Later on Wednesday, Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, issued his own subpoena to the Justice Department for the full Mueller report.
Schiff said he has "no choice" but to compel the department's compliance. He warned that if it continues to "ignore or rejects our requests," his panel could take legal action.
Here's Chris Riotta's report on a step that dramatically escalates tensions between Trump's White House and Capitol Hill.
Here's Clark Mindock on what that executive privilege intervention by the president means for Barr, the Mueller report and the Democrats.
Donald Trump pere was in Panama City Beach in the Florida Panhandle last night to address a particularly rowdy MAGA rally.
Earlier in the day he had visited damage done by Hurricane Michael, a category 5 storm that blasted the area in October 2018 after forming over the Caribbean.
Trump announced $448m (£344m) in disaster relief funding for the Sunshine State a mere seven months late (a fact he blamed on Congress and its preference for delivering aid to Puerto Rico) before addressing his fans.
Poorly lit as he took to the stage, Trump bragged from the darkness about the size of his crowd, joked about shooting migrants at the Mexico border, not paying contractors and his chances of serving three terms before branding asylum seekers from Central America an "invasion".
He attacked his potential 2020 rivals and China and called Puerto Rico ungrateful.
The brazen hypocrisy of this closing remark was particularly outlandish, even for him.
His audience, meanwhile, shouted "Socialism sucks!" and chanted "Lock her up!" like it was the night of 8 November 2016 all over again.
It was, in short, a pretty typical evening in Trumpland.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening that Donald Trump had lost more than any other American taxpayer between 1985 and 1994 on failed real estate and other commercial ventures - a cool $1.17bn (£897m) over the course of the decade - after the newspaper got hold of copies of the president's old income tax returns.
He explained himself accordingly.
Here's Andrew Buncombe on the ongoing efforts by the Democrats to obtain his more recent filings from 2013 to 2018, which Trump himself has refused to release because he remains "under audit" (which would represent no legal obstacle even if it were true). He is the first American president since Gerald Ford in 1976 not to do so.
Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin meanwhile refused to hand over the files to Richard Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this week on the basis that there was no "legitimate legislative purpose" to do so.
“There are several options. One of them is to go directly to court,” says Nancy Pelosi.
The battle continues.
Trump is also facing pressure on his tax history from his old stomping ground of New York City, where state attorney general Letitia James is gunning for him.
Here's our editorial on Trump and his secretive tax affairs.
With the spotlight thrown on Donald Trump's 1980s heyday, his old ghost writer has returned to haunt him.
Tony Schwartz, who penned The Art of the Deal (1987), Trump's laughable business manual, has suggested the tome be refiled by booksellers under "fiction".
Here's Jon Sharman with more.
Trump was actually fairly open about his past losses on The Apprentice, as a viral video recirculated online yesterday made clear.
Here's Sophia Ankel for Indy100.
Trump ratcheted-up his criticism of China in Florida last night ahead of further trade talks, accusing the rival superpower of "breaking the deal".
"I just announced that we’ll increase tariffs on China and we won’t back down until China stops cheating our workers and stealing our jobs, and that’s what’s going to happen, otherwise we don’t have to do business with them," the president told the cheering crowd.
"They broke the deal. They can’t do that. So they’ll be paying. If we don’t make the deal, nothing wrong with taking in more than $100 billion a year."
The US is "the piggy bank everyone wants to rob", he said.
The president was referring to the $200bn (£153bn) increase in tariffs on Chinese goods (a rise from from 10 percent to 25 percent) announced by the US Trade Representative's office on Friday, a move that sent Chinese stock markets tumbling.
Beijing has since threatened retaliation.
"The Chinese side deeply regrets that if the US tariff measures are implemented, China will have to take necessary countermeasures,” the country's commerce ministry said.
Here's Chris Baynes with more.
Donald Trump ordered new sanctions against Iran on Wednesday hours after Tehran said it was relaxing some restrictions on its nuclear programme.
Adam Forrest has more.
This is interesting. Democrats in the House of Representatives yesterday withdrew two bills from the floor they had planned to vote on after Trump tweeted his opposition, fearing his post could influence the outcome.
Trump urged Republicans to vote against a measure that would end a legal challenge to the planned construction of a casino on the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s reservation in Massachusetts.
A second bill pulled from the schedule would have affirmed the federal government’s right to place land into a trust for the tribe’s benefit.
State senator and 2020 contender Elizabeth Warren - whom Trump loves to ridicule with the nickname "Pocahontas", satirising her claim to Native American heritage - has supported the tribe in the dispute.
“The president sent out a tweet, which was silly - I'm trying to use the kind of words I can use - it was the wrong thing to do,” House majority leader Steny Hoyer said, explaining the decision.
But why would Trump chose to intervene in this local squabble, you ask?
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the case has been the subject of lobbying by a Cove Strategies representative named Matthew Schlapp, husband of White House director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp, a connection that appears to suggest a clear conflict of interest in the president's tweet.
The casino set to go up on the reservation would be built by Malaysian gaming conglomerate Genting while Herr Schlapp's firm represents American rival Twin River Management Group, who just might like to see off new competition for their own resorts in nearby Rhode Island.
“With this tweet, President Trump is not only allowing special interest lobbyists like Matt Schlapp - who happens to be married to his staffer - to direct federal policy, but reinforcing the federal government’s ugly history of oppression towards Indian tribes,” Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego said.
Speaking of Warren, her attempt to go after Democratic 2020 rival Joe Biden over his fundraising tactics has ended in embarrassment.
Don Jr isn't the only Trump offspring in the spotlight today.
Former chief of staff John Kelly has spoken of his frustration in dealing with Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner during his tenure at the White House, characterising them as an obstacle to be "dealt with" at all times in an interview with Bloomberg's David Rubenstein Show.
And now to what is unquestionably my favourite story of the day.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is selling "Cocaine Mitch" T-shirts in support of his re-election campaign. Yours for just $35.
McConnell is embracing a nickname given to him in 2018 by failed West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship, who said “one of my goals as US senator will be to ditch Cocaine Mitch.”
The name, Blankenship explains, relates to his former opponent's father-in-law, a shipping magnate whose company was implicated in alleged coke smuggling.
Not to be a killjoy but should this veteran lawmaker really be making light of the war on drugs at a time when an administration he routinely apologises for stands accused of demonising asylum seekers desperate to escape gang violence at the hands of narcotics traffickers striving to meet American demand?
Billy Bush, the man last heard from opposite Donald Trump in the notorious Access Hollywood tape, is returning to television.
The tape saw Trump, on the set of soap opera Days of Our Lives, discussing groping women.
"I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything," the president of the United States famously told Bush in a clip widely circulated ahead of the 2016 election, which, remarkably, he still won.
Bush was subsequently sacked from NBC's Today programme for his part in an incident dismissed by red-faced Republicans as "locker room talk".
Here's more from Jack Shepherd.
Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, has cited comments by President Trump as a reason she cannot be extradited to the United States from Canada.
Wanzhou was arrested in December on charges related to Iran sanctions violations and remains under house arrest in Vancouver.
Trump suggested at the time he would be open to using the pending case as a negotiating tactic in trade talks with China, saying he would “intervene” if he decided it was necessary.
Wanzhou’s lawyers now argue his comments disqualify the United States from pursuing the matter. Her spokesman Benjamin Howes said on Wednesday there are “political factors” behind the arrest, adding Wanzhou’s rights have been violated.
Trump is hosting the Boston Red Sox this afternoon but not all the team's players will be in attendance, it appears.
Over on this side of the Atlantic to visit Westminster, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has called Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn "disgusting" over his support for Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Here's Ben Kentish with more.
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