Donald Trump has stirred controversy by accusing House Democrats of failing to tackle antisemitism in their ranks, saying it was “shameful” the opposition had not taken a “stronger stand”.
The president appeared to be exploiting divisions exposed by congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s criticism of Israeli lobby groups in Washington, which has seen her spar with fellow representatives including New York veteran Nita Lowey while the House dawdles over whether to stage a vote on a resolution condemning prejudice against the Jewish faith outright.
President Trump has also threatened to stop “the Fake News Networks” covering the 2020 presidential election debates on a day his former campaign manager Paul Manafort is sentenced after being found guilty of bank and tax fraud.
The president is tweeting about border security again.
Donald Trump says US Border Patrol has done a “great job” amid new reports of increased apprehensions along the US-Mexico border.
“We are on track to APPREHEND more than one million people coming across the Southern Border this year,” he wrote. The president added that the “broken system” could be fixed “if only the Democrats would get on board.”
Democrats have said they are in support of border security but do not want to fund a wall.
Donald Trump has lambasted the media once again in a tweet denying his involvement in hush money payments sent to porn star Stormy Daniels — who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with the president — during the 2016 election.
“It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me,” he wrote. “Fake News!”
It’s pretty fascinating to unpack the level of crimes Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman committed before facing justice today.
NPR reports Paul Manafort avoided reporting millions of dollars in foreign income, much of that stuff in international bank accounts, and he repeatedly lied to banks in order secure additional millions throughout his career.
As Marshall Cohen - a reporter dedicated to covering the Russia investigation - noted on Twitter, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after his sentencing his delivered today.
"Paul Manafort ran the Trump campaign in 2016. He was indicted in 2017. He was convicted in 2018. He’ll learn his fate today," the journalist wrote. "He could spend the rest of his life in prison for his crimes — bank fraud, tax evasion, conspiracy, etc."
"A pardon is the only way out at this point," he added.
It’s another busy day in Washington.
Donald Trump is meeting with his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at 11:00am, followed by a lunch with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The president will also be welcoming to the White House Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his wife, Monika Babišová.
Before lunchtime at the White House, Melania Trump will join Pompeo at the State Department, where the first lady will be the secretary’s guest at the the annual International Women of Courage awards.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi will be hosting her weekly press conference after the US House of Representatives convenes at 10:00 am. Look for that at about 10:45 am. She’s expected to face questions over a delay in a resolution condemning anti-Semitism seen as a rebuke of freshman Democrat Ilhan Omar’s controversial statements on Israel.
The Senate will continue confirmation hearings for Eric Murphy, nominated to serve on the US Court of Appeals’ 6th Circuit. Those meetings will kick off at 9:30 am.
We’re also going to get a taste of how the economy is doing as a slate of reports are scheduled to drop on jobless claims, labor productivity in the fourth quarter and consumer credit in January.
Andrew Gillum, former Tallahassee mayor and Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, has urged Ilhan Omar to apologise for her remarks on CNN's New Day.
The current cracks emerging in Democratic unity appear to be placing the old guard, represented by pragmatic party elders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, against an idealistic younger generation embodied by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
How best to respond to Ms Omar's criticism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has sharply divided the party and allowed President Trump to exploit the political tensions to take the pressure off the whirl of congressional investigations embroiling him.
“I just think that we lose too many battles up here arguing over the stuff that’s kind of silly to argue over,” Democratic whip James Clyburn told The Hill.
He suggested Ms Omar's experiences as a Somali refugee should not be dismissed in her attack on what she regards as oppressive forces.
He also promised the new resolution against prejudice will not be a rebuke for her comments.
“She won’t be targeted. We’re going to target those people who had her picture on the Twin Towers,” Mr Clyburn said, referring to the Islamophobic image below, posted outside the West Virginia House of Delegates chamber during a celebration of the state's Republican Party and linking the congresswoman to the 9/11 terror attacks.
Here's journalist Berny Belvedere for Indy Voices on why Republicans should subject Donald Trump to a presidential primary against a serious opponent ahead of the 2020 election.
Opinion: Republicans should be happy to primary the president — including Trump supporters
Even if all we get is the Trump campaign adjusting itself and listening more to the people's priorities (is the border wall really still their biggest one?) then that in itself is a significant resultA zinger (of sorts) from Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on why the upper chamber will not take up a House election reform bill whereas the progressive Green New Deal on greenhouse gases will reach the floor.
The Kentucky senator had already dismissed the House Democrats' sweeping anti-corruption bill, known as HR 1, earlier this week.
"This sprawling 622-page doorstop is never going to become law. I certainly don't plan to even bring it to the floor here in the Senate," Mr McConnell said on Monday.
The bill proposes to introduce automatic voter registration and to make Election Day a national holiday.
It's good to be the king.
President Trump reportedly received gifts worth more than $140,000 (£106,000) from foreign leaders during his first year in office.
Chinese President Xi Jinping gave Mr Trump and first lady Melania Trump a $14,000 (£100,000) ornate calligraphy set and $16,250 (£12,350) of porcelain dinnerware while Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad gave them a $4,850 (£3685) gold-plated model of a fighter jet.
Foreign leaders shower Trump with gifts totalling over $140,000
Bahrain's crown prince gave the US president a gold-plated fighter jet model worth $4,850The US government reportedly kept a database of journalists and activists covering the migrant caravan's progress from Honduras across Mexico to the Texas border last year, according to documents apparently leaked to NBC 7 San Diego by an unnamed Homeland Security source.
At least 21 people from a list of 51, entitled "San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019 Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media" were duly arrested or questioned, according to NBC. Some had alerts placed on their passports.
The convoy of refugees were heavily-politicised by President Trump and Fox News in particular in a fairly transparent bid to whip up paranoia ahead of the midterms, with bogus claims bandied around regarding the group's supposed villainous intent, before the story was emphatically dropped once the polls had closed.
Barack Obama's vice-president Joe Biden is reportedly telling Democrats he is 95 percent certain to run for president, entering an ever-more crowded field featuring the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.
Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg are among those high-profile possibilities to have ruled themselves out.
President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani has told The New York Times attorneys for several people of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation have previously approached him to discuss the possibility of being granted presidential pardons.
Mr Giuliani did not give names but the news follows the issue being raised in relation to Michael Cohen, who says he had discussed the possibility with Trump attorneys including Jay Sekulow when the FBI raided his house and business premises last April.
One wonders whether Paul Manafort was one of those people.
One of President Trump's actions from yesterday deserving greater attention was his decision to end an Obama-era requirement that the US government publish information on people killed in drone strikes or other counter-terrorism operations outside of war zones.
The executive order - ending a requirement brought in in July 2016 following criticism of his predecessor's lack of transparency over the military's use of drone warfare in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen - was made without further explanation.
“This action eliminates superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission,” a National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson said.
Ned Price, an Obama administration NSC official, has hit out at the decision.
Here's Peter Stubley's report.
Trump drops Obama rule on reporting civilian casualties from US drone strikes
'A shameful decision that will shroud this administration’s actions in even more secrecy'On Manafort, the possibility of course exists that President Trump could use his powers of office to pardon his old friend.
Doing so would of course provoke fresh outrage but here's how it might work.
This is how presidential pardons work
Sweeping powers enable the commander-in-chief to waive criminal convictions retroactively but the full extent of its remit remains something of a grey areaDonald Trump's denuclearisation summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Vietnam last week appears to have had the adverse effect, with new activity reportedly underway at missile test sites in the territory.
The US president blamed the failure of the talks on the distraction caused by Michael Cohen's appearance before Congress and yesterday said he would be"very disappointed" if Mr Kim's apparent resumption of long-range rocket testing turned out to be true.
State TV in Pyongyang has meanwhile aired a documentary on the Hanoi summit glorifying its leader's contribution, hailing the event as "yet another meaningful incident on the issue of world peace".
Here's Samuel Osborne again.
North Korea nuclear and missile bases being monitored by Seoul after new activity spotted
Donald Trump says he 'would be very disappointed' if Pyongyang rebuilt rocket siteThe president's pick to run the Office on Violence Against Women, which manages grants for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, has been under fire after some of her more controversial opinions resurfaced online.
Shannon Lee Goessling, a Republican who has a history of opposing LGBT+ and immigrant rights, has previously claimed guns would protect women from violence, despite research demonstrating the contrary.
Here's Maya Oppenheim.
Trump’s pick for Office on Violence Against Women claims guns will protect women from violence
'It is concerning. What is the point of having four decades worth of evidence if you are going to ignore it,' says campaignerWhile Nancy Pelosi has so far discouraged her fellow Democrats from pursuing Donald Trump's impeachment, not everyone in the party is so cautious on the strategy.
Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, already famous for telling supporters she wanted to "impeach the mother****er", yesterday announced her plans to make good on that pledge.
Here's Andrew Buncombe.
Congresswoman who vowed to impeach 'mother****er' Trump just announced plan to file resolution
Detroit congresswoman's move unlikely to gain much tractionAll this and we haven't even gotten around to "Tim Apple" yet!
Having previously referred to Lockheed Martin CEO Marilyn Hewson as "Marilyn Lockheed", the president made the same gaffe in addressing Apple CEO Tim Cook at the first meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the State Dining Room of the White House yesterday.
Apparently unable to imagine anyone running a company they weren't born into, Mr Trump's slip of the tongue has brought delight to the internet.
Samuel Osborne has more.
Trump calls Tim Cook 'Tim Apple' to his face
It is not first time president has referred to someone by name of their companyMr Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen returned again to Capitol Hill yesterday for a second appearance before the House Intelligence Committee, his fourth and final day of testimony on his soured relationship with his former boss.
Chairman Adam Schiff said the talks, which took place behind closed doors, were "enormously productive", clearly enjoying the theatre of the moment.
Cohen, facing three years in jail, last week accused the president of being "a racist, a cheat and a conman" during an explosive seven-hour appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee last week.
Here's Andrew Buncombe.
Chairman Adam Schiff said the talks, which took place behind closed doors, were "enormously productive", clearly enjoying the theatre of the moment.
Cohen, facing three years in jail, last week accused the president of being "a racist, a cheat and a conman" during an explosive seven-hour appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee last week.
Here's Andrew Buncombe.
Michael Cohen attacks Trump one more before he goes to jail
'He was fully cooperative with the committee. He answered every question'Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
