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Lois Beckett in Oakland (now) and Erin Durkin in New York (earlier)

Trump reportedly promised to pardon CBP head if he violated immigration law – as it happened

Donald Trump: ‘The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!’
Donald Trump: ‘The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!’ Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Escalated attacks on a Muslim congresswoman, 'incitement', and the border

Wrapping up our live United States coverage for the night. Today’s key political developments:

  • Donald Trump escalated a rightwing attack suggesting that a black Muslim lawmaker is unpatriotic and un-American, prompting condemnations from progressive Democrats that the president was inciting violence against a sitting member of Congress. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed in to defend Representative Ilhan Omar; House Democratic leadership did not immediately comment.
  • Trump also threatened to ship immigrants detained at the border to so-called sanctuary cities to release them, as a way to stick it to Democrats who have opposed his immigration policies. “They’re always saying they have open arms. Let’s see if they have open arms,” he said. The threat came after news outlets reported that the White House pushed the idea months ago, but officials insisted it was briefly considered and then rejected. Trump apparently felt otherwise.
  • Trump last week told Kevin McAleenan, then his Customs and Border Protection commissioner and now the acting Homeland Security secretary, that he would pardon him if he faced legal trouble for carrying out immigration policies that violate the law, CNN and the New York Times reported.
  • The feud between fellow Indianans Pete Buttigieg and Mike Pence over religion and sexual orientation escalated, with Pence saying the South Bend mayor is attacking his Christian faith, and Buttigieg shooting back that he is only attacking bad policy.

Updated

Two of the most progressive Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential race have both called on other politicians to forcefully condemn the attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar, calling Trump’s latest attack “dangerous” and “shameful.”

Astead Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times, noted that it was striking to see high-profile support for Omar come from 2020 contenders, rather than Congressional leadership.

Updated

Less than three years ago, shortly before the vote determining whether the UK would leave the European Union, a young left-wing politician was stabbed and shot to death by a white supremacist.

“Britain first” and “keep Britain independent” her killer shouted.

Jo Cox had opposed Brexit. She was just 41 when she died, and left behind her husband and two children, then aged five and three.

For those who follow both British and American politics, it’s difficult not to think of Jo Cox’s politically motivated murder this week, as right-wing attacks on Muslim-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar have raised repeated fears of incitement to violence. Omar is just 37, and has three children.

A Trump supporter in upstate New York was charged with threatening to kill Omar last week.

Some American activists are speaking out about the Democratic Party’s lack of a strong response to the right-wing attacks on the loyalty and patriotism of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Among them is Mariame Kaba, an influential organizer and prison abolitionist:

“@IlhanMN’s life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress.”

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins Rep. Rashida Tlaib in calling for Democrats to “speak out” about the consequences of attacks on the Muslim-American politician by President Trump, Republicans, and right-wing media outlets.

An MSNBC host weighs in on the president’s Friday night attack against Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

Just last week, a Trump supporter was charged with threatening to kill Omar, one of the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress.

President Donald Trump is attacking a Muslim congresswoman for an out-of-context line from a speech she gave about Islamophobia after September 11.

Trump’s own comments on September 11, 2001 have long attracted criticism. In a media interview just hours after the terror attack on the World Trade Center, Trump first described his shock and disbelief at what had happened.

Then he added a comment that left the journalists interviewing him “stunned.”

Trump, claimed, falsely, that one of his own buildings had been “the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan,” just after the World Trade Center.

“And now it’s the tallest,” he added.

Read more about Trump’s interview on September 11.

Rashida Tlaib, one of two Muslim-American women currently serving in Congress, is calling on Democrats to “speak up” against the smear attacks against congresswoman Ilhan Omar by right-wing media outlets and President Trump.

“We cannot stand by,” she wrote.

It’s Friday night, and the president is still tweeting. He just retweeted a Fox News interview clip from Thursday, in which his former campaign manager repeated Trump’s belief that the Obama administration approved spying on the Trump campaign.

Last year, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said publicly that the FBI was not spying on the Trump campaign: “They were spying on — a term I don’t particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage and influence which is what they do.”

President Donald Trump’s tweet attacking the patriotism of a Muslim American member of Congress comes less than a month after a major white supremacist terror attack targeting Muslim worshippers at two mosques in New Zealand.

“The sequence of events from Christchurch to now is quite terrifying,” Jason Wilson, a reporter who covers far-right extremists in the United States and Australia, wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Trump escalates attacks against Muslim congresswoman

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Muslim American, has faced new smear attacks from Republicans and right-wing news outlets in the past week, including accusations that she is un-American or not loyal to the United States.

President Donald Trump escalated the attacks Friday evening by tweeting a video focused on the latest right-wing attack on the liberal Democrat.

Just last week, a Trump supporter in upstate New York was charged with threatening to kill Omar.

The most recent attacks have focused on a snippet from a speech she gave referencing September 11, which has been used to falsely claim that Omar did not take the terrorist attack seriously.

Fox News and the New York Post, which are both owned by Rupert Murdoch, have both devoted high-profile coverage to the misleading claims, including a graphic New York Post cover.

Omar and others have called the smears an “dangerous incitement” to violence against one of the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress.

Updated

An op-ed in the Boston Globe that argued former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should face ongoing public censure because of the harm her policies caused was removed from the paper’s site after the Globe’s owner intervened, WGBH reports.

The piece, by freelance writer Luke O’Neil, was originally titled, “Keep Kirstjen Nielsen unemployed and eating Grubhub over her kitchen sink,” and included O’Neil’s regret for “not pissing in Bill Kristol’s salmon” when he was a service worker. He also praised the restaurant protests that have disrupted the dinners of some Trump administration employees.

The piece sparked a pile-on from Fox News and other conservative pundits who claimed that the op-ed was advocating violence against conservatives. It was first edited, then taken down completely.

John and Linda Pizzuti Henry, the Globe’s owners, contacted the newspaper’s editorial editor and said that “this is a kind of piece that should never been published,” the editor told WGBH.

O’Neil, a freelancer who has also written for The Guardian, criticized the Globe for taking down the piece. He told WGBH that the he had called for making Trump administration officials feel uncomfortable in public, not for any kind of physical violence.

“How many families do we have to tear apart, how many babies do we have to snatch away before people could agree that it’s okay to be rude to the head of the DHS? Is there a number? If we stole a million babies, would it be okay to yell at Kirstjen Nielsen?”

Other journalists criticized the Globe’s editor and owners for what they saw as bowing to the pressure of Fox’s right-wing outrage cycle.

“The outcry is hypocritical and hypocrites have no standing,” Laura Lippman, a novelist and former journalist, wrote.

Updated

A decision by the U.S. Justice Department not to fight to defend a federal law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) sends a “damaging message” to those working to end the practice, according to advocates, Reuters reports.

Government lawyers said on Wednesday they would not appeal a decision by a Michigan federal judge who dismissed charges involving FGM as unconstitutional, ruling it was a state issue. Congress in 1996 outlawed FGM, a ritual that involves partial or total removal of external genitalia, which the World Health Organization has called “a grave violation of the human rights of girls and women.”

Half a million girls and women in the United States have undergone or are at risk of undergoing FGM, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lois Beckett here, picking up our Friday evening live coverage from the West Coast.

It’s just past 5 pm now in Washington, DC, and reporters are standing by to see what this week’s Friday evening news dump might be. I’ll keep you updated...

Summary

  • Donald Trump threatened to ship immigrants detained at the border to so-called sanctuary cities to release them, as a way to stick it to Democrats who have opposed his immigration policies. “They’re always saying they have open arms. Let’s see if they have open arms,” he said. The threat came after news outlets reported that the White House pushed the idea months ago, but officials insisted it was briefly considered and then rejected. Trump apparently felt otherwise.
  • Trump last week told Kevin McAleenan, then his Customs and Border Protection commissioner and now the acting Homeland Security secretary, that he would pardon him if he faced legal trouble for carrying out immigration policies that violate the law, CNN and the New York Times reported.
  • The feud between fellow Indianans Pete Buttigieg and Mike Pence over religion and sexual orientation escalated, with Pence saying the South Bend mayor is attacking his Christian faith, and Buttigieg shooting back that he is only attacking bad policy.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responds to Donald Trump’s threat to send detained migrants to sanctuary cities.

The House Oversight committee plans to subpoena Donald Trump’s account firm for the president’s financial records on Monday, the Washington Post reports.

The committee will serve the subpoena on Mazars USA. Chairman Elijah Cummings has said the firm required what he called a “friendly subpoena” before they would turn over the requested documents.

Stephen Moore, Donald Trump’s pick for the federal reserve board, has a history of self-described “radical” views, according to speeches and radio interviews reviewed by CNN.

“I’m not even a big believer in democracy,” he said in a 2009 interview, and has often said capitalism is more important than democracy.

He has advocated for eliminating corporate and personal income taxes entirely, and called the constitutional amendment that created income taxes the “most evil” law passed in the 20th century.

Susan Rice, the national security adviser under Barack Obama, will not run against Maine Senator Susan Collins next year.

Rice said that “the timing really isn’t right for us,” the Associated Press reported. She had previously floated the idea of running against Collins, a moderate Republican, after the senator supported Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Rice lives in Washington DC but has family roots in Maine.

Donald Trump urged Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan to close the US-Mexico border last week, even after he had publicly backed off a threat to close it, the New York Times reports.

The Times also confirms an earlier report from CNN that Trump promised McAleenan a pardon should he be charged with breaking the law as a result of closing the border. He may or may not have been joking.

The Trump administration has declined to name anyone to a UN committee on racism, Politico reports.

The White House intervened to to prevent the expected re-nomination of a human rights lawyer picked by former President Barack Obama for the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and instead let the deadline pass without naming anyone, a State Department official told Politico. “It cements the narrative that the Americans just don’t care about these kinds of things anymore,” the official said.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Donald Trump’s threat to flood sanctuary cities with migrants is not a “real idea or a real proposal” but rather “just another scare tactic.”

“We are proud to be a Sanctuary City and to continue to put forward proposals to support our immigrant communities,” she said.

Trump reportedly promised to pardon CBP commissioner

Donald Trump promised to pardon Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan if he were jailed for illegally blocking asylum seekers from entering the United States, CNN reports.

During a visit to Calexico, California last week, he told border agents to prevent asylum seekers from entering the country, which would be contrary to US law. He also told McAleenan he would give him a pardon if he faced charges for the policy, administration officials told CNN.

McAleenan has since been named acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Updated

Donald Trump’s full remarks at the White House about his idea to floor sanctuary cities with migrants, via a pool reporter:

Donald Trump is using immigration as a “political drum” to rev up his supporters, Hillary Clinton said Friday at the Women of the World Summit. She went on:

“If you really wanted to solve this problem, you would double, you would quadruple the number of immigration judges, you would hire more people, you would send them to the border. You would begin to organize a system so that people could be quickly processed in a legal and humane way. We would not be separating families and putting babies in cages. You know, we’re rather good at things if we decide if we want to do them. We would have enough decent humane housing, you would have people in a system — one of the worst things this administration has done is to separate those children and have no system.

I would go to the big tech companies and say, okay, you’ve got 15 days, get me a system so that I can keep track of everyone. I’m not going to lose anyone. No baby, no older person. Everyone is going to be in the system, and we’re going to have enough judges. down there, we’re going to have decent housing conditions, and we’re going to start hearing those cases. That’s what someone who wanted to solve the problem would be doing as opposed to either denying or politicizing it and that is what I hope will eventually will be done.”

The man apprehended outside the White House set his jacket on fire and is being treated for injuries, according to CNN.

The Secret Service has apprehended a man who tried to set himself on fire outside the White House, according to reporters on the scene.

Donald Trump said Friday at the White House he is “strongly looking at” the possibility of shipping immigrant detainees to sanctuary cities.

“We’ll give them to the sanctuary cities to take care of them, if that’s what they want,” he told reporters. “We’ll bring them to sanctuary City areas and let that particular area take care of it...We’ll give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply.”

Updated

Beto O’Rourke compared Donald Trump to an “arsonist” who is worsening the immigration situation at the US-Mexico border.

“Donald Trump is the arsonist who gets the credit for putting out the fire,” the former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate told CNN.

“What we need is someone who will not play games or politics with people’s lives or the security of this country but will invest in the smart decisions and policies like investing in Central America to stop the outflow before it even begins,” O’Rourke said. “We can try to address these problems at the US-Mexico border with walls or open arms, or we can address them in the countries of origin before they ever become a problem, and that’s what I want to do.”

Updated

My colleague Lauren Aratani writes:

Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Women in the World summit in New York today, recalled dealing with Wikileaks’ disclosures when she was secretary of state:

“ I do have a personal connection to this because this happened in 2010 what I was Secretary of State. So there was a great deal of military information, there was a great deal of state department, diplomatic information because part of the reason you have an ambassador in a country is to have pick up information and report it back to the state department. There were memos and what were cables that were very honest, very candid, describing leaders, and saying ‘We heard this, and we met about that’. It was useful information because if you’re trying to figure out how to deal with a country, you want to have that material.

When all of this was exposed, we had to scramble like crazy. Because in that trove of material, there were names of people, people who had helped our embassy or our military in Afghanistan, human rights activists, people who were then, prisoners of conscience who were trying to convince the United States, meeting with our embassy personnel to help them. So there were names of people. I had to make the decision to try to remove people, get them out of danger, create identities for them to make sure they weren’t going to be hurt. So I take it seriously.”

Clinton said “I don’t know” whether Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should also be indicted for his role in publishing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election.

Updated

Greg Craig, the former White House counsel under Barack Obama who was indicted Thursday, pleaded not guilty today and was released on his own recognizance, CNN reports.

Craig is accused of lying to federal authorities about his work for Ukraine, charges that grew out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón responds to Donald Trump’s threat to release immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities:

“With immigrants being less likely to commit crimes than the U.S. born population, and with sanctuary jurisdictions being safer and more productive than non-sanctuary jurisdictions, the data damns this proposal as a politically motivated stunt that seeks to play politics with peoples’ lives. The fact that such a proposal is being peddled by the leader of the free world is an all-time low for American discourse, and it’s the clearest sign yet that the president fully intends to chart a path to reelection on the back of racist rhetoric and policies intended to divide us.”

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called Donald Trump’s proposal to ship unauthorized immigrants to sanctuary cities “an outrageous abuse of power and public resources.”

“The idea that the administration thought in any way that it would be acceptable to use families and children - human beings - as political retribution against their enemies should infuriate every American,” she said on CNN.

Oakland is a sanctuary city, meaning it does not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

“I am proud to be the mayor of a sanctuary city,” Schaaf said. “The data is very clear that immigrants, and even undocumented immigrants, commit far fewer crimes than non-immigrants.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says of Donald Trump’s tweets: “He’s just being a freak, I mean, he’s just terrible.”

In an interview with Recode, Pelosi said Trump’s approach to Twitter has “cheapened the presidency.”

“There’s more of a responsibility for a president to communicate his point of view, which we should respect, he’s the president of the United States, whether you agree with him or not, he has a point of view. But to use the office of the president as an attack vehicle ... for his market, it seems to have worked,” she said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to potential Fed picks Herman Cain and Stephen Moore saying she has “strong” and “significant” concerns about them joining the board, the Hill reports.

She wrote that both men have a “history of forming views on policy based on political loyalties.”

Updated

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is advising a Bronx Republican planning a run against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Magazine reports.

Ruth Papazian, a medical journalist, has been telling Republican operatives that Lewandowski has agreed to serve as an unofficial adviser.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Donald Trump’s idea to ship detained immigrants to sanctuary cities as a way to stick it to Democrats “unworthy” of the presidency.

“It’s just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a county, as a people, to address who we are: a nation of immigrants,” Pelosi told reporters Friday, the Hill reported.

Pelosi’s San Francisco district was reportedly one of those the White House wanted to inundate with released detainees.

“That you could use ICE — or any other federal agency — to penalize or to visit retribution for political reasons, that’s not the act of a democratic government,” House majority leader Steny Hoyer said, according to the Hill.

Updated

New York City comptroller Scott Stringer says Donald Trump’s idea of sending migrants to “sanctuary city” comes from a “warped mind.”

New York is one of the so-called sanctuaries targeted by Trump, since it does not allow local police to participate in immigration enforcement and in most cases refuses to turn immigrant detainees over to ICE.

Trump’s tweet today doubling down on the idea is a reversal from his aides statements that it had been floated and rejected and was going nowhere.

Updated

The Trump administration has finalized a rule to put new restrictions on food stamps, making it harder for states to waive work requirements for the assistance. The program requires able bodied adults with no kids to work or get job training in order to get food stamps, but many states waive the requirements.

It could result in 750,000 people losing food stamps, according to NPR.

Donald Trump called it a “major international victory” that the International Criminal Court rejected a request by the court’s top prosecutor to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan.

“We welcome this decision and reiterate our position that the United States holds American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards,” said Trump, whose administration has attacked the international court on multiple fronts.

Trump threatens to release immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities

Donald Trump not only confirms he considered sending immigrant detainees to sanctuary cities, he says he is still “giving strong considerations” to doing it.

“The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy – so this should make them very happy!” he said in a tweet.

“Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only,” he wrote.

Updated

Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren brought Dunkin’ donuts for striking supermarket workers in Somerville today and urged shoppers, “don’t cross the picket line,” per NBC News.

Updated

Hillary Clinton condemns the Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members.

The Huffington Post takes a look at the history of the law that allows Congress to obtain the tax returns of any citizen, including Donald Trump.

The law dates to 1924, and says the Treasury Department “shall” provide anyone’s tax returns to the House Ways & Means Committee upon request. It came in the aftermath of the Teapot Dome scandal, where Warren Harding’s interior secretary sold the rights to a Navy oil field in return for bribes.

Congressional investigators sought tax return information for the interior secretary, Albert Fall, the oilmen who bribed him, and related companies. After some back and forth, they got them. But the scandal spurred another investigation, into Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, HuffPost notes. A senator asked for his tax returns, which he resisted. The fight spurred legislation in which Congress gave itself the right to obtain tax returns.

Senator Elizabeth Warren will join striking Stop & Shop workers on the picket line today in Somerville, Massachusetts, per the Daily Beast.

After Vice President Mike Pence accused Pete Buttigieg of attacking his religious faith, Buttigieg said his only objection is to “bad policies.”

“I’m not critical of his faith. I’m critical of bad policies,” the South Bend, Indiana mayor and presidential candidate said on the Ellen DeGeneres show. “I don’t have a problem with religion. I’m religious too. I have a problem with religion being used as a justification to harm people, specifically in the LGBT community.”

Kelly Sadler, the former White House aide who was forced out for mocking the late Senator John McCain, is going to work for a pro-Donald Trump super PAC, CNN reports.

She’s been hired by America First Action to handle communications and starts Monday. She left the White House after it was revealed that she said that McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel as CIA director didn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.”

Political consultant Sam Patten has been sentenced to three years probation but no jail time.

The case against him grew out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Patten - a longtime associate of Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort - pleaded guilty to steering money from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to Trump’s inauguration.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson handed down the sentence Friday and accepted prosecutors request for lenience because he cooperated with investigators, the Washington Post reported. He was also sentenced to 500 hours community service and a $5,000 fine, according to the Post.

Updated

Republicans seem eager to turn the 2020 election into a referendum on socialism, but Politico reports that the party has already tried the strategy and it flopped.

During last year’s election in Pennsylvania, Republicans labeled Democrats running for governor, Congress and the state legislature as socialists, even though many of them ran as moderates. But Democrats ended up winning three House seats and 16 in the state General Assembly, and the Democratic governor and US senator were easily re-elected.

State Rep. Jennifer O’Mara tells Politico that Republicans protested one of her events and handed out fake $10,000 bills that said ‘In Socialism We Trust’ with an image of her face. “Their attacks backfired,” she said.

Donald Trump’s advisers discussed Tuesday night discussed whether the military could be used to build tent city detention camps for migrants, NBC News reports.

They also discussed having the military run the camps once the migrants are housed there. That would probably not be legal, three US officials told NBC.

Jared Kushner only registered as a Republican on September 20, 2018, Vice reports.

The presidential adviser and son in law was unenrolled in any party until he changed his New York City voter registration on that date.

Vice-president Mike Pence says Donald Trump’s many past comments praising WikiLeaks were “in no way an endorsement” of the organization.

“I think the President always, as you and the media do, always welcomes information,” Pence told CNN. “But that was in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America.”

Wikileaks was well known for releasing classified and hacked information when Trump said: “I love WikiLeaks.”

Updated

Donald Trump is upset about the coverage of the indictment of Gregory Craig, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama.

He’s also still mad about the Mueller report.

First amendment scholars and advocacy groups are raising alarm over the criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports.

Much of the indictment against Assange detailed conduct indistinguishable from the basic activities of journalism protected by the first amendment of the US constitution, the experts said.

“Many of the allegations fall absolutely within the first amendment’s protections of journalistic activity. That’s very troubling to us,” said Carrie Decell, staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

Assange is charged with conspiring to hack US government computers, which if true, sets him apart from mainstream journalists and is not protected by the first amendment. But the criminal complaint against him also includes actions that are part of normal news gathering:

Among the phrases contained in the indictment that have provoked an uproar are:

  • “It was part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States.” It is a basic function of journalism to encourage sources to provide information in the public interest on the activities of government.
  • “It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks.” Protecting the anonymity of sources is the foundation stone of much investigative and national security reporting – without it sources would not be willing to divulge information, and the press would be unable to fulfill its role of holding power to account.
  • “It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used the ‘Jabber’ online chat service to collaborate on the acquisition and dissemination of the classified records.” The indictment similarly refers to a dropbox. Both Jabber and Dropbox are communication tools routinely used by journalists working with whistleblowers.

Vice-president Mike Pence responded to criticism from Pete Buttigieg in a new interview with CNN.

“I think Pete’s quarrel is with the First Amendment. All of us in this country have the right to our religious beliefs. I’m a Bible-believing Christian,” Pence said.

Buttigieg, who is gay and married, has called Pence “fanatical” for his opposition to gay rights. “That’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: That if you have a problem with who I am, your quarrel is not with me,” he said in a recent speech that went viral. “Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”

Pence, the former governor of Indiana, told CNN he “worked very closely together” with the South Bend mayor and “considered him a friend.” “And he knows I don’t have a problem with him,” he said. As for whether he accepts Buttigieg’s assertion that God made him gay, he said, “All of us have our own religious convictions. Pete has his convictions, I have mine.”

Updated

A new poll found Donald Trump’s approval rating has jumped since the release of a summary of the findings of the Mueller report, the Washington Post reports.

Friday’s Gallup poll found 45% of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, up from 39% in March. Still, 51% disapprove.

Thousands of fake Russian Twitter accounts urged Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, according to a new report.

Clemson University researchers conducted an analysis of Twitter data for the Washington Post and found 9,000 Russian tweets that used the word “Bernie,” which were “liked” 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times. Thousands of other tweets were also designed to appeal to Sanders’ supporters, urging them not to back Hillary Clinton in the general election.

One Twitter account, called Red Louisiana News, wrote “Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016.” It was actually written from Russia, not Louisiana. Another Russian account tweeted, “Bernie Sanders says his message resonates with Republicans.”

Donald Trump considered naming his daughter Ivanka Trump to head the World Bank, and also thinks she would have been a great United Nations ambassador, he told the Atlantic in an interview released Friday.

Trump was apparently quite eager to sing his daughter’s praises: the author writes that she requested an interview with Ivanka herself and was turned down, but instead got a call that the president wanted to talk to her.

“I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank … She would’ve been great at that because she’s very good with numbers,” Trump said.

“She’s a natural diplomat,” Trump said. “She would’ve been great at the United Nations, as an example.” Asked why he didn’t nominate her, he said, “If I did, they’d say nepotism, when it would’ve had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would’ve been incredible.”

Trump sometimes calls Ivanka “baby” during official meetings, the magazine reports. “If she ever wanted to run for president,” he said, “I think she’d be very, very hard to beat.”

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has gone after vice-president Mike Pence on the campaign trail, but the Associated Press reports that things have been much more cordial in their mutual home state of Indiana.

Buttigieg as mayor of South Bend and Pence as governor of Indiana collaborated on economic development projects and the mayor gave Pence a South Bend promotional T-shirt that said “I (heart) SB.”. That’s nothing out of the ordinary for a local executive looking to help his city, but as AP notes, some Indiana Democrats have been frustrated with Buttigieg’s reluctance to take on Pence directly.

He was largely absent from the debate when an HIV outbreak raised pressure on Pence to approve needle exchange. And while he criticized a religious freedom law Pence signed as anti-gay, he attended a Pence event weeks later and said nothing, and acknowledged in his book that he passed up the chance to urge Pence in person to veto the measure.

“With respect to Pence’s worst blunder, his most difficult controversy, Mayor Pete was not leading the charge against him,” said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana.

Updated

White House pushed to release detainees into sanctuary cities

The White House pushed to release detained immigrants into the streets of “sanctuary cities” as a form of retaliation against immigrant-friendly Democratic politicians.

The plan has not been carried out, but the Trump administration broached it at least twice, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the news.

In a November email obtained by the Post, White House officials suggested that members of a migrant caravan apprehended at the US-Mexico border be bussed to “small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities” and released.

Sanctuary cities, which include New York, Chicago and San Francisco, do not use their local police for immigration enforcement and refuse in many cases to turn over unauthorized immigrants in their custody to the federal government. Donald Trump has often blasted the jurisdictions and attempted to take away federal grants from them.

The White House believed it could use the tactic to punish Democrats – including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco district was specifically suggested as a place to dumb detainees – according to two Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers cited by the Post.

Matthew Albence, the acting deputy director of Ice, shot down the idea.

“Not sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them – when they can be released on the spot – is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way,” adding that “there are PR risks as well.”

Pelosi blasted the scheme. “The extent of this administration’s cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,” Ashley Etienne told the Post. “Using human beings – including little children – as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.”

Updated

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Seriously, I can't get it out of my mind.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Bad Bunny fires back at Super Bowl halftime show critics
Bad Bunny has mocked those criticising the decision to choose him as the Super Bowl halftime show headliner by joking that they "have four months to learn Spanish" before his performance next year.
BANG Premier
BANG Premier
A Blake Lively Response, A Rumor About Travis Kelce’s Ex And More From Taylor Swift’s Life Of A Showgirl Weekend
Who's girl-bossing too close to the sun?
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Eat these five foods if you don’t want to bloat
Gassy discomfort can ruin anyone’s week - and it does for many Americans
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
“Getting a ‘hey girly’ dm over your cat is diabolical”: Texas woman’s cat wanders outside every night. Then he returns with a note
A Texas woman was shocked to discover that her cat had been spending time with an entirely different family when she let him out at night. “New neighborhood, new family??” she wrote, captioning a video with over 3.7 million views that shows a note she got back from “the other…
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
30 Years Ago, My Dad Took Me To See Apollo 13 Instead Of Power Rangers. I Was Pissed Then, But Now I'm Grateful
We had a problem that day in 1995.
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
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