The White House pushed back on Sunday against any attempt to link Donald Trump to the accused gunman who killed 50 people in two New Zealand mosques, saying the act of a disturbed individual cannot be blamed on any one politician.
Related: Christchurch: how quiet city became target for terror
Continue reading...As investigators close in, the president invokes the support of the military, police and vigilantes. This is a perilous moment
What does a megalomaniacal president of the United States do when he’s cornered? We’ll soon find out.
Related: 'It's a small group of people': Trump again denies white nationalism is rising threat
Continue reading...New app helps people who feel they are the victims of anti-Maga sentiment to find restaurants they feel comfortable in
Last week, a man named Dion Cini was refused service at a bar in New York City. He claims he had done nothing wrong and was discriminated against.
A video of the incident confirms that Cini doesn’t appear overly inebriated or obviously violating any other rules of decorum at Jake’s Dilemma; instead he was kicked out for what he was wearing: a Maga hat.
Continue reading...With the winding down of the ‘Winter White House’ comes another season of controversy and scandal that swirl around the president’s resort
At Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s waterfront winter retreat, an end-of-term air hangs over the expansive verandas and perfectly manicured lawns. In barely a month’s time, following the traditional season-closing Easter Sunday brunch gala, the private members’ club will be scrubbed and shuttered for the summer, its wealthy clientele dispersing to residences in the Hamptons or boarding their mega-yachts to cruise the Mediterranean.
Related: Trump's four 2017 Mar-a-Lago trips cost taxpayers nearly $14m, watchdog says
Continue reading...President downplays hate surge after white supremacist, who mentioned Trump in a manifesto, attacked New Zealand mosques
Donald Trump said he did not view white nationalism as a rising threat around the world, as New Zealand is reeling from a white supremacist attack on two mosques that killed 49 people.
Asked by a reporter on Friday if he saw an increase globally in the threat of white nationalism, the US president responded: “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess, if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s a case. I don’t know enough about it yet.”
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Donald Trump has now scheduled a 3:30 pm Oval Office event where it’s expected he will veto the congressional resolution to block his national emergency.
The schedule says he will deliver remarks on national security and the humanitarian crisis at the southern border.
Trump will "VETO!" at 3:30 in the Oval Office, per updated schedule. And will deliver remarks.
Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders got 7 stitches to his head after hitting his head on a glass shower door this morning, his campaign says. He got a “clean bill of health” and plans to continue with his regular schedule.
Just in: @BernieSanders campaign informed the press that the senator will proceed with his schedule after hitting his head on a glass shower door this morning. He went to a walk-in clinic and received 7 stitches. The notice says he was given a "clean bill of health".
Continue reading...Fired by the president, the former US attorney has written his first book. He talks about if and when Trump will face justice – and why he fears for his own safety
Preet Bharara is used to dealing with bullies. When he was the US attorney for the southern district of New York, the premier law enforcement body in America, his office prosecuted Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, Crips and Bloods gang leaders and mafia bosses. For going after the infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout he was banned from Russia, and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once tried to persuade the then US vice-president, Joe Biden, to sack him (he didn’t). The TV series Billions is loosely based on his legal battles with a hedge-fund billionaire. As he puts it himself: “Neither I nor anyone I know was too afraid to prosecute rich men in suits.”
So when Bharara says that even he is now feeling apprehensive about his personal safety, and that his fears relate not to al-Qaida or the Gambino family, but to the president of the United States, it comes as a jolt. “I used to have great confidence that my government would protect me,” he says. “You understood that if you were an American citizen like me, or resident like Jamal Khashoggi, you weren’t going to be rendered somewhere, you didn’t think that if you travelled to Madrid, say, and a BS red notice was issued for you, you’d be on your own. I’m a citizen of the United States and I served my country for 17 years, yet I don’t have that confidence any more. I don’t know that the government at its highest level thinks of Americans first – it’s whether you are on his side, or not on his side.”
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The Sanders Institute has stopped accepting donations and will shut down during Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president, AP reports, to ensure ethical issues don’t arise. The think tank was founded and is operated by his wife Jane.
Sanders rebuked Hilary Clinton in 2016 for not shuttering her family’s foundation, saying then that the nonprofit provided ways to buy influence from the candidate, who was then expected to win the election.
Jane Sanders said in an interview that the Vermont-based institute has stopped accepting donations and plans to suspend all operations by the end of May.
The move comes as Bernie Sanders, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, prepares for a wave of scrutiny into his political network and his family’s role”.
El Pasoans have largely expressed excitement about having their former congressman announcing he’s entering the already-crowded field for the White House in 2020 - though some have questions about his record and his long odds to secure the Democratic nomination.
Among local leaders in El Paso, county commissioner David Stout told The Guardian on Thursday that he’d been waiting for O’Rourke to announce a run for president from the moment of his narrow loss for Ted Cruz’s US Senate seat in the November midterm elections. Stout highlighted O’Rourke’s well-known charisma and ability to connect with ordinary people as his most important qualities.
Continue reading...Twelve Republicans joined every Senate Democrat in rare move to block president’s effort to divert funds for US-Mexico border wall
The US Senate delivered a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump on Thursday, voting to overturn his declaration last month of a national emergency in order to divert taxpayer funds to the US-Mexico border.
In a 59-41 vote, 12 Republicans joined every Senate Democrat in a rare move to block the president’s effort to divert billions in funding to build his long-promised border wall without congressional approval.
Continue reading...Paul Manafort, the former Donald Trump campaign chairman, was told by a judge on Wednesday that he is a liar and fraud who will spend a total of seven and a half years in prison.
Related: Paul Manafort charged by New York prosecutors with 16 further crimes
Continue reading...Plan to shut 21 international offices of USCIS and transfer duties to domestic offices and State Department’s embassies and consulates
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service announced that it will close all 21 of its immigration offices abroad. It will shift the duties performed at those offices which include processing applications from potential immigrants to domestic employees and to the State Department.
The Trump administration is preparing to shutter all 21 international offices of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a move that could slow the processing of family visa applications, foreign adoptions and citizenship petitions from members of the military.
USCIS Director L. Francis Cissna said in an email to staff Tuesday that he is working to transfer those duties — now performed by employees worldwide — to domestic offices and the State Department’s embassies and consulates. He wrote that if the State Department agrees, the agency would move to close its international field offices in coming months “in an effort to maximize our agency’s finite resources.”
In an interview with Breitbart, Donald Trump hinted at new regulation of big tech companies like Google and Facebook.
“I understand a lot of people wanting to look into it. I mean normally I’d like to say let it be free, let it all be free, but it’s not free. It’s really run by a small number of people,” said Trump.
Continue reading...President’s 2020 plan signals intent to reignite a political fight that has already led to a record 35-day partial government shutdown
Donald Trump’s latest budget request, which demands billions of dollars for a border wall at the expense of social safety nets and environmental protections, was dismissed on Monday as “dead on arrival” and “breathtaking in its degree of cruelty”.
Related: Fox News condemns host Jeanine Pirro's attack on Ilhan Omar – live
Continue reading...A company run by a donor to Donald Trump claimed it could provide Chinese clients with a chance to mingle and take photos with the president, along with access to his private club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Related: Trump in Super Bowl selfie with founder of spa in prostitution case
Continue reading...Senate Republicans have confirmed 89 Trump-nominated judges to serve at all levels of the federal court system
Many Americans watching the turmoil in US institutions and political norms are yearning for the day when Donald Trump is no longer president. But whether he leaves after 2020 or 2024, Trump has built a legacy in one vital area that can be expected to stand for decades, long after his Twitter feed has fallen silent, analysts across the political spectrum agree.
That legacy comprises the 89 judges, and rapidly counting, that Trump has nominated, and Senate Republicans have confirmed, to serve at all levels of the federal court system. They are taking up posts from the district courts (53 Trump nominees confirmed out of 677 total) to the appellate courts (34 out of 179) to the US supreme court (two out of nine). Put together they form a kind of conservative judicial revolution that could impact all aspects of American life.
Continue reading...Donald Trump will be making a significant request for border wall funds and seeking money to stand up his “Space Force” as a new branch of the military in the White House budget being released next week, an administration official said on Saturday.
Related: SXSW: Warren tells tech audience plan to break up giants is 'like baseball'
Continue reading...Joe Cunningham intervened in a House committee hearing on the environmental impact of seismic air-gun testing. The Democrat reached for the 120-decibel device after the official claimed the practice, used to locate underwater oil deposits, would have no effect on marine animals. Cunningham said seismic air guns were 16,000 times louder than his air-horn
Continue reading...Democrats say Trump’s attempts to conceal his conversations with the Russian leader raise questions about his motivations
Since Donald Trump was sworn in as president he has met his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, five times. The details of their conversations remain unknown to the public, and in most cases even to senior administration officials.
Related: Trump inauguration took money from shell companies tied to foreigners
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Donald Trump will host the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, at the White House on 19 March, press secretary Sarah Sanders just announced.
The pair will discuss “how to build a more prosperous, secure and democratic Western Hemisphere,” according to the White House statement, as well as “opportunities for defense cooperation, pro-growth trade policies, combatting transnational crime and restoring democracy in Venezuela”.
"President Donald J. Trump will welcome President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil to the White House on Tuesday, March 19, 2019" pic.twitter.com/YIIwZc4axH
Senator Kamala Harris, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, weighed in on Paul Manafort’s controversial 47 month sentence while campaigning in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina today.
“We are looking at further evidence in America’s judicial system of absolute unfairness,” Harris said in video captured by CNN. “People who commit white collar crimes – they should be prepared to bring their tooth brush and spend as much time behind bars as anybody else.”
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris responds to Manafort sentencing: "Absolute unfairness" in the judicial system https://t.co/nMyXQjVbke pic.twitter.com/f2BpAB4ksz
Continue reading...US position hardens after Hanoi summit collapse, warning that any launches at missile sites would violate Kim Jong-un’s promise
The US is demanding North Korea destroys all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before receiving any sanctions relief, as positions harden on both sides in the aftermath of last week’s failed Hanoi summit.
The US clarified its demands after satellite images showed the North Koreans had completely rebuilt a space launch site they had partially dismantled after the first summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in June last year.
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Here’s our man! Trump offers a stout defense of his repeated payments to Michael Cohen, made after the latter paid two women “hush” money to not talk about alleged affairs with Trump.
Cohen has already been convicted of violating campaign finance laws by paying off actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
It was not a campaign contribution, and there were no violations of the campaign finance laws by me. Fake News!
So Michael Cohen could have talked himself into trouble with that very definite “no pardon” statement to the House oversight committee last week.
During the hearing Cohen was asked if he had requested a pardon from Donald Trump.
I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from Mr Trump.
During that time period, he directed his attorney to explore possibilities of a pardon at one point with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani as well as other lawyers advising President Trump.
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