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For all its rhetoric, the US under Donald Trump is on a clear path of disengagement in international matters
America’s ambivalence about engagement with the world beyond its shores is nothing new. Isolationist instincts are deeply rooted in the national psyche. Large constituencies opposed US involvement in both world wars. Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign was the most recent manifestation of a longstanding desire to avoid the “foreign entanglements” that the first US president, George Washington, warned against in his 1796 farewell address.
Yet, as US power expanded, this yearning for separateness grew increasingly at odds with another national urge – to demonstrate America’s pre-eminence, and propagate its values and interests, through global leadership. This process climaxed in the early 1990s when America’s main rival, the Soviet Union, imploded and the US claimed the mantle of sole superpower.
President offers temporary concessions and demands wall
Little chance of progress as House speaker says no
Donald Trump forged ahead on Saturday and proposed a deal to end the US government shutdown, despite Democrats having rejected it before he began to speak.
Special counsel says elements of BuzzFeed story, claiming Trump told his former lawyer to lie to Congress, are ‘not accurate’
In a rare public remark, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller disputed a bombshell report alleging that Donald Trump had directed his former attorney to lie to congress.
BuzzFeed News reported Thursday evening that Trump had personally directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a real estate project in Moscow. The report cited two federal law enforcement sources and said the special counsel’s office had learned of Trump’s alleged directive from multiple witnesses, Trump Organization emails, text messages and other documents.
Location of summit between leaders to be announced later
Decision comes in wake of talks between Trump and envoy
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will hold a second summit near the end of next month, the White House has announced, after the president held an Oval Office meeting with a North Korean emissary.
The Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has accused the White House of leaking information about a planned congressional trip to Afghanistan, saying it was 'very, very irresponsible on the part of the president'
How the president’s two years in power have changed key US policies ... North Korean envoy to meet Pompeo ... Democrat takes charge of Flint water crisis investigation
Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
Guardian reporters chart the president’s impact on foreign policy, the economy, the judiciary, the environment and immigration
If there has been one defining trait in the foreign policy of the Trump era, it is confusion – not only in the frequent gaps between the paths taken by the president and his own administration, but also in the morass of contradictions and U-turns in his own impulses.
According to CNN, President Trump wasn’t pleased to learn that his AG pick was so close with special counsel Robert Mueller. AG nominee William Barr referred to Mueller as “Bob” during the first day of his Senate confirmation hearing, and said that “the Barrs and Muellers were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over”. He also described Mueller as a “straight-shooter”.
While Barr said during his hearing that Trump ‘was interested’ in hearing about the friendship, the details that emerged this week caught the President off guard, the three sources said. He bristled at Barr’s description of the close relationship, complaining to aides he didn’t realize how much their work overlapped or that they were so close”.
Reuters is reporting that four Volkswagen managers from the car company’s luxury Audi unit have been indicted for their role in the 2015 scandal over the automaker’s attempt to evade US exhaust emissions tests.
The four are charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiring to evade U.S. emissions standards in diesel vehicles sold in the United States with 3.0-liter engines. The vehicles include the 2009-2015 Audi Q7 vehicles as well as other Q5, A6, A7, and A8 diesel models. They are accused of wire fraud, violating the Clean Air Act and conspiracy.
Volkswagen spokesman Pietro Zollino said the company continues ‘to cooperate with investigations by the Department of Justice into the conduct of individuals. It would not be appropriate to comment on individual cases’”.
Arms control experts fear system review, unveiled at Pentagon, could fuel arms race with Russia and China
Donald Trump has announced plans for a huge expansion of US missile defense with aim of destroying enemy missiles “anywhere, anytime, any place”.
The missile defense review, which Trump unveiled on Thursday in a speech at the Pentagon, calls for a major upgrade in land and sea-based missile interceptor systems, as well as the development of a layer of satellite sensors in low orbit that would help track new types of cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) countries like Russia and China are developing.
Donald Trump has dramatically escalated his feud with House speaker Nancy Pelosi amid the US government shutdown by canceling her previously undisclosed trip abroad and denying her the use of a military aircraft to visit American troops in Afghanistan.
Trump’s lawyer denies president himself conspired with Russia
Cohen reported to have tried to rig polls in Trump’s favour
Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has insisted that he “never said there was no collusion” between Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign and Russia – only that Trump himself was not involved.
The former New York mayor said he did not know if others involved in the campaign had worked with Russia.
‘It’s not normal to shutdown the government when we don’t get what we want,’ says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during her first speech on the house floor. ‘The truth of this shutdown is that it’s actually not about a wall. The truth is, this shutdown is about the erosion of American democracy and the subversion of our most basic governmental norms’
Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader in the House, makes plain “the State of the Union is off” in an interview with CNN.
.@KateBolduan: "The letter sounds like she’s asking, but isn’t she just telling him?" Rep. Hoyer: "The speaker is the one who invites the president…” Kate: "So, the State of the Union is off?" Hoyer: "The State of the Union is off."
It’s worth looking at this time capsule at the shock felt in Washington in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson became the first president to deliver the State of the Union in person since John Adams.
WASHINGTON IS AMAZED. Pelosi proposal to delay the SOTU gives me a chance to once again tweet my favorite WaPo story ever, about how the city was "agape" when a pressident (Wilson) showed up to give a speech at the Capitol: https://t.co/8A1qsRYbsl
Well, at his Mar-a-Lago country club where the price of admission has doubled to $200,000, he is right. The economy could not be better for the top 1% and corporate America.
The office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, submitted a new court filing on Tuesday detailing communications between former Trump aid Paul Manafort and alleged Russian intelligence operative Konstantin Kilimnik.
New filing from Mueller's office: Paul Manafort said in Jan 2017 he was using intermediaries "to get people appointed in the Administration", Rick Gates has told investigators. pic.twitter.com/yv5ypLdrpL
At a taping for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” this evening, Sen. Gillibrand shared that she was officially joining the race for the white house. Announcing that she was assembling an exploratory committee and will soon be on her way to Iowa, she told Colbert she was running as a mom as she outlined key parts of her platform:
“As a young mom, I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I’d fight for my own, which is why I believe health care should be a right, not a privilege; it’s why I believe we should have better public schools for our kids because it shouldn’t matter what block you grew up on; and I believe that anybody who wants to work hard enough should be able to get whatever job training they need to earn their way into the middle class” she said.
Tonight I announced that I’m preparing to run for president, because I believe we’re all called to make a difference. I believe in right vs. wrong – that wrong wins when we do nothing. Now is our time to raise our voices and get off the sidelines. Join me: https://t.co/I1vp93u0wh
Ms. Gillibrand, a 52-year-old former corporate lawyer, has been criticized by opponents as a politician without a firm ideological bearing of her own, having transformed from a pro-gun, conservative upstate congresswoman with deep ties to Wall Street financiers to a crusading liberal who rails against guns and refuses corporate political action committee money.”
Trump encouraged Chris Christie to wear a long tie to appear thinner, the former governor wrote in his book, and it appears the president has been taking his own advice since the 1980s
Exclusive: ex-New Jersey governor, who had prosecuted Kushner’s father, was sacked as head of Trump’s transition team
Chris Christie, who was ousted as chairman of Donald Trump’s White House transition team in 2016, has written a blistering attack on Jared Kushner, whom he accuses of having carried out a political “hit job” on him as an act of revenge for prosecuting his father, Charles Kushner, a decade ago.
The Guardian travelled to five border locations to discover how Trump’s rhetoric jars with the reality on the ground
Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” has become the trademark of his presidency. It is the promise that more than any other has energized his base, and riled his opponents, and his dogged attachment to it has now brought a large part of the US government to a historic 25 days of partial shutdown.