Feds on Trumpa s shutdown threat: a Ita s blackmaila

President Donald Trump's latest threat to shut the government is just the most recent indication that he is unfit and unprepared for the office. The notion that the president of the United States would purposefully imperil services to taxpayers if Congress doesn't approve $1.6 billion for his Mexico border wall would be far-fetched, if a credible person occupied the White House.

Changes coming to US protected lands, but details unknown

Tribes, ranchers and conservationists know that none of the national monuments ordered reviewed by President Donald Trump will be eliminated, but the changes in store for the sprawling land and sea areas remain a mystery after the administration kept a list of recommendations under wraps. That left people on all sides of the contentious debate clinging to only shreds of information and anxiously waiting for more details.

Trump’s Evil Empireby Rich Lowry For many Republicans, what matters…

The media has become for the Right what the Soviet Union was during the Cold War - a common, unifying adversary of overwhelming importance. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, religious conservatives and libertarians could agree that, whatever their other differences, godless communism had to be resisted.

Trump is winning the statue war

Trump is winning the statue war With Democrats howling about tearing down statues and supporting violent protesters, Trump is free to run the nation. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2xy8DHq Just last month, Democrats were talking about how they needed to rebrand their party around a positive message.

GOP discord might not bode well for raising debt ceiling

Fanning the flames of GOP discord, President Donald Trump is accusing Republican congressional leaders of botching efforts to avoid an unprecedented default on the national debt. "Could have been so easy-now a mess!" Trump tweeted.

Trump’s Battle to Fund His Wall Squeezed by Deadline for Debt Limit

President Donald Trump is spoiling for a fight with Congress over funding a border wall with Mexico, but he'll have a hard time waging that battle because of a looming deadline to avert a U.S. debt default. Some of the president's advisers consider a tough stand on border wall funding crucial to Trump's credibility and even political survival, two White House officials said.

GOP Plan to Kill Estate Tax Sets Up Charitable Giving Conflict

Most Republicans support killing the estate tax as part of a tax overhaul, but doing so could have dire consequences for something else conservatives cherish -- charitable giving. President Donald Trump along with top GOP lawmakers have proposed ending what they call the death tax -- a 40 percent levy that's applied to estates worth more than $5.49 million for individuals and $10.98 million for married couples.

Miniskirt Photo Swayed Trump on Afghanistan

President Donald Trump changed his mind about sending more troops to Afghanistan after a campaign by his national security adviser H.R. McMaster which reportedly included showing the president a photograph of women in miniskirts in Kabul. The picture from 1972 was used by McMaster in an effort to demonstrate to Trump that Western culture could return to Afghanistan if he sent more troops, the Washington Post reported.

OnPolitics Today: How Russian Twitter accounts push pro-Trump propaganda

OnPolitics Today: How Russian Twitter accounts push pro-Trump propaganda Plus: Trump's total eclipse of Obama. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: https://usat.ly/2wCS5S8 During President Donald Trump's rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, he said he's willing to close down the government to build his proposed border barrier.

Jeff Flake wants details of Trump’s call for border wall

Sen. Jeff Flake said Thursday he won't be able to say whether he'd vote to fund President Donald Trump's wall along the US-Mexico border until he knows whether the president wants to build a single brick-and-mortar structure or instead erect a combination of fencing and other barriers. The president threatened earlier this week at a rally in Phoenix to shut down the federal government unless the gridlocked Congress agrees to build a border wall.

Corker’s careful balancing act on Trump knocked off kilter

Sen. Bob Corker refuses to say whether he'll seek a third term, but he has carefully said and done all the right things to avoid provoking a spirited primary challenge next year. The Tennessee Republican has limited public appearances back home largely to friendly civic clubs and chambers of commerce meetings, where he can regale members with tales of his pro-business agenda and blunt assessments of congressional dysfunction - all the while steering clear of direct criticism of President Donald Trump.

Lindsey Graham says that Trump’s recent behavior isn’t…

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said that there's "nothing crazy" about President Donald Trump's recent string of bombastic tweets and comments. Appearing on MSNBC's Hugh Hewitt Show , Graham said that Trump was "not the first president to use the bully pulpit to try to push the country in a particular direction."

The Obama Era Deficit Scolds All Want Big Tax Cuts NowFix the Debt is now fixina to get paid.

One of the unnoticed ways in which American politics has changed under Donald Trump is the quiet disappearance of the budget deficit as a fixation of the news media and the business and political elite. During Barack Obama's two terms in office, terror about deficits positively consumed the discourse.

Navajo leader relieved no monuments eliminated

He says his tribe that has the largest American Indian reservation is willing to be patient with the monument review because it worked for years to help get Bears Ears National Monument in Utah designated as a national monument. Begaye adds: ``We are very hopeful the secretary listened to our people, to our leaders, to our medicine people, to our elders and he will take all those comments to heart and leave the monument as is.'