Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said "we have the votes" to pass the tax reform bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced he has secured at least 50 votes needed to pass a $1.4 trillion tax cut bill later this afternoon.
ABC News reported today that former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn is prepared to testify that President Donald Trump directed him to make contact with Russians when he was a presidential candidate. Reuters could not immediately verify the report, which cited a Flynn confidant.
The change was a key last-minute revision to the bill meant to gain the votes of Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana. Republicans will increase the size of the one-time tax on overseas corporate earnings to pay for bigger small business tax breaks in their tax bill, several senators said Friday.
Sen. Kennedy cited concerns with the nomination process leading to Duncan's selection and the paperwork submitted to Congress regarding the nomination as prompting his hesitation. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he will support 5th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Kyle Duncan, amid mounting criticism of Kennedy's hesitation from conservatives in his home state and Washington.
One of the ways the White House brushed aside the first three indictments in the Russia investigation was by noting they weren't directed at anyone serving in the administration. George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort were on the campaign - in limited roles , officials claimed - and Rick Gates was simply Manafort's business partner.
Republican senators say tax reform would benefit small businesses but their true goal is to help the biggest firms, a fact dramatically illustrated by a Republican-on-Republican policy fight this week. The legislation would reduce the top corporate tax rate, the one paid by the largest publicly-traded companies, from 35 to 20 percent.
On Friday morning, the former national security adviser pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government. The "lock her up" chant had arisen out of Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, which the FBI investigated last year.
Hours before Senate Republicans were scheduled to vote on a tax proposal that doesn't technically exist in final legislative form, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell strode to the floor McConnell was foiled over the summer and fall by the GOP effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, suffering a number of embarrassing defeats that illustrated his inability to wrangle the Republican Senate conference. Tax reform would be different, promised McConnell and other GOP leaders.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to misleading the FBI about conversations he had with Russia's ambassador to the United States. His guilty plea marks an escalation of the special counsel's probe into Trump campaign ties to Russia, and also corroborates anonymously-sourced media reports about Flynn's contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn's plunge was even faster. He was fired by Trump after just a month in the White House and left to contend with a mounting criminal probe that led to his decision to plead guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
A federal appeals court on Friday revived a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing Capital One Financial Corp of imposing illegal overdraft fees on customers. People walk past a Capital One banking center in New York's financial district January 17, 2013.
Oh my . What, we wondered , did Michael Flynn have that led Robert Mueller to let him off with a relatively minor plea deal to one count of lying to investigators? According to ABC's Brian Ross, it's that Donald Trump ordered Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russians as a candidate - but for what purpose? And is that illegal? JUST IN: @BrianRoss on @ABC News Special Report: Michael Flynn promised "full cooperation to the Mueller team" and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump "directed him to make contact with the Russians."
Really? It didn't look that way yesterday evening when three of their Republican colleagues nearly derailed the tax reform bill on a procedural vote. After intense negotiations this morning and a little horse-trading, though, John Cornyn told reporters that GOP leadership have 50 votes whipped for the bill's final vote, expected later today or early tomorrow: Pressed if that means GOP leadership has the 50 votes needed to let Vice President Pence break a tie, he added "yes."
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana plans to back President Trump's judicial nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, said The Advocate, a Baton Rouge newspaper, on Thursday. Mr. Kennedy had expressed frustration earlier in the week with Kyle Duncan, who the president tapped to fill a vacancy on Louisiana's federal bench.
Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of the last remaining GOP holdouts on the Senate's tax-cut plan, announced Friday he will support the bill in exchange for work on a fix for certain illegal immigrants often brought into the country as children - a hot-button issue as lawmakers also work on year-end spending bills. Mr. Flake said he wanted to get a firm commitment for work "on a growth-oriented legislative solution to enact fair and permanent protections for DACA recipients," and to eliminate what he described as one of the budget gimmicks GOP leaders are using to bring down the cost of their bill.
Donald Trump has condemned a jury's verdict that a Mexican man is not guilty of murdering a woman on a San Francisco pier. In a pre-dawn tweet, the president said the cleared man, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, "came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent".
Senate Republicans are stepping quickly to meet competing demands of holdout GOP senators for a tax overhaul package expected to add $1 trillion to the nation's deficit over 10 years. The Republicans eye a crucial final vote Friday on the $1.4 trillion Senate bill carrying the hopes of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party to preserve their majorities in next year's elections.
They used to say that a lie could make it halfway around the world before the truth could get its pants on. In the internet age, the truth shouldn't even bother getting out of bed.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has bluntly warned Pentagon weapons buyers that he won't let the Air Force accept new refueling tankers from Boeing if they're flawed or don't meet all contract obligations, according to a person familiar with the issue. The plain-spoken defense chief sent a note to staff last month that he's "unwilling " to accept deficient planes in the $44.5 billion KC-46 tanker program, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.
The Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. The U.S. military considers them a legitimate and important weapon, although critics say they kill indiscriminately and pose hazards to civilians.