Among those spotted in the Washington, D.C. Women's March crowd yesterday was Joshua Kushner, the brother of top Trump advisor (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner.
Sources close to Kushner tell Axios that he's in D.C. supporting his brother, who officially starts work at the White House today, and that he was taking a walk near his hotel when the photo was taken. He also wanted to observe what the source referred to as "a peaceful form of self expression."
One of the best-wired Republican lobbyists in town emails Axios previewing the initial phase of Trump executive actions:
Look for a possible hiring freeze at executive branch
5-year lobbying ban on transition and administration officials
Mexico City policy, which prevents foreign NGOs from getting U.S. family planning money if they provide abortions with non-U.S. funds. (It's already illegal to use U.S dollars on abortions.)
Task the Defense Secretary and joint chiefs to come up with plan to eviscerate ISIS
Report on readiness, and something cyber security related
Border/immigration: Something on sanctuary cities, expand E-Verify, an extreme vetting proposal
Trade: Withdraw from TPP and a thorough review of NAFTA
What else we're hearing: The Mexico City executive order could come as soon as today. Also, watch for dozens of EPA executive orders coming down the pike. Says a Trump source: "EPA has clean water-related and some 30,000 foot regulatory ones lined up [immediately]...We have dozens for the EPA...Starting Monday through the month of February. We have to roll them out gradually."
President Trump, on his first full day in office, praised the intelligence community during a solemn trip to CIA headquarters and announced a state visit and trade talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May, reaffirming the skittish United Kingdom as a top U.S. ally.
The overwhelming size of yesterday's peaceful women's marches against Trump in 50-plus countries stunned even the organizers. In Washington, a huge column marched past Lafayette Park, across from the White House, and women with pink hats and signs screamed and chanted at Trump's motorcade.
How it came together: Jenny Backus, a veteran Dem organizer, emails us: "[O]ne of the biggest winners of this whole thing is Facebook and Zuckerberg. This was pretty much a testimony of what the Internet can do right … after an election which was an example of what the Internet can do wrong — fake news."
Backus says the untraditional organizing showed up in good and bad ways. Good: "reaching folks who had never done something like this — looking and feeling truly organic." Bad: "lack of traditional organizers and advance folks to help on staging, crowd movement."
From the Sunday shows: Lindsey Graham and John McCain both said they'll vote to confirm Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
Why it matters: Tillerson can clear the Senate with just Republican votes. His refusals to condemn Putin drew lots of attention at his confirmation hearing. Now it looks like he'll be just fine.
The one to watch: Marco Rubio, who was the senator to put Tillerson through the ringer on Russia. He's still mum on his vote.
This Kellyanne Conway exchange with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, on whether Sean Spicer was lying yesterday when he said Trump's inaugural was the most-watched ever, will dominate Twitter today.
Conway: "You're saying it's a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that."
Todd: "Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods."
Conway: "If we're going to keep referring to the press secretary in those types of terms I think we're going to have to rethink our relationship here."
A new trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K. is shaping up to be the key focus of Trump's meetings with U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May when the two meet Jan. 27.
The Sunday Telegraph says the talks could include an agreement to give U.S. and U.K. companies free reign to operate across the border with limited regulatory hurdles. It could be set up within 90 days of the U.K. leaving the EU.
British banks already have a deal like that, called "passporting," with the EU which lets the banks operate in any member country with one set of regulations The Telegraph says losing that arrangement might send billions of pounds from British banks to Paris or Frankfurt
Trump officials told Bloomberg that quick work on a trade deal with the U.S. will give May more leverage in Brexit negotiations; she'll be able to say the U.K. will prosper with closer U.S. ties despite losing EU membership.
The long game: Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner were behind pushing May to the front of the line for a U.S. visit, Jonathan Swan reported yesterday.
What we're watching: The marchers were brought to Washington by many different causes, all of them in opposition to the agenda of the new administration and Republican-controlled Congress. Now, we're looking less for politicians' responses to the one-time event than whether the protests continue over time, which is usually how something like today's march becomes effective.
Laurie Wright, 60, a small business owner from Charlottesville, VA: "Being 60, I don't want to go back to where I was when I was a little girl... Equality needs to be the top thing, for everyone. For women, for LGBTQ, and for minorities, black lives matter — every life matters. I want the politicians to understand we're not the 1%. We're the working class."
Ben Schweitzer, 31, a roofer from Pennsylvania: "Most jobs are going the way of the dinosaurs...Nobody's talking about that except me and some other people...This guy's talking about building a wall. I guess that'll bring some jobs for a little while, but no, automation."
Lily Buyer, 12, from NYC: "I'm a big soccer player and I really know about the women's soccer team are getting paid less than the men...I thought it was really important to come not only to support the women's soccer team, but all women in all jobs."
Clyde Lloyd, 54, from Atlanta: "As a black man, an attack on anybody is an attack on everybody. To single out a single race, for Mexicans, it's the same thing that happened to us as African Americans. We were singled out too."
The new White House press secretary just took the podium, delivered a statement claiming that President Trump's inaugural was the largest ever, hammered the press for reporting that his crowd was considerably smaller than Obama's, and declined to answer questions.
Key quote: "We're going to hold the press accountable."
As former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer put it: "This is called a statement you're told to make by the President. And you know the President is watching."
Trump, in a speech at the CIA headquarters today, did not hold back against the media.
He also called out TIME's Zeke Miller for incorrectly stating in a pool report that a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was removed from the Oval Office:
A hardline immigration leader (somebody whose work has strongly influenced top Trump adviser Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller) told Axios recently to read some of May's previous speeches on immigration. He was majorly impressed.
The British PM enjoys significant goodwill among Trump's nationalist allies, particularly due to her tougher positions on immigration. She's no Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader and spearhead of the Brexit movement, but she's regarded warily as a potential friend of Trump's nationalist populist movement.
Donald Trump will take his first foreign leader meeting as President with British Prime Minister Theresa May. They'll meet Thursday, says White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Behind the Scenes:
A senior source tells Axios that Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon played an important role in pushing the meeting to happen earlier than originally planned.
Bannon has also been in contact with Boris Johnson, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and one of the chief cheerleaders of the Brexit movement.
Jared Kushner was also very influential in the process, we are told.
In his brief remarks on Saturday, Trump said any sense of him feuding with the intelligence community was invented by the media.
I have a running war with the media. They are the most dishonest people on earth. — Trump to CIA employees
Why it matters: The CIA endorsed the conclusions of an intelligence report saying that Russia interfered with the election to boost Trump. Trump dismissed those reports, and even suggested outgoing CIA Director John Brennan leaked the reports.
In the initial days after Donald Trump won the election, his advisers began discussing how to make his inauguration different from the shows of the past.
While Trump's Inauguration Committee had trouble drawing celebrities to perform at events throughout the weekend, Women's March organizers have rallied a series of A-listers to participate in today's event. They'll be appearing in crowds that dwarf the inauguration festivities.
Here are the famous people you can expect to see marching through Washington.
One of the more contentious — and consequential — international relationships is set to be that between Donald Trump and the German leader Angela Merkel.
One of the underpinnings of the Trump team's plans is the notion that the quislings in the establishment fail to see the world as it actually is. This is nasty, brutish and short, applied to governing. There's plenty of delusion among the establishment, but Trump's speech overcorrects. An AP Fact Check ticks off three ways he overshot:
"The American economy is a lot healthier than the wreck Trump describes. Jobs have increased for a record 75 straight months. The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in December, close to a nine-year low and to what economists consider full employment."
"The U.S. military … remains the world's most advanced, expensive and far-flung fighting force. American military spending is nearly three times that of second-place China."
"Quelling radical Islamic terrorism worldwide is a heavy lift in which the U.S. has been engaged for years, and Trump has offered no plan for how he will deliver on" the promise in his speech to "unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth."
The new president's 16-minute address tipped his hand — in ways both subtle, and stunningly blunt — about his political plan for the coming years. Yes, he plans to pound his America-first, Washington-sucks message that the establishment and media hate. But it was telling how much time he spent talking about infrastructure and jobs for ALL Americans, twice sounding racially inclusive notes.
Stephen Miller, the speech's principal writer, and Steve Bannon, whose worldview dominated and who helped with the prose , see a huge infrastructure bill as a way to attract voters, especially minorities, who opposed Trump in 2016. They argue privately they will shake up voting coalitions if they run new roads, repair tunnels and provide web access to other classes or regions of forgotten Americans. They also believe tariffs and bullying of corporate-outsourcers will change some minds, too.
The coastal bubbles hated the speech. But, like the campaign, it wasn't aimed at them.
Russia signed signed an agreement Friday giving it a much greater ability to deploy military forces in Syria for at least the next HALF-CENTURY, per the NYT.The winner: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his people during the six-year war to hold power.Elsewhere:
More from the NYT: "As the clock wound down on Barack Obama's presidency, an Air Force B-52 bomber carried out a punishing airstrike against a training camp of al Qaeda in Syria, the Pentagon said Friday. The attack, which took place west of Aleppo, killed more than 100 fighters."
British Prime Minister Theresa May, the first leader Trump mentioned in our interview when asked about his top allies, told the Financial Times she would be very frank about the need for a strong NATO and EU. Trump has very critical of both institutions.
