Mitt Romney's full statement on the retirement of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch:
"I join the people of Utah in thanking my friend, Senator Orrin Hatch for his more than forty years of service to our great state and nation. As Chairman of the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees and as the longest-serving Republican Senator in U.S. history, Senator Hatch has represented the interests of Utah with distinction and honor. Ann and I wish Senator Orrin Hatch and his loving wife Elaine all the best in their future endeavors."
The backdrop: Romney has reportedly been considering a run for Hatch's seat if he retires.
Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Finance Committee chairman, President Pro Tempore of the Senate and longest-serving Republican senator, announced Tuesday that he will retire at the end of this term, his seventh.
Why it matters: Mitt Romney has been considering a run in the event Hatch retires. President Trump had urged Hatch to seek re-election, in part to block Romney. Romney has moved from "willing to run" to "wanting to run" in recent weeks, MSNBC's Garrett Haake reports. He released a statement on Hatch's retirement Tuesday, but did not comment on running for the open seat.
South Korea has proposed high-level talks with North Korea next week in the border town, Panmunjom. This comes after Kim Jong-un suggested in his New Year's Day speech that the two countries "urgently meet," per the NYT. The key topics up for discussion: military exercises and the Olympics.
Why it matters: It would be the first official dialogue between the two countries since South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office last year. Moon has been pushing for talks, whereas Trump's approach has been to keep a military option on the table.
"Fake news" wasn't a term many people used two years ago, but since the 2016 presidential election it has become more commonly viewed as a threat to democracy. But a recent analysis of the search histories of thousands of adults in the month around the election found that though fake news had a broad reach, even people with the largest fake-news appetite consumed much more real news overall, per the New York Times.
Why it matters: The new data could help researchers determine how influential fake news was during the 2016 election and beyond. "There's been a lot of speculation about the effect of fake news and a lot of numbers thrown around out of context, which get people exercised," Microsoft's Duncan Watts told NYT. "What's nice about this paper is that it focuses on the actual consumers themselves."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has raised $12.8 million in campaign money — more than almost any other Senator ever at this point in the election cycle and despite a likely easy re-election, Politico reports. The Democratic firebrand has made several political moves which would keep a 2020 Trump v Warren showdown an option.
The signs: Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti points out that Warren has recently worked with several Republican Senators on issues, hired a team of researchers to dig into her past and highlight any possible political vulnerabilities, visited several battleground states on behalf of fellow senators, met with big-name, traditional Democrats with whom she's disagreed with in the past (including Barack Obama) and became more accessible to the press.
The Pakistani government held an emergency security meeting on Tuesday in response to President Donald Trump accusing the country of "lies and deceit" in an early morning New Year's Day tweet, per CNN. Pakistan also on Monday summoned the U.S. ambassador David Hale, per Reuters.
The backdrop: The White House considering whether to give Pakistan $255 million in military aid it has withheld in August out of frustration over what it has characterized as Islamabad's unwillingness to crack down on terror groups, The New York Times reported last week. U.S. aid to Pakistan totals $33 billion since 2002. In a Times op-ed last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Pakistan to contribute more by combating terrorist groups on its own soil, adding that the country must "demonstrate its desire to partner with us."
In a morning tweet, President Trump tied new reports from Dutch consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network that called 2017 the safest year in commercial aviation history to his "strict" action on the industry during his first year in office.
Yes, but: There hasn't been a fatal commercial crash in the United States since 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in upstate New York. And Trump's "strict" action on aviation involved backing a controversial proposal to privatize air traffic control nationwide, which stalled out in the House late last year, per The Hill.
President Trump slammed the "Deep State" Justice Department on Twitter Tuesday morning, calling on them to "finally act" and prosecute Hillary Clinton's former aide, Huma Abedin as well as former FBI Director James Comey.
The backdrop: Huma Abedin allegedly forwarded sensitive State Department emails, some containing passwords to government systems, to a personal email account that was later hacked, according to the conservative news site The Daily Caller. For comparison, Trump cited a former Navy sailor who was sent to prison for taking photos inside a nuclear submarine.
President Trump blasted President Obama's part in the Iran nuclear deal in a tweet this morning, claiming that it funded a terroristic "brutal and corrupt Iranian regime" that led to the country's ongoing protests.
