Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) is the latest Republican who will vacate their House seat after this term. The five-term congressman initially supported Marco Rubio in the 2016 campaign, and later endorsed Donald Trump before un-endorsing him following the Access Hollywood tape, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Trump won Rooney's district by 27 points in 2016.
President Trump posed a question Monday after a weekend of frequent tweeting about the Russia probe: Why didn't President Obama take action over Russian interference in the 2016 election?
The backdrop: The Obama administration knew about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election months before Election Day, and Obama was briefed in August 2016 on intelligence that Putin himself was involved, the Washington Post reports. Still, there were limitations to what they could do, former administration officials say.
A panel of 170 presidential politics experts considers Trump the worst president in history, according to rankings published by the New York Times. Obama is 8th, with Lincoln, Washington and Franklin Roosevelt holding the top three spots. The same experts ranked Buchanan last and Obama 18th in 2014.
Notable movements: Clinton slid from 8th to 13th and Jackson from 9th to 15th, "arguably the result of contemporary scorn for [Clinton's] treatment of women, and for evolving attitudes on [Jackson's] treatment of Native Americans," per the Times. George W. Bush moved from 35th up to 30th.
The White House said Monday that President Trump will attend the Gridiron Club's annual dinner on March 3, marking his first appearance at a press dinner since taking office. Trump skipped both the Gridiron dinner and the White House Correspondents Dinner last year.
Correction: A previous version of this story and its headline stated that Trump was also planning to attend this year's WHCD after the Daily Mail reported, "Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied 'yes,' when asked if Trump would attend the annual April affair." But Sanders released a statement saying no decision has yet been made regarding the WHCD.
President Trump-appointed Neil Gorsuch holds the key vote in a case to be heard next week over whether public-sector unions should require people who don't want to be union members to pay for collective bargaining, the AP reports.
Why it matters: Unions are major financial backers of Democratic candidates and causes across the country, and a rebuke from Gorsuch would deal a crushing blow to organized labor. Even though Trump overwhelmingly won support from white working-class voters, he had expressed support for the right-to-work movement. Per Politico, his administration sides with the plaintiff who's challenging the "fair-share fees." The Supreme Court had reached a 4-4 deadlock in 2016 on the issue following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Supporters of President Trump want him to grant pardons to at least four of his former aides who have been targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe in an effort to stymie it, Politico reports.
Why it matters: This comes on the heels of what might have been one of the most momentous weeks in the Russia investigation so far. Mueller on Friday charged 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities for designing an operation to subvert the 2016 presidential election.
Lost in Russia, and internal intrigue, and FBI trashing and mean tweets: Donald Trump is confronting a slow-moving sex scandal that would easily sink most politicians and presidents.
It includes porn stars, hush money, caught-on-tape crudeness and tawdry tabloids. And Bill Clinton would blush at how easily Trump seems to duck consequences for it all:
President Trump's longtime lawyer Michael Cohen has been protecting him from scandal for years, according to a New York Times review of records, emails and interviews.
How he does it: "[T]he lawyer relied on intimidation tactics, hush money and the nation’s leading tabloid news business, American Media Inc., whose top executives include close Trump allies. ... [He] maneuvered in the pay-to-play gossip world — populated by porn stars and centerfold models, tabloid editors and lawyers with B- and C-list entertainment clients."
President Trump's infrastructure plan encourages states to "incorporate new and evolving technologies" into their proposals, but does not require any form of cybersecurity for those technologies. Experts say that might set states on the path to disaster.
The bottom line: "These plans are not just about putting down pavement. 21st century infrastructure is networked," said Richard Harknett, a University of Cincinnati professor that recently served as scholar-in-residence at the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.
