Axios

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are planning to ask President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to not participate in future cases involving Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian collusion spanning from the 2016 election, if confirmed, Politico reports.

The backdrop: This comes in response to past remarks Kavanaugh made that a sitting president should be exempt from civil lawsuits or criminal investigations. And as Politico notes, the high court could rule on matters related to the special counsel's probe. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tx.) called Democrats' call for recusal "ridiculous."

President Trump increased his total number of pardons to seven on Tuesday by granting clemency to two Oregon cattle ranchers, Dwight Lincoln Hammond and his son, Steven Hammond, who were imprisoned for setting fire to federal land.

The big picture: While he still lags far behind many of his predecessors in overall pardons, Trump is the first president since George H.W. Bush to grant a pardon within the first two years of his presidency. H. W.'s pardons in his first year were all related to the Iran-Contra affair.

The ACLU Foundation of Northern California has filed a series of abuse claims related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's treatment of immigrants being transported between detention facilities.

The accusations: The ACLU claims that nine women spent more than 24 hours being driven from two facilities in California that are less than 300 miles apart. Shackled in the back of a windowless van with no air, the women were allegedly denied "adequate food and water," causing several to vomit and faint in the extreme heat.

Four of the 102 migrant children under five years old have been reunited with their parents in compliance with a court order, and 34 more will be reunited today, Health and Human Services official Chris Meekins told reporters on a call Tuesday afternoon.

Big picture: These reunited families have been released into the community with ankle bracelets, and the Department of Homeland Security plans to do this for most families with children under five years old, although that will be determined on a case-by-case basis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Executive Associate Director Matthew Albence told reporters.

President Trump has granted pardons to two Oregon cattle ranchers — Dwight Lincoln Hammond, Jr., 76, and his son Steven Hammond, 49 — after they were imprisoned for setting fire to federal land, the White House said on Tuesday.

The big picture: These are the latest pardons in Trump's clemency spree, which has seen high-profile interventions from celebrities like Kim Kardashian West.

A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll shows how each party would perform in 13 Senate races under six different scenarios that measure potential turnout.

President Trump's attorney and former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani is still representing a host of overseas clients, which he has yet to register with the Justice Department, breaking from precedent set by prior presidential attorneys.

What's new: Giuliani told The Washington Post that he serves clients in Brazil and Colombia personally and through his security firm, and offers paid speeches (he gave one last Saturday) for Iranian resistance group, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), which was listed as a terrorist group by the State Department until 2012.

To win the Senate, Democrats need to keep all 10 seats they're defending in states that President Trump won in 2016 — plus pick up two more seats.

Why it matters: That's not happening. A new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll of key states shows Dems would lose three of those red-state seats while picking up two GOP seats — still short of the majority.

President Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "a competitor," but that that the meeting with him may be easier than Trump's meeting with NATO allies this week, per pool reports.

"So I have NATO, I have the UK — that’s a situation with turmoil. And I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of all.”

Why it matters: These comments echo concerns from European officials told to Axios' Jonathan Swan that Trump will "spend the entire NATO summit beating up on America's closest allies — especially Germany — for not spending enough on their defense .. [a]nd that he'll have a friendlier summit with Putin just a few days after."

Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court, would have the second most conservative score (0.693) on the bench if confirmed, next to Justice Clarence Thomas (0.725), per a measure that scores judges on a liberal-conservative spectrum.

Why it matters: Kennedy often sided with the liberal wing of the court, so with this choice, Trump is cementing a solid conservative majority on the bench.

President Trump wanted a walk-off home-run win with his Supreme Court pick, so when confidants raised doubts about Brett Kavanaugh over the past week, according to Axios' Jonathan Swan, Trump brushed them aside and offered the simple retort: “He’s got the votes.”

Why it matters: So many reluctant Republicans voted for Trump because of the Court. They got Justice Neil Gorsuch, and now they have Kavanaugh, validating and institutionalizing their ideology for 30 years to come.

Two municipal-level Democratic campaigns have been hit by distributed denial-of-service campaigns this year, which essentially render web sites useless by bombarding them with traffic, per a CyberScoop report.

What it means: Sources told CyberScoop the attacks appear to have some pattern of intention behind them, given their timing during moments of positive publicity or online fundraising campaigns. It’s not clear if the attacks significantly disrupted the campaigns, which have not been identified.

The Trump White House and the Trump campaign are preparing for the inevitable — Democratic gains in November, the start of the 2020 re-election campaign, and Robert Mueller’s verdict — by shifting into full war footing.

• "Trump is gearing up for a bloody war," said a Trump confidant.
• Why it matters: While hard to imagine, watch for President Trump specifically — and politics generally — to take on an even harsher, intransigent tone, with implicit and explicit us-vs-them undertones of race, gender and what it means to be American. 

President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will be a key moment of Trump's presidency that could ultimately reshape the high court's ideology for decades to come — if he's confirmed.

Key players: A few key senators hold the cards on whether Kavanaugh will make it through the confirmation process, including vulnerable red state Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans. So far, these senators have largely all responded with a similar message — that they will conduct a careful vetting of Kavanaugh, including interviews with the nominee one-on-one ahead of his confirmation hearing.

President Trump's nomination of U.S. Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has set off a contentious confirmation battle.

Be smart: Trump’s nod to Kavanaugh is not a surprise, given his conservative record and deep ties among Washington's Republican establishment. He was the frontrunner from the start, and a favorite of White House Counsel Don McGahn. If confirmed, Kavanaugh will certainly solidify the court's conservative majority.

President Trump announced Monday night that he has nominated Brett Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old federal appeals court judge from Bethesda, Maryland, to the Supreme Court, replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Why it matters: As expected, Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will shift the court substantially to the right.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee denied President Trump's request that she change her 2015 ruling on the Flores Settlement, which prevents immigrant children from being kept in detention longer than 20 days, Politico reports.

Bottom line: This was not a surprising decision, but it's a big loss for the Trump administration, which is back where it started in dealing with undocumented migrant families. The only way for Trump to avoid the restrictions on child detention would be a Supreme Court decision — which is unlikely — or for Congress to act, according to former DOJ immigration judge Leon Fresco.