The federal government has reunited 879 migrant children with their families to date, according to court documents released Monday.
Why it matters: The government is facing a court-mandated deadline (Thursday) to reunite all migrant kids in government custody who were separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy. More than 2,500 children, ages 5-17, were separated at the border since the policy came into effect.
Court filings released on Monday show that federal prosecutors investigating President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen have access to 12 audio recordings seized by the FBI during their April raid of Cohen’s office and hotel room in New York.
Timing: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed Friday that Cohen had secretly recorded a conversation with Trump in September 2016, during which the two discussed a potential payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims she had an affair with Trump.
It’s possible that some intelligence officials at the CIA and NSA know what President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed in their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki, thanks to the existence of a highly classified intelligence service that taps adversaries' communications, reports Politico’s Josh Meyer.
Why it matters: Sources told Meyer that the service, known as the Special Collection Service or “STATEROOM,” likely picked up Russia's readout of the conversation as well as top Kremlin officials' analysis on the meeting. This puts the U.S. intelligence community at less of a disadvantage than public statements may have initially suggested.
Former intelligence and law enforcement officials have all pushed back on Sarah Sanders' announcement that Trump is considering taking away their security clearances, as well as those of other former intelligence officials.
What they're saying: "This is a very, very petty thing to do," Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday that President Trump is considering revoking former CIA Director John Brennan's security clearance, as well as those of several other former intelligence officials, claiming they’ve "politicized and in some cases actually monetized their public service security clearances" and have made "baseless accusations" against the president.
Why it matters: These former intelligence officials have all been quick to criticize the president, with Brennan being a leading voice of opposition following Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As some White House reporters pointed out in the briefing, revoking their clearances has the optics of political retaliation.
Star soccer player Mesut Özil posted a four-page statement to his social media accounts Sunday explaining his decision to quit playing for the German national team, citing racism over his Turkish heritage.
Why it matters: Özil's shock resignation comes just one week after France — a team where 12 of 23 players were of African heritage — won the World Cup, igniting discussion of celebrating diversity in the world's most popular sport.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has emerged as the Democratic Party's "candidate-of-the-moment" for the 2020 presidential elections, writes Rebecca Traister in NYMag.
Why it matters: With frustration and contempt for the current administration at an all-time high, the 69-year-old Warren — who couples a progressive vision with a populist firebrand unfazed by the prospect of going tweet-to-tweet with President Trump — may offer the "the persistence" its best chance to win the White House in 2020.
President Trumploves to brag of doing the biggest, best, most never-been-before acts in history.
The big picture: In 35 days — through five meetings, from Singapore to Helsinki — Trump has rattled and reordered the world, throwing decades of order and common assumptions into chaos.
Here's a fresh window into his media mind, in this exclusive preview from Sean Spicer's book, The Briefing: Politics, The Press, and The President (Regnery), out July 24.
"[B]etween10:00 a.m. and noon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and I would poke our heads into the Oval Office ... [Trump] was always full of questions, wanting background on where a story came from and, of course, curious to know what we were going to say about it. And he was never shy about giving us directions."
World leaders are learning to play President Trump using his own set of predictable negotiating tricks. The most vivid example of this: French President Emmanuel Macron bragging to Trump that he was jamming him by stealing "The Art of the Deal" techniques, Axios has learned.
The scene: Perched on white leather armchairs in their bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Brussels, Trump and Macron soon turned to the unavoidable subject: The expanding trade war between the United States and Europe.
Not since the Bill Clinton sex scandals of the 1990s has the national conversation focused on a president's personal life on so many fronts so often.
And not since the 1990s has sex been part of a federal investigation stirring calls for impeachment: Kristin Davis, known as the "Manhattan Madam" for the high-end prostitution ring she ran in the 2000s, says Robert Mueller's prosecutors have notified her that he wants to interview her — probably about her close friend, Roger Stone, she tells the WashPost.
The Department of Justice has released redacted documents pertaining to the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who in 2016 was believed by the FBI to be an agent of Russia, the New York Times reports.
Why it matters: The wiretapping warrant on Page was issued and renewed several times under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and has been heavily criticized by President Trump and Republicans in Congress as an abuse of power by the FBI. The documents appear to show that the FBI properly disclosed its sources of information and that it relied on more than just the controversial Steele dossier, contradicting claims of abuse made by Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes.
