African small businesses face an uphill battle attracting equity investments and are constrained by a funding gap of as much as $140 billion, according to a new report from the London Stock Exchange Group.
Why it matters: Small businesses account for nearly 90% of companies in Africa and provide nearly 80% of the continent’s employment, a much higher percentage than the United States' 53%. With Africa’s population set to double to 1.6 billion by 2050, these enterprises will play a critical role in creating local, sustainable jobs.
Former FBI Director James Comey urged Democrats to nominate the best possible candidate to defeat President Trump in 2020 at an event Sunday night, saying Americans must "use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021," CNN reports.
"We have to remind ourselves that the president of the United States of America is publicly announcing that people are committing crimes, they should be in jail — private citizens — that's not OK. And if we become numb to it, we risk surrendering the norm."
The backdrop: Comey has grown to become a vocal critic of Trump since being fired in May 2017, at various points labeling his presidency "an attack of our values" and the rule of law. That has opened him up to repeated character attacks from the president — most recently on Sunday, when Trump tweeted that "Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day."
White House staff turnover is normal. President Trump’s chief of staff mess is most definitely not.
The latest: Trump and John Kelly agreed the chief of staff would announce his resignation Monday — until Trump spilled the news on TV Saturday morning. Nick Ayers seemed set to replace him — until he begged out Sunday, refusing to commit to the 2020 deadline Trump had said Kelly would hit.
When Argentine President Mauricio Macri hosted Trump at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires last week, Trump said he'd "been friends with Mauricio for a long time, many years."
But as Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien reported, that history wasn't always sunny. Trump met then-teenage Mauricio Macri while wrangling with his father, a top Argentine developer, over a contentious Manhattan real estate partnership.
Here we go again. On Tuesday at 11:30 am, President Trump plans to meet with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to see if they can cut a deal to keep the government open. Over the past two days, we've emailed and spoken to more than a dozen Democrats and Republicans in close touch with leadership. None were optimistic that Tuesday's meeting could yield a durable deal.
The bottom line: The problem is simple: Trump wants $5 billion for his border wall, and Pelosi and Schumer don't want to give it to him.
Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) will introduce a resolution on the floor of the Senate Monday to establish the John S. McCain III Human Rights Commission, CNN reports.
Details: The bipartisan commission, which the senators will propose on the 70th anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, will work to raise awareness of human rights issues and develop initiatives in the Senate. McCain, who died in August, left behind a legacy of "shining a light on human rights abuses across the world and building bipartisan coalitions to take action," Tillis wrote in a statement.
Over the past 24 hours, President Trump has been privately asking many people who they think should be his new chief of staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge.
What's happening: Trump has asked confidants what they think about the idea of installing Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, as John Kelly's permanent replacement, according to these three sources. Trump has also mentioned three other candidates besides Meadows, according to a source with direct knowledge. I don't yet have their names.
Incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that if it is proven President Trump directed his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to commit campaign finance violations — as is alleged in a sentencing memo released Friday — those actions would be "impeachable offenses."
The big picture: Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York claim Cohen paid off two women "in coordination with and at the direction of" then-candidate Donald Trump to hide his extramarital affairs and prevent the women from influencing the election. Nadler said that whether those offenses are "important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question," but added that he believes it is important to fully investigate the issue.
