President Trump set up the controversial issue of "late-term abortion" as a potential 2020 flashpoint on Tuesday, using his State of the Union address to graphically denounce Democrats for permitting "a baby to be ripped from the mother's womb moments from birth."
Driving the news: A pair of state measures that loosened, or sought to loosen, abortion restrictions in New York and Virginia were met with widespread condemnation from Republicans that reached a fever pitch after a radio interview on the topic by Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam last week — before his administration pitched into chaos over a racist medical school yearbook photo.
House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced Wednesday that the panel has voted to release all witness transcripts related to the Russia investigation to the Department of Justice and special counsel Robert Mueller.
Why it matters: Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and former personal attorney Michael Cohen have both been indicted for lying to the committee. Schiff has previously said that he would like Mueller to review the transcripts to determine whether other witnesses, including Donald Trump Jr. and Erik Prince, may have also lied during their testimonies.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) addressed President Trump's State of the Union vow that "America will never be a socialist country" after the speech Tuesday, telling reporters, per HuffPost, "I think it was great. I think he's scared. ... He knows he's losing the battle of public opinion when it comes to the actual substantive proposals that we're advancing to the public."
The backdrop: Ocasio-Cortez has proposed one of the most radical tax ideas from the new Democratic House majority — a 70% marginal rate on income earned over $10 million. But recent polling suggests that the public might largely be on her side as 76% of Americans favor higher taxes on the wealthy, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released earlier this week.
The Trump administration is already rolling out more details about one of the president's most ambitious State of the Union pledges: "to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years."
By the numbers: Roughly 40,000 people get HIV each year, and that rate has held steady for a while now.
President Trump used last night's State of the Union address to lay out themes, policies and symbols for his 2020 re-election race, winning over no Democrats in the chamber but giving new hope to supporters who were turning pessimistic. He softened some edges for his largest audience of the year, but made it clear that he's going to try to re-run many of his 2016 plays in 2020.
A notable new twist that we'll hear a lot more about on the campaign trail: "Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country."
Here's an interactive look at the topics President Trump covered in his State of the Union address Tuesday, compared to last year's address and his first-year speech before Congress.
Data: Analysis of the State of the Union and Joint Session speeches. Get the data; Analysis by Chris Canipe, Lazaro Gamio, Harry Stevens and Andrew Witherspoon/Axios
Stacey Abrams stepped back into the national political spotlight Tuesday night, delivering a blistering rebuke to President Trump in the Democratic response to his State of the Union.
Catch up quick: Abrams took Trump to task over the recent 35-day partial government shutdown, calling it a "stunt engineered [by Trump], one that defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people — but our values."
President Donald Trump used a portion of his State of the Union address Tuesday night to laud the record number of women serving in Congress, drawing a rare bipartisan standing ovation in the House chamber.
President Trump kept his demand for border wall funding in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, but stopped short of invoking national emergency powers to get funds for his long-sought project.
The backdrop: There had been speculation that Trump might use the address to Congress to announce plans for a national emergency. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently said he warned Trump during a meeting at the White House against using emergency powers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren listed her race as American Indian on her registration card for the State Bar of Texas in 1986, the Washington Post reports.
Why it matters: The Post notes that there's "no indication Warren had anything to gain by reporting herself as Native American," as the registration claims the "information is statistical purposes only." However, the disclosure comes just days after Warren apologized to the Cherokee Nation for taking a DNA test in an effort to prove her Native American ancestry, a move that prompted significant backlash ahead of her decision to run for president in 2020
Over the past 30 years, only 5 people of color have been selected to deliver a rebuttal to the State of the Union. Tonight, Stacey Abrams became the sixth.
