President Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to blast Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's official entrance into the 2020 Democratic presidential race, resurrecting his "Pocahontas" nickname and musing if she would run as "our first Native American presidential candidate."
"Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz!"
The big picture: Warren has faced early speed bumps over her past claims of Native American ancestry, and Trump takes particular delight in his offensive nickname, as Axios' Jonathan Swan reported last year. The president's personal focus on Warren is also highlighted by the fact that he failed to tweet after other high-profile campaign launches from Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.
Howard Schultz sounded stumped last week when asked the price of a staple that wasn’t coffee — a reminder of the campaign-trail hazards for billionaires trying to project a common touch.
What happened: Mika Brzezinski asked Schultz on MSNBC's "Morning Joe": “How much does an 18 ounce box of Cheerios cost?" Schultz responded: "An 18 ounce box of Cheerios? I don’t eat Cheerios." Spoiler: They're about 4 bucks at Walmart.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) officially announced her 2020 presidential run at a rally in Lawrence, Mass. on Saturday, pledging her place in "a fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone."
What she said: Warren promised "big, structural change," calling President Trump "the latest — and most extreme — symptom of what's gone wrong in America." She added, "It won’t be enough to just undo the terrible acts of this administration. We can’t afford to just tinker around the edges — a tax credit here, a regulation there."
Potential 2020 Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke is set to speak at a march against President Trump's border wall in his hometown of El Paso, Texas on Monday across the street from Trump's first "Make America Great Again" rally of 2019, reports CBS.
Driving the news: Trump called El Paso one of the nation's "most dangerous cities" in his State of the Union address last week, erroneously claiming that a section of border wall built in 2008 lowered the city's crime rates. O'Rourke also authored a Medium post about Trump's visit, writing that El Paso is "safe not because of walls, and not in spite of the fact that we are a city of immigrants. Safe because we are a city of immigrants and because we treat each other with dignity and respect."
President Trump watched live cable coverage of yesterday's chippy Hill testimony by acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, and liked what he saw.
The big picture: "He liked the combative approach," said an outside West Wing adviser familiar with Trump's thinking. "He thought the Democrats were grandstanding." Inside the White House, according to the adviser, here were the lessons learned: Do not give an inch, push back, resist, delay, deflect.
Fewer Americans have received their tax refunds in the first week of this year’s tax filing season compared to the same period last year, Bloomberg reports, citing IRS statistics.
The big picture: About one in eight IRS employees worked during the longest government shutdown in history, impeding the agency's ability to full prepare for tax season. 4.67 million refunds were sent out in the first week, down 24% from the 6.17 million delivered in the same period last year. Bloomberg also notes that this is the first year that changes from the 2017 GOP tax overhaul will be in effect, adding further complexities to an already-hectic start to filing season.
Ivanka Trump told ABC News Friday that she has “zero concern” about her loved ones' legal exposure in the Mueller investigation, and that she knew “literally almost nothing“ about the Trump Organization's efforts to build a tower in Moscow.
"It’s not like it's a strange thing, as a hospitality company or a development company, to have a hotel or a property in Russia. We're not talking about Iran. It was Russia. And we weren't even advanced enough that anyone had even visited the prospective project site. So it really was just a non-factor in our minds. I'm not sure that anyone would have thought of it."
The big picture: In pleading guilty to Congress about the extent of his work on the Moscow tower, the president's former personal attorney Michael Cohen admitted that he briefed members of Trump's family about the project. Ivanka, much like her father has done both during the campaign and his presidency, downplayed the significance of the Moscow project in her interview with ABC.
The Washington Post located 16 former workers in Costa Rica and other countries who said they and other family members and friends were employed by the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., and that their managers knew they were undocumented.
Why it matters: From the campaign trail to the Oval Office, President Trump's rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration has been harsh and unyielding. Yet, as one former Bedminister worker told the Post: "Many of us helped get what [Trump] has today. This golf course was built by illegals."
Former Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz's "60 Minutes" interview and a recent New York City book event to promote an expected presidential run have short sellers lining up to bet on the company's fall.
What's happening: Short sellers added 2.5 million shares, or 6.78%, to bets against Starbucks over the last week. Short interest is now $2.7 billion, with 39.21 million shares shorted, according to data firm S3 Partners.
"The political crisis in Virginia threatens to turn a state that has trended Democratic back into a battleground, a development that could complicate the party's effort to defeat President Trump next year," AP's Bill Barrow reports.
Why it matters: "Virginia's increasingly diverse and urban population has fueled Democratic victories at the state and presidential level for a decade. But Democrats are anxious that the dizzying developments could suddenly halt their progress."
Former House Speaker John Boehner this morning will announce the National Cannabis Roundtable, an industry-funded group to lobby for cannabis reform, including changes affecting medical research, banking and taxes.
"As the cannabis industry grows and matures, it’s vital that we work together for a common-sense legal framework for cannabis policy,” Boehner says in a forthcoming release.
The group has seven founding companies, including Acreage Holdings, where he's on the board.
Democrats are flirting with socialism in ways they carefully and clearly ran away from in the past, handing President Trump a new way to unify Republicans — and to club his opponents.
Former Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who was the longest-serving member in the history of Congress, died Thursday at the age of 92, reports the Detroit News.
Dingell was elected to the House in 1955 at the age of 29, and retired in 2014. His wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, revealed on Wednesday that the former congressman had been receiving hospice care. Dingell tweeted on Wednesday evening: "The Lovely Deborah is insisting I rest and stay off here, but after long negotiations we've worked out a deal where she'll keep up with Twitter for me as I dictate the messages. I want to thank you all for your incredibly kind words and prayers. You're not done with me just yet.
Applications from Indian national students to American graduate programs fell 12% from 2017 to 2018, leading to an overall decline in international enrollment in U.S. universities, according to a new study from the Council of Graduate Schools.
The big picture: India is one of the biggest sources of foreign students in American universities, where international enrollment has fallen for two consecutive years. "While two data points is not a trend, we're troubled that there's a decrease for the first time ever," says Suzanne Ortega, head of the Council of Graduate Schools.
