Well-connected Republican operatives have launched the group Trade Works for America, which aims to spend more than $10 million pushing members of Congress to support the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), according to two officials who set up the group.
Why it matters: Republicans and industry groups are starting to panic about USMCA, Trump's NAFTA replacement bill. And for good reason.
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) passed away Sunday afternoon at the age of 76, according to his office.
The congressman was admitted to hospice care last month after sustaining a broken hip. He has been in office since 1995 and represented a safe red district.
Our lead item in Axios Sneak Peek last week — a leak of three months of Trump’s private schedules — enraged White House officials.
The president’s secretaryMadeleine Westerhout tweeted that the leak was "a disgraceful breach of trust." Then Politico scooped (and we confirmed) that the White House has launched an internal hunt to find the leaker.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) announced at a snowy rally in Minnesota Sunday that she will be running for president in 2020.
The big picture: The popular Midwestern Democrat joins a primary field already occupied by four of her Senate colleagues — Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand — as well as a number of other candidates.
On her first full-day as an official Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren hit back at President Trump's attacks over her claims of Native American ancestry by calling attention to the numerous investigations that have clouded his presidency.
“Every day there is a racist tweet, a hateful tweet — something really dark and ugly. ... Here’s what bothers me. By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person."
— Warren to a crowd in Iowa
The backdrop: Just hours after launching her bid on Saturday, Trump attacked Warren in tweet that appeared to joke about the Trail of Tears — the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans in the mid-1800s: “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!”
In a sign of Nikki Haley's continuing star power, the former UN ambassador will be the guest of honor at a dinner with about 20 of Manhattan's top GOP donors on Feb. 27, Axios has learned.
The dinner will be the first of a series being organized by Paul Singer, the hedge-fund magnate, to spotlight key surrogates for the congressional races of 2020.
Democratic campaigns are secretly shopping dirt on their primary rivals much earlier than usual, reflecting the high stakes of surging or sinking quickly with so many people running so early.
The meltdownin Virginia politics is also infecting the race — and fueling media investigations of the candidates — with a reminder that, as one top operative put it: "Everything old is new again."
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.
