Former White House communications aide Cliff Sims, who released the White House insider memoir "Team of Vipers" last month, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Trump, accusing him of directly using his campaign to violate his ex-employees' free-speech and free-press rights by improperly seeking retribution, the New York Times first reported.
President Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, has postponed his scheduled closed-door appearance Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee due to "post-surgery medical needs," his attorney said Monday in a statement.
Details: Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, said that the panel has accepted his client’s request for a delay and that a "future date will be announced by the committee." Cohen recently had shoulder surgery, and he is due to begin a three-year prison sentence on March 6 for campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress. He is currently expected to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 28.
Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a junior senator from California, declared her support for legalizing marijuana at the federal level Monday on the syndicated radio show "The Breakfast Club."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) jumped into the White House race yesterday, and her speech's climate lines are worth breaking down:
"The people are on our side when it comes to climate change. Why? Because like you and I, they believe in science. That's why in the first 100 days of my administration, I will reinstate the clean power rules and the gas mileage standards and put forth sweeping legislation to invest in green jobs and infrastructure. And on day one, we will rejoin the international climate agreement."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has attracted more online and media attention this year than any Democrat running for president.
Why it matters: Like President Trump in 2016, Ocasio-Cortez has mastered Twitter while at the same time acting as a magnet in the digital and cable news ecosystem.
Bipartisan negotiations to strike a border security dealand to keep the federal government open have broken down over the past 24 hours.
Driving the news: "Negotiations reached an impasse on Saturday, primarily over detention beds and interior enforcement, according to four sources familiar with the talks," Politico reports.
About 10 days ago, a deputy to Trump's top trade negotiator gave a shockingly optimistic forecast on the political fate of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — the president’s renegotiated NAFTA deal. To the bemusement of two sources on the call, C.J. Mahoney, Robert Lighthizer’s deputy, said he figured the USMCA could get through Congress with huge bipartisan support by the end of April.
Between the lines: Nobody we've spoken to on Capitol Hill thinks Mahoney's prediction is remotely possible. While the two sources on the call were impressed with his technical grasp of the trade deal, they called his comments on its political fate "naïve," saying they betrayed only a tenuous comprehension of the USMCA's troubled standing with Congress.
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."
