President Trump condemned Venezuelan socialist President Nicolás Maduro for blocking humanitarian aid from entering the country, urging the country's military in a speech in Miami Monday not to help the embattled leader, who he called a "Cuban puppet," to stay in power.
In her next big move as a presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to release a proposal for universal child care on Tuesday, HuffPost first reported and Axios has confirmed with a source familiar with this plan.
Why it matters: This could make child care a more prominent issue in the 2020 presidential election, especially as health care in general will be a dominant topic. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders proposed significant changes to the current child care system during the 2016 election.
An investigation into North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District 2018 election has found a "coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme" in two counties carried out by a political operative hired by the Republican candidate, the state’s elections board executive director revealed Monday at a hearing.
Why it matters: The evidentiary hearing may last for two days and it could prompt the five-member election board to certify the November results or order a new election in the district if there’s strong evidence that ballot-tampering was widespread enough to affect the outcome of the race. Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders in Washington had signaled that they could launch their own inquiry, depending on the outcome of hearing.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe claimed in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that President Trump chose to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin's claims on North Korea's ballistic missile capabilities over the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, saying in a White House briefing, "I don't care. I believe Putin."
The big picture: It's not the only bombshell claim from McCabe in the "60 Minutes" sit-down. He also said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed removing Trump via the 25th Amendment, a claim that was vehemently denied by the Justice Department earlier this week.
The next trillion-dollar fight concerns the debt ceiling. Global markets freak out any time members of Congress or White House officials float anything other than a drama-free debt-ceiling hike.
The state of play: As a House conservative, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney pushed to use the debt ceiling as a lever to cut spending. And as Trump's budget director, he favored the concept of "debt prioritization" — an idea that thrills some in the conservative movement but horrifies the markets, the Treasury secretary and the leadership of both parties.
Shortly after becoming President Trump's acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney conveyed a blunt message to several Cabinet secretaries. According to a senior White House official with direct knowledge and another source briefed on the private conversations, Mulvaney told the Cabinet officials that their "highest priority" over the next year would be deregulation.
What they're saying: "We knew there was one thing we could do without legislation," the senior official told me. When Mulvaney sits down with the president to discuss the Cabinet secretaries' performance, the official said, "Dereg is going to be top of the list."
A senior government official who was involved in the spending negotiations over the past few weeks told me the experience taught them something disturbing.
"We're going to go to the edge on everything," the official said on Friday, shortly after Trump signed the bill to fund the 25% of the government that had shut down for 35 days on his watch.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that he will hold a hearing regarding former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's allegations that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hosted discussions about removing President Trump via the 25th Amendment.
Details: Graham said he would call both McCabe and Rosenstein for questioning, saying, "The whole point of Congress existing is to provide oversight of the executive branch." He added, "So I promise your viewers the following — that we will have a hearing about who’s telling the truth, what actually happened."
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said on "Fox News Sunday" that President Trump "will protect his national emergency declaration" for the border, refusing to answer whether Trump would veto a resolution of disapproval that Congress may pass.
Backdrop: Trump plans to tap into$3.6 billion of additional funding for the border wall via the Department of Defense's military construction fund. Trump's decision to declare a national emergency to fund a border wall has been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats as a dangerous precedent that could grant expanded executive power to future presidential administrations.
Resigning in shame isn't really a thing anymore. Hanging on for dear life, and hoping everyone will forget about your scandal, is the new thing.
Why it matters: It's not just Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. It's a growing group of elected officials who are still hanging around despite scandals that would have been considered fatal in the past. That's a sign of our shorter attention spans and the lightning speed of today's news cycles — but it's also a sign of how our standards have changed.
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