Three Republican senators — Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — have said they will vote in favor of a resolution to block President Trump's national emergency, which just passed the House.
Why it matters: Just 4 Republican senators are needed for the resolution to pass, though Trump has already signaled that he will veto the bill if it makes to his desk. It would be the first veto of his presidency, in direct defiance of Republican concerns about executive overreach.
The House passed a resolution 245-182 Tuesday to block President Trump’s emergency declaration over the border wall.
Why it matters: The Republican-controlled Senate will now be forced to take up the measure. If 4 Republican senators defect and vote to pass the resolution, it would set up the first veto of Trump’s presidency. So far, three Republican senators — Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis — have indicated they will vote to block the declaration, while several others have expressed concerns about Trump's use of emergency powers.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) tweeted a threat to President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen on the eve of his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Three top strategists left Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign on Tuesday, including the chief strategist of his 2016 White House bid, due to creative differences, reports the New York Times' Jonathan Martin.
Details: Tad Devine, Mark Longabaugh and Julian Mulvey, who work together as a political consulting firm, all had key roles in Sanders' first run for the White House. They told NBC News they decided to leave because they "just didn't have a meeting of the minds." Martin also reported that the sudden departure angered remaining 2020 staffers, who believe that it could impact Sanders' fundraising total.
Thousands of allegations of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors (UAC) in the custody of the U.S. government have been reported over the past 4 years, according to Department of Health and Human Services documents given to Axios by Rep. Ted Deutch's office.
Data: Dept. of Health and Human Services; Note: The type of perpetrator is only known for cases ORR reported to DOJ; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios
The House Oversight Committee approved the first batch of subpoenas to Trump administration officials regarding the policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press.
The big picture: The decision will "compel the heads of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to deliver documents," per the AP. Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings said, "I believe this is a true national emergency. When our own government rips children from the arms of their mothers and fathers with no plans to reunite them — that is government-sponsored child abuse."
President Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen is expected to present evidence of alleged "criminal conduct" by Trump during his time as president to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that was "stumbled across ... within the last 48 hours," a source familiar with Cohen's testimony told Axios.
The big picture: Cohen is set to accuse Trump of criminal misconduct linked to reimbursements Cohen received in 2017 for hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels regarding her alleged affair with Trump toward the end of the 2016 campaign, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The source said Cohen will describe "in granular detail" the scheme to pay off Daniels, which Cohen is set to say was orchestrated by Trump.
Some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are proposing non-traditional ways to provide reparations for the descendants of slaves, the AP's Errin Haines Whack reports.
What's new: Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former HUD Secretary Julián Castro have all made the case for the U.S. government to make reparations for "centuries of stolen labor and legal oppression," but none involve traditional cash payments.
President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen will make public some of the president's private financial documents and tell Congress this week he witnessed "lies, racism and cheating" during a decade of working with Trump , the Wall Street Journal reports.
The state of play: Cohen is also expected to say during his public House Oversight Committee testimony on Wednesday that Trump directed him to carry out other unscrupulous deeds, some of which he alleges made him a felon. The WSJ, which hadn't seen the financial documents Cohen was set to produce, said he will "allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes."
At a half-dozen events 2020 candidates held in Iowa over the weekend, attendees barely mentioned President Trump — and not a single person asked about Robert Mueller’s investigation or Russia.
The big picture: Instead, most of the questions were about policies — most often health care, climate and immigration.
India said Monday night it launched airstrikes across the ceasefire line inside Pakistan's territory in response to a deadly terrorist attack on the Indian side of the disputed Kashmir region.
Why it matters: The strikes mark an escalation of tensions between the two alliesof the United States — and both countries have nuclear weapons. The U.S. sees India as key to its Indo-Pacific strategy and Pakistan as a vital partner in negotiations with Taliban leaders over the future of its neighbor Afghanistan, with talks in Qatar this week. However, former U.S. envoy to the UN Nikki Haley said on Tuesday the U.S. should cease giving Pakistan aid. "Pakistan ... has a long history of harboring terrorists who have killed US troops in Afghanistan," she wrote in a blog for her new policy group, Stand America Now.
Why it matters: President Trump’s elder daughter and White House senior adviser discussed in the interview, to be broadcast on Sunday, whether the 2020 presidential election would be centered around her father's capitalism versus the Democratic party’s perceived pivot toward socialism. She said the U.S. economy was "doing very well" under her father's presidency. When asked what she would say to people to whom Ocasio-Cortez's new deal policy appealed, Trump said: "I don’t think most Americans, in their heart, want to be given something. ... People want to work for what they get. So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want."
Sen. Bernie Sanders has received $10 million from 359,914 donors since launching his 2020 presidential bid last week Tuesday, campaign officials told the New York Times in a report Monday, cementing him as the financial front-runner in an increasingly crowded Democratic field.
The details: Officials reportedly said almost 39% of the donors have used email addresses that weren't previously given to the Sanders campaign — suggesting that the senator is expanding the donor network for his second White House bid (though some may have updated their contact information). In the first 24 hours of his announcement, the campaign had said Sanders raised $5.9 million from 225,000 individuals donors.
