Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke gave one of the clearest signals yet about the possibility of announcing a run for president in 2020, telling Vanity Fair's Joe Hagan in a profile published Wednesday: "I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment."
Details: O'Rourke, who gained national prominence during his campaign for Senate last year — ultimately lost by a narrow margin to GOP incumbent Ted Cruz. He could announce his bid as early as this week, per multiple reports. Hagan says that O'Rourke, 46, privately met with former President Obama in November, who asked the Texas Democrat to examine whether his path to the Oval Office is clear and if he could win Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
You've probably never heard of Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar, Florida. But that's not stopping him from forming an exploratory committee to run for president.
Details: Messam was just re-elected as mayor last night, a victory that is one factor in his decision to move toward a presidential bid, according to an advisor for his campaign. His team often refers to Messam as a "dark horse" candidate, but they're banking on a path to victory through appealing to black voters in southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and both of the Carolinas.
Neomi Rao has been confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 53-46 vote, per the Washington Post.
The big picture: Rao is the 36th circuit court judge appointed under President Trump. She will succeed Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the nation's second-highest court, which feeds judges to the Supreme Court. Rao faced criticism during her confirmation hearing over her controversial past writings on gender equality, sexual assault and race.
After being sentenced in Virginia last week to 47 months in prison for bank and tax fraud, Paul Manafort was sentenced in D.C. to 73 months for crimes related to his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. 30 months of the sentence will overlap with the previous sentence.
"It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved in this case."
— Judge Amy Berman Jackson
Why it matters: President Trump's 69-year-old former campaign chairman has been sentenced to a total of 90 months, or 7.5 years in prison. Manafort pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy last September, but violated his cooperation agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller by lying to investigators — eliminating any chance he had of receiving leniency from D.C. Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
Michael Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis told Axios that Cohen and his legal team "blame ourselves, not anybody else," for not clearly explaining what he called the "two Michael Cohens."
Why it matters: Cohen attorney‘s Michael Monico sent a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings Tuesday night clarifying that Cohen never asked President Trump to grant him a pardon, despite Trump tweeting that Cohen had "directly asked." The letter comes amid questions whether Cohen lied again to Congress.
With the U.S. nearly alone among major countries in allowing 737 Max 8 jets to keep flying, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, made a personal appeal to President Trump, the New York Times reports in its lead story.
With signs pointing increasingly to a 2020 presidential run by former Vice President Joe Biden, here's the case he'd make, based on our conversations with current and former advisers:
President Trump and the Republican National Committee publicly criticized the New York attorney general’s office and state Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) Tuesday over an investigation into his family business.
The big picture:The New York Times first reported the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas late to Deutsche Bank AG and Investors Bank over their financing of Trump Organization projects for a civil investigation. Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen testified that Trump inflated his total assets in financial statements. He presented Congress with statements he alleged were submitted to Deutsche Bank.
The Senate on Tuesday voted largely along party lines to confirm Paul Matey — who served as deputy chief of counsel to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) during the Bridgegate scandal — to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that has handled cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.
The big picture: Matey is the 35th circuit nominee to be confirmed under President Trump, a historic number at this point in his presidency, amid ongoing Republican efforts to impose a conservative imprint on the federal judiciary. Matey's confirmation marks the first time Trump flipped an appeals court previously dominated by Democratic presidents' nominees, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) breaking with his party and voting in favor the nominee. The Third Circuit now has a 7-6 majority of GOP picks and 1 pending vacancy.
Andrew Yang, a former tech executive who founded Venture for America, announced Tuesday that he has qualified for the first round of the Democratic primary debate by raising money from more than 65,000 unique donors.
The big picture: Yang's top 3 policy concerns are universal basic income, Medicare for All and a "human-centered capitalism" approach to the economy. His proposal for universal basic income, his central campaign issue, is grounded in a belief that millions of jobs will be wiped away due to automation.
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan will likely face a grilling today when he testifies before the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, but if history is any guide the hearing will make little difference to Wall Street.
What it means: It's the company's fourth appearance on the Hill since the bank's cross-selling scandal came to light in 2016. Previous hearings haven’t moved its share price to the downside.
Presidential budget proposals — all of them, no matter the president — are aspirational. They are not bills with the potential to be signed into law; they are statements about an administration's priorities.
Between the lines: With that in mind, here are the health care highlights from the budget proposal the White House released yesterday.
The New York Times' Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman get the jump on "Kushner Inc.," a book by investigative journalist Vicky Ward that's out a week from today:
She portrays Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner as two children forged by their domineering fathers — one overinvolved with his son, one disengaged from his daughter — who have climbed to positions of power by disregarding protocol and skirting the rules when they can. And Ms. Ward tries to unravel the narrative that the two serve as stabilizing voices inside an otherwise chaotic White House, depicting them instead as Mr. Trump’s chief enablers. ...
Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum anchor Election Night '18. Photo: Fox News
Top Fox News anchors said they were disappointed by the DNC's rejection of Fox News as a host for one of the 12 party-sanctioned 2020 presidential primary election debates.
Axios' Dan Primack speaks with 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, in this special episode. Hear his position on such issues as automation, whether big tech are monopolies, and more.
Industries in the U.S. that provide food, shelter, clothing and health care often rely on the labor of immigrants — those on work visas, brought here as kids or in the country illegally, according to new data given exclusively to Axios from New American Economy (NAE), a group that supports immigration.
Why it matters: House Democrats are resuming the fight over immigration issues with the reintroduction of the Dream Act, to give legal status to immigrants who came to the U.S., illegally as children.
Rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost her 2018 race for Georgia governor, said Monday a run for presidency in 2020 is "definitely on the table."
Details: Abramshad said in an interview at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival earlier in the day: "2028 would be the earliest I would be ready to stand for president because I would have done the work I thought necessary to be effective in that job."
