Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned Sunday evening after a tumultuous tenure in the Trump administration.
Between the lines: It may well be that Nielsen was the one who formally resigned — but the formalities don't really matter. Trump has wanted Nielsen gone for months because he believes she's "weak" on immigration, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the president's thinking tell Axios.
2020 Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke defended his criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while campaigning in Iowa on Sunday, arguing that the U.S.-Israel relationship must "transcend partisanship" and "transcend a prime minister who is racist" in order to preserve the alliance.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on the campaign trail in Iowa that people convicted of felonies should "absolutely" be able to vote while behind bars, calling on more states to join Vermont and Maine in allowing the practice, the Des Moines Register reports.
"In my state, what we do is separate. You’re paying a price, you committed a crime, you’re in jail. That's bad. But you’re still living in American society and you have a right to vote. I believe in that, yes, I do."
The big picture: Sanders is the first 2020 candidate to publicly support this idea. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently endorsed enfranchising felons who have completed their sentence, but stopped short of saying they should be allowed to vote while in prison. Currently, Iowa and Kentucky are the only remaining states that impose lifetime voting bans for people with felony records unless the governor individually restores their rights.
Some Democratic candidates for president are adding Fox News to their campaign stops as the primary battle heats up, hoping to reach as many potential voters as possible.
Why it matters: The debate among Democrats over whether or how the party should engage with Fox News is sowing division within the party ahead of 2020.
The majority of 2020 Democratic hopefuls are sponsoring or considering plans to dismantle the electoral college. Their pledges follow a growing movement for change at the state level and represent frustration over twice losing to Republican candidates in the past 20 years — Donald Trump and George W. Bush — despite winning the popular vote.
By the numbers: Eight Democratic 2020 candidates support eliminating the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, per the Washington Post. Four Democrats are open to the idea, and only 3 want to keep it.
President Trump tried to secure votes for his 2020 re-election bid at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting on Saturday, speaking to a largely supportive crowd that frequently chanted "4 more years" and displayed a united departure from the splintered view the group had of Trump in 2017.
The big picture: RJC board members, who are confident that 2020 is the cycle where Republicans can finally make real inroads with the Jewish vote, have planned a $10 million investment to garner Jewish support for Trump, Politico reports. But there is some doubt that Trump's bid with the RJC will pay off in 2020, despite his heightened rhetoric that "the Democrats hate Jewish people" and his status in the RJC as "the most pro-Israel president ever in history."
2020 Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg identified as a capitalist on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, but noted that he believes democracy is "more important" than capitalism.
The book out Tuesday by Politico's Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer, "A Hill to Die On," is full of juicy nuggets about Congress from Election Day '16 through the shutdown (some gleaned from phone calls they were allowed to eavesdrop on).
Here's a sneak peek at one of my favorite recurring themes — the fraught relationship between President Trump and former House Speaker Paul Ryan: On Oct. 10, 2016, three days after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, Ryan held "a rare conference call with all House Republicans. Ryan's message on the call was blunt: Republicans should feel free to abandon Trump."
The Trump administration said in a court filing that it could take 2 years for federal officials to identify the thousands of migrant children that were most likely separated from their parents before the government began collecting data through its "zero-tolerance" immigration policy in April 2018, the New York Times reports.
Details: The administration plans to apply a statistical analysis to about 47,000 children in order to locate families who entered the U.S. on or after July 1, 2017 — the earliest known date of separation — or when families had their child detained and released to a sponsor before a judge's reunification order on June 26, 2018. According to Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, about 2,800 children have been reunified with their families or "situated according to their parents' wishes."
Florida Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell were verbally denied access into the Homestead temporary shelter for unaccompanied migrant children last Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Miami Herald reports.
The big picture: The congresswomen say HHS is in violation of a law passed last year that says members of Congress can’t be prevented from entering "any U.S. facility used for maintaining custody of or otherwise housing unaccompanied alien children" for oversight purposes. HHS said they require a two-week visit notification from visitors. The for-profit Homestead facility, owned by Comprehensive Health Services, is the largest shelter for migrant children in the country, as reported by NPR.
Democrats would "leave Israel out there" if they won in 2020 and they've allowed anti-Semitism to "take root in their party and their country," President Trump told the Republican Jewish Coalition conference Saturday.
Details: During his speech in Las Vegas, Trump called the asylum program "a scam" and mocked its applicants and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). He explained why the U.S. now recognized Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights and referred to Israeli PM Netanyahu as "your prime minister" while addressing the gathering of Jewish Americans.
President Trump visited the southern border in Calexico, Calif. on Friday, a day after the White House retracted its nomination of 30-year border official Ron Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in favor of going in a "tougher" direction.
What he's saying: "It's a colossal surge and it's overwhelming our immigration system, and we can't let that happen. So, as I say, and this is our new statement: The system is full. Can't take you anymore. ... Our country is full," Trump said on Friday. Before his nomination was revoked, Vitiello was expected to join the president on the border trip.
