Pope Francis has donated $500,000 to help migrant communities in Mexico, providing food, shelter and other basic necessities, reports ABC News.
The big picture: The donation will be distributed among 27 Mexico-based projects associated with 16 Mexican diocese and congregations, aiming to help 75,000 migrants, according to a release from the organization that gives people the opportunity donate to the Catholic Church, and where the donations are managed.
President Trump's announcement on Friday that the U.S. will “unsign” the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) further erodes the global norms of international weapons sales.
Why it matters: The ATT is intended to contribute to international peace and security and reduce the human suffering caused by illegal and irresponsible arms trading. The agreement also promotes transparency and accountability in a global market that's worth nearly $100 billion a year but has largely been handled in the shadows.
White male candidates continue to lead the 2020 presidential polls, despite this being the most diverse Democratic primary field in history.
Why it matters: The party and the country are having real conversations about race and gender in politics. Yet those factors aren't necessarily decisive for Democratic voters — so after all this, they could still end up with a white guy as their nominee.
After a campaign event on Friday, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said she is neutral about her state's Gov. Andrew Cuomo throwing his support behind former Vice President Joe Biden for the 2020 presidential election, reports AP.
"Our governor can endorse whoever he likes, but I am the best candidate to defeat President Trump, and I will."
— Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to reporters in New Hampshire
Texas officials reached an agreement with a number of civil rights organizations on Friday to halt the review and effort to purge tens of thousands of suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls, putting an end to multiple federal lawsuits challenging their controversial plan.
The backdrop: In January, officials rolled out a list of almost 100,000 people on its voter rolls flagged as possible non-U.S. citizens, and said that 58,000 of them may have voted in one or more election. Local election officials were asked to launch a review for potential removal of those individuals from the voter roll.
Approximately 31% of Americans believe President Trump has been exonerated after the Mueller report came out, while 58% believe the president lied to the public, according to a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News.
The backdrop: Trump's legal team characterized the Mueller report as a "total victory." However, the president has spent this past week addressing some of the report's claims, including that his staff does not fail to obey him. Prior to the Mueller report, 29% of Americans believed Trump had been cleared of wrongdoing.
University of Virginia's head basketball coach Tony Bennett announced the national championship team will not be going to the White House citing scheduling conflicts, after winning the national title for the first time in the school's history last month.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced in an email on Friday that the campaign will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, and plans to return $30,250 to those who have already donated.
The big picture: The decision comes 1 day after former Vice President Joe Biden announced his presidential candidacy at the home of a Comcast executive, per Politico. Buttigieg recently found himself in the hot seat, per the Huffington Post, for being the only high-profile Democratic candidate to actively accept money from powerful Washington lobbyists.
Nearly 1,300 migrants escaped a detention center near the Mexico-Guatemala border over shortages of food and sleeping space, reports AP.
Why this matters: This recent breakout highlights the pressure that's been placed on the Mexican government following an influx of new arrivals, reports Reuters. Mexico has already returned 15,000 migrants during the past 30 days following threats from President Trump to close the border if the country didn't reign in the migrant caravans, per Reuters.
Former Vice President Joe Biden raised $6.3 million during the first 24 hours of his 2020 presidential campaign, his campaign announced Friday.
The big picture: Biden raised more than any other candidate in the Democratic field over their first 24 hours, besting Beto O'Rourke ($6.1 million) and Sen. Bernie Sanders ($5.9 million). While the campaign said that 97% of its online donations were under $200 — with an average online donation of $41 — it's worth noting that Biden held a big-money fundraiser in Philadelphia on Thursday night, headed by Comcast executive David Cohen.
President Trump signed a formal request for the Senate to discontinue the United States' ratification process for the global Arms Trade Treaty on Friday.
The big picture: Russia, North Korea and Syria are the only other countries that oppose this treaty, which "seeks to prevent illicit arms transfers that fuel destructive conflicts, making it harder to conduct weapon sales in violation of arms embargoes," per Washington Post reporter Missy Ryan.
Vice President Mike Pence's former chief of staff, Josh Pitcock, has responded for the first time to speculation in conservative media outlets that FBI agents wanted to use him to infiltrate President-elect Trump's transition team in 2016.
Driving the news: In a statement to Axios, Pitcock said he had "no contact" with either former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok or former FBI attorney Lisa Page — the officials at the center of the speculation — and "took zero actions on their behalf."
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who jumped into the 2020 race this week, said he won't commit to a one-term presidency during an interview Friday on "The View."
The big picture: A one-term limit had been floated by pundits as a way to make the 76-year-old stand out in a crowded field. Last month, Biden also pondered announcing Stacey Abrams as his vice presidential nominee out of the gate, which didn't materialize. He said on "The View," "I think it's important for people, it's a legitimate question to ask about my age," adding that he believes his age brings "experience and wisdom."
In his first public remarks since the Mueller report's release, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Thursday Russian hacking was "only the tip of the iceberg" in the country's plans to "influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America," per the Washington Post.
What he's saying: Rosenstein, who spoke at the Public Servants Dinner of the Armenian Bar Association, also defended the decision not to charge President Trump with obstruction of justice as a result of the Mueller report, saying, "The rule of law is our most important principle. ... As President Trump pointed out, 'We govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather [than] … the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.'"
Trump told reporters outside the White House on Friday that Robert E. Lee was "a great general, whether you like it or not," continuing his praise for a Confederate figure whose statue was at the heart of the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The big picture: Trump has long defended Confederate statues around the South, calling them part of "the history and culture of our great country" and comparing Lee to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in a 2017 tweetstorm just after the events in Charlottesville.
Onstage and on the air, 2020 Democrats are talking about topics like health care, student loans and reparations, but in the online scramble for donations and e-mail addresses, Trump-centric topics dominate the left's conversation.
The big picture: Hot-button issues like gun control, abortion, immigration and climate change are among the topics that have dominated digital advertising — mostly on Facebook and Google‚ since the midterms, according to data provided to Axios by the progressive group Tech for Campaigns.
After his blockbuster "FEAR," which comes out in paperback this fall, Bob Woodward tells me he's considering a second book on President Trump, perhaps before the election: "I'm not sure. Let's see what the story is."
What he's saying: Woodward told me that after the Mueller report, he continues to think that the story is "what Trump does as president" — from how well he understands that "preventing World War III is Job 1," to the economic risks he's taking with tariffs and redoing trade deals, to what he's doing with North Korea, the Middle East and China.
Former Vice President Joe Biden announced his presidential candidacy on Thursday, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the opportunity to ask supporters to donate to his own presidential campaign in an email with the subject line: "Joe Biden."
"It's a big day in the Democratic primary and we're hoping to end it strong. Not with a fundraiser in the home of a corporate lobbyist, but with an overwhelming number of individual donations in response to today's news. Contribute before midnight. It would mean A LOT to our campaign."
A federal judge in California on Thursday imposed a 6-month deadline on the Trump administration to identify potentially thousands of migrant children who were separated from their families after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year.
Details: The government had said it would take officials up to 2 years to comb through the records of 47,000 migrant children who were in custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018. U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw's ruling came in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Earlier this year, an internal government watchdog found that thousands of migrant children may have been separated before the administration began collecting data through its "zero-tolerance" policy, officially announced in April 2018. Last year, Sabraw ordered the administration reunite more than 2,000 migrant children with their parents.
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