Beto O'Rourke told supporters at a Fort Worth rally on Friday that he would put former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in charge of voting rights initiatives if he were elected president, CBS reports.
Driving the news: Abrams, a rising star in the Democratic Party, has fielded offers from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Vice PresidentJoe Biden for respective Senate and 2020 White House runs. O'Rourke reportedly said at the rally he spoke with Abrams on the phone "to thank her for all the work that she's doing on voting rights."
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who exceeded the highest amount raised by any Democratic 2020 candidate in the first 24 hours, plans to allow limited media access at his fundraising events, Politico reports.
Why it matters: Closed-door comments at fundraising events have haunted presidential candidates in the past, like Hillary Clinton's 2016 "basket of deplorables" moment. Some veteran fundraisers have called Biden’s move unusual, according to Politico, but it marks a strategy focused on the optics of transparency.
Beto O'Rourke showed support via Twitter on Friday for South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, in response to anti-LGBTQ protesters demonstrating at the latter candidate's event in Dallas.
Why it matters: Buttigieg would be the first openly gay U.S. president if elected. So far, anti-LGBTQ statements have been made by hecklers at 2 Iowa campaign events, in addition to his Friday address at the Dallas County Democratic Dinner, per CNN.
Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi announced on Saturday he will not seek a fifth term, declining to run for reelection in 2020, Politico reports.
Details: Enzi, a 75-year-old Republican, who was first elected to his seat in 1996, chairs the Senate Budget Committee. He will retire at the end of this term. Per Politico, the seat is expected to stay in Republican hands. The Washington Post reports he will spend the remainder of his term concentrating on budget reform.
Trump retweeted far-right internet personality Paul Joseph Watson on Saturday, who was banned from Instagram and Facebook this week for spreading "dangerous" extremist rhetoric and violating hate speech policies.
Why it matters: Real-world hate crimes are putting pressure on Facebook and other platforms to crack down on pages and accounts that have repeatedly shared false information or hate speech. The president is expressing support for one of these extremist internet personalities through retweets.
Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly joined the board of Caliburn International, an organization known to operate shelters for unaccompanied migrant children, reports CBS News.
The backdrop: Prior to jumping into the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly sat on the board of advisors for DC Capital Partners, now the owner of Caliburn.During Kelly's tenure in Trump's White House — first as Secretary of Homeland Security and later as chief of staff — the administration implemented aggressive new immigration enforcement measures. Caliburn International — which owns Comprehensive Health Services, the only private company operating such shelters, per CBS — counts Florida's Homestead facility among its locations, has successfully sidestepped inspections by state child welfare regulators.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) submitted a letter on Friday to special counsel Robert Mueller inviting him to testify before the Senate "regarding any misrepresentation by the Attorney General of the substance of [his and Attorney General William Barr's] phone call."
Details: In the letter, Graham indicates that Mueller did not challenge the accuracy of Barr's summary of the report, but wants more of the report revealed — particularly the executive summaries about obstruction of justice.
As part of what House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called "one more good faith attempt to negotiate," the committee issued a final deadline on Friday for Attorney General Bill Barr to honor his subpoena to produce an unredacted copy of the Mueller report: 9am ET on Monday.
President Trump said that former White House counsel Don McGahn and other former administration officials should not testify before Congress in a Fox News interview on Thursday.
Driving the news: McGahn, a key witness from the Mueller report, was subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on May 21. Attorney General Bill Barr canceled his scheduled appearance before the committee on Thursday, which caused House Democrats to consider holding him in contempt of Congress.
In the run-up to 2020, power over debates, nominating contests and the national convention is moving from the Democratic National Committee to grassroots activists.
The big picture: The rules to qualify for next month's debates include an emphasis on grassroots donors, who helped Democrats take back the House in 2018.
The California Senate voted to pass a bill on Thursday that would require presidential candidates to publicly share their tax returns from the past 5 years to appear on the primary ballots, the AP reports.
The big picture: This is part of a growing trend around the country where states are trying to pass similar bills to prevent President Trump from appearing on the 2020 ballot. Such proposals are also a response to Trump's refusal to release his tax returns.
In September 2016, under the guise of discussing foreign policy, a woman who went by the name of Azra Turk asked Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in a London pub whether the campaign was working with Russia, the New York Times reports.
The backdrop: Turk, masquerading as a Cambridge University research assistant, was in fact a government investigator sent by the FBI as part of a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. According to the Mueller report, the inquiry was launched after Papadopoulos suggested to an Australian diplomat that the campaign had "received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton."
A newly filed suit on Thursday is challenging an order issued last month by Attorney General William Barr that would deny bail to thousands of migrants seeking asylum and force them to wait in jail until their cases are resolved.
Details: Barr had said the order will go into effect in July. But the suit filed by the American Immigration Council and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project seeks to prevent the measure from ever going into effect. The groups are amending an original complaint in a Seattle federal court that challenges the slow pace of bond hearings for asylum seekers in custody.
/2019/05/01/1556738156984.gif?w=3840)
