North Korea fired missiles, a U.S. warship deployed to the Middle East and unrest continues in Venezuela, but two days after President Trump announced he would appoint him as Defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan spent his Saturday in McAllen, Texas, underscoring his focus on solving the crisis at the border.
1 key quote: "We're not going to leave until the border is secure," Shanahan told Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel during his visit.
Some of President Trump’s top aides, who assume he will be re-elected,are already planning for an epic 2021 spending battle.
What's happening: Senior administration officials — including acting Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought and fiscally conservative chief Mick Mulvaney — have told Republicans that the president doesn't want Congress to strike a spending deal in September when current funding runs out. Instead, Team Trump wants a short-term solution to preserve the ability to fight for massive spending cuts in the fifth year of a Trump presidency.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is favored by 46% of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, up 14 percentage points since last month, according to a new Post and Courier-Change Research Poll.
Why it matters: Biden has developed deep ties to the early voting state throughout his political career, having spent more days in South Carolina "visiting, vacationing or politicking than the rest of the crowded field, combined," according to the Post and Courier. His appeal with black voters will play an especially important role in next February's primary vote.
2020 Democrat Bernie Sanders unveiled a multifaceted, comprehensive plan to help revitalize rural farming communities and break up Big Agriculture corporations like Bayer-Monsanto and John Deere by enacting "Roosevelt-style trust-busting laws."
"For far too long, government farm policies have incentivized a 'get big or get out' approach to agriculture. This approach has consolidated the entire food system, reducing farm net income, and driving farmers off the land in droves. As farms disappear, so do the businesses, jobs, and communities they support."
Behind the scenes, aides to President Trump have long seen Joe Biden as his biggest potential threat in 2020. Now, the president is saying it out loud.
Driving the news: "Looks to me like it’s going to be SleepyCreepy Joe over Crazy Bernie. Everyone else is fading fast!" Trump tweeted Friday. Trump also called Biden the frontrunner in an interview with Politico, mocking him for mistakenly referring to Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher: "Is that a good front runner? I don’t know. That was a beauty."
Every incumbent president since FDR who has avoided a recession in the lead-up to an election year was re-elected.
Why it matters: More Americans are saying they approve of President Trump's handling of the economy, even though they disapprove overall.51% of people disapprove of Trump's job performance in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll out last week, but 51% approve of him on the economy. If he loses, it would be a big break with recent history.
2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris told CNN's Jake Tapper that "we need to seriously take a look" at breaking up Facebook, which she claimed is "essentially a utility that has gone unregulated."
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on ABC's "This Week" that President Trump's stonewalling of congressional oversight — which he considers further obstruction of justice — adds weight to some Democrats' calls for impeachment, but that it may simply be Trump's "perverse way" of dividing the country further.
2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang is using his campaign to warn America about the potentially damaging impact automation could have on the economy — and he's putting an emphasis on truck drivers.
What he's saying: "What are the truck drivers going to do when the robot trucks come and start driving themselves?” Yang asked at a recent rural issues forum in Stuart, Iowa. Yang says the country needs a plan to manage the loss of these jobs, describing truck driving as the "most common job in 29 states."
Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg criticized social conservatives and accused some Democrats of playing "identity politics," exacerbating a "crisis of belonging in this country," in a Las Vegas speech addressing claims of white privilege Saturday.
"What every gay person has in common with every excluded person of any kind is knowing what it's like to see a wall between you and the rest of the world and wonder what it's like on the other side."
President Trump denounced his former counsel Don McGahn on Saturday, following a report that the White House asked the lawyer twice to say publicly that Trump didn't obstruct justice by asking for special counsel Robert Mueller's dismissal.
