The Department of Justice on Monday announced a slew of lawsuits targeting New Jersey, California and King County, Washington, over laws and policies that the agency claims make it harder to enforce federal immigration law.
Why it matters: The administration has long railed against "sanctuary cities" and has been rolling out retaliatory actions against states, counties and cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement.
Attorney General Bill Barr confirmed Monday that the Justice Department "established an intake process" for information Rudy Giuliani gathered about the Bidens in Ukraine.
The latest: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to Barr Monday afternoon demanding answers as to why the department is receiving information from Giuliani outside of normal channels, especially in light of reports that he is under investigation by the Southern District of New York.
Matt Schlapp, chair of the Conservative Political Action Conference, said in an interview with Full Court Press Sunday that he would be afraid for Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-Utah) safety if the former presidential candidate attended the yearly conservative conference.
Driving the news: Romney has faced substantial blowback from Trump loyalists in the Republican Party over his vote last week to convict the president in his impeachment trial.Schlapp had already announced on Twitter that Romney was "formally NOT invited" to CPAC after his vote to call new impeachment witnesses.
Sen. Bernie Sanders' and Pete Buttigieg's campaigns are both seeking a partial recanvass of Iowa caucus results, the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) said in a statement Monday.
What's next: The limited requests, which together amount to a review of 85 precincts, will be assessed by an IDP committee to determine within 48 hours whether they meet the standard for a recanvass.
Amazon wants to depose President Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Defense Secretary James Mattis as part of its lawsuit against the Pentagon for granting a $10 billion cloud computing contract to Microsoft, court documents filed on Monday show.
Why it matters: Amazon claims the decision last year to hand Microsoft a $10 billion contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) was influenced by Trump, who has repeatedly and publicly taken shots at Amazon and its owner Jeff Bezos.
The White House is asking for a boost to this year's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget, a proposal that includes 60,000 detention beds — 6,000 more than last year's budget proposal and around 15,000 more than ICE actually received.
Why it matters: It is a "wildly large" ask, an administration official told Axios. "It's almost too much money absent any sort of immigration reform."
President Trump is expected to double down on big spending and tax cuts when he releases his budget proposal for fiscal year 2021 later today.
The big picture: The budget proposes increases in defense spending and other categories and also assumes the annual budget deficit will fall from more than $1 trillion in 2020 to around $200 billion, largely as a result of increased U.S. growth.
Congress says it's trying again to pass legislation protecting patients from surprise medical bills, but it doesn't appear to have resolved any of the fights that derailed the effort late last year.
The big picture: Surprise billing is the unique issue that splits lawmakers not by party, but by which industry group — insurers or providers — they sympathize with more. And both industries are fighting hard for their favored solution.
Donald Trump's campaign call for all Muslims to be barred from entering the United States has morphed over the past threeyears into a complex web of travel and immigration restrictions placed, to varying degrees, on 7% of the world's population.
The big picture: While most eyes were on impeachment and Iowa, President Trump recently extended restrictions to six additional countries — widening the ban and ignoring the massive outcry it has created.
Mike Bloomberg's campaign feels corporate. It's calm, orderly and punctual. His audiences clap politely, and you can't walk two steps without running into a paid staffer with talking points. Nobody whoops or yells. Nothing is left to chance. No expense is spared. The candidate is self-consciously low-key.
The big picture: After being immersed in Donald Trump's freewheeling White House and campaign for more than four years, I found the day I spent flying around with Bloomberg's campaign last week in California to be a foreign experience.
"American Factory," the first Netflix film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground, won an Oscar for best documentary feature Sunday.
What they're saying: The former president and first lady both tweeted their congratulations to filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, who directed the film, which documents what happened to an Ohio factory after it was reopened by a Chinese billionaire. "So glad to see their heart and honesty recognized — because the best stories are rarely tidy or perfect," Michelle Obama said. "But that's where the truth so often lies."
