Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) wrote in a CNN op-ed on Wednesday that he learned that the State Department is currently working to sell thousands of additional precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey publicly called on Wednesday for charges to be filed against the arresting officer seen kneeling for several minutes on the neck of George Floyd, a black man who died shortly after the police encounter on Monday.
Right-wing media and some conservative lawmakers have taken the rare step of criticizing President Trump over his tweeting of conspiracy theories that accuse MSNBC host Joe Scarborough of murdering a congressional aide, Lori Klausutis, in 2001.
The state of play: Trump has received widespread backlash over his tweets spreading the baseless accusations, including from Klausutis' widower. Authorities at the time suspected no foul play in Klausutis' death and ruled that it was a result of an irregular heartbeat that caused her to collapse and strike her head.
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has been scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 3 as part of the Republican-led inquiry into the origins of the Russia investigation, the panel announced Wednesday.
Why it matters: Rosenstein is the first witness slated to testify in the committee's investigation. After President Trump fired FBI director James Comey in 2017, Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference and any potential coordination with the Trump campaign.
President Trump and his allies have made a lot of noise about purported Obama administration wrongdoing via the “unmasking” of then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn’s identity in reports of intercepted conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016–17 presidential transition.
The big picture: This is, at bottom, a manufactured controversy. Neither the interception of Kislyak’s calls nor the requests by senior U.S. officials to know whom he was speaking with about sanctions relief were unusual in and of themselves, though the context — the Russian election interference scheme in 2016 — certainly was.
Acting Senate Intelligence Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned his fellow Republicans in an interview with Politico not to fall victim to Russian disinformation as they move to probe the involvement of Obama administration officials, including Joe Biden, in the opening of the Russia investigation.
The big picture: Rubio has so far been reluctant to embrace ideas like "Obamagate," the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama ordered such investigations in order to undermine the incoming Trump administration, and he has distanced himself from GOP-led investigations into Biden's affairs in Ukraine.
Before former Vice President Joe Biden began his virtual event with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf Wednesday, he addressed the recent officer-involved death of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis.
What they're saying: Biden referenced the 2014 deathof Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died after a New York police officer used an illegal chokehold on him during an arrest.
Twitter made headlines Tuesday after labeling two election-related tweets from President Trump as potentially misleading — the company’s first action against the president’s tweets, which often test its policies on misinformation and abuse.
The big picture: Twitter's unprecedented move, which swiftly drew Trump's fury, was just one of four controversies over the last 24 hours involving tech platforms grappling with free speech issues. And all of them, Axios' Sara Fischer and I report, reflect what a partisan issue the policing of social media content has become.
President Trump threatened to shut down or regulate social media platforms due to anti-conservative bias in a pair of Wednesday tweets — the day after Twitter's first fact-check against the president's claims on its platform.
Reality check: While his claim that social media companies target conservatives isn't new, an Axios analysis last year found that stories about the 2020 presidential election that drove the most engagement online often came from right-wing media outlets.
President Trump's exuberance around today's scheduled SpaceX launch — including his decision to travel to Florida to watch — goes beyond a personal fascination with astronauts, rockets, and how to make money and wield power in the next frontier.
The bottom line: There's a presidential election in November, and the U.S. space program enjoys wide support across party lines. It's good politics for Trump, at least for now.
Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested at a virtual fundraiser on Tuesday that President Trump would likely contest the 2020 results if he does not win reelection, per a pool report.
What he's saying: While discussing foreign policy plans, Biden said on the call that Trump would "probably contest we didn't win." Biden previously noted in April that Trump may try to delay the 2020 election amid the coronavirus pandemic because "that’s the only way he thinks he can possibly win."
Biden is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, pitting him against Trump as they head into the November contets.
The two have already launched feverish attack ads, with polling suggesting a tight race.
What he's saying: "Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post," the president tweeted. "Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!"
