Apr 3, 2019

Wilbur Ross refuses second invitation to testify on Trump's budget

Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has turned down a second request from the House Appropriations subcommittee to testify on President Trump's proposed budget, Politico reports.

Details: Ross said testifying in front of the subcommittee would take away from the important budget discussions happening, per Politico. This comes a day after Ross was subpoenaed by the House Oversight committee to answer questions about the citizenship question on the 2020 census.

Go deeper: House Oversight subpoenas Wilbur Ross over census citizenship question

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Orion Rummler

1 min ago - Politics & Policy

Appeals court allows House Democrats to continue lawsuit for Don McGahn testimony

Don McGahn in an October 2018 Cabinet meeting. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A D.C. appeals court on Friday allowed House Democrats to continue their case for testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn before the House Judiciary Committee.

Why it matters, via the AP: McGahn was one of the most important witnesses in Robert Mueller's investigation. He appears on 66 pages of the Mueller report and played a central role in some of its juiciest revelations, including the fact that President Trump once asked him to fire Mueller.

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Dan Primack

1 hour ago - Economy & Business

There's little consensus on TikTok's specific national security threat

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

TikTok has become a Rorschach test for how U.S. politicians view China, with little consensus on the specifics of its threat to homeland security.

The big picture: Much of what D.C. fears about TikTok is fear itself, and that's reflected in President Trump's executive order to ban the app by Sept. 20 if it's not sold by parent company ByteDance — alongside another focused on Chinese messaging app WeChat and its parent company Tencent.

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Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Ursula Perano

2 hours ago - World

U.S. sanctions Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam

Photo: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

The Treasury Department on Friday placed sanctions on Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, following months of tension as she has allowed continued overreach by Beijing to subvert Hong Kong's autonomy.

Why it matters: It's the toughest sanction yet imposed on China for its destruction of Hong Kong’s relatively free political system.