President Trump is departing on the longest trip of his presidency today: a five-country, 12-day tour of Asia intended to strengthen international resolve to denuclearize North Korea, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and advance economic partnerships through fair trade.
Why it matters: The stakes for this trip couldn't be higher. North Korea is more dangerous than ever, and China continues to steal U.S. intellectual property and demand that American investors hand over their technology to Chinese state entities. And political uncertainty remains at a high, as the administration continues to throw international trade agreements into flux.
Sam Clovis, the Trump campaign's former national co-chair, has withdrawn his nomination to the top science post in the Department of Agriculture, per the AP. The Washington Post broke the news earlier this morning that Clovis had confirmed in a letter to Sen. Debbie Stabenow that he had no formal academic credentials in agricultural science or research. Clovis also recently found himself at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation after corresponding with indicted former foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos.
Hillary Clinton is defending her campaign's role in the infamous dossier on Trump. In an interview on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah last night, Clinton claimed they merely paid for legal opposition research, which was initially started by a Republican donor.
Throwback: Donald Trump Jr. had also claimed that his meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer was only "opposition research," but Hillary said that her actions were different and approved by her campaign lawyer. Clinton said that Trump "had to know that people were making outreach to Russians, to the highest levels of the Kremlin, in order to help him, to hurt me, but more importantly to sow this divisiveness."
"The hackers who [tried to upend] the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press":
Why it matters: "The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe — from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow."
