Politics

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Saturday said that U.S. sanctions on Iran are leading to economic pain that could lead to a “successful revolution,” contrasting with administration comments that government change in Tehran is not U.S. policy. “I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them,” said Giuliani, who spoke in his own capacity though …

The Washington Post reports: An array of White House aides, playing the role of various senators on the Judiciary Committee, quizzed Kavanaugh last week about his sex life and other personal matters in an attempt to prepare him for a hearing that would inevitably be uncomfortable. In his answers during the practice runs, aides said, Kavanaugh condemned sexual assault and …

NBC News reports: Six weeks before the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats hold a 12-point lead in congressional preference among registered voters, with nearly six-in-ten saying they’d like to see significant change in the direction President Donald Trump has been leading the country, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.  The results suggest a political environment where Democrats …

The New York Times reports: The woman who has accused Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers said on Saturday that she was willing to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but asked for more time to continue negotiating the details of her appearance. It is now up to Senator Charles E. Grassley, …

NBC News reports: A press adviser helping lead the Senate Judiciary Committee’s response to a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has stepped down amid evidence he was fired from a previous political job in part because of a sexual harassment allegation against him. Garrett Ventry, 29, who served as a communications aide to the committee chaired …

The Hill reports: The New York Times on Saturday defended its bombshell report on Friday that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed secretly recording conversations with President Trump last year and proposed the possibility of administration officials invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. The Times’s deputy managing editor Matt Purdy wrote in a statement Saturday that …

NBC News reports: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was joking when he discussed wearing a wire to secretly record President Donald Trump and does not believe Trump should be removed from office through the use of procedures outlined in the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, according to Justice Department officials who requested anonymity to discuss the conversation. In a May, 16, 2017 …

PBS reports: Republican Sen. Ted Cruz will face Democratic challenger Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Friday in Dallas, the first debate of the Texas Senate race. The hourlong debate is being hosted by the Dallas Morning News, Southern Methodist University and KXAS-TV. The debate — the first of three scheduled debates in the race — will take place at Southern Methodist …

Politico reports: The Senate Judiciary Committee is giving Christine Blasey Ford attorney’s until the end of the day Friday to work out terms of next week’s proposed hearing on Ford’s allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, according to a Republican senator. The GOP is offering to hold the hearing on Wednesday after Ford sought Thursday and …

The Associated Press reports: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is denying a report in The New York Times that he suggested last year he secretly record President Donald Trump in the White House to expose chaos in the administration. Rosenstein says the story is “inaccurate and factually incorrect.” The report also says Rosenstein floated the idea of trying to remove …

The Daily Beast reports: If you visited Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ (R-WA) campaign website in 2014, you would have had no doubt what she wanted to do with Obamacare. She wanted to kill it. Four years later, Rodgers’ hatred for President Obama’s signature domestic law has not just softened on her campaign website, it’s disappeared. Her site today doesn’t make …

USA Today reports: Former Vice President Joe Biden regrets how Anita Hill was treated 27 years ago and hopes the same thing doesn’t happen to Christine Blasey Ford. “What should happen is the woman should be given the benefit of the doubt and not be, you know, abused again by the system,” Biden told NBC’s “Today” show in an interview …

Reuters reports: Facebook Inc said on Thursday that it would no longer dispatch employees to the offices of political campaigns to offer support ahead of elections, as it did with U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2016 race. The company and other major online ad sellers including Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter Inc have long offered free dedicated assistance to …

The Hill reports: Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said on Thursday that people need to “lighten up” over his joke mocking sexual misconduct accusations brought against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Earlier on Thursday at an election debate, Norman quipped that “Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out saying she was groped by Abraham Lincoln.” Norman’s comments prompted a whirlwind of …

The Washington Examiner reports: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., stated definitively Friday that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed soon, despite the controversy generated by allegations that the nominee engaged in sexual misconduct. “You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics,” McConnell said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “But here is what I want to …

CNBC reports: A prominent conservative commentator teased the revelation of “compelling evidence” that would exonerate Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh of a sexual assault allegation, electrifying the nominee’s supporters on Twitter. But the argument laid out Thursday, which appeared to suggest that accuser Christine Blasey Ford had mistaken Kavanaugh for another person, was met with a backlash from many on …

The New York Times reports: This year, there are 21 openly L.G.B.T. people nominated for Congress and four for governor, all Democrats, according to the L.G.B.T.Q. Victory Fund, a nonpartisan group that supports and tracks gay and transgender political candidates. Eight years ago, the first year the group started tracking candidates, there were only five openly L.G.B.T. people nominated for …

The Hill reports: The Cook Political Report on Friday updated its rating for Texas’s heated Senate race, moving it from leans Republican to toss-up amid new polls showing Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) in a tightening race with Sen. Ted Cruz (R). The change in rating Friday came amid two other Senate race changes, with the prediction website changing the race …

Bloomberg reports: President Trump likes to mock Nancy Pelosi, but a private survey conducted for the Republican National Committee finds that she’s actually more popular—and beats the president when the midterm election is framed as a contest between the two. The internal poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek, asks registered voters who they support “when …

Politico reports: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will face a barrage of congressional inquiries into his business dealings, travels, political activities and relations with industry if Democrats win the House in November, according to lawmakers who hope to lead the chamber next year. Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has already unsuccessfully demanded a …