Politics

The Guardian reports: Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has laid a ceremonial brick at a Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and said he might one day buy a “holiday home” there. The two-time Republican presidential hopeful and father of the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, used a cement trowel to pave a wall in the …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump said Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should terminate the investigation into Russian election interference “right now,” and called the prosecution of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort “a hoax.” But in an interview Wednesday, two of Trump’s lawyers said Trump was not ordering Sessions to take any specific action. “The president has issued …

The Hill reports: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) holds a six-point lead over Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) in the race for Senate in Texas, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out Wednesday. Cruz’s support comes in at 49 percent among Texas voters, according to the survey. O’Rourke comes in at 43 percent. That’s a significantly smaller lead for the incumbent than …

USA Today reports: Former President Barack Obama announced endorsements Wednesday of 81 Democratic candidates in the November midterm elections, and said he is “eager” to help his party gain seats in a contest widely seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump. While Obama did not mention Trump by name, he said in the public statement outlining his plans that …

The Associated Press reports: The Republican-controlled Senate has defeated a push by Democrats to set aside an additional $250 million for states to upgrade their voting systems to protect against hacking and other cyberattacks. An amendment offered by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy received 50 yes votes, 10 short of the 60 needed for approval. Leahy said securing U.S. elections and …

Politico reports: A former girlfriend of Illinois state Rep. Nick Sauer has filed an official complaint accusing the first-term Republican of creating a fake Instagram account and populating it with nude photos of her to lure men into “graphic” discussions. According to the complaint filed by ex-girlfriend Kate Kelly with the Office of the Legislative Inspector General and obtained by …

Politico reports: Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 7 percentage points in a head-to-head match-up, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. A plurality of registered voters, 44 percent, said they’d choose Biden in the 2020 presidential election, while 37 percent of voters said they would vote for Trump. The percentage of Democrats who would choose …

The Associated Press reports: A federal judge in Seattle has issued a temporary restraining order to stop the release of blueprints to make untraceable and undetectable 3D-printed plastic guns. Eight Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to block the federal government’s settlement with the company that makes the plans available online. They also sought a restraining order, arguing …

The Washington Post reports: Tad Devine, who was Bernie Sanders’s chief strategist in the 2016 election, explained to jurors how he came to work with Paul Manafort in Ukraine. He said his then-partner, Mike Donilon, was contacted by Manafort’s then-partner, Richard Gates, in 2005 about working for the Party of Regions, a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine. Devine described the …

The New York Post reports: Gov. Andrew Cuomo holds a commanding 2-1 lead over rival Cynthia Nixon in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary — but his running mate, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, is locked in a surprisingly close race against insurgent Jumaane Williams, according to a poll released Tuesday. Cuomo, who is running for a third term, leads Nixon 60 …

Courthouse News reports: A jury has been seated in the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on tax evasion and bank fraud charges. A jury of six men and six women has been sworn in for the trial, and four alternate jurors, three women and one man, have also been selected. Opening arguments will begin later Tuesday afternoon. …

Via press release: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., today released the D.A.’s Office’s new policy to decline to prosecute marijuana possession and smoking cases, effective tomorrow, August 1. The policy, which is included below, is expected to reduce Manhattan marijuana prosecutions from approximately 5,000 per year to fewer than 200 per year, a 96% reduction. “Every day I …

Via press release: Today, U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) and Tom Carper (D-DE), both members of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the Census Equality Act, legislation to require the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure the approximately 10 million Americans who identify as LGBTQ are properly counted for and represented in Census data collection efforts. The Census …

CNBC reports: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has committed to remaining in his post through the 2020 election, according to two White House officials. Kelly, who hit his one-year mark in the White House on Monday, had been expected to step aside as early as this summer. But President Donald Trump, who asked Kelly to stay on, has …

The New York Times reports: Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity ahead of November’s midterm elections, according to three people briefed on the matter. In a series of briefings on Capitol Hill this week, the company told …

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Group of 20 …

Mediaite reports: Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called on Twitter to ban a candidate running for Congress who referred to First lady Melania Trump as a “hoebag” in a tweet. The House candidate in question is Mark Roberts, an Independent running to represent Oregon. He has a very bizarre Twitter presence, where he refers to himself as a “superfan” of television …

Deutsche Welle reports: A Berlin regional court on Monday ordered the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its board member Georg Pazderski to publicly retract false claims that the Federal Environment Ministry (BMU) donated millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. An AfD press release, authored by Pazderski and published in November 2016, stated that the …

The Associated Press reports: Eight states are filing suit against the Trump administration over its decision to allow a Texas company to publish downloadable blueprints for a 3D-printed gun, contending the hard-to-trace plastic weapons are a boon to terrorists and criminals and threaten public safety. The suit, filed Monday in Seattle, asks a judge to block the federal government’s late-June …

When you’re not extreme enough for the Koch Brothers: The powerful Koch political network won’t help the Republican nominee in a crucial Senate race less than 100 days before the midterm elections, saying Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) doesn’t do enough to further the Koch’s policy issues to warrant their help in the race. The announcement — made in front of …