Politics

“Any allegation provided by a woman is supposed to be enough, isn’t it? Isn’t that how everyone wanted this Me Too moment to work? You believe all women. You believe all women whether or not the evidence exists. They’re asking for evidence so I guess, what, they’re calling her a liar? Are they shaming the woman and calling her a …

CBS News reports: New York City unveiled an ambitious plan on Wednesday to replace the notorious Rikers Island jail complex with four smaller lockups located in densely populated neighborhoods, including turning an Art Deco government building that went up in lower Manhattan in 1930 into a tower for up to 1,500 inmates. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials …

People Magazine reports: Omarosa Manigault Newman‘s tell-all Unhinged claims that Ivanka Trump hated the Saturday Night Live sketch that labeled her “complicit” in March 2017. “At the senior staff meeting, Ivanka couldn’t stop bemoaning it, how offensive it was, how ridiculous it was,” Manigault Newman, 44, says about Trump, 36. “We’d all been subject to SNL attacks. We’d all been …

Politico reports: Steve Bannon is attempting a political resurrection, launching a 25-person pro-Trump rapid-response and polling operation that is framing the midterms as an up-or-down vote on the president’s impeachment. The former White House chief strategist has started Citizens for the American Republic, an outside political group that intends to advise surrogates, generate talking points, and flood the TV and …

The Hill reports: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Wednesday praised President Trump’s decision to revoke former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, an action Paul had lobbied Trump to take. “I filibustered Brennan’s nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information,” Paul …

The Washington Post reports: U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III is currently reading to jurors the instructions on the law they will have to consider as they decide whether Paul Manafort is guilty of the 18 charges he faces. This is the last step before the case will be given to jurors to begin their deliberations. The instructions are technical, …

“Much of Giuliani’s attack on Brennan involved the dossier compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele that the administration has repeatedly asserted was what began the Russia investigation. It was not. The investigation began after the former Trump policy adviser George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat that the Russians had dirt on his then-political opponent, Hillary Clinton. That information …

From the nonpartisan Cook Political Report: For Republicans, the 2018 House playing field is a lot like a game of Whack-a-Mole: everywhere they turn, new problems keep popping up in surprising places. In January, we rated 20 GOP-held seats as Toss Ups or worse, including three leaning towards Democrats. With today’s changes, we now rate 37 GOP-held seats as Toss …

Newsweek reports: In an interview on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert brought up a betting site that saw Sanders tied with Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) as favorites for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “You want to lay a bet on who gets to face Donald Trump in 2020?” Colbert jokingly asked. “Actually, that’s exactly what I don’t want to do. …

The Wichita Eagle reports: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has captured the Republican nomination for governor after the tightest primary fight in Kansas history, edging out the state’s sitting governor. Gov. Jeff Colyer, a plastic surgeon from Overland Park, announced his concession Tuesday night after he failed to narrow the gap with Kobach when provisional ballots in Johnson County …

Aleppo! The Daily Beast reports: 2016 Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson has entered the New Mexico Senate race, throwing a curveball into a contest that was deemed safe for Democratic incumbent Sen. Martin Heinrich. Johnson, who served two terms from 1995 to 2003 as a Republican governor of the state, tweeted on Tuesday that “New Mexico deserves a strong, independent …

CNN reports: One of Defense Secretary James Mattis’ most senior civilian advisers is being investigated by the Defense Department Office of Inspector General for allegedly retaliating against staff members after she used some of them to conduct her personal errands and business matters, according to four sources familiar with the probe. Dana White, the Trump administration political appointee who serves …

The Hill reports: Democrats are threatening to take the GOP to court to keep Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), who’s been charged with insider trading, on the November ballot. New York Democrats believe they have a better shot of flipping the ruby-red, Buffalo-area seat if the embattled congressman’s name stays on the ballot, and want to keep Republicans from replacing him …

USA Today reports: Who says sending anti-Trump texts to your girlfriend doesn’t pay? Sure, such texts cost Peter Strzok his 22-year career with the FBI, but they also seem to have garnered the former agent a lot of support – enough to raise more than $300,000 for his legal expenses in one day on a GoFundMe page. The page, launched …

The Washington Post reports: Lawyers for Paul Manafort say they’ll rest their case without calling any witnesses in the former Trump campaign chairman’s trial. The decision in the bank- and tax-fraud case comes after Judge T.S. Ellis III denied a defense motion to acquit Manafort as his lawyers argued the special counsel had failed to prove its case at the …

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports: State House candidate Melissa Howard admitted Monday that she lied about having a degree from Miami University, apologized and declared she intends to stay in a race that has drawn national attention after it came out she was displaying a fake diploma and had gone to great lengths to deceive people about her college credentials. “I …

The Associated Press reports: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson both came out Monday against boycotting Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson, the day after President Donald Trump said it would be “great” if there was a boycott. Trump’s Sunday tweet forced Walker and other Republicans to take a position on the sticky political issue involving an iconic Wisconsin …

The uncle of White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller today published a blistering takedown of his famously anti-immigrant nephew. The essay begins: Let me tell you a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration. It begins at the turn of the 20th century in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what …

Talking Points Memo reports: An employee of Federal Savings Bank, where former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort successfully obtained $16 million in loans, testified Monday that the bank’s president opposed extending one of those loans to Manafort but was overruled by bank CEO Steve Calk, who served as an adviser on the Trump campaign. “It closed because Mr. Calk wanted …

Does this qualify as more infighting? Bobby Goodlatte, the son of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), said on Monday he is “embarrassed” that his father’s “political grandstanding” cost FBI agent Peter Strzok his job. Earlier Monday, it was announced that Strzok was fired on Friday after sending disparaging text messages about President Trump during the 2016 election. Strzok, …