Politics

The Hill reports: The judge in the tax and bank fraud trial against one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said Friday he’s been threatened over the case, denying a request from media outlets to release the names and addresses of the jurors. Judge T.S. Ellis III said he’s not going to reveal the specifics of the threats he received. “I …

The Washington Examiner reports: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Thursday evening he would ask President Trump to lift sanctions against the chairmen of both houses of the Russian legislature so they can visit the U.S. in the fall. Paul just returned to the U.S. from Russia after a trip intended to promote diplomacy between the two countries. Paul told Fox …

Mediaite reports: GOP Senate Candidate Chris McDaniel has had a rough 48 hours of attempted Civil War revisionism. The state senator, running to represent Mississippi in Congress, first took to social media to wheel out some wild claims about Confederate general Robert E. Lee. He was promptly fact checked, by everyone from CNN anchor Jake Tapper to historian Kevin Kruse. …

The Miami Herald reports: As one of his first acts in office in 2011, Gov. Rick Scott canceled a $2.4 billion federally funded and shovel-ready bullet train from Orlando to Tampa because it carried “an extremely high risk of overspending taxpayer dollars with no guarantee of economic growth.’’ It was a political slap to then-President Barack Obama, who considered the …

The Hill reports: First lady Melania Trump is planning to attend a summit in Maryland early next week focused on combatting cyberbullying. The White House announced that the first lady will be “addressing the positive and negative effects of social media on youth” during brief remarks at the summit in Rockville, Md., on Monday. The first lady is set to …

Politico reports: There’s a new way of demonstrating loyalty to Donald Trump and his Republican Party: Claiming that the president could not only survive an impeachment effort, but that it would guarantee his victory in 2020. The idea gaining currency on the right is that Trump can be Bill Clinton, not Richard Nixon. It depends on a delicate political calculation …

The Hill reports: Democrats have about a 75 percent chance of retaking the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, according to the data crunchers at FiveThirtyEight. The website launched their new House forecast on Thursday, predicting an 80 percent chance that Democrats gain between 14 and 58 seats. The party needs to flip 23 seats to retake the House …

Click On Detroit reports: President Donald Trump tweeted about the passing of Aretha Franklin on Thursday. Trump, joining the chorus of reaction and tributes around social media, said, “She was a great woman, with a wonderful gift from God.” The legendary soul singer met with, performed for and was honored by many of the presidents during her long career. In …

“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 …