Trump Administration

The Daily Beast reports: Officials and staffers in the U.S. embassy in Riyadh said they were not read in on the details of Jared Kushner’s trip to Saudi Arabia or the meetings he held with members of the country’s Royal Court last week. And that’s causing concern not only in the embassy but also among members of Congress, according to …

Courthouse News reports: The Trump administration’s push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census suffered a major setback late Wednesday when a federal judge issued a second nationwide injunction against the policy, finding it would “threaten the very foundation of our democracy.” U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg is the second federal judge in less than two months to …

The New York Times reports: Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, on Wednesday implored Congress to confront what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” on the southern border by supporting President Trump’s call for a border wall and changing laws to crack down on asylum-seekers and illegal border-crossers. In her first congressional appearance since Democrats took control of the House, Ms. …

Axios reports: White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to House Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Tuesday rejecting the committee’s request for documents explaining the process for granting security clearances to White House personnel, calling their demands “unprecedented and extraordinarily intrusive.” Cipollone’s letter is likely the first of many confrontations to come, as Democrats intent on probing every …

The Washington Post reports: Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who used his post to tackle difficult public health issues from youth vaping to opioid addiction – surprising early skeptics worried about his drug industry ties – resigned Tuesday, effective in about a month, according to an administration official. Gottlieb, who has been commuting weekly to Washington from his home …

ABC News reports: Ty Cobb, the veteran Washington attorney who represented the White House as special counsel Robert Mueller ramped up his investigation into Russian meddling, said he considers the man leading the probe “an American hero” and does not share President Donald Trump’s view that the Russia inquiry is a politically motivated hoax. “I don’t feel the same way …

CBS News reports: Attorney General William Barr will not be recusing himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe, citing advisement from “senior career ethics officials,” according to the Department of Justice. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is expected to be leaving his post in the coming weeks, will continue to serve as a “liaison” to the investigation. …

CNBC reports: The Food and Drug Administration called out 15 retailers on Monday for allegedly selling tobacco products to minors and requested information from more than 40 e-cigarette companies the agency thinks may have illegally introduced new products onto the market. The agency named corporate-owned and franchise retailers who were allegedly found selling tobacco products to minors more than 15 …

Earlier today House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler filed documents requests with 71 people and entities affiliated with Trump. Here’s some of the people on Nadler’s list: DONALD TRUMP JR. – Trump’s oldest son is a top surrogate for his father in conservative circles and helps run his business. During the 2016 campaign, he set up a meeting with a Kremlin-connected …

NBC News reports:  Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker left his position at the Justice Department on Saturday, a department spokeswoman said. Whitaker had been serving as a senior counselor at the Justice Department since Attorney General William Barr was sworn in last month. His next career move is unknown, but Whitaker has told friends that he will remain in …

CBS News reports: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has delivered a slew of document requests as a first step in his investigation into President Trump and his associates, as the White House adjusts to the realities of a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. On Monday Nadler revealed his committee has requested documents from 71 entities and individuals, from the White …

Politico reports: Kellyanne Conway claimed Friday that President Donald Trump has the “absolute right” to order that security clearances be approved, following a report that the president did so for son-in-law Jared Kushner despite other officials’ misgivings. “We don’t discuss security clearances. I won’t discuss my own,” she said during an interview on Fox News. “I will tell you the …

The New York Times reports: President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, …

The Daily Beast reports: Vice President Mike Pence’s incoming chief of staff Marc Short disparaged people living with HIV and AIDS and claimed that the transmission of the disease was largely the result of “repugnant” homosexual intercourse in an early ’90s column for his college newspaper. Writing in a conservative publication at Washington & Lee University, Short criticized what he …

CNN reports: An appeals court has rejected the Justice Department’s bid to overturn a ruling that cleared the way for AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. At a hearing in December, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judges Judith W. Rogers, Robert L. Wilkins and David B. Sentelle grilled the Justice Department’s attorneys about their contention that the original decision by Judge …

Politico reports: The Interior Department has given offshore oil drillers nearly 1,700 exemptions to Obama-era safety rules put in place after BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, effectively gutting parts of the regulation before the Trump administration officially rolls them back. Those waivers were awarded in the first 20 months after the Well Control Rule took effect, according to …

Politico reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Sunday that North Korea remains a nuclear threat, straying from past comments President Donald Trump has made, but the secretary of state also maintained that the country’s leader Kim Jong Un continues to show commitment to denuclearizing the area. When pressed about Trump no longer seeing North Korea as a nuclear threat, …

The Associated Press reports: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday declined to say whether President Donald Trump still has confidence in Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, a day after a federal judge ruled the Justice Department broke the law while Acosta was a U.S. attorney. A judge said Acosta — then the U.S. attorney in Miami — signed …

Politico reports: The head of the Office of Government Ethics has refused to approve Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s 2018 financial disclosure report, citing an inaccuracy concerning the former investing mogul’s holdings of BankUnited stock. The action is the latest blow for Ross, who has repeatedly drawn scrutiny over his personal finances since he was nominated for the Commerce job. He …

Salon reports: A new report issued by House Democrats this week claims that key Trump administration appointees overrode the objections of top national security officials and attorneys to promote the sale of nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia — and these sales could have directly benefited Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. “The Cummings report notes that one of the power plant …