Trump Administration

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. and China have reached a preliminary agreement in their long-running trade war, President Trump and China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen said in separate statements Friday. Mr. Trump tweeted that the two sides had agreed “to a very large Phase One Deal with China,” adding that the 25% tariffs on Chinese imports …

Vox reports: From Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration through the end of November 2019, the American economy added a total of about 6.2 million jobs. But during a speech at a White House event on paid family leave on Thursday, the president credited his daughter, Ivanka Trump, with personally creating more than twice as many jobs over the same timespan. …

From an op-ed by former AG Eric Holder: Virtually since the moment he took office, though, Barr’s words and actions have been fundamentally inconsistent with his duty to the Constitution. Which is why I now fear that his conduct — running political interference for an increasingly lawless president — will wreak lasting damage. The American people deserve an attorney general …

From an op-ed published tonight by Jared Kushner: As the poison of anti-Semitism spreads with dangerous violence throughout Europe, the Middle East, and even here at home — most recently in a horrific attack on Tuesday in Jersey City — President Trump is taking meaningful action to crush this evil. On Wednesday, the president will sign an executive order to …

NPR reports: The Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday about his report on the origins of the FBI’s probe into the 2016 Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia. The 434-page report found that the bureau’s decision to open an investigation “was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did …

NBC News reports: Attorney General William Barr said he still believes the FBI may have operated out of “bad faith” when it investigated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, and he contends the FBI acted improperly by continuing the investigation after Donald Trump took office. In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Barr essentially dismissed the findings of the …

The Hill reports: The White House says President Trump is hoping a Senate impeachment trial begins “sooner rather than later” as senators indicate the process likely won’t commence until after the holidays. “The president wants it sooner rather than later. I think that’s pretty obvious as well,” deputy spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters. “But in what form that takes, time …

The Washington Post reports: Attorney General William P. Barr had planned to hold a 200-person holiday party at the Trump hotel in Washington Sunday night, but the event was rescheduled, according to a Justice Department spokeswoman. The spokeswoman declined to say when the event would take place but said it would still be at the Trump International Hotel, a choice …

Space News reports: The leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Dec. 9 unveiled the conference agreement they have reached for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020. The conference report includes language to authorize a U.S. Space Force as an independent military branch under the Department of the Air Force. “The FY20 NDAA recognizes …

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump criticized FBI Director Christopher Wray in a tweet on Tuesday, a day after the U.S. Justice Department’s internal watchdog said it found no evidence of political bias when the FBI began investigating contacts between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia in 2016. Wray, in an interview on ABC News on Monday, acknowledged the numerous errors the …

Mediaite reports: Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report, which examined the conduct of the FBI toward President Donald Trump’s campaign, uncovered text messages from agents celebrating Trump’s 2016 victory. The report goes on to detail in footnotes that there were also FBI agents who texted about their support for Trump on page 339, where it is also recorded that a supervisory …

The New York Times reports: Attorney General William P. Barr sharply criticized on Monday the F.B.I.’s decision to open the Russia investigation, undercutting a major finding in a long-awaited watchdog report and at the same time showing his willingness to act as President Trump’s vocal defender. The report, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, found that the …

ABC News reports: Nearly a decade before the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka met a British intelligence officer who ran the Russia desk — and when the agent left his covert service and moved into private practice in 2010, she stayed in touch, ABC News has learned. Ivanka Trump worked as an executive vice president at the Trump …

CNBC reports: The Department of Justice’s internal watchdog on Monday released its long-awaited report on the FBI’s decision to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including its surveillance of a then-Trump campaign aide. Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that there was a proper legal basis for the FBI to seek a surveillance warrant against Carter Page, a former …

The Huffington Post reports: Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and a large group of Democratic senators have signed a letter that will be sent to the White House on Monday calling on President Donald Trump to fire senior adviser Stephen Miller in light of leaked emails showing the extent of his white nationalist beliefs. “We write to demand the immediate removal …

The Christian Post reports: Highlighting a raft of promises fulfilled by President Donald Trump through policies advancing economic prosperity and religious freedom, Vice President Mike Pence rallied faith leaders in Michigan Wednesday to pray for four more years of the Trump administration in 2020. “I wanted to come here today and make sure you all knew, as leaders in the …

The New York Times reports: Trump administration officials, seeking to weaken Democrats’ case for impeachment, disputed on Thursday some of the details in the House Intelligence Committee’s report about calls between President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and White House aides. As part of its portrait of Mr. Trump’s campaign of pressure on Ukraine, the committee’s report released this …

ProPublica reports: Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, was seriously ill when immigration agents put him in a small South Texas holding cell with another sick boy on the afternoon of May 19. A few hours earlier, a nurse practitioner at the Border Patrol’s dangerously overcrowded processing center in McAllen had diagnosed him with the flu and measured …

The Desert Sun reports: A video taken by a Mexican citizen shows the newly replaced border fence in Mexicali being scaled by two men with a rope ladder, one of whom makes it over to the United States. The 38-second video shows a pair of men climbing the ladder while another holds it on the Mexico side of the border. …

TechCrunch reports: Homeland Security has confirmed it will not expand face recognition scans to U.S. citizens arriving and departing the country, days after it emerged the agency proposed making the scans for citizens mandatory. The department, whose responsibility is border protection and immigration checks, said in a government filing that it wanted to “amend the regulations to provide that all …