Trump Administration

ProPublica reports: Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings. …

Politico reports: Social media users are editing White House adviser and President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump into iconic photos using the hashtag “#UnwantedIvanka” after she was seen in a viral video trying to make conversation with leaders at the Group of 20 (G-20) meeting last weekend. The clip, released by the French presidential palace, appeared to show Ivanka Trump jumping …

Axios reports: Sarah Sanders is likely to hit the speaking circuit and write a book after leaving the White House on Friday, and she’ll move to Arkansas in August as the prelude to a possible 2022 run for governor, sources tell Axios. We hear the book will be billed as an account of her life in politics and experience inside …

The Guardian reports: Newly appointed White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was reportedly bruised in a scuffle with North Korean guards as President Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Tensions escalated after the guards tried to prevent U.S. reporters from entering a room inside the Freedom House in South Korea as Trump and Kim began their meeting. …

NBC News reports: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is delaying the implementation of its “conscience protection” rule until November to give the administration more time to deal with a lawsuit over the policy. HHS announced in a court filing Saturday that the rule, which was originally scheduled to take effect July 22, would not be implemented until …

The Washington Post reports: The chairman of the House Oversight Committee is expanding the committee’s review of Gilead Science’s patent claims relating to Truvada for PrEP, the company’s drug that prevents HIV infection. In a letter released Thursday, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) demanded emails and other information from Gilead about negotiations that led to Gilead’s pledge to donate free …

The Daily Beast reports: Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claims the State Department was kept in the dark about key U.S. foreign-policy decisions during his time in the Trump administration because the president’s son-in-law had effectively set up his own shadow operation. Jared Kushner was privately working on strategic partnerships with foreign countries and meeting discreetly with world leaders …

Raw Story reports: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Dept. of Commerce v. New York, where the state of New York sued over the question the Trump administration placed on the census asking about legal citizenship. The Court decided that they agreed with lower court decisions and that the reason for putting the question on the census was “invalid.” …

The Washington Post reports: There were smiles, handshakes, hugs and photos as Sarah Sanders, the outgoing White House press secretary, hung out on Monday night with colleagues and journalists at a happy hour in a D.C. steakhouse. Amid all the bonhomie, the Erik Wemple Blog attempted to sneak in some business questions for the woman who pretty much ended the …

NBC News reports: Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders will resign, a CBP official said, as the Trump administration faces backlash over treatment of migrant children. He steps down amid furor over conditions at a border patrol facility in Texas. His departure is effective July 5, the official said. Sanders has led the agency since President Trump tapped …

CNN reports: Melania Trump’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham will get a major new role as both White House press secretary and communications director, the first lady tweeted Tuesday. President Donald Trump didn’t look far for his next press secretary in Grisham, who for the past two years has been the communications director for the first lady. Grisham will keep her current …

Newsweek reports: First lady Melania Trump on Monday announced new Be Best ambassadors to help “improve the lives of children,” at the same time as the Trump administration continues to receive heavy criticism for the conditions that migrant children face in border detention facilities. A White House press release stated that Trump was expanding her signature Be Best initiative aimed …

CNN reports: White House lawyers told the House Oversight Committee on Monday that senior counselor Kellyanne Conway will not appear at a hearing on Wednesday after a federal agency said earlier this month that she was a repeat offender of the Hatch Act and she should be fired. Chairman Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, told CNN that he planned to …

Politico reports: A former senior Commerce Department official refused to answer more than 100 questions during an interview with the House Oversight and Reform Committee that centered on the Trump administration’s controversial decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, according to a transcript released Tuesday. Commerce Department lawyers instructed James Uthmeier, who served as senior adviser and …

E & E News reports: After spending $66 to buy a new 3-by-5-foot nylon rainbow flag, the National Park Service flew it high at one of the agency’s newest monuments: the historic Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village, where a riot on June 28, 1969, launched the modern gay rights movement 50 years ago this week. But a trove …

The New York Times reports: The Treasury Department’s internal watchdog has agreed to look into why designs of a new $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman will not be unveiled next year. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, last week asked the Treasury Department’s inspector general to open an investigation following Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s announcement at a …

Politico reports: The Trump administration has refused to publicize dozens of government-funded studies that carry warnings about the effects of climate change, defying a longstanding practice of touting such findings by the Agriculture Department’s acclaimed in-house scientists. The studies range from a groundbreaking discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment — a potentially serious health concern for the …

Just in via press release: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary. That position has repeatedly and unambiguously been made clear in the Museum’s official statement on the matter – a statement that is reiterated and reaffirmed now. The link to the Museum’s statement is …

The Hill reports: Kellyanne Conway on Monday claimed allegations she violated the Hatch Act are politically motivated, after a House committee floated a subpoena for the White House counselor. The House Oversight and Reform Committee will vote this week on a subpoena to compel Conway to testify on the Office of Special Counsel’s (OSC) finding that she violated the law …

“I spent a lot of time as an attorney general fighting human trafficking in Virginia, and we literally have a legal system that Congress could fix that right now is set up that essentially makes the federal government the last mile in a human trafficking chain. “Because we’re literally handing unaccompanied children over to illegal aliens in this is country …