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FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed that the bureau is investigating Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election — including any links or coordination between members of Donald Trump's campaign and Moscow...

In a dramatic moment at the beginning of a hotly anticipated House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference in the U.S. election, Comey announced that he had been authorized by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to break bureau policy and publicly disclose the probe.

“As you know our practice is not to confirm the existence of an ongoing investigation,” he said. “But in usual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so.”

A palpable ripple of anticipation went through the hearing room as Comey continued: “This is one of those circumstances.” But he declined to provide more details, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

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President Trump’s former campaign leader Paul Manafort is being accused of laundering money from the party of Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed former president, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing documents from a Ukraine lawmaker.

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Some Republican senators are coming out against a resolution that would repeal an Interior Department regulation governing oil and natural gas drilling on federal land. The rule is designed to cut down on the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas...

Despite support from Senate leadership and the oil and gas industry, the methane legislation has not come up for a vote in the upper chamber, and its future there is uncertain.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill that a CRA resolution, which prevents the government from writing any future rule that is “substantially the same” as the one overturned, is too blunt an instrument in this case. “I think we can replace it with a better reg, rather than a CRA,” Graham said.
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The drilling industry supports the measure, saying it would undo a costly regulation that threatens jobs and their operations on public land. They also say the rule is duplicative with regulations passed by many states.

The American Council for Capital Formation, which is backed in part by fossil fuel interests, started a multimedia advertising campaign this week focused on Washington, D.C., and the home states of senators who are undecided on the CRA resolution....


Methane is a key component of natural gas. Supporters of Interior’s rule say capturing methane and putting it on the natural gas market will lead to a bigger financial return for both drillers and American taxpayers, who own the land on which the companies drill.
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A group of local officials from Western states — which contain the vast majority of public land holdings — sent a letter to senators in February urging them to oppose the resolution.

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The methane resolution is stalling just as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans begin ramping up their focus on Interior Department rules.

Congress has sent President Trump a resolution undoing a Bureau of Land Management planning rule, though he hasn’t signed it yet. The Trump administration last week announced that it would repeal a major bureau rule for hydraulic fracturing on federal land.

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President Trump’s regulatory moratorium is coming under fire from Democrats. ....

“In recent days, it appears that Administrator [Scott] Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and potentially additional agency heads, have consistently ignored and flouted the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA),” Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), Bobby Rush (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.) and Doris Matsui (Calif.) told White House Office of Management and Budget Director Michael Mulvaney.

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The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to go through a lengthy rulemaking process before issuing new regulations. This includes a notice-and-comment period that gives the public time to respond to any proposed changes by the government.
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To repeal the rules, the Trump administration must go through the same lengthy process, which could take years to complete. So in the interim, agencies are delaying rules published by the Obama administration that had not yet taken effect.

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“Despite these clear requirements, Administrator Pruitt issued two ‘final rules’ this week with no notice, no comment, and less than 30 days between publication and the effective date,” they wrote. “And according to press reports, Secretary Perry will publish five similar ‘final rules’ tomorrow.”

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The executive vice president of Freedom Partners told the news outlet that the GOP healthcare bill doesn't fully repeal ObamaCare — a promise he said Republicans have been making since ObamaCare became law....

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said the group has "never wavered in our commitment to a full repeal of this disastrous law."
We want to make certain that lawmakers understand the policy consequences of voting for a law that keeps Obamacare intact," Phillips said in a statement.

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In an extraordinary move, the chairman of the House panel investigating Russian interference in the presidential election bypassed his own committee Wednesday to brief President Trump on information related to U.S. surveillance of his transition team.

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"Well I’ve been saying for a while that there’s a coverup going on here," Carl Bernstein said on CNN after it released its report on the information from FBI officials that Trump associates may have worked with Russian operatives to release damaging information targeting Hillary Clinton's campaign
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"What we’re seeing is push back, smoke screens, an attempt to keep away from what really happened here by the President of the United States, by [press secretary] Sean Spicer, and that raises a whole set of additional questions," he said.
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"The heroes of Watergate were really Republicans, they were Republicans in the House and the Senate who wanted this investigated to the bottom: What did the president know and when did he know it," he said. "That’s what we’re not seeing here. We’re not seeing it from the Republicans on the Hill who are consumed by supposedly looking for leaks."

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The notion that the Trump team may have coordinated its strategy with Russian intelligence has been alleged for a while now, but so far any actual evidence of this has been circumstantial at best. We already knew that members of Trump’s campaign had spoken to Russian intelligence officials, for example, but we didn’t know what they had talked about.

This is why CNN’s report seems so stunning: It is the first such report suggesting that the FBI may have credible information — say, an account of a meeting where collusion was discussed, to give one wholly hypothetical example — of a possible Trump campaign-Russia plot against Hillary Clinton.

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Democrats early Thursday slammed the House GOP for planning to fast-track consideration of their healthcare plan later in the day even though the legislation still hasn’t been finalized...

House GOP leaders are determined to bring their bill on the seventh anniversary of ObamaCare and send it to the Senate as soon as possible.

The fast-track procedure, if approved Thursday, would allow the House to consider a rule approved out of the House Rules Committee that sets parameters for floor debate on the same day it comes out of the panel. Normally, the House has to wait a day before considering a measure produced out of the Rules Committee....

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the fast-track procedure made the House feel like a scene out of the classic novel “Lord of the Flies.” “The rules are there are no rules. It’s Lord of the Flies day here in the House of Representatives. They want to make us vote on a bill that no one’s even read. No one can find it. Anything goes,” Raskin said.

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Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) most recently accused Russia of engaging in warfare.
“I think this attack that we’ve experienced is a form of war, a form of war on our fundamental democratic principles,” Coleman said during a hearing this week at the House Homeland Security Committee.
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Michael Schmitt, an international law professor at the University of Exeter in Britain, told The Hill that public officials need to choose their words carefully to “control escalation.”

“I find that sort of talk dangerous,” said Schmitt, who led the team of legal experts that formulated the Tallinn Manual 2.0, a comprehensive analysis of how international law applies to cyberspace.

The Army’s top officer, Mark Milley, also cautioned individuals about using the term “war” to refer to the cyberattacks, saying at a conference on Tuesday, “If it’s an act of war, then you’ve got to start thinking of your response to that sort of thing.”

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With the GOP healthcare plan dead, Republicans are quickly setting their sights on another challenging campaign promise: tax reform.Within hours after GOP leaders pulled the healthcare bill on Friday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) appeared on Fox News to talk up tax reform. “We’re going to pivot straight to this and just roll forward,” Brady said in an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto.
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Republicans insist they’re not completely abandoning efforts to reform the healthcare system.
“It just shows that our first attempt didn’t work. This was not our last attempt. There will have to be other actions,” said Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.).
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The House is expected to vote this week to overturn internet privacy rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year. The rules require internet service providers to obtain customers’ permission before using their personal information for consumer data and online advertisements. They mandated internet service providers needed consent before using and sharing data like location tracking, browsing data and app usage.

The Senate voted to eliminate the rules last week in a party-line vote. The measure will head to President Trump's desk upon approval by the House.
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Democrats are expected to force more votes this week to demand President Trump’s tax returns.
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The Senate will take up a treaty allowing Montenegro to join NATO after a vote on the measure was blocked earlier this month. ...
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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) tried to get unanimous consent to schedule a vote on the treaty earlier this month, but was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). Under Senate rules any one senator is able to object to a unanimous consent request.

The libertarian lawmaker said in a statement that he blocked McCain’s request over concerns about the debt, warning that the United States is already stretched too thin militarily.
... Under NATO's Article 5, member states agree to defend any NATO country that is threatened by force.

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The House Science Committee has scheduled a provocative hearing next week to challenge the science behind climate change.

Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) panel will meet on Wednesday to consider "assumptions, policy implications, and the scientific method" related to climate change.

The meeting will give Smith, who doubts the broad scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions have caused climate change, a large platform from which to try making his point.

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) canceled a hearing on Russia where former acting Attorney General Sally Yates was to testify the same day the Trump administration voiced objections to him about her planned testimony.

Yates... was fired by Trump after she refused to defend in court his executive order temporarily banning all refugees and immigrants from a handful of Muslim-majority countries. After she was fired, it was revealed that Yates had notified the White House that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had not properly explained his contact with the Russian ambassador, according to a report published Tuesday in The Washington Post.
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The Post report cites documents showing that the Justice Department told Yates that her testimony would have to be seriously limited because of executive privilege, which protects executive branch documents and information from having to be turned over in certain cases.

According to the series of letters, a Justice Department official told Yates's lawyer, David O'Neill, that she would need “consent” from the White House in order to discuss her conversations with the White House.

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer earlier Tuesday denied a Washington Post report that the Trump administration blocked Yates from testifying before a panel probing Russian intrusions in the campaign.

“I hope she testifies,” Spicer told reporters. "I look forward to it. ... If they choose to move forward, great. We have no problem with her testifying, plain and simple. The report in the Washington Post is 100 percent false.”

...Spicer said Tuesday the White House was given a March 27 deadline by Yates’s attorney to register any objections to her testimony, who added they would view a nonresponse as permission to go ahead.

“The White House did not respond and took no action that prevented Ms. Yates from testifying,” he said. "That’s the story.”

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) says he won't reveal his intelligence sources to members of his own panel.

Asked whether he'd tell committee members who gave him intelligence reports indicating President Trump's team was incidentally surveilled, Nunes replied, "We will never reveal those sources and methods," according to Reuters.

Nunes stirred controversy last week when he revealed that he had seen evidence that the U.S. intelligence community had incidentally collected information on members of Trump's transition team in the months before he took office.

Nunes met with an unidentified source on the White House grounds the night before he made his announcement to view evidence of the surveillance.

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The Government Accountability Office will review how President Trump secures classified information when he visits his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., according to a Tuesday Reuters report.

It will also look at how the Secret Service screens Mar-a-Lago guests and examine the expenses of government employees who travel to Florida with the president, according to a letter the agency sent the lawmakers on Friday....

The agency will also examine whether Trump kept the pledge he made before taking office, which requires the president to donate any profits the Trump hotels incur from foreign agents and governments to the U.S. Treasury.

The White House did not immediately respond to Reuters’s request for comment.

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President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to start rolling back President Obama's climate change agenda.

As The Hill's Timothy Cama reports, the most significant piece of the order instructs the EPA to formally consider repealing the Clean Power Plan, which orders a 32 percent cut in the power sector's carbon dioxide emissions by 2030....

In other news, industry groups are ramping up their fight to scrap an Obama-era rule aimed at reducing blue-collar workers' exposure to beryllium, a toxic material that can cause a deadly lung disease.

The Labor Department has delayed the rule, but industry is now turning to the courts to eliminate the regulation all together.

The rule requires companies to limit the amount of beryllium that enters the air when it is cut, machined, ground, mechanically sheared or crushed to dust.

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Humanitarian groups are voicing concern after reports the Trump administration may step up support for the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

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President Trump's funding request for a border wall will likely be put on hold, Senate Republican leaders signaled Tuesday.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, announced at a leadership press conference that Trump's supplemental funding request will wait until later in the year.

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President Trump is seeking to stop a lawsuit filed by a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” arguing a state lawsuit can’t be brought against a sitting president.

Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s longtime attorney, plans to file briefs in New York’s Supreme Court seeking to stop the lawsuit brought by Summer Zervos, according to a Tuesday Hollywood Reporter report.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kasowitz plans to argue that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause bars the president from state lawsuits.
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The Supreme Court ruled that a president is not immune to private litigation, but Justice John Paul Stevens, writing on behalf of the court, also said the cases should be decided as early as possible so the president is not prevented from performing his duties.

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Senators in both parties are gearing up for a showdown over Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) confidently predicted on Tuesday that the Senate would confirm Gorsuch on April 7, before lawmakers leave town for a two-week recess.

But as Democratic opposition grows, leaders are signaling they’re prepared to push the chamber to the edge as President Trump’s pick comes up for a vote — even if it means using the “nuclear option” to change the Senate’s rules.

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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Tuesday said America can't give away the Rio Grande to Mexico in the process of building President Trump's signature border wall, implying the structure could wind up standing partially on Mexican land.

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The executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, Jim Pasco, told Reuters after a White House meeting between the president and police union leaders on Tuesday that the move to restrict grants from sanctuary cities could hurt police departments.

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The president has approved a Department of Defense proposal to provide additional precision fires in support of African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali security forces operations to defeat al-Shabaab in Somalia,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis confirmed in a statement Thursday.

The statement comes after several news outlets reported earlier in the day that Trump had relaxed rules meant to safeguard against civilian casualties to allow for increased operations in the Horn of Africa country.

The new rules in Somalia could renew questions that have dogged the Trump administration about mission creep and civilian casualties.

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Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a former Air Force lawyer and a frequent critic of President Trump, is demanding answers from Defense Secretary James Mattis on a reported increase in civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria.
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Pentagon officials have acknowledged that a U.S. airstrike was at least partially responsible for a building collapse in west Mosul that reportedly killed more than 200 people. But they’ve also said that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could have done something to cause the building to collapse.

In addition to the west Mosul casualties, there have been reports of civilian casualties in Syria from an airstrike on a building associated with a mosque and another strike on a school. Pentagon officials have said the reports about the school strike are likely not credible, while the mosque strike continues to be investigated.

The reports have left human rights groups and independent monitors suspicious that President Trump has made changes to the rules of engagement.

The Pentagon has insisted that no such changes have been made.

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Vice President Pence on Thursday cast a tie-breaking procedural vote that allowed the Senate to move forward with an effort to nix an Obama-era rule that blocked states from defunding healthcare providers for political reasons.

... A final vote on getting rid of the Obama-era rule could happen as early as Thursday afternoon.

Republicans are using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to roll back some Obama-era regulations with only a simple majority vote.

Former President Obama's rule required that state and local governments distribute federal Title X funding for services related to contraception, fertility, pregnancy care and cervical cancer screenings to health providers, regardless of whether they also preform abortions.

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Two White House officials helped House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) acquire information that he says shows President Trump’s transition team was incidentally surveilled, according to The New York Times.

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ep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) on Thursday defended House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes's (R-Calif.) decision to brief President Trump on claims that members of his transition team were incidentally surveilled by the intelligence community, saying that Nunes answers to the president.

"You've got to keep in mind who he works for," Yoho said during an interview on MSNBC. "He works for the president, and he answers to the president."

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Federal budget deficits in the United States will more than triple over the next three decades, leading to a record level of publicly held debt by 2047, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected Thursday.

Budget deficits — the differences between U.S. yearly revenues and expenditures — are set to increase from 2.9 percent to 9.8 percent by 2047, skyrocketing the federal debt from 77 to 150 percent of the country’s GDP, according to the CBO’s long-term budget projection released Thursday.

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President Trump lashed out at The New York Times again on Thursday morning, threatening to change libel laws in order to prosecute the newspaper for "getting him wrong."

In the tweet, Trump linked to a New York Post opinion piece alleging that the Times was biased against Trump and "ethically challenged."

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President Trump's new tax proposal will create large cuts for the New York City's elite while not substantially helping middle-income families, a new government report finds.

According to Reuters, City Comptroller Scott Stringer estimated that the president's tax plan, as proposed during the 2016 campaign, is set to give the city's residents more than $5 billion worth of tax cuts, with almost two-thirds of the sum going to those who earn more than $500,000 a year.

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President Trump is defending former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's offer to testify in ongoing probes of Russian hacking of the 2016 election in exchange for legal immunity.

Trump wrote on Twitter early Friday morning that investigation had become "a witch hunt," echoing language used by his former campaign adviser's attorney.

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But during last year’s campaign, Trump excoriated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s associates for getting immunity, asking: "If you're not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for?"

Trump’s campaign repeatedly hammered the Department of Justice for granting immunity to a number of people, including top aide Cheryl Mills, during the investigation into Clinton’s private email server, saying the deals were proof of corruption and calling for a special prosecutor.

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"For the Justice Department to agree to give somebody like him immunity it means they want him to turn and testify against someone higher up in the food chain," Bash said.

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions indicated Thursday evening that the Trump administration would pursue criminal charges to end alleged leaks from U.S. agencies.

Trump said in February that he had directed Sessions to "look into the leaks" following published accounts of his private phone calls with world leaders and other conversations.

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President Trump tweeted Thursday evening that his scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week will be “very difficult," citing outsourced jobs and past trade deals he opposes.

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Congressional Republicans are facing widespread outrage after advancing a bill that will overturn privacy protections for internet users.

The bill narrowly passed the Senate by two votes and the House by 10. Now it heads to the White House, where President Trump is expected to sign it.

The measure blocks rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission during the Obama administration that restrict what internet service providers can do with their customers’ data. Those companies would be required to get consumers’ express permission before using or sharing “sensitive” data for advertising.

The rule’s definition of sensitive data includes users’ browsing history, app usage and financial and medical information.

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Two journalists are suing President Trump and other top U.S. officials, claiming that they are on the government's "kill list" of individuals targeted for drone strikes, Politico reported Thursday.

The journalists, former Al Jazeera Islamabad bureau chief Ahmad Zaidan and freelance journalist Bilal Kareem, say in the lawsuit that they were placed on the "kill list" by the Obama administration, a decision maintained by the Trump White House....

Both Zaidan, a Pakistani and Syrian citizen, and Kareem, a U.S. citizen, deny having any affiliation with terrorist groups and say that their designations on the "kill list" are the results of "algorithms" used to identify terrorists.

But those algorithms are flawed, they argue, and the designations are based on their travel, social media content and communications related to their professions....

The U.S. drastically expanded its use of unmanned aerial drones under the Obama administration, much to the chagrin of human rights advocates and lawyers, who argue that their deadly strikes violate due process rights. Shortly after taking office in January, Trump gave the CIA authority to launch drone strikes.

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A coalition of liberal groups is putting pressure on the Democratic Party not to help centrist Democrats running for reelection next year if they vote for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch.

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The Hill’s Whip List: How Dems say they'll vote on Gorsuch filibuster

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Senators in both parties are speculating that a blowup over President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court could lead not only to the end of the filibuster for such nominations, but for controversial legislation as well.

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The Trump administration has quietly issued new policy guidance that would make it harder for companies to use the H-1B visa program to bring foreign computer programmers into the U.S.

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The Supreme Court will not pause a case concerning the Obama administration’s Clean Water Rule in a rebuke to the Trump administration.

The justices' decision came on Monday with no explanation.

The White House opposes the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers’ rule and asked the court to hold off on the case while the agencies formally consider repealing it.

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President Trump on Monday affirmed that the United States will be an ally to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his country following the first meeting of the two leaders since Trump took office.

“I just want to let everyone know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President el-Sisi,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside el-Sisi. “He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation.”...

Trump's praise for el-Sisi comes as the former general's three-year-old administration, which started after el-Sisi led a coup to depose Egypt's first freely elected president, faces criticism over alleged widespread human rights abuses. A 2016 State Department report on human rights in Egypt accused the country's security forces of, among other things, "unlawful killings and torture."

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President Trump can extract money from his business endeavors while serving as president, ProPublica reported on Monday. According to the news outlet, an extra clause added to a trust document in February allows Trump to request funds from the trust.

The clause specifically states that the trustees “shall distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request.”

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Despite the hyperpolarized environment of Washington that favors hard-liners, Republicans who advocate compromise have emerged as a force to be reckoned with.

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White House officials presented an offer to the conservative House Freedom Caucus on Monday night as they seek to revive the ObamaCare replacement bill.

Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials presented an idea to the Freedom Caucus meeting to allow states to choose to apply for waivers to repeal two ObamaCare regulations that conservatives argue are driving up premiums.

Those two regulations detail ObamaCare's essential health benefits, which mandate which health services insurers must cover, and "community rating," which prevents insurers from charging sick people higher premiums.

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Last week, the Senate voted 51 to 50 to repeal Obama-era guidance that explicitly prevented states from denying Title X funds to clinics that also provide abortion services, like Planned Parenthood health centers. After two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, sided with Democrats in voting to continue debate on the bill, Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote to end debate, and later voted again to repeal the rule. President Trump is expected to sign the repeal bill.

Repealing the rule means state governments that object to Planned Parenthood can try to prevent the group from receiving Title X funds, directing the federal money to health programs they prefer. But such differentiation remains illegal under the law, observers indicate. That could put the courts at the heart of the debate over family planning funding.

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A former adviser to President Trump’s campaign met a Russian intelligence operative three years before the 2016 race, according to a new report.Carter Page passed documents to the operative during a 2013 encounter in New York City, BuzzFeed said Monday.

BuzzFeed said Page huddled with Victor Podobnyy, a Russian intelligence official whom the U.S. government later charged with acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign government.

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The filing says Page, an energy consultant, then met with, emailed with and “provided documents to [Podobnyy] about the energy business” from January to June of that year.

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President Trump’s administration is reviewing ways to enact the “extreme vetting” practices that often mentioned during his campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Administration officials told the newspaper they are evaluating whether to require foreign nationals who visit the U.S. to divulge cell phone contacts and passwords for social networking websites.

“If there is any doubt about a person’s intentions coming to the United States, they should have to overcome — really and truly prove to our satisfaction — that they are coming for legitimate reasons,” a counselor to Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told the Journal.

Possible alterations to the visa process could affect citizens from countries like France and Germany, the newspaper noted.

While phone checks are not routine, new rules could potentially force visitors to supply their phones to authorities to check their contacts. Another method would require visitors to supply authorities with the passwords for online accounts so they may view both public and private interactions.

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President Trump rolled back a trio of regulations Monday, including protections for hibernating bears in Alaska.

The Obama-era rule from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) prohibited certain hunting tactics that target “predator” animals likes bears and wolves while they are inside Alaska’s national preserves. This included a ban on hunters using airplanes.

Trump overturned the rule Monday, handing control of the hunting regulations over to Alaska state officials who have shown an eagerness to control predator populations as a way to protect other animals such as deer.

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President Trump signed a bill on Monday repealing internet privacy rules passed last year by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would have given internet users greater control over what service providers can do with their data, a White House spokeswoman confirmed.

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As Monday morning dawned, several media outlets broke a story that gave new life to the ongoing political saga surrounding President Trump’s allegations that the Obama administration had “spied” on him (as well as his campaign and transition teams). The reports stated that former National Security Advisor Susan Rice had been the official who had requested the unmasking of the identities of several Trump associates contained in intelligence reports derived from authorized surveillance.

Almost immediately, partisans on both sides leapt to put their spin on the new information, often times without regard for even the appearance of objectivity or factual accuracy. Through the partisan haze and cable news hyperbolic rhetoric, however, one thing has become rather clear: absent some new information, the current reports do not demonstrate that Rice’s actions were illegal, unethical or otherwise inconsistent with existing government protocols.

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President Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted praise Tuesday for writer Mike Cernovich, a promoter of the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, saying he deserved a Pulitzer Prize for his scoop on a story about former national security adviser Susan Rice requesting the "unmasking" of American citizens connected to Trump in intelligence reports.

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President Trump has removed chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon from his role on the National Security Council (NSC), a senior White House official said Wednesday.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster made the decision, which Trump approved, the official said...
The Joint Chiefs chairman and intelligence director are having their roles as “regular attendees” of the principals committee restored, according to a regulatory filing dated Tuesday. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency will also have a permanent role on the committee.

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Trump's email to CNN president Jeff Zucker, reported by the New York Times Wednesday, came after CNN panelists pressed Trump during a presidential debate about the "Access Hollywood" tape that showed him boasting about sexually assaulting women.

In the full email, reportedly delivered by Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, Trump accused Zucker of disloyalty and alluded to further retribution:

“Jeff — Too bad you (CNN) couldn’t be honest with how well I did in the debate. The dumbest thing I ever did was get you the job at CNN — you are the most disloyal person. Just remember, I always seem to find a way to get even. Best wishes, Donald J. Trump.”

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Trump said that a chemical attack in Syria that killed dozens of people, including children, “crossed a lot of lines for me.”

The president also said, “it is very, very possible — and I will tell you it’s already happened — that my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

The administration had signaled as recently as last week that the ouster of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, was no longer a priority. Trump’s comments suggest the removal of Assad is once again on the table.

But he did not say that explicitly, leaving Washington wondering what will come next.

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Bipartisan negotiations involving as many as 10 senators hoping to avoid a floor blowup over the Senate rules and Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch have collapsed, setting up a partisan showdown on Thursday.

A group of Republicans and Democrats led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.) negotiated intensely in recent days in hopes of reaching a deal to avoid the nuclear option, a tactic GOP leaders plan to use Thursday to change the filibuster rule.

Senate Republicans are poised to hold a simple majority vote to strip the minority party of the power to filibuster Supreme Court nominees — a rarely used and highly controversial tactic that would allow them to confirm Gorsuch without help from Democrats.

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Trump Turns on Assad, Strikes Air Base With Flurry of Cruise Missiles

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The president enforced the U.S. red line on chemical weapons, but this could all turn out very badly.

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Russia is suspending a communications channel with the United States set up to avoid midair incidents between Russian and U.S. pilots in the skies over the Syria.

The move is in response to a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airfield carried out on Thursday in retaliation for a chemical attack by the administration of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday.

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President Trump is preparing an executive order to start undoing former President Obama’s restrictions on offshore drilling.
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The order would direct Interior to rewrite Obama’s five-year schedule for lease sales between 2017 to 2022, which left out any drilling in the Arctic or Atlantic oceans, and to add some sales in those areas.

It would also begin the process of undoing Obama’s actions to indefinitely block drilling in certain areas of the Arctic and Atlantic, Bloomberg reported. The former president used a little-known provision in law to do that last year, and his administration argued that the action could not be undone by Trump.
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He signed a wide-ranging executive order last week to undo nearly all of Obama’s climate policies. That order also directed Interior and other agencies to find policies that inhibit domestic energy production and use and to work to undo them.

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Twitter filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday alleging that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials had tried to get the company to reveal the identity of an anonymous account that has been critical of the agency.

The lawsuit alleges CBP agents issued an administrative summons to Twitter asking it to reveal the identity of the user @ALT_uscis, an account that has been critical of the administration and specifically the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and claims to be run by a government employee.

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President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, failed to disclose dozens of meetings and contacts with foreign officials in the months before inauguration while he was seeking a top-secret security clearance, The New York Times reported Thursday.Among the meetings that Kushner omitted from his national security questionnaire were one with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and another with Sergey Gorkov, the CEO of the Russian state-owned bank Vnesheconombank.