Jan. 23, 2018, 7:39 a.m.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was interviewed for hours last week in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.
The interview comes as Mueller is investigating whether President Donald Trump's actions in office, including the firing of FBI Director James Comey, constituted obstruction of justice. Mueller is also investigating contacts between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.
Sessions is thought to be the highest-ranking Trump administration official to be interviewed by Mueller's team.
Jan. 22, 2018, 3:45 p.m.
President Trump stood in the East Room of the White House last February and haltingly addressed what he called "a very, very difficult subject for me" — the hundreds of thousands of immigrants known as Dreamers, who came to this country illegally as children.
"We're going to show great heart," he vowed, gesturing with both hands during a news conference. "You have these incredible kids, in many cases — not in all cases. In some of the cases they're having DACA and they're gang members and they're drug dealers too. But you have some absolutely incredible kids — I would say mostly — they were brought here in such a way — it's a very, very tough subject."
Jan. 23, 2018, 4:28 a.m.
President Trump started his day Tuesday as he often has — with a tweet against “Fake News CNN.” Only this time it came after news that a man with the same complaint had been arrested for calling CNN’s Atlanta headquarters “to gun you all down.”
News of the arrest broke late Monday but the man, identified as Brandon Griesemer of Novi, Mich., was charged in federal district court on Friday after repeated threatening calls to CNN on Jan. 9-10.
"Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down," the caller said, according to CNN, quoting from a federal affidavit. In another call, the caller threatened, "I am on my way right now to gun the f****** CNN cast down .... I am coming to kill you.”
Jan. 22, 2018, 6:18 p.m.
President Trump signed a bill reopening the government late Monday, ending a 69-hour display of partisan dysfunction after Democrats reluctantly voted to temporarily pay for resumed operations.
They relented in return for Republican assurances that the Senate will soon take up the plight of young immigrant “Dreamers" and other contentious issues.
The vote set the stage for hundreds of thousands of federal workers to return on Tuesday, cutting short what could have become a messy and costly impasse.
Jan. 22, 2018, 1:46 p.m.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took aim at White House aide Stephen Miller on Sunday, accusing the former Santa Monica High School conservative activist of ill-advising President Trump’s White House staff.
“Every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere,” Graham said.
Miller has advocated a hard-line immigration enforcement agenda.
Jan. 22, 2018, 11:02 a.m.
The White House branded the federal budget impasse, which appeared to be ending on Monday, as the “Schumer Shutdown” in its attempt to pin the blame on Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
But it wasn’t just Republicans using that phrase during the weekend government shutdown. Independent analysts said Twitter accounts linked to Russia have spread the same message.
The website Hamilton 68, which monitors accounts it considers to be part of Russian influence networks, said #SchumerShutdown was the top hashtag over the last two days.
Jan. 22, 2018, 8:55 a.m.
Jan. 22, 2018, 8:08 a.m.
President Trump has discussed traveling to San Diego to see border wall prototypes, and White House officials are known to have been discussing plans for a possible trip, but a Trump administration official said Monday that there is still nothing in that regard on Trump’s short-term schedule “as of now.”
The official requested anonymity to discuss the internal schedule, which is updated often and usually not made public until days or hours before Trump makes a public appearance.
Trump plans to deliver the State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, Jan. 30, and is likely to talk about his signature campaign promise, the border wall. Presidents traditionally travel after those speeches to promote their agendas.
After sodden hillsides thundered into Montecito, obliterating scores of homes and killing nearly two dozen people, seven days went by before President Trump first acknowledged the disaster.
Even then, word came not from Trump, but from his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who noted in a two-sentence statement that the president "has been briefed and will continue to monitor the mudslides."
Jan. 22, 2018, 7:25 a.m.
The Trump administration’s effort to minimize public anger over the partial government shutdown got a boost from the Smithsonian on Monday, which is keeping its doors open at least one more day.
The organization, which hosts 715,000 people daily at the National Zoo and its 19 museums said it had enough funds lingering in its accounts to avoid turning away visitors on the day much of the rest of government was winding down operations.
Visitors were put on notice that the reprieve may be brief.