World Economic Leaders Condemn President Trump’S Twitter Trade Rants At G-20 Summit

World Economic Leaders Condemn President Trump’s Twitter Trade Rants at G-20 Summit image (Bloomberg) — Global economic leaders are pushing back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest rants on global trade and currencies, speaking out against higher tariffs while backing central bank independence. Officials from Germany to Japan and South Africa at the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers in Buenos Aires rejected Trump’s unilateral stance, while working to build consensus on a final communique that would avoid upsetting Washington. G-20 members traditionally...

Russian Diplomat Calls For The Release Of Suspected Foreign Agent Maria Butina

Russian Diplomat Calls for the Release of Suspected Foreign Agent Maria Butina image (Bloomberg) — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the U.S. arrest of Russian Maria Butina on suspicion of trying to infiltrate Republican circles and acting as an unregistered foreign agent was unacceptable. In a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, the top Russian diplomat said the charges against Butina were fabricated and called for her prompt release, according to a Foreign Ministry statement. Butina was ordered jailed in the U.S. on July 19...

President Trump Fully Supports Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Says

President Trump Fully Supports Federal Reserve, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Says image (Bloomberg) — U.S. President Donald Trump fully supports the independence of the Federal Reserve and isn’t trying to interfere in the foreign-exchange market, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters in Buenos Aires. Speaking on the sidelines of the Group of 20 nations summit, Mnuchin tried to assuage investor concerns that a currency war was looming. In a series of tweets on Friday, Trump lashed out at China and the European Union for their weak currencies and said a stronger...

President Trump Calls Former Lawyer Michael Cohen’S Phone-Taping ‘Perhaps Illegal’

President Trump Calls Former Lawyer Michael Cohen’s Phone-Taping ‘Perhaps Illegal’ image (BRIDGEWATER, N.J.) — President Donald Trump is asserting that his former personal lawyer’s taping of their private phone conversations is “totally unheard of & perhaps illegal.” Trump is responding to the revelation that attorney Michael Cohen made a secret recording of their discussion about a potential payment for a former Playboy model’s account of having an affair with Trump. That conversation took place weeks before Trump’s November 2016 election. Trump...

Democratic Centrists See A ‘Silent Majority’ Ready To Rebuild

Democratic Centrists See a ‘Silent Majority’ Ready to Rebuild image Rep. Jim Himes is so confident that Democrats will recapture the House of Representatives in the fall elections that he’s wearing a tie with tiny blue waves on it. But sitting at a high-top bar table in Columbus, Ohio, recently, the chairman of the 68-member New Democrat Coalition fretted that his party could still blow its chance by veering too far to the Left in reaction to President Donald Trump. The latest irritant for him: a proposal to scrap Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the...

Koch Brothers Mount Grassroots Effort To Support Immigration

Koch Brothers Mount Grassroots Effort to Support Immigration image As the son of Mexican migrant workers and a veteran of the George W. Bush Administration, Daniel Garza has been frustrated by President Donald Trump’s hard-line approach to immigration. To push back on it, he’s revving up a grassroots effort to lobby Congress, backed by the billion brothers Charles and David Koch. As head of the conservative mega-donors’ LIBRE Initiative aimed at Hispanics, Garza will be organizing five public rallies in the next week aimed at shaking loose a...

Michael Cohen Secretly Recorded Donald Trump Talking About Paying Playboy Model: Report

Michael Cohen Secretly Recorded Donald Trump Talking About Paying Playboy Model: Report image President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer secretly recorded a conversation with him discussing a payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to a report in the New York Times . The article cites lawyers and others who are familiar with the recording saying that it was seized by the FBI during a raid on Michael Cohen’s office earlier this year and includes Trump discussing payments to McDougal. Current Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani confirmed the existence of the tape...

President Trump Says He’S Prepared To Slap Tariffs On Every Product Imported From China

President Trump Says He’s Prepared to Slap Tariffs on Every Product Imported From China image President Donald Trump has indicated that he’s willing to hit every product imported from China with tariffs, sending U.S. markets sliding before the opening bell Friday. In a taped interview with the business channel CNBC, Trump said “I’m willing to go to 500,” referring roughly to the $505.5 billion in goods imported last year from China. WATCH: Trump says he's 'ready' to put tariffs on all $505 billion of Chinese goods imported to the US...

The Trump Administration Proposes Limiting Protections For Threatened Species

The Trump Administration Proposes Limiting Protections for Threatened Species image (DENVER) — The Trump administration on Thursday proposed ending automatic protections for threatened animals and plants and limiting habitat safeguards meant to shield recovering species from harm. Administration officials said the new rules would advance conservation by simplifying and improving how the landmark Endangered Species Act is used. “These rules will be very protective,” said U.S. Interior Department Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, adding that the changes would reduce...

‘The American People Have A Right To Know.’ Justice Department Lays Out Plan To Fight Election Meddling

‘The American People Have a Right to Know.’ Justice Department Lays Out Plan to Fight Election Meddling image (ASPEN, Colo.) — The top law enforcement official overseeing the probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election is defending the prosecution of foreign agents who may never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom. Speaking Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein also said the Justice Department will notify the U.S. public when it identifies efforts by foreign government to target U.S. politics. Rosenstein unveiled a report identifying the major cyber...

Senate Unanimously Rejects Idea Of Allowing Russia To Question U.S. Diplomats

Senate Unanimously Rejects Idea of Allowing Russia to Question U.S. Diplomats image The Senate unanimously voted to reject Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to put American diplomats up for questioning by Russian authorities, after failing to pass two other measures that would have affirmed its commitment to the the intelligence community’s findings that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. The Senate voted 98-0 in favor of a non-binding resolution opposing the offer Putin made to President Donald Trump in Helsinki to exchange Russians indicted by Robert...

President Trump Asks Bolton To Invite President Putin To The White House This Fall

President Trump Asks Bolton to Invite President Putin to the White House This Fall image (WASHINGTON) — Unbowed by criticism over his Helsinki summit, President Donald Trump extended an invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet in Washington in the fall, the White House said Thursday. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Twitter that Trump had asked National Security Adviser John Bolton to invite Putin, adding, “Those discussions are already underway.” The invitation was announced hours after the president tweeted that he looked forward to...

Washington’S Newest Game: Guessing Who’S Unnamed In Indictments

Washington’s Newest Game: Guessing Who’s Unnamed in Indictments image Washington, D.C., is known for its political guessing games. There’s the one where you guess who will be appointed to a White House position. The one where you guess who the next round of elected candidates will be after election season. And the one where you guess how long a controversial figure will hold onto a job. But the newest one has a darker undercurrent: Trying to figure out the unnamed figure in an indictment related to Russian interference in U.S. politics. “We used to call...

Microsoft Says It Stopped Cyberattacks On Three 2018 Congressional Candidates

Microsoft Says It Stopped Cyberattacks on Three 2018 Congressional Candidates image (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp. said it identified and stopped attempts to launch cyberattacks on three 2018 congressional candidates using a phony version of its website. The targets, who it didn’t identify, were “all people who because of their positions might have been interesting from an espionage standpoint, as well as an election disruption standpoint,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for customer security and trust, said at the Aspen Security Forum in...

Mitch McConnell Withdraws Trump Judicial Pick Ryan Bounds Just Minutes Before Confirmation Vote

Mitch McConnell Withdraws Trump Judicial Pick Ryan Bounds Just Minutes Before Confirmation Vote image (WASHINGTON) — In a surprise move, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has withdrawn one of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees just minutes before he was set for a confirmation vote. McConnell announced Thursday on the Senate floor that he was pulling the nomination of Ryan Bounds. Trump had nominated the assistant U.S. attorney in Oregon to be a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The withdrawal of the nomination is a blow to the White House. Judicial nominations...

President Trump ‘Disagrees’ With Putin’S Interview Offer, White House Says

President Trump ‘Disagrees’ With Putin’s Interview Offer, White House Says image (WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump “disagrees” with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to allow the U.S. to question 12 Russians accused of interfering in the 2016 election in exchange for permitting Russia to interview Americans the Kremlin accuses of unspecified crimes, the White House said Thursday. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the proposal was “made in sincerity” by Putin, but Trump “disagrees with it.” She said...

President Trump Says He’S ‘Not Happy’ With The Federal Interest Rate Hike

President Trump Says He’s ‘Not Happy’ With the Federal Interest Rate Hike image (WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Thursday cast aside concerns about the Federal Reserve’s independence, saying he was “not happy” with the Fed’s recent interest rate increases. Trump told CNBC in an interview: “I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up.” Last month, the Fed raised its benchmark rate for a second time this year and projected two more increases in 2018. Its rate hikes...

Why These Former Cybersecurity Officials Are Worried About The Census

Why These Former Cybersecurity Officials Are Worried About the Census image In the wake of indictments against 12 Russian operatives for hacking into the Democratic National Committee, cybersecurity experts are raising concerns about plans but he U.S. Census Bureau to use digital questionnaires for the first time ever in 2020. Eleven former government cybersecurity employees demanded the Census Bureau and Department of Commerce outline any planned security measures in a letter that was coordinated and released by Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional...

Landscaping Businesses Are Losing Money Because Of U.S. Visa Policy

Landscaping Businesses Are Losing Money Because of U.S. Visa Policy image This year has been tough on Shayne Newman, the owner of the Connecticut-based landscaping company YardApes. For the past two decades, Newman’s business has come to rely on help that comes via the H-2B visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers for seasonal, nonagricultural employment. But this year, Newman was not able to secure the 15 H-2B visas he requested, leaving him short on workers and overly reliant on his full-time employees to pick up the slack. As a result, he...

President Trump Says He Wants To Meet With Vladimir Putin Again

President Trump Says He Wants to Meet With Vladimir Putin Again image (WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he wants a second meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to start implementing ideas they discussed at the Helsinki summit. Pushing back against criticism of first meeting, Trump accused the news media of trying to provoke a confrontation with Moscow that could lead to war, although concerns about the summit came have been raised by a broad cross-section of Republicans and Democrats. Trump tweeted a list of topics discussed at the summit,...