Trump rails against asylum seekers and Mexico as Congress prepares to subpoena Mueller report
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Your support makes all the difference.House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler is planning a vote on Wednesday on a motion to subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on ties between Donald Trump and Russia and demand testimony from at least four former top Trump aides.
The report is still under review by attorney-general William Barr but Mr Nadler has lost patience and hopes to issue him with a “hurry up” notice and call up Mr Trump’s ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon, former director of strategic communications Hope Hicks, ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus to appear before his committee.
President Trump has meanwhile repeated his threat to shutdown the US border with Mexico in protest at what he regards as America’s neighbour’s failure to tackle northbound illegal immigration and called on the Democrats to help fix asylum “loopholes”.
Mr Mueller's report was delivered to the Justice Department a week and a half ago, marking an end to a nearly two year investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The attorney general's office then sent a letter to Congress just two days later, detailing in broad strokes the findings of the investigation. Mr Barr wrote in that letter that the Mueller probe found no evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Russian efforts and the Trump campaign. Mr Barr then noted that the Mueller probe did not make a judgement on whether Mr Trump had committed obstruction of justice — and the attorney general said that he had determined that charges were not warranted.
The information in the letter has been celebrated by Mr Trump, who has insisted repeatedly during the first two years of his campaign that he and his campaign had not colluded with the Russian meddling.
The Mueller report did, however, note that dozens of Russian individuals or groups were involved in an effort to sway the election for Mr Trump.
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Donald Trump is up and has taken to Twitter to declare his respect and affection for the Democrats.
April Fool!
No, the president has, of course, launched quickly in today's tirade against his political foes and their support for Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. He then calls on the Democrats to work with Republicans in Congress to close immigration "loopholes".
Some more on the late Barbara Bush's thoughts about Donald Trump, after it emerged last week she once said his criticism of her son Jeb had "given her a heart attack".
A new biography of the first lady - The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty by Susan Page - says she considered the current president "the real symbol of greed in the Eighties".
She wrote in her diary in January 1990: "Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly. So sad."
Until the day she died, Mrs Bush kept on her bedside table a red, white and blue digital clock, given to her as a joke, that counted down to the end of Trump's term.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler is planning a vote on Wednesday on a motion to subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller's report from the Justice Department and demand testimony from at least four former top Trump aides, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The four are: ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon, former director of strategic communications Hope Hicks, former White House Counsel Don McGahn and former chief of staff Reince Priebus.
The move comes in response to attorney-general William Barr's failure to release the 400-page report in time for Nadler's 2 April deadline.
Barr responded to Nadler and three other congressional leaders on Friday after they urged him to hurry up in his review of the file, saying he was scouring it for sensitive material and classified information that needed to be held back from the public in accordance with federal law.
The Democrats are meanwhile taking to Twitter to place further pressure on Barr to release the Mueller report as that 2 April deadline nears.
The House Judiciary's account has been busy retweeting the party's key players.
Donald Trump is having a busy morning, and has added his quest to make his mark on Obamacare to the list of goals he is working towards today.
Mr Trump has lashed out at the healthcare overhaul implemented by his predecessor — a programme that as proved increasingly popular in the US — calling it "worthless and unusable".
It is not clear that Republicans will follow the president's lead on the issue, however, as several attempts to derail Obamacare during the Trump presidency have damaged the party across the country.
Here's the latest on the potential subpoenas for the Mueller report, and for several former Trump aides.
Apparently, Democrats in the House plan on bringing up the subpoena for a vote on Wednesday — and approval would be a big deal for Representative Jerry Nadler's power.
The president's threat to shut down the US-Mexico border is not without some pretty clear and immediate consequences.
Communities all along the US-Mexico border rely on cross-border trade and travel every day for workers and goods. And, the impact could have impacts all over the country, with more expensive producing hitting the shelves almost immediately.
“First, you’d see prices rise incredibly fast. Then . . . we would see layoffs within a day or two,” Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas in Nogales, Arizona, told The Washington Post. “This is not going to help border security.”
Maine senator Susan Collins is among those already pushing back on the idea that Obamacare should be repealed.
Ms Collins, who is running for re-election in 2020 and has been an occasional Republican foil for the president, wrote a letter to the Justice Department scolding them for the aggressive lawsuit against the legislation being undertaken.
“Rather than seeking to have the courts invalidate the [Affordable Care Act], the proper route for the Administration to pursue would be to propose changes to the ACA or to once again seek its repeal,” Ms Collins wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr on Monday. “The Administration should not attempt to use the courts to bypass Congress.”
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