2017

ANALYSIS — A trade agreement with China that President Donald Trump boastfully announced nearly two months ago remains stalled, despite a top White House economic adviser’s Friday pledge that a final deal is “close.”

On Thursday, the often-verbose president was notably succinct when a reporter asked about the on-again/off-again/on-again China trade negotiations, including whether he would follow through on a threat to slap 15 percent tariffs on $160 billion worth of Chinese-made items on Dec. 15.

ANALYSIS | Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ voice cracked Thursday afternoon as she described her reasons for giving up her White House press secretary gig.

“I feel like it’s important for the president to be able to put somebody in place as he moves into the campaign season,” Sanders said in an impromptu gaggle in her office, also saying she wants to spend time with her three young kids. 

Eric Ueland, hand-picked by President Donald Trump to be his third legislative affairs director, has decades of experience in the D.C. “swamp” his soon-to-be boss loathes. But the former senior GOP aide will quickly learn it is the president alone who is, as one official put it Thursday, “the decider.”

Ueland has been chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and a Senate Budget Committee staff director. Experts and former officials describe him as highly qualified for the tough task of being the messenger between Trump and a Congress with a Democrat-controlled House that regularly riles up the president and a Senate where Republicans lack votes to pass most major legislation.

A federal special counsel nominated by President Donald Trump is calling for White House counselor Kellyanne Conway to be removed from office for taking overtly political actions while fulfilling her official government duties.

But the White House is pushing back, saying the office violated Conway’s due process rights and is questioning the special counsel’s motivations.

Amid signs former Alabama judge Roy Moore is planning another Senate bid, President Donald Trump has urged him to stay out of the 2020 race after sexual misconduct allegations helped wreck a 2017 run that gave the seat to Democrat Doug Jones.

A day after Moore took to Twitter to signal he’s planning a second bid, the president fired off his own pair of tweets declaring that the twice-removed judge “probably won’t” be able to defeat Jones and bring the seat formerly held by Jeff Sessions — Trump’s onetime attorney general — back into Republican hands.

Rep. Elijah Cummings threatened Tuesday to hold former White House adviser Carl Kline in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena ordering him to testify about his role allegedly covering up wrongdoing in the Trump administration’s White House security clearance process.

President Donald Trump’s White House counsel directed Kline in a letter earlier this week not to comply with the subpoena. Kline did not appear for his scheduled deposition.

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III uncovered “evidence of numerous links” between Donald Trump campaign officials and individuals with or claiming ties to the Russian government, according to a redacted version of his final report released by the Justice Department on Thursday.

But Mueller declined to charge any of those campaign officials under conspiracy, coordination, or campaign finance laws for their contacts with Russians, because the evidence didn’t reach a prosecutable threshold.

Documents requested from key associates of Donald Trump as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into obstruction of justice and corruption are beginning to trickle in, the top Democrat on the committee indicated Thursday.

About half of the 81 people and entities connected to Trump who received letters and document requests in February from Chairman Jerrold Nadler have been in touch with the New York Democrat’s staff about complying with the committee’s probe.

An intransigent proponent of impeaching President Donald Trump plans to force his Democratic colleagues to go on record on the issue again this year — after twice doing so last Congress. But the vote tally may look a lot different than in 2017 and 2018 when roughly five dozen Democrats wanted to debate and vote on impeachment.

Democrats, then in the minority, were eager for any forum to debate the president’s alleged crimes since Republicans weren’t investigating them. But now that they’re in the majority and have multiple congressional committees probing Trump, most Democrats want to avoid rushing to judgement or action.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s opposition to impeaching President Donald Trump won’t stop a House vote on the issue, as Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green intends to force one again like he twice did when Republicans held the majority.

“I’m going to bring it the floor of the House again,” Green said Tuesday morning on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.” He declined to say when he plans to take action, saying, “The acid test is one that does not carry with it a specific date.”