President Donald Trump has purchased at least $82 million worth of corporate and municipal bonds between late August and early October, according to newly released federal financial disclosures. The information, published Saturday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, details more than 175 financial transactions conducted by the president from August 28 through October 2. Read More…
President Donald J. Trump has directed the Department of Justice to investigate the nation’s largest meat packing companies for potential collusion, price fixing, and manipulation, with a focus on foreign-owned or heavily foreign-influenced firms. The probe targets the “Big Four” meat packers — JBS (Brazil), Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef — which together control Read More…
(The Center Square) – States rely on federal dollars more than they have in modern history, according to a new report, with one of the report’s authors saying such dependency makes states easy victims to the whims of federal bureaucrats and turmoil. Co-author of the State Policy Network’s report as well as senior policy adviser Read More…
The federal government shutdown entered its sixth week this weekend, stretching into the longest in U.S. history and revealing the mounting toll of Washington’s political stalemate. With more than 1,000 flight cancellations nationwide for the second straight day and critical federal services strained, the crisis is now hitting ordinary Americans far harder than the politicians Read More…
BILLINGS – Montana State University Billings has named Ed Garding as the Interim Dean of the College of Business. Garding served as the president and CEO of First Interstate BancSystem from 2012 to 2015. He is still involved at First Interstate as the corporate and government relations officer. He began his career with First Interstate Read More…
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has invited FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok to appear before the panel. Strzok has faced a barrage of attacks from President Trump and conservatives after an internal investigation revealed he had been sending messages critical of the then-Republican candidate during the 2016 presidential race to FBI lawyer Read More…
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said in an interview last week that not enough of her fellow Senate Democrats were willing to “take on the billionaire class.” Warren has been critical of Senate Democrats for their support of the Dodd-Frank rollback, which President Donald Trump signed in May. The new legislation scaled back regulations imposed Read More…
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., used a private plane to travel between some stops on a three-day RV tour of her state, McCaskill confirmed Tuesday. “I added some stops with the use of the plane, but I was on the RV so much that the broken door drove me crazy,” McCaskill said Tuesday, according to Politico. Read More…
(CNN) – A government watchdog has cleared Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke from improper political activity when he spoke to a professional hockey team owned by one of his campaign donors. The Office of Special Counsel found “no evidence or allegation” that Zinke “gave a political speech or otherwise engaged in political activity during this event” Read More…
At least two advertisers say they’re suspending ads from comedian Samantha Bee’s television show. The backlash follows the latest episode of TBS’s “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” in which Bee called first daughter Ivanka Trump a vulgar name. Autotrader said in its statement that Bee’s comments were “offensive and unacceptable.” “As a result, Autotrader has Read More…
When a small group of alarmed White House aides caught wind that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp — one of the most endangered Democrats up for reelection in 2018 — would be attending President Donald Trump’s bill signing last week, they raced to stop it. Word eventually reached Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has made unseating Read More…
California’s primary elections on June 5 will be one of the most consequential — and bizarre — contests of the entire primary season. The Golden State is crucial to Democrats’ effort to retake the House — Republicans currently hold a whopping seven districts Hillary Clinton won, and Democrats are eager to pry them away. The Read More…
Democrats are quietly fighting their biggest political battle in a decade for state legislative races as they aim to flip control of up to a dozen chambers. The effort could position the party to play a bigger role in redrawing U.S. House districts after the 2020 census and could help boost turnout for candidates running Read More…
A South Carolina Democrat who has admitted to physically abusing his former wife in the 1970s has refused to drop out of next month’s congressional primary despite a call from his state’s Democratic Party to do so and the resignation of his campaign manager. The Post and Courier of Charleston reported Monday that Archie Parnell, Read More…
Seonki Jo, who was brought to America from South Korea at age 3, has lived in Duluth, Georgia, nearly all his life. When it came time for him to begin his college search, he wanted to stick close to home. But, he found, he couldn’t. Georgia not only banned undocumented immigrants like Jo, who in Read More…
Democrat House candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher is projected to win the Texas primary runoff, giving national Democrats their preferred candidate in the race to unseat Rep. John CulbersonJohn Abney CulbersonFive races to watch in the Texas runoffs Democrats are geared up for primary runoff D-Day in Texas The Hill’s Morning Report — Sponsored by CVS Read More…
Jon Tester was on his farm in rural Montana when his phone rang with the news: It was his chief of staff, informing him that the president of the United States had just called for his resignation on Twitter. The Montana Democrat briefly considered President Donald Trump’s latest attack on him, then fired up his Read More…
MIAMI — The elections supervisor in Florida’s second-most populous county broke state and federal law by unlawfully destroying ballots cast in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s 2016 Democratic primary, a judge ruled Friday in a case brought by the congresswoman’s challenger who wanted to check for voting irregularities. In light of the ruling, Gov. Rick Scott’s Read More…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two Montanans, Jon Tester and Ryan Zinke, faced off Thursday in the U.S. Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee over funding to support public lands. Zinke, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, has proposed deep cuts to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and Tester, a Democratic senator, wanted to know why. In March, Read More…
Comey, who just released his book A Higher Loyalty, also discussed the email scandal that dogged Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential candidate who lost to Trump. Former FBI director James Comey likened U.S. President Donald Trump to a self-serving Mafia boss Thursday during a talk in which he defended the decision to reopen the Read More…
GREAT FALLS, Mont. — President Trump’s unrelenting attacks on this state’s Democratic senator have landed with a boom, drawing the attention of voters and those fighting to keep GOP control of the Senate. Trump’s fierce criticism — calling Sen. Jon Tester “dishonest and sick,” saying he knows things about the senator that would make him Read More…
Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana still doesn’t know who his Republican opponent will be in the November midterm elections. But the Democratic lawmaker is already under fire from President Donald Trump and other GOP critics who blame him for scuttling Ronny Jackson’s bid to become the secretary of Veterans Affairs. Now, conservative politicians and Read More…
(CNN)Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, will campaign in Montana for a Republican Senate candidate “very soon,” the candidate has announced. Troy Downing, an Air Force veteran and one of the four Republicans vying to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in November, announced the news Friday. “It is time to stand Read More…
Democrats and some in the mainstream media have been desperately trying to attack Ryan Zinke over his travel spending as US Secretary of Interior. However, new data shows that Zinke is spending less than his predecessors who served as Interior Secretary under former President Obama. As The Daily Signal reports: “The Daily Signal’s examination of Read More…
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he may “hold up” a major trade deal the U.S. recently made with South Korea, in order to use the agreement as leverage in any upcoming negotiations with North Korea over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. “I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea,” Trump Read More…
Government officials ratcheted up pressure Monday on Facebook Inc. over its handling of user data, with federal regulators saying they are investigating the social-media giant’s privacy policies and 37 state attorneys general demanding explanations for its practices. The Federal Trade Commission, in a statement, signaled that its probe of Facebook is broad. Tom Pahl, a Read More…
Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said in an op-ed Tuesday that the Second Amendment should be repealed, citing the protests in response to the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, as an impetus for the change. Stevens, who retired from the high court in 2010 as one of the longest-serving justices in history, Read More…
Nearly a year before Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired senior FBI official Andrew McCabe for what Sessions called a “lack of candor,” McCabe oversaw a federal criminal investigation into whether Sessions lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly accused Read More…
The longtime spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was physically assaulted by a Democratic operative on Capitol Hill Thursday. Politico, The Daily Caller, and other outlets are now reporting that a man who works for the liberal group known as American Bridge was arrested following the incident. Here’s a compilation of coverage from various outlets Read More…
At a hearing on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Washington Senator Maria Cantwell asked Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to explain since he is advocating higher admission prices at national parks, why he chose to take a private jet home from Las Vegas. “First, insults and innuendoes are misleading,” Zinke said. Read More…
President Donald Trump said Monday his commerce secretary will talk to the European Union about tariffs Trump argues have been unfair to the United States. Trump wrote on Twitter: “Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will be speaking with representatives of the European Union about eliminating the large Tariffs and Barriers they use against the U.S.A. Read More…
WASHINGTON — Despite unrelenting criticism from the White House on the course of the investigation into Russia’s election interference, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Monday offered unqualified support for special counsel Robert Mueller. “The special counsel is not an unguided missile,” Rosenstein said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY. “I don’t believe there is Read More…
President Donald Trump said again Monday he wants a “phase two” of tax cuts on top of the law Republicans passed in December. Speaking as the World Series champion Houston Astros visited the White House, Trump asked Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, whether he planned to cut taxes further. Brady and GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Read More…
Conservative economist Larry Kudlow is the front-runner to replace Gary Cohn as President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, CNBC’s Jim Cramer reports. “I have it pretty good … that Larry Kudlow is now the leading contender for the job to replace Gary Cohn. I think if he was offered it, he would take it. This Read More…
ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers approved a bill on Thursday that stripped out a tax break proposal highly coveted by Delta Air Lines — the most stinging punishment that America’s pro-gun forces have leveled so far on one of the many corporations recalibrating their positions on firearms after the Florida high school massacre. The $50 million Read More…
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A pro-Second Amendment section of John Kasich’s website was removed Sunday, after the Republican governor appeared on CNN and said reasonable gun control measures should be enacted following last week’s deadly Florida school shooting. JohnKasich.com, his political website that is separate from his governor’s site, had previously contained text and photos illustrating Read More…
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.), who once spearheaded an unsuccessful bipartisan agreement to strengthen gun laws, said Tuesday that he plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would expand background checks on firearm purchases, giving a jolt to gun-control efforts in the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Florida that left 17 Read More…
As Democrats make raising the minimum wage a centerpiece of their 2018 campaigns, and Republicans call for states to handle the issue, both are missing an important problem: Wage laws are poorly enforced, with workers often unable to recover back pay even after the government rules in their favor. That’s the conclusion of a nine-month Read More…
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that President Donald Trump was not attacking the FBI when he wrote on Twitter last weekend that the bureau spent “too much time trying to prove Russian collusion” and that it “missed all of the many signals” from the man police say killed 17 people at Read More…
Democrats are looking to embrace the #MeToo moment and rally women to push back on President Donald Trump in the midterms—and they don’t want Bill Clinton anywhere near it. In a year when the party is deploying all their other big guns and trying to appeal to precisely the kind of voters Clinton has consistently Read More…
Mitt Romney will launch his Utah Senate campaign Thursday morning with a low key announcement on social media, and will make his first public appearance a day later near Salt Lake City with a keynote address to a gathering of grassroots Republicans. Romney teased his run for Senate in a Feb. 1 tweet, saying that Read More…
President Donald Trump’s approval rating is now higher than former President Barack Obama’s on the same date of his first term, Rasmussen Reports daily tracking data shows. In its presidential daily tracking poll released Thursday, the Rasmussen Reports showed Trump’s approval at 48 percent, statistically tied with his disapproval rating of 50 percent. READ THE Read More…
Pundits and pols alike are increasingly referring to the race to succeed Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott as “the main attraction” of 2018. Florida boasts 20.6 million residents, and ranked second only to Texas as the state with the largest gain in population last year. Boasting 29 electoral votes, the Sunshine State packs one of Read More…
BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—“We don’t need to give him another ounce of our brain-space,” Dan Canon told the crowd of 40 people, hitting the TV mute as President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech began. “We don’t care what he says.” The speech had been the advertised reason for the gathering at the Crazy Horse bar Read More…