Alex Kozinski, the powerful judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who was facing a judicial investigation over allegations that he subjected 15 women to inappropriate sexual behavior, announced Monday that he would retire effective immediately. In a statement provided by his lawyer, Kozinski apologized, saying that he “had a broad Read More…

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — A mystery super PAC backing Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama is controlled by a pair of groups closely aligned with the national Democratic Party, even as the candidate strives to dissociate himself from Washington interests. Highway 31, which dropped more than $4.1 million in support of Jones and against Roy Moore ahead Read More…

A federal investigation launched in 2016 into possible bank fraud by Jane Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, is still underway — with “a potential” grand jury review possible. The probe could thwart Sanders’ 2020 presidential ambitions — as well as the Vermont political plans of Jane Sanders’ daughter, Carina Driscoll. Individuals questioned by Read More…

Fourteen Democratic senators and the DNC chief urged Sen. Al Franken to resign Wednesday following the latest sexual misconduct allegation against him. After the resignation calls, Franken’s office said the senator would make an “announcement” on Thursday. It didn’t elaborate. Earlier Wednesday, Politico reported that a former Democratic congressional aide is accusing the Minnesota Democrat Read More…

A senior member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team said he was in “awe” of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates the day she was fired for refusing to defend President Trump’s controversial travel ban, according to emails obtained by a conservative watchdog group. Andrew Weissmann, a veteran Justice Department prosecutor who is one Read More…

Calls for his resignation reached the highest levels of House leadership last week, as Brown and another accuser went public detailing his alleged misconduct. Supporters held a rally in Detroit on Monday to call for Conyers to receive “due process” and for critics to stop pressuring him to step down. Bloom said Grubbs’ affidavit is Read More…

BISMARCK—State regulators want to sit down with company officials behind a proposed oil refinery in western North Dakota to understand why they’re not going through the Public Service Commission’s siting process. The commission has scheduled a meeting for Dec. 19 regarding Meridian Energy Group’s plans for a refinery in Billings County near Theodore Roosevelt National Read More…

WASHINGTON D.C. – Funding for the government expires on Friday and Republicans are planning to bring a two-week spending measure to the floor. House GOP appropriators released the continuing resolution (CR) on Saturday morning, which which fund the government through Dec. 22. This will give Republicans two extra weeks to try to negotiate a longer-term Read More…

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s brother Anthony Rodham are facing a $17 million fraud lawsuit from Chinese investors in Greentech Automotive, an electric car company that appears to be struggling to survive. A group of 32 Chinese citizens filed the suit last week in Fairfax County, Virginia court, claiming Read More…

Most of us are well aware that sexual harassment was a problem in America well before the Harvey Weinstein scandal erupted this summer. But there is no denying the Weinstein story has taken the wraps off of a massive number of alleged and confirmed cases of this kind of misconduct in Hollywood. Now, the same Read More…

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) took action earlier this year to make her family’s private plane untrackable by the public, according to documents obtained from the Federal Aviation Administration. McCaskill garnered much criticism ahead of her last reelection campaign over her use of a private jet at taxpayer expense, causing her to demand her husband “sell the damn Read More…

Donna Brazile, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Hillary Clinton gained control of the political party before she won the presidential nomination in an effort to squeeze out Bernie Sanders. She began investigating whether Clinton “rigged the nomination process” as emails hacked from the DNC and published by WikiLeaks last year had Read More…

The pollster for President Trump’s campaign says that he believes Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have defeated Trump in the general election had he secured the Democratic nomination. Tony Fabrizio said at a Harvard University Institute of Politics event Monday that Sanders could have prevailed where Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did not. “There’s no question that if Read More…

The former House speaker feels liberated—but he’s also seething about what happened to his party. WEST CHESTER, Ohio—He swings the golf club like a right-hander, which he is, but putts as a southpaw. Maybe it’s a metaphor for a conservative politician who often turned to liberals in crunch time, but I’m too busy losing $20 Read More…

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the election has dramatically escalated, with authorities indicting former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and campaign official Rick Gates with money laundering, making false statements and other charges. It was also revealed on Monday morning that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy Read More…

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday gave a significant boost to President Donald Trump’s promise to cut taxes, narrowly passing a GOP budget that shelves longstanding concerns over federal deficits in favor of a rewrite of the tax code that Republicans promise will jump-start the economy. The 216-212 vote permits Republicans to begin work on Read More…

A shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a Read More…

Some of the biggest names in technology have been lavishing millions on Congress during the third quarter, according to government documents — at a time when they’re under increasing regulatory scrutiny from Washington. The disclosures, required by the Lobbying Disclosure Act, revealed Google spent $4.17 million lobbying Congress this most recent quarter. Facebook spent $2.85 Read More…

Washington (CNN)Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that President Donald Trump is “getting a lot more done” than his criticism of the slow-moving Senate would suggest. “I think he’s getting a lot more done than he’s giving everybody credit for,” McConnell said. “I think his appointments, as I’ve Read More…

LAS VEGAS — The Democratic National Committee is reeling, facing a turnaround that’s proving a much bigger lift than anyone expected as it struggles to raise enough money to cover its basic promises. Many donors are refusing to write checks. And on-the-ground operatives worry they won’t have the resources to build the infrastructure they need Read More…

The Democratic Party this week plans to name 75 people including lobbyists and political operatives to leadership posts that come with superdelegate votes at its next presidential convention, potentially aggravating old intraparty tensions as it struggles to confront President Donald Trump. The new members-at-large of the Democratic National Committee will vote on party rules and Read More…

Here are the highlights from Monday’s proceedings in the federal corruption trial of U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez. Menendez, a Democrat and New Jersey’s senior senator, is charged with doing official favors for his friend and co-defendant, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, in exchange for expensive hotel stays, private jet flights and hundreds of thousands of Read More…

The Russians who worked for a notorious St. Petersburg “troll factory” that was part of Vladimir Putin’s campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election were required to watch the “House of Cards” television series to help them craft messages to “set up the Americans against their own government,” according to an interview broadcast Sunday (in Russian) with a former member of the troll factory’s Read More…

Washington (CNN)Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is expanding his efforts to unseat sitting Senate Republicans in primaries next year. In the two weeks since Bannon-backed former judge Roy Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama’s Republican primary, Bannon has expanded his map of targets in the 2018 midterms and ramped up his efforts Read More…

The Trump administration will order nearly two-thirds of Cuba’s diplomatic personnel to leave the United States after months of mysterious “attacks” that have damaged the health of U.S. embassy staff in Havana, according to a congressional source and a person familiar with the plan. The U.S. State Department is expected to announce the expulsions as Read More…

Washington (CNN)A full-strength Supreme Court will take the bench Monday for what could be the most consequential term in decades, as the ideologically split justices consider cases as diverse as religious liberty, immigration, cell phone privacy, voting rights and possibly the legality of President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban. “There is only one prediction that Read More…

Since announcing in December that he would step down as Starbucks chief executive, there has been speculation that Howard Schultz is eyeing a run for president in 2020. A couple weeks back, I pegged him as the businessperson most likely to win the Democratic nomination. Well, Howard Schultz sure sounds like a candidate. Schultz spoke Read More…

U.S. authorities placed Paul Manafort under surveillance after he was ousted as Donald Trump’s campaign manager in the summer of 2016, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. The surveillance, which was part of a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference with the presidential election, didn’t involve listening to Mr. Manafort’s phone communications in Read More…

An aide to Tim Kaine enters a diner in Charlottesville and informs the host that the Virginia senator is about to walk in. The host smiles and cracks a joke: “You mean the guy who lost to Trump?” Ten months after the presidential election, Kaine is still trying to shed the stigma of being the Read More…

President Donald Trump plans an aggressive travel schedule, taking him to as many as 13 states over the next seven weeks, to sell the idea of a tax overhaul as the administration tries to avoid repeating the communications failures of its attempt to repeal Obamacare. With a make-or-break legislative battle looming on taxes, the White Read More…

More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a motor vehicle. Conservatives say the state’s same-day registration is an invitation for fraud because of loose proof-of-residence rules. New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Read More…

(CNN)Hillary Clinton casts Bernie Sanders as an unrealistic over-promiser in her new book, according to excerpts posted by a group of Clinton supporters. She said that his attacks against her during the primary caused “lasting damage” and paved the way for “(Donald) Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.” Clinton, in a book that will be released September Read More…

Sean Spicer is cashing in on “candor.” President Donald Trump’s first press secretary — who ceded his high-profile post to Sarah Huckabee Sanders in July but celebrated his official last day in the West Wing on Aug. 31 — has signed with Worldwide Speakers Group, the company confirmed to POLITICO. “Audiences around the world will Read More…

Chief White House economic advisor Gary Cohn rejected arguments that the administration’s tax plan will benefit the wealthy most. In fact, Cohn told CNBC that simplifying the tax code actually could mean higher earners would pay more. “Simplification does not mean tax cuts for the higher end of the bracket. We can simplify and we Read More…

The latest actions by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are forcing the U.S. and its allies to consider a more combative strategy, retired Gen. Wesley Clark said Wednesday on CNBC, including going after test-launch pads and naval assets. “We’re walking up to that and actually Kim is forcing us to walk up to considerations Read More…

A restless base, along with Trump’s low approval ratings, has Democrats starting presidential bids earlier than usual. MANCHESTER, N.H. — Just like that, the 2020 retail campaigning for president began right here in a strip-mall campaign headquarters Monday, when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti showed up for what he called “the most important race in Read More…