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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that Democrats "should be thanking" President Trump for firing FBI Director James Comey. During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Paul said “there’s a lot of hypocrisy” coming from Democrats who are outraged by Trump dismissing the FBI chief. “Many of these Democrats, including [Sen.] Chuck Schumer [N.Y.], said they lost confidence in Comey a long time ago,” Paul told the hosts, invoking the Senate Democratic leader. “Hillary Clinton’s been blaming Comey. They should be thanking President Trump for getting rid of Comey because he politicized something that may well have had something to...

GOP senators on Comey firing: Where they stand President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is splitting Senate Republicans. Several prominent GOP lawmakers have raised concerns about the timing of the decision, which comes as the FBI is investigating the 2016 election and any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. Others, however, have offered support for Trump, arguing the president was well within his authority. ADVERTISEMENT Trump scored his most prominent defender on Wednesday when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) noted that Democrats had previously criticized Comey and supported Rod Rosenstein’s deputy attorney general nomination. “Our...

The Senate panel has requested information about President Donald Trump and his top aides from a financial intelligence unit in the Treasury Department that imposed a $10 million civil penalty on Trump Taj Mahal in 2015 for multiple violations of money-laundering laws. The Senate Intelligence Committee wants to see any information relevant to its Russia investigation the Treasury agency has gathered, including evidence that might include possible money laundering, according to a committee aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. Also at issue: to what extent, if at all, people close to Vladimir Putin have invested in Trump's real estate...

Democrats are threatening to slow the Senate to a crawl in response to President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, launched the effort by objecting to the Senate GOP's routine request to allow 13 committee hearings to take place on Wednesday. "Because of the decision last night by the president of the United States to terminate the director of the FBI and the questions that its raised we gathered together, the Democratic senators on the floor, and listened as our leader at least suggested a path for us to follow...

Three Republicans joined Senate Democrats on Wednesday to reject an effort to overturn an Obama administration rule limiting methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling. Only 49 senators voted to move forward with debate on legislation to undo the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule, short of the 51 votes needed. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined all 48 members of the Democratic caucus in rejecting the resolution under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Graham and Collins had previously publicized their plans to vote against the legislation. But McCain’s vote came as a...

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter detailing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) rationale for calling for the dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey is heavy on professional grievance. The memo, submitted to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, strongly suggests that officials at the Justice Department felt Comey improperly assumed prerogatives that rightly belong to career prosecutors at DOJ, instigating a bureaucratic turf war that left department officials displeased. The memo opens with Rosenstein’s conclusion that Comey’s press conference on July 5, 2016, where he announced he would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email...

Top Senate Republican Chuck Grassley backed President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday and had a strong message for outraged media outlets: “suck it up and move on.” Grassley, R-Iowa, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on "Fox & Friends" that he supports Trump’s decision to fire the controversial FBI chief. “Of course I support it,” he said.

Democrats predictably raised the alarm after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, accusing the president of trying to cover up the investigation into Russia’s interference into the 2016 presidential election. Despite blaming Comey for Hillary Clinton’s loss, former campaign aides defended him. “Twilight zone. I was as disappointed and frustrated as anyone at how the email investigation was handled. But this terrifies me,” wrote former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook on Twitter. Former Obama aides also accused Trump of covering up the Russia investigation. “This should not be sugar coated. Firing Comey is up there in terms of...

The Senate confirmed Heather Wilson to be Air Force secretary Monday, making her only the second of President Donald Trump's nominees to be approved for a Pentagon post. The vote was 76-22. Only Democrats opposed Wilson, a former Republican congresswoman from New Mexico. Her confirmation was a rare victory for the Trump administration in its long slog to fill senior vacancies at the Pentagon. Dozens of national security positions remain unfilled, with Obama holdovers or civil servants filling many senior jobs on an acting basis.

FULL TITLE......................In blow to U.S.-Turkey ties, Trump administration approves plan to directly arm Syrian Kurds against Islamic State..............President Trump has approved a plan to directly arm Kurdish forces fighting in Syria as part of a U.S. military plan to capture Raqqa, the Syrian city that is the Islamic State’s defacto capital, U.S. officials said on Tuesday. The decision, which was first reported by NBC, is sure to anger Turkey, the NATO ally that views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, as a threat and has rebuked the United States for partnering with them in its fight against extremists in...

A judge on Tuesday erased former NFL star Aaron Hernandez’s conviction in a 2013 murder because Hernandez died before his appeal was heard. Hernandez, who had been a standout tight end for the New England Patriots before his arrest, hanged himself in his jail cell on April 19. He was serving a life sentence in the killing of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd, and his suicide came just five days after he was acquitted in a different double slaying in 2012.

The personal appeal that President Trump said he received from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month — leading him to renegotiate NAFTA — was only made after Trump’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner called Trudeau’s office in Ottawa and begged him to talk some sense into the commander-in-chief, a report says. The unconventional move was revealed Monday by the National Post, who spoke to several government sources familiar with the desperate pleas from Washington. Toronto’s Metro newspaper later revealed that Kushner was the government official who made the phone call.

Three senior defense officials report that Iran test-fired a high-speed torpedo near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The Hoot torpedo is still in the testing phase, the officials report, but once it is fully operational it should be able to travel about 12,000 yards (approximately six nautical miles) at a speed of about 200 knots per hour (approximately 250 miles per hour). None of the officials could say whether the test was successful or not.

Emory University is keen to pay “100 percent of demonstrated financial need for undocumented students (with or without DACA) who are admitted as first-year, first-degree-seeking students,” according to an online description of coming fall program. As The College Fix reports, the private Atlanta university has given the take care of illegals program the unwieldy name of “Need-Based Financial Aid Program for Undocumented Students, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) Students” and the information is all available on their website. There’s money galore for illegals. “All Undocumented Students (with or without DACA) who are admitted as first-year, first-degree-seeking undergraduate students,...

Conservative columnist George Will has now become the latest prominent figure to join MSNBC and NBC News as a network contributor. Fox News cut ties with Will earlier this year, which came after months of feuding between him and the network’s former ratings colossus, Bill O’Reilly. Will has been making frequent appearances on MSNBC recently, and in one of his latest segments, he elaborated on his column about how President Trump‘s “disorderly mind” is a “dangerous disability” that could result in dire consequences..

When the House passed the GOP’s ObamaCare replacement, the AHCA last Thursday, there was no shortage of angry celebrities attacking the GOP in profanity-laced tweets, claiming the GOP “will pay” for it come election time. Looks like the anger has not died down in Hollywood yet. Actress and singer Bette Midler followed the rest of her ilk’s partisan and vile lead, tweeting that the GOP was “gassing their own people” by repealing ObamaCare. So the #homegrownAssads in the #FreedomCaucus want employers to not have to offer health care to employees. Like gassing their own people! — Bette Midler (@BetteMidler) May...

The company owned by Jared Kushner’s family apologized on Monday for touting the son-in-law of President Trump in a sales pitch during an investor conference over the weekend in China. Nicole Kushner Meyer, the sister of the key White House adviser, raised her brother’s connections to the Trump administration while seeking to raise money from Chinese investors through a government visa program for foreigners who invest in US projects.

President Trump's war on basic facts continues — but this time, you'll literally end up choking on it. Late last week, the President and his Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott "Coal Belchin'" Pruitt quietly fired half of the 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors, a panel that evaluates research done by EPA scientists to help government regulators create the rules that protect clean air, water and soil, among many other things. It's part of a larger war on science that includes a House bill that would require more industry representatives on another EPA science panel so that it's oversight of industry...

Ivanka Trump has been tapped by her father, President Donald Trump, to review the United States’ commitment to the Paris Climate Change agreement, signed by former President Barack Obama as an executive agreement in 2015 without congressional approval, the Associated Press is reporting. The agreement requires countries to cut greenhouse emissions on a country-by-country basis, with Obama committing the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The U.S. is expected to have a representative at the United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, next week but Trump’s advisers — including daughter...

A New York Times correspondent falsely reported Thursday on Twitter that members of the House of Representatives unanimously voted to exempt themselves from the Republican health care bill. A day earlier, reporters noticed that a provision in the American Health Care Act would exempt lawmakers and their staff from losing some of the repealed Obamacare provisions. In response to the criticism, House leadership announced they would vote separately on the issue. The House voted 429-0 to pass a bill rectifying the mistake, preventing lawmakers from being exempted. But the New York Times‘ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, apparently misunderstood...