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Nearly 60 percent of U.S. voters surveyed say President Trump should be either impeached and removed from office or formally censured, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released exclusively to The Hill. The poll shows that a majority of voters polled think some kind of action should be taken against Trump, though they are divided on how far lawmakers should go as Democrats prepare to take over the House majority. Asked whether Trump should be impeached and removed from office for his actions, censured by Congress or whether Congress should take no action, 39 percent of respondents said Trump...

Trump CANCELS his favorite trip to celebrate New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Lago so he can deal with shutdown, new White House chief of staff reveals White House says president will remain in Washington until the end of year Donald Trump typically spends his New Year's holiday at the lavish estate he owns in Palm Beach, Florida But incoming White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said Friday: 'He's cancelled his plans for Christmas, now he cancelled his plans for New Year's' Shutdown has kept Trump in Washington for the past week, aside from a secret trip the day after Christmas...

AMAZING MOMENT! US Soldier in Iraq Tells President Trump: “I Came Back into the Military Because of You” President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump made history on Wednesday as the first First Couple to travel together to meet the troops in Iraq war zone. President Trump fired up the troops at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. President defended his decision to remove troops in Syria and said the US can use its base in Iraq to hit the terrorists. President Trump took time meeting the troops and also signed at least one Make America Great Again hat at...

Shoppers delivered the strongest holiday sales increase for U.S. retailers in six years, according to early data. Total U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles, rose 5.1% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 from a year earlier, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending with all forms of payment. The figures suggest a stock-market swoon and partial government shutdown haven’t curbed consumer confidence and spending. “Wall Street is running around like a chicken with its head cut off, while Mr. and Mrs. Main Street are happy with their jobs, enjoying their best wage increases in a decade,” said...

His meeting with Barack Obama went over schedule. He and Beto O’Rourke have spoken. Not long ago, he thrilled 300 well-heeled political donors hungry to win in 2020. But no one seems to know, except for Andrew Gillum, if he’s actually thinking about running for president. The door is open for Gillum to explore a run for the presidency, strategists familiar with the rigors of organizing presidential campaigns said. Gillum has not ruled it out. But according to interviews with nearly a dozen friends, former aides, or associates for this story, he is on his own schedule. He intends to...

California’s newly instituted March 3 primary date is rattling the early presidential state map, as Democratic state and party officials grapple with the shadow cast by the nation’s most populous state. The idea that millions of absentee and mail-in votes could be cast in advance of California’s actual primary election day — and the prospect that presidential candidates might bypass the early states entirely to concentrate on target-rich California — is finally beginning to sink in.

We’ve been covering some of the early 2020 polling here recently and the same group of names keeps coming up for the Democratic nomination. At the top, we find Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in almost every survey. More recently, Beto O’Rourke has climbed into the mix (somehow). In this Age of Diversity and Year of the Woman, doesn’t something seem to be missing? That’s what Kirsten Gillibrand suggested when she sat down for an interview with Van Jones on Friday night. Does it bother her that the frontrunners are, not to put too fine of a point on...

California is determined to force 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls to make some hard choices. The nation’s most populous liberal state has moved its presidential nominating contest to early in the 2020 calendar, a shift its leaders hope will give it maximum impact on the selection of a Democratic nominee and push candidates to address progressive issues such as climate change. The reshuffling means California voters, who can cast ballots weeks before primary election day, will be helping to determine a nominee at the same time as those in traditional early primary states such as New Hampshire.

"In view of the content of many of the text messages between Strzok and Page, the OIG also asked the Special Counsel's Office to provide the OIG the DOJ issues iPhones that had been assigned to Strzok and Page during their respective assignments to the SCO." After a number of steps by the OIG, "was the recovery of thousands of text messages within the period of the missing text messages, December 15, 2016 through May 17, 2017, as well as hundreds of other text messages outside the gap period that had not been produced by the FBI due to technical...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the biggest star in the Democratic Party, and she has been ever since she unseated Rep. Joe Crowley in a surprise primary upset in May. That her win didn’t, in the final analysis, launch a wave of leftist primary victories only goes to show what a phenomenon she personally is. Not everyone shares her brand of politics, of course, but her constituency has exploded beyond the initial set of ideologues who powered the challenge to Crowley because of her incredible wit, charisma, social media savvy, and basic political smarts. In a year when moderate incumbents generally didn’t...

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro on Wednesday launched a presidential exploratory committee, a significant step toward mounting a presidential bid in 2020. Castro said he would make an announcement about his plans on January 12 in Texas. Castro's decision to form an exploratory committee, which is often seen as a formality before starting a presidential campaign and allows him to start raising money, gives him a jumpstart in what's expected to be a crowded Democratic field, which already consists of two declared candidates -- Rep. John Delaney of Maryland and Richard Ojeda, a former congressional candidate in...

About the only consensus to emerge from 2016 was that it was an extraordinarily unusual election cycle, from beginning to end. One aspect that differentiated the cycle from most in the recent past was the enormity of the Republican field. The primary season kicked off with so many GOP candidates that the debates had to be split into two broadcasts, with the lower-polling members of the field serving as a not-ready-for-prime-time opening act for the main debate. There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth throughout Republican Land about the number of contenders for the title. The early...

Running for president is hard. Deciding not to run? That can be even harder. Over the last year, two-term former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has explored the possibility of running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, urged on by a small army of Patrick devotees in the Commonwealth. Inspiring and experienced, Patrick would have been a formidable candidate. He compiled real accomplishments as governor, putting his state at the forefront of life sciences globally and managing the fallout of the 2008 recession. Since leaving office, he has worked for Bain Capital investing in firms with social benefits. But on...

Larry Wallace, a top aide to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), resigned Wednesday, amid allegations of harassment during his tenure at the California Department of Justice. “We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously,” Lily Adams, a spokesperson for Harris, said in a statement. “This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator and she accepted it.”

The Post reports: Beto O’Rourke, weighing whether to mount a 2020 presidential bid, met recently with Barack Obama at his post-presidency offices in Washington. The meeting, which was held on Nov. 16 at the former president’s offices in Foggy Bottom, came as former Obama aides have encouraged the Democratic House member to run, seeing him as capable of the same kind of inspirational campaign that caught fire in the 2008 presidential election. O’Rourke, as Obama did, certainly has the rhetorical skills and charisma to make Democrats swoon. He has some of the same advantages Obama enjoyed, and a few that...

The State funerals of Senator, John McCain & FLOTUS, Barbara Bush were proper and dignified, but they were not responded to by large segments of the American people as they should have been. Again, my belief that at the end of life one "reaps, what one sows" and when the First family of POTUS, Donald J. Trump was not officially invited to either funeral, it diminished these two events drastically. However, the Bush family, with great dignity, sense of history and respect, on the passing of Ex-POTUS, George H.W. Bush recognized the need for all of the present and Ex-Presidents...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is calling close allies and informing them he is not running for president in 2020, sources close to the governor tell POLITICO. Patrick informed staff and advisers of his decision Tuesday, the sources say, with an announcement to come as soon as this week. A close ally of former President Barack Obama, the Democrat rejoined the private sector at Bain Capital after serving two terms as Massachusetts' governor. But he ramped up his political activity this fall in advance of a possible presidential bid, traveling to a handful of races across the country.

This is sad twice over, once because the pandering is so clunky, twice because it’s so unlikely to succeed. Our future is: Female Intersectional Powered by our belief in one another. And we’re just getting started.

Beto O’Rourke, weighing whether to mount a 2020 presidential bid, met recently with ­Barack Obama at his post- presidency offices in Washington. The meeting, which was held Nov. 16 at the former president’s offices in Foggy Bottom, came as former Obama aides have encouraged the Democratic House member to run, seeing him as capable of the same kind of inspirational campaign that caught fire in the 2008 presidential election. The meeting was the first sign of Obama getting personally involved in conversations with O’Rourke, who, despite his November loss in a U.S. Senate race in Texas, has triggered more recent...

Stocks took a nosedive on Wall Street as investors worried that a US-China trade truce reached over the weekend wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank almost 800 points Tuesday. ------------------ The markets plunged after Trump unleashed a threatening tweet Tuesday morning. “President Xi and I want this deal to happen, and it probably will. But if not remember, I am a Tariff Man,” Trump tweeted.