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One of the Senate's strongest voices will be quieter this week following Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) diagnosis with brain cancer. The six-term Arizona Republican was in his home state recently having surgery to remove a blood clot from above his eye when doctors found a brain tumor. McCain, 80, received an outpouring of support and well wishes from his colleagues in Washington on Thursday following news of his condition, with many saying they expected to see him back on Capitol Hill as soon as possible. (TWEETS-AT-LINK) McCain's absence could spell more trouble for the fate of the GOP's health care...

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi today wrote to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn, calling on him to publicly disclose all pardons issued by President Trump. Rep. Krishnamoorthi's letter comes in response to the Washington Post’s report that President Trump and his legal team have explored his power to pardon as a means of disrupting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The signed letter is available here and the text follows: July 21, 2017 The Honorable Donald F. McGahn, II Counsel to the President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20006...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/how-the-democrats-fell-for-trumps-trap

House Democratic leaders on Wednesday offered a stern warning to Republicans hoping to put hundreds of millions of dollars toward President Trump’s border wall next year: You’re on your own. “They know that the majority of the Democrats don’t support funding for that wall,” Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, told reporters in the Capitol. “If they choose to include it, then they are basically saying, ‘We have the votes among the Republican Party to pass this without a single Democratic vote.’ And if they’re not successful, the blame lies squarely at their feet, because they...

A group of liberal House Democrats stepped up criticism of President Trump on Wednesday, introducing a “no confidence” resolution that officially questions Trump’s fitness to serve as commander in chief. It logs a laundry list of controversies swirling around the president — including his campaign’s many contacts with Russian officials, his refusal to release his taxes, his verbal attacks on women and the press, and his firing of FBI Director James Comey. Sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the resolution has been endorsed by 23 more Democrats, including Reps. John Lewis (Ga.), a civil rights icon; John Yarmuth (Ky.), ranking...

The White House formally announced its plans to nominate former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as the ambassador to Russia, signaling its intent to put the one-time Trump campaign critic in a leading diplomatic role. Huntsman, who sharply criticized President Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries for his statements and rhetoric about women, previously served as ambassador to Singapore under former President George W. Bush and the ambassador to China under former President Barack Obama. He was reportedly offered the position back in March, a move the Trump administration publicly solidified Tuesday....

Steve Bannon reportedly called House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) “a limp-dick mother****** who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation,” referring to the think tank whose fiscal conservative policies the representative espouses. The detail is one of many bizarre nuggets in Devil’s Bargain, a new book on White House chief strategist Bannon’s role in President Donald Trump’s political rise, by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green, who has extensively covered the former Breitbart chairman. Green wrote that Bannon’s comment on Ryan came during the spring of 2016, when it became increasingly possible that Trump would become the GOP...

There was a break-in at Senator Dean Heller’s office in southwest Las Vegas over the weekend and the GOP’s health-care bill seems to have inspired it. Considered a key swing vote on the Senate bill, Heller initially expressed reservations about its Medicaid cuts but hasn’t said much about the latest revised version. According to one report, his vote is likely to be “bought,” giving Republicans enough “yeas” to push the bill through. One person in Nevada wants to make sure Heller remains opposed to the bill and went about it in about the worst possible way, breaking into his office...

Republicans make excuses for Trump’s behavior, but continue to back him. All this anti-Trump energy would be better spent organizing for the coming election The latest New York Times blockbuster revealing the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, knowingly accepting a meeting in 2016 with a Russian lawyer in the hope of getting damaging information on Hillary Clinton is making waves across Washington DC. But if people think that this latest story is definitely going to lead to criminal charges against Trump Jr, or force the president from office, it’s time for a reality check. The journalism displayed by the Times...

A new list of approval polls for all 50 U.S. senators released this week seems to indicate that the Republican senators with the lowest popularity among voters at home are those who have been the most vocally critical of President Donald Trump — and who have historically supported amnesty for illegal immigrants. The least popular GOP senators, according to the series of polls from Morning Consult, were — in this order — Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). McConnell, McCain, and Flake were the three least popular senators overall,...

CNN political analyst Paul Begala suggested on Thursday night the Trump administration should be arguing "how many sanctions we should place on Russia or whether we should blow up the KGB, GSU or GRU" by "retaliating massively." “We were and are under attack by a hostile foreign power,” Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, told Anderson Cooper. “We should be debating how many sanctions we should place on Russia or whether we should blow up the KGB, GSU, or GRU. The KGB, GSU and GRU are former and current Russian intelligence agencies. “If I were a Trump supporter,...

Last week, the Democrats released a new bumper sticker for their 2018 Congressional campaign: “I mean, have you seen the other guys?” It’s not a bad political notion so far as it goes — opposition in politics is an effective tool, as Democrats learned from Republicans, who campaigned against Obamacare and Democratic spending policies to the tune of 1,000 state legislature seats, 12 governorships (including in states such as Michigan and Massachusetts), 10 Senate seats and 63 House seats. Now Democrats hope to reverse the math. But there’s something else going on here, too. Democrats hope that campaigning as #TheResistance...

Criticism of Hillary Clinton over documents posted by WikiLeaks played a key role in her failed US presidential campaign and successful election of Donald Trump, a study of viral tweets has found. Twitter posts during the final two months of the 2016 election race shows that Ms Clinton was heavily criticised on social media compared to her rival Donald Trump. Posts relating to WikiLeaks were the most common form of attack on social media for the Democratic candidate, who was also heavily criticised on Twitter over an FBI investigation into her use of a private email server, researchers said. Researchers...

As official Washington grapples with the prospect of living through Watergate 2.0, some of the city's most post powerful Republicans gathered on Wednesday night to hear the words of a man who came away famously unscathed from Watergate 1.0: Henry Kissinger. The former secretary of state to Richard Nixon and honorary chairman of the Center for the National Interest spoke before an enraptured audience at the glamorous Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown in a speech that touched on the “extraordinary division” of the Vietnam era to the hyperpolarization of the Donald J. Trump era. The purpose of the event was...

(snip) Many Republicans legislators are insulated from even the fiercest political backlash because the political playing field is tilted strongly towards the GOP side. Now the White House is about to make it even more so with a scheme to shrink the electorate and skew it towards the GOP. In late June, the Trump administration announced a series of measures to constrict the body politic, making it older, whiter, and wealthier - and therefore more Republican. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is asking for detailed state data about voters. There already is evidence that merely asking for the data is stopping...

IT’S OFFICIAL: PUTIN WANTED TRUMP TO WIN Vladimir Putin is ruthless. Vladimir Putin is capable of murder. Vladimir Putin is insatiably nationalistic. Is Vladimir Putin stupid? Wouldn’t it be great if most of our politicians were that kind of stupid?! Is Vladimir Putin an idiot? Same answer, basically. Putin’s dilemma, prior to November, 2016: “Do I want Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to be elected president of the United States?” It’s widely held that Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be tantamount to Barack Obama’s third term. What gains did Russia achieve during the eight years of Obama: No American political figure...

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said this afternoon that he now sees Robert Mueller's Russia investigation as a probe into possible "treason." Kaine and others on Capitol Hill reacted this afternoon to the latest revelations about a meeting last June between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. Earlier today, Trump Jr. released what he said was the “entire email chain” of conversations setting up the meeting with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. In the email chain, Trump Jr. expresses interest in obtaining damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Kaine, who was Clinton's running mate last year, said the new reports take the probe...

For many Democrats, the multiple investigations into Russia's influence on the 2016 presidential election seem front and center on their minds, if not daily, pretty close. But not everyone feels that way. Lindsay Maizland of Vox News in D.C., saw that firsthand recently when she returned to her hometown of Linden, a rural little town between Flint and Detroit, and interviewed people there and in the neighboring community of Argentine Township. She reports: Nearly every single person I spoke with said the same thing: The media just needs to leave Trump alone, and the Russia investigation is a distraction. “I'm...

Chelsea Clinton has responded to Donald Trump’s early morning Twitter claims that the media would have treated Hillary Clinton’s daughter differently than his own, who was criticized for temporarily filling the president’s seat at the G20 Summit. “Good morning Mr. President. It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not,” Clinton wrote. Trump fired off a Twitter storm on Monday morning, retweeting a variety of “Fox & Friends” segments and defending his daughter Ivanka holding his seat. He wrote, “When I left Conference Room for short meetings...

Arizona Sen. John McCain "sometimes" regrets his vote for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, especially in the wake of Tillerson floating the idea that the United States has been taking the wrong approach in Syria. McCain said on CBS Sunday said his vote in favor of Tillerson pains him on occasion, and comments Tillerson said made about the conflicting plans of the United States and Russia in Syria, which McCain saw as kowtowing to the Kremlin, are troubling. "Sometimes I do," McCain said when asked if he regrets voting for Tillerson. "But, I'm still torn by the fact that the...