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(CNN)Miles Taylor, a former senior Trump administration official, endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign on Monday, becoming one of the highest-ranking former Trump administration officials to do so. Taylor, who served as chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, also accused President Donald Trump of repeatedly using his office for political purposes, including directing officials to cut wildfire relief funding to California because voters there overwhelmingly opposed him in 2016. Taylor, a longtime Republican and political appointee at DHS from 2017 to 2019, endorsed the former vice president in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump...

A CNN reporter raised eyebrows on Monday with a curious explanation of why President Trump is considering giving his GOP renomination acceptance speech at the Gettysburg Civil War battlefield.

The White House coronavirus task force will start to wind down later this month, a senior White House official told CNN on Tuesday. The official said the task force "will be phased down around Memorial Day. We will continue to have key medical experts advising (President Donald Trump) daily and accessible to press throughout the coming months ahead." The New York Times first reported the White House's plan to wind down the task force. The move would quash the most visible nerve center for the federal government's response to the virus. But a senior administration official told CNN to expect...

The tension between President Donald Trump's bellicose rhetoric and his non-interventionist foreign policy instincts was on full display Thursday afternoon as he huddled in the Situation Room. Lawmakers in the room watched as the weight of his duties as commander-in-chief bore down on him, lives hanging in the balance. Trump did not tip his hand on which way he was leaning, focusing instead on "drilling down" on the differing perspectives and arguments leveled by the assembled lawmakers, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman James Risch said. But it was clear, the Idaho Republican said, that Trump is a president who "doesn't want...

Washington (CNN)For more than two years, Donald Trump has wanted the investigation into allegations of collusion with Russia to go away. Now that it has, the President isn't prepared to let go. Even as the specter of Robert Mueller's probe has vanished, Trump plans to turn the investigation, Democrats' constant accusations of wrongdoing and the media's coverage of it all into a new foil, half a dozen advisers and aides said. He has already signaled he'll weaponize the results, targeting those who ordered the investigation and Democrats he says waged political warfare. The counteroffensive has some advisers concerned the President...

President Trump declines to answer a final question from the press as he departs the White House Jan. 14, 2019 in Washington, DC. President Trump is digging in his heels on his demand for a border wall, telling aides and allies that he believes he is winning the battle for public support. Over the last 24 hours, Trump has privately touted a Washington Post-ABC News poll indicating that public support for a border wall has increased to 42% from 34% last year, a source familiar with his comments told CNN.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump struck a nakedly political tone during a Thanksgiving call with US service members stationed around the world as he steered the conversation toward controversial political topics. Speaking with a US general in Afghanistan, Trump likened the fight against terrorists to his efforts to prevent a group of migrants from illegally entering the United States, and he assailed federal judges who have ruled against his administration. The President also pressed the commanding officer of a Coast Guard ship in Bahrain on trade before touting his trade policies and arguing that "every nation in the world is taking...

President Donald Trump, facing a drastically revised death toll in Puerto Rico a year after dual hurricanes devastated the island, offered a still-rosy outlook of his administration's handling of the disaster on Wednesday. "I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico," Trump told CNN's Jim Acosta during an exchange with reporters at the White House. "We're still helping Puerto Rico." It was an optimistic accounting of his administration's handling of the natural disaster, which left much of the US territory without power for weeks and resulted in thousands of deaths.

Drudge Report founder Matt Drudge, who knows of what he speaks, dropped a bomb Thursday with the newsy prediction that CNN chief Jeff Zucker is doomed. "Jeff Zucker out either way at CNN," Drudge wrote before adding, "primetime ratings abysmal. Feud with President Trump too personal and ridiculous ..." [Snip] The problem for last-place CNN, though, is that it has actual competition in the form of MSNBC and Fox, both of which are shellacking The Least Trustws Name In News in every conceivable metric. Moreover, when compared to the same month last year, CNN’s October 2017 ratings collapsed a whopping...

New York (CNN)Bernie Sanders is taking a sledgehammer to the political status quo on Israel. Sanders refused to back down Thursday night from his claim that Israel in 2014 used "disproportionate" force to respond to Hamas rocket fire from Gaza while calling for the United States to stop being "one-sided" in the conflict there. In doing so, he upended a long-standing tenet of American politics: that unflinching support for Israel is non-negotiable. Sanders' unorthodox remarks at CNN's Democratic debate came just days before voters head to the polls in New York, where Sanders is fighting to narrow the significant, but...

Donald Trump is leaving the door open to not releasing his tax returns, just hours after Mitt Romney warned Wednesday that the billionaire's tax documents could contain a "bombshell." The GOP front-runner said in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that he will "make a determination over the next couple of months" as to whether he will release his tax returns... It was also an attack steeped in irony, since Romney was on the receiving end of similar claims by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, when Democrats eviscerated him over his fortune and business record during the 2012 campaign. Reid...

Donald Trump said he wanted to punch a protester "in the face" after a man was escorted out of Trump's rally Monday night. "I'd like to punch him in the face," Trump said, remarking that a man disrupting his rally was escorted out with a smile on his face. "He's smiling, having a good time." Trump also claimed the protester was "nasty as hell" and accused the man of trying to punch the security officers forcing him out of the rally, though the man did not appear to be fighting off those officers. "In the old days," Trump added, protesters...

The Pentagon conceded Wednesday that U.S. troops are in combat in Iraq after days of dancing around the characterization following the first death of U.S. service member in the campaign against ISIS. "We're in combat," Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Wednesday. "I mean, of course, this is a combat zone. There's a war going on in Iraq, if folks haven't noticed. And we're here and it's all around us."

Washington (CNN)A number of cruise missiles launched from a Russian ship and aimed at targets in Syria have crashed in Iran, two U.S. officials told CNN Thursday. Monitoring by U.S. military and intelligence assets has concluded that at least four missiles crashed as they flew over Iran. One official said there may be casualties, but another official said this is not yet known.