| | | | | | Michael Warren is on vacation this week, and Andrew Egger is filling in for him on White House Watch. Michael will be back in the saddle on March 12. | |
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 A burgeoning White House conflict was partially defused last Friday, when President Trump told reporters that chief of staff John Kelly would make the final decision about his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s access to classified information. “That will be up to General Kelly,” Trump said at a White House news conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. “General Kelly respects Jared a lot, and General Kelly will make that call . . . And I have no doubt that he will make the right decision.” Kelly had been pushing for tighter controls on security clearances across the administration for more than a week, ever since a scandal surrounding former staff secretary Rob Porter, who had been granted a temporary security clearance despite credible allegations he had abused his ex-wife, raised questions about the White House’s internal handling of classified information. Among other changes, Kelly proposed eliminating the interim security clearances of senior officials, including Kushner, whose permanent clearance requests were still pending at the Justice Department. Read more... |
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| | In the wake of the Parkland shooting, is President Trump moving the needle for Republican gun policy? In recent days, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of implementing new restrictions on who can purchase guns, including raising the minimum purchase age from 18 to 21, and strengthening background check requirements. He also expressed support for a ban on bump stocks, aftermarket devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully automatic ones. Some moderate Republicans who have supported similar measures in the past have welcomed Trump’s suggestions. “Our president can play a huge and in fact probably decisive role in this,” Sen. Pat Toomey said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. If Trump ultimately decides to push any restrictive proposals, however, he’ll have to do it over the objections of the National Rifle Association. Spokesperson Dana Loesch said Sunday that the NRA remained opposed to both a bump-stock ban and a higher age limit. “I know that people are trying to find daylight between President Trump and five million law-abiding gun owners,” Loesch said on ABC’s Face the Nation. “So far nothing’s been proposed yet.” | |
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| | Mueller Watch—Last week was a terrible week for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has had a string of bad weeks lately. On Tuesday, Manafort saw special counsel Robert Mueller extract a guilty plea from a lawyer connected to his alleged illegal consulting work for the Ukrainian government. On Thursday, Mueller slapped Manafort with a whole new bundle of charges—including bank and wire fraud—to go along with his previous indictments for conspiracy and illicit foreign lobbying. And on Friday, Manafort saw his longtime business partner Richard Gates turn state’s evidence, changing his plea to guilty in anticipation of a plea deal with the special counsel. It was an impressive run—especially considering it was only a four-day week. “Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence,” Manafort said in a statement Friday. “I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled-up charges contained in the indictments against me.” | |
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| | Be sure to read my colleague Alice B. Lloyd on CPAC’s wild Saturday, where conservative writer Mona Charen took the disgruntled crowd to task over the GOP’s embrace of Roy Moore and Marion Le Pen. | |
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| | 2018 Watch—Much ink has been spilled over the Republican party’s civil war under Trump, but the GOP isn’t the only party with a squirrely base to soothe in 2018. That was made clear Sunday, when Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California, failed to secure her own party’s endorsement in her bid for reelection. Politico reports: Riven by conflict between progressive and more moderate forces at the state party’s annual convention here, delegates favored Feinstein’s progressive rival, state Senate leader Kevin de León, over Feinstein by a vote of 54 percent to 37 percent, according to results announced Sunday.
Neither candidate reached the 60 percent threshold required to receive the party endorsement for 2018. But the snubbing of Feinstein led de León to claim a victory for his struggling campaign.
“The outcome of today’s endorsement vote is an astounding rejection of politics as usual, and it boosts our campaign’s momentum as we all stand shoulder-to-shoulder against a complacent status quo,” de León said in a prepared statement. “California Democrats are hungry for new leadership that will fight for California values from the front lines, not equivocate on the sidelines.” | |
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| | The last day of the Pyeongchang Olympic Games brought with it a surprising international development: South Korean president Moon Jae-in said Sunday that North Korea is interested in opening diplomatic talks with the United States. The North Korean delegation agreed that “the inter-Korean relationship and North Korea-U.S. relationship should develop together,” Moon said in a statement. The surprise statement came at the end of an Olympics in which the United States, whose delegation was initially led by Vice President Mike Pence, largely ignored North Korea’s propaganda campaign, and only days after President Trump announced a new raft of sanctions targeted at crippling North Korea’s ability to trade at sea. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders responded to the news with optimism, but cautioned that “denuclearization must be the result of any dialogue with North Korea.” “As President Trump has said, there is a brighter path available for North Korea if it chooses denuclearization,” Sanders said in a statement. “We will see if Pyongyang’s message today, that it is willing to hold talks, represents the first steps along the path to denuclearization. In the meantime, the United States and the world must continue to make clear that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs are a dead end.” | |
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