Instead of answering questions about the purported “secret provisions” of his immigration agreement with Mexico, President Trump pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, waved it around, but refused to show to reporters, Vox reports.
Said Trump: “That’s the agreement that everybody says I don’t have.”
Pressed later to detail the contents of the agreement, Trump again refused to do so, but pounded the piece of paper in his jacket’s chest pocket and said: “I don’t want to say, but you can just figure it out yourself — right here … right here is the story.”
The Washington Post snapped an photo of Trump’s alleged Mexico deal, magnified it and posted as much of the text as they could decipher.
“The House took its strongest step yet in the standoff with President Trump over congressional oversight, voting Tuesday to seek court enforcement of subpoenas for Attorney General William Barr and former White House counsel Donald McGahn,” the Washington Post reports.
“On a party-line vote of 229-to-191, the House passed a resolution that would empower the House Judiciary Committee to go to court against Barr and McGahn over non-compliance with requests for documents and testimony.”
President Trump said that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has “kept his word” when it comes to nuclear and missile testing, contradicting his own national security adviser, John Bolton, who just hours earlier had accused Pyongyang of failing to follow through on its commitments, CNN reports.
“Canada on Monday joined a growing global movement with a plan to ban single-use plastics blighting the environment,” the New York Times reports.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he wanted his children to be able to play on the beach or swim in a lake without having their memories interrupted by dead birds or fish killed by pollution.”
Wall Street Journal: “Heading into 2020, polling suggests that the president’s support among Iowa Republicans has held firm, despite his aggressive tariff moves that have disrupted business for farmers and drawn bipartisan criticism from elected officials.”
“But his standing overall in the state is more mixed—a recent Morning Consult poll showed Mr. Trump with a 42% approval rating and 54% disapproval among Iowans. The president’s trip underscores that he plans to leave nothing to chance in a state he captured by nearly 10 percentage points in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton but that Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that the numbers in the Democratic caucus “are not even close” to move forward with impeaching President Trump, and that victories in court and concessions from the Justice Department on the Mueller report should be satisfying to Democrats.
Jamelle Bouie: ““I think there’s a deeper divide, between a politics that sees the grass roots as an asset to use and cultivate versus one that treats it as a complication to manage. It’s a ‘leader knows best’ approach that may squander the Democratic Party’s advantage of enthusiasm and drive against a corrupt and unpopular president.”
“Then again, Pelosi and Schumer are shrewd politicians with decades of experience. Perhaps their resistance to grass-roots Democrats, and to impeachment in particular, will pay dividends. But we should consider the reverse as well: that a Democratic Party that plays with excessive caution — and keeps its base at a distance — is one that might demobilize its voters and produce the same conditions that helped Trump win in the first place.”
Washington Post: “The court announced decisions Monday in only three minor cases. That leaves two dozen, including important rulings on racial and partisan gerrymandering, whether the 2020 Census will contain a controversial question on citizenship and the fate of a 40-foot cross built as a World War I memorial that stands on public land in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.”
“The court will announce those outcomes and others during a string of decision days that will commence next week. The court usually finishes its work before the end of June.
Politico: “A dozen people around Trump said the approach is rooted in recent history and the president’s own love for a fight. Trump has discussed with aides how a cascading series of investigations helped propel President Bill Clinton to a second term in 1996 and then led to historic setbacks for House Republican in the 1998 midterms when they ran on a platform to impeach the Democratic president.”
“Trump himself is also telling people that anything House Democrats write into impeachment articles against him will fall short of the loosely defined ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ threshold spelled out in the Constitution, making him confident of an acquittal in the GOP-led Senate.”
“Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in recent weeks to discuss how his company handles viral misinformation, but she has not called him back or personally replied,” the Washington Post reports.
“Pelosi’s decision not to engage with Zuckerberg, one of the most powerful technology executives in the world, reflects her frustration with how Facebook handled a manipulated video clip of remarks by the speaker.”
“Kim Jong Nam, the slain half brother of North Korea’s leader, was an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency who met on several occasions with agency operatives,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Kim, the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was killed in Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February 2017, when two women smeared his face with the nerve agent VX. U.S. and South Korean officials have blamed the attack on North Korea, which it denies.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed a bill into law Monday night that would require the chemical castration of certain sex offenders as a condition of parole, the Birmingham News reports.
“House Democratic leaders are postponing consideration of a bill that would include a pay raise for members of Congress, after facing a major backlash from the party’s most vulnerable members,” Politico reports.
Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) submitted an amendment to the appropriations package, which includes funding for legislative branch operations, that would ban lawmakers from using their offices as sleeping quarters, The Hill reports.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) told CNN that he stepped down from the House Freedom Caucus after supporting President Trump’s Impeachment.
Said Amash: “I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends. I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”
Washington Post: “His views turned out to be a particular affront to the Freedom Caucus — a group founded in 2015 to push House Republicans in a more purely conservative policy direction. But as Trump rose to dominate the GOP, so, too, has he come to dominate the Freedom Caucus.”
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