Hillary Clinton sounded off on the Mueller report, saying that it “documents a serious crime against the American people.” In an oped for the Washington Post, she talked about the national security risks at play, and how “unless he’s held accountable, the president may show even more disregard for the laws of the land and the obligations of his office.”
The National Security Agency has recommended that the White House to drop the metadata phone-surveillance program that Edward Snowden revealed to the world, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ nonprofit is suing the FEC to take action on the complaints accusing the NRA of campaign finance violations.
Ed Helmore writes for the Guardian about the White House’s new focus with immigration:
The White House has opened a new front in its war on illegal immigration, threatening nations to punish with high rates of visitors who arrive in the US legally and then remain after their visas expire.
In a presidential memo issued on Monday, Trump described visa overstays a “widespread problem” and instructed the department of homeland security to consider action against countries that have business and tourist visa overstays higher than 10 percent.
According to a Washington Post report, 20 countries fall into that category, though with the exception of Syria and Nigeria, they account for fewer than 1,000 overstayers each.
Thirteen of the countries identified are in Africa, with Djibouti topping of list with 180 of the 403 business and tourism travelers to the US in 2018 overstaying. Chad’s 30.8 percent overstay rate amounted to 165 people. Yemen, with the third-highest rate, had 518 overstayers.
The report found that Mexico had more than 43,000 overstays — a rate of 1.5 percent — and that Canada had 88,000 overstays, at a rate of less than 1 percent. The list only consider travelers who entered the country legally.
Of the 50 million visitors who entered the US last year, nearly 667,000 people overstayed their visas last year. In fiscal 2017, more than 700,000 people stayed in the United States longer than they were allowed.
Trump gave the state department four months to consult with Homeland Security officials and the attorney general to recommend sanctions.
It appears former Congresswoman and outspoken gun control activist Gabrielle Giffords is taking the NRA to task:
Just in: Giffords (the nonprofit started by former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords) is suing the FEC to act on administrative complaints accusing the NRA of numerous campaign finance violations, incl. illegal contributions to Trump's presidential campaign https://t.co/HUzjYrzkCIpic.twitter.com/QeIa5RXRKL
NSA recommends abandoning US metadata phone-surveillance program
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that that the National Security Agency has advised the White House to drop the 9/11-era surveillance program that gathers metadata from Americans’ phone calls and text messages because “the logistical and legal burdens of keeping it outweigh its intelligence benefits.”
The recommendation against seeking the renewal of the once-secret spying program amounts to an about-face by the agency, which had long argued in public and to congressional overseers that the program was vital to the task of finding and disrupting terrorism plots against the U.S.
The latest view is rooted in a growing belief among senior intelligence officials that the spying program provides limited value to national security and has become a logistical headache.
Frustrations about legal-compliance issues forced the NSA to halt use of the program earlier this year, the people said. Its legal authority will expire in December unless Congress reauthorizes it.
It is up to the White House, not the NSA, to decide whether to push for legislation to renew the phone-records program. The White House hasn’t yet reached a policy decision about the surveillance program, according to the people familiar with the matter.
The White House National Security Council and the NSA declined to comment.
The surveillance program began clandestinely—and, at first, without court approval—under the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The NSA operation has sought to collect the metadata of all domestic calls in the U.S. in order to hunt for links among potential associates of terrorism suspects. Metadata include the numbers and time stamps of a call or text message but not the contents of the conversation.
Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked the existence of the program—along with a tranche of documents exposing other surveillance operations carried out by the NSA—to journalists nearly six years ago. The disclosures ignited an international uproar over the scope of America’s electronic-spying capabilities.
Everybody and their mother has weighed in on the Mueller report at this point in time, and Hillary Clinton has jumped in as well with an oped in the Washington Post today. She wastes no time batting around the bush:
Obviously, this is personal for me, and some may say that I’m not the right messenger. But my perspective is not just that of a former candidate and target of the Russian plot. I am also a former senator and secretary of state who served during much of Vladimir Putin’s ascent, sat across the table from him and knows firsthand that he seeks to weaken our country.
I am also someone who, by a strange twist of fate, was a young staff attorney on the House Judiciary Committee’s Watergate impeachment inquiry in 1974, as well as first lady during the impeachment process that began in 1998. And I was a senator for New York after 9/11, when Congress had to respond to an attack on our country. Each of these experiences offers important lessons for how we should proceed today.
Here’s where we’re at as I sign-off on the live blog and hand over to Vivian Ho in San Francisco.
Cindy McCain, the widow of Arizona senator John McCain disputed a Washington Examiner report claiming her family is endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Are you a male Elizabeth Warren fan looking for a plural noun to categorize yourself under? You are a Liz Lad.
The former deputy chief of staff for former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was resentenced to 13 months for her role in “Bridgegate.” After the resentencing, the former aide, Bridget Kelly, said Christie is “a bully.”
New Jersey senator, Cory Booker, committed to picking a female vice president if he secures the Democratic nomination. “I will have a woman running mate,” Booker said.
Ed Helmore writes for the Guardian about Joe Biden’s forthcoming presidential bid announcement:
When Joe Biden announces his presidential bid tomorrow he will be exceptional to the expansive, 20-strong Democratic field in one crucial respect: fundraising.
Biden, who has not been a singular political candidate for more than a decade, is likely to rely on big donors and not small-donor contributions funding.
The question for supporters of the former Delaware senator – who will enter the race a front runner with 27% of Democrats voters supporting him, according to CNN – is whether this distinctly old-fashioned strategy will help or hinder his candidacy.
“He’s in an unusual position because he’s against candidates who have been fundraising recently and he hasn’t had his own campaign since his unsuccessful presidential bid in 2008,” OpenSecrets’ Ben Quinn told the Guardian last month. “A lot of political fundraising norms have changed and his ability to fundraise is unknown.”
The campaigns of Biden’s closest rivals have used their small-donor fundraising numbers to establish the grassroots strength of their candidacies. Sen Bernie Sanders, for instance, raised $18.2m in the six weeks from 900,000 donors.
According to The Atlantic, the three most prolific democratic fundraisers —Senators Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, and former Representative Beto O’Rourke—hauled in just less than $40 million total in the first three months of the year.
That’s noticeably low compared to previous races at this point in the cycle (in the first three months of 2007, democratic Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and ex-Senator John Edwards had raised more than $65 million.)
The former deputy chief of staff for former New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was resentenced to 13 months for her role in “Bridgegate,” a plot to cause traffic jams near New York City’s George Washington Bridge to punish a mayor who wouldn’t endorse Christie’s reelection.
The former aide, Bridget Kelly, cried in court and asked the judge to consider the impact of imprisonment on her children.
She was convicted with Bill Baroni in 2016, but some of the counts against them were tossed out by a federal appeals court last year.
Baroni had his sentence reduced from 24 months to 18 months in February and has begun serving his term, according to the AP.
Kelly was initially sentenced to 18 months.
"Mr. Christie: you are a bully. And the days of you calling me a liar and destroying my life are over. The truth will be heard, and for the former governor, that truth will be inescapable...I plan to make sure of that." -- Bridget Kelly, post-#Bridgegate sentencing today
Former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Julián Castro, took the stage at the SheThePeople conference and pointed out they had used a photo of his brother, Joaquin, in the event program. “He would say that that’s a good thing, because he’s better looking than I am,” Castro said.
He also promised to address economic and social inequalities, if elected president, such as raising the minimum wage.
“I’ve called for giving people a first chance in life because too often we can’t even talk about a second chance in life, people don’t even get a first chance,” Castro said.
He also received applause when he answered a question about income inequality in Spanish.
New Jersey senator, Cory Booker, is the first Democrat seeking the presidential nomination to speak at the She the People forum in Houston.
Booker garnered much applause for committing to picking a female running mate.
“I will have a woman running mate,” Booker said. “To me it’s really clear that we do that.”
He is also asked what he will do to stand-up for women such as representative Ilhan Omar, who the president has repeatedly harassed.
“The criticisms of Ilhan Omar, what Donald Trump is saying about her, is reprehensible,” Booker said. “It’s stoking Islamophobia. It should be condemned by everyone.”
Booker was also asked why women of color should support him in the Democratic race when there are several women running.
“Women of color can trust me as someone from my entire career has been rooted in the communities that have empowered me to be who I am today,” he said. “And so my fights have shown who I am and shown my loyalty and when I am president, these are going to continue to be the kind of fights that I take on and I will make sure this nation is finally who we say we are, a nation of liberty and justice for all.”
More from Khushbu Shah, reporting from the drug abuse forum in Atlanta:
President Trump spoke for nearly 45 minutes on issues surrounding drug abuse and addiction prevention to a seemingly divided audience – the applause through his speech was scattered.
He promised the crowd of lawmakers, law enforcement, advocates, health care officials: “Nothing is going to stop us. We will never stop until our job is done. We will succeed.”
Later, he bragged that the US has dedicated six billion dollars to fight the opioid epidemic. But the loudest cheers from the audience when he referenced faith-based initiatives.
10 minutes into his speech, President says, "We are all Americans, we are all one country and we are the strongest when no one is left behind." He gets loudest applause of his address when he references faith-based initiatives.
During his speech, President Trump seemed to only veer off script substantially when speaking about pharamceutical companies “rigging the system” around the pricing of drugs. He added, “I know all about the rigging the system because I had the system rigged on me.”
“I think you know what I’m talking about,” he said, looking out across the audience, receiving a smattering of laughter. At the same time, a number of audience members shook their head in disbelief.
Much of the speech revolved around praising law enforcement, the DEA, and Customs and Border Protection...and dogs.
The president deftly weaved in a reference to his proclamation of a national emergency along the southern border, declaring much of the drugs came through the border.
