Former first lady Barbara Bush died Tuesday at her home in Houston, Texas, just days after deciding to stop medical treatments and focus on comfort care. She was 92. Bush was in failing health due to congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The wife of former President George H.W. Bush and mother of…
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt paid only $50 a night to lease a room owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The agreement stipulated that Pruitt pay “only on the nights when he actually slept there,” and paid a total of $6,100 to from March to…
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has reportedly been asking witnesses about events surrounding the 2016 Republican convention. According to Reuters, investigators are zeroing in on a possible discussion between then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, in addition to a change in the official Republican party platform that softened language relating to Russia. Mueller…
A day after President Trump tweeted his intention to replace Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin with Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician, the president told an audience in Richfield, Ohio, that “the Democrats didn’t want the vets to have choice.” Shulkin, who was a holdover from the Obama administration, suggested in a New…
Russia announced Thursday that it will expel 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, and close the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg. The move comes after Western nations banded together in solidarity with the U.K. over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in southern England earlier this month. The 60 expelled…
President Donald Trump reportedly told his top national security aides to not publicly tout a new U.S. lethal defensive weapons sale to Ukraine, for fear of angering Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to NBC News, it took “months” for those aides to convince the president to sign off on the sale to Ukraine’s military, which…
Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for the repeal of the Second Amendment in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday. Stevens, who served on the Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, called the Second Amendment “a relic of the 18th century” that saw a lifting in its previously limited reach in 2008’s…
White House attorneys are looking into whether two loans worth more than $500 million given to President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate business violated any criminal laws or federal ethics regulations, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Journal obtained a letter from David Apol, the acting director of the Office…
A lawyer representing Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, sent a cease and desist letter to the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress who uses the name Stormy Daniels, on Sunday night after Clifford appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to discuss her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen’s lawyer, Brent Blakely, charged that…
President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the United States on Monday, including 12 people identified as Russian intelligence officers who have been stationed at the United Nations in New York, in response to Russia’s alleged poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. The expulsion order, announced by administration officials, also closes…
Student-led March for Our Lives rallies are scheduled in Washington and cities across the United States on Saturday. About 500,000 people are expected to gather in the capital alone, and some 700 additional protests for stricter gun laws are listed on the march website. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where…
John Dowd, President Trump’s personal attorney in the Russia investigation, resigned Thursday, The New York Times reported. The news comes just days after Dowd called for the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference and whether the Trump campaign was involved. Dowd reportedly decided to resign after concluding that Trump was…
The House passed the $1.3 trillion spending bill Thursday, approving the massive package to fund the federal government through September. The 2,232-page bill was released late Wednesday after congressional negotiators finalized its terms. The proposal increases spending on the military and border protection and provides $1.6 billion for President Trump’s proposed border wall, but it…
President Trump tweeted on Thursday evening that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is being replaced by John Bolton, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations and Fox News analyst. “I am very thankful for the service of General H.R. McMaster who has done an outstanding job and will always remain my friend,” Trump…
Three people were critically injured in a shooting at Great Mills High School in Maryland on Tuesday morning. A student reportedly “pulled a gun out and shot” a female student and a male student, according to NBC4. St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron also said the shooter exchanged gunfire with the school resource officer. The…
A female FedEx employee was injured early Tuesday when a package at the FedEx facility in Schertz, Texas, exploded. The San Antonio Fire Department says the package was destined for Austin, and the FBI tells CBS News that it is “more than possible” that the explosion is linked to the four explosions in Austin this…
Former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe has followed in the footsteps of Trump foe James Comey—he reportedly kept personal memos on his dealings with the president. McCabe, fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday less than two days before his retirement, took notes on his interactions with the president in the same manner as…
The U.K. on Friday said it is “overwhelmingly likely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the poisoning of an ex-spy, upping the ante against Russia as Moscow warned it was prepared to escalate a standoff with the West. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s comments mark the first time that the U.K. has specifically linked the Russian…
A pedestrian bridge under construction in at Florida International University in Miami collapsed Thursday afternoon, killing “multiple” people, The Miami Herald reported. The bridge covers a major highway at Southwest 8th Street near 109th Avenue, and it runs through downtown Miami. Multiple people were trapped underneath in cars. The bridge was not scheduled to open…
President Trump on Wednesday admitted to spouting off made-up facts to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about a nonexistent trade deficit, The Washington Post reports. Speaking at a fundraising event in Missouri, the president told donors he’d complained of a major trade deficit with Canada without really knowing whether that claim was true. “Trudeau came…
Colbert joked about Donald Trump calling for a space military, “Space force! Spaaaace force! Look, as long as JJ Abrams directs and Mark Hamill has a cameo, I’m in!” Colbert said. “But there’s no threat in space, who are we fighting? Satellites? A bunch of frozen monkeys? Elon Musk’s convertible? Why don’t we just build…
CNN said Wednesday that they are shifting the morning show co-host Chris Cuomo into a prime-time slot at 9 p.m. EDT, to debut later this spring at a date not yet specified. The change will shave Anderson Cooper’s current two-hour show into one. “We will test power,” Cuomo tweeted on Wednesday. “Every. Damn. Day. Just…
President Trump has chosen economist and media analyst Larry Kudlow to direct the National Economic Council, Politico reported Wednesday. Kudlow will replace Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs executive who resigned from the post amid disagreements over Trump’s steel and aluminum import tariffs. Trump called Kudlow on Tuesday night to offer the job, and Kudlow accepted,…
Twenty-three Russian diplomats will be expelled from the U.K. after Russia failed to meet a midnight deadline to disclose details of the nerve agent that is suspected to have been used to poison a former spy on British soil. Speaking in the British Parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia offered “complete disdain”…
The expensive tastes of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are under renewed scrutiny after leaked emails appeared to show he was personally involved in choosing a wildly expensive furniture set for his office’s dining room—a claim that he previously denied. An email from August seen by CNN, sent by department staffer to Carson’s…
Beginning at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, students at schools across the U.S. and as far away as Australia and Germany walked out of class for 17 minutes to mark the one-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed in that shooting, and most of…
Stephen Hawking, the British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, has died, a spokesman for his family announced Wednesday. He was 76. Hawking died at his home in Cambridge. In a statement, his children, Lucy, Robert, and Tim, called their father “a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many…
Donald Trump has finally broken his silence on the attempted murder of a Russian former spy on British soil, saying it “sounds to me” like Russia carried out the attack against Sergei Skripal. Trump has been silent on the attempted murder using a deadly nerve agent in England last week, but speaking shortly after he…
John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show Sunday night took on how the North Korea news distracted from International Women’s Day, a day in which women all over the country protested for equal rights—and against a president who’s been accused of sexual harassment or assault by at least 19 women. “It was a day…
Five people were killed Sunday evening when a helicopter crashed into New York City’s East River and then flipped on its side, authorities said. There were six people on board the helicopter; one was rescued by a tugboat, and five were “recovered by divers,” officials said. During a news conference, FDNY Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro…
