10 things you need to know today: March 26, 2018

1. Stormy Daniels details alleged affair with Trump on 60 Minutes

Adult film star Stormy Daniels said in a 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday that she had unprotected sex with Donald Trump once in 2006. Daniels told Anderson Cooper that she went to Trump's hotel suite after meeting him at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe. She added that Trump told her he could get her a spot as a contestant on his reality TV show, The Apprentice, although he later told her he couldn't. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told her story in 2011 to a sister publication of In Touch magazine, which eventually spiked the article. She said a man later approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot and told her to "forget the story," adding "it would be a shame if something happened" to her. Trump "knows I'm telling the truth," Daniels said. Trump denies he had an affair with Daniels.

Deadline CBS News

2. Trump reverses decision to add 2 lawyers to legal team

President Trump has changed his mind about adding two lawyers, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, to his team of lawyers dealing with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling. "The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president's special counsel legal team," Trump's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said in a Sunday statement. "However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them." The news came days after Trump's former lead lawyer in the matter, John Dowd, quit as Trump's attorneys negotiate the terms of a possible interview with Mueller.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The New York Times

3. VA Secretary David Shulkin reportedly next to go in Trump's shakeup

President Trump plans to oust Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin next in the ongoing shakeup of his administration, The Associated Press reported Sunday, citing three administration officials. Two said Shulkin's departure could be announced this week, once Trump makes a final decision on replacing him. Trump reportedly told associates during his weekend stay at his Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, that he would keep two other embattled officials, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. "He did say that he’s expecting to make one or two major changes," Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a Trump confidant, told ABC's This Week.

The Associated Press

4. Fox News' Chris Wallace schools Mnuchin on line-item veto

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday that lawmakers should give President Trump a line-item veto to prevent Democrats from getting their domestic priorities included in the next must-pass spending bill. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace put Mnuchin on the spot by pointing out, "That's been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court." Congress passed a line-item veto in 1996 and then-President Bill Clinton used it 82 times before the Supreme Court ruled that presidents can't wield such authority because the Constitution gives them no power to single-handedly amend or repeal laws. Mnuchin said Congress could "pass a rule" letting presidents veto specific parts of laws. Wallace responded: "It would be a constitutional amendment."

The Washington Post

5. Polls show Americans, Germans lack trust in Facebook

Polls released Sunday in the U.S. and Germany found that most respondents were losing trust in Facebook's protection of users' privacy. Fewer than half of Americans surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll said they trusted Facebook to respect U.S. privacy laws. Sixty percent of Germans questioned by Bild am Sonntag, Germany's largest-selling Sunday paper, said they worried that social networks, including Facebook, were having a negative impact on democracy. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized in advertisements placed in major newspapers for "a breach of trust" and promised that the company would work to protect the privacy of its users. Facebook faced fresh questions after the website Ars Technica reported that some users had found that Facebook collected years of contact names, phone numbers, and text messages.

Reuters Ars Technica

6. Fire kills at least 64 at Russian mall

A fire at a shopping mall in Siberia killed at least 64 people, many of them children, and left dozens more missing on Sunday, Russian authorities said. Dozens of children were among those remaining missing at the four-story Winter Cherry mall in the city of Kemerovo, firefighters told Tass. Some of the victims died of smoke inhalation. Others were burned. Firefighters managed to extinguish the flames but were not immediately able to search the top floors due to fear that parts of the building would collapse. The shopping mall opened in 2013 with a movie theater, a petting zoo, and a bowling alley.

CBS News NPR

7. Pennsylvania GOP congressman announces he won't seek re-election

Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.) announced Sunday that due to the "political environment," he will not seek re-election in 2018. The state Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania's congressional map drawn in 2011 was unconstitutional, and Costello would have been running in the newly drawn 6th Congressional District. He told the Delaware County Daily Times he wasn't afraid of losing, but was tired of the "hate out there, from the left especially, and it's a very angry environment." Costello is the latest in a wave of Republicans who have announced they will not be returning to Congress.

The Delaware County Daily Times

8. Santorum says Parkland survivors should learn CPR instead of protesting gun violence

Former Sen. Rick Santorum said Sunday that instead of rallying in support of tighter gun laws, survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting should learn CPR, how to respond to a gun attack, or how to discourage bullying. Santorum, speaking on CNN's State of the Union the day after March for Our Lives rallies around the nation, said the teens should "do something" instead of "looking to someone else to solve their problem," because protests won't make schools safer. Trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran tweeted that Santorum's suggestion made no sense, medically. "Victims that go into cardiac arrest after #GunViolence are Bleeding to Death," Sakran wrote. "CPR is NOT effective in this situation."

USA Today

9. Car bomb kills at least 3 in Somalia as wave of attacks continues

A car bomb exploded at a security checkpoint near Somalia's Interior Ministry in Mogadishu on Sunday. It was the third explosion in four days in the Somali capital in a wave of violence by Islamist militants that has killed 20 people and injured dozens more. The police chief, Gen. Bashir Mohamed Jama, said three people were killed, not counting the bomber, and five others were hurt in the blast. Police also thwarted two other attempted suicide bombings early Sunday. The Shabab, an Islamist extremist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, immediately claimed responsibility for the car bombing and said it had killed 13 members of the African nation's security forces.

The New York Times

10. Underdog Loyola-Chicago joins Michigan, Villanova, and Kansas in Final Four

Loyola-Chicago extended its unexpected run in the men's NCAA basketball tournament on Sunday, defeating Kansas State 78-62 to advance to the Final Four. Loyola is only the fourth 11-seed to make it to the tournament's semifinals since it expanded to include 64 teams in 1985. In the only regional final game pitting a No. 1 seed against a No. 2, top-seeded Kansas beat Duke in overtime, 85-81. Another top seed, Villanova, also made it to the Final Four, as did Michigan. Villanova will square off against Kansas on Saturday, and Michigan will play Loyola to determine who makes the finals. In the women's tournament, Louisville rolled over Oregon State 76-43 and Mississippi State beat UCLA to advance to the Final Four.

The Washington Post Sports Illustrated