Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an ardent Trump supporter, admitted the president-elect's promise to get Mexico to fund his proposed border wall may have just been "a campaign device." "He may not spend much time trying to get Mexico to pay for it," Gingrich said of a hypothetical border structure. "But it was a great campaign device."
Gingrich, who is reportedly being considered for the role of secretary of state, said what Trump will "spend a lot of time" on is "controlling the border." Gingrich suggested the flow of refugees into the U.S. could be reduced "by 99 percent in one day by just being practical." "He knows how to build big buildings. He knows how to build golf courses. He knows how to build lots of stuff," Gingrich said of Trump. "The idea that Trump can't figure out how to control the southern border is just silly." Becca Stanek
To President Trump, Stephen Miller is a senior policy adviser. To David Glosser, he's his "immigration hypocrite" of a nephew.
Last August, Glosser, a retired neuropsychologist, penned an essay about Miller, the architect of Trump's harsh immigration policies. Glosser wrote that their relatives came to the U.S. in the early 1900s from Europe, fleeing anti-Jewish violence, and he shuddered to think "of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses" been in effect.
His message didn't get through to Miller, Glosser said on Monday's Rachel Maddow Show, but he didn't think it would, as Miller's "entire career, his entire persona, is built on this particular issue." Glosser did hear from others whose families came to the U.S. under similar circumstances, he said, and seeing Americans speaking out against the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants shows that "people care, as it turns out."
The political reasoning behind Trump's cruel policies is simple, Glosser said. The Republican Party and demographers found that in a few decades, the U.S. will go from being a "white majority country to being a white plurality country. As it turns out, the people who are not predominately of European background are less likely to vote for Republicans than for Democrats. This makes it problematic for them if they anticipate remaining in positions of power in order to advance their particular agenda." Because of this, he said, it's "not worthwhile for them to allow people into the country or to allow people to gain citizenship who may not be members of their party in the future."
Glosser said he finds it "repugnant" that the Trump administration assumes a majority of white Americans are racist, and thought the country had repudiated racism since George Wallace's 1968 presidential run. "Now we see Mr. Trump and his minions have legitimized race hatred as a means of sustaining and gaining political power and influence," he said. Catherine Garcia
Mexico says it has been successful in slowing down the flow of Central American migrants to the U.S.
Since June 7, migrant flow through Mexico has dropped by 36.2 percent, the country's foreign minister told reporters on Monday.
Marcelo Ebrard credits the Mexican government's decision to deploy 20,000 members of a new militarized police force to the country's southern border. The plan went into action after President Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs if it didn't slow down the flow of migrants making their way to the U.S. border.
The National Immigration Institute states that during the week of June 1 to 7, an average of 4,156 migrants entered Mexico daily through its southern border. Two weeks later, this number declined to 2,652 people per day, The Guardian reports. After making their deal in June, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to reconvene after 45 days to come up with new target numbers, but until then, "we're going to keep up this effort so the trend continues downward," Ebrard said. Catherine Garcia
The White House and congressional leaders have reached a two-year budget deal that would raise spending caps by $320 billion and suspend the debt ceiling, President Trump announced on Twitter Monday evening.
"This was a real compromise to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!" he added. Congress still has to pass the deal, which would set spending levels through Sept. 30, 2022 and suspend the debt ceiling until July 31, 2021. The agreement was brokered between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Some Democrats and Republicans have voiced their displeasure with the deal, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is angry it does not keep Trump from using funds to build his wall along the southern border, and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), who is outraged the agreement adds to the country's debt. The debt has grown from about $19 trillion in January 2017 to more than $22 trillion now, but speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said he thinks the U.S. is "doing very well on debt, if you look at debt limit, however you want to define that, but we're doing very well on that and I think we're doing pretty well on a budget." Catherine Garcia
When Vice President Mike Pence's trip to New Hampshire was canceled earlier this month at literally the last minute, the reason shrouded in secrecy, people started talking — what could possibly have happened to keep Air Force Two from leaving D.C.?
Pence was set to visit a Granite Recovery Center to meet with former patients and talk about the opioid epidemic, but instead, he got off the plane and went to the White House. Trump promised reporters the reason would be revealed "in about two weeks," and on Monday, law enforcement officials told Politico the trip was called off because Pence would have likely met a person being investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration for moving more than $100,000 of fentanyl from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.
The man, former New York Giants player Jeff Hatch, worked for Granite Recovery Centers. He appeared in federal court on Friday and agreed to plead guilty to a single count of using a telephone to help commit a crime, court records show; he faces four years in prison. Hatch toured New Hampshire and spoke to young people about the dangers of drug use, often sharing a stage with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). In a statement, Shaheen said people "seeking recovery from substance use disorders put their trust in Mr. Hatch and it's incredibly disappointing to see how badly that trust was betrayed. He needs to be held accountable." Catherine Garcia
Justice Department officials have reportedly told former Special Counsel Robert Mueller that the department expects him to limit his congressional testimony on Wednesday to already-public information from his office's report on its investigation into 2016 Russian election interference, Politico reports. Any material beyond the public findings is being considered "presumptively privileged."
However, both the White House and the Justice Department are expected to refrain from placing lawyers in the room during the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committee hearings, leaving Mueller to "police" himself.
The Trump administration doesn't seem too worried about that — Mueller is known for sticking to the rules and has previously said that the report is his testimony, so it was always unlikely that he'd go off script.
"[The report] contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made," Mueller said in May. "We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself."
All of this could prove a hurdle for Democrats on the panels, who are hoping to glean new information from the now-private citizen. But Politico reports that some Democrats have said that even if Mueller simply reads the report word-for-word, it would help "educate the American public" about President Trump's conduct during the Mueller's probe. Read more about Politico. Tim O'Donnell