Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's federal trial continued Monday, with an appearance from star witness Rick Gates, reports Politico.

Gates, a longtime Manafort associate, took the stand to testify against his former colleague, who is accused of bank and tax fraud. Gates pleaded guilty in February to felony charges of conspiracy and lying to the FBI, and he is now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as investigators probe the Trump campaign's role in Russian election interference. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Gates testified that he was "involved in criminal activity with Mr. Manafort," and said that the two committed crimes together, MSNBC reported. He additionally said that he and Manafort had 15 foreign bank accounts that they did not report to the federal government, knowing it was illegal. They omitted the accounts from legal documents "at Mr. Manafort's direction," he reportedly testified. Gates also admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort, which the defense has used to argue that Manafort was merely victim to Gates' crimes.

Manafort and Gates worked together on pro-Russia lobbying in Ukraine, and Gates later admitted to making false statements about the work. He also pleaded guilty to hiding millions of dollars that the two earned through their consulting work. Read more at Politico. Summer Meza

President Trump's former director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci, is downright begging him to knock it off with the racist attacks on minority congresswomen.

Scaramucci, who served in the White House for just 10 days in 2017, spoke to CNN's New Day on Thursday morning after previously denouncing Trump's tweets telling four minority congresswomen to "go back" to where they came from as "racist and unacceptable." At a rally on Wednesday, Trump'' supporters chanted "send her back" about one of the women he attacked, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Min..).

During the interview, Scaramucci implored elected Republicans to "pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, you should really knock this off'" to Trump, per Mediaite. He also predicted that if the president "continues on that path" with this apparent new strategy that is "against the idealistic values of America," a "glacier of support is going to break off and float away from him in a way that he doesn't fully understand." Asked if he will personally still support Trump in this scenario, Scaramucci responded, "No."

Recent polling has suggested Trump actually increased his support among Republicans in the immediate aftermath of his weekend tweets, with one poll showing that 57 percent of Republicans agreed with him.

At the same time, Scaramucci suggested he'll have to weigh who Trump's opponent is when making the decision to abandon him over what he considers to be blatant racism, telling CNN, "You also have to compare it to what you're going up against." At some point, though, Scaramucci said this will become a "moral question." Brendan Morrow

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) didn't even dignify President Trump's rally attack with her own words.

At a Wednesday night presidential rally, Trump called out Omar by name and accused her of "launching vicious anti-Semitic screeds" during her time in office. That launched the crowd into chants of "send her back," echoing Trump's racist tweets against Omar and other Democrats earlier in the week. But instead of brashly fighting back, Omar responded to the rally attack with a bold quote from Maya Angelou.

The rally attack came after Trump on Sunday directed racist tweets at Omar and three other Democratic congresswomen, calling on them to "go back" to the countries they came from. Only Omar was not born in the U.S., but she became a citizen as a teenager. Kathryn Krawczyk

Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, is pushing back — though only slightly — after President Trump's rally crowd chanted "send her back!" about a minority congresswoman.

Walker on Thursday tweeted that "I struggled with" the chant at Trump's Wednesday night rally, which came as the president repeated his attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the four minority congresswomen he told to "go back" to where she came from in a weekend tweet. Omar fled to the United States as a refugee from Somalia at a young age.

This language at the rally, Walker suggested, is "painful to our friends in the minority communities." At the same time, Walker didn't veer too far from Trump's talking points because in the same tweet he attacked Omar as someone who has "great disdain" for the United States.

Trump's weekend tweets drew some pushback from elected Republicans, while GOP leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) defended him and argued he is not racist. On Thursday, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) joined Walker in criticizing the chant by saying "there is no place for that" while defending Trump as someone who "does not have a racist bone in his body," reports Time's Alana Abramson.

Outside of elected officials, Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, also called the chants "wrong" and "vile," adding that they "don't reflect who we are as Americans," while conservative Trump critic Bill Kristol tweeted that "'send her back' conservatism is not a conservatism worth defending." Brendan Morrow

As many as 23 people have been killed, and dozens more injured, after an apparent arson attack on Kyoto Animation's studio in Japan.

Thirteen people have been confirmed dead and another 10 are presumed dead, with at least 36 people injured, after an attack on the popular animation studio's three-story building in Kyoto that had more than 70 people in it at the time, The Associated Press reports.

The fire began at about 10:30 a.m. local time after a man reportedly entered the building and spread a flammable liquid while shouting, "Die!", The New York Times reports. A 41-year-old man is in custody, and per the AP, he is not an employee. Kyoto Animation President Hideaki Hatta says the company had received threats, The Washington Post reports.

This attack, if 23 people are ultimately confirmed dead, would be Japan's deadliest mass killing since 19 people were killed in a knife attack in Tokyo in 2016, the AP writes. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday called the attack "so horrifying that I am at a loss for words," the Times reports, offering his "deepest condolences to the victims." Brendan Morrow

This is an early 20th anniversary gift they'll never forget.

When the Camp Fire swept through Grass Valley, California, last fall, it completely destroyed Marc and Mary Taylor's home. All of their possessions were lost in the wildfire, including decades worth of photos. Hoping she could recover some of them, Mary Taylor got in touch with the photographer, Richard Briggs, who shot their wedding on August 14, 1999.

Briggs was thrilled when he started digging around and found the negatives, telling KCRA that usually, photographers don't keep them for so long. "Luckily, they were intact," he said. "They were a little faded. I bought a scanner and scanned them all. And my wife, she's excellent in editing, and she brought back the color and the life into the photos, and from those images, I was able to make an album." He can still recall the wedding, he added, and remembers thinking, "These people are so much in love."

The Taylors cried when Briggs gave them not only their wedding album, but also the negatives, as these are the only photos they've been able to replace. "It gave us a piece of something back after losing everything," Marc Taylor said. "I don't know how to explain it. There's no words." Catherine Garcia

On Wednesday's Late Night, Seth Meyers took to task Republican leaders who are insisting that President Trump's "latest racist comments are not at all racist, despite the fact the they are definitely super racist."

As everyone knows by now, on Sunday Trump tweeted that four Democratic congresswomen of color should "go back" to their "crime infested" home countries. Three of the women were born in the United States, and the fourth arrived as a refugee from Somalia and is now a naturalized citizen. "If their country is broken and crime infested, that's on you," Meyers said. "Trump accidentally burned himself. It's like if someone said, 'Man your parents must have really screwed you up,' and that someone was your mom."

Since posting the tweets, Trump has defended himself multiple times by accusing the women of saying "horrible things" and saying over and over again that anyone who isn't happy in the United States should leave. "Trump's brain disease won't let him backtrack, no matter how far over the line he goes," Meyers said. "If he says, 'I'm going to eat this apple,' and you said, 'Dude, that's an onion,' he would stand there and eat the whole thing with tears streaming down his face."

Most of Meyers' ire went beyond Trump to Republican lawmakers who are bending over backwards not to comment on the situation, and he played a montage of some senators who fled to elevators to avoid having to speak to reporters. He also singled out Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who was a congressman during the Obama administration. In the new book American Carnage, author Tim Alberta writes that in 2016, Mulvaney said Republicans would not let "Donald Trump dismantle the Bill of Rights," and bristled at the idea that their constant pushback against Obama was racist, saying they would treat a president of their own party the same way. That's just not true, Meyers said, as Republicans "are literally hiding in elevators to avoid criticizing Trump." Watch the video below. Catherine Garcia