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, 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, she said people "seeking recovery from substance use disorders put their trust in Mr. Hatch and its 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
Facebook reportedly dodged a Federal Trade Commission fine several times larger than the one it's ultimately expected to receive.
Regulators, according to a Monday report in The Washington Post, "stopped short of some even tougher punishments it initially had in mind" for Facebook as part of the FTC investigation into the company's data practices, including a potential fine of "tens of billions of dollars." But Facebook thought it should have to pay less than $1 billion and "felt it could easily prevail in court" over the FTC, the report says.
Ultimately, the FTC reportedly settled with a $5 billion fine. The settlement is expected to be officially finalized and announced in the coming days, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The FTC also considered punishments as part of its settlement that would have held CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally liable for the company's privacy scandals, the Post reports, with this, too, being scrapped as Facebook resisted. The Post cites some sources as now expressing "concern that Facebook may not have had to admit guilt" in the settlement.
Criticism had already emerged last week after reports about the Facebook settlement, with a bipartisan group of senators blasting it as "egregiously inadequate," Engadget reports, also warning that it is "sending the wrong message to tech companies." Read the full report at The Washington Post. Brendan Morrow