Pat Cipollone is using a defensive strategy that could end up redefining the power of the presidency. His detractors say his stonewalling of the impeachment inquiry and other investigations into Trump could do long-term damage to the very institution he is supposed to protect. 

The Marine Corps could soon be getting the Navy’s new Naval Strike Missile for use as a shore battery, according to the Navy’s acquisitions chief.

In audio released by CNN Wednesday night, you can hear Warren saying, "I think you called me a liar on national TV."

Former Sergeant First Class William Chamberlain, 46, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and receiving stolen government property in federal court in North Carolina on Monday after having fought the charges for years, prosecutors said. Four other soldiers, who like Chamberlain were from the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and served in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in 2014 while Chamberlain planned to defend himself at trial.

Michael Bloomberg's campaign fired off dozens of tweets about meatballs, podium preferences, how many batteries he could stuff into his mouth.

The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday made public a trove of previously unreleased documents that dramatically raise the stakes of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

(Bloomberg) -- A state-of-the-art $130 million presidential Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner is becoming a headache for the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.Mexico is flying back the luxurious aircraft from California after failing to sell it for over a year, Lopez Obrador said Tuesday in his daily press conference, adding that they are rethinking options to get rid of the plane that he has deemed as too ostentatious.AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, put the Dreamliner on the block right after his inauguration in December 2018, choosing to fly commercial airlines instead to make a point about his frugal government style. The plane was flown to a Boeing hangar in Victorville, where the government has been paying maintenance and rent fees while trying to sell it.A dozen potential bidders surfaced last year but no deal was closed, Jorge Mendoza, chief executive officer of state bank Banobras, which is overseeing the sale process, said at the same conference. The plane has a market value of $130 million, Mendoza said, down from the $219 million that Mexico agreed to pay when it ordered it in 2012.Read More: Mexico Set for Loss on AMLO Sale of $219 Million DreamlinerLopez Obrador said he even offered the plane to U.S. President Donald Trump and agreed to receive goods in exchange, to no avail.“We give them the plane, they can pay us in kind. We need X-rays, ambulances, tomographs, laboratories,” he said. “We didn’t get an answer.”The government is now open to renting the plane or splitting ownership among 12 holders, AMLO said, urging Mexicans to make offers for the plane and other aircraft, including helicopters and Gulfstreams, that the government is auctioning. In the meantime, the Air Force will keep the Dreamliner in custody.AMLO has repeatedly criticized the purchase of the plane as too lavish for the leader of a country with millions living in poverty. The president, who has yet to make his first international trip as head of state, also recently argued that the aircraft is too big and expensive for his traveling schedule, given that he can reach most locations in Mexico in less than two hours with commercial flights.\--With assistance from Lorena Rios and Andrea Navarro.To contact the reporter on this story: Cyntia Barrera Diaz in Mexico City at cbarrerad@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Tehran has the initiative to attack from the direction of its choosing—or several directions simultaneously—while confronting defenders with the Sisyphean task of providing 360-degree protection.

Ain al-Asad Air Base (Iraq) (AFP) - Moments after volleys of Iranian missiles began to batter Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, US soldiers at the desert facility lost contact with their ultra-powerful -- and expensive -- eyes in the sky. At the time the attack was launched at 1:35 am on January 8, the US army was flying seven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over Iraq to monitor bases where US-led coalition forces are deployed. "We thought it may lead to a ground assault, so we kept the aircraft up," said one of the pilots, 26-year-old Staff Sergeant Costin Herwig.

For the Trump administration, appointing board members may be an effective and little-noticed means of weakening a federal apparatus it fundamentally distrusts. His board appointments, many of which may outlast his presidency, could serve an internal Republican resistance to a future Democratic administration. 

Texas schools officials say they’ve taken “corrective action” after a ninth grade teacher included a question about a rape victim in a homework assignment receivedApproximately 90 students received an assignment that asked the following: “Suzy was assaulted in an alley and is a victim of rape. The police collected a sample of sperm that was left at the crime scene and now have three suspects in custody. Which of the suspects raped Suzy?”

The outbreak in Wuhan has raised the specter of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Phosphorus is key in forming DNA, but the element is rare in the universe. Astronomers found molecules forming with the element around newborn stars

During a Wednesday press conference, Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson said deputies with the sheriff's office along with federal agents with the Department of Health and Human Services were serving a federal arrest warrant for Anthony Todt, 44, who lived at the home with his wife and kids.

The USS Little Rock is the fourth ship to get a laser gun.

It's unclear whether they'll throw the cases out.

On an island famed as Australia's "Galapagos" for its unique and abundant wildlife, rescuers are racing to save rare animals in a bushfire-ravaged landscape. The charred forest floor on Kangaroo Island is littered with corpses of animals incinerated by the blazes that swept through two weeks ago. Unprecedented fires across swathes of southern and eastern Australia over the past five months have killed an estimated billion animals.

Putin will have to step down from the top job in 2024, but he's proposed constitutional changes to limit his successor's power, and empower his allies.

An Australian student who was briefly detained in North Korea last year over spy charges said he had been kidnapped by secret police and forced to make a false confession, according to an article written by him and seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Alek Sigley was held for nine days from June 25 while studying for a postgraduate degree in modern Korean literature at the prestigious Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. North Korean state media KCNA said he had admitted his "spying acts" including passing data and photos he collected by utilizing his status as a foreign student to "anti-state" media outlets.

Hundreds of people registered for the Florida Python Challenge to capture invasive snakes in the Everglades in a 10-day event.

WASHINGTON (AP) — “OK, Boomer" made its first appearance in the Supreme Court Wednesday, invoked by baby boomer Chief Justice John Roberts 12 days before he turns 65. The meme is a favorite of younger generations and Roberts used it in questions in a case about age discrimination in the workplace. “The hiring person, who's younger, says, ‘OK, Boomer,' once to the applicant,” Roberts said as he conjured a hypothetical exchange to try to figure out when an older federal employee might be able to win a lawsuit under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Warren confronted Sanders after the two appeared onstage during the seventh Democratic debate. She said he had called her a "liar on national TV."

Under the “Remain in Mexico” policy, into which House Democrats have launched an investigation, just 0.2% of cases result in reliefUnderneath a white tarpaulin roof, behind razor wire and barking police dogs, Wendy Ramírez Penosa and her two teenage sons stood before an immigration judge sitting 30 miles (48km) away from them. Through tears, they begged the court to keep them safe.“My children have been threatened with kidnap,” Ramírez said through a translator on Monday afternoon, describing threats both in Mexico and in Honduras, her home country. “They said I would be forced to work in a brothel.”“I don’t want to be taken back to Mexico. They killed my father [in Honduras]. That is why we are fleeing.”Ramírez was pleading her case at one of Donald Trump’s newly built tent immigration courts, nestled a few feet from the US-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas. These makeshift courts, constructed last September, have been inaccessible to the public, but play a central role in the president’s “Remain in Mexico” (Migrant Protection Protocols) policy, which advocates describe as an attempt to curtail the right to asylum in the US by sending migrants back to Mexico as their cases are processed.Of the 56,000 cases brought under MPP only 117 or 0.2% of cases have so far led to asylum relief for applicants, according to data from a monitoring project at Syracuse University. On Tuesday, House Democrats launched an investigation into the process, describing it as “a dangerously flawed policy that threatens the health and safety of legitimate asylum seekers – including women, children, and families” that “should be abandoned”.The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which is the arm of the justice department overseeing immigration court, declined to answer certain questions for this report, citing “pending litigation”. They referred other questions to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who did not respond despite multiple requests.The Guardian is one of the first media organizations to observe proceedings in Brownsville after the tent courts here, and others in Laredo, were opened to the public at the end of last week.The court in Brownsville, a sprawling complex of white tents, is built on a parking lot next to a US Customs port of entry that is attached to a bridge over the Rio Grande, which links the US to Mexico. Asylum seekers are bussed in by DHS officials, and line up, single file along floors covered in artificial grass, many holding babies and toddlers, and are then ushered into a courtroom under guard. They are sent back to Mexico after the proceedings, often carrying belongings in clear plastic bags.Judge Barbara Cigarroa appeared via video link on a large TV screen inside a portable building that was listed as Courtroom C. The judge, softly focused on the monitor, sat at an immigration court in the city of Port Isabel. The voice of a government lawyer was audible on the link up, but their face could not be seen by the roughly 23 asylum seekers present for the afternoon session.“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Cigarrroa to Ramírez as she articulated her fears. The judge encouraged her to find an attorney to assist with her asylum application.But, like the vast majority of those seeking asylum in the US, Ramírez could not afford one – of the 5,596 cases completed at this court in Brownsville, just 81 people had a lawyer, according to public records.“I prefer that you send me back to Honduras and my children to the US,” she said. “Even if they kill me, I don’t care. As long as my boys are OK.”The judge set her next hearing date for 10 March, and instructed DHS to interview her and her children after they articulated their fears of returning to Mexico.Advocates suggest anecdotally that around a third of asylum seekers in these courts express fears of returning to Mexico, where extortion and threats from cartels in border areas is common. But for those without attorneys, it is unheard of to be taken out of the Remain in Mexico program and held in the US despite articulation of fears, said Andrew Udelfman, a legal fellow at the Texas Civil Rights Project who is monitoring the Brownsville tent court.“The purpose of this policy [MPP] is absolutely to deter people from seeking asylum, making it as inconvenient, difficult and dangerous as possible,” Udelfman said. “This is the next development on from the child separation policy \- designed to deter people from coming to this country.”The justice department and DHS would not comment on Ramírez’s case and did not provide the numbers of asylum seekers in the Remain in Mexico program articulating fears of return. The Guardian has been unable to verify if Ramírez, and at least six other asylum seekers who articulated fears of returning to Mexico – two others citing kidnap or forced prostitution threats – were returned to Mexico after their hearings on Monday.Although the tent courts are now technically open to the public, their operations remain shrouded in opacity.The Guardian was not allowed to move between courtrooms during a visit on Monday, and was escorted into a single public gallery by private security guards. The Guardian was earlier held in a separate waiting area, under guard, away from other members of the public. Udelfman was blocked from entering the facility on Monday because he brought a pen and paper, which an armed Department of Homeland Security police officer outside the facility said was a security risk.The Guardian was allowed to enter with stationary, but was prevented from viewing the court’s docket list, meaning the spelling of names and the number of cases before the courts could not be verified. Only initial hearings, known as Master Calendars, were open to the public, leaving merits hearings – where an asylum case is finally decided – inaccessible.Across the Rio Grande, in the Mexican town of Matamoros, an encampment of about 2,500 asylum seekers has been erected since the start of the policy.The hundreds of tents are home to mostly central Americans waiting for their days in court. Aid has been slow to arrive here, and there remains no official Mexican or US government presence. Instead, volunteers and NGOs have established makeshift schools, legal centers, sanitation services and a medical clinic offering support to migrants. Many of these facilities are being staffed by asylum seekers themselves.Dr Dairon Rojas, a 28 year-old Cuban seeking asylum, works as a general practitioner as he awaits his next court hearing on 27 February. He said there remain ongoing health concerns related to the spread of bacterial infections due to the closed quarter living conditions.“Sometimes we don’t have everything a patient needs. Blood tests. X-rays. We can’t do that here,” he said, adding that complicated cases are referred to Mexican health authorities.But, at the back of his mind, Rojas continued to worry about his own case as well.“You can’t imagine the stress,” he said. “All I want is to live and work in the US.”

Andrew Yang has a theory for why there are barely any candidates of color left in the Democratic primary race.After Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) dropped out earlier this week, Yang remains the only person of color in the Democratic race with a solid base of support. And as he tells Politico ahead of Tuesday night's Democratic debate, that dilemma stems from "inequities and financial realities" that affect people of color outside of politics, too.While Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) made the December debate stage, she dropped out of the 2020 race due to a lack of financial support beforehand, leaving Yang the only person of color in that debate. That left him feeling "a bit of extra pressure" to talk about race both in the debate and in his campaign in general, he told Politico. "Race has not been the central theme of my campaign from the beginning," Yang said, but added "it's more natural to talk about it when you're literally the only person of color on a national debate stage."Now, Yang has been barred from Tuesday's debate after he failed to make the Democratic National Committee's polling threshold, leaving six white candidates on the stage. This, Yang says, "reflects the realities of our society where being able to run for office and contribute to political campaigns requires a degree of disposable income. If you're black or Latino in the country, you are much less likely to have disposable income."DNC Chair Tom Perez defended the thresholds as a "remarkably inclusive and frankly low bar" which have resulted in "the most diverse field in American history."More stories from theweek.com John Bolton will reportedly reveal some of what he knows about Trump's Ukraine scandal in his upcoming book 'Okay Boomer' was just used in a Supreme Court argument for the 1st time The paradox of Trump's trillion-dollar deficit