The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Tuesday it has hired a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan with experience investigating Russian mobsters and white-collar crime to lead its probe into the Trump administration.

The hiring of Daniel Goldman is the latest move by the House’s new Democratic majority to add legal firepower to an expanding list of investigations into the affairs of Republican President Donald Trump and his associates.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler, recently announced that he had retained Barry Berke, a prominent criminal trial lawyer, and Norman Eisen, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, to work on his expansive probe into Trump and other issues.

Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Goldman joined the panel in February as senior adviser and director of investigations. Schiff also named a new budget director and three other people for various roles.

The committee’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign has taken on new life since the Democrats took control of the House in November elections. The panel is set to hear testimony from Michael Cohen, the president’s onetime “fixer,” for a second time on Wednesday since he turned on his former boss.

Goldman was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York for a decade through 2017, serving as the lead prosecutor in the conviction of Las Vegas sports gambler William “Billy” Walters for insider trading.

But likely more relevant to the committee’s probe is Goldman’s tenure as deputy of the Southern District’s Organized Crime Unit, where he oversaw a major Russian mob case against more than 30 individuals for money laundering and racketeering.

Goldman has also worked as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, commenting on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month-old investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia. NBC did not return a request for comment.

Goldman attended last summer’s trial of former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and was at the December sentencing of Cohen, who is due to start a three-year sentence in May for violating campaign finance laws and other crimes.

In other recent hires by the Democrats, the House Financial Services Committee enlisted the help of Bob Roach, a longtime investigator of complex financial and money laundering issues for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Russia has denied meddling in the 2016 election. Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow, and has called the Mueller probe a “witch hunt.”
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The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Wednesday to condemn anti-Semitism and bigotry, a rebuke targeting a new Democratic lawmaker, a Somali-American Muslim who has criticized Israel in ways that many find offensive.

The resolution, as drafted by key Democrats, does not name Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, one of two Muslim women who were elected to the 435-member House last November and took office in early January. But the statement was clearly aimed at the 37-year-old lawmaker from the Midwestern state of Minnesota.

Omar has incensed many fellow Democrats for her comments calling into question long-held U.S. support for the Jewish state that has been a bedrock belief of Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike since the country’s inception in 1948. Numerous Democrats, with a few exceptions, say her comments are anti-Semitic and have condemned them as well beyond the realm of normal political debate in the U.S.

In recent days, Omar referred to pro-Israel advocates in the U.S. as supporting “allegiance to a foreign country.” Omar previously had drawn the ire of top Democratic lawmakers and Republicans for questioning the financial clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a highly influential  lobby in the U.S. supporting Israel.

“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” Omar tweeted, referring to pictures of Benjamin Franklin, a U.S. Founding Father whose picture is on $100 bills. She apologized and joined in voting for an earlier resolution condemning anti-Semitism. AIPAC does not make campaign contributions to U.S. lawmakers, but many of its members individually do.

The resolution set for a Wednesday vote said the “myth of dual loyalty … has been used to marginalize and persecute the Jewish people for centuries for being a stateless people.”

The statement said that “accusing Jews of dual loyalty because they support Israel, whether out of a religious connection, a commitment to Jewish self-determination after millennia of persecution, or an appreciation for shared values and interests, suggests that Jews cannot be patriotic Americans and trusted neighbors, when Jews have served our nation since its founding, whether in public life or military service.”

Citing past hate attacks on Jews in the U.S., including last October’s killing of 11 Jews inside a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the resolution said the House “recognizes the dangerous consequences of perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes and rejects anti-Semitism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.”

Nearly a dozen pro-Israel groups called for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oust Omar from membership on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but top Democrats in the House leadership have stopped short of that action.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, called on the House to reject what it said was Omar’s “latest slur.”

One Jewish lawmaker, Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York, demanded Omar apologize for her comments referring to American Jews’ supposed “allegiance to a foreign country.”

“No member of Congress is asked to swear allegiance to another country,” Lowey said. “Throughout history, Jews have been accused of dual loyalty, leading to discrimination and violence, which is why these accusations are so hurtful.”

Omar replied, “Our democracy is built on debate, Congresswoman! I have not mischaracterized our relationship with Israel, I have questioned it and that has been clear from my end.”

Not all Democrats have condemned Omar’s comments, with at least two other new House lawmakers, progressive Democrats Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian-American congresswoman, and New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, coming to her defense.

Tlaib said Omar had been “targeted just like many civil rights icons before us who spoke out about oppressive policies.”

President Donald Trump weighed in with his assessment of Omar, saying on Twitter that she “is again under fire for her terrible comments concerning Israel. Jewish groups have just sent a petition to Speaker Pelosi asking her to remove Omar from Foreign Relations Committee. A dark day for Israel!”
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Matthew Whitaker, whose brief tenure as acting U.S. attorney general was marred by accusations he might try to interfere in a probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign, left his Justice Department job over the weekend, a department spokeswoman confirmed on Monday.

Whitaker’s last day at the department was on Saturday, the spokeswoman said, adding she did not know where he might be headed next.

In mid-February, Attorney General William Barr was sworn in and Whitaker stepped down from the top post to become a senior counselor in the office of the associate attorney general.

In one of his final acts as acting attorney general, Whitaker testified before the House Judiciary Committee, where combative Democratic lawmakers pressed him on whether he had tried to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.

Whitaker denied any interference and said he had not talked to Trump about the probe. Trump has denied colluding with Russia and has repeatedly called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”

Whitaker first joined the Justice Department as former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff in the autumn of 2017. Trump handpicked him as acting attorney general in November after the president ousted Sessions.

Whitaker’s appointment alarmed Democrats, who pointed to numerous negative comments he had made about the probe during his previous work as a conservative political pundit.

Those concerns were exacerbated after the Justice Department disclosed that its career ethics lawyers had recommended that Whitaker recuse himself from the probe to avoid the appearance of a conflict but that he declined to do so.

The Justice Department also faced a backlash in the form of multiple lawsuits alleging Whitaker’s appointment violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal law governing succession at the department.

None of the plaintiffs who challenged Whitaker’s appointment prevailed, and the issue has since been mooted with Barr’s Senate confirmation.

Although Whitaker is no longer with the Justice Department, he could still find himself in the spotlight.

Following his contentious House of Representatives testimony last month, Democrats have raised questions about whether he had been truthful in his statements under oath.

In a letter to Whitaker, the panel’s chairman, Jerrold Nadler, said he wanted Whitaker to come back and follow up on answers he gave that seemed “unsatisfactory, incomplete or contradicted by other evidence.”

Nadler told MSNBC that Whitaker has agreed to testify again before the committee and his appearance would happen in the next few weeks.
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U.S. senators of both parties on Monday blasted the Trump administration’s response to the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey last October, accusing the administration of defying a law requiring it to investigate and identify those responsible for the dissident Saudi reporter’s death.

“It’s outrageous, it’s insulting, and it’s nothing more than a sham,” the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told reporters.

Menendez spoke after the committee received a classified briefing from State Department and Treasury officials on the Khashoggi case. Last year, lawmakers triggered the Global Magnitsky Act, which gave the White House 120 days to identify those responsible for the journalist’s killing, a deadline that expired last month.

Persistent news reports have said the CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the execution of Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter who wrote critically about the Saudi kingdom. No intelligence officials were present for Monday’s closed-door briefing, causing multiple senators’ tempers to flare.

“It was a complete waste of time,” South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham said. “I knew more [about the Khashoggi case] than they [briefers] did.”

Graham said he left the briefing “less satisfied” about the White House’s response to the journalist’s death, a sentiment Democrats echoed.

“They [the administration] sent up witnesses who say they can’t comment [on the investigation],” Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine told VOA. “They have no information about whether the president will ever reach the determination required by law about MBS [Mohammed bin Salman], about whether the president will ever comply with the law.”

Kaine added, “The determination about MBS, they [briefers] say, is for the president to make. They’ve been instructed that it’s not theirs to make, and they have no information about whether the president will ever do that.”

Administration officials “don’t want us to have a conversation about the intelligence,” Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy said. “I don’t think you could tell who was a Democrat and a Republican on that panel. There were equal amounts of frustration with the briefing.”

Florida Republican Marco Rubio noted that the administration has identified and sanctioned 17 Saudis believed to have been directly involved in Khashoggi’s killing.

“But who told them to do it?” Rubio asked. “I don’t believe you could do that without him [Prince bin Salman] knowing about it and approving it. That isn’t exactly a decentralized government.”

Trump has said responsibility for Khashoggi’s death is an open question. He also has affirmed the crown prince’s denials of involvement. The president’s statements, according to some lawmakers, explain the administration’s foot-dragging in complying with the Global Magnitsky Act and addressing Salman’s culpability.

“This was a political decision. This has nothing to do with the facts. It’s a political decision by the president, and that becomes clearer and clearer and clearer,” Murphy said.

For its part, the administration has been noncommittal about its intentions regarding the Global Magnitsky Act in relation to the Khashoggi case.

“We will continue to consult with the Congress and work to hold accountable those who are responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s killing,” Deputy State Department Spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters last month.

“This is an unacceptable murder. Make no mistake about it,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a recent interview with CBS. “We also know that we have an important relationship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and we are determined to make that a successful relationship.”

Pompeo added, “[W]e’ve made clear as the facts are developed, as we learn more, we will hold everyone responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi accountable.”

State Department correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to this report.
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The House Judiciary Committee on Monday requested documents from 81 people and organizations as part of an investigation into alleged obstruction of justice and other abuses by President Donald Trump and others.

Among those on the list are familiar names like former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who will be sentenced this month for lobbying and fraud violations; former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and breaking campaign finance laws; and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Other key figures who received document requests:

Trump family

Donald Trump Jr. – Trump’s oldest son is a top surrogate for his father in conservative circles and helps run his business. During the 2016 campaign, he set up a meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who promised damaging information on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Eric Trump – Trump’s second-oldest son helps oversee his business, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

​Jared Kushner – Trump’s son-in-law is a top White House adviser who formerly ran Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate business.

White House and outside advisers

Don McGahn – The former White House legal counsel was intimately involved in a wide range of administration decisions. He is now back in private practice.

Jeff Sessions – A longtime U.S. senator from Alabama, Sessions served as a top campaign aide and Trump’s first attorney general. Trump fired him in November 2018 after frequently expressing anger that Sessions removed himself from the department’s investigation of possible ties between the campaign and Russia.

Jay Sekulow – The Washington lawyer is helping Trump respond to the various investigations as part of his legal team. Cohen told Congress last week that Sekulow had helped him craft a misleading statement about efforts to build a Trump tower in Moscow.

Reince Priebus – The Wisconsin lawyer headed the Republican National Committee during the 2016 election and served as Trump’s first chief of staff.

​K.T. McFarland – The former Fox News analyst was Trump’s deputy national security adviser under Flynn but was asked to resign by Flynn’s successor, H.R. McMaster.

Sean Spicer – Trump’s first White House press secretary sometimes struggled to explain his boss’s positions to an often-adversarial press corps.

Steve Bannon – Bannon encouraged Trump’s nationalist instincts as the campaign’s chief executive officer and served as his chief strategist at the White House until he left in August 2017.

Hope Hicks – She was a Trump Organization employee who was one of the first staff members of Trump’s campaign and worked in the White House, specializing in communications, until March 2018.

​Trump Organization

Allen Weisselberg – As chief financial officer for the Trump Organization, he has been intimately involved with the business for decades. Federal prosecutors have granted him immunity.

Alan Garten – The top lawyer at the Trump Organization.

Sheri Dillon – A tax lawyer, Dillon helped Trump deal with the IRS’s audit of his tax returns and signed off on a conflict-of-interest plan before Trump took office that let him retain ownership of his business empire.

Rhona Graff – A longtime executive assistant at the Trump Organization.

Felix Sater – A convicted felon and Russian-American businessman, Sater worked with Cohen to try to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow during the campaign. He is due to testify before the House Intelligence Committee this month.

Trump campaign

Brad Parscale – The digital-media director for Trump’s 2016 campaign is now heading up his 2020 re-election effort.

Corey Lewandowski – Trump’s first campaign manager.

Michael Caputo – A communications adviser for Trump’s campaign.

Carter Page – The FBI concluded during the campaign that Page, a foreign-policy adviser, was probably an agent for the Russian government.

​George Papadopoulos – The junior foreign-policy adviser tried to set up a meeting between the Kremlin and top campaign officials. He pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and served 14 days in prison.

Others

David Pecker – The head of tabloid publisher American Media pursued “catch and kill” agreements with women who claimed to have slept with Trump in an attempt to buy their silence.

Erik Prince – The former head of military contractor Blackwater USA worked informally with Trump’s transition team after the election. He is the brother of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

​Julian Assange – The head of WikiLeaks oversaw efforts to release internal emails from the Clinton campaign during the election.

Organizations

Justice Department – The committee is seeking documents on a wide range of subjects, including Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey; Trump’s firing of Sessions in November 2018; and communications between Trump and Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general after Sessions left.

FBI – The committee is asking similar questions of the FBI.

General Services Administration – The agency responsible for managing federal property decided after Trump’s 2016 election that he could maintain his lease on the Old Post Office Building, a showcase property blocks from the White House that Trump has transformed into a hotel. The agency’s internal watchdog said in January that the arrangement might violate the U.S. Constitution.

Trump 2016 presidential campaign

Trump Organization – The committee is seeking documents relating to foreign governments, payments to Cohen and American Media, and financial arrangements with Russian businesses or individuals, among other topics.

Trump Transition – The organization responsible for setting up his administration after the November 2016 election.

Trump Foundation – Trump’s charity, which shut down in December amid an investigation by the New York attorney general, who accused it of serving as a checkbook to further Trump’s business and political interests.

National Rifle Association – The gun-rights group, a major player in conservative U.S. political circles, has attracted scrutiny for possible ties to Russian figures.
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Nearly 20 years after he left the White House, Bill Clinton is still sought after for advice by some Democrats running for president. But the names on his dance card in recent months underscore how much his standing in the party has changed.

So far, none of the party’s early front-runners has had a formal meeting with Clinton. Nor have the women who are running in the historically diverse primary field.

Instead, Clinton has spoken mostly with male candidates who are considered longshots for the Democratic nomination, including Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former Housing secretary Julian Castro and former Maryland Rep. John Delaney.

Clinton remains one of Democrats’ most successful politicians of the last half-century and one of its strongest messengers on the economy. Yet the party has shifted considerably to the left since his two terms in White House, and his personal baggage – as well as lingering hostilities from his wife Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 campaign – make him an awkward adviser for some in his party’s next class of presidential hopefuls.

Tensions run particularly deep between the Clintons and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has launched another bid for the White House. The Clintons blame Sanders for damaging Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary. And as they assess the 2020 field, the Clintons don’t believe Sanders is capable of beating Trump, according to those who have spoken with them.

“I think that at some point bygones can be bygones, but what you can’t get around is the electability question,” said David Brock, a longtime Clinton ally.

Neither side tried to mask the tensions in the days since Sanders launched his 2020 campaign. When asked Friday on ABC’s “The View” whether he would seek campaign advice from Hillary Clinton, Sanders said: “I think not.”

​There was not much warmth between Sanders and Hillary Clinton on Sunday when the two were in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 54th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” clash. 

Bill Clinton has offered advice to a handful of candidates, sometimes meeting them at his New York office or speaking to them by phone. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper was meeting with Hillary Clinton at the couple’s Chappaqua, New York, home when the former president stopped by and sat in on the rest of the meeting.

Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said he spoke with Clinton in January and “got some good advice,” though he wouldn’t elaborate on what they discussed. Others discussed meetings with Clinton on the condition of anonymity in order to speak about the private conversations.

Clinton’s friends say he still relishes the political debate and is closely monitoring early developments in the primary. While he doesn’t have much of a relationship with some of the younger White House hopefuls, like Beto O’Rourke, some of his contemporaries are considering running, including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Vice President Joe Biden. Neither has had a formal meeting with Clinton about the campaign, but they’ve talked politics with him for years.

The 72-year-old former president rarely offers tactical advice about how to structure a campaign, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. He’s said to be well-aware that technology and campaign tactics have significantly evolved since he was last on the ballot in 1996.

But the famously verbose Clinton does dive deep into policy and offers advice on how to appeal to the same economic anxiety that drove some white, working-class voters to side with Trump over his wife.

Clinton’s focus on white, working-class voters became something of a joke within his wife’s 2016 campaign, with aides privately mocking his insistence on plunging more energy and resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Top campaign advisers believed they didn’t need to invest heavily in those reliably Democratic states, then watched Trump narrowly edge Clinton out in the upper Midwest on his way to the presidency.

​Some progressives say that while they agree Democrats can’t turn their backs on white, working-class voters, they see Clinton’s more centrist approach to winning back those voters as a throwback to an era – and a party – that no longer exists.

“Times have changed,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal group that has endorsed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “The center of gravity within the Democratic Party and the electorate overall has moved massively in a more populist direction.”

Indeed, some of Clinton’s signature policies – including the North America Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 crime bill – are out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Clinton himself has acknowledged that the crime bill worsened the problem of mass incarcerations, particularly among black men.

It’s Clinton’s personal baggage that has created another uncomfortable dynamic with Democrats running for the White House.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who had been backed by the couple throughout her political career, said Clinton should have resigned from office because of his affair with a White House intern. The former president has tried to publicly brush off the comment, saying Gillibrand – a leading Senate voice on sexual harassment and assault – is “living in a different context.” But Clinton allies say the couple’s anger at Gillibrand runs deep and their relationship may be irreparable.

Other women seeking the Democratic nomination also haven’t met with Clinton, including Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar spoke with Clinton briefly at last month’s funeral for John Dingell, the retired Democratic congressman.

2020 wouldn’t be the first time Clinton has been sidelined in part because of his personal transgressions. His own vice president, Al Gore, distanced himself from Clinton during the 2000 campaign, a move some Democrats still see as a mistake. But views on Clinton shifted, and by 2012, he was considered one of the strongest surrogates for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

In a shot at those who see Clinton as an albatross this time around, one ally of the former president referenced Gore and said the track record isn’t good for candidates who distance themselves from Clinton.
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Thunder rolling above Brown Chapel AME Church, Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker warned Sunday of a looming threat to American democracy and called for protecting the legacy of the civil rights movement with love and action.

“It’s time for us to defend the dream,” Booker said in a keynote speech at Brown Chapel, which two generations ago was the starting point of a peaceful demonstration in support of voting rights that ended in beatings on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The infamous “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965, galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act that year.

“It’s time that we dare to dream again in America. That is what it takes to make America great. It is up to us to do the work that makes the dream real,” said Booker, a New Jersey senator and one of three White House hopefuls who participated in events commemorating the march.

Saying America faces challenges, Booker said: “People want to make it just about the people in the highest offices of the land.

People who traffic in hatred, people in office that defend Nazis or white supremacists, people that point fingers and forget the lessons of King. What we must repent for are not just the vitriolic words and actions of bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of good people.”

Also visiting Selma on Sunday were Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Joining them was Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016. Booker and Brown, along with Clinton and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, marched with dozens of others Sunday afternoon to Edmund Pettus Bridge. Sanders had left for a campaign event in Chicago.

The throng of marchers had set out from the church and sang freedom songs under a stormy sky as they headed to that sacred spot over the Alabama River to commemorate the peaceful protesters who were met with tear gas and clubs wielded by state troopers.

This year’s commemoration came in the early days of a Democratic presidential primary campaign that has focused heavily on issues of race. Several candidates have called President Donald Trump a racist, while others have voiced support for the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved black Americans.

Booker and Sanders have already announced their campaigns. Brown is still considering a White House bid. The three gathered for a unity breakfast in Selma to pay homage to its civil rights legacy and highlight how the movement shaped their personal narratives.

For the New Jersey senator, much of the day felt personal. In Brown Chapel he sat next to Jackson, for whom he cast his first ballot as an 18-year-old during Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign. He later marched to the bridge alongside Jackson, their arms locked together.

In his speech, Booker linked the 1965 Selma demonstration to the lawyer who volunteered to help his family buy a home in a white neighborhood after they were discriminated against and repeatedly denied.

“I would not be here if it wasn’t for marchers on a bridge who inspired a man a thousand miles away in New Jersey,” he said. “The dream is under attack. You honor history by emulating it, by us recommitting ourselves to it.”

Brown, currently on a “Dignity of Work” tour inspired by King, returned to Selma for the fifth time. He frequently draws connections between civil rights and worker’s rights. A former secretary of state in Ohio, Brown also has a reputation as a leader on expanding voter participation.

“We need to understand what happened here and we need to talk about it so we keep fighting on these issues,” Brown told reporters at the breakfast. “It’s clear we make progress and then we fall back because of Republican attacks on voting rights.”

Claiming that the Georgia governor election was stolen from Democrat Stacey Abrams, Brown said: “It’s not just a Southern issue, of course. In the north we see all kinds of changes in voting laws. We see suppression of the vote in 2016, purging of voters in my state in a big way. This fight continues. It’s become personal in many ways because voting rights are so important to our country.”

Sanders attended the 1963 March on Washington, which featured the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

Sanders has highlighted his civil rights and activist background as a young man at the University of Chicago. He is working to strengthn his relationship with black voters, with whom he struggled to connect in the 2016 Democratic primary that Clinton won.

Clinton told those at Brown Chapel that the absence of crucial parts of the Voting Rights Act contributed to her 2016 loss to Trump.

The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a part of the law that required the Justice Department to scrutinize states with a history of racial discrimination in voting.  

Clinton said “it makes a really big difference” and warned of the need for continued vigilance about voter suppression heading into the 2020 election.

The backdrop of Selma provides a spotlight on voting rights. Advocates say the gains achieved as a result of “Bloody Sunday” have been threatened in recent years, particularly by the 2013 Supreme Court decision.

Voter suppression emerged as a key issue in the 2018 midterm elections in states such as Georgia and North Carolina, where a Republican congressional candidate was accused of rigging the contest there through absentee ballots. House Democrats signaled they plan to make ballot access a priority in the new Congress, introducing legislation aimed at protecting voting rights in 2020 and beyond. 
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U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has become the fourth Republican to vow to oppose President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration to build a wall along the southern U.S. border, likely giving the Senate enough votes to pass a resolution blocking it.

“I can’t vote to give the president the power to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated by Congress,” Paul told guests at a GOP dinner at Western Kentucky University, according to the Bowling Green Daily News.

Paul joins Republicans senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina in his opposition. If all 47 Senate Democrats vote as expected, the Senate has enough votes to pass a resolution with 51 votes.

Thirteen Republicans in the House joined Democrats last week to pass a resolution to block Trump’s emergency declaration. If it passes the Senate, the resolution will go to the president, who has promised to veto it.

Neither chamber has enough votes to overturn a veto by Trump — two-thirds of each chamber is needed to overturn a veto.

Trump made the declaration in February after Congress approved just $1.375 billion for border security, far short of the $5.7 billion he had sought.

He plans to divert about $6.2 billion to build his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He is seeking to use $3.6 billion from military construction, $2.5 billion from a Defense Department drug interdiction program, and $600 million from a Treasury Department drug forfeiture program, in addition to the money from Congress.

“We’re being invaded by drugs, by people, by criminals, and we have to stop it,”Trump has said in justifying the action.

While some Republicans support the action, others have rejected it.

“What we see happening along the border – the amount of drugs, the amount of deaths in America, the human trafficking that’s coming across, the overwhelming problem there. So the president has the authority to do it,” Republican Congressman  Kevin McCarthy said.

But Senator Collins calls the president’s move “ill-advised precisely because it attempts to shortcut the process of checks and balances by usurping Congress’ authority.”

VOA’s Michael Bowman contributed to this report.
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Top Democratic lawmakers vowed Sunday to step up their investigations of U.S. President Donald Trump and his connections to Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told ABC News that on Monday his panel would be issuing requests for documents to 60 people, “to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power.”

He said the requests would be sent to officials at the White House and Justice Department, along with Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, the president’s global business empire.

Nadler said he believes the president has obstructed justice during his two years in office. He said that Trump’s former long-time personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, in his lengthy public testimony to Congress last week, “directly implicated the president in — in various crimes, both while seeking the office of president and while in the White House.”

“We don’t have the facts yet,” Nadler said. “But we’re going to initiate proper investigations.”

Cohen, who called Trump “a racist, a con man, a cheat,” showed a House panel two $35,000 checks — one signed by the president and one signed by the younger Trump and Weisselberg — to Cohen to partly reimburse him for $130,000 he paid shortly before the 2016 election to adult film star Stormy Daniels as hush money, to keep her quiet about an alleged affair she claims to have had with then real estate mogul Trump more than a decade ago.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN that after hearing Cohen’s testimony, “We’ve got to dig deeper” about the extent to which Trump pursued construction of a skyscraper in Moscow during the 2016 campaign even as he told voters he was not involved in any Russian business deals.

Cohen has been sentenced to prison for three years after pleading guilty to financial crimes and to lying to Congress that Trump’s Russian business overtures ended in January 2016 at the outset of the presidential campaign. Now, Cohen says Trump’s Russian business involvement extended for months after that.

Warner said he will reach his decision on whether Trump colluded with Russia to help him win the election after more investigation. But he said, “The claim that there is no evidence is factually wrong.”

Nadler’s committee would be first to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump, but he said that no decisions have been reached on that. His Judiciary committee and other panels in Congress are awaiting release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his 22-month investigation of Trump campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

Mueller’s report could be turned over to Attorney General William Barr in the coming days, but how much of it will be made public is uncertain. Democratic lawmakers have called for its full release, but Barr has said he would only do so to the extent that Justice Department regulations allow him to.

Nadler said, “The Republicans spent two years shielding the president from any proper accountability.” He said Republican lawmakers “threatened to impeach people in Justice Department, they threatened the — the Mueller investigation. It’s our job to protect the rule of law. That’s our core function.”

Trump, since returning from his collapsed summit in Hanoi last week with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has resumed his attacks on Mueller’s investigation and the growing number of inquiries in Congress.

“After more than two years of Presidential Harassment, the only things that have been proven is that Democrats and other [sic] broke the law,” Trump said on Twitter Sunday.

“The hostile Cohen testimony, given by a liar to reduce his prison time, proved no Collusion!” Trump said. “His just written book manuscript showed what he said was a total lie. but the Fake Media won’t show it. I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start – And only because I won the Election! Despite this, great success!”

 
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