Dems Take Back the House

Democrats won back the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave an inspirational speech shortly after their success.

Stacey Abrams

Stacey Abrams, democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia. Abrams was endorsed by President Obama in August of this year.

Susan Collins

Aunt Susan

Beto O'Rourke

Congressman Beto O'Rourke, democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas

John Brennan

In an unprecedented move Donald Trump pulled the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan for political reasons.

Carter Page

Newly released FISA warrant application for Carter Page shows that Donald Trump named somebody as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign who was believed to be a Russian foreign agent

Michael McFaul

After Donald Trump’s private, one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki the White House said it was reviewing a request by Putin to allow Russian investigators to question American citizens. The list of citizens included former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul. Trump called it an "incredible offer" before finally turning it down after some pushback.

Rod Rosenstein

This month Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the Justice Department indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking American democrats in order to attack the 2016 American presidential election. The indictments came right before Trump was planned to meet with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. During Trump's meeting with Putin he reportedly met in private with no advisers or staff with him. After the one on one, in a joint news conference with Putin, Trump said, "I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia who hacked Americans. Twenty four hours later Trump claimed he misspoke on the Russian attack on the US election, saying he meant he saw no reason why it “wouldn't” be Russia that was responsible. Trump crossed out a line in the portion of his prepared remarks that read “Anyone involved in that meddling to justice" and wrote in "No collusion" spelled incorrectly.
Trump's supporters have now come out in support of the Russian attack on the American election presumably because the attack helped their candidate and was made on the opposing party.

Paul Manafort

Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort headed to jail after witness tampering allegation while awaiting money laundering and fraud trials.

Scott Hutchison

Fully clothed, I'll float away

Down the Forth, into the sea

I'll steer myself through chopping waves

As manic gulls scream "it's okay"

Take your life

Give it a shake

Gather up all your loose change

 

        - Scott Hutchison

James Clapper

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper recently revealed in an interview with Rachel Maddow that he believed Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election did tip it to Donald Trump. A claim he also makes in his recent book "Facts and Fears."  The compelling interview is a must-watch and can be seen here in 3 parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. After the interview Maddow pointed out how Clapper's assessment calls into question the legitimacy of Donald Trump's presidency saying, "If James Clapper is correct that Donald Trump is only in office because Russia put him there, the Trump Russia investigation isn't just a matter of crime and punishment... It is a critical nexus between the rule of law and national sovereignty."  It should be noted that yesterday Trump claimed on twitter that Clapper admitted there was spying on his campaign when, in fact, Clapper actually did not say that. 

Moon Jae-In

South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed a historic declaration on Friday pledging "no more war."  Later when responding to a letter from former Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae Jung's wife, which said Moon deserves a Nobel for the successful summit, Moon said, "President Trump can take the Nobel prize. All we need to take is peace." Moon was apparently referring to Trump taking credit for Korean nuclear talks and conservatives' erroneous claims that Trump should win the prize for the summit.

James Comey

Former FBI Director, James Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty" is being released on Tuesday. Donald Trump called Comey an 'untruthful slimeball' after revelations of the book were leaked. Trump launched a series of airstrikes without congressional approval on Syria Friday night which knocked the book's release out of the headlines.

Michael Cohen

The FBI raided Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's office seeking information about a $130,000 payment in hush money Cohen made to a porn star shortly before the 2016 election.

Scott Pruitt

Donald Trump’s EPA pick Scott Pruitt has come under fire recently when it was revealed that he took a $40,000, taxpayer-funded first class trip to Morocco late last year. The reason the trip reportedly cost so much is because it wasn’t only Pruitt flying first class but his entire staff. The explanation for Pruitt’s trip was to pitch the supposed benefit of liquefied natural gas imports on Morocco’s economy. At that time, Cheniere Energy owned the only liquefied natural gas export in the US. We now know that at that time, Pruitt was living in the Cheniere Energy lobbyist’s house for $50 a night which is less than a third of what other nearby two-bedroom homes list for. Other recent scandals involve Pruitt reassigning the guy who would not let him use a police siren to get out of DC traffic,
EPA officials being demoted after raising concerns about Pruitt's ethics and perks for Pruitt's staffers. Donald Trump's response to this is that Pruitt has done a 'fantastic job.'

David Hogg

I am much older than Parkland shooting survivor, David Hogg but I want to be him when I grow up.

Emma Gonzalez is a Warrior for Change

Emma Gonzalez, survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. After the shooting Gonzalez, 18,  gave a speech advocating for gun control in the US. In the speech, she called out the NRA, Trump and called BS to gun industry talking points declaring, "They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don't know what we're talking about, that we're too young to understand how the government works. We call BS." Her bravery and impassioned plea absolutely catapulted her into the spotlight making her one of America's most prominent advocates for gun control. More recently Gonzalez appeared on 60 Minutes. When asked why she thought the issue of arming teachers was stupid, she responded. "First of all, they have-- Douglas ran out of paper for, like, two weeks in the school year, and now all a sudden they have $400 million to pay for teachers to get trained to arm themselves? Really?"  Last week Gonzalez wrote an outstanding essay on gun control for Teen Vogue. In her essay she writes, "we don’t need to wait around to have our voices heard or for someone else to make a change — we have to be the change we need to see.” Today hundreds of thousands are expected to participate across the country in the March For Our Lives rally which sends a message to Congress for tougher gun regulations. If you're interested in joining the fight visit the hashtags #neveragain and #marchforourlives on Twitter. Gonzalez can be followed on Twitter at @Emma4Change

Andrew McCabe

Donald Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions fires FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe -- just days before he was supposed to retire. Firing McCabe, who has worked at the FBI for the past 22 years, before his retirement causes him to lose his pension. McCabe has made a statement regarding his firing.  After McCabe's firing, John Dowd, Trump's personal lawyer said that he hoped Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would follow Sessions and fire Robert Mueller, head of the Trump/Russia probe. It is now being reported that Andrew McCabe has lawyered up retaining former inspector general of the Justice Department, Michael Bromwich to represent him.

Stephen Hawking

“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.” - Stephen Hawking

Rex Tillerson

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was fired by Donald Trump via tweet just one day after taking a hard line on Russia after a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in the UK.

Evan Osnos

Evan Osnos, staff writer for the New Yorker. Osnos recently co-authored a detailed report with Adam Entous about how senior adviser to the president, Jared Kushner is unable to attain White House security clearance. Despite not having security clearance Kushner still gets access everyday to the president’s highly classified daily brief from the intelligence community. We also learn from the article that Kushner made the decision to meet alone, one on one with Chinese ambassador Cui Tiankai. Kushner has reportedly discussed his own business interests alongside policy with Cui. Last year the New York Times reported that eight days after the election Kushner met with an insurance company tied to the Chinese government that was considering putting millions of dollars into Kushner’s struggling 666 Fifth Avenue building in Manhattan. Kushner reportedly has to make a 1.2 billion dollar mortgage payment on the building next year despite the fact that there are no signs he will be able to make that payment.

Tom Hamburger

Tom Hamburger, national reporter for The Washington Post, talks about his new reporting for the post on how Christopher Steele, the infamous Trump dossier author, alerted the FBI about the intel he had found on Trump and Russia.

Chuck Rosenberg

Former U.S. attorney, Chuck Rosenberg. Here Rosenberg discusses with Rachel Maddow the FISA process and why the FBI’s hands are tied after the release of Devin Nunes’ memo stunt. When Maddow asked, “Should we expect that there would be some kind of rebuttal that the FBI would issue a public statement clarifying what are the implicit allegations against them in this memo?” Rosenberg used a hypothetical situation to explain saying, “Imagine that someone leaked a document that said that Rachel Maddow, a senior official at a foreign government, loved Nutella but would only eat it with a red plastic spoon and that becomes public and is marked top secret and everyone is wondering, ‘why in the world would that be marked top secret? That seems so innocuous.’ But it turns out only one person in the world, your Great Aunt Barbra knows you like eating Nutella with a red plastic spoon. And so we’ve now told the whole world that Great Aunt Barbra is the source for the United States government, she’s a mole, she’s a spy and something very bad is going to happen to her in the next couple of days in that foreign country. So the FBI cannot be in the business of rebutting this stuff because to rebut it they’re gonna lay out other facts that foreign governments are going to use to their advantage and our disadvantage.” This is what Donald Trump has done to the United States Federal Bureau  of Investigation in order to obstruct justice and try to get himself off the hook for conspiring with Russia to win the office of the presidency.

Franklin Foer

National correspondent for The Atlantic, Franklin Foer. Here Foer discusses his new reporting for the Atlantic about Donald Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort's checkered past and how he wanted to work for the Trump campaign for free.

Gabriel Maldonado

Gabriel Maldonado, former member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Here Maldonado discusses how the Trump administration ended the AIDS council without any warning via FedEx.