What’s New?

Congressional negotiators on Sunday reached an agreement to keep the government open and operating through Sept. 30, averting the possibility of a government shutdown and providing increased funds for defense and border security. The agreement does not, however, include money to build a border wall, meaning that there remain points to resolve when Congress begins to negotiate a budget for fiscal 2018, the first to fully represent President Trump’s priorities. Turns out not every Republican wants to repeal Obamacare. A late push last week to mollify conservatives who didn’t like the previous version of the repeal-and-replace proposal ended up scaring away some moderate Republicans whose constituents, it turns out, aren’t keen on losing their health insurance. Republican leaders say they are ...

Congress returns and faces a budget deadline and a potential government shutdown, as the Trump Administration, wrapping up its first 100 days in office on Saturday, is desperately seeking a legislative victory to trumpet as evidence of its successful start. The Senate will vote late Monday to confirm Sonny Perdue as Agriculture Secretary. The President of Argentina visits the White House on Thursday. And the Supreme Court wraps up its final three days of oral arguments for the current session Monday through Wednesday; among the six cases it will hear are two death penalty appeals and a fight over generic drug availability. Funding for the federal government ends at midnight Friday, on President Trump’s 99th day in office. Much of Congress’s week, therefore, will be spent trying to avoid a ...

THE BIG EVENT: President Trump meets Thursday and Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-A-Lago, a summit that Trump tweeted he expects to be “very difficult,” focused on jobs and the trade deficit. It could make for an awkward meeting; during the campaign, Trump accused China of “rape” of the U.S. economy and of currency manipulation, a charge on which he has gone silent since being inaugurated. NO SMALL THING: Before China gets its welcome, President Trump will play host to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the military ruler of Egypt, who helped lead the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in 2013 and subsequently took the title of President in an election in which he claimed 97 percent of the vote. Sisi, according to Politico, is “reviled by activists for what they call the ...

Did Russian security services – or the Obama Administration – take “active measures” to influence the 2016 Presidential election? The House Select Intelligence Committee wants to know; it will conduct a hearing Monday headlined by testimony from FBI Director James Comey and Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, on whether Russia hacked into email accounts at the Democratic National Committee and elsewhere, and whether President Obama had Trump Tower bugged. The chairman of that committee, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, said Sunday that new information provided to the committee on Friday revealed no signs of physical wiretaps at Trump Tower and no FISA warrant authorizing such surveillance. The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, put it simply: “We are a ...

As if the Justice Department didn’t already have enough worries, President Trump sparked another conflict on Friday when he ordered the remaining 46 United States Attorneys held over from the Obama Administration to resign. Preet Bharara, the outspoken and aggressive U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, refused to do so and was fired, he says – which probably lessens the chance that there will be a real investigation anytime soon into allegations that Trump Tower was bugged. Tic Tac alert! German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits the Oval Office on Tuesday, the first meeting between two of the most powerful leaders in the West. One subject likely to come up is how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Merkel has had 11 meetings, making her by far the Western leader most familiar wi ...