Category Archives: Donald Trump

McCord had been carrying wiretapping gear at the Watergate. This was evidence of a federal crime the illegal interception of communications which meant the break-in was a case for the F.B.I. Wiretapping was standard practice at the F.B.I. under J. Edgar Hoover, who had ruled the bureau since 1924. But Hoover died six weeks before the Watergate break-in, and L. Patrick Gray, a lawyer at the Justice Department and a staunch Nixon loyalist, was named acting director. I dont believe he could bring himself to suspect his superiors in the White House a suspicion which was well within the Watergate investigating agents world by about the third or fourth week, Mindermann said.

A month after the break-in, Mindermann and a colleague named Paul Magallanes found their way to Judy Hoback, a Creep accountant. The interview at her home in suburban Maryland went on past 3 a.m. By the time Mindermann and Magallanes stepped out into the cool night air, they had learned from Hoback that $3 million or more in unaccountable cash was sloshing around at Creep, to finance crimes like the Watergate break-in. Both men sensed instinctively that people in the White House itself were involved, Magallanes, who is now 79 and runs an international security firm near Los Angeles, told me. Mindermann said he felt a dark dread that this is happening in our democracy. By 10:45 that morning, the agents had typed up a 19-page statement that laid out Creeps direct connections to Nixons inner circle.

Mindermann, the young ex-cop with five $27 department-store suits to his name, remembers the presidents men who stonewalled the investigation throughout 1972 and early 1973 as Ivy Leaguers in their custom-fitted finery these privileged boys born to be federal judges and Wall Street barons. They were gutless and completely self-serving. They lacked the ability to do the right thing. By late April 1973, however, the stonewalls were crumbling. On Friday, April 27, as Nixon flew off to Camp David for the weekend, mulling his dark future, the F.B.I. moved to secure White House records relevant to Watergate.

At 5:15 p.m., 15 agents arose from their dented metal desks in the Old Post Office building and marched in tight formation, fully armed, up Pennsylvania Avenue. On Monday, a highly agitated Nixon returned to the White House to find a skinny F.B.I. accountant standing watch outside a West Wing office. The president pushed him up against a wall and demanded to know how he had the authority to invade the White House. Mindermann laughed at the memory: What do you do, he said, when youre mugged by the president of the United States?

I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation, James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, said in June, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee a month after his abrupt dismissal from his post by the president. Comey was referring to the account Trump gave in an NBC interview on May 11 and Comey fought back on the rest of the story as Trump told it. Trump, he said, chose to defame me and, more importantly, the F.B.I. by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the work force had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple.

Trump, Comey said, had asked his F.B.I. director for his loyalty and that seemed to shock Comey the most. The F.B.I.s stated mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States not to protect the president. Trump seemed to believe Comey was dutybound to do his bidding and stop investigating the recently fired national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The statue of Justice has a blindfold on because youre not supposed to be peeking out to see whether your patron is pleased or not with what youre doing, Comey said. It should be about the facts and the law.

Trump might have been less confused about how Comey saw his job if he had ever visited the F.B.I. director in his office. On his desk, under glass, Comey famously kept a copy of a 1963 order authorizing Hoover to conduct round-the-clock F.B.I. surveillance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was signed by the young attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, after Hoover convinced John F. Kennedy and his brother that King had Communists in his organization a reminder of the abuses of power that had emanated from the desk where Comey sat.

One of historys great what-ifs is whether the Watergate investigation would have gone forward if Hoover hadnt died six weeks before the break-in. When Hoover died, Nixon called him my closest personal friend in all of political life. Along with Senator Joseph McCarthy, they were the avatars of anti-Communism in America. Hoovers F.B.I. was not unlike what Trump seems to have imagined the agency still to be: a law-enforcement apparatus whose flexible loyalties were bent to fit the whims of its director. In his half-century at the helm of the F.B.I., Hoover rarely approved cases against politicians. In the 1960s, he much preferred going after the civil rights and antiwar movements and their leaders, and his agents routinely broke the law in the name of the law.

In 1975, however, Congress, emboldened by Watergate and newly attuned to its watchdog responsibilities, began its first full-scale investigation of this legacy, and of similar abuses at the C.I.A. Edward Levi, Gerald Fords attorney general, gave the F.B.I. an unprecedented assignment: investigating itself. Fifty-three agents were soon targets of investigations by their own agency, implicated in crimes committed in the name of national security. Mark Felt, the agencys second-in-command (who 30 years later revealed himself to have been Bob Woodwards source Deep Throat), and Ed Miller, the F.B.I.s intelligence director, were convicted of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Americans. (President Ronald Reagan later pardoned them.) The F.B.I.s rank and file felt it was under attack. Every jot of wrongdoing whether real, imagined or grossly exaggerated now commands an extraordinary amount of attention, Clarence Kelley, the F.B.I. director under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Jimmy Carter, said in 1976. The American people, he argued, could not long endure a crippled and beleaguered F.B.I.

The Iran-contra scandal provided the bureau with its first great post-Watergate test. On Oct. 5, 1986, Sandinistas in Nicaragua shot down a cargo plane, which bore an unassuming transport-company name but was found to contain 60 Kalashnikov rifles, tens of thousands of cartridges and other gear. One crew member was captured and revealed the first inklings of what turned out to be an extraordinary plot. Reagans national-security team had conspired to sell American weapons to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and, after marking up the price fivefold, skimmed the proceeds and slipped them to the anti-Communist contra rebels in Nicaragua. This was a direct violation of federal law, as Congress had passed a bill cutting off aid to the rebels, which made Iran-contra a case for the F.B.I.

In a major feat of forensics, F.B.I. agents recovered 5,000 deleted emails from National Security Council office computers, which laid out the scheme from start to finish. They opened a burn bag of top-secret documents belonging to the N.S.C. aide Oliver North and found a copy of elaborately falsified secret testimony to Congress. They dusted it for fingerprints and found ones belonging to Clair George, chief of the clandestine service of the C.I.A. In short order, an F.B.I. squad was inside C.I.A. headquarters, rifling through double-locked file cabinets. Almost all the major evidence that led to the indictments of 12 top national-security officials was uncovered by the F.B.I.

George H.W. Bush pardoned many of the key defendants at the end of his presidency, on Christmas Eve 1992 just as Reagan pardoned Mark Felt and Ford pardoned Nixon. This was the limit of the agencys influence, the one presidential power that the F.B.I. could not fight. But over the course of two decades and five presidents, the post-Hoover relationship between the F.B.I. and the White House had settled into a delicate balance between the rule of law and the chief of state. Presidents could use secrecy, and sometimes outright deception, to push their executive powers to the limit. But the F.B.I., through its investigative brief, retained a powerful unofficial check on these privileges: the ability to amass, and unveil, deep secrets of state. The agency might not have been able to stop presidents like Nixon and Reagan from overreaching, but when it did intervene, there was little presidents could do to keep the F.B.I. from making their lives very difficult as Bill Clinton discovered in 1993, when he appointed Louis J. Freeh as his F.B.I. director.

Freeh was an F.B.I. agent early in his career but had been gone from the agency for some time when he was named to run it so he was alarmed to discover, shortly after he started his new job, that the F.B.I. was in the midst of investigating real estate deals involving the Clintons in Arkansas. Freeh quickly turned in his White House pass. He saw Clinton as a criminal suspect in the Whitewater affair, in which the F.B.I. and a special prosecutor bushwhacked through the brambles of Arkansas politics and business for four years and, through a most circuitous route, wound up grilling a 24-year-old former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky in a five-star hotel. The bureau, through the White House physician, had blood drawn from the president to match the DNA on Lewinskys blue dress evidence that the president perjured himself under oath about sex, opening the door to his impeachment by the House of Representatives.

He came to believe that I was trying to undo his presidency, Freeh wrote of Clinton in his memoir. Clintons allies complained after the fact that Freehs serial investigations of the president were not just a headache but also a fatal distraction. From 1996 to 2001, when Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden bombed two American Embassies in Africa and plotted the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. spent less time and money on any counterterrorism investigation than it did investigating claims that Chinese money bought influence over President Clinton though illegal 1996 campaign contributions an immense project that eventually became a fiasco on its own terms. One of the F.B.I.s informants in the investigation was a socially prominent and politically connected Californian named Katrina Leung. At the time, Leung was in a sexual relationship with her F.B.I. handler, James J. Smith, chief of the bureaus Los Angeles branchs China squad. Smith had reason to suspect that Leung might be a double agent working for Chinese intelligence, but he protected her anyway.

The F.B.I. buried the scandal until after Clinton left the White House in 2001. By the time it came to light, Freeh was out the door, and President George W. Bush had chosen Robert Mueller as the sixth director of the F.B.I.

Born into a wealthy family, Mueller exemplified the tradition of the muscular Christian that came out of the English public-school world of the 19th century, Maxwell King, Muellers classmate at St. Pauls, the elite New England prep school, told me. Mueller arrived at F.B.I. headquarters with a distinguished military record he earned a bronze star as a Marine in Vietnam and years of service as a United States attorney and Justice Department official. It was a week before the Sept. 11 attacks, and he was inheriting an agency ill suited for the mission that would soon loom enormously before it. Richard A. Clarke, the White House counterterrorism czar under Clinton and Bush, later wrote that Freehs F.B.I. had not done enough to seek out foreign terrorists. Clarke also wrote that Freehs counterterror chief, Dale Watson, had told him: We have to smash the F.B.I. into bits and rebuild it.

Mueller had already earned the respect of the F.B.I. rank and file during his tenure as chief of the criminal division of the Justice Department. When he started work at the Justice Department in 1990, the F.B.I. had been trying and failing for two years to solve the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The F.B.I. was not set up to deal with a major investigation like this, Richard Marquise, an F.B.I. intelligence analyst who became the leader of the Lockerbie investigation under Mueller, said in an F.B.I. oral history. I blame the institution.

Mueller used his power under law to obliterate the F.B.I.s byzantine flow charts of authority in the case. We literally cut out the chains of command, Marquise said. We brought in the C.I.A. We brought the Scots. We brought MI5 to Washington. And we sat down and we said: We need to change the way were doing business. ... We need to start sharing information. It was a tip from the Scots that put Marquise on the trail of the eventual suspect: one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafis intelligence officers, whose cover was security chief for the Libyan state airlines. Qaddafis spy, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was indicted in 1991. It took until the turn of the 21st century, but he was convicted.

It meant a great deal to Mueller, in the Lockerbie case, that the evidence the F.B.I. produced be deployed as evidence in court, not justification for war. In a speech he gave at Stanford University in 2002, concerning the nations newest threat, he spoke of the balance we must strike to protect our national security and our civil liberties as we address the threat of terrorism. He concluded: We will be judged by history, not just on how we disrupt and deter terrorism, but also on how we protect the civil liberties and the constitutional rights of all Americans, including those Americans who wish us ill. We must do both of these things, and we must do them exceptionally well.

These views made Mueller something of an outlier in the Bush administration; five days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney was warning that the White House needed to go over to the dark side to fight Al Qaeda. Among the darkest places was a top-secret program code-named Stellar Wind, under which the N.S.A. eavesdropped freely in the United States without search warrants.

By the end of 2003, Mueller had a new boss: James Comey, who was named deputy attorney general. Comey was read into the Stellar Wind program and deemed it unconstitutional. He briefed Mueller, who concurred. They saw no evidence that the surveillance had saved a single life, stopped an imminent attack or uncovered an Al Qaeda member in the United States. In the first week of March, the two men agreed that the F.B.I. could not continue to go along with the surveillance programs. They also thought Attorney General John Ashcroft should not re-endorse Stellar Wind. Comey made the case to Ashcroft.

In remarkable congressional testimony in 2007, Comey would describe what happened next: Hours later, Ashcroft keeled over with gallstone pancreatitis. He was sedated and scheduled for surgery. Comey was now the acting attorney general. He and the president were required to reauthorize Stellar Wind on March 11 for the program to continue. When Comey learned the White House counsel and chief of staff were heading to the hospital of the night of March 10 to get the signature of the barely conscious Ashcroft, Comey raced to Ashcrofts hospital room to head them off. When they arrived, Ashcroft lifted his head off the pillow and told the presidents men that he wouldnt sign. Pointing at Comey, he said: There is the attorney general.

Bush signed the authorization alone anyway, asserting that he had constitutional power to do so. Mueller took meticulous notes of these events; they were partly declassified years later. On March 11, he wrote that the president was trying to do an end run around Comey, at the time the nations chief law-enforcement officer. At 1:30 a.m. on March 12, Mueller drafted a letter of resignation. I am forced to withdraw the F.B.I. from participation in the program, he wrote. If the president did not back down, I would be constrained to resign as director of the F.B.I. And Comey and Ashcroft would go with him.

Seven hours later, with the letter in the breast pocket of his suit, Mueller sat alone with Bush in the Oval Office. Once again, the F.B.I. had joined a battle against a president. Muellers notes show that he told Bush in no uncertain terms that a presidential order alone could not legalize Stellar Wind. Unless the N.S.A. brought Stellar Wind within the constraints of the law, he would lose his F.B.I. director, the attorney general and the acting attorney general. In the end, Bush relented it took years, but the programs were put on what Mueller considered a defensible legal footing.

Trumps showdown with Comey and its aftermath is the fifth confrontation between the F.B.I. and a sitting president since the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and the first in which the presidents principal antagonists, Mueller and Comey, have been there before. When Bush faced the same two men, he was acutely aware of the history that attended their confrontation. He wrote later that he realized their resignations could be the second coming of the Saturday Night Massacre, the penultimate disaster of Nixons presidency, when the embattled president keelhauled the special prosecutor pursuing the secret White House tapes and lost his attorney general and deputy attorney general in the process. The question is whether Trump cares enough about the consequences of history to avoid repeating it.

For the Watergate veterans John Mindermann and Paul Magallanes, the news of recent weeks has come with a certain amount of professional gratification. When I spoke with them on June 14, both agents said they wanted the bureaus role as a check on the president to be in the public eye. For years, they felt that their own work had gone unacknowledged. We never got an attaboy letter from our superiors, Mindermann said. But we changed history, and we knew it. Magallanes had always been bothered by how, in the collective American memory, Nixons downfall was attributed to so many other authors: Woodward and Bernstein, crusading congressional committees, hard-nosed special prosecutors. To the agents who were present at the time, it was first and foremost an F.B.I. story. We were the people who did the work, Magallanes told me. It was we, the F.B.I., who brought Richard Nixon down. We showed that our government can investigate itself.

Tim Weiner was a reporter for The Times from 1993 to 2009. His work on national security has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. His books include Enemies: A History of the F.B.I.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2017, on Page MM27 of the Sunday Magazine.

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How Donald Trump Misunderstood the FBI - New York Times

(NEW YORK) President Trump's press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders urged all Americans to watch an online video posted by a conservative provocateur with a CNN producer commenting on his network's coverage of Trump's connections to Russia.

Sanders, in the White House briefing, called producer John Bonifield's statements a disgrace to journalism. In the hidden camera video posted by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, Bonifield is heard to say that the story was getting extensive coverage because it is good for the ratings.

Sanders said, "if the media can't be truthful and report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America."

During her briefing, she did not take any question from CNN correspondent Jeff Zeleny.

The video of Bonifield was released after three CNN journalists resigned Monday following the network's retraction of a story Friday about a supposed investigation into a pre-inaugural meeting between a Trump associate and the head of a Russian investment fund.

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Donald Trump's Press Aide Attacks CNN During Briefing - TIME

President Donald Trump arrives for a rally on June 21, 2017 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Trump spoke about renegotiating NAFTA and building a border wall that would produce solar power during the rally.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

When Donald Trump chatted with three Reuters reporters in April, he handed each of them a map memorializing his win over Hillary Clinton. Its pretty good, right? the president asked before adding, The red is obviously us. This was not an outlier. Trump also bragged about his election victory at a Republican Party retreat in Philadelphia days after the inauguration, during an appearance with the president of Romania, and in response to a question about anti-Semitism.

Slates Donald Trump Election Brag Tracker keeps a close watch on the presidents penchant for praising his own remarkable performance in the 2016 election, a contest in which he lost the popular vote.

Want to know the last time Trump bragged about the election?

Type inwhenwasthelasttimetrumpbraggedabouttheelection.comand youll be redirected to this page.

We cant do this tracking without your help. If we missed any Trump election brags, or if you hear a new one, let us know by filling out this form.

Torie Bosch is the editor of Future Tense, a project of Slate, New America, and Arizona State that looks at the implications of new technologies.

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The Donald Trump Election Brag Tracker - Slate Magazine

A new red line? The White House Monday night put Syria on warning that if the government engages in another chemical attack, Bashar al-Assad and his military will "pay a heavy price," while President Trump tweeted minutes later about a Russia "Witch Hunt!"

THE TAKE with ABC News' Rick Klein

Do senators even want "the closer" in this game? It's not just the distractions "witch hunt" talk and Syria threats that are rolling out with equal apparent presidential focus but the lack of any discernible White House ideology that has, or should have, Republican senators concerned. President Trump has been for just about every iteration of the health care bill. Now he wants lawmakers to have faith both that he will stay committed to the latest Senate version of the bill which, like every other version, breaks multiple presidential promises -- and stand by them to defend their votes as...what exactly? The efforts of his outside political arm have been neutral, at best, so far, and could wind up being downright harmful to efforts to pass a bill. The president has so often blamed others for his political problems: former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, the intelligence community, Congress, Democrats, some Republicans, and, of course, the courts. The courts have now given him some of what he wanted, on the travel ban. Republicans have the power to give him his top legislative priority this week, on health care. Now, though, the president needs his allies to trust him. That means trusting Trumpism over all else, a tough argument to make under the best of circumstances.

ANALYZING THE CBO ANALYSIS

A health care bill gets judged in how it treats the most vulnerable, and the CBO carries grim news for the sick, the poor, the elderly and women in general. Younger, healthy people could save real money. But older Americans who are buying their own insurance, especially in rural America, could see skyrocketing prices: a 64-year-old making roughly $57,000 a year would see his or her annual premiums rise by nearly $14,000, the CBO report says. If women want maternity care, the price would go up in about half of states. Because of the Medicaid roll back and shrunken subsidies, the CBO estimates that among those just above the national poverty line, almost 40 percent of adults aged 30 to 49, would have no insurance at all by 2026, under the Senate bill. Governors of all stripes know they would have to pick up the pieces -- and the checks if the bill passes. Governors John Kasich, R-Ohio, and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., will be in Washington talking on the topic today, on the heels of a bipartisan National Governors Association request for the Senate to take more time, ABC News' MaryAlice Parks writes.

WHAT TO WATCH TODAY

A Republican and a Democrat governor -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper -- are teaming up against this Senate health care bill and holding a news conference in D.C.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I try to stay out of politics. I don't profess to be a political savant," Ivanka Trump to Fox News on whether she advises her dad on his Twitter habits

NEED TO READ with ABC News' Adam Kelsey

White House says Syria could be planning another chemical attack. In a statement released Monday night, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the United States had found "potential" evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to conduct an attack similar to the one carried out April 4 that killed dozens of civilians, including children. The White House did not provide any specific evidence to support the claim. http://abcn.ws/2rWorBo

Carter Page questioned by FBI in probe of Russian election meddling. The FBI has conducted extensive interviews with one-time Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as part of the federal investigation into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Page has confirmed to ABC News. http://abcn.ws/2rVeZxR

Trump claims Obama "colluded" on Russia, without citing evidence. President Trump said that his predecessor Barack Obama "colluded or obstructed" in regard to Russian interference in the U.S. election. "The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win and did not want to 'rock the boat.' He didn't 'choke,' he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good," Trump wrote. http://abcn.ws/2tMxciN

WHO'S TWEETING?

The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.

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The Note: Will the real Donald Trump please stand up on health care - ABC News

(WASHINGTON) Hugging outside the White House Monday, President Donald Trump and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi heralded an increasingly close strategic partnership as the U.S. branded a top militant from neighboring Pakistan as a "global terrorist."

Trump declared he was "true friend" of India and said relations between the two largest democracies have never been better. But there were some tensions in the inaugural meeting between the two populist leaders. On trade, Trump demanded fewer barriers for American companies exporting to India.

Speaking in the Rose Garden after their talks, Trump said: "Both our nations have been struck by the evils of terrorism, and we are both determined to destroy terrorist organizations and the radical ideology that drives them. We will destroy radical Islamic terrorism."

Modi, a Hindu nationalist but also leader of a nation with nearly 175 million Muslims, did not use the same, charged terminology. He stressed the importance of "doing away" with terrorist sanctuaries and safe havens, apparently reflecting Indian concerns about militants based in Pakistan, India's historical archrival. He said the U.S. and India will enhance intelligence-sharing.

Hours before Modi's arrival, the State Department imposed sanctions on Syed Salahuddin, the Pakistan-based leader of Hizbul Mujahideen, the main rebel group that fights against Indian control in the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir. India's foreign ministry hailed the move.

Trump has so far focused on outreach to China, India's other strategic rival, as he looks to Beijing to rein in nuclear-armed North Korea. But Washington and New Delhi share concerns about China's rise as a military power that have underpinned increasingly close relations in the past decade.

The Trump administration says it want to provide India with improved defense technology. The State Department on Monday approved the $365 million sale of a C-17 military transport aircraft to India. The administration is also set to offer a $2 billion sale of U.S.-made unarmed drones to help in surveillance of the Indian Ocean.

Although Modi's two-day Washington visit, which began Sunday, is lower-key than his previous three trips to the U.S. since he took office in 2014, it has included plenty of face-time with Trump. Modi later joined the president and first lady for dinner the first dinner Trump has hosted for a foreign dignitary at the White House, although he has hosted the leaders of Japan and China at his resort in Florida.

Trump and Modi share a populist streak and a knack for social media, but their economic nationalist agendas could clash. While Trump champions the idea of "America First" and wants to stop the migration of jobs overseas, Modi has his own drive to boost manufacturing at home, dubbed "Make in India."

India is among the nations singled out by the Trump administration for their trade surpluses with the U.S., and it is also reviewing a visa program used heavily by skilled Indian workers. The U.S. deficit in goods and services with India last year was about $30 billion.

"It is important that barriers be removed to the export of U.S. goods into your markets, and that we reduce our trade deficit with your country," Trump said.

But Trump also lauded Modi's economic stewardship, and the praise was mutual. Modi, who invited the president and his family to visit India, extolled Trump's leadership qualities. He said the president's "vast and successful experience in the business world will lend an aggressive and forward-looking agenda to our relations."

The personal chemistry between the two leaders could prove as important as policy in setting the tone for the future. They appeared keen to show they got along hugging twice during their joint appearance. They did not take questions.

When it comes to terrorism, Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Wilson Center, said the two leaders have a similar worldview that "it needs to be destroyed wherever it rears its murderous head."

He said the designation of Salahuddin shows that Washington is willing to work closely with New Delhi on terrorism-related matters, although it remains to be seen if that signals a tougher policy toward Pakistan. India accuses Pakistan-based militants of launching attacks on its soil.

The two leaders voiced a joint interest in bringing stability to Afghanistan, where India has committed $3 billion in aid since 2001. However, in their public remarks, they skirted the contentious issue of climate change. New Delhi has been irked by Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris accord.

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President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Exchange Hugs and Herald Stronger Ties - TIME

Sacramento Bee

How Donald Trump is killing romance Sacramento Bee In the treacherous, amusing and sometimes rewarding world of online dating, Donald Trump has become the newest way to find or reject a romantic match. Did you vote for or do you support Trump? Then I'm not your man. It would never work,. What I ...

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How Donald Trump is killing romance - Sacramento Bee

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

North Korea Compares Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler Wall Street Journal (subscription) SEOULNorth Korea's state media described President Donald Trump's America First policy as Nazism in the 21st century, and compared the U.S. president to Adolf Hitler, in the harshest language that Pyongyang has directed at the Trump administration. North Korea compares Donald Trump to Hitler in attack on 'racist' America First policiesTelegraph.co.uk all 13 news articles »

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North Korea Compares Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Republican support for the Senate health care bill is falling, after a report predicted 22 million people would lose insurance. Here are some key takeaways.

Undocumented immigrants in the United States appear to be avoiding medical treatment, out of fear they might be deported.

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In Britain, the Conservatives signed a deal with Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party that will allow Prime Minister Theresa May to govern, after she lost her majority in the recent general election.

And Mrs. May pledged that E.U. citizens currently living legally in Britain would not be asked to leave the country after its exit from the bloc.

Separately, the authorities are racing to identify and evacuate dozens of high-rises wrapped in the same kind of combustible cladding as Grenfell Tower in London, where a fire killed at least 79 people.

A regulatory gap allowed the claddings American manufacturer to sell the product for use in towers in Britain, despite a ban in the U.S.

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Climate conundrum: The amount of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the air seems to have stabilized but data gathered at the worlds monitoring stations (like the one above in Australia) shows that excess carbon dioxide is still on the rise.

One terrifying possibility is that the worlds natural sponges for the greenhouse gas, like the ocean, are no longer able to keep up.

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We bring you news of the great male skirt rebellion of 2017.

French bus drivers suffering through last weeks heat wave were among the men conducting a sartorial revolt against dress codes barring shorts.

Our top fashion critic says the design crowd actually seems to be far more comfortable with skirts than shorts on men. Odds are, we are going to see more of it, she predicts. Employers had better get ready.

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Finally, The New York Times has set up the Reader Center, a forum for our journalists to speak directly to you about our coverage.

In one of the first such posts, a top editor addresses a frequent complaint that we are overly focused on U.S. politics.

You can contact the Reader Center at nytnews@nytimes.com.

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European Union officials are expected to issue a record fine of at least $1.2 billion against Google as soon as today for breaking the regions competition rules. Above, Margrethe Vestager, the blocs competition chief.

There was widespread criticism of Italys decision to use billions in taxpayer money to wind down two banks, and of the E.U.s swift approval.

American hedge funds are taking their aggressive strategies to Europe, where companies have fewer tools to thwart activist investors.

Amazons newest Echo smart speaker has a touch screen.

Heres a snapshot of global markets.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany softened her opposition to gay marriage, saying Conservative lawmakers could deviate from the partys position in a future vote of conscience. [Deutsche Welle]

In France, a court rejected a request to establish a shelter for migrants but ordered the local authorities to allow the distribution of aid. [France 24/Le Monde]

In Moscow, a jury could soon reach a verdict in the trial of five men accused of killing Boris Nemtsov, a leading Russian opposition figure, in 2015. [TASS]

A Swedish tourist kidnapped by Islamist militants in Mali in 2011 has returned home. A South African fellow traveler remains missing. [Radio Sweden]

Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese Nobel Peace laureate, has been transferred to a hospital to be treated for late-stage cancer. [The New York Times]

In Brazil, President Michel Temer was charged with corruption. [The New York Times]

A court in Madrid ruled that exhuming Salvador Dals corpse was the only way to resolve a womans claim that she is the Surrealist painters daughter. [The New York Times]

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

Give biking to work a try. Start with our guide.

If you find yourself nodding off at your desk today, take a nap. Itll do wonders for your productivity.

Recipe of the day: A cucumber and yogurt salad sprinkled with dill and sour cherries is a great complement to a hearty main dish.

New Zealand won the Americas Cup, the most prestigious prize in yachting. The Kiwis took calculated risks to overcome tight budget constraints.

Thousands of patients may receive incorrect cancer diagnoses each year because of biopsy mix-ups. And heres how to make sense of shifting advice on prostate cancer screenings.

In the French village of Courances, about an hours drive south of Paris, a furniture designer and a restaurateur find silence (for her) and outstanding produce (for him).

Today is Seven Sleepers Day, which both celebrates an ancient legend and supposedly predicts the weather in the German-speaking parts of Europe.

The legend stretches back centuries. It involves a group of seven youths who escaped religious persecution by hiding in a cave, where they slept for hundreds of years before awakening.

More practically speaking, the days weather is thought to foretell conditions for the rest of the summer, similar to the way Groundhog Day predicts the arrival of spring in the U.S.

Above, a hiker on Herzogstand Mountain in southern Germany.

According to one saying, If Seven Sleepers is wet, it rains unceasingly. More precisely, if it rains on June 27, it will pour for seven weeks.

The days predictive power is helped, as Germanys weather service explains, by the jet stream, which stabilizes around this time, providing, with some variation, a consistent forecast.

(Confusing matters, the days name in German is Siebenschlfertag, but it did not get that name from Siebenschlfer, a word for a common European dormouse that hibernates for about seven months.)

Palko Karasz contributed reporting.

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The 59-year-old actor said that he will be bringing back his famous Donald Trump impersonation to "Saturday Night Live" this fall.

"Yea, we're going to fit that in. I think people have enjoyed it," said Baldwin, who was in New York City on Monday to promote is new movie "Blind." His busy fall schedule will keep the number of Trump impersonations to a minimum, he said, which means SNL fans will be treated to "a couple celery sticks" rather than a "whole meal" of blonde wigs and orange bronzer.

Baldwin has hosted "SNL" a record 17 times and his Trump impersonation has become one of his most memorable sketches.

During his Spike TV roast, which was taped on Sunday night at New York City's Apollo Theater, his Hollywood cohorts, Robert De Niro, Julianne Moore, Tracy Morgan and Horatio Sands all commended Baldwin's spot-on Trump impression during their roasts.

Baldwin's success on "SNL" and in movies means he's in a position to be selective about the projects he works on. Baldwin says that he picks his roles wisely because he doesn't need to work out of necessity.

"You get a little bit older and you think, 'Do I want to work right now?' For me the question is not what do I want to do [it's] do I want to do anything? Do I want to work? I don't need to work. Do I want to work or do I want to just take it easy and smell the roses or do something else? When I decide I want to go to work I look at what's out there and pick something that's the best that's available to me."

"Blind" hits theaters on July 14.

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Alec Baldwin will return to 'SNL' as Donald Trump - CNN

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Trump travel ban injunction partly lifted by top US court - BBC News