First Run News

BLOOMER, Wis. — Marc Boettcher’s day started before dawn, when he fired up the hammer mill that ground up corn for a mixture he fed to the steers in his barn. There was an empty room where he used to milk dairy cows until he sold them a couple of years back, but on a cold morning this summer, much of the barn was full of cattle — curious, anxious, and endearingly weird — who jostled one another to get a look at him. One left him a gift of manure in the drinking trough.

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, negotiated earlier this year to represent Ukraine’s top prosecutor for at least $200,000 during the same months that Giuliani was working with the prosecutor to dig up dirt on Vice President Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the discussions. The people said that Giuliani began negotiations with Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, about a possible agreement in February.

Three women have accused Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, of making unwanted sexual advances toward them years before his recent turn as a star witness at the impeachment proceedings against President Trump, according to a news report. The women shared their accounts with ProPublica and Portland Monthly, which published them online Wednesday in a joint investigative project between the nonprofit news organization and the Oregon magazine. The publication of the allegations came exactly one week after Sondland appeared before Congress and

WASHINGTON (AP) — Richard Spencer, who was fired this week for his handling of a SEAL war crimes case championed by President Donald Trump, wrote Wednesday that the commander in chief “has very little understanding” of how the American military works. The extraordinary accusation came in an opinion piece published on The Washington Post’s website Wednesday evening, three days after he was fired.

Secretary of State MORE and members of the State Department following critical testimony by diplomatic officials in the public impeachment hearings led by House Democrats.  Career foreign service officers and Trump appointees came forward last week to lay out in great detail how the president and his allies carried out a smear campaign against the now-former U.S.

A federal district judge on Wednesday issued a temporary stay of her order that former White House counsel Don McGahn comply with House Democrats' subpoena for testimony. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, an Obama appointee on the district court in D.C., granted McGahn's request for a temporary stay while she deliberates on whether to issue a lengthier one to allow him to appeal her decision. The House Judiciary Committee, which had asked the court to enforce its subpoena for 

Legal experts say the fight over whether White House counsel Don McGahn must testify under subpoena before Congress could be settled at the Senate impeachment trial before it finishes its path through the courts. A federal judge on Monday ruled against the Trump administration, deciding that McGahn must comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena seeking his testimony. The ruling is being appealed, but Democrats could look to secure testimony from McGahn and other key witnesses directly at the Senate trial, where Chief Justice John Roberts would preside, experts said.

Democratic White House hopeful MORE released eight years of his tax returns Wednesday ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Yang released the returns for 2011 to 2018, the period after he created Venture for America, which offers two-year fellowships to help recent college graduates work at startups. The returns don’t include the period when he worked at a series of startups.

MORE on Wednesday signed legislation offering support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, one week after it passed the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities. The White House made the announcement that Trump had signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act despite protests from officials in Beijing, who complain that the legislation meddles in their domestic matters. "I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China, and the people of Hong Kong," Trump said in a statement.