President Donald Trump on Monday said he would build his long-desired wall along the southern border regardless of whether Congress approves funding for it.

“Just so you know, we’re building the wall anyway,” Trump said at a campaign rally in El Paso, Texas, which sits directly across the Rio Grande from Mexico.

Trump spoke shortly after lawmakers said they had reached a funding deal in principle to avoid another government shutdown set to begin on Saturday. The deal includes some money for barriers along the border.

The president said he would not sign an agreement that cuts the number of detention beds used to house immigrants caught living illegally in the U.S. Read Full Story at The Hill

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The acting attorney general also told lawmakers he won’t discuss his ‘private conversations’ with the president.

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told the House Judiciary Committee on Friday that he has never interfered with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but he declined to discuss any conversations he’s had about the probe with President Donald Trump.

“There has been no event, no decision that has required me to take any action, and I have not interfered in any way in the special counsel’s investigation,” Whitaker said after Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., pressed him about his involvement overseeing Mueller’s 20-month-old probe since the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions last November.

Whitaker’s long-awaited testimony was dramatic on multiple fronts. He stood his ground insisting he would not “talk about my private conversations with the president of the United States” — citing the possibility that the president would invoke executive privilege to shield the contents of those discussions. Read Full Story at Politico

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In 2016, Donald Trump’s appeal to black voters couldn’t have been more direct: “What the hell do you have to lose” by supporting Republicans, he would say, given the damage Democratic policies have done to minority communities. Trump noted that the Democrats offer a mere image of concern for minorities, whereas Republicans deliver policies that actually help them.

As president, he has built on this message by spurring economic growth that has lowered the unemployment rate in the black community. During Obama’s first two years in office, black unemployment rose; under Trump, it has fallen.

The liberal apoplexy about the Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam debacle is a reminder that the Democrats obsess not over sound policies but the preservation of politically useful images. They don’t want to lose any ground to a president whom they routinely smear as a racist. They live in dread fear of losing a monopoly on the black vote, a monopoly based not upon substantive achievements but on the successful manipulation of identity politics. Read Full Story at The American Spectator

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