To date, Trump has nominated 87 people to be judges with lifetime tenure on U.S. district courts, circuit courts or the Supreme Court. Eighty of them are white, or nearly 92 percent. One is black, one is Latino and five are Asian or Pacific American. He hasn’t nominated any Native American judges.

The president also keeps nominating men. Sixty-seven of his court picks are male, compared to 20 who are female.

Advocates for a more diverse federal bench say it’s crucial that the nation’s courts reflect the demographics of the populations they serve.

If added to the White House legal team, Flood would be tasked with helping Trump handle Justice Department inquiries. Flood reportedly spoke with Trump about potential White House positions, as well as the possibility of being associate attorney general, Washington Post reporter Robert Costa tweeted Sunday.

In response to the report, Trump tweeted Sunday that he wasn’t adding another lawyer to “help out” and accused the Times of intentionally writing a “false story.” 

Military officials are still grappling with President TrumpDonald John TrumpAccuser says Trump should be afraid of the truth Woman behind pro-Trump Facebook page denies being influenced by Russians Shulkin says he has White House approval to root out 'subversion' at VA MORE’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum, uncertain as to how they might affect the Defense Department.

But he added that the Pentagon was concerned “about negative impact on our key allies” from the tariffs.

Lawmakers and industry executives are also warning Trump’s tariffs could result in higher costs for weapons systems and infrastructure projects.

President Donald Trump on Sunday blamed Senate Democrats for the dearth of experts at the State Department, ignoring the department's high turnover and the number of positions for which there is no nominee.

Despite the March 8 announcement of the possible talks, the U.S. currently does not have people in a number of key roles.

Later on Sunday, Trump blamed the media for downplaying his approval ratings.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he thinks Trump needs to square off against a Republican who espouses Flake’s more traditionally conservative views on free trade and more, the retiring senator said, “Yes, I do. I do. It would be a tough go in a Republican primary. The Republican Party is the Trump party right now. But that’s not to say it will stay that way.”

Flake is also planning to introduce legislation to nullify Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, set to take effect later this month.

The Trump administration escalated what had been a war of words over California’s immigration agenda, filing a lawsuit late Tuesday that amounted to a pre-emptive strike against the liberal state’s so-called sanctuary laws.

The lawsuit was the department’s boldest attack yet against California, one of the strongest opponents of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration.

The lawsuit claims that the statutes “reflect a deliberate effort by California to obstruct the United States’ enforcement of federal immigration law.”

In defending his embrace of steep tariffs — and in comments that seem to encourage a trade war — President Trump has repeatedly claimed enormous trade imbalances, unfair practices and an international system that benefits everyone but the United States.

Regardless, Mr. Trump’s trade claims are often overstated and contradicted by his own economic council.

But it’s not accurate to attribute all of these declines to trade, even if globalization clearly did contribute. Economists say technology had a role to play, too.

President Trump is strongly considering Christopher P. Liddell, a White House official who was an executive at Microsoft and General Motors, to succeed his departing top economic adviser, Gary D. Cohn, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

The president has always wanted a prominent business figure to oversee the council, according to people who have spoken with him. But his aides, mindful of the difficulties they have had attracting people from outside the White House, have been looking internally, and a successor could be named as early as next week.

Others noted that Mr. Liddell had a role in selecting personnel during the transition, an endeavor that has been widely perceived as subpar.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the US intelligence community's assessment that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election in his favor, dismissing the investigation into whether or not his campaign colluded with Russia as "fake news," a "hoax" and a "witch hunt."

In a tweet hours after the indictments were issued, Trump acknowledged that Russia did indeed wage a years-long operation against the United States. He maintained, however, that his campaign in no way colluded with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

President Trump will make the first visit of his presidency to Latin America next month, the White House said on Saturday, traveling to Peru for a summit meeting of Western Hemisphere nations where he will convene with a group of leaders who have criticized his statements and policies on immigration.

As he has moved the United States toward a more protectionist stance on trade, Mr. Trump has abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes Mexico, Peru and Chile. The United States is also engaged in difficult negotiations with Mexico and Canada over changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement.

American presidents have attended the Western Hemisphere meeting, known as the Summit of the Americas, in previous years — Barack Obama made history there in 2015 by meeting with President Raúl Castro of Cuba — but few have stoked as much indignation as Mr. Trump.

When Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez declared last April that support for abortion rights was a litmus test for Democrats, some elected members of the party pushed back, forcing the head of the DCCC to say, “there is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates.”

Does this pro-choice orthodoxy hurt Democrats politically? In some places, surely

Lipinski’s primary challenger, activist Marie Newman, is particularly explicit on this point. “No matter how you feel personally [on abortion],” she says, “you have to vote to support the Democratic Party values.” Think on that a moment.

The most widely backed response to the Parkland shooting would provide new incentives for public agencies to submit information that could disqualify prospective gun buyers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an action most agree is modest at best.

To Democrats, the fact that the N.R.A. is not opposed to the proposal is prima facie evidence that it falls short.

Mr. Trump told lawmakers they should use a broader bipartisan background check measure that failed in 2013 after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., as the basis for a comprehensive measure that could take in many proposals, including the Cornyn plan, new mental health provisions and added security for schools

Trump says, "the only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness." Trump is making the case that a person can get the death penalty or life in prison for shooting a single person, but a drug dealer can kill thousands and spend little or no time in jail.

President Donald Trump is bashing the press for its coverage of his decision to agree to direct talks with North Korea.

McDaniel credits Trump for "record unemployment" and bringing "3 million jobs back to America."

President Donald Trump's campaign to discredit the news media has spread to officials at all levels of government, who are echoing his use of the term "fake news" as a weapon against unflattering stories.

"The Statesman has a longstanding reputation as a reliable paper of record — going back 154 years — and our standards for accuracy and fairness have never changed," she said in a statement. "The allegations of 'fake news' are unjust attacks on a free press."

"I worry about the ongoing attack on the legitimacy of the media by President Trump and some of his supporters. The press is hardly perfect, of course, but it is also an important mechanism of accountability for people in power," said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College

Donald Trump faced criticism from Republican allies on Sunday after apparently agreeing to meet Kim Jong-un without demanding that North Korea start scrapping its nuclear program.

Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said Trump should not meet Kim until North Korea produces proof it has begun reversing its years-long pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

The president has offered little clarity. After tweeting about conversations with world leaders on the issue he returned to it in a rambling speech to supporters in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, saying of North Korean denuclearisation: “They are thinking about that – who knows what’s going to happen?”

Donald Trump will propose arming school staff and raising the minimum age to purchase certain firearms to 21 in a school safety proposal the administration will release on Sunday

During his White House run, Trump touted his support for gun rights. Since the shooting last month in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, he has offered conflicting statements on gun policies, at times calling for new restrictions and at other times rowing back.

An NRA spokesman, Chris Cox, responded that the bill punished law-abiding gun owners for the criminal acts of a “deranged individual”.

A debate over proposals to scrap a Nazi-era law that forbids German doctors from providing information on abortion is expected to set the tone of the new coalition government when it is voted on this week.

The FDP has also said it now favours an adjustment rather than the abolition of the clause.

Advocates of a change to the law say Germans have only begun to realise how restrictive their abortion laws are due to Hänel’s campaign.

If a summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un really takes place in May, it will count as one of the most remarkable and unexpected pieces of theatre in diplomatic history.

Having invested so much personal capital in the meetings, there is a significant danger of a backlash from either or both men if they do not get their way under the glare of international attention.

There is plenty of room for misunderstanding. Both leaders say they want the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, but historically their governments have interpreted that to mean quite different things

There is little doubt that Vladimir Putin will win a fourth term as president in the election next Sunday, making him the first Kremlin leader since Stalin to serve two decades in power

officials across the country are experimenting with raffles, competitions and the occasional referendum – like one in Volgograd that asks voters whether they want to change time zones – all in an effort to ensure Putin wins with greater support than in 2012.

The 2018 election may already go down as one of Russia’s most bizarre and inert.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) filed a federal lawsuit over gun control legislation on Friday, just hours after Florida’s governor Rick Scott signed it into law.

Lawyers for the NRA want a federal judge to block the new age-restriction on buying a gun – raised to 21 from 18 – from taking effect, saying it violates the second amendment

The bill is not what many of the survivors of the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, wanted, which was a blanket ban on assault weapons for the general public.