monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I wonder, if more than two A2K'ers are among those 670,000 people in the USA who followed, retweeted, or liked posts from the 3,814 twitter-accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency.

Small-town activists fueled by the Women’s March take aim at midterm elections

Turkish war planes have launched air strikes on Kurdish positions in northern Syria, in a move likely to cause tensions with the US.

Turkey is seeking to oust Kurdish fighters from Afrin, held by them since 2012. Some of these forces helped the US to fight the Islamic State group.

There are also reports of pro-Turkish Syrian rebels advancing on the city.

Turkey says it is launching a full military operation against these Kurds - which it considers a terrorist group.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also threatened to strike at the city of Manbij - some 100km away from Afrin in another Kurdish area - as a next target.

Russia - a key military figure in the region - says it is concerned by the reports, but earlier said it would not interfere in the conflict.

Syria has previously warned against any operation and said it would shoot down Turkish planes.

With the government shut down, President Donald Trump isn't going to Mar-a-Lago as he planned for his high-dollar fundraiser on Saturday night.
But the party for supporters to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his inauguration will still go on, according to a person involved with the fundraiser.

Given the impasse on government spending, planners of the event have been told it's unlikely Trump will make it to West Palm Beach to attend it himself. But the soiree, due to be held in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, will still happen.

Donors paid $100,000 a couple for tickets — or $250,000 a couple to participate in a roundtable with Trump. The proceeds go to the Trump Victory Fund, the joint fundraising effort between Trump's campaign and the Republican Party.

Trump was scheduled to fly to his Florida estate on Friday and remain there for the weekend, but the White House scrapped the president's plans as a government shutdown seemed more likely. Now that Congress failed to pass a spending bill to fund the government before the Friday midnight deadline, Trump is bunkering down in Washington until a deal is made.

#ReleaseTheMemo is the next phase in the anti-Mueller campaign

You've got the trick now. I chose to post it in a smaller size simply because it is so gaudy/ugly I didn't want to assault anyone's eyes.

How do you post a gif?

Representative Patrick Meehan, a Pennsylvania Republican who has taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in Congress, used thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct complaint after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her, according to several people familiar with the settlement.

A married father of three, Mr. Meehan, 62, had long expressed interest in the personal life of the aide, who was decades younger and had regarded the congressman as a father figure, according to three people who worked with the office and four others with whom she discussed her tenure there.