monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

But Democrats said they did not expect Mr. Barr to break the law and unilaterally release grand jury secrets, but rather to join them in petitioning a judge to unseal material for the grand jury for committee use.

Mr. Nadler said after the vote that Democrats intended to go to the judge on their own authority.

Democrats view the president’s executive privilege claim as nonsense, since much of the report and evidence has either been released publicly or shared with lawyers.

Still, Mr. Trump’s invocation of privilege could tie up the material in court and significantly complicate Democrats’ efforts to call other witnesses. Mr. Nadler said Wednesday it could delay a potential hearing with Mr. Mueller in the Judiciary Committee. And it could also limit testimony by Donald F. McGahn II, a former White House counsel and key witness in the special counsel’s investigation, scheduled under subpoena for May 21.

Democrats’ frustration in the hearing room was clear. “I can only conclude that the president now seeks to take a wrecking ball to the Constitution of the United States of America,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas said.

But Democrats said they did not expect Mr. Barr to break the law and unilaterally release grand jury secrets, but rather to join them in petitioning a judge to unseal material for the grand jury for committee use.

Trump Downgrades ‘No Obstruction’ To … ‘Essentially No Obstruction’

President Donald Trump seemed to hedge a bit on his months-long chant of “no obstruction, no collusion,” saying that the redacted Mueller report revealed “essentially no obstruction” during a bill signing Thursday.

“At the end of the testimony, no collusion,” he said. “And essentially no obstruction.”

the deserved vote of contempt

His base has never got over the hostage crisis of the 80s. The death of the Ayatollah and a new generation of politicians hasn't changed that.

conveniently ignoring the CIA coup that deposed a Democratic government putting the autocratic Shah in power

and Iranian passenger airlines shot down by American forces.

These people just see Iran as the focus for their Islamophobia, they don't want to know the truth, it gets in the way of bigotry.

The US has more than doubled tariffs on $200bn (£153.7bn) worth of Chinese products, in a sharp escalation of the countries' damaging trade war.

Tariffs on affected Chinese goods have risen to 25% from 10%, and Beijing has vowed to retaliate.

China said it "deeply regrets" the move and will have to take "necessary counter-measures."

The move comes as high-level officials from both sides are attempting to salvage a trade deal in Washington.

Only recently, the US and China appeared to be close to ending months of hostilities.

China's Commerce Ministry confirmed the latest US tariff hike on its website.

"It is hoped that the US and the Chinese sides will work together ... to resolve existing problems through cooperation and consultation," it said in a statement.

Chinese stock markets were little changed after the deadline passed, with the Hang Seng index trading up 0.6% and the Shanghai Composite 1.5% higher.

The market took a beating earlier this week after US President Donald Trump flagged the tariff hike on Sunday.

The 10% duties on $200bn worth of Chinese products - including fish, handbags, clothing and footwear - were due to rise at the start of the year.

That was delayed as negotiations advanced, but Mr Trump is now saying talks are progressing "too slowly".

“This is the first instance of which I am aware in which a private lawyer for the president of the United States has, in his own words, ‘meddled’ in a foreign criminal investigation of a third party in order to politically benefit the president," said Tim Meyer, an international law expert at Vanderbilt University. “Mr. Giuliani’s actions undermine the longstanding U.S. foreign policy of promoting the rule of law in Ukraine generally and in the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office specifically.”

Two of the three votes needed to maintain the sanctions against goons like Deripaska came from senators representing a state into which his company was pumping money he'd obtained god knows where or how, and one of whom is the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate into whose PAC Deripaska's partner dumped $3.5 million between 2015 and 2017. Oddly, one of the stories that has sunk like a stone over the past few years is the story of how much Russian ratfcking money went into Republican campaigns generally over the past few cycles.