Miles Parks

Updated at 9:49 p.m. ET

President Trump continued his defense Tuesday of his Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, mocking one of Kavanaugh's accusers at a Mississippi campaign rally.

The latest move by Trump came just hours after he had highlighted the possibility of false accusations against young men in the midst of a cultural moment brought on in the past year by the #MeToo movement.

About 1 out of every 3 American adults thinks a foreign country is likely to change vote tallies and results in the upcoming midterm elections, according to a new NPR/Marist poll released Monday.

The finding comes even as there is no evidence Russia or any other country manipulated or tried to manipulate the vote count in 2016 or at any other point in American history.

In a sign that America's two centuries-old democracy is under strain, nearly 2 in 5 American voters do not believe elections are fair, according to a new NPR/Marist poll. Nearly half of respondents lack faith that votes will be counted accurately in the upcoming midterm elections.

Updated at 1:59 p.m. ET

Paul Manafort's defense team rested on Tuesday without calling any witnesses to testify in the bank and tax fraud trial, including Manafort himself.

The move means the trial is nearing its end, as closing arguments are expected to begin on Wednesday morning.

Defense attorney Kevin Downing told Judge T.S. Ellis III about his team's decision before the court broke for lunch Tuesday and repeated it again in the afternoon to make it official in front of the jury.

Prosecutors rested their case on Monday in the federal tax and bank fraud trial of Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Over the past three weeks, through 10 days of testimony and more than two dozen witnesses, the government's lawyers told a story about how they said Manafort evaded taxes on millions of dollars that poured in from his political consulting work in Ukraine.

After that income dried up, prosecutors say, Manafort lied to banks to get loans to continue the lifestyle to which they say he had become accustomed.

Updated at 7:34 p.m. ET

After an initial focus on Paul Manafort's lavish spending, including on luxury suits and home landscaping, the former Trump campaign chairman's trial has now moved squarely into the heart of his alleged financial crimes

On Day 4 of the federal trial Friday in Alexandria, Va., jurors heard from two of Manafort's former tax accountants, Cindy Laporta and Philip Ayliff. Their testimony directly addressed the bank and tax fraud charges the government has brought against Manafort.

Updated at 6:15 p.m. ET

President Trump asked his attorney general to stop Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation Wednesday morning, as the first trial stemming from that investigation entered its second day.

Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, is on trial in Alexandria, Va., for bank and tax fraud charges, not, as Trump noted in a Twitter thread Wednesday morning, for "collusion."

A bloc of conservative House Republicans filed articles of impeachment on Wednesday against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, escalating their war against federal law enforcement to new heights.

The group of 11 lawmakers, led by Freedom Caucus leaders Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have been threatening to file impeachment articles for months. They say Rosenstein is withholding documents from Congress and has mishandled the 2016 election investigations.

Updated at 7:02 p.m. ET

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and FBI Director Christopher Wray headed to Capitol Hill Monday for a grilling from senators — that quickly turned partisan — about the inspector general's scathing report on the FBI's mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016.

Updated at 11:23 p.m. ET

After one White House adviser said there was "a special place in hell" for foreign leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and another said Trudeau "stabbed us in the back," Canadian leaders offered a measured — even polite — response.

Updated at 5:54 p.m. EDT

Donald Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen also has been representing Fox News host Sean Hannity, it emerged in federal court on Monday.

Federal judge Kimba Wood ordered an attorney for Cohen to reveal the identity of a client that Cohen's team had withheld in earlier court documents as part of a dispute over evidence seized by the FBI from Cohen's home and office earlier this month.

Updated at 10:53 a.m. ET

Donald Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen is set to appear in federal court on Monday afternoon as he and the president are fighting to be able to review documents seized last week by federal agents before prosecutors do.

Updated at 11:55 p.m. ET

Just a few hours before James Comey's first television appearance ahead of his new book's release, President Trump published a string of tweets calling Comey a "slimeball" and saying the notes the former FBI director says he took were "fake."

Updated on March 26 at 2:45 p.m. ET

In Stephanie Clifford's much anticipated first television appearance since the story of her alleged affair with President Trump began dominating news cycles, the adult film actress also known as Stormy Daniels shared graphic details and said she signed a nondisclosure agreement to keep quiet about the encounter because she felt threatened.

Updated at 8:10 a.m. ET

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will either be sent home or have been told to not show up to work at all on Monday, as furloughs due to the government shutdown that began Friday night start to affect workers around the country.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gave a foreboding warning from the Senate floor on Sunday.

"The shutdown is going to get a lot worse tomorrow," he warned. "A lot worse."

John Tunney, the former U.S. senator who looked briefly like the future of the Democratic Party and whose rise inspired the Robert Redford film, The Candidate, has died, his brother confirmed to NPR on Saturday.

Tunney died of prostate cancer Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 83.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET

President Trump unleashed one of the most vitriolic insults of his presidency Thursday morning, saying MSNBC Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" while at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort for New Year's Eve. He also described her as "low I.Q. Crazy Mika."

The president sent a pair of tweets aimed at Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough, whom Trump called "Psycho Joe," apparently in response to Thursday morning's episode (although he tweeted that he no longer watches the show).

Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Tuesday, fiercely maintaining he did nothing wrong in meeting twice with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during President Trump's 2016 campaign and also infuriating Democrats by refusing to detail any conversations he has had with the president.

A federal appeals court denied President Trump's attempt to restore his travel ban on refugees and visa holders from seven majority-Muslim countries Sunday morning, sending people scrambling to board planes while it is legal once again for them to enter the country.