Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Biden confronts campus protests; Trump hedges on accepting election results

Kristi Noem just won’t stop talking about killing her dog

Noem’s dog-killing isn’t popular, though Trump supporters are divided

In a pinch, the Nationals finally find some offense

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

The new cure-all for vacation excess: the IV drip 

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

Five tech products we actually like

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

The ‘Access Hollywood’ video cemented Trump’s air of invincibility

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Confident of victory over Ukraine, Russia exhibits Western war trophies

Two women are seeking Mexico’s presidency. But the race is about a man.

Hamas in Cairo for hostage talks as Israel briefs aid agencies on Rafah

The Post endorses April McClain Delaney and Tom Royals for Maryland’s 6th District

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

In photos: At least 39 dead as historic flooding hits southern Brazil

Sea level rise brings new era of dangerous flooding

Michael Cohen keeps broadcasting despite being a witness

Ask Amy: My boyfriend just confessed he’s almost $20,000 in debt

Miss Manners: Is it inappropriate to reach out to old girlfriends?

Carolyn Hax: Longtime friend won’t forgive being last-minute canceled for a guy

See more coverage in your recommendations

Get the weekly Campaign Moment newsletter

Set alerts for major election developments

Election 2024

The Campaign Moment newsletter

Politics alerts

The White House announced Thursday that Vladimir Putin has been invited to Washington this fall, even as leaders in Washington tried to fully understand what happened when President Trump and the Russian leader met earlier this week in Helsinki.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders <a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1020033303351619584" >announced the planned visit in a tweet</a>, saying that national security adviser John Bolton extended the invitation and that “discussions are already underway.”

As the late afternoon tweet landed, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats was on stage at the Aspen Security Forum in the middle of an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who broke the news to him. Coats, clearly surprised, took a deep breath.

“Say that again,” he said. “Did I hear you?”

“Okaaaay,” Coats said. “That’s going to be special.”

Coats said he would have advised against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/very-much-counter-to-the-plan-trump-defies-advisers-in-embrace-of-putin/2018/07/16/b2176bfe-8921-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.ef99c2b86fb6" >Trump and Putin’s private meeting in Helsinki</a>, which worried U.S. security officials because no notes were taken and only two interpreters were present, but that he had not been consulted. Underscoring how little is known about the meeting, Coats acknowledged that he has not been told what happened in the room. Asked whether it was possible Putin had secretly recorded the more-than two-hour meeting, Coats answered, “That risk is always there.”

Thursday’s announcement was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-returns-to-touting-his-summit-with-putin-a-day-after-doing-damage-control/2018/07/18/ff794dea-8a70-11e8-8aea-86e88ae760d8_story.html" >the latest unexpected turn</a> in a week in which Trump has faced a torrent of bipartisan criticism over his cozy approach to Putin and his vacillating utterances about Moscow’s election interference, all while brushing aside warnings that the Russian leader should be viewed as an adversary.

“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” Trump wrote in a morning tweet. “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed.”

The tensions within the administration have been most evident between Trump and Coats. When asked in Helsinki whom he believed regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, he appeared to give equal weight to Coats’s warnings and Putin’s denial of Russian interference.

“All I can do is ask the question,” he said. “My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia.”

Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump.

“Coats has gone rogue,” said one senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment.

After Coats indirectly rebuked Trump’s Helsinki performance on Monday, senior administration officials were concerned that the intelligence director could perhaps resign and so implored Trump to reassure Coats and calm the waters. Trump tried to do just that on Wednesday in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor, singling out Coats by name for praise. A transcript of the president’s interview was sent to Coats to ensure the director of national intelligence saw the comments, the senior official said.

White House aides are worried that Trump will interpret the comments by Coats as a personal betrayal, since they came so soon after the president praised him. Explaining that Trump does not take kindly to slights and that he nurses grudges, one official predicted that Coats’s Aspen interview could bother the president more than the many ethical blunders of Scott Pruitt, who was ousted as Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said that Coats has a good relationship with the president and speaks with him frequently. He disputed the suggestion that the director was somehow undermining the president and said Coats was doing his job to describe what the Russians did.

“For someone in the White House to criticize Dan Coats for speaking truth to power is unfair,” the intelligence official said.

On Capitol Hill, where the reaction to Trump’s shifting stances on Russia’s role in the election has ranged from mild disapproval to accusations of treason, lawmakers on Thursday gave the president a legislative rebuke — albeit a toothless one.

On a 98-to-0 vote, the Senate approved a measure telling Trump not to honor a request by Putin that would have allowed Russian officials to interview Americans targeted by Moscow, including former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul, in exchange for making Russian intelligence officers indicted in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe available for questioning. The White House caused an uproar on Wednesday when it said the president and his team would discuss the request rather than dismissing it out of hand.

Just before the vote, Sanders said Trump did not agree with Putin’s request but described it in friendly terms, saying it “was made in sincerity.”

Two other symbolic resolutions were blocked by Senate Republicans, underscoring their reluctance to challenge Trump despite voicing concerns over his comments this week. Those measures would have urged the president to take a tougher stand against Russia and affirmed lawmakers’ support for the intelligence community’s assessment of election interference as well as the special counsel’s investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that he had directed the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations committees to explore legislation that would impose further sanctions on Russia if it interferes in future elections.

In the House, Republicans voted down a Democratic effort to increase election security spending, unmoved by Democrats’ arguments for more funding and chants of “USA! USA!” on the House floor.

House Republicans also blocked an effort to subpoena the interpreter who translated for Trump at the president’s private meeting with Putin in Helsinki. Democrats argued that the interpreter’s testimony is necessary to understand what, if any, deals Trump and Putin may have agreed to during their meeting.

In a brief speech Thursday to Russian diplomats in Moscow, Putin said the Helsinki summit had led to “useful agreements.” Now, he said, U.S. jobs and European and Middle Eastern security hang in the balance as Trump’s U.S. opponents try to block the path to improving relations between Moscow and Washington.

“We will see how things go, as some forces in America are trying to belittle and disavow the results of the Helsinki meeting,” Putin said.<span> “We see that there are forces in the United States ready to sacrifice Russian-American relations for their own domestic political ambitions.”</span>

A day earlier, Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters in Moscow that “important verbal agreements” were reached at the Helsinki meeting.

They include preservation of the New START and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreements, major bilateral arms-control treaties whose futures have been in question, Antonov said. He also said Putin had made “specific and interesting proposals to Washington” on how the two countries could cooperate on Syria.

<i>[As Russians describe ‘verbal agreements’ at summit, U.S. officials scramble for clarity]</i>


Trump told law­makers this week that he and Putin had made “significant progress toward addressing” key issues. U.S. officials have offered few specifics on what was decided on those subjects beyond what Sanders on Wednesday called “the beginning of a dialogue with Russia.”

Trump’s close guarding of information about his discussions with Putin reflects his anger over leaks earlier this year, according to current and former White House officials.

He was enraged when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-national-security-advisers-warned-him-not-to-congratulate-putin-he-did-it-anyway/2018/03/20/22738ebc-2c68-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html?utm_term=.b2491b956d5a" >it was reported in May</a> that he did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers and congratulated Putin on his reelection. The warnings from aides included a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”

Trump urged senior White House officials to “fire someone,” in the words of one former senior administration official, and mentioned to others the names of low-level National Security Council staffers who he thought could be responsible for the leak.

Trump has since complained that many within his own government do not want him to have a friendly relationship with Putin and has been skeptical of making others privy to his conversations with the Russian leader — afraid that they will become public, according to the officials.

Democrats have blasted Trump for not revealing more about his meeting in Helsinki.

“Do we know if President Trump made commitments about the security of Israel or Syria or North Korea or any of the other issues the president said he discussed with Putin?” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday. “It is utterly amazing, utterly amazing, that no one knows what was said. This is a democracy. If our president makes agreements with one of our leading — if not the leading — adversary, his Cabinet has to know about it, and so do the American people.”

As fallout from the Helsinki summit entered its fourth day, some administration officials walked a fine line between affirming the intelligence community’s findings and steering clear of saying anything that might embarrass Trump personally.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the audience at a separate Aspen Institute appearance that “it would be foolish” to think that Russia is not continuing to target the United States. But she also appeared to push back against the notion that Russia’s 2016 interference was specifically aimed at helping Trump.

“I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election infrastructure was to favor a particular political party,” Nielsen said, adding that the “overall purpose” of Russia’s actions was to “get us all to fight against each other.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also defended Trump, saying in an interview with Fox News Channel that allegations that the president came across as weak in Helsinki are “absurd.”

“This administration has been relentless in its efforts to deter Russia from its bad behavior,” Pompeo said. “We inherited a situation where Russia was running all over the United States. These last few days have been, frankly, more heat than light.”

Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, Karoun Demirjian, Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan in Washington and Anton Troianovski and Natalia Abbakumova in Moscow contributed to this report.

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, The Washington Post, 2021

George Polk Award, The Washington Post, 2021 

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, The Washington Post, 2019  

Helen Bernstein Book Award For Excellence In Journalism, 2011

Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, 2010

The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State 

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex 

Wake Forest University, B.A. in Politics

Shane Harris writes about intelligence and national security. He was a member of reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, as well as two George Polk Awards. He is also the winner of the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. Shane is the author of two books, "The Watchers" and "@War." 

Shane Harris

Harvard University, B.A. in Government, 2005

Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter covering breaking news from the White House, Congress and the campaign trail. She was previously based in Beijing, where she worked for Agence France-Presse and The Wall Street Journal.

Felicia Sonmez

Stanford University, BA in Political Science

John Wagner is The Post's national political breaking news editor. He previously was a reporter on the breaking news team. Prior to that, John covered the Trump White House. During the 2016 presidential election, he focused on the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. John also chronicled Maryland government for more than a decade.

John Wagner

The Washington Post

President Donald J. Trump

staff

Biden administration

The Fix

The 202s

Polling

Democracy in America

Politics

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice

iptc-media/politics/government/defence/security_measures_(defence)

iptc-media/politics

iptc-media/politics/international_relations/diplomacy

iptc-media/conflict_war_and_peace/armed_conflict/war

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/construction_and_property

iptc-media/politics/government/defence/security_measures_(defence)/national_security

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/politics/political_process

iptc-media/politics/international_relations

iptc-media/politics/government/defence

iptc-media/politics/government

iptc-media/politics/international_relations/diplomacy/summit_meetings

iptc-media/politics/election

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021 - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Exxon Mobil  - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Asian Content_legacyaux_8xg

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ExxonMobil 03312021 KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Siemens Continuum KWs

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Business_legacyaux_hws

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - EXCLUDES ALL - 12.23.20

advertising/B2_Congressional Elections_legacyaux_r48

client-blocklists/Blockist: Capitol Building Mob

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Culture and Tradition_legacyaux_kfx

client-blocklists/Client List: IBM KWs ALTERNATE Watson - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/B2_Cyber Security & Intelligence Community_legacyaux_E8X

advertising/B2_Embassy, Ambassador, & Diplomat Content_legacyaux_1ho

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Citrix Mindfulness

advertising/B2_Government & Policy_legacyaux_mza

advertising/B2_Health and Beauty_legacyaux_3fv

advertising/Client Keywords: On Running

client-blocklists/BP KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_International Conflicts & Relations_legacyaux_5l0

advertising/B2_International Relations_legacyaux_a8t

advertising/B2_Media and Advertising_legacyaux_xym

advertising/B2_Politically Active - DO NOT REMOVE_legacyaux_lmp

advertising/B2_Politics_legacyaux_8f3

advertising/B2_Positive News_legacyaux_hlt

advertising/B2_Russia & Putin_legacyaux_F55

advertising/B2_Society_legacyaux_0cz

advertising/B2_Winter Travel_legacyaux_by6

advertising/B2_Winter Weather, Sports and Attractions 11-18-14_legacyaux_jqm

advertising/B2_Young Professional / International Businessman_legacyaux_r5x

advertising/B2_Middle East Content_legacyaux_tde

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Novo Nordisk KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Siemens KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Cisco KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T ALT KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Mercedes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FX Excludes All Disney

client-blocklists/Client List: PMI KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Boeing KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Inpixon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Aetna KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Philip Morris KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Google KWs - INCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Dupixent neg kws - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Capital One KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY - 1.4.21

client-blocklists/Bank of America Merrill Lynch KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CME KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: IBM KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Office Depot KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: ETrade KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/politics&limit=20

Post Politics from The Washington Post is the source for political news headlines, in-depth politics coverage and political opinion, plus breaking news on the biden administration and White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, elections and more.

prism://prism.query/site,/politics/the-fix&limit=6