presidential election

Moments ago, Kellyanne Conway confirmed that President Donald Trump will sign a new executive order on immigration Monday, which as Reuters reported earlier, will remove Iraq from the list of countries targeted in the travel ban. The revised order comes over a month after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts.  According to a Reuters source, the new executive order would keep a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of six Muslim-majority nations - Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Former French prime minister Alain Juppe, who has seen a recent surge in the polls as his conservative peer Francois Fillon has been tumbling, said on Monday that he had decided "once and for all" not to stand in France's presidential election, ending the hopes of many in his conservative party who had seen him as a logical replacement to Fillon. Juppe pulled no punches, and called the scandal-ridden Francois Fillon obstinate in his determination to continue in the face of opinion polls that show him knocked out of the race in the first round of voting, however offered no alternative plan.

In the latest dramatic plot twist to emerge from Trump's accusation that Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower prior to the election, the NYT reports that FBI director James Comey asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s allegation that Obama eavesdropped on the soon-to-be president. According to the NYT, which cites 'senior American officials' Comey has argued that the "highly charged claim" is false and must be corrected as there is no evidence to back them up, but the DOJ has not yet released any such statement.

The White House has asked Congress to criminally investigate Barack Obama for unlawfully wiretapping Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. According to Trump, the Obama administration abused their executive power as part of a phoney investigation into Russian hacking during the election, with the sole purpose of trying to make Trump lose the presidential race.

Francois Fillon has confirmed that he will stay in the race for the French presidential election following a rally he said proved his legitimacy as candidate. Taking a jab at the Republican Party establishment's pressure for hism to step aside, he exclaimed "I am innocent, no one has the power to force me to step down, it’s my decision." While his odds of victory remain low (sub-10%), we do note Le Pen's odds dropped below 30% for the first time in six weeks.