President Trump’s granting of a full pardon to former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was seen by many legal experts as a sign of what may come in the special counsel’s inquiry into Russia’s meddling in last year’s presidential race and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

Trump has insisted the investigation led by former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is a “witch hunt” and should be shut down, the sooner the better. Some predict that the president will use his power to pardon anyone at any time for nearly any reason to make the investigation moot.

“Kim Jong Un was not the only leader testing his weapons” last week, said Bill Yeomans, a veteran Justice Department lawyer now working with the liberal Alliance for Justice, referring to the North Korean leader’s missile launch a day after Trump pardoned Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona.

President Trump is still reviewing whether to end the Obama-era program that has protected from deportation more than 750,000 people brought to the country illegally as children, senior White House officials said on Thursday.

The officials denied the president had decided to end it, in response to press reports that Trump would announce the decision perhaps Friday. 

"My position here today is that the administration is still reviewing the policy," Trump's homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, told reporters.

Congress will likely need to address Tropical Storm Harvey relief aid as soon as next week, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency quickly spending down its main disaster account.

Lawmakers already face a full September agenda when Congress resumes. But the fallout from Harvey and the need to swiftly provide assistance to disaster victims now tops the agenda.

"FEMA will likely run out of money before there’s a comprehensive number to address the entirety of the disaster response, so immediate action is needed," said a senior Democratic aide.

Defense Secretary James N. Mattis moved Thursday to knock down speculation that he was at odds with the White House, less than a week after a video of him talking to troops about American values led to widespread speculation that he was criticizing President Trump.

In the impromptu speech to U.S. forces deployed in Jordan, which was surreptitiously recorded on cellphone video, Mattis talked about political divisiveness in the wake of the racially inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va.

“Our country, right now, it’s got problems that we don’t have in the military,” Mattis said. "You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”

The Trump administration announced Thursday that a former official at for-profit DeVry University has been picked to head an Education Department unit that polices colleges for student aid fraud.

Last year, DeVry paid $100 million to settle federal claims it misled students.

Julian Schmoke Jr., who was an associate dean at DeVry from 2008 to 2012, will lead federal student aid enforcement activities, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said.

Responding to a Russian government demand to drastically slash its diplomatic staff in Russia, the Trump administration Thursday ordered Moscow to close three of its consular offices in the United States.

Russia will be required to close its Consulate General in San Francisco, the chancery annex in Washington and the consular annex in New York, the State Department announced. 

The move was the latest tit-for-tat action in worsening relations between Washington and Moscow, despite President Trump's expressions of friendliness toward President Vladimir Putin.

On the day that changed his life, Gregory Cheadle almost stayed in bed.

He was tired — he traveled a lot in his long-shot bid for Congress — but asked himself: How often does a candidate for president come to the far reaches of Northern California? And why pass up a crowd and the chance to hand out more fliers?

So Cheadle roused himself that June 2016 morning and secured a spot up close when Donald Trump swooped in for a rally at Redding’s municipal airport.

A grand jury used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has heard secret testimony from a Russian-American lobbyist who attended a June 2016 meeting with President Trump's eldest son, the Associated Press has learned.

A person familiar with the matter confirmed to the AP that Rinat Akhmetshin had appeared before Mueller's grand jury in recent weeks. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the secret proceedings.

The revelation is the clearest indication yet that Mueller and his team of investigators view the meeting, which came weeks after Trump had secured the Republican presidential nomination, as a relevant inquiry point in their broader probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Pentagon revealed Wednesday that roughly 11,000 U.S. troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan, 2,600 more than the U.S. military had previously disclosed to the public.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White and Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., director of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff, blamed the significant undercount on head-counting rules the Obama administration had devised.

The Obama-era policies did not include troops deployed for less than six-months -- a stint the military considers a "temporary basis" -- as part of the military's total for Afghanistan. Because the Obama administration had set caps on the number of troops allowed to be deployed to active war zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, U.S. commanders found ways to supplement their forces by “temporarily” adding additional troops who would not be counted.