Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were ordered to surrender their passports and remain in home confinement after pleading not guilty Monday in the first indictments from the special counsel investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

Manafort was released on $10 million bond and Gates on $5 million.

The two, who were arrested earlier in the day,  appeared before a federal judge here Monday afternoon.

A federal court in Washington, D.C., is barring President Trump from changing the government's policy on military service by transgender people.

Trump first announced in a July tweet and then in an August memo that he intended to reverse course on a 2016 policy that allowed troops to serve openly as transgender individuals. He said he would order a return to the policy prior to June 2016, under which service members could be discharged for being transgender.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote Monday that transgender members of the military who had sued over the change were likely to win their lawsuit and barred the Trump administration from reversing course.

A former foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians who claimed to have “thousands of emails” on Hillary Clinton, in the latest charges filed in the investigation of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia. 

George Papadopoulos, 30, of Chicago, has agreed to cooperate with the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to a plea agreement unsealed on Monday.

He pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to making false statements to disguise his contacts with Russians whom he thought had “dirt” on Clinton, according to court papers. He was arrested in July as he got off a plane at Dulles International Airport.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the charges filed against President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort's former business associate showed the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was "doing his job and the process is working."

"I’ll continue to support Bob Mueller as he follows the facts —  his independence must remain sacrosanct," the California Democrat said in a statement. 

On Friday, Feinstein sent letters requesting information from the White House, Michael Cohen, Facebook, Twitter and Cambridge Analytica on Russia's use of technology to interfere with the election. 
 
“Bob Mueller’s criminal investigation is important, but Congress has a responsibility to get to the bottom of this and work to make sure it never happens again. That’s why it’s so vital that the congressional investigations continue.”

The main Republican argument for killing the state and local tax deduction is that the break forces residents of low-tax states to subsidize those in California and other high-tax states.

But when it comes to federal taxes, the data show that it’s the other way around. And it could get worse for Californians if the deduction is eliminated as part of the GOP tax overhaul.

California is among 13 states that ship more tax money to Washington than they get back in federal spending, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank in Albany, N.Y.

Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign manager, has been indicted on 12 charges of money-laundering and conspiracy, the first charges  filed in the investigation of possible connections between the Trump campaign and a Russian effort to influence last year’s presidential election.

Manafort, 68, turned himself in at FBI headquarters early Monday for his role in an alleged scheme to use offshore accounts to hide tens of millions of dollars in payments he received for representing a pro-Kremlin political faction in the Ukraine.

Manafort also was charged with filing false reports to conceal the fact that he was acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Also charged in the indictment was Richard W. Gates III, a top business aide to Manafort.

The head of Puerto Rico's power company said Sunday the agency will cancel its $300-million contract with Whitefish Energy Holdings amid increased scrutiny of the tiny Montana company's role in restoring the island's power system following Hurricane Maria. 

The announcement by Ricardo Ramos came hours after Gov. Ricardo Rossello urged the company to scrap the deal. 

Ramos said that Whitefish will continue with current work, but the contract would then be scrapped — leading to delay of 10 to 12 weeks in completing the work.