Kushner’s clearance is ‘concrete threat’ to national security, says Brookings expert: It’s “appalling” that President Donald Trump reportedly ordered that Jared Kushner should be granted a top-secret security clearance last year despite warnings from intelligence officials, said Susan Hennessey, a Brookings Institution senior fellow who specializes in national-security issues, in a tweet.

“It represents a real and concrete threat to the national security of the United States,” she added.

Hennessey also tweeted that she’s “depressed to see the completely defeated ‘Kushner won’t resign whatever’ responses to the clearance story. This is an unbelievable scandal. Make it matter. The White House staff still works for us. The American people still get a say here.”

Some foreign officials, whose communications were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, once privately discussed how they could manipulate Kushner, taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties he had at the time and his lack of foreign-policy experience, according to a Washington Post article.

Biden makes quick U-turn after calling Pence a ‘decent’ guy: Former Vice President Joe Biden has quickly changed his tone on Vice President Mike Pence after criticism from Cynthia Nixon, the actress and former New York gubernatorial candidate.

Biden, a potential Democratic presidential candidate who endorsed gay marriage before President Barack Obama, had said the Republican VP was “a decent guy,” leading Nixon to tweet the following at him: “.@JoeBiden you’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader ‘a decent guy.’ Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.”

“You’re right, Cynthia. I was making a point in a foreign policy context, that under normal circumstances a Vice President wouldn’t be given a silent reaction on the world stage,” Biden responded on Twitter. “But there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the Vice President.”

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee enters Democratic presidential race: Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee announced Friday that he’s aiming to become the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nominee, saying he’s “running for president because I am the only candidate who will make defeating climate change our nation’s number one priority.”

He is the first governor to officially enter the race.

Inslee’s plan to tether his campaign to the environment is a high-risk strategy that hasn’t been tried in national politics since Vice President Al Gore’s unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid, a Wall Street Journal story said.

Read more:Here are the more than two dozen Democrats running for president or in the mix

New conservative and Trump-skeptical media outlet in the works: A new reporting-driven, Trump-skeptical media outlet is in the works, says an Axios report.

It will begin with newsletters as soon as this summer, then add a website in September and perhaps eventually a print edition. The outlet’s founders will be two veteran journalists who previously worked at well-known conservation publications — Jonah Goldberg from the National Review and Steve Hayes from The Weekly Standard, which has been shuttered.

Senate report raises concerns about Chinese language programs in U.S. schools: A new bipartisan report by a Senate panel has found that the Chinese government has the potential to use a popular Mandarin language program it funds at hundreds of U.S. universities and K-12 schools to shape and even stifle the discussion of controversial Beijing policies, says a Roll Call report.

The report did not show a pattern of egregious incidents of stifled U.S. research or debate, but it did say the Confucius Institutes have fostered a climate where self-censorship on controversial topics was more likely to occur.