Scott Detrow

It's hard to make time for history books when there is so much history crashing down on us every single day — and especially when that history is divisive, aggressive and seemingly never-ending.

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET Saturday

President Trump has ordered the FBI to conduct a limited "supplemental investigation" into his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, to update the judge's background check, following a deal struck by Senate Republicans to move the nomination forward.

The move comes after Senate Republicans agreed to delay a vote on Kavanaugh's nomination to give the FBI one week to look into the allegation of sexual assault brought against him by Christine Blasey Ford, which the federal appeals court judge denies.

Updated at 11 p.m. ET

The Senate Judiciary Committee will move forward with a hearing scheduled for Monday on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, despite a request for further investigation from his accuser.

John Kerry's new memoir, Every Day Is Extra, begins like Barack Obama's literary Dreams From My Father and — over the course of nearly 600 pages — slowly morphs into Hillary Clinton's paint-by-numbers political tome Hard Choices.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has gotten fed up with all the speculation.

"It is the least important question you could ask," she told NPR, "with all due respect to your list of questions there."

The question, of course, is whether Pelosi would have enough votes to retake the Speaker's gavel if Democrats win back control of Congress in November.

At rally after rally, President Trump insists that Democrats will rush to impeach him if they regain control of Congress. But the bulk of Democratic lawmakers have shied away from calling for impeachment, and Michael Cohen's stunning courtroom admission that Trump "directed" him to break the law hasn't changed that.

Democratic leaders are wary of impeachment, even as the Democratic base appears more and more animated by the idea.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh told her he views the landmark abortion rights ruling Roe v. Wade as "settled law."

That assurance, made during a Tuesday morning meeting in the Maine senator's office that lasted more than two hours, likely goes a long way toward securing a key vote for Kavanaugh's confirmation.

Updated at 7:40 p.m. ET

House Republican leaders delayed a vote on the "consensus" immigration legislation Thursday afternoon as they scrambled to convince enough GOP lawmakers to support the measure.

The vote on that bill was initially rescheduled for Friday morning. But after a closed-door meeting that lasted more than two hours, leaders delayed it even further — to next week, according to several House Republican sources.

Updated at 5:18 p.m. ET

President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to end his controversial policy that has resulted in thousands of family separations and brought criticism from Democrats and Republicans.

"We're going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don't stand for and that we don't want," Trump said Wednesday morning, when he announced that he would sign the order.

Updated on June 6 at 10:10 a.m. ET

Democratic hopes to take back the House may have gotten a major boost on Tuesday, with the party seeming likely to avoid its worst nightmare as Democrats appear to have survived California's top-two "jungle primary."

As House Republicans poured out of the closed-door meeting where Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told them he won't run for re-election this year, there was a constant theme: Things are on track. All is well. And a sitting speaker's decision to call it quits after less than three years in charge of the House chamber shouldn't be taken — at all — as a sign the GOP is facing an increasingly challenging election cycle.

"I go back to my district and people couldn't be more ecstatic about the things we're doing," Florida Rep. Brian Mast said. "I'm not concerned about it at all."

Joe Paterno's fall from grace was swift, sudden and completely unexpected.

In November 2011, the Penn State head coach set the record for most wins in the history of NCAA Division I college football after leading the team since 1966. Less than two weeks later, his glory came crashing down as instances of sexual abuse committed by Paterno's assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, came to light.

The Hogarth Shakespeare series has been having a little fun with the Bard in recent years, reimagining the plays for a 21st-century audience. The latest edition is a retelling of Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, the Norwegian author widely celebrated as the king of Nordic Noir.

Of course, it's not the kind of mystery novel he usually writes — after all, everyone knows how this one ends.

It has been a bad week for Cambridge Analytica.

The Democratic National Committee's latest fundraising update fits into the general spot the committee has found itself in over the past year: Better than before, but still not good enough.

The DNC brought in more money than it did this time last year, but Democrats' $6 million January fundraising totals were still doubled by their Republican counterparts.

It's been a year since former Labor Secretary Tom Perez took charge of a DNC hurt by neglect, a hacking scandal and a devastating presidential election.

Updated at 11:58 a.m. ET

When it comes to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program and Congress, no one seems to know what comes next.

Updated at 4:08 p.m. ET

Pennsylvania will soon have new congressional maps.

The United States Supreme Court has decided not to block a state court ruling requiring Pennsylvania's Legislature to immediately redraw its legislative boundaries.

Pennsylvania's state Supreme Court had previously ruled those 18 congressional districts — drawn by a Republican Legislature and signed by a Republican governor in 2011 — were overly partisan and violated the state Constitution.

Updated at 7:37 p.m. ET

President Trump is denying reports, from NPR and other news outlets, that in a Thursday meeting at the White House he disparaged African nations as "shithole countries" and questioned why the United States would admit immigrants from them and other nations, like Haiti.

Trump told lawmakers that the U.S. should instead seek out more immigrants from countries like Norway.

Updated at 3:51 p.m. ET

When Steve Bannon left the White House in August 2017, he framed his exile from the West Wing as a promotion, not a demotion.

Updated at 11:40 p.m. ET

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon says that he still believes President Trump is "a great man" and that he supports Trump "day in and day out."

He made the comments despite the fact that Trump eviscerated Bannon on Wednesday in a cutting public statement.

"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency," Trump said. "When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind."

The DREAM Act has failed to pass when Democrats have held complete control of government; when Republicans have held all the cards; and in periods when the two parties have split control of the White House, Senate and House.

But lawmakers from both parties hope to secure permanent legal status for people protected by the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals , or DACA, program and they are trying to achieve some sort of solution over the next two weeks.

There's a small chance that if Saturday Night Live hadn't been so mean to former New York Gov. David Paterson, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand wouldn't be in the U.S. Senate.

In late 2008, Hillary Clinton was vacating her Senate seat for the State Department, and the New York governor was trying to decide who should fill it.

"It was the stereotypical Mr. Magoo, blind character who does everything wrong and in a sense is actually stupid in addition to being blind," Paterson, who is legally blind, recalls of the SNL skit.