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Having apparently temporarily misplaced his Android phone after his joint address to Congress, President Trump has relocated it (probably on the nightstand in the Lincoln bedroom) and has resumed his habit of angry early morning tweeting about his political opponents.

On Friday morning, his target was Democrats on Capitol Hill who he said are still blocking his Cabinet picks from being approved.

Its hard to overstate what nonsense this is.

It is true that, at one time, Senate Democrats were dragging their heels on Trumps Cabinet picks. In January, members of the party boycotted committee votes to advance nominees to the full Senate, slowing the process. In recent weeks, however, the process has happened in regular bursts. Three Cabinet picks have been approved in the last two days.

How does Trump compare to past presidents? At this moment, he has two unconfirmed Cabinet positions the same as Barack Obama had on Mar. 3, 2009. In fact, only three of the last six presidents have had their entire Cabinets in place at this point.

Remember: The Democrats dont control the Senate. While they were able to throw some hurdles in the path of the president hurdles that Republicans overcame by changing the rules to allow a vote without Democrats present there was nothing they could do to block nominees entirely.

So whats the hold-up on the two empty slots? Well, one is his nominee for Secretary of Labor. His first pick, Andrew Puzder, withdrew last month and Trump nominated Alexander Acosta in his stead. Theres a natural delay built-in to that switchover.

But the main problem is that neither that pick nor Trumps pick to run the Department of Agriculture have been sent to the Senate yet.

Senate Republicans are baffled that the White House hasnt yet sent over the necessary paperwork for Sonny Perdue, his late pick to run Agriculture. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chair of the Senate committee that will forward Perdues nomination, told ABC News on Wednesday that he didnt know when to expect Perdues formal nomination. I wish to hell I did, Roberts said. We need a champion for agriculture, we need him on board.

Trumps team also hasnt sent over Acostas paperwork something that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) subtly pointed out in a tweet on Thursday evening.

The president has embraced the idea that the opposing party is behind all of his problems, blaming them for Attorney General Jeff Sessions current troubles and for the regular protests over the course of his presidency. But in this case in particular, the Democrats arent to blame.

The buck, as they say, stops with the president. Whether he likes it or not.

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President Trump's blaming the Democrats for Cabinet delays that are normal and his own fault - Washington Post

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

WASHINGTONSen. Sherrod Brownunveiled a set of populist, pro-worker policies on Friday that he says could strengthen the middle class, increase wages, and serve as a blueprint for Democrats as his party searches for ways to reconnect with working-class voters.

In a speech Friday in Columbus, the Ohio Democrat called for a dramatic shift to the political left on a series of economic and labor issues including stronger collective bargaining rights for workers, creating a national paid leave fund, and requiring corporate freeloaders to reimburse taxpayers if low-wage employees have to rely on federal assistance to make ends meet.

We need to change the way we think about the American economy, Brown said in remarks delivered at Ohio State University.

The view that businesses drive the American economy and that helping corporations by extension help workers has been discredited, Brown argued. Its not businesses who drive the economy its workers, he said.

Browns proposals, spelled out in a 77-page proposal full of footnotes and graphics, are not likely to go anywhere in the current Republican-controlled Congress. But his ideas could serve as a rallying point for Democrats as they gear up for the 2018 election, when Brown and others will be on the ballot.

They could also serve as fodder for Brown's GOP opponents, who may seize on his new platform as out of themainstream.Even before Brown began his speech, a Republican opposition research group attacked it as bad for the economy and a sop to his liberal base.

By pushing rejected ideas that would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs and penalize entrepreneurs, Browns proposal is only meant to curry favor to his liberal, special interest donors, said Jeremy Adler, a spokesman for America Rising Squared, a GOP group that does not disclose its donors.

In a document dubbed Working Too Hard for Too Little, Brown broadly calls for changes in four areas:

--Increasing workers wages and benefits, including raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour and providing employees with 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

--Giving workers greater bargaining power and cracking down businesses that misclassify workers as independent contractors or that deny workers overtime pay.

--Helping workers save for retirement, by offering tax credits to match retirement contributions and expanding retirement programs for part-time and hourly workers.

--Encouraging companies to invest in their workforce by giving them a tax break if they commit to staying in the U.S. and providing good wages and benefits to employees.

"I can accept that the workforce is changing. But what we cannot accept is that more and more of our workers are paid less and have little economic security," Brown said. "We need to update our economic policies, our retirement policies, and our labor laws to reflect todays reality."

Read more:

Democrats' 'checklist' for attacking Trumponomics reflects 2016 lessons

Strange bedfellows: Will Brown and Trump join forces on trade?

In an interview before the speech, Brown said he began work on the proposal in 2015, well before Trump won the presidency, and he dismissed questions about whether it would serve as his campaign platform as he vies for a third term in the Senate. Brown is expected to face a tough re-election in a state that Trump won by 51 percent of the vote, compared to Democratic nominee Hillary Clintons 43 percent.

As he gears up for that race, Brown will have to walk a tightropewooing the blue-collar workers who supported Trump while not alienating his own liberal base. But in an interview Thursday, Brown said this was not a political pitch, noting he has long been focused on worker-related issues, such as raising the minimum wage.

Its not addressing Trump. Its not addressing Hillarys loss, Brown said. Its addressing what we do to empower workers, all workers.

Still, Brown conceded that his ideas could serve as a roadmap for his own party, as Democrats look for a way out of the political wilderness and come to grips with their stunning 2016 election losses. Brown said he also plans to share his proposal with the White House, noting that Trump won in part because of his populist pitch to working-class voters in Ohio and across the country.

I hope anybody steals these ideas and moves forward, whether its Secretary of Treasury (Steven) Mnuchin or whether its Tom Perez, the newly elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Brown said. I want it talked about. I want people to try to move that agenda.

Read more:

Josh Mandel plans another U.S. Senate bid

Democrats elect Tom Perez, former Labor secretary, as new party leader

Here are some of Brown's specific proposals:

*Require employers to provide workers with a minimum of seven paid sick says;

*Create a national "paid leave fund," paid for via employee and employer payroll contributions, to provide workers with 12 weeks of paid family or medical leave;

*Increase penalties against employers who discriminate against workers trying to form a union or who commit unfair labor practices'

*Require businesses to allow certain part-time workers to participate in thecompany's retirement plan; and

*Create a "corporate freeloader fee," levied against large corporations who pay poverty-level wages.

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Can Sherrod Brown's plan save the Democrats? - Cincinnati.com

As the number of documented contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russian officials grows, congressional investigators are increasingly looking at the events that occurred around those meetings to determine if they provide evidence of a Russian influence campaign.

Whether there was any collusion there is of keen interest to our committee, said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. This could all be coincidence or could be collusion.

Trump has continually denied lingering allegations that associates of his campaign had been in contact with the Russians. In a Feb. 16 news conference, Trump underlined previous denials, saying, "I have nothing to do with Russia. I told you, I have no deals there, I have no anything," and said that "the news is fake."

Senior Republican leaders in Washington have said they remain unconvinced the timeline points to anything out of the ordinary.

We have seen no evidence from any of these ongoing investigations that anybody in the trump campaign or the trump team was involved in any of this, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told ABC Newss Mary Bruce. We've been presented with no evidence that an American was colluding with the Russians to meddle in the election.

A key period that is gaining interest from investigators is July 2016, as the Republican National Convention got underway in Cleveland. On July 18, party insiders took the unusual step of altering the official GOP platform by watering down its position on the use of force to protect the Ukraine from Russian incursions.

The champagne corks were going off when that happened, said Paul Joyal, a Russian intelligence expert and managing director of National Strategies.

Two days later, on July 20, the Russian Ambassador to the United States surfaced in Cleveland, meeting at different points with then-Senator Sessions (R-AL) who served as a campaign advisor and now as Trump's Attorney General and with a one-time Trump foreign policy adviser named Carter Page. Page later denied any meeting had occurred, telling PBS Newshour, I had no meetings. No meetings.

That same week, on July 22, WikiLeaks posted the first of the hacked Democratic party e-mails.

July seems to be a key month, Schiff told ABC News.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told ABC News he considered that month to be a turning point. He said investigators are likely to explore how hackers changed their approach to releasing stolen material.

The selective leaking of that information in a way that was I think initially just to throw chaos into the election but increasingly about mid-summer switched from let's just throw chaos into let's favor Mr. Trump at the expense of Hillary Clinton, Warner told ABC News.

He specifically noted the timing of leaks revealing Clinton campaign chairman John Podestas emails. The first of those leaks occurred just hours after Trump had suffered a public relations blow from the release of embarrassing hot mic recordings of Trump on the Access Hollywood entertainment program in 2005.

That was more than coincidence, Warner said.

Schiff cautioned that it remains far too soon to draw any conclusions.

I see as my responsibility is to follow the facts wherever they lead, Schiff said.

ABC News' Cho Park, Alex Hosenball and Paul Blake contributed to this report.

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Democrats plumb election timeline for Trump-Russia clues - ABC News

Amid growing calls from Democrats for an investigation into the Trump administration 's ties to Russia , the President tweeted an old photo of Chuck Schumer with Vladimir Putin and called the top Senate Democrat a "hypocrite."

"We should start an immediate investigation into @ SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!" Trump tweeted Friday afternoon, with an accompanying photo of Schumer and the Russian president eating doughnuts together.

The photo is from Putin's 2003 trip to New York for the opening of a Russian gas companys station, The Hill reports .

Schumer fired back on Twitter, writing, "Happily talk re: my contact w Mr. Putin & his associates, took place in '03 in full view of press & public under oath. Would you &your team?"

The online spat comes after revelations that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. twice in 2016, which he did not disclose during his confirmation hearing. Sessions said Thursday he would recuse himself from any investigations into the Trump campaign, but he denies any wrongdoing in meeting with Russia. Still, the disclosure fanned the fire under Schumer and other Democrats calling for an independent probe into Trump's relationship with Russia.

"We have an obligation to get to the truth," Schumer said in a press conference Thursday calling for an independent prosecutor to conduct an investigation. "We must evaluate the scope of Russia's interference in our elections and assess if agents of their government have penetrated to the highest level of our government. Nothing less than the sanctity of our dear democratic process, the primacy of rule of law, and the integrity of our executive branch is at stake."

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President Trump Hits Back at Democrats With Photo of Chuck Schumer and Vladimir Putin - TIME

NBCNews.com

Key Republicans Ask Jeff Sessions to Recuse Himself in Russia Case New York Times WASHINGTON Congressional Republicans began breaking ranks on Thursday to join Democrats in demanding that Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuse himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the ... Republicans turn up heat on SessionsCNN Democrats Demand Attorney General Jeff Sessions Resign Over Russian MeetingsNBCNews.com White House defends Sessions as Dems seek resignation over Russia revelationFox News Reuters -AL.com -TheBlaze.com -Washington Post all 1,480 news articles »

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Key Republicans Ask Jeff Sessions to Recuse Himself in Russia Case - New York Times