Avril Haines, Biden’s nominee for director of national intelligence, began her confirmation hearing Tuesday. She was President Obama’s top lawyer on the National Security Council from 2010 to 2013 and CIA deputy director from 2013 to 2015, where she authorized using drone strikes to carry out targeted extrajudicial assassinations.
With less than 12 hours before the end of his presidency, Donald Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations, including a pardon for Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist and campaign manager. Trump, who has pardoned other associates and allies during his single term, has so far rejected calls to pardon prominent whistleblowers including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Reality Winner.
How do I communicate how hurt I am without ending these friendships?
Parenting advice on affair revelations, angry fathers, and expensive avatars.
Biden’s plan to encourage better masking, social distancing, testing and contact tracing could gain traction with governors whose states are overwhelmed.
He can’t possibly expect the GOP to go along with this—but that might be a good thing.
Or his ability to help Americans will be doomed from the start.
What was the point of Fortress D.C.
This is why so many of us spent the late summer and fall screaming our heads off for Congress to pass some sort of new coronavirus relief bill.
“There’s no doubt about it that that can be done,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said.
Born as a second Manhattan Project, the Trump administration vaccine program actually achieved most of its goals – until distribution problems marred its success.
The decision cuts scientists at the Food and Drug Administration out of the process.
Trump’s presidency may be best remembered for its cataclysmic end. But his four years as president also changed real American policy in lasting ways, just more quietly. We asked POLITICO’s best-in-class policy reporters to recap some of the ways Trump changed the country while in office, for better or worse.
At the same time, the unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, the first time it hasn’t fallen since April.
The share of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent sits at levels not seen since the 1920s. Biden’s hopes for changing it rests on Senate control.
A government shutdown was averted after the president approved the Covid relief package and annual spending bill.
The president has thrown the fate of the bill into jeopardy.
Federal prosecutors have alleged that Bannon’s “Build the Wall” fund served as a slush fund for the former White House adviser and his partners.
Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week.
Half a day until JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE
Excerpts from the February Harper’s Index:
Estimated amount spent on 2020 campaigns for the U.S.
Since the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol we’ve been treated to the spectacle of people like Rep.Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Ted Cruz, and others within the Republican party invoking a spirit of “unity” as they urge Democrats to temper their response to a crisis that Republicans themselves were responsible for causing.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is well known to Kansans. In his six years in the U.S. House, Pompeo was ranked as one of the most conservative by GovTrack, and the policies he promoted were, well, the kinds of things most of America simply would roll their eyes at even considering. As a secretary of state, Pompeo has served failure after failure and has been rewarded for it, repeatedly, as one of Trump’s members who followed his marching orders.
Who is Michael Boulos, how is Lindsay Lohan involved, and why the heck now?
It looks like one of Team Trump’s last-minute efforts to destroy the civil service has fizzled. With less than a day to go, the plan to strip protections from tens of thousands of career federal employees hasn’t been put into effect at any federal agency.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Personnel Management had rushed to list many of their jobs in the new Schedule F, a new classification for jobs involving policymaking.
Joining the increasing number of Trump supporters arrested after storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Pennsylvania woman who allegedly took a laptop belonging to Speaker Nancy Pelosi was arrested Monday. The woman, identified as 22-year-old Riley June Williams, is charged with intentionally entering into a restricted building without lawful authority in addition to disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
Tomorrow, America inaugurates a new president. With the transfer of power comes the transfer of responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic. On the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration, the toll of the pandemic stands at 23.9 million cases and 392,428 deaths, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. There are 123,820 people hospitalized. Today alone, states reported 144,047 cases and 2,141 deaths.
The president’s youngest daughter announced she’s engaged to Michael Boulos a day before her father leaves office.
The House passed the For the People Act in 2019. Now Senate Democrats name it as their No. 1 bill, too.
“Now I’m feeling guilty. She didn’t get a call. I got a call.
I have no idea how to have a sex life anymore.
Every Tuesday, our lead climate reporter brings you the big ideas, expert analysis, and vital guidance that will help you flourish on a changing planet. Sign up to get The Weekly Planet, our guide to living through climate change, in your inbox.Tomorrow, pending calamity or misfortune, Joe Biden will take the oath of office and become president of the United States. In that moment, the United States’ approach to climate change will invert.