Politics

By Katie Lobosco, CNN About 9 million people with federal student loans will start getting their bills from a new agency after one of the government’s biggest servicers said Thursday that it will end its contract with the Department of Education in December. The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), which is better known as

By Gregory Wallace and Pete Muntean, CNN The number of guns found at airport checkpoints nationwide this year is fast approaching the number caught in all of 2020, officials say, and the uptick is slowing down screening lines as masses of passengers return to air travel. In the first six months of this year, Transportation

By Kyung Lah, CNN Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wants the state attorney general to investigate whether allies of former President Donald Trump violated state laws by conducting a pressure campaign against county officials in the wake of the November 2020 election. In a Wednesday letter to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, she wrote

By Hannah Rabinowitz and Joe Beare, CNN A federal judge blasted the DC jail Thursday for failing to get evidence to a Capitol riot defendant who has been in jail since January. “I can’t allow someone to sit in prison for this long without access to material,” Judge Randolph Moss said at a hearing, calling

By Erica Orden and Kara Scannell, CNN A federal judge on Thursday sentenced celebrity lawyer turned criminal defendant Michael Avenatti to 30 months in prison for attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike. Avenatti, who rose to fame as Stormy Daniels‘ lawyer, was convicted in February 2020 of three counts for threatening to publicly

By Dan Merica, CNN A series of Democratic Senate candidates announced substantial fundraising hauls this week, putting each campaign in strong financial positions ahead of races that will be critical to the Biden administration’s goals. Sen. Raphael Warnock will report raising $7 million in the second quarter of 2021, his campaign told CNN on Friday,

By Kate Sullivan and Jeremy Diamond, CNN The White House is doubling down on vaccinations as the main focus of its strategy to fight Covid-19 as the Delta variant and undervaccinated clusters of Americans threaten the nation. “We’re going to stay at it and continue to make progress,” White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients

By Marshall Cohen, CNN The Justice Department unveiled a major indictment Thursday against five Floridians accused of attacking at least seven police officers during the US Capitol insurrection. Prosecutors say the defendants, all from the Tampa Bay area, repeatedly attacked members of Washington, DC’s police force. They allegedly used stolen riot shields and flagpoles to

By Maegan Vazquez, Betsy Klein and Kate Bennett, CNN First lady Jill Biden’s team is still assessing whether it’s feasible for her to attend the Olympics in Tokyo after Japan’s Olympics Committee announced all spectators will be banned from the venues of the Games in the host city and the nation declared a state of

By Oren Liebermann, Jennifer Hansler, Nicole Gaouette and Barbara Starr, CNN With the Taliban advancing across rural parts of Afghanistan, and criticism mounting over what some view as an overly hasty departure, the Biden administration is staring down a few short weeks to make a handful of critical decisions it’s put off until the last

By Dan Merica, CNN Loretta Smith and Wesley Hunt are members of different parties, separated by both distance and policy. And yet, Smith, an Oregon Democrat, and Hunt, a Texas Republican, find themselves in similar positions headed into the 2022 midterms: Both have announced plans to run for Congress, but neither know what the district

By Kevin Liptak, CNN Leaders of eight civil rights organizations warned President Joe Biden on Thursday that time is running short to enact new voting rules protecting Americans’ right to cast ballots. The dire message, delivered during a candid session in the White House Roosevelt Room, came as Democrats clamor for the President to do

By Eric Bradner, CNN Texas Republicans are set to mount another push for restrictive new voting laws in their state as lawmakers on Thursday begin a 30-day special legislative session that Gov. Greg Abbott says he wants to see focused in part on “election integrity.” Abbott released an 11-item agenda for the special session that

By Lauren Fox and Jeremy Herb, CNN As they start the process of standing up a select committee to investigate security failings and circumstances surrounding the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol, House Democrats aim to use a strategy that avoids turning the investigation into a spectacle. They hope to keep some of

By Kevin Liptak, CNN President Joe Biden delivered a vehement defense Thursday of his decision to end the war in Afghanistan, insisting no amount of sustained American presence there could resolve the country’s own intractable problems. Instead, Biden argued American resources — lives, money and attention — were better focused elsewhere. Pressed on the likelihood