The self-proclaimed leader of the “Maga Caravan,” which led dozens of vehicles to Washington, DC, to a rally held by former President Donald Trump, was charged with allegedly being one of the first insurrectionists to assault law enforcement at the US Capitol, the Justice Department announced. Kenneth Joseph Owen Thomas, 38, of East Liverpool, Ohio,
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The midterm elections are still 18 months away, but the fight for control of the Senate is already shaping what gets done in the nation’s capital this year. In an evenly divided Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris gives Democrats the tie-breaking vote, every vote matters. That’s proven to be a crucial consideration for President
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A group of Democratic House members who are Jewish are calling on President Joe Biden to address a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the US amid a divide within congressional Democrats, especially between moderate and progressives, on how to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Four Democrats, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, sent a
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The mother of fallen US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who had asked to meet with GOP senators, will meet with at least 15 of them Thursday ahead of an expected vote on the January 6 commission that so far is short of the 10 Republican votes needed to pass. Gladys Sicknick told reporters Thursday
Continue Reading Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday will announce commitments from 12 private companies and organizations to invest in the Northern Triangle, a White House official says, marking the latest administration attempt to address the root causes of migration from the region. The agreement, dubbed a “Call To Action,” includes commitments from major companies like Microsoft,
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The White House on Friday will propose a $6 trillion budget for the 2022 fiscal year, a senior administration official tells CNN, as President Joe Biden prepares to outline his spending blueprint for the first time in his formal request to Congress. The budget proposal calls for the most sustained spending in more than a
Continue Reading One of President Joe Biden’s closest advisers is rallying allies to embrace White House proposals that have come under sharp criticism from Republicans as the President moves to put the spotlight back on his sweeping economic agenda Thursday. With a group of Senate Republicans set to unveil their latest infrastructure counter-proposal Thursday morning, Mike Donilon,
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The Pentagon is in the early stages of planning for the potential evacuation of thousands of Afghan nationals whose work for the US could make them Taliban targets when the American military withdraws from the country, according to four administration officials. The officials emphasized that a formal request to develop a contingency plan has not
Continue Reading Democrats are bracing for a deluge of disinformation in next year’s midterm elections, and they view leading Republicans, not foreign actors or armies of online trolls, as the biggest disinformation threat. After the 2016 election, there were concerns about how Russia, a foreign actor, had used platforms like Facebook and Twitter to set up thousands
Continue Reading Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging West Virginia’s new anti-trans sports law, arguing that the measure banning transgender girls and women from participating in school sports unconstitutionally “discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status.” The lawsuit challenges a measure that prohibits transgender girls and women in the state from competing
Continue Reading In the weeks after the January 6 riot, Capitol Police officers were shell-shocked and wounded, both physically and psychologically. They’d been through hell, they’d sacrificed their bodies, they’d lost colleagues who died as a result of the attack. But in the end they had safeguarded democracy and upheld their primary directive: Secure and protect the
Continue Reading The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday will mandate that critical pipeline operators comply with several cybersecurity measures, including reporting cybersecurity incidents to the department within 12 hours, according to DHS officials. In the wake of the debilitating ransomware attack earlier this month on Colonial Pipeline, which operates a major fuel pipeline, department officials rushed
Continue Reading Rep. Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat and veteran who helped comfort other lawmakers during the US Capitol insurrection, said Wednesday evening there’s a “domestic terror movement” in the US as he sought to highlight the risk of not investigating the January 6 riot. “We have a domestic terror movement in America. It has been enabled,
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A federal judge on Wednesday wrote that Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him could still inspire some of the former President’s supporters to take up arms, as they did in January during the deadly US Capitol insurrection. The judge’s blunt assessment of the current, charged political climate came in
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President Joe Biden said Wednesday he has directed the US intelligence community to redouble their efforts in investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days. The announcement comes after a US intelligence report found several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and
Continue Reading Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday reflected on the frustration he had felt in office when his “institutional role” limited his ability to comment on federal investigations into the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. “I went as far as I could just commenting on cases like Trayvon Martin or what was happening
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Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are objecting to changing protections police currently enjoy from civil lawsuits, underscoring the challenges facing a trio of lawmakers who are furiously working to cut a deal that would overhaul policing in America. The issue — known as qualified immunity for police officers — has long been the biggest
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A New Mexico man is facing a federal charge for allegedly threatening to kill President Joe Biden and others in text messages he sent to people in two states. John Benjamin Thornton is charged with using interstate commerce communications to send a threat to injure another person. The rambling texts allegedly from Thornton provided as
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President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress are facing increasing pressure this week from Black civil rights leaders who say federal lawmakers have made little progress with police reform one year after George Floyd’s death. Activists say they are demanding that the Senate pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which remains stalled amid
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President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Congress are facing increasing pressure this week from Black civil rights leaders who say federal lawmakers have made little progress with police reform one year after George Floyd’s death. Activists say they are demanding that the Senate pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which remains stalled amid
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