Politics

By Phil Mattingly, CNN As President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met privately in Tokyo last year, Biden delivered a message that was as strategic as it was genuine. US support for a more assertive defense and security posture from Japan was understood, but Biden made clear that if there was anything

By Simone Pathe, Maeve Reston, Janie Boschma and Renée Rigdon, CNN Illustration by Will Mullery, CNN Lori Chavez-DeRemer sat in the gallery of the House nearly two decades ago with her mom and her twin daughters — tourists peering down at lawmakers on the floor of the chamber. “I’d really love to be here someday,”

By Pamela Brown and Sonnet Swire, CNN Concerns over Rep. George Santos‘ backstory became louder over the summer and into the fall campaign season, and issues surrounding the recently elected Republican congressman from New York had not been a secret, a GOP source told CNN on Friday. When it became clearer that Santos had a

By Phil Mattingly, Chief White House correspondent A White House facing the first full day of a special counsel investigation sought to maintain a business-as-usual attitude, highlighting what has become a central objective amid an uncertain and potentially perilous new reality. President Joe Biden welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to the White House, making

By Katherine Dillinger, CNN Dr. David Kessler, chief science officer for the White House Covid-19 Response Team, is retiring, according to a statement from the US Department of Health and Human Services. “For decades, Dr. Kessler has worked tirelessly to address our nation’s most challenging public health issues, and his work during the COVID-19 pandemic

By Kara Scannell and Nicki Brown, CNN Former President Donald Trump denied sexually assaulting former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll and said he never pressured a woman to have sex with him in a deposition transcript that was unsealed Friday. “But it’s a false accusation. Never happened. Never would,” Trump said of Carroll’s allegation that

By Natasha Bertrand, Jennifer Hansler and Alex Marquardt, CNN The Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve the sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, after weighing a Turkish request for the planes for more than a year, congressional sources familiar with the deliberations told CNN. If approved, the sale would be

By Devan Cole and Ariane de Vogue, CNN The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up the case of a former US Postal Service worker who wants the justices to revisit a decades-old test for determining whether employers can deny religious accommodation requests. Conservatives have long sought to throw out the standard set in 1977,

By Maegan Vazquez, Marshall Cohen, MJ Lee, Arlette Saenz and Zachary Cohen, CNN It was an office fit for a former vice president working in Washington — dark hardwood floors, plush seating and a spacious desk set to a lofty backdrop of the Capitol building. This week, what took place inside that office — a

By Gabby Orr, CNN A three-way race for chairman of the Republican National Committee could deal another setback to a party looking to enter the 2024 cycle with a unified front. Each of the three candidates running for chair — incumbent Ronna McDaniel, California-based attorney Harmeet Dhillon and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — confirmed to

By Kara Scannell and Devan Cole, CNN Investigations into the Trump Organization’s business practices are entering a new chapter and will “go as long as the facts and the law require,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told CNN on Friday, even as he stressed that “a very important chapter” of the probe ended after the

By Kara Scannell, CNN A New York judge has given Steve Bannon until the end of February to find new lawyers to advise him in a criminal fraud case after the former Donald Trump aide’s attorney said there were “irreconcilable differences” and communications have broken down. Bannon attorney David Schoen said in court Thursday that

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN Attorney General Merrick Garland and Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), announced new regulations Friday that would subject pistol-stabilizing braces to additional regulations, including higher taxes, longer waiting periods and registration. Gun control proponents argue that stabilizing braces — which can be attached