Judge says Michael Flynn must testify in Ga. election probe
A Florida judge has ruled that former national security adviser Michael Flynn must testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that’s looking into whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
Biden wants to discuss Taiwan, Russia, trade with China's Xi
President Joe Biden says he hopes to use an anticipated meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping to discuss growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, trade policies and Beijing’s relationship with Russia.
Judge orders Gingrich to testify in Georgia election probe
A judge has ordered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta that's investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and Republican allies illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
Meadows trying to avoid testifying in Georgia election probe
Mark Meadows, former White House chief of staff, is trying to avoid having to testify before a Georgia special grand jury that’s investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies illegally tried to influence the state’s 2020 election.
Jan. 6 panel asks former Speaker Gingrich for information
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is seeking information from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about his communications with senior advisers to then-President Donald Trump in the days leading up to the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
For Taiwan, Pelosi visit is about US, China controlling risk
The crisis sparked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan misses a key point, experts say: that the real focus should be on how the United States and China manage their differences so the risks of confrontation don’t spiral out of control.
Planners of Jan. 6 Trump rally subpoenaed by House panel
The House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection has issued subpoenas to two Republican strategists and a Trump administration official regarding their involvement in the planning and preparation of one of the rallies that preceded the deadly attack.
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Child tax credit tussle reflects debate over work incentives
President Joe Biden and leading Democratic lawmakers, including Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, have been fighting to make permanent a child tax credit that would give families at least $300 a month per child.
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Republicans seize on immigration as border crossings surge
Team Brownsville, a humanitarian group, is helping the migrants reach their final destination in the U.S. A surge of migrants on the Southwest border has the Biden administration on the defensive. Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families remain lower than at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. They deride the policies Trump implemented to deter asylum as cruel and inhumane and an abdication of the country’s humanitarian responsibilities. "The Trump administration did everything in their power for four years to make the already broken immigration system as cumbersome and ineffective as possible. ... You leave yourself nowhere to go.”Ad“They’re kind of stuck in a corner,” agreed Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies think tank, which advocates on behalf of more restrictive immigration policies.
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Republicans seize on immigration as border crossings surge
Team Brownsville, a humanitarian group, is helping the migrants reach their final destination in the U.S. A surge of migrants on the Southwest border has the Biden administration on the defensive. Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families remain lower than at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. They deride the policies Trump implemented to deter asylum as cruel and inhumane and an abdication of the country’s humanitarian responsibilities. "The Trump administration did everything in their power for four years to make the already broken immigration system as cumbersome and ineffective as possible. ... You leave yourself nowhere to go.”Ad“They’re kind of stuck in a corner,” agreed Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies think tank, which advocates on behalf of more restrictive immigration policies.
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Pentagon chief purges defense boards; Trump loyalists out
During the last two months of his tenure, former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller removed a number of longtime members from several defense policy, health, science and business boards and replaced many with loyalists of former President Donald Trump. And he ordered all committee members who were appointed by the defense secretary to resign no later than Feb. 16. In November, however, Trump appointed him to that same post, just days after firing then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and putting Miller in the job. Miller appointed Tata to the Defense Policy Board on Jan. 19, his last full day on the job. AdOne new congressionally mandated commission is also being purged of the four members that Miller appointed in early January.
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Trump pardons in California extend to former congressman
The disgraced former San Diego congressman received one of the pardons issued Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, by President Donald Trump in the final hours of his term. The disgraced former San Diego congressman received one of the pardons issued Wednesday by President Donald Trump in the final hours of his term, which included several others with California connections. Trump granted him a conditional pardon, saying Cunningham tutored inmates while in prison and now volunteers for a local fire department. ELLIOTT BROIDYTrump granted a full pardon to Broidy, of Beverly Hills, a major Trump fundraiser and former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman. Those supporting the pardon included California Republican Reps. Devin Nunes and Ken Calvert.
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Trump's pardon largesse a boon for well-connected fraudsters
Trump is expected to pardon Bannon, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, as part of a flurry of last-minute clemency action that appears to be still in flux in the last hours of his presidency. For instance, joining Cunningham on the pardon list was Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. The pardon nullified the prosecution of Bannon while the trial was still months away, eliminating the prospect for any punishment for him. He pleaded guilty last fall to acting as an unregistered lobbyist and was awaiting sentencing at the time of his pardon. In the final minutes of his term, Trump pardoned Al Pirro, the ex-husband of Fox News Channel host Jeanine Pirro, in a tax evasion case.
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Sheldon Adelson, billionaire casino mogul and GOP power broker, dies
Adelson died Monday night from complications related to treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Las Vegas Sands announced Tuesday. “If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,” he said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas. In politics, Adelson was a record-breaking campaign donor who had the ear of domestic and international leaders, including President Donald Trump. Late in 2015, Adelson secretly purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Soon his Macao revenue outstripped that of his Las Vegas holdings.
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Hurt feelings, anger linger after Pence, Trump clash
But for more than four years, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence made their marriage of political convenience work. Pence, for his part, was left feeling “hurt” and “upset” by the episode, according to people close to him. Pence's decision to publicly defy Trump was a first for the notoriously deferential vice president, who has been unflinchingly loyal to Trump since joining the GOP ticket in 2016. “If Mike Pence does the right thing we win the election,” Trump wrongly insisted. He repeatedly returned to Pence throughout his speech as he tried to pressure the vice president to fall in line.
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Trump push on $2K checks flops as GOP-led Senate won’t vote
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., walks off of the Senate floor on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2020. Opening the Senate on Thursday, McConnell called the House-passed bill matching Trump's $2,000 request “socialism for rich people” who don't need the federal help. The Republican-led Senate acquitted the president in 2020 of the charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump’s push for $2,000 checks gained sudden momentum when dozens of House Republicans joined Democrats in approving the measure Monday. But the GOP leader has scheduled no votes on his measure and it would be unlikely to have enough support in Congress to pass.
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Wealthy voters are 'mythical middle' in Georgia Senate races
Peterson, like many voters in this area of Atlanta, voted for Democrat Joe Biden but also cast votes for Republican Senate candidates in November. Some of Georgia's most affluent voters, formerly reliable cornerstones of the state's once-ascendant Republican majority, live in million-dollar houses here. Perdue led Ossoff by about 88,000 votes, although the incumbent fell short of the majority required in Georgia because of votes won by a Libertarian. Perdue also ran ahead of Trump in wealthier areas of DeKalb County, a Democratic bastion where Trump won only two of 191 precincts and lost some areas 20-to-1. Once a registered Republican in Pennsylvania — Georgia doesn't register voters by party — Levin said she has “zero respect” for Perdue and Loeffler.
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Georgia US Senate race: Ossoff again campaigning in overtime
Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Georgia Jon Ossoff speaks after voting early in Atlanta on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020. For the second time in three years, Jon Ossoff is campaigning in overtime. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)ATLANTA – Though still chasing his first victory, Jon Ossoff is no stranger to the pressure of campaigning in overtime — this time for one of two crucial U.S. Senate seats that will determine control of the chamber. Ossoff ran a formidable campaign even while being mocked by Republicans as a lightweight unqualified to occupy the seat once held by Republican Newt Gingrich. Biden received nearly 100,000 more votes in Georgia than Ossoff.
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What mandate? Biden's agenda faces a divided Congress
"That’s a mandate to flip the switch.”The idea of a Biden mandate, though, is relative, certainly embraced by Democrats who want to push ahead with his agenda. California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House's Republican leader, said the election “was a mandate against socialism," stepping up the relentless GOP attacks, even though Biden is a centrist Democrat. Biden comes to the presidency like few in recent history, with a rare mix of experience but also a potentially divided Congress. Whether McConnell emerges in the new Congress as majority or minority leader with a narrowly divided Senate, the longest serving Republican leader in history will have great leverage over legislation that arrives on Biden's desk. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and even McCarthy will have oversize roles because of the changed makeup of the new Congress.
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Vatican calling: Pope congratulates Joe Biden on election
It’s not exactly divine intervention, but even the pope considers the U.S. presidential race over. President-elect Joe Biden, a lifelong Roman Catholic, spoke to Pope Francis on Thursday, despite President Donald Trump refusing to concede. Trump claims — without evidence — that the election was stolen from him through massive but unspecified acts of fraud. Biden has said he accepts church doctrine about abortion on a personal level, but does not want to impose that belief on everyone. Having the pope on board, too, likely has special significance for Biden.
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Trump books will continue after Trump leaves office
NEW YORK – One of publishing's most thriving genres of the past four years, books about President Donald Trump, is not going to end when he leaves office. In 2021 and beyond, look for waves of releases about the Trump administration and about the president's loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. “But there are tens of millions of Americans who look to the Trump presidency as an important time and are fans of his administration. Center Street, a Hachette Book Group imprint, has published Donald Trump Jr., Newt Gingrich and Judge Jeanine Pirro among others. Any publisher signing with Trump or a top administration official might face the anger not just of Trump critics among the general public, but from within the industry.
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Stacey Abrams credited for boosting Democrats in Georgia
Abrams, the onetime candidate for Georgia governor who has become perhaps the nation's leading voice on voting rights, is being credited for paving those inroads. “There’s a lot of work that’s gone into this, but Stacey really is the architect of what’s been built in Georgia,” said Dubose Porter, the former Georgia Democratic Party chairman and an Abrams mentor. The 2018 campaign marked a notable shift in Georgia Democrats’ overall approach. They’d do it by reshaping the electorate, by exciting the expanding universe of potentially Democratic voters: the youngest native white Georgians; whites from beyond Georgia; Black voters who cast ballots sporadically; Black voters moving to Georgia from other regions; and a growing Latino and Asian-American population. “We’ll take on Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Fair Fight, Stacey Abrams and all of them.”Trump himself was an accelerating variable in Georgia’s shift, pushing some white suburbanites toward Democrats.
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Georgia's McBath seeks 2nd win in once-famed GOP district
ATLANTA – Karen Handel is looking for Republicans to mobilize in Georgia's 6th District, once an incubator of high-profile Republicans. But Democrat Lucy McBath, who unseated Handel in 2018, is trying to show that Atlanta's wealthiest suburbs have changed. But McBath is hitting Handel with a range of attacks, with the most concerted sparring around health care. “My opponent's record on health care is absolutely dismal,” McBath said. “Right now we have a single-issue, completely disengaged member of Congress representing this congressional district,” Handel said.
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Trump intensifies focus on Harris in final weeks of campaign
Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks at Carpenters Local Union 1912 in Phoenix, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020, to kick off a small business bus tour. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)If you need help with the Public File, call 210-351-1241.
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Trump intensifies focus on Harris in final weeks of campaign
During the past week, Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News that Harris would assume the presidency within “three months” of Biden's inauguration. During a conversation with Rush Limbaugh, he warned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would “replace” Biden with Harris. Trump's focus on Harris is building as he tries to regain an advantage against Biden, who is leading most national and battleground state polls three weeks before the election. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, is pushing the president to make Harris a campaign centerpiece. “This is a desire not to run against Joe Biden, to run against anybody but Joe Biden,” he said.
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Trump's task: Resetting campaign that GOP fears is slipping
This year's campaign, other Republicans worry, may instead resemble 1980 or 2008: a close race until, at the end, it decidedly wasn’t. Reviewing data afterward, campaign aides worried as they started to see Trump’s support begin to slip. Trump’s campaign worries that it is losing support among suburban voters, women and older voters. The Democrat on Monday will make a trip to Ohio for his general election campaign, another state Trump won convincingly in 2016. Trump’s campaign believes the hearings could change the political narrative away from the virus and draw attention to Biden’s refusal to say whether he would expand or “pack” the Supreme Court.
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Biden harnesses history to describe urgency of 2020 campaign
It cannot, and it must not.”The approach, Biden aides say, is more than lofty presidential rhetoric; it’s necessary groundwork for governing. Being a steady alternative to Trump, the ex-reality television star Biden describes as “erratic” and “dangerous,” may be enough to win in November, they argue. People realize what’s at stake here,” Biden said Saturday in Erie, Pennsylvania, repeating what has become a go-to line in nearly every campaign setting. Biden described his Gettysburg speech as “dramatic” in a preview to donors hours before he delivered it. In a Sept. 22 fundraiser, a top Biden supporter recalled urging the former vice president to run against Trump.
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Dear Donald, Dear Mr. President: A Trump-Nixon '80s tale
This image provided by the Richard Nixon Foundation shows a copy of correspondence between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon. The letters between once and future presidents, revealed for the first time in an exhibit that opens Thursday, Sept. 23, 2020, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, show the two men engaged in something of an exercise in mutual affirmation. The museum shared the letters exclusively with The Associated Press ahead of the exhibits opening. (Richard Nixon Foundation via AP)
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Dear Donald, Dear Mr. President: A Trump-Nixon '80s tale
FILE - In this Nov. 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting. There were two men in 1980s Manhattan who craved validation one a past president, one a future president. Their letters are being revealed for the first time in an exhibit that opens Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. “Let me be so presumptuous as to offer a little free advice (which is worth, incidentally, exactly what it costs!”) Nixon writes to Trump. Pat Nixon thought Trump did “great,” Nixon writes.
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Dear Donald, Dear Mr. President: A Trump-Nixon '80s tale
FILE - In this Nov. 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting. Nixon told the APME "I am not a crook." There were two men in 1980s Manhattan who craved validation one a past president, one a future president. Thats how a thirty-something Donald Trump and a seventy-ish Richard Nixon struck up a decade-long correspondence in the 1980s that meandered from football and real estate to Vietnam and media strategy. Their letters are being revealed for the first time in an exhibit that opens Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum.
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Dear Donald, Dear Mr. President: A Trump-Nixon '80s tale
FILE - In this Nov. 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting. There were two men in 1980s Manhattan who craved validation one a past president, one a future president. Their letters are being revealed for the first time in an exhibit that opens Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. “Let me be so presumptuous as to offer a little free advice (which is worth, incidentally, exactly what it costs!”) Nixon writes to Trump. Pat Nixon thought Trump did “great,” Nixon writes.
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In battleground states, Catholics are a pivotal swing vote
For decades, Roman Catholic voters have been a pivotal swing vote in U.S. presidential elections, with a majority backing the winner whether Republican or Democrat nearly every time. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)For decades, Roman Catholic voters have been a pivotal swing vote in U.S. presidential elections, with a majority backing the winner — whether Republican or Democrat — nearly every time. “The swinging portion of the Catholic vote swings more than other voting segments — that’s the target-rich segment,” said Brian Burch, president of the conservative advocacy group CatholicVote.org. Among Wisconsin Catholics praising Altman was Kevin O’Brien, co-founder of a movement called Men of Christ. He said priests in his region around Harrisburg are openly suggesting that politicians who support abortion rights should be denied Communion.
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House GOP unveils tax cuts, police funds in election agenda
WASHINGTON – House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy rolled out Republicans' priorities of tax breaks and police funding Tuesday, the GOP's calling card to voters as they try to wrest back seats from Democrats in a long-shot November election bid for majority control. They're also taking a page from Trump's playbook by portraying Democrats as aligned with the racial injustice protests in American cities, vowing a tougher approach. The GOP rollout comes as House Democrats are vowing to try again to pass a new round of coronavirus relief after a Senate bill collapsed last week. The House Republicans' economic priorities include new tax breaks for businesses, forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans for companies struggling during the coronavirus shutdown, and making the 2017 GOP tax cuts for families permanent. 2 GOP leader, Rep. Steve Sclaise, R-La., the GOP Whip, said, the party will "renew and restore” the nation.
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Melania Trump taking Rose Garden turn to pitch her husband
Mrs. Trump said months ago that she's ready for another four years. Only the second foreign-born first lady in U.S. history, Mrs. Trump is a native of Slovenia, a former communist country in eastern Europe. The first lady is set to speak Tuesday night from the renovated Rose Garden, despite questions about using the White House for a political convention. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said people appreciate that Mrs. Trump is her own person. Last week, after Mrs. Obama's forceful rebuke of Trump in an address to the Democrats' largely virtual convention, social media lit up with tongue-in-cheek speculation about whether Mrs. Trump would give the same speech.
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Too little, too late? Trump embraces masks in an about-face
On Tuesday, July 21, Trump professed a newfound respect for the protective face masks he has seldom worn. I mean, I carry the mask, Trump responded. But that pronouncement was too little, too late for some public health officials, who have blamed the mixed messaging and Trump's personal actions for politicizing mask-wearing and fueling a partisan social divide. He worried that Trump's words would have only marginal impact in moving Americans who arent consistently wearing masks in public to do so. Trump tweeted a photo of himself in a face mask Monday, calling it an act of patriotism.