National Politics

Georgia is on a “good schedule right now” to finish an audit of the presidential election by Wednesday and thus certify its results by Friday, a top state voting official says, and the vast majority of counties are reporting results that are “spot dead on” to the initial tallies or finding only minor discrepancies. Gabriel

Wreaths Across America’s annual wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery is set to go forward as planned after all. Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy said Tuesday afternoon that he had overruled an earlier decision to cancel the event. “I have directed Arlington National Cemetery to safely host Wreaths Across America,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller announced Tuesday that the US will withdraw thousands more US troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by January 15, 2021 — just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office, confirming plans first reported by CNN on Monday. Miller said the withdrawal, which will leave approximately 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger stood firm Monday on his account that Sen. Lindsey Graham had hinted that he should try to discard some ballots in Georgia, where a recount is underway after the state went for President-elect Joe Biden in the presidential election. “He asked if the ballots could be matched back to

Joe Biden won’t be sworn in for another 64 days, but the President-elect is already under pressure from activist groups to bring progressive leaders into his administration — and close its doors to establishment figures with cozy relationships to Wall Street, defense contractors and the fossil fuel industry. The pressure campaign has played out in

President-elect Joe Biden is building out the staff that will surround him in the White House, announcing Tuesday that he is tapping two long-time advisers for top roles and naming several other veterans of his presidential campaign to senior positions. Among Tuesday’s announced hires: Mike Donilon, the chief strategist for Biden’s campaign who played a

The White House coronavirus task force has again ramped up its warnings to states in a weekly set of reports as the pandemic continues to aggressively worsen, raising alarms on the potential impact of rising cases on hospitals. “There is now aggressive, unrelenting, expanding broad community spread across the country, reaching most counties, without evidence

A group of federal prosecutors on Friday urged Attorney General William Barr to rescind his order for any prosecutor to examine allegations of voting irregularities before states move to certify the results in the coming weeks, according to an internal letter obtained by CNN. Read the letter:

Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond will join President-elect Joe Biden’s White House, departing the New Orleans-area House of Representatives seat he has held since 2011. Richmond will serve as senior adviser to the President and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. The 47-year-old former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus was a co-chair

Congresswoman-elect Cori Bush said Monday evening she was stunned and “hurt” when some Republicans addressed her as “Breonna” during new member orientation at the Capitol because she was wearing a mask with Breonna Taylor’s name on it. “It did not seem like they were being malicious. They just did not know,” Bush told CNN’s Erin

Stanford University on Monday evening distanced itself from White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the school’s Hoover Institution, after he urged Michigan residents to “rise up” against new public health measures. “Stanford’s position on managing the pandemic in our community is clear. We support using masks, social distancing,

When President Donald Trump learned at the end of last week that his lawyers were dropping their lawsuit seeking a review of ballots in Arizona, the news caught him by surprise. Summoning members of his team to the Oval Office, where he has been spending afternoons and evenings lately when not in the adjoining dining

President Donald Trump last week asked senior aides what possibilities he had for an offensive strike on Iran’s primary nuclear site, The New York Times reported Monday. Citing four current and former US officials, the paper reported that the meeting occurred in the Oval Office on Thursday. A day before, the International Atomic Energy Agency

Sen. James Lankford said Monday that he did “step in” with the General Services Administration late last week over the presidential transition process — and seemed satisfied with the agency’s handling of the matter, although there is no indication yet that Joe Biden will start getting the intelligence briefings that the Oklahoma Republican said he

Then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper sent a classified memo earlier this month to the White House asserting that it was the unanimous recommendation of the chain of command that the US not draw down its troop presence in Afghanistan any further until conditions were met, sources familiar with the memo tell CNN. The assessment from

Hate crime reports in America surged in 2019 to the highest level since 2008, according to new data released on Monday by the FBI. In its annual report on national hate crime statistics, the FBI found that murders classified as hate crimes more than doubled from 2018 to 2019, with 51 people killed last year

Top Senate Republicans seemed unmoved Monday by President Donald Trump’s baseless charges that the election was “rigged” and his false assertions that he actually won the election, even though the results show he lost the race despite his efforts to sow distrust over a cornerstone of US democracy. As Democrats reacted with alarm to Trump’s