President Joe Biden is set to announce $200 billion in education funding as part of his sweeping spending package he will unveil prior to his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, according to a White House official. The proposal will direct the funds toward universal pre-school for all three- and four-year-olds through a
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President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged all eligible Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, saying that new guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention easing certain restrictions for fully vaccinated individuals is a great incentive for Americans to roll up their sleeves. “The bottom line is clear: If you’re vaccinated, you
Continue Reading As the White House intensifies conversations with key Republicans on infrastructure, a small, bipartisan group of senators is in the early stages of seeing if they might be able to break loose consensus on their own plan. Two senators — a Republican and a Democrat — warned the talks are in their infancy but could
Continue Reading Progressive Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is reintroducing three policing bills she hopes will be incorporated into the bipartisan package lawmakers have been fine-tuning for weeks as pressure mounts on Congress to pass meaningful legislation that will impose new police practices across the country. All three bills were first introduced in the last Congress,
Continue Reading Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican Senate candidate seeking to challenge Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2022, once wrote in support of an “ex-gay” Christian organization that promoted discredited “conversion therapy” and said that homosexuality was caused by “sexual molestation during childhood.” In an article unearthed by CNN’s KFile, Tshibaka wrote that gay people can “work through
Continue Reading The Justice Department has charged at least 400 people in connection with the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, according to CNN’s latest review of court documents. The 400 known defendants come from 43 states and Washington, DC, according to CNN’s analysis. The massive federal inquiry has added several defendants nearly each day since
Continue Reading The Senate confirmed Colin Kahl to be the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon on Tuesday, approving President Joe Biden’s nominee for Pentagon policy chief on a party-line vote. The 49-45 vote came one week after Vice President Kamala Harris broke a 50-50 tie on a procedural vote to advance Kahl’s nomination, in the first
Continue Reading New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has asked state Attorney General Letitia James to review legal options after the state came just 89 residents short of maintaining all of its congressional districts in the 2020 US Census Bureau count. A Democratic stronghold in Congress, the state is set to lose one of its seats in the
Continue Reading An Alaska state lawmaker who had called flight attendants “mask bullies” and clashed with airline employees on video over mask rules is now banned from Alaska Airlines for her “continued refusal to comply” with the mask policy, the airline said in a statement. The restriction on Republican state Sen. Lora Reinbold will make her job
Continue Reading President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will meet with former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter in their hometown of Plains, Georgia, on Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. The event will mark the first time the couples will meet in person since Biden became president. The
Continue Reading The State Department on Tuesday ordered the departure of government employees from the US Embassy in Kabul “whose functions can be performed elsewhere” as the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan gets underway. US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad told senators in a Tuesday hearing that some diplomats who “are not necessary to
Continue Reading When President Joe Biden delivers his first address to Congress on Wednesday, two of the past year’s ground-shaking events will be hard to ignore. The room where he’ll deliver it is exactly where a riot of would-be insurrectionists tried to prevent him from becoming president. And for the first time in history, a pair of
Continue Reading President Joe Biden will seek $80 billion to fund enhanced Internal Revenue Service enforcement of high-earners to help pay for his American Families Plan, which he is set to unveil later this week, two sources briefed on the proposal told CNN. The administration believes the enhanced measures to crack down on tax evasion will increase
Continue Reading Iran’s Navy once again harassed US ships operating in the Persian Gulf, this time coming within 68 yards of the ships on Monday night, prompting one of the American ships to fire warning shots, according to Cdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a spokeswoman for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Three fast inshore attack craft from the Islamic
Continue Reading The Washington Metropolitan Police Department has been the subject of a ransomware attack, according to a source familiar with the incident. The attackers posted a ransom note claiming they had stolen more than 250 GB of data and threatening to publish the material if they were not paid. The ransomware group Babuk claimed credit for
Continue Reading WASHINGTON, DC — President Joe Biden will nominate Harris County, Texas, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, a critic of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, to serve as director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the White House announced Tuesday. Gonzalez, who was elected Sheriff of Harris County in 2016, has a decades-long career in law enforcement, according
Continue Reading When cheerleader Brandi Levy posted a Snapchat of herself giving the middle digit salute with a profanity-laced caption, she likely never thought she’d become the center of a Supreme Court fight. On Wednesday, however, the nine justices will review her case and consider the authority of public school officials to discipline students for what they
Continue Reading Dozens of former Supreme Court clerks, Justice Department officials and law professors are throwing their support behind President Joe Biden’s highest-profile judicial nominee to date as the Senate Judiciary Committee gets set to consider his first batch of selections for the federal courts. The endorsements, in a series of letters obtained by CNN, show a
Continue Reading House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pointedly declined an opportunity on Tuesday to say whether he believes Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3-ranking House Republican who has been a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, was a “good fit” for the party’s leadership. Asked by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman whether Cheney, the GOP conference chairwoman
Continue Reading Senate Democrats are using a lottery system to distribute the limited number of tickets available for members of the caucus who are interested in attending President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, multiple senators — including Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz — and aides told CNN. The sources say the system
Continue Reading When President Joe Biden speaks to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, it will look different than presidential addresses in years past with the event taking place amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and heightened security concerns in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack. The joint session will be designated a National Special
Continue Reading The Biden administration announced Tuesday an operation focused on disrupting transnational criminal organizations, including human smugglers who have facilitated the illegal crossings of migrants at the US-Mexico border. The administration has been up against human smugglers who in some cases have marketed their services on Facebook, a platform critics say has failed to uphold its
Continue Reading “Amtrak Joe” is returning to his roots. President Joe Biden will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Amtrak’s founding when he travels to Philadelphia on Friday to make a push for his massive infrastructure proposal, a White House official confirmed to CNN. He will be visiting the William H. Gray III 30th Street Station in downtown
Continue Reading Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory acknowledged reality in 2020: former President Donald Trump lost. He then explained why — and objected to Trump’s baseless effort in Congress to overturn the election. Now a candidate for Senate, McCrory is facing the same threat as other Republicans in key races: a primary against challengers who vigorously
Continue Reading An Arizona Republican lawmaker on Friday defended a GOP-sponsored bill that would change the mail-in voting process by arguing that state lawmakers need to “correct problems” regardless of whether there was actual fraud in the 2020 election. Arizona GOP lawmakers have put forth a bill, SB 1485, that would revise the state’s permanent early voting
Continue Reading Cheri Beasley, the first Black woman to be North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice, launched her 2022 Senate campaign on Tuesday, seeking to break another barrier as the state’s first Black senator. Beasley, 55, has won two statewide judicial elections: for the court of appeals in 2008 and for the Supreme Court in 2014. In
Continue Reading Four ships from the Navy of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps harassed the US Coast Guard operating in the Persian Gulf earlier this month, with one of the ships repeatedly crossing in front of the US patrol boats at very close range despite multiple warnings, the US Navy said. The Coast Guard cutters Wrangell and
Continue Reading A New York state court employee was charged with threatening to murder a US official after he made online posts threatening to kill several high-level Democratic members of Congress, according to a complaint from the US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York. Brendan Hunt, who goes by “X-Ray Ultra” on social media
Continue Reading The son of a retired New York City family court judge is on trial for allegedly threatening the lives of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Prosecutors showed a jury in Brooklyn federal court messages and social media videos in which Brendan Hunt, 37, makes threats against the
Continue Reading Republican members of Congress, Fox News personalities and other prominent right-wing figures are falsely claiming that President Joe Biden is trying to force Americans to eat far less red meat. “Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a
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