WASHINGTON (SBG) — Lawmakers had their first opportunity to hold members of the Biden administration accountable for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan when members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee question Secretary of State Anthony Blinken Monday afternoon. It was the beginning of a series of congressional hearings to investigate America’s longest war. Blinken is scheduled to Read More…

Boots on the ground in Iowa. Accelerated fundraising. More national media interviews. A flood of new press statements. A rise in attack ads on the web. With a flurry of activity from his main political committee and hints dropped in private conversations with confidantes and advisers, Donald Trump is signaling a heightened interest in reclaiming Read More…

President Joe Biden on Thursday slammed a Supreme Court decision that allowed one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country to take effect in Texas. Calling the law an “unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional rights,” Biden promised a “whole-of-government effort” to fight the ruling. The law, which went into effect Wednesday, bans abortions conducted after Read More…

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm earlier this week chartered a military jet to attend a diplomatic summit in Ukraine as the Pentagon struggled to evacuate Americans and allies from Afghanistan with limited time and operational resources, sources told the Washington Free Beacon. Granholm’s military flight took place amid the United States’ frantic effort to airlift tens Read More…

Democratic lawmakers pleaded with Biden administration officials on Tuesday to ignore an Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, arguing that it would be nearly impossible to evacuate all American citizens and Afghan allies from the country before that date. During a classified briefing with President Joe Biden’s national security deputies, there Read More…

In the giddy early hours of his landslide victory, California’s governor-elect struck a tone that signaled the grandiosity of his ambitions. “The sun is rising in the west, and the arc of history is bending in our direction,” Gavin Newsom told jubilant supporters on election night in November 2018. There was some basis for a progressive Read More…

Hours before he officially left office, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo granted clemency to six people, including convicted murderers. Cuomo commuted the sentences of convicted murderers Greg Mingo, Robert Ehrenberg, Ulysses Boyd, and Paul Clark. He also referred David Gilbert, who was convicted of murder and robbery in 1983, to the parole board for possible release. READ Read More…

CLEVELAND — Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland investment banker running for the Republican nomination in Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, is planning to spend $10 million on television and radio advertising over the next nine months. The large figure of reserved airtime stands out as millions of dollars begins pouring in to the competitive GOP primary to Read More…

Activists gathered at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) home to demand her eviction in jest. While organizing Saturday in conjunction with Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-Mo.) protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, activists demanded a congressional session to extend the eviction moratorium. The notice claims because of rising COVID case counts, people should be Read More…

Joe Manchin strongly signaled in 2018 that his brutal reelection campaign that year was his last. Now, as he marshals the entire Senate in his centrist direction, he’s not so sure he’ll call it quits. The West Virginia Democrat is steadily padding his campaign coffers, raising $1.6 million in the first six months this year Read More…

One of the Texas Democrats who fled the state to protest a GOP-backed voter ID bill promoted an event that required park cleanup volunteers to provide multiple proofs of identification—standards the lawmakers have declared onerous and racist. When state representative Erin Zwiener helped organize a neighborhood cleanup in Kyle, Texas, on September 19, 2020, she Read More…

(CNN)Loretta Smith and Wesley Hunt are members of different parties, separated by both distance and policy. And yet, Smith, an Oregon Democrat, and Hunt, a Texas Republican, find themselves in similar positions headed into the 2022 midterms: Both have announced plans to run for Congress, but neither know what the district they plan to run Read More…

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, won big on Alphabet Inc. stock and added bets on Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. in the weeks leading up to the House Judiciary Committee’s vote on antitrust legislation that seeks to severely limit how these companies organize and offer their products. In a financial disclosure signed by Nancy Pelosi July 2, her husband reported exercising call Read More…

Nearly six months into President Joe Biden’s administration, Wall Street remains divided over the likelihood, and impact of, one of the Democrat’s key campaign promises: higher taxes. While the president and his Cabinet have made progress in persuading foreign partners to back a global minimum corporate tax rate, the Biden team does not appear any closer to passing Read More…

LEESBURG, Va.—Before Covid-19 forced its students into online classes, Loudoun County’s bimonthly school board meetings were often dry exercises in bureaucratic wrangling: Haggling over AP textbook availability and public construction projects. Poring over budget proposals for custodial supplies and debating about whether to renew the contract for a company supplying milk to cafeterias. Only a handful of parents showed up Read More…

Former President Donald Trump, who has complained about censorship by social media giants, filed class-action lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Why it matters: It’s the latest escalation in Trump’s yearslong battle with Twitter and Facebook over free speech and censorship. Trump is completely banned from Twitter and is banned from Facebook for another Read More…

A federal judge in Manhattan tossed an indictment against a Bronx shooting suspect because of a lack of racial diversity in the White Plains grand jury pool — the first such ruling since city cases were moved to the suburban county amid the pandemic. Judge Analisa Torres sided with defendant William Scott, who had argued that Read More…

Jason Rochester tried everything he could to persuade the Trump administration to allow his wife Cecilia, who is Mexican, to come back to their home in the United States. A truck driver from Georgia, Rochester wanted to fix his wife’s undocumented immigration status and put her on track to become an American citizen, like him Read More…

Vice President Kamala Harris finally visited the southern border, three months after being put in charge of solving the immigration crisis. In that time, more than half-a-million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the southern border. Upon arriving in El Paso on Friday, the vice president continued to attack journalists for asking questions about why she Read More…

Several House Republicans say one of the first orders of business if they regain a majority in 2022 will be to take down the security barrier surrounding the Capitol. The massive fence, erected after rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, remains standing. Ten members of Congress told the Washington Free Beacon that the barricade serves no purpose, Read More…

Corrected 12:08 P.M. | Two key senators want travel records of Supreme Court justices as part of a broader congressional look at financial disclosure standards for the receipt of gifts, travel and other financial gains by senior government officials. Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals Service Read More…

WASHINGTON — New focus groups conducted by a prominent Democratic pollster warn that many voters “have trouble describing a clear positive vision of what the Democratic Party stands for.” The study of swing voters and liberal “surge” voters in competitive districts, led by Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners and requested by the Congressional Progressive Read More…

Former President Donald Trump announced Monday that he will go on a “history tour” to discuss his presidency for paying customers at arenas in Florida and Texas in December. Mr. Trump will attend four events with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in a series of live discussions to address “exactly how things were accomplished, as well as challenges, both good and bad,” Read More…

Democratic congresswoman Marie Newman (Ill.) promised a six-figure, taxpayer-funded job to a local activist that he says was a bribe to keep him out of a tight primary race—an apparent violation of federal law. Columbia College Chicago adjunct professor and Palestinian activist Iymen Chehade sued Newman in January for breach of contract. Included in the Read More…

This summer will be the furthest thing from a vacation for congressional Democrats. President Joe Biden’s party is gearing up to sprint through Washington’s sweltering season, trying to squeeze through a long list of top legislative priorities in barely two months. With Biden’s sprawling infrastructure plan stuck in bipartisan talks, a voting rights bill mired Read More…

Lansing — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an apology Sunday after a photo emerged showing her at a restaurant with 12 other people gathered around tables pushed together in violation of her health department’s current epidemic order. The May 15 order from the state Department of Health and Human Services says no more than six people Read More…