Politics Now - USA

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden dance during the Comander-in-Chief's Inaugural Ball at the Walter Washington Convention Center January 21, 2013 in Washington, DC. WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden's newly formed inaugural committee will accept donations from individuals up to $500,000 and from corporations up to $1 million, a transition official told CNBC on Monday. The committee will bar any contributions from registered lobbyists, foreign agents and the fossil fuel industry. A newly created inaugural committee website released Monday initially limited online donations to $100,000. But a Biden transition official later clarified to CNBC that this figure reflected a limit set by the ActBlue fundraising platform that the inaugural committee is using for online donations, and not a limit set by the inaugural committee itself. The inaugural committee's ban on donations from lobbyists and the oil and gas industry represents a continuation of the Biden pres...

Former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs speaks to reporters in Arlington, Va., March 3, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Trump campaign lawyer Joe diGenova declared Monday that the Trump administration’s former cybersecurity chief deserves to be put to death for claiming that the presidential election was the “most secure” in the country’s history. President Trump fired Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, earlier this month after Krebs disputed Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Krebs found himself at odds with the president after he called the election the “most secure in United States history.” Advertisement “Anybody who thinks the election went well, like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot,” diGenova, who is also a former U.S. Attorney, said during an appearance on the Howie Carr show, broadcast...

All the key battleground states in the 2020 presidential election have now certified their election results, cementing President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump. The six battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin certified their results for Biden as of November 30. The canvassing and certification came under a national spotlight because of the efforts from Trump and his allies to challenge the election results in court and spread baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. All the key battleground states in the 2020 presidential race have now certified their election results, cementing President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Donald Trump. Biden won the Electoral College with 306 electoral votes, compared with 232 for Trump. The former vice president flipped five states that Trump won in 2016: the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, an...

The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) sent a letter last week to Representative-elect Lauren Boebert, R-Co., asking the QAnon sympathizer to disclose her campaign's fundraising ties to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx. Cruz's first donation came on the same day the senator asked the Department of Justice to investigate Netflix for alleged child pornography, a cause célèbre for QAnon adherents. Advertisement: The FEC's letter says Boebert failed to report the Cruz 20 for 20 Victory Fund PAC as a fundraising partner, even though two reported transfers appear to have come through joint fundraising efforts. Boebert and Cruz both reported the mid-September transfers, which dropped $136,250 in Boebert's campaign account. Federal rules require joint fundraising committees to disclose their partners. While Cruz's PAC listed the Boebert campaign in its initial filing this July, the gun-rights restaurateur and political novice apparently did not reciprocate despite updating her own campa...

(CNN) More than 940,000 mail-in ballots have been requested in Georgia for the January 5 runoff election that will decide which party controls the Senate, Gabriel Sterling, the state's voting systems implementation manager, said Monday. That includes 604,255 people who are eligible to receive mail-in ballots automatically, according to Sterling. For comparison, 1,322,529 absentee ballots were cast in November's general election, according to a release from the Georgia Secretary of State's office. Sterling said that 1,040 ballots have been returned so far, a "small trickle that we expect to get larger soon." Georgia voters are required to request absentee ballots again for the runoff, even if they voted absentee in November, except those over the age of 65, members of the military or physically disabled people who requested absentee ballots for the entire election cycle. Republicans are struggling to encourage voters to back incumbent Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffle...

Digital rights groups applauded the news Monday that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai—known for his efforts to destroy net neutrality and his fealty to corporate telecom interests—will resign his powerful post when President Donald Trump leaves office in January. "His callous attack on net neutrality and blatant coddling of Big Telecom monopolies sparked the largest cross-partisan online backlash in the modern era." —Evan Greer, Fight for the Future "Ajit Pai will go down in history as one of the most corrupt government officials of the century," Fight for the Future deputy director Evan Greer said in a statement. "His callous attack on net neutrality and blatant coddling of Big Telecom monopolies sparked the largest cross-partisan online backlash in the modern era. As he fades into the background, his smug demeanor and giant Reese's mug will become cautionary memes—reminding internet users what happens when we don't hold our government accountable." While Pa...

Georgia Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff launched a blistering attack on Donald Trump and suggested his visit would just bring Covid to the state. And Mr Ossoff branded Mr Trump “a disgraced president” who would only “intensify” the enthusiasm of Democratic voters in Georgia. "With respect to President Trump, I mean, is he bringing stimulus for families? Is he bringing relief for small businesses? Or is he just going to come down here and spread Covid-19?” said Mr Ossoff on MSNBC. Mr Trump and many members of his inner circle have already been diagnosed with coronavirus amid accusations they refused to take proper precautions against the spread of Covid. Georgia has already had more than 420,000 cases and at least 8,778 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Mr Ossoff faces a run-off election against Senator David Perdue in January, with polls putting them both at 49 per cent of the vote. Your daily US politics newsletter Sign up Already have an account? Log in here Update pre...

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Sunday falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had beaten President-elect Joe Biden to the punch when the transition team announced an all-female communications team. The Washington Post on Sunday reported that Biden had selected an "all-female White House press team," drawing complaints from the Trump administration. Advertisement: McEnany claimed on Twitter that Trump "already has an ALL FEMALE White House press team" as she accused the "completely DISCREDITED" Washington Post of revealing its "blinding propagandist Fake News proclivities." But many on Twitter noted that McEnany's deputies included Judd Deere and Brian Morgenstern. She claimed that Vice President Mike Pence also had an all-female team, but his press secretary is Devin O'Malley. "This is just such a weird and pointless thing to lie about," George Conway, a conservative critic of the president and husband of fo...

Millionaire Senator Kelly Loeffler was mocked for an ad claiming she knows what “it feels like waiting on that paycheck.” Ms Loeffler, who is fighting to retain her Georgia seat, is married to the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Jeffrey Sprecher. She is reportedly the wealthiest member of congress with a fortune estimated at between $800m and $1bn, according to Forbes. She was appointed to the senate seat in December 2019 by Georgia governor Brian Kemp after Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. Ms Loeffler finished second in the election last month and now faces a January run-off against Raphael Warnock. "It's so important to have Senator Loeffler in the Senate, especially right now. What we need more than ever is a business mind," said former deputy director of the Georgia Republican Party Janelle King, Your daily US politics newsletter Sign up Already have an account? Log in here Update preferences "We need someone who understands not just how to wr...

Wisconsin on Monday formally declared President-elect Joe Biden Joe BidenTrump rages against '60 Minutes' for interview with Krebs Cornyn spox: Neera Tanden has 'no chance' of being confirmed as Biden's OMB pick Five things to know about Georgia's Senate runoffs MORE the winner of the state's presidential contest following a partial recount. Biden won the Badger State by roughly 20,700 votes, according to Elections Commission Chairwoman Ann Jacobs (D), with Gov. Tony Evers Tony EversWisconsin police still searching for mall shooting suspect The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by the UAE Embassy in Washington, DC - Trump, Biden clash over transition holdup, pandemic plans Stocks close with losses as states, cities reimpose COVID-19 restrictions MORE (D) releasing a statement saying he had certified the results. “Today I carried out my duty to certify the November 3rd election, and as required by state and federal law, I've signed the Certificate of ...

Nor did Americans learn until a decade after his death that John F. Kennedy, a much less devoted family man than Life magazine let on, shared a mistress (sequentially if not concurrently) with the Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana, whom the CIA recruited in one of several harebrained plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. Then there’s Richard Nixon. Americans knew many shameful things about Nixon thanks to the Watergate investigation that prompted his resignation. But only after he left office did we learn, for instance, that Nixon ordered an aide to compile a list of Jews who worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics so he could demote some of them. Nixon represents the gold standard in postpresidential shockers. Decades after he left the Oval Office, gasp-inducing revelations from his White House tapes and other documents continue to stream forth. As recently as September, the Princeton political scientist Gary Bass revealed that the president who engineered a 1971 tilt in U.S. foreign policy...

Ivanka Trump should not expect a warm welcome back in New York after a string of “Not Wanted” posters appeared across Manhattan. Donald Trump’s daughter has faced fierce criticism for not preventing her father implementing a string of controversial policies, including child separation at the US border. Now the frontier-style signs have appeared in Ms Trump’s former hometown just weeks before her father is due to leave the White House. They are the work of the Good Liars comedy duo of Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler and mock among other things Ms Trump’s “fake posh” accent. Her husband, senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, also gets targeted and is referred to as fictional supernatural character Slender Man. Ms Trump and Mr Kushner are reportedly already thinking of avoiding a return to New York and have eyed relocating to either New Jersey or Florida in January. Your daily US politics newsletter Sign up Already have an account? Log in here Update preferences A former friend of Iv...

Federal Judge Advances Lawsuit Accusing Felix Sater of Laundering Loot Through Trump Properties A federal judge on Monday partially advanced a lawsuit accusing Russian mafia-tied businessman Felix Sater of laundering millions stolen from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank through Trump Organization properties. “In this case, Kazakhstan’s largest city and a Kazakhstani bank seek to recover millions of dollars in stolen funds from those who allegedly helped the culprits launder them,” U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan summarized in a 25-page opinion dismissing only two counts of a five-count complaint. “Felix Sater—the alleged ringleader of the money-laundering operation—along with his associate Daniel Ridloff and several business entities they control, move to dismiss.” Like Sater, Ridloff was also formerly associated with the Trump Organization. The lawsuit stems from allegations of the systematic looting of Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty and its bank in 2009. “The Court emphasizes that the Kazak...

Wisconsin confirmed Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump as the president promised to fight election results in court. All six key battleground states have now finalised their presidential election results, cementing Mr Biden’s status as the projected president-elect. The Wisconsin Election Commission determined Mr Biden’s win by about 20,700 votes a day after completing a partial recount, and just hours after Arizona also certified its result in favour of the Democrat. Mr Trump has vowed to file a lawsuit to overturn the results by attempting to disqualify up to 238,000 ballots, saying the Wisconsin recount was not about finding mistakes but finding people who voted illegally. The Trump campaign has a five-day window to seek a recount or file legal challenges appealing the result, which was characterized by the Election Commission as a “determination” rather than a “certification”. Republican commissioners wanted to delay finalization until after the Trump campaign had filed its laws...

mikeledray / Shutterstock The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on whether to federally decriminalize marijuana this week — an action that would be the biggest move toward marijuana legalization ever taken by Congress.According to a notice posted by the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, the vote for the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act, HR 3884, should come between Wednesday, Dec. 2 and Friday, Dec. 14."This floor vote represents the first Congressional roll call ever on the question of ending federal marijuana criminalization," NORML Political Director Justin Strekal said in a statement. "By advancing the MORE Act, the House of Representatives sends an unmistakable signal that America is ready to close the book marijuana prohibition and end the senseless oppression and fear that this failed policy wreaks on otherwise law-abiding citizens."He added, "Americans are ready to responsibl...

I wasted 90 minutes of my sorry existence Monday watching a live feed of Rudy Giuliani and company "testifying" before a rump committee of Arizona legislators on the subject of "election integrity." The pattern of the hearing was easily discerned: the legislators asked questions about stuff they don't remotely understand, an "expert" baffled them with bullshit for a couple minutes, then they moved to the next clueless legislator. This made me dumber by the second. And the punchline was that, in the middle of all this, Arizona certified its election results. So, basically, the rest of the hearing was meant to construct an ongoing, slow-acting poison of a narrative concerning the basic unreliability of American elections. This is a not-inconsiderable problem going forward. The country can't survive in good health if between 43 and 45 percent of the electorate lives in a weird Dungeons and Dragons political reality that they have been encouraged to en...

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the unelected multimillionaire Georgia Republican senator facing a critical runoff election this January which will determine control of the U.S. Senate, released an ad over the weekend claiming that she knows "how it feels" to wait on a paycheck. "It's so important to have Senator Loeffler in the Senate, especially right now. What we need more than ever is a business mind," Janelle King, who is billed as the founder of Speak Georgia but is also the former deputy director of the Georgia Republican Party, says in the ad. "We need someone who understands not just how to write paychecks and sign paychecks but how it feels like waiting on that paycheck." Advertisement: Loeffler, who has held executive positions for well more than a decade at her husband's company, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — which owns the New York Stock Exchange, among other markets — is worth between $800 million and $1 billion, according to Forbes. That ma...

Arizona officials certified the state’s voting results from the 2020 presidential election, effectively sealing president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani held a meeting with Republican state lawmakers at a hotel in Phoenix to allege voter fraud and amplify baseless conspiracies while urging officials that their “political career is worth losing if you can save the right to vote in America.” Certifying the results with Governor Doug Doucey and state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, both Republicans, Arizona secretary of state Katie Hobbs said that the election was “conducted with transparency, accuracy and fairness in accordance with Arizona’s laws and election procedures – despite numerous unfounded claims to the contrary.” Amid a spurious legal bid to overturn the results of the election, Mr Giuliani and the president’s attorneys – who held a “hearing” with Republican officials in Pennsylvania last week – continued to air unfound...

This couldn’t come at a worse time for the party. Republicans are trying to rally their loyalists to vote Jan. 5 in two Senate runoff races that will decide whether Democrats have full governing control in Washington next year or Republicans can block some of their policies. AD But almost all the establishment Republican figures in Georgia or campaigning there have recently faced accusations from some voters that they’re not Trumpian enough for not wading completely into the president’s baseless claims that the election was stolen from him. Recent examples include: AD Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the Republican incumbents trying to hold on to their seats in the January runoff, have not yet acknowledged that Trump lost the election. But they hint at it in their campaigning, because it’s powerful to frame their candidacies as firewalls to Democratic rule. But some engaged Republican voters don’t seem to want to even think about the Senate races until they find a way to win the ...

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post were out over the holiday with deep dives into the post-election moves by Donald Trump and various players around the country as the president refuses to concede and one lawsuit after another is rejected by the courts. They are harrowing tales of a president (whom one source in the Post describes as "Mad King George, muttering 'I won, I won, I won'") and a group of lower-level Republicans and judges around the country who stepped into the breach to stop him from overturning the election results. The Post's narrative takes us down the White House rabbit hole to show just how demented Trump has been ever since election night, when it became clear that his strategy to take advantage of the "red mirage" wasn't working. You may recall that Republicans had successfully kept certain swing states from counting mail-in ballots until the day of the election, the idea being that an early lead from in-person votes ...

New York (CNN Business) President Donald Trump repeatedly warned Americans that if they failed to reelect him, the stock market would implode . In reality, the opposite happened. Between August and October alone, Trump sent six tweets saying markets would "crash" if Joe Biden were elected , using a word presidents typically avoid. "The Dow Jones Industrial just closed above 29,000! You are so lucky to have me as your President," Trump wrote on September 2 . "With Joe Hiden' it would crash." Yet no post-election meltdown emerged. If anything, markets melted up as nightmare election scenarios were avoided and investors celebrated coronavirus vaccine breakthroughs from Pfizer and Moderna The S&P 500 notched its best election week rally since 1932. And despite a sharp pullback Monday, the Dow is up nearly 12% in November, on track for its best month since January 1987. "In terms of Biden being bad for the market, we can already see the opposite is...

LISTEN TO ARTICLE 3:41 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg Arizona certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state on Monday, dealing the latest blow to President Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn his defeat and leaving Wisconsin as the last contested battleground state to formalize its election result. Biden defeated Trump by 10,457 votes in Arizona, according to the official results certified by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in Phoenix. The process was overseen by Governor Doug Ducey, Attorney General Mark Brnovich and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel. The certification confirms that Biden won the state and triggers the appointment of electors who will cast Arizona’s 11 Electoral College votes for Biden when they meet on Dec. 14, unless a court intervenes. It’s yet another loss in efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his election defeat by challenging the results in ...

Karine Jean-Pierre is "profoundly honoured" to be Joe Biden's deputy press secretary (Jim Spellman/Getty) Joe Biden has named Karine Jean-Pierre, a proud Black lesbian immigrant, as his deputy White House press secretary. The political heavyweight served as Kamala Harris’ chief of staff during the Biden-Harris campaign and is now the first out lesbian and first Black woman to hold the key media-facing role. She is among four women of colour filling the seven top communications jobs in the White House – and for the first time in history, the entire communications team will be all-female. “Taken together, the plans demonstrate the president-elect’s determination to bring in a more diverse leadership team than what Washington has seen in the past,” according to the Washington Post. “The decisions also reflect the reality that women powered Joe Biden’s victory via, among other contributions, record activism and political donations.” Jean-Pierre, 43, said she was “profoundly h...

Despite losing the general election, President Donald Trump's campaign is seeking donations from voters. The Make America Great Again Committee donation page says that 75% of every contribution is routed to Trump's newly established leadership PAC, Save America. These funds could be used to finance the president's life after he leaves office or even go toward a 2024 presidential bid. "This money could easily — and legally — end up in his own pocket in the coming years," the vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause told CNN. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election but continues to bombard voters with repeated texts and emails seeking donations for his efforts to overturn the results. "Please contribute $5 RIGHT NOW to the Election Defense Fund to stop the Radical Left from STEALING this Election," one campaign email said on Tuesday. However, it remains unknown exactl...

Every time you think you have a grasp of how preposterous the Trump team’s election lawsuits are, another one comes out, dumber and more conspiracy-filled than the last. The Pennsylvania monstrosity that was submitted by Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and the Four Seasons Total Litigation supporting cast was terrible. It made, according to a federal appeals court ruling, “vague and conclusory” allegations about alleged misconduct, tried to get the court to do things that would violate the U.S. Constitution, and had, in the court’s words, “no merit.” Their case was such complete nonsense that two courts and four judges decided it was too dumb to fix. You want that to be the bottom. You want the lawsuit that the president’s legal team lost, twice, for literally every reason it’s possible to lose the case to be the most preposterous election lawsuit we’re going to see this year. You go to bed Wednesday night hoping that it was. And you wake up disappointed Thursday morning because while you ...

Judge Amy Coney Barrett listens as she is nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in the Rose Garden of the White House on Sept. 26. Olivier Douliery/Getty Images Critics of conservative originalism have charged that it is just a fancy word used to reach conservative results and sanction discrimination. The Supreme Court’s blockbuster census case, Trump v. New York, which will be argued on Monday, will be a major test of whether there is a principled core to conservative originalism. It will help show whether the court’s conservatives are willing to follow the Constitution’s text and history where it leads. Advertisement Throughout his presidency, President Donald Trump has flouted the parts of the Constitution he does not like. Trump v. New York involves President Trump’s decision to disregard the federal government’s constitutional obligation to count all persons residing in the United States in apportioning representatives for Congress. On July 21, President Trump a...