U.S. News
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An upbeat President Joe Biden says a deal to resolve the government’s debt ceiling crisis seems “very close." He spoke late Friday, shortly after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pushed the deadline for a potentially catastrophic default back to June 5. That announcement seemed likely to drag negotiations between the White House and Republicans into another frustrating week. House Republicans led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent the day negotiating by phone and computers with the White House. One Republican negotiator, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, called Biden’s comments “a hopeful sign” but also cautioned that there’s still “sticky points” impeding a final agreement.
May 26, 2023 -
The Air Force fighter pilot tapped to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff got his call sign by ejecting from a burning F-16 fighter jet high above the Florida Everglades and falling into the watery sludge below. It was January 1991, and then-Capt. CQ Brown Jr. had just enough time in his parachute above alligator-full wetlands. He landed in the muck, which coated his body. That's how the man nominated to be the country’s next top military officer got his call sign: “Swamp Thing.” President Joe Biden announced he was nominating Brown for the chairman's job during a Rose Garden event on Thursday.
May 25, 2023 -
Many residents of Guam are without power and utilities after Typhoon Mawar tore through the remote U.S. Pacific territory and ripped roofs off homes, flipped vehicles and shredded trees. The governor's office says there were minor injuries reported but no fatalities. She declared the “all clear” Thursday evening. The typhoon is the strongest to hit the territory of roughly 150,000 people since 2002. It briefly made landfall Wednesday night as a Category 4 storm. The island’s international airport flooded and the swirling typhoon churned up a storm surge and waves that crashed through coastal reefs and flooded homes. An island meteorologist said Thursday that “what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks.”
May 25, 2023 -
Powerful Typhoon Mawar has smashed the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, lashing the island with wind and rain, tearing down trees, walls and power lines, flipping cars and pushing a dangerous storm surge ashore. The typhoon is the strongest to hit the territory of roughly 150,000 people since 2002. It briefly made landfall Wednesday night as a Category 4 storm, according to the National Weather Service. Videos posted on social media showed fallen trees, a flipped pickup truck, solar panels flying through the air, and storm surge and waves crashing through coastal reefs. An island meteorologist says the aftermath “looks like toothpicks.”
May 24, 2023 -
House Republicans passed a resolution on Wednesday that would overturn President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plan, but the measure faces an uncertain path in the Senate, and the White House has vowed to veto it. It adds to the GOP’s ongoing attack on Biden’s one-time student loan cancellation, which was halted in November in response to lawsuits from conservative opponents. The Supreme Court is now weighing the plan after hearing arguments in February. Biden’s plan would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loans for 43 million Americans. About 26 million had applied for the relief before federal courts intervened.
May 24, 2023 -
There's a new leader at America's National Archives. President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Archives was confirmed Wednesday after a partisan battle over the agency’s role in the investigation into sensitive documents seized at Donald Trump’s Florida home. The Senate confirmed Colleen Shogan as archivist in a 52-45 vote. Republicans mostly opposed her nomination and sought to portray the National Archives as weaponized against Trump. Shogan stressed that she has not been involved in the ongoing investigations into Trump’s handling of presidential records and promised she won't bring a partisan mindset to the job.
May 10, 2023 Lawmakers grilled U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram over millions of dollars in no-bid contracts that are the subject of a watchdog probe into whether the agency improperly hired some of her past associates. Mostly Republicans pressed her about an Associated Press report that the DEA spent $4.7 million on “strategic planning and communication” and other contracts to hire people Milgram knew from her days as New Jersey’s attorney general and as a law professor — at costs far exceeding pay for government officials. Milgram declined to comment, saying she didn't want to interfere with the inspector general's probe.
April 27, 2023-
Iranian hackers broke into to a system used by a U.S. municipal government to publish election results in 2020 but were discovered by cyber soldiers operating abroad and kicked out before an attack could be launched, according to U.S. military and cybersecurity officials. The system involved in the previously undisclosed breach was not for casting or counting ballots, but rather one that was used to report unofficial election results on a public website. The breach was revealed during a presentation Monday at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, which is focused on cybersecurity. Officials did not identify the municipality targeted.
April 25, 2023 -
One of the most important munitions of the Ukraine war comes from a historic factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Steel rods are brought in by train to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant to be forged into the artillery shells Kyiv can’t get enough of. The plant is at the vanguard of a multibillion-dollar Pentagon plan to modernize and accelerate its production of ammunition and equipment. It is one of just two sites in the U.S. that make the steel bodies for the 155 mm howitzer rounds that the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine. The lack of 155 mm shells has alarmed U.S. military planners, who see it as a critical shortage.
April 23, 2023 -
A senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary committee has demanded that U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram address allegations of improper hiring and contracting of her past associates. The request Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa follows an investigation by The Associated Press finding that a federal watchdog is investigating whether strict federal rules on no-bid contracting and hiring may have been violated to channel DEA work to Milgram’s associates. The scrutiny by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General comes as the DEA is struggling with repeated revelations of agent misconduct and a fentanyl crisis claiming more than 100,000 overdose deaths a year.
April 20, 2023 -
A federal watchdog is investigating whether the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration under chief Anne Milgram improperly awarded millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to hire her past associates. Among the spending under scrutiny by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is $4.7 million for “strategic planning and communication” and other contracts that were used to hire people Milgram knew from her days as New Jersey’s attorney general and as a New York University law professor – at costs far exceeding pay for government officials. DEA declined to comment specifically but said in a statement it has acted to “set a new vision.”
April 19, 2023 -
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is back at work in the U.S. Capitol, almost six weeks after a fall at a Washington-area hotel and undergoing extended treatment for a concussion. The 81-year-old Kentucky Republican has been recovering at home since he was released from a rehabilitation facility March 25. He fell after attending an event earlier that month, injuring his head and fracturing a rib. On Monday he criticized President Joe Biden for not doing enough to negotiate on the nation’s debt ceiling and thanked his colleagues for their well-wishes. He joked that "this wasn’t the first time that being hard-headed has served me very well.”
April 17, 2023 -
The Supreme Court is allowing challenges to the structure of two federal agencies to go forward in federal court. The high court ruled unanimously Friday to allow challenges to the structures of the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission to go forward in federal court. In one case, the FTC had brought an enforcement action against Axon Enterprise, the Arizona-based company best known for developing the Taser, arguing that its purchase of its competitor Vievu for approximately $13 million was improper. The other case involved an SEC enforcement action against Michelle Cochran, a certified public accountant. Axon and Cochran responded by suing in federal court and arguing that the structure of the FTC and SEC respectively are unconstitutional.
April 14, 2023 The Supreme Court is allowing a roughly $6 billion legal settlement to go forward that will cancel student loans for hundreds of thousands of borrowers who say they were misled by their schools. The justices didn't comment in rejecting an emergency plea from Everglades College, Lincoln Educational Services Corp. and American National University. The schools had argued they were unfairly included on a list of more than 150 institutions, most of them for-profit, that were linked with alleged misconduct. The justices’ action comes as the high court is weighing what to do with the Biden administration’s plan to wipe away $400 billion in student debt held by more than 40 million people.
April 13, 2023Federal officials say they have asked the FBI to consider criminal charges against more than 250 unruly airline passengers since late 2021. The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday that 17 of those cases have been referred to the FBI in the first three months of this year. That's a slower pace, and it seems tied to a decline in passengers acting up on planes since a judge struck down the requirement for passengers to wear masks. The FAA can levy civil fines for misbehaving on planes, but it has to ask the FBI to file criminal charges in the most serious cases.
April 13, 2023