PoliticsAxiosPence breaks silence to condemn Democrats' sweeping voting reform bill
In some of his most extensive remarks since Jan. 6, former Vice President Mike Pence wrote an op-ed Wednesday condemning House Democrats' sweeping election and anti-corruption proposal as an "unconstitutional power grab" by "leftists." Why it matters: Pence has largely stayed quiet since the Capitol insurrection, during which rioters were heard chanting "hang Mike Pence" after former President Trump promoted the claim that the vice president could block the certification of the Electoral College. The big picture: Writing in The Daily Signal, Pence repeated dubious claims that the 2020 election was "marked by significant voting irregularities."
PoliticsThe WeekWhite House withdraws nomination of Neera Tanden as OMB chief
The White House announced on Tuesday evening it withdrew the nomination of Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The White House also released a letter from Tanden, who wrote that she appreciated Biden's support, but it "now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities." Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, faced criticism from Republican senators who accused her of having made "thousands of negative public statements" about people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
PoliticsReutersFormer Trump Attorney General Sessions regrets migrant family separations
Jeff Sessions, the top official behind former President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" border strategy, says it was "unfortunate" that migrant children and parents were not reunited quickly after being split apart at the U.S.-Mexico border. Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the border under the 2018 Trump policy, which charged parents with federal immigration offenses and sent them to jails, while children were labeled "unaccompanied" and placed in shelters. In a phone interview on Tuesday, Sessions defended the prosecutions, saying a person traveling with a child "shouldn't be given immunity."
PoliticsAxiosCNN: Pentagon watchdog says Ronny Jackson drank on duty and harassed staff
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) allegedly made "sexual and denigrating" comments about a female staffer, drank alcohol and took sleeping medication while working as White House physician, according to an official report obtained by CNN Tuesday night. The big picture: The Department of Defense inspector general's report stems from a years-long investigation into allegations against Jackson of alcohol abuse and overprescription of medication, which Jackson has called "false and fabricated." Of note: The DoD report was based on White House documents and interviews with 78 witnesses and covers his time as White House physician during the Obama and Trump administrations, per CNN.
BusinessAssociated PressWith sale of the Venetian, Las Vegas Sands exits the Strip
Las Vegas Sands is selling the iconic Venetian casino resort and its Sands Expo and Convention Center for $6.25 billion, withdrawing from gambling operations on the Las Vegas Strip after changing the nature of the casino business there and just about everywhere else. The name of the Venetian, the expo center as well as the Palazzo, the Sands' luxury casino and resort that is part of the same complex, will remain, and the company's headquarters will stay in Las Vegas. Under Adelson, the company's focus turned to Asia years ago, where revenue eventually outpaced even the operations on the Las Vegas Strip.
BusinessReutersOPEC oil has advantage over U.S. shale during pandemic recovery
The once-brash U.S. shale industry, which spent profusely in recent years to grab market share, is now focused on preserving cash, putting it at a disadvantage to low-cost OPEC producers as the global economy begins to gear up again. Prior to the pandemic-induced downturn, OPEC countries led by Saudi Arabia restrained their production, eager to bolster prices to fund national budgets dependent on oil revenue. Shale drillers took advantage, boosting U.S. output to a record 13 million barrels a day.
PoliticsThe IndependentBiden calls Mexican president an ‘equal’ partner amid surge in border crossings
And while Mr Biden has kept Mr Trump's policy in place to send new migrants back to Mexico due to concerns about Covid spread, the new president has already begun rolling back other Trump-era policies that hardened the border against refugees and other migrants seeking opportunities or safe haven in the US. The Biden administration has ended Mr Trump's so-called Remain in Mexico programme that forced more than 70,000 asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while their cases wound their way through immigration courts. Thousands of those enrollees have now crossed into the US under the Biden administration's supervision.
WorldReutersSouth African scientists find antibodies from variant may offer cross-protection
Research by South African scientists suggests that antibodies triggered by exposure to the country's dominant coronavirus variant can prevent infection by other variants, the scientists said on Wednesday. The findings in laboratory studies offer hope that COVID-19 vaccines based on the 501Y.V2 variant first identified late last year could protect against multiple variants circulating in different parts of the world. The more contagious variant drove a second wave of infections in South Africa that peaked in January and is believed to have spread to many other countries in Africa and other continents.
BusinessReutersU.S. budget airlines plot pandemic breakthrough
The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the global travel landscape and U.S. no-frills carriers are pouncing. As legacy airlines shrink to contain costs, budget carriers Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Travel and privately-owned Frontier Airlines are resuming pilot hiring and expanding networks to seize turf dominated by larger rivals. The three airlines' combined U.S. market share, which barely topped 10% before the pandemic, could grow by 10 percentage points this year alone, said René Armas Maes of UK-based consultancy MIDAS Aviation.
WorldAssociated PressUS sanctions Russian officials over nerve-agent attack
The Biden administration sanctioned seven mid-level and senior Russian officials on Tuesday, along with more than a dozen government entities, over a nearly fatal nerve-agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent jailing. The measures, emphasizing the use of the Russian nerve agent as a banned chemical weapon, marked the Biden administration's first sanctions against associates of President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader was a favorite of former President Donald Trump even during covert Russian hacking and social media campaigns aimed at destabilizing the U.S. The government officials included at least four whom Navalny's supporters had directly asked the West to ...
PoliticsThe IndependentWhat happened to the NRA, and what will become of it now?
Since the late 20th century, only abortion and immigration have been as consistently contentious, divisive and difficult to legislate around – but neither has been as influenced by a single institution as the gun issue has by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Whether framed as gun rights, or gun safety, or gun control, Democratic efforts to keep America safe while staying within the bounds of the Constitution's second amendment have foundered time and again in the face of intense campaigning by the NRA, a lobby group of astonishing power that has long mastered multi-million-dollar politics, and which has exerted remarkable power over the Republican Party platform in particular. With millions of paying members, the association has been led since the early 1990s by Wayne LaPierre, a reliable presence at national Republican Party events and a true hardliner when it comes to firearms-related rhetoric.
PoliticsArchitectural DigestHouse Call: Cue the Waterworks and Welcome to March
Zoë's newsletter comes to a web page near you, and the theme of the day is damp Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
U.S.Fort Worth Star-Telegram‘Morally compromised.’ Why one archdiocese urges Catholics to avoid newest COVID vaccine
The Archdiocese of New Orleans has advised Catholics against receiving the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, calling the one-dose shot “morally compromised. In a statement Friday, the religious organization said the new vaccine should be avoided due to its link to an “abortion-derived cell line” used in the vaccine's development and production phases. But the available vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are “morally acceptable,” the archdiocese wrote, because only some lab testing utilized stem cells from aborted fetuses, making their connection to abortion “extremely remote.
PoliticsBusiness Insider10 hours in Cancún hurt Ted Cruz's job approval more than when he tried to flip the presidential election
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz drew national ire after he attempted to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, but according to a new poll from Morning Consult, his overall job approval from Texans was hurt far more when he vacationed in Cancún during a winter storm that left much of Texas without power or water for days. According to polling conducted between February 18-28, Cruz's net approval rating dropped from +6 to -5 in the weeks following his Cancún excursion. A net approval rating is calculated by subtracting the share of disapproving Texan voters from the share of voters that approve of Cruz.
PoliticsThe IndependentCreator of CPAC golden Trump statue admits it was made in China, after saying Mexico
The golden Donald Trump statue that appeared at last week's conference for the country's conservatives was actually made in China — rather than Mexico — the creator reportedly admitted. Artist Tommy Zegan told reporters last week that the six foot statue of the former US president was assembled in Mexico — a country routinely belittled by Mr Trump. It immediately went viral after it was wheeled into the hall at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida, for last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where Mr Trump delivered an address on Sunday.
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Kayleigh McEnany says she wished Biden press secretary Jen Psaki well on way out of White House
Part two of former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's sit-down with Fox News' Harris Faulkner on 'The Faulkner Focus.
PoliticsINSIDERCrossFit condemns Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for 'loathsome and dangerous lies'
Fitness brand CrossFit, a staple of Marjorie Taylor Greene's political brand, is distancing from the Republican. A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company is against Greene's conspiracy theories. CrossFit's statement comes after the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments.
U.S.The GuardianIce reached a new low: using utility bills to hunt undocumented immigrants
The startling truth is that signing up for even basic utilities in this country has turned into a gamble for many people, particularly undocumented immigrants. Last week, the Washington Post revealed that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has paid tens of millions of dollars since 2017 for access to a private database that contains more than “400m names, addresses and service records from more than 80 utility companies covering all the staples of modern life, including water, gas and electricity, and phone, internet and cable TV”. The information has been mined by Ice, the Post reported, for immigration surveillance and enforcement operations.
PoliticsThe Independent5,000 National Guard troops remain in DC amid QAnon frenzy that Trump will be inaugurated again this week
Nearly 5,000 National Guard troops are in Washington, DC this week for an inauguration that won't happen. According to Rep. Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, this has led to online chatter about storming the Capitol a second time. “Some of these people have figured out that apparently 75 years ago, the president used to be inaugurated on 4 March,” Smith said during a hearing last month with Department of Defense officials.
WorldThe TelegraphMeghan wore earrings gifted by Prince Salman after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered
The Duchess of Sussex wore earrings during a royal tour which were a gift from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia who is accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Chopard earrings worn by the Duchess at a formal dinner in Fiji in October 2018 during a royal tour of New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga were a wedding gift from the crown prince according to The Times. Kensington Palace was reportedly instructed to brief the media that the chandelier earrings were “borrowed” and this was reported by outlets covering the engagement.
PoliticsBusiness Insider10 Senate Democrats tell Biden to implement recurring stimulus checks after $1.9 trillion bill is passed
Ten US senators are calling for President Joe Biden to support regular direct payments. A group of senior Democrats are calling for President Joe Biden to support regular direct payments to low-income Americans while the US economy recovers from the pandemic. Insider obtained a copy of the letter that's being sent to the White House, led by Democrats chairing key economic committees in the Senate.
LifestyleUSA TODAYWhich countries welcome American vacationers – and which are safest to visit?
Countries have begun vaccinating citizens against COVID-19, but that doesn't mean they're letting their guard down – or opening their borders – just yet, especially after a deadly winter and the emergence of variants of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. "With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variants spreading, this isn't the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Jan. 25 at a briefing, explaining the justification for President Joe Biden reinstating travel restrictions that had been lifted by outgoing President Donald Trump. After nearly a year of working from home and enduring lockdowns and travel restrictions, some Americans are eager to use their passports, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advice against travel.
CelebrityAssociated PressBunny Wailer, reggae luminary, dies in Jamaica at age 73
Wailer, a baritone singer whose birth name is Neville Livingston, formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh when they lived in a slum in the capital of Kingston. They catapulted to international fame with the album, “Catch a Fire and also helped popularize Rastafarian culture among better-off Jamaicans starting in the 1970s. Jah-B was a vanguard, always pushing the boundaries of expression, whether in song, in style or in spoken word,” said Brian Paul Welsh, a local reggae musician known as Blvk H3ro.
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WH defends not punishing Saudi Crown Prince
The White House is defending its decision not to sanction or punish Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following a U.S. intelligence report implicating him in the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (March 1)
PoliticsINSIDERA Palm Beach mansion owned by the Trump family just hit the market for $49 million, and it's right across the street from Mar-a-Lago
A mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, that's owned by the Trump family just hit the market for $49 million, Bloomberg reported. The 10,455-square-foot home comes with a free membership to former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, which is right across the street, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. Known as Beachouse, the house was previously owned by Trump's sister Maryanne Trump Barry, public records show.
“How about we skip ‘he won’t win’ cycle and not do 2016 all over again. Trump can absolutely win another presidential election.”
“With independents deserting him, there is simply no path for Trump to get back into the White House — except as a tourist.”
“They might as well cancel the 2024 primaries...because there is no way he can lose.”
“The next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump — whether or not he decides to run again.”
“Donald Trump will not be running for president again. He will, however, continue to tease the possibility of a 2024 run.”