A reflection on the year 2020

A reflection on the year 2020

Latest Stories

  • NBA player turned conspiracy theorist stages one-man pro-Trump protest amid inaugural security prepared for thousands

    The extra security measures appeared to have kept many protesters away from the Capitol and inaugural activities, but not one man.

  • Kamala Harris won't be moving into vice president's residence immediately

    Vice presidents since Vice President Walter Mondale have been living in the residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.

  • Michigan official shows gun after public meeting criticism

    A county official in northern Michigan displayed a rifle during an online meeting in response to a citizen's comments about a far-right extremist group, drawing outrage from some local residents. Ron Clous, an elected member of the Grand Traverse County Board of Commissioners, was at home during the livestreamed meeting Wednesday, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported. During a public comment period, a local woman, Kelli MacIntash, criticized the board for allowing self-described members of the Proud Boys to speak at a commission meeting last year and urged commission Chairman Rob Hentschel to denounce them.

  • Commanding Officer of Navy Reserve Center Fired After Investigation

    Capt. Scott Moss, who led the NOSC in Knoxville, was relieved of command by Capt. Dale Maxey.

  • Voting to convict Trump would cost McConnell his Senate leadership, GOP faction warns

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is genuinely undecided on how he will vote in former President Donald Trump's second Senate impeachment trial, his close allies say, but a faction of Senate Republicans are warning him if he votes to convict, the backlash will be swift and severe, CNN reports. "If he does, I don't know if he can stay as leader," one senior GOP senator told CNN, portraying that as a sentiment shared by several of his colleagues. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he could not support McConnell if he voted against Trump.McConnell has publicly shifted against Trump since a pro-Trump mob ransacked Congress on Jan. 6. "The mob was fed lies," McConnell said Tuesday. "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people." McConnell is part of "a small but notable faction of high-profile Republicans are taking a stronger stance against Trump or distancing themselves from him," The Associated Press notes, but "Trump is expected to remain politically active, including trying to exact revenge by backing primary challenges against Republicans he believed scorned him in his final days," especially the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him."In the House, a group of Trump loyalists are seeking to strip Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney of her GOP leadership post for supporting impeachment," CNN reports, "a predicament some Republican senators privately believe could hound McConnell if he seeks to end Trump's political career."The logistics and timing of Trump's impeachment trial are up in the air, though multiple Capitol Hill sources tell Politico's Playbook team it could end up being as short as three days, barring Trump calling witnesses. In the end, CNN reports, "Republicans who know McConnell well believe he will take the temperature of the Senate GOP conference and ultimately make a decision based in part on the views of his colleagues and the mood of the country when it comes time to cast the key vote."More stories from theweek.com 7 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's White House exit Eli Lilly antibody drug 'significantly' reduces risk of COVID-19 in nursing homes, study shows Biden's team reportedly realized after inauguration that Trump really had no vaccine distribution plan

  • Michigan man accused of attacking police with hockey stick during Capitol riot

    Michael Joseph Foy was arrested Thursday thanks to an unwitting assist from his father, who chronicled his son's activities on Facebook.

  • US, UK Sign Agreement to Merge Forces for Historic Joint Carrier Deployment

    Marine F-35B Joint Strike Fighter aircraft and the Navy destroyer The Sullivans will deploy as part of the strike group.

  • Photos: How newspapers around the world covered Biden's inauguration

    The inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris was splashed across the front pages of newspapers in the United States and around the world on Thursday, a day after they were sworn into office.

  • Trump spends first night as a private citizen 'looking for lawyers for his impeachment trial'

    Donald Trump spent his first hours as a private citizen scrambling to find lawyers to represent him in his upcoming impeachment trial, as he settled into his new home at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. One of Mr Trump’s first calls after leaving office was to Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator and staunch ally, telling him he was now “looking for some lawyers” for the imminent Senate hearing. "[Trump] said, 'I really don't know the lay of the land here,' and he's looking for some lawyers," Mr Graham told Punchbowl News. "I'm trying to help him there, and he's just trying to put together a team." Mr Trump will not be drawing on his usual litigators: Rudy Giuliani, his longtime personal lawyer, is likely to step aside as he could be called as a witness, while attorneys who represented him at the first impeachment hearing have declined.

  • Tennessee state senator charged in 2nd fraud case

    Already facing allegations of stealing more than $600,000 in federal funds from a health care school she directed, a Tennessee state senator has been charged in a new fraud case, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday.

  • India's vaccine diplomacy in south Asia pushes back against China

    India will give millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine to South Asian countries in the next few weeks, government sources said on Thursday, drawing praise from its neighbours and pushing back against China's dominating presence in the region. Free shipments of AstraZeneca's vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world's biggest producer of vaccines, have begun arriving in the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

  • Trump is reportedly just going up to people and asking if they want a pardon

    President Trump has spent the last few days asking his friends, aides, and associates if they would like pardons — even those who are not facing any charges, a senior administration official told The Washington Post.In one case, the official said, Trump offered a pardon to a person who declined the chance at clemency, saying they weren't in any legal trouble and hadn't committed any crimes. "Trump's response was, 'Yeah, well, but you never know. They're going to come after us all. Maybe it's not a bad idea. Just let me know,'" the official recounted.Trump has taken a great interest in pardoning people, the Post reports, even calling families to personally let them know he granted a pardon. A person familiar with the matter told the Post that Trump was talked out of pardoning himself, family members, and controversial figures like Rudy Giuliani. An aide said there was also a brief discussion about possibly issuing pardons related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, but that idea went nowhere.While Trump has held a few ceremonial events in recent weeks, journalists have been kept away from the White House, largely because the president is "just not in a place where they would go well," one official told the Post. Trump is constantly flip-flopping, another administration official said, talking about his future but uncertain of where he will be. "He goes between, 'Well, I'm going to go to Florida and play golf, and life is honestly better,' and then in the next moment, it's like, 'But don't you think there's a chance to stay?'" the official said. Read more at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com Bernie Sanders steals the inauguration with his grumpy chic outfit Only a sprinkling of Trump supporters showed up at state capitols to protest Biden's inauguration QAnon believers are realizing their entire conspiracy was a hoax as Biden is sworn in

  • Pence moves out and Harris moves in: This is the official home of the Vice President

    Ms Harris is expected to move into the 128-year-old residence once a number of repairs have been made

  • Investigators probe whether automatic throttle malfunction caused Indonesian air crash

    Investigators in Indonesia are probing whether a malfunctioning automatic throttle could have brought down the Sriwijaya Airlines flight that nosedived into the Java Sea on January 9. A person familiar with the investigation told Bloomberg that the autothrottle was producing more thrust in one of the Boeing 737-500’s two engines than the other after the plane took off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport carrying 62 people. Unequal thrust can cause a plane to roll onto its side and descend abruptly and autothrottle malfunctions have previously caused incidents on the 737 and led to the Tarom airlines crash in Romania in 1995, which killed 60 people. The source said the device had been having problems on previous flights made by the aircraft. Nurcahyo Utomo, the lead investigator at Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, confirmed that a malfunctioning throttle was “one of the factors that we are looking at, but I can’t say at this point that it’s a factor for the crash or there was a problem with it." Earlier this month, officials investigating the tragedy were reported to be looking at a possible link to the 27-year-old plane’s prolonged grounding because of travel restrictions and reduced timetables during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Women are being hurt disproportionately by the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic

    Women around the world have borne a disproportionate brunt of the social and economic effects of COVID-19.Why it matters: Women in the U.S. and around the world already faced an unequal playing field before the pandemic. As countries prepare for the post-COVID-19 world, they need to take special care to ensure the virus doesn't permanently set back the cause of gender equality.Support safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.What's happening: The Center for Global Development (CGD), a think tank that focuses on poverty and inequality, is launching the COVID-19 Gender and Development Initiative, which will seek to fill in data gaps about the gendered effects of the pandemic.By the numbers: The early indications are dire. * Data from 26,000 businesses collected across 50 countries shows women were more likely to close their businesses than men because of the pandemic and consequent social distancing policies. * Female wage workers have been disproportionately forced into the informal sector or have been thrown out of work altogether. * According to the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity's "true unemployment" metric, 30.9% of American women were unemployed as of November — an increase from October, even as the overall unemployment rate fell.The disproportionate effects of containment measures on female-dominant sectors, the heavier role of women in child and elder care, and an uptick in domestic violence are all behind COVID-19's female recession, according to Megan O'Donnell, CGD's deputy director for gender."COVID-19 is not just a short-term health crisis. The economic effects of this crisis are going to far outlast the direct health effects for women."Megan O'DonnellThe bottom line: "We need to recognize that addressing gender inequality is not just a side issue," says O'Donnell. "It is critical to an effective recovery from COVID-19."Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.

  • Biden might succeed in legalizing millions of undocumented immigrants. Here’s why | Opinion

    Under the immigration bill that President Joe Biden is expected to send to Congress, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act, undocumented immigrants would be given an eight-year path to citizenship if they pass background checks and prove they have paid taxes.

  • AD100 Designer Monique Gibson Designs a Tribeca Aerie with High-Impact Views

    800 feet up in the sky, the Dreamy 6,000 square foot space offers panoramic views from the East River to the HudsonOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Trump reportedly extended 24-hour Secret Service protection to his 4 adult children

    One of former President Donald Trump's last acts in office was issuing a directive extending free Secret Service protection to his four adult children and two of their spouses for the next six months, three people with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post.It's not just his adult children benefiting — Trump also directed that former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and former National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien continue to receive Secret Service protection for six months, two people familiar with the matter told the Post. This 24-hour security, funded by taxpayer money, is expected to cost millions.Under federal law, only Trump, former first lady Melania Trump, and their 14-year-old son, Barron, are entitled to Secret Service protection now that they have left the White House; while Donald and Melania can receive protection for the rest of their lives, Barron is only entitled to it up until his 16th birthday.The Post notes that presidents have the ability to order Secret Service protection for anyone they want, but it is extremely unusual for an outgoing president to order this type of security for their children who are well into adulthood. It is also unclear if there is precedent for ordering security for former aides. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush requested security extensions for their daughters, who were in college when their presidencies ended. Once former President Barack Obama was out of office, his daughters — one in high school, the other on a gap year from college — received a short extension of security.During Trump's presidency, his adult children took more than 4,500 trips, including vacations and business travel for the Trump Organization, the Post reports. Taxpayers paid millions of dollars for Secret Service agents to accompany them on those jaunts.More stories from theweek.com 7 brutally funny cartoons about Trump's White House exit Eli Lilly antibody drug 'significantly' reduces risk of COVID-19 in nursing homes, study shows Biden's team reportedly realized after inauguration that Trump really had no vaccine distribution plan

  • Marine archeologists discover ancient shipwrecks off island in the Aegean

    Four shipwrecks, including one dating back to Roman times, have been discovered by marine archeologists off the Greek island of Kasos in the Aegean. Lying between Rhodes and Crete, the Dodecanese island was on a crucial trade route in antiquity. Inside the Roman-era shipwreck, divers found amphorae which originated from Spain and what is now Tunisia, the Greek culture ministry said. They would have been used to transport wine, olive oil and possibly garum – a pungent fish sauce that was much prized by the Romans. The ship has been lying on the seabed for nearly 2,000 years - it is believed to date back to the 2nd or 3rd century AD.

  • The Coolest New Automotive Technology at CES 2021

    Mercedes-Benz’s Hyperscreen, General Motors’ Bright Drop, and Jeep’s Electric Wrangler were among the unveils that turned headsOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest