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President-elect Donald Trump fawned over Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) after a recent meeting between the two, calling him a “fascinating man” who he “couldn’t be more impressed” by. CBS News reported late last week that Fetterman was set to become the first Democratic senator to meet Trump since his triumph in November’s presidential election. “I think that one, he’s the president, or he will be officially…and I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper,” said...

CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten said Monday on “News Central” that Americans don’t understand the connection between climate change and wildfires. Host John Berman said, “Just a few minutes ago, you heard FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell talking about the role that climate change has in helping create the conditions for these wildfires burning out of control, the most destructive in some ways that we’ve ever seen in and around Los Angeles. So how do Americans feel about climate change and the danger it poses? Do they feel the same way that they used to?” Enten said, “I mean,...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s response to the California wildfires in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” recorded Saturday, saying, “Mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.” Newsom appeared to be referring to Trump’s posts on Truth Social blasting Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass since the fires broke out Tuesday. In one post, the president-elect baselessly claimed Newsom had blocked a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California. “Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month,”...

Biden inherited a mess. He leaves the U.S. in far better shape, at home and abroad.It is easy to forget how desperate things were on Jan. 20, 2021, when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States.Just two weeks earlier, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to keep Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory. The nation was at the height of the coronavirus pandemic; in that month, 3,000 Americans died daily from covid-19. There were newly developed, lifesaving vaccines, thanks to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed...

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) met with key Democrats last month to make her case to help lead a committee that will be critical in countering President-elect Donald Trump, she faced sharp questions from members of her party. As Ocasio-Cortez lobbied the powerful Steering Committee that decides panel assignments, Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (D-California) pressed her on her past decisions to endorse primary challengers against Democratic incumbents. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), one of the incumbents Ocasio-Cortez tried to defeat, followed up by asking why Democrats should elevate her given her previous animosity toward her less-liberal colleagues, according to two...

Firefighters are battling multiple fast-growing wildfires in Los Angeles that have destroyed buildings and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. Almost 3,000 acres have burned in the city's Pacific Palisades neighborhood after a fire broke out on Tuesday morning. About 30,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Read more Fire photos show Palisades destruction—"Looks like Mars" Two more blazes broke out later on Tuesday. The Eaton Fire has since burned 1,000 acres in the hills above Altadena, prompting evacuation orders for parts of Altadena and Pasadena. The Hurst First has burned at...

Susan Wild is a Democrat ex-congresswoman from Pennsylvania who was defeated for re-election in November. She has every reason to be bitter about the Republican victories. So naturally, she fits perfectly on CNN. In today's episode of CNN This Morning, Wild was asked for comment on Trump's press conference where David Sanger of The New York Times pressed him to reassure people wouldn't use the military in Greenland or at the Panama Canal. Trump wouldn't commit to that. CNN host Kasie Hunt actually said "God bless David Sanger for being there to ask these questions of Donald Trump. What is...

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan told conservative colleague Scott Jennings to “zip it” during an on-air dispute with a Democrat-supporting pundit who claimed that “prices are going down.” Bolduan hosted a segment ahead of the certification of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Monday in which she, Jennings and Bakari Sellers debated President Joe Biden’s legacy and the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Jennings, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), pushed back when Bolduan expressed amazement that Trump was re-elected despite his role in the events at the US Capitol four years ago. “They looked at what happened...

With all the ballots counted and all the races decided, in today’s post, I want to unpack what we already know about how Trump “won” the popular vote.1 I use quotes around the word “won” for two reasons. First, to keep in full view what I wrote earlier in “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” – that Trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again) and (2) shielded him from standing trial before the election...

To hear President-elect Donald J. Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. “Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!” he declared on social media last week.But by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Monday, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001.For the first time since...

On Dec. 12th, 2024—the D.O.J Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report evaluating the FBI’s role in intelligence gathering and handling of Confidential Human Sources (CHS) leading up to certification day for the 2020 presidential election. The report touched on several aspects in which the FBI was both functionally successful and in which it failed to adequately meet its own standards of due diligence. It also made clear that there was no evidence of undercover FBI agents being present within the Capitol crowd, and that none of the CHSs who were at the riot were authorized by the FBI...

An alliance of grassroots environmental groups could lose $60 million in federal funding after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) was named one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “grantmakers” more than a year ago, putting it in charge of distributing subgrants for locally led environmental projects. But out of 11 of the EPA’s grantmakers, the CJA is the only one that has yet to receive any funding. The group has faced a barrage of attacks for publicly opposing the Israel-Hamas war, and some EPA staffers say the group has been singled out as a result....

Author and Marine veteran Philip Klay on Thursday expressed concern about the role that Trump Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth played in lobbying him to pardon war criminals during his first term in office. Writing in the New York Times, Klay highlights Hegseth's efforts on behalf of 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, a convicted war criminal whom Trump pardoned in 2019.

Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be White, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the United States. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base

LONDON — He’s branded one U.S. ally's government “fascists” and another leader a “fool.” Now, Elon Musk has labeled Britain a “tyrannical police state” while endorsing calls for a new election and boosting a video from a jailed far-right activist. Musk, not just the world’s richest man but a key adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has clashed for months with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a time when the U.K. is concerned about its standing with the incoming U.S. administration. Over the weekend the tech billionaire took his feud to a new level, taunting the U.K.'s new center-left leader over...

President-elect Donald Trump has made clear his intent to supercharge his “America First” approach to foreign policy in his second term — and Mexico looks set to be at the tip of the spear.While many of Trump’s predecessors have also followed a “realist” strategy — that is, one in which relative power is at the forefront of international relations and diplomatic success is viewed through how it benefits one’s own nation — the incoming president has displayed an apparent unwillingness to consider the pain that his plans would inflict on targeted countries or the responses this will engender.Trump’s proposed policies...

The only man to lead both the FBI and the CIA urged caution to senators who might vote to confirm former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kash Patel to lead the FBI, according to a letter sent to senators this week. "I am deeply concerned about the potential nominations of Mr. Kash Patel to lead the FBI and the inclusion of Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as DNI in intelligence roles," William Webster, who led the FBI during the Carter and Reagan administrations and the CIA after that, said in a letter to senators on Thursday. Webster...

WASHINGTON — The fate of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet is still unclear after Republican senators spent much of December carefully dodging questions about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’s views on vaccines, accusations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard’s 2017 meeting with then-President Bashar Assad of Syria. While some GOP senators have indicated they are all-in on Trump’s picks, others have for now withheld support, especially on some of his more controversial nominees. The dynamic is injecting uncertainty into the process as Republicans prepare to take the Senate majority in January with a four-seat margin and as Trump...

President-elect Trump settled a defamation lawsuit with ABC News for $15 million. That suit followed a segment in which George Stephanopolous inaccurately said Trump had been found liable for raping writer E. Jean Carrol when in fact, he had been found liable in a civil case for sexual abuse. Amna Nawaz discussed more with New York Times reporter David Enrich. Amna Nawaz: Today, at his first news conference since winning the 2024 election, president-elect Donald Trump spoke about a number of his policy priorities and answered questions on a wide range of issues. Geoff Bennett: Despite the potential U.S. ban...

“The rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, 2021, is incredibly disturbing,” Judge Beryl Howell said U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan says she has often reassured police officers traumatized by the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, that “the rule of law still applies.” But as President-elect Donald Trump — once a defendant in Chutkan’s very court — prepares to retake the White House and pardon many Jan. 6 perpetrators, Chutkan now says, “I’m not sure I can do that very convincingly these days.” Chutkan’s comments, delivered this week as she sentenced another member of the Jan. 6 mob to eight...