Biden says administration will raise refugee cap in first comments after Friday's back and forth
CNN
President Joe Biden said Saturday his administration will increase the refugee cap after a back and forth on Friday where the administration first announced it would keep the cap at the historically low level set by former President Donald Trump, before reversing course after facing blowback from refugee advocacy groups and Democrats in Congress.
"We're gonna increase the numbers," Biden told reporters at the Wilmington Country Club after a round of golf, noting that the situation on the southern border had complicated things. "We couldn't do two things at once. And now we're going to increase the numbers," he said. Notably, the President called the situation on the southern border a crisis, a word administration officials have avoided using. White House officials signaled in a conference call with refugee resettlement advocates late Friday that Biden is likely to raise the current refugee cap of 15,000 quickly, well ahead of the May 15 deadline set Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
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Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.