House fails to pass GOP resolution to fine Attorney General Merrick Garland
CNN
The House on Thursday failed to pass a GOP-pushed resolution to fine Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The House on Thursday failed to pass a GOP-pushed resolution to fine Attorney General Merrick Garland. The vote was 210 to 204, with four Republicans voting against it. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said that she plans to reintroduce the resolution against Garland shortly after it failed on the House floor. “We are very confident it will pass,” Luna, of Florida, said. “Just because it went down the first time doesn’t mean it can’t actually pass the second time.” The move is an extension of the fight over the audio tapes of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, who did not charge the president but called him “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The White House exerted executive privilege over the tapes, but Republicans still held Garland in contempt of Congress and have since filed a lawsuit in court. CNN has also sued for the tapes. The resolution states that “the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall impose a fine, which may not be paid with appropriated funds, on Attorney General Garland of $10,000 per day, until such time as Attorney General Garland complies with the subpoena of the House of Representatives by turning over the audio tapes.” Luna originally suggested her legislation would use a rare process referred to as “inherent contempt” that hasn’t been utilized in modern times, though the legislation was later rewritten to only charge a fine.
FBI says it has disrupted major Chinese hacking operation that threatened US critical infrastructure
The FBI has used a court order to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked internet routers and other devices that Chinese government-linked hackers were using to threaten critical infrastructure in the US and overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates for the first time in the Biden era after the White House spent the last three years grappling with Americans’ dissatisfaction with the cost of living, raising new questions about the health of the economy and the impact on voters at the ballot box.
Israeli officials notified the US that the country was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.