Biden set to meet with world leaders who have already moved on to Trump
CNN
When President Joe Biden’s aides were planning his visit to South America this week for a pair of leaders’ summits, two vastly different scenarios were in play.
When President Joe Biden’s aides were planning his visit to South America this week for a pair of leaders’ summits, two vastly different scenarios were in play. In one, Biden arrived as the confident statesman burnishing a legacy and preparing to hand off to his vice president. In the other, he was faced with anxious world leaders and fresh questions about whether, as he’d spent four years claiming, “America was back.” He wanted the first. He got the latter. Denied a victory lap on the world stage, Biden will instead use his time in Peru and Brazil this week for reflection and looking ahead. No longer viewed on the world stage as the American president who defeated Donald Trump — and his “America First” ideology — for good, Biden will find himself amid leaders who are already moving on. Many of his counterparts have pivoted to cultivating — or in many cases recultivating — relationships with Trump, angling for meetings in Palm Beach while they are in the hemisphere. The summits carry an inevitable awkwardness given the short time Biden has left in office and the sea change that awaits when he leaves. Leaders are talking among themselves about how to insulate their economies and respond to the threats Trump has already put forth, but Biden administration officials have been largely excluded from those conversations.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.