President Joe Biden responded to a question about inflation by calling a Fox News reporter a vulgarity. The president was in the East Room of the White House on Monday for a meeting of his Competition Council, which is focused on changing regulations and enforcing laws to help consumers deal with high prices. Reporters in…
read moreJudges have approved a request for a special grand jury by the Georgia prosecutor who’s investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others broke the law by trying to pressure Georgia officials to throw out Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week sent a letter to county superior court…
read moreThe congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday asked former President Donald Trump’s daughter to voluntarily cooperate with its probe. In a letter to Ivanka Trump, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said the panel wants her to tell them what she knows about her father’s efforts to thwart congressional…
read morePresident Joe Biden ends his first year in office as tensions with Russia hit a fever pitch. He warned his Russian counterpart to choose a diplomatic resolution and to not invade neighboring Ukraine — a message his secretary of state also is pushing in Kyiv this week. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from…
read moreVoting legislation that Democrats and civil rights groups argued is vital for protecting democracy was blocked Wednesday by a Republican filibuster, a setback for President Joe Biden and his party after a raw, emotional debate. Democrats were poised to immediately pivot to voting on a Senate rules change as a way to overcome the filibuster…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said it was appropriate for the Federal Reserve to recalibrate the support it provides to the U.S. economy, in light of fast-rising prices and the strength of recovery. “Given the strength of our economy and recent price increases, it’s appropriate, as … Fed Chairman [Jerome] Powell has indicated, to…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris would be his running mate in the 2024 presidential election if he stood for office again. “She’s going to be my running mate,” Biden said of Harris during a press conference held to mark the first year of his presidency. In mid-December, Harris…
read moreAn effort to bar members of Congress from buying and selling stock in public companies is gaining momentum in Washington after a series of revelations that dozens of lawmakers violated financial disclosure requirements, often in ways that suggested they were profiting from advance knowledge of issues related to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Georgia…
read moreA group of Republican U.S. senators is due to speak to reporters Wednesday in Washington about U.S. concerns of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. The group includes Republicans from the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. Three of those members — Senators Kevin Cramer, Roger Wicker and Rob Portman — were part of…
read morePresident Joe Biden put the full weight of his presidency behind voting rights action last week, heading to Capitol Hill to push Democrats to change Senate rules to pass legislation. Vice President Kamala Harris — whom Biden tapped to take the lead on passing voting rights legislation in June — wasn’t there. Both White House…
read moreThe House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection issued subpoenas Tuesday to Rudy Giuliani and other members of Donald Trump’s post-election legal team who filed multiple lawsuits claiming election fraud that were roundly rejected by the courts but gave rise to the lie that Trump did not really lose the 2020 presidential contest. The committee is…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden began his term under the long shadow of the January 6 Capitol riot, a grinding pandemic and an increasingly divided America. As he now rounds the one-year mark, he faces many of those same challenges – all as he tries to push through a sweeping and expensive legislative agenda. The difficulty…
read moreVoting legislation that Democrats and civil rights leaders say is vital for protecting democracy appeared headed for defeat as the Senate opened debate Tuesday, a devastating setback enabled by President Joe Biden’s own party as two holdout senators refuse to support rule changes to overcome a Republican filibuster. The Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona…
read moreFormer U.S. President Donald Trump recently addressed 15,000 ardent supporters in Arizona, making his first major public appearance since the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to keep him in office despite having lost the 2020 presidential election. In 93 minutes of remarks late Saturday, Trump repeated…
read moreDescendants of slain U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and their supporters marched on Washington Monday to urge Senate Democrats to overcome Republican opposition and obstruction within their own ranks to push through a national overhaul of voting rights. They rallied on the national holiday honoring King on the 93rd anniversary of his…
read moreAs the U.S. approaches the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., modern-day civil rights advocates are facing the reality that despite years of increasing public focus on racial injustice, they appear likely to fall short of their goal of improving minorities’ access to the vote. Last week King’s family requested that celebrations…
read moreOhio’s Republican-drawn congressional map was rejected by the state’s high court Friday, giving hope to national Democrats who had argued it unfairly delivered several potentially competitive seats in this year’s critical midterm elections to Republicans. In the 4-3 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court returned the map to the Ohio General Assembly, where Republicans hold supermajorities…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers are maneuvering this week to alter Senate rules to allow for debate on key voting rights legislation that has been blocked for months by Republicans. The showdown is the culmination of a fierce debate over the democratic process. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more. …
read moreThe U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol subpoenaed Meta, Alphabet, Twitter and Reddit on Thursday, seeking information about how their social media platforms were used to help fuel misinformation in a failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. “Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats in a last-ditch plea to overhaul the country’s election laws even as one fellow Democrat pointedly said she would not support changing the Senate’s legislative rules to circumvent uniform Republican opposition to establishing national voting rules. Biden met with most of the Senate Democratic caucus over…
read moreU.S. President Joe Biden was a longtime supporter of the Senate supermajority rule known as the filibuster, but with the chamber’s Republican minority blocking parts of his agenda, the former senator said this week he is open to altering the rule in order to try to enact voting rights legislation. The 100-member Senate is currently…
read moreThe House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection requested an interview and records from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday, shifting their investigation to a top ally of former President Donald Trump in Congress. Representative Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, requested that McCarthy provide information to the nine-member panel regarding the violence…
read more