CNN – US Politics

By Phil Mattingly, Chief White House correspondent President Joe Biden said in a new interview that the recently recovered Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental US did not damage bilateral relations between the two countries. “The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden told PBS

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, suggested Wednesday that an FBI search of Pence’s Indiana home for any additional classified materials is “not too far off into the future.” “There have been conversations about a consensual search to be conducted, and I presume that’s not

By MJ Lee, Senior White House correspondent The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus is throwing its support behind Julie Su, the deputy Labor secretary, to replace Labor Secretary Marty Walsh who is soon departing the Biden administration — a significant public display of support for an Asian American to join President Joe Biden’s Cabinet. “We

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN One of President Joe Biden’s top cybersecurity advisers will retire next week as the Biden administration continues to face a myriad of foreign hacking threats and US officials urge — and sometimes compel — US companies to tighten their defenses. The departure of Chris Inglis, who has over four decades of

By Jeremy Herb, Sara Murray, Alayna Treene, Annie Grayer and Marshall Cohen, CNN Former Twitter executives acknowledged to lawmakers Wednesday that the social media company erred when it temporarily suppressed a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, but the officials emphasized there was no government involvement in the decision. Republicans

By Maegan Vazquez and Nikki Carvajal, CNN Republicans repeatedly heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, ignoring the occasional shushes from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In moments throughout the address, Republicans in the House chamber shouted at Biden, protesting his approach to a wide range of issues such

By CNN staff President Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address on Tuesday. Here is a fact check of some of the claims from Biden and the Republican response by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Cutting the deficit Biden claimed his administration cut the federal deficit by “more than $1.7 trillion.” Facts

By Katie Bo Lillis, Jeremy Herb, Josh Campbell, Zachary Cohen, Kylie Atwood and Natasha Bertrand, CNN US intelligence officials believe that the recently recovered Chinese spy balloon is part of an extensive surveillance program run by the Chinese military, according to multiple American officials familiar with the intelligence. The surveillance program, which includes a number

By CNN President Joe Biden delivered his 2023 State of the Union address on Tuesday. Here’s his speech as prepared for delivery and released by the White House. Mr. Speaker. Madam Vice President. Our First Lady and Second Gentleman. Members of Congress and the Cabinet. Leaders of our military. Mr. Chief Justice, Associate Justices, and

By Kevin Liptak, CNN When President Joe Biden took to the House Chamber on Tuesday for his annual State of the Union address, his message was one of unadulterated optimism — even in the face of open hostility. The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some

By Clare Foran, CNN Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave a combative speech Tuesday evening in response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, drawing a sharp contrast with Biden as she delivered a series of blistering criticisms of the president. Sanders called Biden “unfit to serve as commander in chief,” said his

By Haley Britzky, CNN A senior American military officer notified lawmakers in January that China has more land-based fixed and mobile intercontinental ballistic missile launchers than the US, according to a letter sent to Congress. The letter from Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of US Strategic Command which oversees the US nuclear arsenal says that as

By Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak and Shawna Mizelle, CNN Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is expected to depart the Biden administration soon, according to two people familiar with the matter, marking the first Cabinet secretary departure of President Joe Biden’s presidency. Walsh has been offered a job heading the NHL’s Players’ Association, the people said. His

By Ella Nilsen, CNN As the Colorado River sinks further into crisis and tensions rise between Western states over how to divvy up painful water cuts, a bipartisan group of senators are formalizing a new caucus to examine how Washington could help. What began as an informal group convened by Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of

By Manu Raju, Chief Congressional Correspondent New York Republican Rep. George Santos is expected to face an investigation from the House Ethics Committee, a probe that could derail his already imperiled political career depending on the secretive panel’s findings. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy initially told CNN “yes” on Tuesday when asked if the embattled freshman

By Jeremy Diamond and Priscilla Alvarez, CNN The White House tried to flip the script on border security politics, accusing House Republicans of “staging political stunts” and undermining border security ahead of a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday that probed the Biden administration’s handling of the US southern border. In a memo obtained by CNN,

By Sonnet Swire, CNN President Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver his second State of the Union address Tuesday night at the US Capitol. His remarks will provide an opportunity to speak to a politically polarized Capitol Hill and nation as his administration faces an uncertain economic picture, renewed calls for police reform, a war

By Fredreka Schouten, Kara Scannell and Gregory Krieg, CNN In the fall of 2020, then-New York Rep. Lee Zeldin’s campaign submitted a report to federal regulators with a series of unusual expenses: 21 payments on a single day of exactly $199.99 each. The outlays — each just one penny below the dollar figure above which

By Betsy Klein and Arlette Saenz, CNN Paul Pelosi, Tyre Nichols’ parents, U2 star Bono, Monterey Park shooting hero Brandon Tsay, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US Oksana Markarova and a Holocaust survivor are among those headed to the US Capitol Tuesday evening where President Joe Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union

By Kevin Liptak and Phil Mattingly, CNN President Joe Biden’s yearly State of the Union speech — his first in front of a divided Congress — will offer the best glimpse to date of his argument for another term, making Tuesday’s address a test run of sorts as he approaches a reelection announcement. In both

By Zachary Cohen, CNN A US military intelligence report from last year that focused on China’s use of high-altitude balloons mentioned sightings in Hawaii and Florida during the Trump presidency, according to an excerpt of the report reviewed by CNN. The April 2022 report, titled “People’s Republic of China High-Altitude Balloon,” found a Chinese spy

By Zachary Cohen, Annie Grayer and Tierney Sneed, CNN The GOP-led House select subcommittee on so-called weaponization of the federal government will draw upon a prominent ex-Democrat, two of their Republican Senate colleagues, and a former FBI agent in their first public hearing to discuss how they believe the government has been weaponized against conservatives,

By Holmes Lybrand, Tierney Sneed and Devan Cole, CNN Two people charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities — a neo-Nazi leader and a woman with whom he had a personal relationship — allegedly planned to attack electrical substations encircling Baltimore and “completely destroy” the entire city, according to federal court documents. The Justice Department

By Natasha Bertrand The transiting of three suspected Chinese spy balloons over the continental US during the Trump administration was only discovered after President Joe Biden took office, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday. The official did not say how or when those incidents were discovered. The official said that the intelligence community

By Katie Bo Lillis and Evan Perez, CNN The insular world of FBI counterintelligence agents was rocked last month when one of their own, Charles F. McGonigal, formerly the FBI’s top counterintelligence official in New York, was indicted for allegedly selling access to Russian and Albanian officials in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars

By Morgan Rimmer, CNN Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a co-chair of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, said Sunday that GOP members of his bipartisan group are ready to break with their party leadership on some aspects of the debt ceiling negotiations but they remain committed to attaching some spending cuts. “We can’t have a clean

By Manu Raju, Gregory Krieg and Kit Maher, CNN A former prospective staffer to Rep. George Santos said he filed a police report and House ethics complaint alleging that the freshman congressman made an unwanted sexual advance toward him during a private encounter in his office and was later denied employment there. Santos told CNN

By Shawna Mizelle, CNN A slew of bills, mostly in Republican-led states, are looking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances in the presence of children, part of a larger fight over a burgeoning culture war issue. Republicans say the performances expose children to sexual themes and imagery that are inappropriate, a claim rejected by

By Fredreka Schouten, CNN The deep-pocketed network associated with billionaire Charles Koch is preparing to throw its money and weight behind a single Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential primary — in a move that could significantly reshape the GOP field. Americans for Prosperity Action, the main political arm of the Koch network, “is prepared

By Steve Contorno, CNN Facing accusations of whitewashing history after his administration blocked a new Black studies course for high-achieving high schoolers, Gov. Ron DeSantis has countered that Florida students already must learn about the triumphs and plight of African Americans. “The state of Florida education standards not only don’t prevent, but they require teaching

By Heather Chen, Andrew Raine and Sophie Tanno, CNN The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

By Ethan Cohen and Kate Sullivan, CNN The Democratic National Committee on Saturday approved a plan to shake up the 2024 presidential primary calendar and demote longtime early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, but significant questions remain about how the new order will be implemented. The new calendar upends decades of tradition in which

By Zachary Cohen, CNN The suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that violated American airspace this week has fueled a diplomatic crisis with the postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing. But the two countries have a long history of spying on each other. The US has sought to collect its own intelligence

By Gabby Orr and Steve Contorno, CNN Republican presidential hopefuls have begun casting themselves as impassioned defenders of “parental rights,” turning schoolbooks and curricula, doctors’ offices, and sports leagues into a new political battleground as they work to distinguish themselves ahead of the 2024 GOP primary. The issue had already emerged as a major vein

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the

By Sonnet Swire, CNN A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in the skies over the continental United States has sparked national security and diplomatic concerns, adding to already tense Washington-Beijing relations. The incident prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his highly anticipated trip to China, saying Friday that the high-altitude Chinese balloon entering US

By Ariane de Vogue and Tierney Sneed, CNN The North Carolina Supreme Court, which flipped to a Republican majority with last year’s elections, said Friday it would rehear a redistricting case and a voter ID case — cases that the state’s GOP legislature had lost when they were previously before the state’s highest court. The

By Annie Grayer, Sara Murray, Zachary Cohen and Marshall Cohen, CNN House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday subpoenaed the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Education for documents as part of its investigation into whether a Justice Department strategy to address threats against teachers and school officials was abused to target

By Nikki Carvajal, CNN The US and allies are trying to further limit Russia’s ability to make money and finance its war efforts with new price limits on products like gasoline and fuel oil, a senior Treasury official announced Friday — adding to sanctions on Russian energy sales in response to the country’s invasion of

By Haley Britzky, CNN As the US and its Canadian partners continue to monitor a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon floating above the northern United States, one question stands out among the rest: Why hasn’t it been shot down? Officials have said that the balloon’s path carries it over a “number of sensitive sites” in the

By David Wright and Clare Foran, CNN GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana announced Friday that she will not run for any office in 2024, opting out of the race for the seat held by Republican Sen. Mike Braun, who is running for governor, while also declaring her intention to leave Congress. “I won a

By Annie Grayer, Sara Murray, Alayna Treene and Zachary Cohen, CNN Rep. Jim Jordan, one of the GOP’s most vocal partisans and now the chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee, started a recent meeting on the “weaponization” of the federal government with a surprising move: He urged caution. Rather than issuing a series of partisan

By MJ Lee and Kevin Liptak, CNN Several months after President Joe Biden promised Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences” after the Saudi-led OPEC+ oil cartel unexpectedly announced it would cut production, the Biden administration has no plans to take proactive steps to punish — let alone significantly reorient its posture toward — the oil-rich Middle

By Jennifer Hansler, Kevin Liptak, Jeremy Herb, Kylie Atwood, Jim Sciutto and Oren Liebermann, CNN US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed his upcoming trip to China in response to the flying of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States, in what marks a significant new phase in the tensions between Washington

By Alayna Treene, CNN House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul has invited former Afghanistan Ambassador to the US Roya Rahmani to be his guest for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address next week, CNN has learned exclusively. Rahmani, a fierce defender of women’s rights in Afghanistan, was the country’s first female ambassador

By Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood, CNN Harrison Li and Katherine Swidan both worry they may never see their loved ones again. Kai Li — Harrison Li’s father — and Mark Swidan — Katherine Swidan’s son — are both Americans who have been imprisoned for years in China, and both have been designated by the

By Katie Lobosco, CNN The Biden administration is making it a little easier for borrowers who were misled by their for-profit college to apply for student loan forgiveness. This comes as the president’s broader, separate plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt is held up in the courts. The Department of Education launched