Politics

By Em Steck, Andrew Kaczynski and Olivia Alafriz, CNN Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis once strongly supported arming Ukraine to fight Russia, urging then-President Barack Obama to do so as a deterrent to Russian aggression in Eastern Europe — a position at odds with his statements this week questioning the United States’ involvement in the conflict.

By Sam Fossum, CNN Federal teams are going door-to-door to check in with residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and conducting health surveys as part of the federal government’s response to the toxic train derailment that has fueled anxiety about the safety of the air and water in the town, according to a White House official.

By Aaron Pellish, CNN CNN, along with a group of other media organizations, has signed on to a letter calling for congressional leaders to grant access to security footage from inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Fox News’ Tucker Carlson access to the material earlier this month.

By Andrew Millman, CNN The Biden administration has proposed new rules that will require patients to have an in-person medical evaluation before being prescribed most prescription medications by their doctors, with limited exceptions, according to a statement released on Friday. Under the new rule proposals from the Drug Enforcement Agency, patients would still be able

By Chandelis Duster, CNN Jewel Bronaugh, the No. 2 person at the US Department of Agriculture and the first Black woman in the position, will leave the department on Tuesday after a two-year tenure in which she led agency efforts to diversify its workforce and provide relief to farmers of color who say they have

By Steve Contorno, CNN Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday will release his book, “The Courage to be Free,” to much anticipation ahead of his expected plunge into the 2024 presidential race. But it’s not the first time DeSantis has dabbled in authorship to jumpstart his political ambitions. As a little-known Navy prosecutor on the

By Alayna Treene and Zachary Cohen, CNN As some outspoken Republican lawmakers threaten to block future aid to Ukraine, a small group of House GOP members that traveled to the country this week vowed to consider a list of key weapons and other crucial necessities during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, sources familiar

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice The seized cell phone of Rep. Scott Perry contained 930 records where the Pennsylvania Republican often tried to cajole executive branch officials around the 2020 presidential election, according to newly released court papers in the fight over his cell phone data. “Rep. Perry’s communications with Executive Branch

By Donald Judd and Jeremy Diamond, CNN President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House Friday he has no plans travel to East Palestine, Ohio, and defended his administration’s response to the train derailment there that caused a toxic chemical spill. “At this point, I’m not,” Biden said, when asked if he has any

By Eric Bradner, Omar Jimenez and Bill Kirkos, CNN Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is fighting for her political survival, seeking to finish in the top two in Tuesday’s crowded primary and advance to an April runoff in her quest for a second term. Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first out gay person to serve

By Sara Murray and Jason Morris, CNN The judge who oversaw a special grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia says he instructed jurors they were prevented from discussing deliberations but did not face restrictions in talking about the panel’s final report. “The

By Annie Grayer, Melanie Zanona and Sydney Kashiwagi, CNN House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are creating a bipartisan task force to determine a process to boot members off committees going forward, a source familiar told CNN. McCarthy is taking the lead in creating it and Jeffries has agreed to name

By Tierney Sneed, CNN The disciplinary office that regulates attorney conduct in Colorado is taking steps toward potentially bringing an ethics complaint against Jenna Ellis, the lawyer who played a prominent role in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Colorado’s Attorney Regulation Counsel, an independent office in the state, indicated last

By Steve Contorno, CNN A new bill overhauling Florida universities to match Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ vision for higher education would shift power at state schools into the hands of the Republican leader’s political appointees and ban gender studies as a field of study. The legislation, filed this week, would also require that general education courses

By Daniel Dale and Zachary Cohen, CNN Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is now considering a run for president, was asked on Fox on Wednesday about the Biden administration’s criticism of rail deregulation efforts by the Trump administration. Fox host Martha MacCallum told Pence that, in the wake of the train derailment in East

By Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid and Jeremy Herb, CNN The Justice Department wants to know how a box containing a handful of classified records scattered among copies of presidential schedules turned up at Mar-a-Lago late last year, well after several rounds of searches of the property by federal agents and aides to former President Donald

By Haley Britzky, CNN US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN that he and his Chinese counterpart have not spoken for a “couple of months,” with Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe refusing to take a call in the wake of the US shootdown of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon. “The last time that

By Tierney Sneed and Jamie Gangel, CNN In a stern rebuke of former Vice President Mike Pence, the conservative former judge who advised Pence on how to handle the January 6, 2021, election certification vote is now warning of both the legal and political consequences of Pence’s plan to fight the grand jury subpoena by

By Jeremy Diamond and Sam Fossum, CNN A year of unprecedented, US-led sanctions designed to isolate one of the world’s largest economies has left Russia weakened, but not incapacitated. Instead of the forecast double-digit GDP drop, Russia’s economy contracted by about 3% last year. After an initial crash heralded by President Joe Biden, the country’s

By Jeremy Herb, CNN The United States is prepared to support Ukraine for the long haul in the war against Russia and is confident Kyiv will prevail, senior Biden administration officials told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at a unique CNN town hall marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. “Russia has already lost this war,” Biden

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN The Pentagon is investigating how a trove of internal US Special Operations Command emails was apparently exposed publicly online and leaked unclassified data for nearly two weeks without the military’s knowledge, a Pentagon spokesperson told CNN. The Department of Defense’s chief information officer and the US military’s Cyber Command are investigating

By Haley Britzky, CNN The US believes the training and equipment it is providing Ukraine will “change the dynamics on the battlefield” in the war against Russia and allow Kyiv’s forces to “breach Russian defenses,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for “CNN This Morning” on Thursday. “We’re training

By Melanie Zanona and Annie Grayer, CNN House Republicans had hoped to pass a narrow border security bill within the first two weeks of their new majority, notching an easy win and delivering on a key campaign promise in the process. But a three-page bill from conservative Texas Rep. Chip Roy has run into fierce

By Shawna Mizelle, CNN Everett R. Berryman Jr. was 11 years old when the Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which made racial segregation in public schools illegal. But supervisors in Prince Edward County, Virginia, where Berryman was attending public school, had no intention of complying. Five years

By MJ Lee and Priscilla Alvarez, CNN The split screen was striking. President Joe Biden in Warsaw, Poland, expressed unequivocal support for refugees borne out of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Back home, his administration just hours later announced its toughest policy yet aimed at turning away migrants, many of whom are fleeing persecution and

By Alayna Treene and Zachary Cohen, CNN The House select committee on China will feature four high-profile witnesses during its first hearing Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET, including former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, and top China expert and former deputy national security adviser, Matthew Pottinger, sources familiar with the hearing told

By Tierney Sneed and Katelyn Polantz, CNN A federal appeals court on Thursday questioned the access that Justice Department prosecutors can have to a GOP lawmaker’s phone seized as part of the special counsel investigation into 2020 election subversion. At a partially public hearing Thursday, the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals grappled with the

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN A 28-year-old Russian man accused of developing and selling a hacking tool used to obtain the login information for tens of thousands of computers worldwide was arrested in the country of Georgia and extradited to the US, the Justice Department said Wednesday. Dariy Pankov is accused of advertising access to more

By Oren Liebermann, CNN A US strike in Somalia killed seven al-Shabaab fighters on Tuesday, US Africa Command said in a statement. The strike was carried out at the request of the Somali government and was a “collective self-defense strike,” AFRICOM said. The strike was carried out approximately 320 miles northeast of Mogadishu. “Given the

By Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell and Paula Reid, CNN A law firm that represented former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon during his fight against a subpoena from the House January 6 committee and other cases is suing Bannon for nearly $500,000 in unpaid legal bills. The lawsuit states that Davidoff Hutcher & Citron LLP worked

By Haley Britzky, CNN The US Defense Department has released a selfie taken in the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane, as an airman flew above the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down by the US military earlier this month. The selfie, taken by the pilot of the U-2, shows the shadow of the

By Ella Nilsen, CNN The Biden administration on Wednesday announced the first-ever US offshore wind energy lease sale for the waters in the Gulf of Mexico, an area long dominated by oil and gas production. The White House and US Department of Interior said they are proposing to open up more than 300,000 acres of

By David Wright, CNN Montana Sen. Jon Tester announced Wednesday morning that he will seek reelection in 2024, providing a boost to Democrats’ hopes of retaining the Senate. “It’s official. I’m running for reelection,” Tester tweeted. “Montanans need a fighter that will hold our government accountable and demand Washington stand up for veterans and lower

By Steve Contorno, CNN As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis intensifies his preparation for a White House bid, several of the wealthiest and most prolific Republican donors are already giving him a major financial boost. Trader and investor Jeffrey Yass donated $2.5 million to DeSantis’ state political committee on February 7, according to online records maintained

By Kevin Liptak, CNN President Joe Biden barely slept as he rolled in the dark toward Kyiv earlier this week, sitting awake as his curtained-off train car crossed into the warzone that has come to shape so much of his presidency. Biden departed Europe three days later having loudly recommitted to backing Ukraine as it

By Lauren Fox and Melanie Zanona, CNN As the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine approaches, the Republican Party finds itself bitterly divided on Capitol Hill over whether the US should continue aiding Ukraine — a dispute that is only expected to intensify in the months ahead even as GOP leaders have sought to

By Shawna Mizelle, CNN Lawmakers in 32 states across the US have introduced or pre-filed at least 150 bills aimed at making it harder to vote, according to a new analysis from the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school. The report, which covers legislative activity through January 25, 2023, was

By Jeremy Diamond, Natasha Bertrand, Jennifer Hansler, Oren Liebermann and Phil Mattingly, CNN Last October, a weeklong barrage of Russian missiles and kamikaze drones destroyed nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations, plunging millions of Ukrainians into darkness ahead of winter and signaling a significant Russian tactical shift to target civilian infrastructure. Back in Washington,

By Daniel Dale and Andrew Kaczynski, CNN Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who fabricated a large portion of his biography, sat down for an extended interview with Piers Morgan — and lied about his lies. Morgan got Santos to explicitly concede that he has “been a terrible liar” on certain “subjects.” But while

By Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand, CNN Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears to have failed around the time President Joe Biden was in Ukraine, according to two US officials familiar with the matter. Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines under its

By Eric Bradner, CNN The Republican rift over the United States’ support for Ukraine was on vivid display this week, as 2024 presidential hopefuls staked out opposing positions on whether President Joe Biden’s administration has done too much or too little to help the country a year into Russia’s invasion. The divide over the US

By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley defended states’ rights to secede from the United States, South Carolina’s Confederate History Month and the Confederate flag in a 2010 interview with a local activist group that “fights attacks against Southern Culture.” Haley, who was running for South Carolina governor at the time, made