Portman among 47 GOP senators to sign letter to Iran WASHINGTON — In a move Democrats denounced as trying to sabotage the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Sen. Rob Portman and 46 other Senate Republicans yesterday warned Iran’s leadership that any agreement to limit Tehran’s apparent efforts to build a nuclear bomb would need Senate approval to stay in effect beyond 2016. More
Coalition on immigration bill clears first tests The bipartisan coalition behind a contentious overhaul of immigration laws stuck together on a critical early series of test votes Thursday, turning back challenges from conservative critics as the Senate Judiciary Committee refined legislation to secure the nation's borders and offer eventual citizenship to millions living illegally in the United States. More
Republicans to back Obama's student loan plan House Republicans are willing to give President Barack Obama a rare win, the chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee said Thursday in outlining a deal that would let college students avoid a costly hike on their student loans. More
Obama to open middle-class jobs, opportunity tour Aiming to show he's still focused on creating jobs, President Barack Obama is beginning a series of quick trips around the country to resurrect ideas from his State of the Union address that became overshadowed by the intense debates over gun control, immigration and automatic spending cuts. More
A new CBS News poll finds President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration starts off with mostly good will from the public: a majority of Americans overall are either happy or at least satisfied that he won and are either excited or optimistic about what he’ll do as president.
Axios: “While President-elect Trump’s 2016 win sparked shock, outrage and massive protests, the response to his 2024 victory has been more muted.”
“2016 birthed The Resistance, a political movement to protest Trumpism online and in the streets. There’s still plenty of resistance to Trump across the country, but little mass mobilization.”
“That could change as Trump moves to implement his agenda.
“The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”
— Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi, quoted by the Washington Post in 2023.
“President-elect Donald Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition.
“Since the election, Jared Bernstein, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, has often found himself in a down mood — dealing, he says, with ‘confusion, guilt’ and ‘cognitive dissonance,’” the New York Times reports.
“President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory was fueled in part by lousy consumer sentiment and working-class Americans’ frustration with the underlying state of the economy.