Top Items:
The White House:
Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency — President Donald J. Trump granted pardons to 73 individuals and commuted the sentences of an additional 70 individuals. — Todd Boulanger - President Trump granted a full pardon to Todd Boulanger.
Discussion:
The Progressive Pulse, USA Today, Detroit Free Press, The Daily Beast, The Verge, NBC News, Reuters, Axios, Business Insider, New York Post, CNN, The Independent, Washingtonian, Mashable, Althouse, ProFootballTalk, Gizmodo, UPI, iPolitics, CBS Baltimore, The Wrap, CBS Dallas / Fort Worth, Reason, Metro.co.uk, The Week, Law & Crime, Mediaite, The Daily Caller, TechCrunch, Variety, HuffPost, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, HBCU Gameday, The Marshall Project and CBS Chicago, more at Techmeme »
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Maggie Haberman / New York Times:
With hours left in office, Trump pardons Bannon. — President Trump has granted clemency to Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist who was charged with defrauding people who supported building a border wall that Mr. Trump supported, White House officials said.
Discussion:
Mediaite, CNN, The Week, The Independent, USA Today, Breitbart, Axios, Los Angeles Times, The Wrap and Washington Times
Washington Post:
Trump grants clemency to 143 people in late-night pardon blast — President Trump on Tuesday granted clemency to 143 people, using a final act of presidential power to extend mercy to former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, well-connected celebrities and nonviolent drug offenders …
Discussion:
ABC News, Talking Points Memo, Slate, Politico, STEPHANIE MILLER SHOW and Common Dreams
New York Times:
With Hours Left in Office, Trump Grants Clemency to Bannon and Other Allies — The president continued using his power to help his supporters, including his former chief strategist and one of his top 2016 fund-raisers. — WASHINGTON — President Trump used his final hours in office …
Discussion:
New York Post, Conservative News Today, Deseret News, CBS Baltimore, Raw Story, The Week, Business Insider and Breitbart
Andrew Restuccia / Wall Street Journal:
Trump Has Discussed Starting a New Party — President Trump has talked in recent days with associates about forming a new political party, according to people familiar with the matter, an effort to exert continued influence after he leaves the White House. — Mr. Trump discussed the matter …
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Blake Montgomery / The Daily Beast:
Trump Discussed Forming ‘Patriot Party’ and Ditching GOP in Final Days: WSJ
Trump Discussed Forming ‘Patriot Party’ and Ditching GOP in Final Days: WSJ
Discussion:
Florida Politics, The Daily Beast and Wall Street Journal
Susan B. Glasser / New Yorker:
Obituary for a Failed Presidency — One last Letter from Trump's Washington. — Susan B. Glasser's column will continue as Letter from Biden's Washington. Sign up for her newsletter to get her stories delivered to your in-box every week. — Precisely at noon on Wednesday …
Discussion:
Common Dreams, Raw Story, IJR, Power Line and Business Insider
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David Yaffe-Bellany / Bloomberg:
Trump Ends Where He Began, Fighting Release of His Tax Returns — President Donald Trump's lawyers made a preemptive move to stop congressional Democrats from obtaining his tax returns once President-elect Joe Biden takes power, asking a judge for an Inauguration Day hearing in a case …
Discussion:
Washington Times, Politico, Voice of America and Washington Post
Transition / President-Elect Joe Biden:
FACT SHEET: President-elect Biden's Day One Executive Actions Deliver Relief for Families Across America Amid Converging Crises — Actions Address the COVID-19 Pandemic, Provide Economic Relief, Tackle Climate Change, and Advance Racial Equity — Today, hours after taking the oath of office …
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, Axios and Sputnik News
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Politico:
Biden plans 15 executive actions on his first day in office
Biden plans 15 executive actions on his first day in office
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, CBS News, The Hill, Denver Post, Real Clear Politics and President-Elect Joe Biden
Jacob Knutson / Axios:
Biden to overturn Trump order excluding undocumented immigrants from census
Biden to overturn Trump order excluding undocumented immigrants from census
Discussion:
ABC News, Talking Points Memo, CBS News and NBC News
CNN:
Trump talked out of pardoning kids and Republican lawmakers — (CNN)President Donald Trump received an unsettling warning on his final Saturday night in the White House. — Huddled for a lengthy meeting with his legal advisers, Trump was warned the pardons he once hoped to bestow upon …
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Jim Small / Arizona Mirror:
Biggs and Gosar sought pardons for Capitol riot, but won't get them: report — Arizona Republican Congressmen Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar have asked President Donald Trump to preemptively pardon them for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but the president has no plans to do so, CNN reported Tuesday.
Discussion:
NBC News, The Stranger, Raw Story and Associated Press
Peter Baker / New York Times:
Inauguration Live Updates: Trump Leaves White House as Biden Prepares to Assume the Presidency — Having issued a raft of pardons overnight, President Trump defied convention by skipping his successor's swearing-in. After taking the oath of office, President-elect Joe Biden plans …
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Alayna Treene / Axios:
Trump leaves White House for the final time — President Trump took off on Marine One at 8:17 a.m on Wednesday morning, departing the White House for the last time, en route to Florida. — The big picture: Trump's final hours will be marked by snubbing his successor and granting pardons …
Andrew Stiles / Washington Free Beacon:
HISTORIC: Joe Biden to Be Sworn In on Jeffrey Epstein's Birthday — Coincidence? The late Democratic pedophile would have been 68 — Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, bringing to a close one of the most successful administrations in American history.
Discussion:
ABC News and No More Mister Nice Blog
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ABC News:
Unity themes will get early tests in flurry of Biden actions: The Note
Unity themes will get early tests in flurry of Biden actions: The Note
Discussion:
New York Times, USA Today, CBS News, Axios, Politico, Poynter, NPR, Wired, Crooks and Liars, The Dispatch, WHYY, Balloon Juice, Washington Times, NBC News and The Colorado Sun
Molly Nagle / ABC News:
Biden takes office looking to turn the page, while rolling back Trump actions
Biden takes office looking to turn the page, while rolling back Trump actions
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, Associated Press, New York Times, NPR, Reuters, CNN, USA Today, Bloomberg, Axios, Los Angeles Times and Al Jazeera
Jim Newell / Slate:
Joe Biden's Chance at Greatness
Joe Biden's Chance at Greatness
Discussion:
CBS News, The Daily Beast, CNN, Florida Politics, Foreign Policy and Cyprus Mail
Dan Diamond / Washington Post:
Biden to ask Surgeon General Adams to resign — Ouster is regarded as a break with the Trump administration's covid-19 response, which the president-elect has called a failure — The Washington Post is providing this important information about the coronavirus for free.
New York Times:
Fox News Fires a Key Player in Its Election Night Coverage — The politics editor who defended the network's accurate projection that Biden had won Arizona is out after a backlash from viewers, including President Trump. — Two senior leaders of Fox News's reporting division are exiting …
Discussion:
Outside the Beltway, TVNewser and The Hill, more at Mediagazer »
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Caroline Kelly / CNN:
Biden to rescind 1776 commission via executive order — (CNN)President-elect Joe Biden will issue an executive order to dissolve the 1776 commission, a panel stood up by President Donald Trump as a rebuttal to schools applying a more accurate history curriculum around slavery in the US, Biden's transition team announced Wednesday.
Discussion:
The Atlantic, BuzzFeed News and New Republic
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Ron Johnson / JSOnline:
Senator Ron Johnson calls editorial about him ‘unhinged and uninformed.’ The Editorial Board responds. — Senator Johnson objects to the Editorial Board's call for him to resign over his actions after the presidential election. … In an unhinged and uninformed editorial …
Josh Gerstein / Politico:
‘Are you QAnon?’: One Trump official's brush with an internet cult gone horribly wrong — The deadly insurrection in the nation's capital this month brought intense public scrutiny to the online conspiracy theory QAnon and shock about its pervasiveness, but one prominent Trump administration official …
Axios:
Off the rails: Inside Trump's campaign to coerce Pence into overturning the election — Beginning on election night 2020 and continuing through his final days in office, Donald Trump unraveled and dragged America with him, to the point that his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol with two weeks left in his term.
Discussion:
The Daily Beast, Fox News, Boston Herald and Reuters
Lisa Friedman / New York Times:
Court Voids a ‘Tortured’ Trump Climate Rollback — The ruling strikes down weak rules for coal-burning power plants and gives the Biden administration a freer hand to impose tighter restrictions. — WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration's plan …
Discussion:
Reuters, Associated Press, KTLA and Wall Street Journal
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Kevin Quealy / New York Times:
The Complete List of Trump's Twitter Insults (2015-2021) — As a political figure, Donald J. Trump used Twitter to praise, to cajole, to entertain, to lobby, to establish his version of events — and, perhaps most notably, to amplify his scorn. This list documents the verbal attacks …
Ben Feuerherd / New York Post:
Brendan Hunt threatened AOC, Schumer and Pelosi in unhinged rants — A Queens man arrested by the FBI this morning for threatening politicians posted unhinged and anti-Semitic rants on social media — and threatened to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi …
Discussion:
Raw Story and Law & Crime
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Washingtonian:
Conspiracy Theorists Target Comet Ping Pong on Trump's Last Night in Office — The Trump era in DC ends in a very similar fashion to the way it began — In a fitting finale to the Trump years in hometown DC, a group of homophobic conspiracy theorists gathered to shout slogans outside Chevy …
New York Times:
Justice Dept. Ends Stock Trade Inquiry Into Richard Burr Without Charges — Law enforcement officials told the senator that they would not pursue charges over his dumping of hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock after Senate coronavirus briefings early in the pandemic.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Raw Story, Axios, The Week, Breitbart, HuffPost, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller, POLITICUSUSA, Politico, The Hill, Associated Press and KIFI-TV
Jordan Fischer / wusa9.com:
Capitol rioter arrested after sending ‘selfie’ to girlfriend's brother - a federal agent — The DOJ says Thomas Fee, of Freeport, New York, sent a photo of himself in the Capitol Rotunda to a special agent for the State Department. — WASHINGTON — A New York man has now been charged …
Discussion:
The Daily Caller and The Hill
Washington Examiner:
It's no time for Biden to be California dreamin' — We did a double take at the report this week that Joe Biden, once inaugurated as president, would treat California as the administration's “de facto think tank,” placing it “center stage again in Washington's policy arena.”
Politico:
‘Like a Ghost’ in the White House: The Last Days of the Trump Presidency — During his last days in the White House, Donald Trump spent a lot of time thinking about the one and only election he ever lost, plotting every way he could to try to change the results. — He thought about when to leave Washington.
Discussion:
CNN, CBS News, New York Times, Fox News, Defense One, Daily Kos, FiveThirtyEight, The Federalist, Japan Times, The Colorado Sun, Sputnik News and KIFI-TV
New York Times:
The Financial Minefield Awaiting an Ex-President Trump — Baseless election fraud claims and the Capitol riot have compounded already-looming threats to his bottom line. And the cash lifelines he once relied on are gone. — Not long after he strides across the White House grounds Wednesday morning …
Discussion:
Lawyers, Guns & Money