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:
HuffPost, NBC News, The Progressive Pulse, USA Today, The Verge, Detroit Free Press, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Axios, CNN, Business Insider, New York Post, Washington Times, The Independent, The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, Gothamist, Washingtonian, CBS Detroit, ProFootballTalk, Mashable, Gizmodo, CBS Baltimore, The Wrap, Reason, Metro.co.uk, The Week, Law & Crime, Althouse, Mediaite, TechCrunch, Variety, Al Jazeera, iPolitics, UPI, CBS Dallas / Fort Worth, 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, The Week, The Independent, USA Today, Breitbart, Axios, Los Angeles Times, CNN, 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, Outside the Beltway, Politico, Slate, 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:
NBC News, New York Post, Reuters, TheBlaze, Conservative News Today, Deseret News, CBS Baltimore, Raw Story, The Daily Caller and The Week
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 — BITTER SPLIT — As his presidential term ends, Donald Trump has discussed creating a new independent political party with several close aides, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Discussion:
Florida Politics, The Daily Beast and Wall Street Journal
Alayna Treene / Axios:
Trump departs on final Air Force One flight — President Trump and his family took off on Air Force One at 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning for the final time en route to Florida. — The big picture: Trump's final hours as president were punctuated by his decisions to snub his successor's inauguration …
Discussion:
Washington Post, ABC News, NPR, The Guardian, Forbes, Washington Times, NBC News, Boston Herald, Breitbart and UPI
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Washington Post:
Biden inauguration live updates: Trump departs Washington for the final time as president — President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as the nation's 46th president on Wednesday at an inauguration like no other, amid a raging pandemic, in a city that has become a fortress of fences, concrete barriers and security checkpoints.
Peter Baker / New York Times:
Inauguration Live Updates: Trump Leaves White House as Biden Prepares to Assume the Presidency
Inauguration Live Updates: Trump Leaves White House as Biden Prepares to Assume the Presidency
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Axios, Breitbart, GovExec.com and NBC News
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
Trump Ends Where He Began, Fighting Release of His Tax Returns
Discussion:
Washington Times, Politico, Voice of America and Washington Post
Politico:
Biden plans 15 executive actions on his first day in office — President-elect Joe Biden is planning a blitz of unilateral action shortly after taking office on Wednesday that will mark his first extensive effort to undo the last four years under President Donald Trump.
Discussion:
Vox, NBC News, Washington Post, Washington Times, Real Clear Politics and President-Elect Joe Biden
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Transition / President-Elect Joe Biden:
FACT SHEET: President-elect Biden's Day One Executive Actions Deliver Relief for Families Across America Amid Converging Crises
FACT SHEET: President-elect Biden's Day One Executive Actions Deliver Relief for Families Across America Amid Converging Crises
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, Axios, Al Jazeera, Sputnik News and Cyprus Mail
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
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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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.
Tina Nguyen / Politico:
A big chunk of Trump's 1776 report appears lifted from an author's prior work — President Donald Trump's 1776 Commission was supposed to be the definitive “patriotic” rejoinder to the academic left for what conservatives view as a slanderous rendering of U.S. history.
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Caroline Kelly / CNN:
Biden to rescind 1776 commission via executive order
Biden to rescind 1776 commission via executive order
Discussion:
The Atlantic, BuzzFeed News and New Republic
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 …
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:
Business Insider, Outside the Beltway, TVNewser and The Hill, more at Mediagazer »
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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.
Washington Post:
Biden is ‘inheriting a disaster’ as coronavirus continues to grip nation amid chaotic vaccine rollout — On Jan. 20, 2020, a 35-year-old man who had recently returned to the United States from Wuhan, China, was admitted to Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash., suffering from fever, cough and general fatigue.
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Carl Zimmer / New York Times:
New California Variant May Be Driving Virus Surge There, Study Suggests
New California Variant May Be Driving Virus Surge There, Study Suggests
Discussion:
KFOR-TV and National Review
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 Independent, The Daily Beast, Fox News, Foreign Policy, Boston Herald and Reuters
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 …
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, 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 …
Bloomberg:
Jack Ma Emerges for First Time Since Ant, Alibaba Crackdown — Billionaire addressed rural teachers live online Wednesday — His emergence follows persistent rumors about his plight — Jack Ma has resurfaced after months out of public view that fueled intense speculation …
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, The Daily Caller, The Week and Al Jazeera, more at Techmeme »
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:
The Progressive Pulse, Washington Post, Raw Story, Axios, The Week, Breitbart, HuffPost, TheBlaze, The Daily Caller, POLITICUSUSA, Politico, The Hill, Associated Press and KIFI-TV
Bernie Sanders / The Guardian:
Joe Biden must put an end to business as usual. Here's where to start — In this time of unprecedented crises, Congress and the Biden administration must respond through unprecedented action — record-breaking 4,000 Americans are now dying each day from Covid-19, while the federal …
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.”