Rep. Ronny Jackson: Biden's trip to Delaware is 'very hypocritical'

Republican congressman joins 'Fox Report' with reaction to the president's recent travels despite CDC guidelines and pressure over school reopenings.

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  • Can the Space Force repair its image and be taken seriously?

    Despite all the jokes about galactic warfare, the Space Force's Earth-bound national security mission is no laughing matter.

  • Biden administration doesn't want to get 'mixed up' in Brexit over Northern Ireland border row

    Joe Biden doesn't want to get "mixed up" in Brexit over the Northern Ireland border row, an ally of the president has told the Sunday Telegraph, The source said the new White House administration is monitoring the situation carefully but is loathe to intervene, marking a significant departure from Donald Trump's foreign policy style. The European Union's recent blunder triggering Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol in a row over vaccines, threatening to effectively create a border on the island of Ireland, set off alarm bells in Washington DC. There was no public comment on the issue at the time from Mr Biden, who has made statements on the subject in the past and is deeply personally committed to the Good Friday Agreement, or from his administration. But it was considered the latest in a series of troubling diplomatic faux pas by the EU as the US seeks to rebuild relations. The Biden source told The Sunday Telegraph: "Whatever the EU or the UK does [in relation to Northern Ireland] the administration wants to tread carefully, wait and see what develops, and not take a hard position. It's a tough one because you have the UK, Ireland and the EU, and you can't win.

  • Three Saudi youths get prison sentence instead of death

    Three young Saudi men who faced death sentences for acts they were accused of committing as minors have been handed a 10-year prison sentence instead, the Saudi Human Rights Commission said. Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoun and Abdullah al-Zaher, youth from Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority, were detained separately on charges stemming from their participation in anti-government Shiite protests over discrimination that rocked the country’s eastern province in 2011-2012. Al-Nimr, the nephew of prominent opposition cleric Shiekh Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution sparked Shiite demonstrations from Bahrain to Pakistan, was arrested in 2012 at age 17, according to Human Rights Watch.

  • Turkey jails four pending trial over university protests: prosecutor

    Four people were formally arrested as part of an investigation into protests against President Tayyip Erdogan's appointment of a rector at one of the country's top universities, an Istanbul prosecutor's office said on Sunday. The protests began last month over Erdogan's appointment of Melih Bulu, an academic and former political candidate, as rector of Istanbul's Bogazici University.

  • Federal government spent $480 million deploying National Guard troops after Capitol riots

    The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 has cost taxpayers upwards of $480 million for the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to Washington. Why it matters: A Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, that found former President Trump's refusal to concede the election cost Americans at least $519 million in repairing damaged property, finding and prosecuting insurrectionists, recounting votes and, of course, increasing security protocols.Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America.Driving the news: According to Bloomberg, Defense Department officials estimated that the $480 million would cover the National Guard spending through mid-March.The deployment was the largest in Washington since the Civil War, according to Bloomberg, with 25,000 troops deployed after the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol.U.S. Capitol Police requested that 5,000 National Guard soldiers remain in Washington through mid-March.The National Guard costs don’t include $8.8 million D.C. police spent during the week of Jan. 6 when it dispatched 850 officers to help defend the Capitol.Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.

  • Harris has reportedly pushed Biden's coronavirus team to focus on overlooked communities

    After Vice President Kamala Harris received her second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in a televised event at the National Institutes of Health in January, Rep. Joyce Beatty's (D-Ohio) phone lit up with calls from constituents who were "newly curious" about getting vaccinated themselves, she told The New York Times. As Beatty explained, watching a Black woman receive the vaccine "gave people hope and gave people education." Black Americans are nearly three times more likely to die from the coronavirus, the Times notes, but they are far less likely to be inoculated, in large part because of a lack of access, but also, some experts have pointed out, because of longstanding wariness about government-driven health programs. Harris, it seems, was able to ease some of those concerns with her public vaccination, and she also has reportedly pressed President Biden and his advisers in private to focus on how their policies will ensure less advantaged people in both urban and rural settings are protected against the virus. "The vice president pushed us hard, in a very good way," Jeffrey Zients, Biden's coronavirus response coordinator, told the Times. "She pushed me on, 'Where are we on mobile vaccination units? How many are we going to have, in what period of time? Are they going to be able to reach rural communities and urban communities? How much progress have you made?" Read more about Harris' role in the Biden administration so far at The New York Times. More stories from theweek.com5 brutally funny cartoons about America's bungled vaccine rolloutThe growing white supremacist threatRepublicans have lost their grip on the national discourse

  • Stimulus check eligibility could be capped at individual income of $60,000, Yellen says

    “It has to go to people and households that do need the money.”

  • Former Iran detainee separates from husband after learning of alleged affair while she was in prison

    A British-Australian woman who spent nearly three years in solitary confinement in an Iranian prison has separated from her husband after hearing allegations he was having an affair with a colleague, according to media reports. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, 33, has filed for divorce from Ruslan Hodorov, her Russian-Israeli husband, according to the Herald Sun of Melbourne. The couple were wed in a traditional Jewish ceremony in 2017 after meeting a decade earlier in Israel. Ms Moore-Gilbert spent 804 days in jail, after being accused of being a spy by the Iranians and sentenced to 10 years. She was seized in 2018 after attending a conference at the holy city of Qom in central Iran and strongly denied the charges. She returned to Australia last November as part of a prisoner-swap agreement that saw the release of three Iranians accused of plotting to kill Israeli officials in Bangkok. But the eminent Islamic scholar was reportedly heartbroken on her return to learn of allegations of her husband’s relationship with Dr Kylie Baxter, her PhD supervisor. Quoting friends, the Australian paper said the affair began a year after Ms Moore-Gilbert’s arrest. She was especially upset, given that she had resisted an attempt by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards to lure her husband to Iran, because they believed he was an Israeli spy.

  • Himalayan glacier breaks in India, around 125 missing in floods

    Around 125 people were missing in northern India after a Himalayan glacier broke and swept away a small hydroelectric dam on Sunday, with floods forcing the evacuation of villages downstream. A wall of dust, rock and water hit as an avalanche roared down the Rishiganga valley deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand, a witness said. "It came very fast, there was no time to alert anyone," Sanjay Singh Rana, who lives on the upper reaches of the river in Raini village, told Reuters by phone.

  • Palestinian leader's path to elections is fraught with peril

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' call for elections has thrown his political future into peril, forcing him to negotiate competing demands to engage with a friendlier U.S. administration, mend the rift with his militant Hamas rivals and keep his unruly Fatah movement from breaking apart. The presidential decree issued last month, calling for what would be the first Palestinian elections in 15 years, stemmed from negotiations launched with Hamas last year aimed at shoring up ranks in the face of unprecedented crises. The Trump administration had cut off all aid and proposed a Mideast plan that overwhelmingly favored Israel and would have allowed it to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

  • Biden on school closures: "It is a national emergency"

    School closures across the country and a lack of in-person learning due to the coronavirus is "a national emergency," President Biden stressed in a pre-Super Bowl interview with CBS on Sunday. Why it matters: Schools' handling of the pandemic reportedly vary wildly from district to district, and one nonprofit study from October estimates that as many as 3 million U.S. students have gone without any formal education — virtual or in-person — since March. Support safe, smart, sane journalism. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.Where it stands: Biden has pledged to reopen schools within his first 100 days, but Anthony Fauci — Biden's chief medical adviser — recently told teachers unions that the administration's goal may not be reached that quickly due to "mitigating circumstances." Current mitigating circumstances include new, more transmissible strains of the coronavirus spreading through the country. What he's saying: "It is a national emergency. It genuinely is a national emergency," Biden said. "I think it's time for schools to reopen safely. Safely. You have to have fewer people in the classroom, you have to have ventilation systems that have been reworked.""Our CDC commissioner is going to be coming out with science-based judgement within, I think as early as Wednesday, to lay out what the minimum requirements are." "I think about the price. So many of my grandkids and your kids are going to pay for not having had the chance to finish whatever it was. That graduation, where you didn't get to walk across the stage — I think they're going through a lot, these kids." The bottom line: "Currently, there is not enough data to understand the status of school re-opening and how students are learning nationwide," the Department of Education said on Friday.Go deeper: Schools face an uphill battle to reopen during the pandemicGet smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.

  • 117 inmates take over section of downtown St. Louis jail

    The incident began after a "defiant" inmate got into a fight with a corrections officer and other prisoners jumped in, officials said.

  • Biden administration suspends Trump asylum deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

    The Biden administration said on Saturday it was immediately suspending Trump-era asylum agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, part of a bid to undo his Republican predecessor's hardline immigration policies. In a statement, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken said the United States had "suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden."

  • Judge: Texan charged in Capitol riot can go on Mexico trip

    A federal judge on Friday granted permission for a West Texas flower shop owner charged in last month's riot at the U.S. Capitol to take a work-related four-day trip to Mexico. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said in the order granting Jenny Cudd's request for travel later this month that neither her pretrial services officer nor prosecutors opposed the request. Cudd was initially charged last month with entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct.

  • Buckingham Palace denies Queen blocked law which would have forced her to disclose her shareholdings

    Buckingham Palace has insisted the Queen has never tried to block legislation, after newly unearthed memos suggested her personal lawyer lobbied the government to change a draft law that would have disclosed details of her private share dealings. Documents from the National Archives revealed a series of meetings between her lawyer, Matthew Farrer, and senior civil servants in 1973 after Edward Heath's government proposed legislation that would have made company shareholdings more transparent. A report in The Guardian claims the Queen was made aware of the draft law through the enactment of Queen's Consent, when the monarch is informed of legislation that could affect the private interests of the Crown. Documents suggest that in Nov 1973, after becoming aware of a bill that would potentially expose the "embarrassing" extent of her share holdings, the Queen dispatched Mr Farrer to press the government to make changes. The government inserted a clause into the draft legislation granting the power to exempt companies used by "heads of state" from transparency measures. But further correspondence suggested unhappiness at that compromise because it would still make it obvious what investments the Queen held.

  • Biden is ‘out of control’ and ‘overstepping his constitutional authority’ with executive orders: Texas AG

    Ken Paxton joins ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ to discuss his ongoing legal challenge against the president’s proposed deportation freeze. He also explains how recent executive orders on immigration are affecting his state.

  • Too soon to end German lockdown, says Bavarian leader Soeder

    It is too soon for Germany to lift its lockdown without risking a third wave of COVID-19 infections, Bavarian premier Markus Soeder said on Sunday, ahead of a crunch meeting to review the restrictions aimed at stemming the pandemic. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany's 16 federal states are due to meet virtually on Wednesday to discuss whether to ease the restrictions from Feb. 15, or extend a lockdown that began in mid-December. "I think, basically, the lockdown will have to be extended for the time being," Soeder told broadcaster ARD.

  • Asylum-seekers stuck in Cyprus' cramped camp want out

    Emmanuel Conteh negotiates the muddy, rutted pathways in shorts and torn plastic flip-flops and says he can’t sleep in his heavy canvas tent at night because of the cold. Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said this week that Cyprus remains first among all other European Union member states in asylum applications relative to its population.

  • Trump would sell US secrets to the highest bidder if given intel briefings, says senior Democrat

    Joe Biden has said there is 'no need' to provide his predecessor with intelligence briefings

  • Covid vaccine could be made available in pill form, minister says

    Coronavirus vaccines could eventually be administered in the form of a pill, Nadhim Zahawi has suggested. The vaccines minister said that injections may not be the sole option for receiving dosages in future but that ensuring a healthy capacity of supplies remained the priority for the Government. Speaking to Times Radio, Mr Zahawi said: "There are technologies with pills and others being developed around the world and we will continue to look at those. "But we're making sure the UK will always have the capability and capacity to manufacture the variant vaccines that will deal with any variant virus.” Asked about a slowdown for first jabs when second jabs are rolled out, Mr Zahawi said: "We've got the capacity to do first and second jabs. The limiting factor is the supply of vaccines.” Receiving a vaccine jab via a pill could help alleviate supply issues that have hindered the rollout in some areas of the world including Europe.