President-elect Joe Biden introduced Democratic primary rival Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday as his nominee for transportation secretary, calling the 38-year-old ex-mayor of South Bend “a new voice, with new ideas determined to move past old politics.”
Top congressional leaders are hoping to seal a deal as early as Wednesday that would extend aid to individuals and businesses and help ship coronavirus vaccines to millions.
This year’s months-long hack of federal networks has revealed new weaknesses and underscored some previously known ones, including the government’s reliance on widely used commercial software that provides potential attack vectors for nation-state hackers.
Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, one of Biden’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, was a breakout star of the primaries.
The dozen or so lawmakers sealed agreement on their COVID relief plan over the weekend and decided to offer two pandemic relief packages with varying price tags.
Federal officials hope to have given both of the required vaccine doses to 100 million people by the end of March. It could take two to three more months to immunize enough people to prompt herd immunity.
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn denied Saturday that the White House had threatened his job if the agency didn’t move quickly on the vaccine.
Food and Drug Administration chief Stephen Hahn signaled that he would tell regulators to allow the vaccine to be issued on an emergency basis, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said.
A groundbreaking measure to end the creation of anonymous shell companies in the United States cleared Congress on Friday as the Senate joined the House in passing a defense-spending bill with a veto-proof margin.
COVID-19 relief talks remain stalled but there is universal agreement that Congress won’t adjourn for the year without passing a long-delayed round of pandemic relief.
An emerging $900 billion COVID-19 aid package from a bipartisan group of lawmakers all but collapsed Thursday after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Republican senators won’t support $160 billion in state and local funds as part of a potential trade-off in the deal.
The deficit—the shortfall between what the government collects in taxes and what it spends—reflected an 8.9% jump in outlays, to $886.6 billion, and a 2.9% decline in tax revenues, to $457.3 billion.
Amid the uncertainty, the House easily passed a one-week government-wide funding bill Wednesday that sets a new Dec. 18 deadline for Congress to wrap up both the COVID-19 relief measure and a $1.4 trillion catch-all spending bill that is also overdue.
The $916 billion offer, the separate ongoing talks among key rank-and-file senators, and the shifting demands by the White House all add up to muddled, confusing prospects for a long-delayed COVID-19 aid package.
The case could mean undoing an agreement between the mortgage giants and the government that has sent about $246 billion in their profits to the Treasury. That was compensation for the taxpayer bailout they received after the 2007 housing market crash.
Lawmakers are struggling to figure out how to deliver long-delayed pandemic relief, including additional help for hard-hit businesses, further unemployment benefits, funding to distribute COVID-19 vaccines and funding demanded by Democrats for state and local governments.
The funding is part of the Community Crossings grant program, which provides matching state dollars for local road and bridge construction projects. Interstate or state highway projects are not eligible for funding.
The Trump administration has alleged that TikTok is a security threat because the Chinese government could spy on app users’ personal data.
Disagreements flared Monday over one key provision of a federal pandemic relief package—a proposed liability shield from COVID-19-related lawsuits for businesses, schools and organizations that reopen.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called the awards the “single largest step ever taken to bridge the digital divide.”
