Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley were walking with President Trump when he posed for a photo-op in front of the historic St. John's Church in Washington, D.C., on Monday, shortly after police dispersed peaceful protesters in the surrounding area with tear gas and flash grenades. Now, a senior defense official claims Esper and Milley weren't aware police had cleared the area prior to Trump's arrival, PBS Newshour reports.

Moreover, the official said Esper and Milley didn't know Trump was going to get his picture taken in front of the church; they thought they were headed outside the White House "to review efforts to quell the protests" against police brutality.

Despite Trump threatening to call in the military to supplement city police across the country, the defense official said the Pentagon isn't keen on deploying any troops, and that Esper referring to demonstration sites as a "battlespace" was merely jargon used to discuss the situation.

Nevertheless, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) wants both Milley and Esper to testify about the possible role the military played in clearing the protesters, even though he was told it was not involved. Tim O'Donnell

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) supports sanctions against colleagues who make extremist remarks, saying he hopes House leadership takes "measures that will send the message that this is unacceptable."

On Tuesday, CNN reported that before being elected last year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) liked a comment on social media that said "a bullet to the head" would be a quick way to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Greene, an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy, also liked comments about executing FBI agents for being members of the "Deep State" and responded to a person asking "now do we get to hang" former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton by saying "stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient."

During an interview with ABC News' Powerhouse Politics podcast, Reed said he doesn't know Greene, but has "expressed concern about the rhetoric and the information that I'm seeing with her, and I would hope some folks would maybe talk to her." Greene represents her constituents as well as the Republican Party, and her fellow members of the GOP "all have to answer for" her remarks, Reed said. Democrats and Republicans both have to call out "any rhetoric that is of that extreme nature," Reed continued, and Greene's online behavior was "offensive" and "appalling. It cannot be accepted."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Wednesday morning said he "planned to have a conversation" with Greene. In a statement, Greene said CNN wants to "cancel me and silence my voice," and called the report about her online comments "a hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office." Catherine Garcia

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) sensible fashion non-statement raised $1.8 million for charitable organizations in Vermont.

For President Biden's inauguration last Wednesday, Sanders wore a simple Burton Snowboards jacket and mittens made from recycled wool. Agence France-Presse photographer Brendan Smialowski snapped a photo of a cozy Sanders sitting in a folding chair, legs and arms crossed, that resonated with the internet — soon, images began appearing showing Sanders sitting on the moon, riding the New York subway, and hanging out with the Golden Girls.

His campaign put the image on sweatshirts, T-shirts, and stickers last Thursday, and the items immediately sold out; more products were released over the weekend, and those were snapped up by Monday morning. Sanders announced on Wednesday that in just five days, $1.8 million was raised for a variety of charitable organizations in Vermont, including Meals on Wheels and senior centers. He was "amazed by all the creativity shown by so many people over the last week," Sanders said, and happy to use his "internet fame to help Vermonters in need."

Fundraising is not enough, Sanders added, as "even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress, and I will be doing everything I can in Washington to make sure working people in Vermont and across the country get the relief they need in the middle of the worst crisis we've faced since the Great Depression."

The mittens Sanders wore were crafted by Vermont elementary school teacher Jen Ellis, who has made additional pairs for Passion 4 Paws Vermont and Outright Vermont to auction off. Burton Snowboards also donated 50 jackets to the Burlington Department for Children and Families in Sanders' name. Catherine Garcia

Cloris Leachman, the award-winning actress known for such roles as Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has died at 94.

Leachman died from natural causes at her home in California on Tuesday, Variety reported.

The beloved actress rose to fame while portraying landlady Phyllis on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time, in the 1970s. She won two of her eight Primetime Emmy Awards for the role, which she reprised in the spinoff, Phyllis, and she's tied with Julia Louis-Dreyfus for most acting honors at the Emmys, NBC News reports.

Leachman also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1972 for her performance in The Last Picture Show, and the long list of her other memorable work includes Young Frankenstein and Malcolm in the Middle, with the latter winning her two additional Emmys in the 2000s. In 2011, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame — and Variety notes that at age 82, she became Dancing With the Stars' oldest contestant in 2008.

"Cloris Leachman was a comedy legend," the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tweeted Wednesday. "From a groundbreaking role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show to the films of Mel Brooks and her Oscar-winning turn in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, she never lost her ability to shock, delight and surprise us. She will be missed." Brendan Morrow

Frank Biden, President Biden's brother, was featured in a newspaper ad for the Florida-based law firm where he works that ran on Inauguration Day in the Florida-based Daily Business Review, CNBC reports. In the ad, which promotes an environmental lawsuit against a group of Florida sugarcane companies, a picture of Frank Biden, a non-attorney senior adviser for the firm, is accompanied by quotes touting his relationship with his brother.

"My brother is a model for how to go about doing this work," one quote reads, while another states "the two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront; the president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, for example."

Richard Painter, who served as former President George W. Bush's chief White House ethics lawyer, said Frank Biden had a right to run the ad, but suggested it wasn't a good look for him or the new administration, which he said should encourage Frank Biden not to promote the family name and make it clear senior White House officials shouldn't engage with him. "The Biden White House has to have a very strict protocol on the using of the Biden name," Painter told CNBC. "Brothers, law firm associates, and anyone else who is using the Biden name should not be contacting the president or anyone else working with the president."

Frank Biden told CNBC in an email he has never "used my brother to obtain clients for my firm." Read more at CNBC. Tim O'Donnell

Dr. Anthony Fauci is continuing to look back — and get brutally honest — about his experience working under former President Donald Trump.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, opened up about the Trump administration in a new interview with The Atlantic, recalling how the White House "became a different place" where officials broke from previous administrations' "deep respect for science," making for a "surrealistic experience."

For instance, Fauci recalled his frustration over Trump hearing things about the COVID-19 pandemic from random people like "a buddy he knew from somewhere" and taking it as seriously as what the experts were saying, as well as surrounding himself with "strange people" promoting "garbage" science. He also said Trump showed an apparent lack of interest in the pandemic.

"It's really tough to get into his head, but I think what was going on with him is he was not interested in the outbreak," Fauci said. "The outbreak to him was an inconvenient truth that he didn't accept as a truth."

Fauci remembers making administration officials "furious" by contradicting Trump's "nonsense," and at one point, the White House even sent out a list of things he allegedly got wrong about the pandemic that "was complete crap." In the end, Fauci said he tried not to let things like this bother him.

"People's lives are at stake," Fauci said. "I'm a physician. I'm a scientist. I'm a public-health expert. I know what I need to do. All that other stuff is just a distraction. Quite frankly, it's bulls--t."

At the same time, Fauci said he and Trump actually "really liked each other," and the president was "charismatic and likable on a personal basis," if "not on a policy basis." But with President Biden in office, Fauci said, it's as if "we went from an alternative world into a real world." Read the full interview at The Atlantic. Brendan Morrow

"We've never seen the groundswell of public support" for Washington, D.C., statehood "that we're seeing now," historian Chris Myers Asch, the co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital, told The Washington Post. That momentum is mainly a product of grassroots activists who are focused on getting the city's federal taxpaying residents representation in Congress, as detailed in a lengthy feature published by the Post on Wednesday. But the future of the movement rests in the Senate chamber, and Democratic lawmakers, often wary of addressing the issue in the past, seem to be warming to the idea for the sake of their party.

"Democrats are shifting toward uniform support for statehood because they realize it's one of the only ways they can gain power that's equivalent to their numbers in the greater population," historian George Derek Musgrove, Asch's co-author, told the Post. "I don't think there's any question that people within the Democratic leadership understand the stakes, and the benefits that statehood would bring to the party."

The last time the discussion about D.C. statehood was really amplified was in the early 1990s, and Democrats had held the Senate for more than 30 of the last 40 years, so they weren't too concerned about power dynamics. But while they have a slim majority in both Congressional chambers now, their grip is very loose, leaving them to face a new reality. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell