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House may push impeachment 'next week,' Pelosi deputy says
January 8, 2021 -
Harris swears in 3 new Democratic senators
5:20 p.m. -
Fox News contributors choke up talking about the importance of Kamala Harris being the first Black woman VP
4:59 p.m. -
Watch Biden arrive at the White House for the 1st time as president
4:48 p.m. -
Biden's team reportedly fears the new COVID-19 variant is even worse than they thought
4:40 p.m. -
Clyburn says George W. Bush called him 'the savior' over his Biden endorsement
4:24 p.m. -
There's a secret message for coders on the new White House website
3:59 p.m. -
Trump made 30,573 false claims as president, by The Washington Post's count
3:54 p.m.
House Democrats may proceed with an impeachment vote against President Trump "as early as mid-next week," Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) told CNN on Friday. The House would like Vice President Mike Pence to quickly invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump, but if he doesn't, "we will move forward with impeachment," Clark said.
If Pence and the Cabinet don't invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, lawmakers will quickly move forward with impeachment, Democratic @RepKClark says.
Articles of impeachment could be voted on “as early as mid-next week,” she adds.https://t.co/44OhofD7jV pic.twitter.com/uDsL9C8ObV
— New Day (@NewDay) January 8, 2021
Cabinet members have reportedly been discussing using the amendment to oust Trump after he provoked an attack by his supporters on the Capitol, but Pence needs to be onboard, and he reportedly is not. Less than two weeks remain before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office. Clark acknowledged "we don't have much time" to remove Trump, but said House "procedural tools" could allow the body to skip committee votes and bring impeachment right to the floor. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) similarly said Thursday that "we don't need a lengthy debate" to decide to impeach Trump. Kathryn Krawczyk
The Democratic Party gained a slim majority in the Senate on Wednesday, when Vice President Kamala Harris — who just a few hours earlier took her own oath of office — swore Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), and her successor Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) into the upper chamber.
BREAKING: Vice Pres. Kamala Harris swears in new Sens. Alex Padilla, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock—giving Democrats the majority in the Senate. https://t.co/olJmrtdU6d pic.twitter.com/XH4WVwd8t4
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) January 20, 2021
The Senate now has a 50-50 party split, though Harris would serve as the tie-breaker in simple majority votes, which means the Democrats hold the edge.
With the addition of three new Democrats, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has taken on the role of majority leader, while Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is once again the minority leader, a post he held between 2007 and 2015. Tim O'Donnell
Liberal Fox News contributor Richard Fowler choked up during an appearance on the network as he marveled at the numerous glass ceilings broken by Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday.
"One part [of the inauguration] that caused me to get real emotional was, we've been a country for 243 years, and in all those 243 years, we have had women citizens but we have never had a woman hold national office," Fowler said, his voice breaking as he went on. "So to see Kamala Harris put her hand on the Bible today — also being her and I are of Jamaican descent, and I just think about my grandmother and my mom and so many other women who saw this, and so many young girls who can finally believe that they can be president, too, because of what we did as a country back in November."
Fox News contributor Richard Fowler gets emotional when talking about Kamala Harris being the first woman VP, and how it makes him think about his grandmother and mom, who like Harris are of Jamaican descent pic.twitter.com/Wdlo8Ca3uh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 20, 2021
Fowler was not the only contributor on Fox News on Wednesday to be audibly moved by the significance of Harris' oath. Political analyst Juan Williams also emotionally explained, "It's visceral, and I'll tell you why. I have granddaughters, I'm the son of a Black mother — you think about American history, you think about the status of Black women in this country for most of our history. And the idea that a Black woman would assume such power in this moment as a national leader — truly inspiring." Jeva Lange
Fox News' Juan Williams gets choked up talking about Kamala Harris:
"You think about the status of Black women in this country for most of our history. And the idea that a Black woman would assume such power in this moment as a national leader, truly inspiring." pic.twitter.com/K13K0Q1vVX
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 20, 2021
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office Wednesday, marking the end of former President Donald Trump's term. After the inauguration ceremony, Biden and Harris embarked on a short parade around the Capitol Hill area that ended at the White House. That's where Biden and his family got to step inside for the first time since Biden was vice president four years ago.
President Biden and @DrBiden arrive at the White House. https://t.co/xvklJYaA5z#InaugurationDay pic.twitter.com/6DGb7JjWC5
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 20, 2021
Shortly after Biden's arrival, Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff made it to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The vice president has a set of offices in the building next to the White House, but lives in a house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory about two miles northwest.
WATCH: Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, after being sworn in today as the first Black, female and South Asian VP in U.S. history. https://t.co/6hMTteTAC3 pic.twitter.com/N6LOjZt4Qz
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 20, 2021
The White House got a thorough cleaning after the Trump administration departed Wednesday morning. Biden administration members will be required to wear masks once they start working, unlike Trump's staff. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Biden's team is reportedly worried the COVID-19 pandemic they're inheriting will be even more difficult to handle than they anticipated, and some advisers say a new, more contagious variant of the virus — as opposed to vaccine distribution logistics — is the main reason why, Bloomberg reports.
Biden has promised to work to curb the virus' spread with a push to inoculate 100 million Americans in 100 days. He plans to encourage widespread mask usage, increase testing, and safely reopen schools. But the fear is that the new variant, which was initially discovered in the United Kingdom, but has made its way to the U.S. and elsewhere, will upend the entire plan and subsequently damage his prospects of achieving other legislative priorities like immigration reform and infrastructure development, Bloomberg notes.
While the mutation is seemingly at the center of the apprehension, Biden's aides also reportedly blame their predecessors for putting them in a bad spot. Some aides, per Bloomberg, privately allege the Trump administration "dragged its heels in showing them details of the federal response and its data." Ultimately, they reportedly opted against making those concerns public because they wanted to avoid publicly criticizing the Trump administration during the transition, potentially motivating them to cut them out of the loop completely.
A former senior Trump official told Bloomberg that description of the situation was just the Biden team's way of lowering expectations, adding that they were given unprecedented access to pandemic-related information. Read more at Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell
Former President George W. Bush described House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) as "the savior" for helping President Biden make his way to the Oval Office, according to Clyburn himself.
The South Carolina Democrat revealed Wednesday he spoke with Bush ahead of the inauguration ceremony and that the former president called him the "savior" because of his key endorsement of Biden's campaign, The Associated Press reports.
"George Bush said to me today, he said, 'You know, you're the savior," Clyburn explained. "Because if you had not nominated Joe Biden, we would not be having this transfer of power today.'"
Clyburn backed Biden prior to the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary, which Biden went on to win in what was widely seen as the major turning point in his presidential campaign; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) subsequently dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
Bush, according to Clyburn, also described Biden as "the only one who could have defeated the incumbent president." Brendan Morrow
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) says President George W. Bush told him he's "the savior" for his help in getting Joe Biden the nomination.
Clyburn says Bush told him Biden was "the only one who could have defeated" Trump. pic.twitter.com/lXeRGLGCLu
— The Recount (@therecount) January 20, 2021
A new White House means a new www.whitehouse.gov. But most people who browse the spiffy website won't know that there's a secret message hidden right under their eyes.
Snuck into the HTML code is a "neat little Easter egg," Protocol reports — a message that says "If you're reading this, we need your help building back better," followed by a link to the U.S. Digital Service, the executive branch's elite technology unit.
Another hidden message on the page points anyone creeping on the HTML toward the White House's analytics website, which allows viewers to see how many people are on government websites at any given time, as well as what pages are the most viewed (if all this tech talk is Greek to you, you can snoop the page the easier way, by clicking here; turns out a lot of people try to track their USPS packages!):
In addition to the hidden message from the U.S. Digital Service, the new White House website’s source code also includes a plug for the federal government’s web traffic dashboard https://t.co/NtUta04bvA pic.twitter.com/c8ueoZljox
— Benjamin Freed (@brfreed) January 20, 2021
President Biden's tough tech agenda in office will indeed need all the help it can get — read more about what he wants to accomplish in office on the cyber front here. Jeva Lange
The numbers are in.
Former President Donald Trump racked up an astonishing 30,573 false claims throughout the four years of his presidency, according to The Washington Post's fact checker. They include repeated inflations like Trump's insistence that more of his border wall was built than actually had been, flat-out lies about just how many votes he received in the 2020 election, and everything in between.
The final count. Never would have believed this number was possible when we started four years ago. https://t.co/rZaAOI0gjd pic.twitter.com/2eCUxwtmSo
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 20, 2021
Trump's false claims increased most dramatically in the months leading up to the 2020 election. They plateaued again afterward as Trump stayed out of the public eye, even as he falsely insisted he won the election and that fraud had cost him votes.
Trump most often repeated his claim of building "the greatest economy in the history of the world," saying it 493 times, the Post counts. False claims about his political opponents wanting fully open borders and the actual size of his tax cuts also topped the most repeated list, which you can explore at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk