Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) slammed President Trump’s decision to grant sweeping pardons to those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, suggesting they are “political foot soldiers” for Trump. “Are they being released as a reserve army of political foot soldiers to act on behalf of MAGA and Donald Trump?” Raskin told CNN’s Erin Burnett during an appearance on the network Tuesday night. “I think that’s what’s so profoundly troubling to a majority of the American people who rejected the idea of freeing at least the violent criminals and...

President Trump made a big splash with dozens of executive actions on his first day in office, but now comes the hard part: getting Republicans in Congress in line to usher an ambitious legislative agenda through their slim majorities and clashing factions. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other GOP congressional leaders met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday to plan out how to do just that. Their sweeping goals include an extension of Trump’s tax cuts, energy policy reforms, border security measures...

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Tuesday said Republicans leaders agreed to move President Trump’s legislative agenda in one sweeping bill, a development he shared with reporters after top GOP lawmakers huddled at the White House with the president. The announcement from Scalise comes after weeks of debate over how to carry out Trump’s legislative wish list, with several senators — including Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) — pushing for two bills of Trump priorities through the budget reconciliation process instead of one, in hopes of more quickly enacting...

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) urged Apple to officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico on its mapping platform following President Trump’s Monday executive order declaring the land mass the Gulf of America. “Hey @tim_cook, just noticed Apple Maps still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Sent a report through the app, but thought you’d want to know,” Crenshaw wrote in a Tuesday post on X tagging the company’s CEO. The former president’s move comes days after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced a measure in the House to...

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former member of the Jan. 6 committee, sought to distinguish between the pardon he received from former President Biden compared to those President Trump gave to those who stormed the Capitol. Just hours apart, both Biden and Trump issued a number of pardons. An order from Biden gave a preemptive pardon to all nine members of the panel that investigated the attack on the Capitol, while Trump, through a series of pardons and commutations, cleared the slate for the more than 1,500 people being prosecuted...

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sharply criticized President Trump for issuing a sweeping pardon to nearly all defendants charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Schiff, a former member of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, called the move a “grotesque display” of power in an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” “It’s obscene. It’s a grotesque display of his new power as President to pardon these 15- or 1600 people, which I have to imagine includes people that committed violent assaults on...

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) blasted President Trump for false statements he made about the now-disbanded Jan. 6 committee, calling them a “reminder that neither lies nor the liar who tells them get better with age.” Cheney’s comments came after Trump gave a speech following his Inaugural address to a crowd of supporters gathered at the Capitol who were unable to sit in the hall where he was sworn in. In that speech, Trump repeated a number of false claims about the committee, again accusing them of deleting evidence. The...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in a Sunday post on TikTok that she is skipping President-elect Trump’s inauguration. “All these journalists are like, ‘Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration? Congresswoman, are you going to the inauguration? Are you going to the inauguration?” Ocasio-Cortez said in her TikTok video. “Let me make myself clear,” she added. “I don’t celebrate rapists.

Rep. Byron Donalds appears to be excited by President-elect Trump’s return to the White House, calling the next leader of the U.S. “daddy” over the weekend. Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, the Florida Republican said he believes Americans will thank Trump as soon as new policies, including deportations, are enacted. “When Americans see deportations or repatriations happen, they’re gonna be like, ‘Thank you,’” Donalds said. “When they see the border closed, they’re gonna say, ‘This is what I voted for.’ When they see peace starting to break out again...

Progressive congressional staffers withdrew their 32-hour week proposal just a day after receiving widespread blowback from both sides of the aisle about the plan. “The letter failed to make two things clear: First, that progressive congressional staff are dedicated to serving the American people no matter how many hours it takes to get the job done,” The Congressional Progressive Staff Association (CPSA) said in a Friday press release.