Politics
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Trump ends historically unpopular presidency with 34% approval rating
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 34% in a Gallup poll released Monday, the low point of a presidency that already had the weakest average approval rating of any of his predecessors since the survey began in the 1940s.
The new Gallup numbers, based on a poll that began just before the assault on the ...Read more
Trump reportedly set to pardon more than 100 people in his final hours as president
With just hours left in office, President Donald Trump is expected to dish out pardons and sentence commutations to a varied group of more than 100 criminals, pardons that could include himself and his family members, according to several reports Monday.
Trump, whose term ends at noon Wednesday, spent his last weekend at the White House ...Read more

Keystone XL may be sold for scrap if Biden moves to kill project
The Canadian province that invested $1.1 billion of taxpayers’ money in the controversial Keystone XL project is now considering the sale of pipe and materials to try to recoup some funds.
“If the project ends, there would be assets that could be sold, such as enormous quantities of pipe,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in a press ...Read more

Editorial: Nation needs Trump impeachment trial before healing can start
Donald Trump is now the United States’ first president to be impeached twice. And his latest trial in the Senate will not start until after he leaves office. For that reason, some have said that the nation should move on.
We disagree. This trial must — and will — be held.
For the sake of our democracy, the country needs a fair inquiry, ...Read more
Woody Guthrie — who despised Trump's dad — gets statue in his presidential sculpture garden of ‘heroes’
Woody Guthrie is on a list of American icons who will have statues built in their honor on President Donald Trump’s orders — even though the late folk music legend wrote a seething song decades ago about the Trump family’s allegedly racist business practices in New York City.
The Guthrie statue will be among more than 100 sculptures ...Read more

Commentary: How Biden can rebuild trust in our elections
Sifting through the figurative rubble from the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol, I recovered a valuable nugget — more on that in a moment — that was overshadowed by the tone-deaf charade President Donald Trump’s congressional toadies perpetrated after the riot.
Sen. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and ...Read more

Census director quits amid criticism that delayed count was politicized
WASHINGTON — Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham announced his resignation Monday amid criticism of his handling of the decennial census and allegations he allowed the count to be politicized.
Dillingham made the announcement in a statement that thanked the bureau’s staff for their work conducting the count amid a global pandemic. For ...Read more

Commentary: The Trump administration executed 13 people in last six months
With the execution early Saturday of Dustin Higgs, the Trump administration ended a killing spree unrivaled in modern federal history.
Over a span of six months, it put to death 13 convicted murderers, more than four times the number of federal executions since the federal government reinstated the death penalty in 1988. And it was done ...Read more

Garth Brooks to perform at Joe Biden inauguration
He’s got friends in high places.
Crossover country star Garth Brooks will perform at Joe Biden’s inauguration Wednesday. The “Friends in Low Places” singer announced his decision on Monday.
“This is not a political statement,” Brooks said in a statement. “This is statement of unity."
Brooks said Wednesday’s performance gives ...Read more

Editorial: A new captain takes the helm
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
The skies were already darkening over the United States in 1840 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow added those metaphorical lines to a poem he titled “The Building of the...Read more

‘Trump Baby' balloon is landing in a British museum
The 20-foot balloon dubbed “Trump Baby” that floated over President Donald Trump as he traveled at home and abroad is being retired to to the Museum of London in the city where it first appeared.
The hot-air dirigible, which made its debut during a protest of Trump’s first visit to the United Kingdom in 2019, was secured by the museum ...Read more

Trump leaves the White House as he came in: Isolated and unpredictable
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump exits the White House after four years of tumult much as he arrived, with only a handful of loyalists and family members at his side.
In his final days in office, Trump found friends and political allies in short supply following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his supporters ...Read more

Citizen Trump: The many paths ahead for the ex-president
Most ex-presidents spend their time out of office playing golf, getting their libraries in order, making well-paid speeches, writing even more lucrative memoirs and biting their tongues about what the next guy is doing. Other than the golf, the road ahead for Donald Trump, a president who has never adhered to his office’s norms, will be unlike...Read more

Taliban call on Biden to honor Trump deal to remove US troops
The Taliban has called on President-elect Joe Biden to honor a U.S. agreement to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan by May in order to secure intra-Afghan peace talks and end the two-decade-long war.
“Steps must now be taken to end the war, not to prolong it, and the agreement was made for the purpose,” Mohammad Naeem, a senior ...Read more

President Voldemort? In protest and without fanfare, Stephen Colbert has stopped saying Trump's name
When the chaotic tenure of Donald Trump as president of the United States ends on Wednesday (according to custom, law and belief), what will also pass is a small, intriguing, almost silent protest against him that’s been carried out over the public airwaves.
Since the week after the November 3 presidential election, CBS “Late Show” host ...Read more

Trump's shambolic empire faces long odds for one more comeback
On the day Donald Trump was getting impeached in Washington, the lobby of his New York tower at 40 Wall St. was almost silent. Few footsteps smudged the shiny marble.
But up the dark and golden elevators, trouble was stirring in one of the billionaire’s most valuable properties. Inside one law office, two partners had clashed over whether to ...Read more

Hundreds in publishing sign letter objecting to book deals for the Trump administration
More than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter last week opposing any publisher that signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration.
Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, journalist Sarah Weinman and "Little Fires Everywhere" author Celeste ...Read more

'Make the dream exist.' How L.A.'s Amanda Gorman became Biden's inauguration poet
LOS ANGELES — Like most of us, Amanda Gorman has been cooped up in her West Los Angeles apartment binge-watching "The Great British Baking Show" because of the pandemic. Unlike most of us, she got some very exciting news recently via Zoom: She'd been handpicked to read a poem at President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration.
The incoming first ...Read more

Make America California Again? State takes center stage as Biden sets his agenda
WASHINGTON — After four years of being relentlessly targeted by a Republican president who worked overtime to bait, punish and marginalize California and everything it represents, the state is suddenly center stage again in Washington's policy arena.
California is emerging as the de facto policy think tank of the Biden-Harris administration ...Read more

Trump pushed the limits of the US legal system; here's how it held up
NEW YORK — In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump gave the U.S. Constitution an unprecedented workout, challenging norms and laws in ways that left few parts of America’s foundational legal document untouched.
The president throughout his term faced suspicion of colluding with a foreign government, worries that his business ...Read more
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