Biden hosts labor leaders in Oval Office to discuss coronavirus relief, infrastructure

Were it up to former president Donald Trump, Republicans would spend the next two years purging their ranks and reshaping themselves in his own image — a process he moved to jump-start Tuesday with a searing attack on the party’s most powerful elected leader, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McConnell (R-Ky.) has other ideas. Having held Trump responsible for both the loss of his Senate majority in the Jan. 5 Georgia runoffs and the deadly attack on the Capitol a day later, he has moved to chart a different path — one that steers clear of the former president’s personal grievances and conspiratorial rhetoric to put the GOP back in power as soon as possible.

Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will be among the headline speakers at the Republican National Committee’s spring finance meeting in Florida — but former president Donald Trump is not expected to speak, according to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post.

Other speakers for the event include South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) and Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), among others.

The meeting is scheduled for April 9-11 in Palm Beach, where Trump lives.

The closing arguments were done, a last-minute attempt to call witnesses had collapsed. It was time for the final vote in former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. The nine House managers all found a spot on the Senate floor as the clerk read out the names of each senator and their vote.

“Mr. Burr. Mr. Burr, guilty.”

Standing on the Republican side of the chamber, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) felt a flash of hope. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), a longtime conservative, had gone against Trump.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted that he had spoken to Biden for about an hour Wednesday, describing the conversation as “very warm and friendly.”

Netanyahu shared that the two leaders discussed regional issues, including the threat posed by Iran.

“The two leaders noted their longstanding personal connection and said that they would work together to continue strengthening the steadfast alliance between Israel and the US,” read a post from Netanyahu’s official Twitter account, @IsraeliPM.

Biden has selected Chiquita Brooks-LaSure to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, filling a major role in his health-care leadership team, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

Brooks-LaSure served in the Obama administration as a senior CMS official who helped implement the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion and insurance-market overhaul. She also previously worked on Capitol Hill for the House Ways and Means Committee, building ties with then-Rep. Xavier Becerra, Biden’s choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

So far, nine federal government agencies and about 100 private companies have been compromised in the SolarWinds hacking campaign, said Anne Neuberger, the White House’s top cyber official, in her first public remarks since being appointed last month.

The number could grow as the investigation continues, but it is the first specific accounting by the U.S. government of the massive espionage operation that the U.S. intelligence community last month said was “likely” the work of Russia. Privately, officials say they are highly confident Moscow’s foreign intelligence service, SVR, is the culprit, but they have not yet made a public statement of blame to that effect.

The first time I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, I was in high school. It was 1991, and I was in the district office of Rep. Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), for whom I’d earned the dubious honor of interning.

Traficant was already infamous both for his public persona, which tended toward the eccentric, and his sketchy background. Eventually, his corruption would lead him to be one of the two members of the House expelled by that body since the Civil War. But his constituents loved him. They loved his panache, and they loved his irreverence. But this was Youngstown, epicenter of the Rust Belt politically, and they loved that he was unabashed in fighting for them, whatever else he was doing on the side. In many ways, Traficant’s political pitch was the same one that President Donald Trump would use three decades later, to equivalent success.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday defended Vice President Harris’s recent remark that the Biden administration was in many ways “starting from scratch” in developing a plan to deliver coronavirus vaccines across the country, arguing that the Trump administration had fallen short in its efforts to craft a national strategy.

“I don’t think most governors, or most of the American people, would tell you that they think it was handled effectively and efficiently by the prior administration, given where we are,” Psaki told reporters at a regular news briefing.