These gentlemen were allegedly able to cobble together a successful (until it wasn’t) illegal insider-trading scheme via “information gleaned through an Alcoholics Anonymous relationship.” Cheers!
A major foreign policy shift out of the gate
McConnell doesn’t seem to be softening on the president
The Biden team noted that Levine has been confirmed three times by the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania state senate
President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will nominate Pennsylvania’s top health official, Rachel Levine, to be his assistant secretary of health. Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said in a statement. “She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
Levine serves as Pennsylvania’s secretary of health and has been leading the state’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Keystone XL may soon be out of stock
U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday. A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president’s team with U.S. stakeholders. The words “Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit” appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden’s presidency.
Navalny returns to Russia, is immediately detained
Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who recuperated in Germany from a near-deadly poisoning, returned to Moscow on Sunday and was detained shortly after leaving his plane. The detention of Mr. Navalny could set off an international backlash and protests at home. He has accused the Kremlin of trying to murder him in YouTube videos viewed more than 40 million times.
Russia’s penitentiary service, which has said that Mr. Navalny was wanted for violating the terms of a prior suspended sentence, released a statement saying that Mr. Navalny had been detained pending a court hearing. …
Before he was detained at passport control, Mr. Navalny gave an impromptu statement to journalists. He stood in the transit area of the airport’s Terminal D, before a lit-up screen showing a photo of the Kremlin, and apologized to air travelers inconvenienced by the air-traffic tumult surrounding his arrival. “I am not afraid,” he said in remarks carried by Russian news media livestreams from the scene. “I know that I am right. I know all the criminal cases against me are fabricated.”
NSA is installing Trump-selected GOP operative as agency’s top lawyer
The National Security Agency is “moving forward” to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP political operative and White House official, as the agency’s top lawyer, the agency said Sunday. The announcement came a day after acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the NSA director, Gen. Paul Nakasone, to immediately place Ellis in position as the agency’s general counsel.
Ellis had been selected for the job in November by the Pentagon general counsel after a civil service competition. But Nakasone was not in favor of Ellis’s selection and sought to delay his installation, according to several people familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. …
Ellis was selected under pressure from the White House, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The move drew criticism from national security legal experts as an attempt to politicize a career position.
A look back at the president’s most notable lies from the most tireless fact-checker of the Trump era
My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan’s Man of the Year
Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan’s Man of the Year years before his presidency? He wouldn’t have been. He wasn’t. And yet this lie he appeared to have invented in the final week of his 2016 campaign became a staple of his 2020 campaign, repeated at Michigan rally after rally. It’s so illustrative because it makes so little sense.
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