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WASHINGTON (AP) — With 13 days left in his term, President Donald Trump finally bent to reality Thursday amid growing talk of trying to force him out early, acknowledging he'll peacefully leave after Congress affirmed his defeat. Trump led off a video from the White House by condemning the violence carried out in his name a day earlier at the Capitol. Then, for the first time on camera, he admitted his presidency would soon end — though he declined to mention President-elect Joe Biden by name or explicitly state he had lost. "A new adm...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government is close to a deal to acquire tens of millions of additional doses of Pfizer's vaccine in exchange for helping the pharmaceutical giant gain better access to manufacturing supplies. A person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the deal is under discussion and could be finalized shortly. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to describe ongoing deliberations. Pfizer's vaccine was the first to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration and initial s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The video message that plunged Washington into chaos was filmed in secret. President Donald Trump stood in the White House's Diplomatic Reception Room, holiday garland and gleaming ornaments draped on the fireplace behind him. He spoke into the camera not to deliver warm Christmas wishes, but to threaten to detonate Congress' $900 billion COVID-19 relief and year-end package. The video was released without warning Tuesday night, its recording orchestrated by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and kept from all but a h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden nominated his former rival Pete Buttigieg as secretary of transportation on Tuesday and intends to choose former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary. Buttigieg would be the first openly gay person confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post. At 38, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would also add a youthful dynamic to an incoming administration that is so far dominated in large part by leaders with decades of Washington experience. Biden said in a statement that Buttigieg w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Friday pressed Food and Drug Administration chief Stephen Hahn to grant an emergency use authorization for Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine by the end of the day or face possible firing, two administration officials said. The vaccine produced by Pfizer Inc. and its German partner BioNTech won a critical endorsement Thursday from an FDA panel of outside advisers, and signoff from the agency — which was expected this weekend — is the next step needed to get the shots to the public. Meado...
NEW YORK (AP) — Competence is making a comeback. President-elect Joe Biden has prized staying power over star power when making his first wave of Cabinet picks and choices for White House staff, with a premium placed on government experience and proficiency as he looks to rebuild a depleted and demoralized federal bureaucracy. With an eye in part toward making selections who may have to seek approval from a Republican-controlled Senate, Biden has prioritized choosing qualified professionals while eschewing flashy names. Even the most recognizab...
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Kamala Harris returned to the Senate this week for the first time as vice president-elect, her Republican colleagues offered their congratulations and Sen. Lindsey Graham greeted her with a fist bump. It was a sign that many Republicans have privately acknowledged what they refuse to say openly: Democrat Joe Biden and Harris won the election and will take office in January. The GOP's public silence on the reality of Biden's victory amounts to tacit approval of Trump's baseless claims of election fraud. That has s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration threw the presidential transition into tumult on Monday, Attorney General William Barr authorizing the Justice Department to probe allegations of voter fraud and President Donald Trump firing the Pentagon chief and blocking government officials from cooperating with President-elect Joe Biden's team. Despite little evidence of fraud, Barr signed off on investigations into the unsubstantiated claims made repeatedly by Trump. Even as Biden began assembling experts to face the surging pandemic, the federal...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fate of the United States presidency hung in the balance Wednesday morning, as President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden battled for three familiar battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House. A late burst of votes in Wisconsin from Milwaukee gave Biden a small lead, but it was too early to call the race. Hundreds of thousands of votes were also outstanding in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The two candidates, who have propo...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Their final debate behind them, President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden are packaging their divergent personal styles and policy prescriptions into closing messages for the final sprint to Election Day. The coronavirus was a central topic for both candidates on Friday as Trump headed to Florida and Biden prepared to address the topic in Delaware. The night before in Nashville, the pair squared off on the pandemic, the economy, climate change and race — and the nature of presidential leadership itself. Trump pitched him...
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, are set to square off in their final debate Thursday, one of the last high-profile opportunities for the trailing incumbent to change the trajectory of an increasingly contentious campaign. Worried about losing the White House, some advisers are urging Trump to trade his aggressive demeanor from the first debate for a lower-key style that puts Biden more squarely in the spotlight. But it's unclear whether the president will listen. Biden, who has stepped o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden squared off, in a way, in dueling televised town halls that showcased striking differences in temperament, views on racial justice and approaches to a pandemic that has reshaped the nation. Coming just two and a half weeks before Election Day, the events Thursday night offered crystalizing contrasts and a national, if divided, audience. But it seemed unlikely to have produced a needed moment for a president running out of time or opportunities to appeal beyond his core base. He w...
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — With Election Day just three weeks away, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden concentrated Tuesday on battleground states both see as critical to clinching an Electoral College victory, tailoring their travel to best motivate voters who could cast potentially decisive ballots. Biden went to Florida to court seniors, looking to deliver a knockout blow in a state Trump needs to win while trying to woo a group whose support for the president has slipped. And Trump visited Pennsylvania, arguably the m...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking to shove his campaign back on track, President Donald Trump and his team laid out an aggressive return to political activities, including a big White House event on Saturday and a rally in Florida on Monday, a week after his hospitalization for a virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. As questions linger about his health — and Democratic opponent Joe Biden steps up his own campaigning — Trump planned to leave the Washington area for the first time since he was hospitalized. He is also increasing his radio...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's return to the White House is poised to reshape the campaign's final four weeks as aides debated Tuesday how to move past an extraordinary setback while grappling with how to send an infected president back on the road. A race that had remained steady throughout the tumult of 2020 now threatens to slip away from the president after he spent 72 hours hospitalized with COVID-19, the very disease that has fundamentally altered the country he leads and the campaign he wanted to run. And as Democrat Joe B...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some answers emerged Saturday on President Donald Trump's condition as he battles the coronavirus, but Trump's medical team withheld some key information in their first full, televised update. Here's what we know and what we don't know: WHAT WE KNOW: TRUMP'S MEDICAL CONDITION White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said some of Trump's vital signs were "very concerning" Friday and that the next 48 hours would be critical in his care. That was a much more cautious assessment than Trump's doctors gave. Navy Commander Dr. Sean C...
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale has been hospitalized after he threatened to harm himself, according to Florida police and campaign officials. Police officers talked Parscale out of his Fort Lauderdale home after his wife called police to say that he had multiple firearms and was threatening to hurt himself when he was hospitalized Sunday under the state's Baker Act. That act allows anyone deemed to be a threat to themselves or others to be detained for 72 hours for psychiatric e...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump met Monday with Judge Amy Coney Barrett at the White House as the conservative jurist emerged as a favorite to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, the start of a monumental Senate confirmation fight over objections from Democrats it's too close to the November election. Trump said he expects to announce his pick by week's end, before the burial of Ginsburg, the court's liberal icon, at Arlington National Cemetery. The president told reporters he was still going to be i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just over six weeks before the election cast an immediate spotlight on the crucial high court vacancy, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly vowing to bring to a vote whoever President Donald Trump nominates. Democratic nominee Joe Biden vigorously disagreed, declaring that "voters should pick the president and the president should pick the justice to consider." McConnell, the majority leader who sets the calendar in the U.S. Senate, declared unequivocally i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel on Tuesday signed historic diplomatic pacts with two Gulf Arab states at a White House ceremony that President Donald Trump declared will mark the "dawn of a new Middle East," casting himself as an international peacemaker at the height of his reelection campaign. The bilateral agreements formalize the normalization of Israel's already thawing relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in line with their common opposition to Iran. But the agreements do not address the decades-long conflict between Israel and t...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — In open defiance of state regulations and his own administration's pandemic health guidelines, President Donald Trump hosted his first indoor rally since June, telling a packed, nearly mask-less Nevada crowd that the nation was "making the last turn" in defeating the virus. Eager to project a sense of normalcy in imagery, Trump soaked up the raucous cheers inside a warehouse Sunday night. Relatively few in the crowd wore masks, with a clear exception: Those in the stands directly behind Trump, whose images would end up on T...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a fraught national moment, President Donald Trump was accepting his party's renomination on a massive White House South Lawn stage Thursday night, breaking with tradition by using the executive mansion as a political backdrop and defying pandemic guidelines to address a tightly packed, largely maskless crowd. As crises churned outside the gates, Trump was painting an optimistic vision of America's future, including an eventual triumph over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 people, left m...
WASHINGTON (AP) — After expressing frustration at the slow pace of approval for coronavirus treatments, President Donald Trump was set to announce on Sunday the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients. The announcement will come after days of White House officials suggesting there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump's reelection chances. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, Trump was set to i...
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — Seizing the power of his podium and his pen, President Donald Trump on Saturday bypassed the nation's lawmakers as he claimed the authority to defer payroll taxes and replace an expired unemployment benefit with a lower amount after negotiations with Congress on a new coronavirus rescue package collapsed. At his private country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump signed executive orders to act where Congress hasn't. Not only has the pandemic undermined the economy and upended American lives, it has imperiled the p...
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — President Donald Trump's end run around Congress on coronavirus relief is raising questions about whether it would give Americans the economic lifeline he claims and appears certain to face legal challenges. Democrats called it a pre-election ploy that would burden cash-strapped states. "When you look at those executive orders ... he doesn't know what he's talking about or something is wrong there," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. "To characterize them to even accomplishing what they set out to as something that will t...
