Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., announced Tuesday that she will not run for reelection after her term is up in early 2025 but will continue serving until then.

Feinstein, 89, has served in the Senate since 1992, winning several senior posts along the way. However, she recently faced pushback from progressives in Washington and California over some of her more centrist leanings, and concerns over her cognitive faculties became an open secret on Capitol Hill.

In a statement announcing her retirement, Feinstein insisted that she will remain focused on passing legislation important to Democrats through the end of her term, including curbing gun violence in the face of a string of mass shootings and ameliorating homelessness and wildfires.

“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” she said.

“Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives. Each of us was sent here to solve problems. That’s what I’ve done for the last 30 years, and that’s what I plan to do for the next two years. My thanks to the people of California for allowing me to serve them,” she concluded.

After announcing her retirement to her colleagues during a closed-door lunch Tuesday afternoon, Feinstein spoke briefly to reporters, saying, “the time has come.”

“There are times for all things under the sun, and I think that will be the right time,” Feinstein said of her retirement.

She made clear she’ll serve out the rest of her term. “It’s not till the end of next year. So, don’t hold your breath,” she joked.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised Feinstein as a “legend” and “an amazing woman,” adding that she gave a “very heartwarming and tearful address” to the Democratic caucus lunch.

“She got a standing ovation that lasted minuets and minutes and minutes. One of the longest I’ve ever seen, which shows the love that our caucus and our country have for this wonderful, wonderful leader and legend,” he said.

Feinstein’s retirement had been almost a foregone conclusion for a number of Democrats eyeing her seat.

Reps. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have already announced runs for her seat, and Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., plans to announce a bid of her own by the end of February.

In a sign of Democrats’ confidence that Feinstein would sit out California’s 2024 Senate race, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., herself a power player in the state’s politics, said she would support Feinstein if she ran — but would throw her support behind Schiff if she didn’t.

“Dianne Feinstein is one of the finest legislators we’ve ever known,” Schiff tweeted. “From the torture report, a dogged pursuit of gun safety, and championship of LGBTQ+ rights, her body of work defines her legacy. We are so grateful for her ongoing leadership.”

“Senator Dianne Feinstein has had a remarkable career serving the people of California,” Porter said. “She created a path for women in politics that I am proud to follow. I thank the Senator for her leadership and appreciate all that she has accomplished for our state.”

Feinstein, the oldest sitting senator, had been facing pressure from fellow Democrats to make way for a younger generation and this year declined to fill the role of president pro tempore, a spot typically reserved for the majority party’s senior member.

Still, until recently, she had been batting away speculation over her future and rebuffed reports on concerns over her mental fitness.

Throughout her career in the Senate, Feinstein was a vocal advocate for stricter gun reforms and advancing LGBTQ+ rights, casting one of only 14 votes in the Senate against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. She also helped spearhead legislation preventing the use of some methods of torture.

However, she has faced rebukes from progressives over the years, including for her cooperation with Republicans on Supreme Court nominees from former President Donald Trump and voting for the resolution authorizing the Iraq war, a stance she said she later came to regret.

Prior to her election to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein was San Francisco’s first female mayor.

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(WASHINGTON) — White House spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday the intelligence community is “considering as a leading explanation” that the three objects shot down over the weekend “could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.”

But Kirby told reporters the U.S. is still not able to call them anything other than “objects” at this point, adding that officials are “pretty comfortable” ruling out that the objects belonged to the U.S. government.

Objects flying over Alaska, Canada and the waters off Michigan were taken down by U.S. fighter jets on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The shootdowns came less than a week after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the continental U.S. for several days before being taken down over the Atlantic Ocean.

The U.S. has still not recovered the three “objects” shot down by the military over the weekend, officials said Tuesday, as details remain scarce on what the objects are or where they came from.

“We’re calling them objects because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Tuesday on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Kirby said the objects fell in “pretty remote locations” and “it could take us a while to reach the debris, yet alone collect it and analyze it.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also confirmed the U.S. had not been able to retrieve the objects as they are in “difficult terrain.”

“We’ll get them eventually. It will take some time to recover those,” Austin said during a news conference in Brussels, where Austin met with NATO allies ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The defense secretary said the first missile strike to down the object over Lake Huron on Sunday missed.

“First shot missed, second shot hit,” Austin said, adding the first missile “landed harmlessly in the water.”

“We’re very careful to make sure those shots are safe,” he said as he detailed some of the decision-making behind the takedowns. “That’s the guidance from the president: shoot it down, make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people.”

As for where the objects came from, or what they are, Kirby had few new details as he appeared on GMA, though he reiterated that they didn’t have any maneuvering capabilities and were “much smaller” than the Chinese spy balloon.

All senators received a classified briefing Tuesday on the China spy balloon and the three other shoot-down incidents.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., emerged from the briefing calling on President Joe Biden to tell the public what he knows.

“We walked out of a meeting like this, and so much of what we’ve been told is classified … but the president can get in front of America and tell them firsthand that we’re safe, that everybody’s going to be okay, that we’ve got this under control, but America needs a strong leader to step forward,” Marshall said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters after the briefing that it was clear the objects posed no immediate harm to Americans on the ground.

“No one has to worry about that,” Schumer said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and other GOP senators said the issue of unidentified aerial objects flying in U.S. airspace “is not new.”

“The most important question we have to answer now is, what are these things? Who sent them here? And what are they doing here? The only way you’re gonna get answers to that is not just to retrieve whatever is left of them, but to understand how it compares to the hundreds of other similar cases,” Rubio said.

Kirby said Tuesday the U.S. is catching all these objects now because adjustments were made to radar parameters following the Chinese spy balloon incursion, and that Beijing has boosted its use of balloons in recent years.

“They have ramped up their abilities,” he said. “And then because of this spy balloon, we changed some of the radar parameters, particularly over the northern part of our northern hemisphere, and it is possible that in part because of tweaking the radar sensitivities, we are simply seeing more objects right now.”

China has accused the U.S. of sending at least 10 balloons into their airspace since the start of 2022. Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a press briefing on Monday that it wasn’t “uncommon for U.S. balloons to frequently take the opportunity to carry out close-up reconnaissance against China.”

Kirby denied that on GMA, stating: “We do not deploy surveillance balloons over China.”

But when asked by Stephanopoulos if we spy over China, Kirby wouldn’t answer and only repeated that the U.S. doesn’t deploy balloons over China.

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(NEW YORK) — An appellate court in New York on Tuesday upheld a $110,000 fine imposed on former President Donald Trump over his failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the New York Attorney General’s office as part of its civil investigation of Trump and his family business.

“The court correctly determined, based on the papers on the motion, that petitioner established by clear and convincing evidence that respondent’s March 31, 2022 response to the subpoena, stating that a diligent search had failed to locate any responsive documents in his possession or custody, without providing any search or document retention policy details as required under the subpoena’s unambiguous instructions, prejudicially violated the lawful, clear mandate of the court, of which he had knowledge,” said the opinion of the New York State Appellate Division’s First Department.

Judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in civil contempt last April and imposed a $10,000 per day sanction until he satisfactorily complied with a subpoena for records and documents sought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump alleging fraudulent business conduct involving the values of his real estate holdings.

“Once again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump is not above the law. For years, he tried to stall and thwart our lawful investigation into his financial dealings, but today’s decision sends a clear message that there are consequences for abusing the legal system,” James said in a statement.

Trump’s attorney said he had no documents responsive to the subpoena but the judge faulted Trump’s failure to swear, under oath, that he even bothered to look. Trump ultimately paid the fine.

“We further find that the financial sanction to compel compliance was a proper exercise of the court’s discretionary power and was not excessive or otherwise improper, under the particular circumstances,” the opinion said.

For 20 years, Trump and his family enriched themselves through “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations,” James alleged in that lawsuit that accuses the Trumps of “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

The civil lawsuit, filed in September 2022 in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks a $250 million judgment and a prohibition on any of the Trumps leading a company in the state of New York.

“We found that Mr. Trump, his children, and the corporation used more than 200 false asset valuations over a ten year period,” James said at the press conference announcing the charges.

Among other allegations, the suit claims that the former president’s Florida estate and golf resort, Mar-a-Lago, was valued as high as $739 million, but should have been valued at around one-tenth that amount, at $75 million. The suit says that higher valuation was “based on the false premise that it was unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use even though Mr. Trump himself signed deeds donating his residential development rights and sharply restricting changes to the property.”

Trump has denied wrongdoing and has called James’ investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.” James rejected a settlement offer from the Trump Organization last month to resolve the matter, sources told ABC News.

Trump withdrew his lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James in January.

The withdrawal came in a brief document filed in January with U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks, who warned Trump’s legal team that the lawsuit appeared to verge on frivolous.

Trump’s lawsuit against the AG had sought to shield Trump’s revocable trust from James.

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(WASHINGTON) — A California man who assaulted former Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone with a stun gun during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol pleaded guilty Tuesday to multiple felony charges.

In a taped interview with the FBI following his arrest, Daniel Rodriguez admitted he drove a stun gun into the base of Fanone’s neck as the officer was trying to fight off rioters who had pulled him down steps on the Capitol’s West Front steps.

“What do you want me to tell you? That I tased him? Yes,” Rodriguez told investigators. “Am I a f——- piece of ​s—? Yes.”

Rodriguez and another co-defendant charged in the attack on Fanone were set to go to trial later this month. Last September, another rioter who had pleaded guilty to assaulting Fanone was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

Among the offenses Rodriguez pleaded guilty to Tuesday were conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly weapon, obstruction and evidence tampering. The offenses collectively carry a potential sentence ranging up to decades in prison.

An attorney for the Justice Department also said during the plea hearing that the government is reserving its right to potentially seek a sentencing enhancement for Rodriguez based on an argument that his conduct could have amounted to terrorism.

His sentencing is set for May 16.

Fanone suffered a heart attack from the assault and later became one of the most outspoken former members of law enforcement calling for accountability for those who incited the mob on Jan. 6. He resigned from D.C. police in late 2021.

In his interview with the FBI, Rodriguez further admitted he broke a window to get into the Capitol and believed that he was following instructions from former President Donald Trump.

“I thought that there was going to be fighting, for some reason, in different cities and I thought that the main fight, the main battle, was going to be in D.C. because Trump called everyone there,” Rodriguez said. “I thought we were going to occupy the building. I thought we were going to take a couple days or something.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to fight special counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury subpoena, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The subpoena requested documents and testimony related to the failed attempt by then-President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and followed months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence’s legal team. ABC News was first to report the subpoena to Pence last week.

But Pence’s lawyers aren’t expected to challenge the subpoena on executive privilege grounds and will instead make a separation of powers argument, sources familiar with the legal strategy said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has announced her presidential bid in a new video released on Tuesday, a day ahead of her formal campaign kick-off in Charleston, South Carolina.

“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants — not Black, not white. I was different,” she says as the video she tweeted, titled “Strong & Proud” opens featuring photos of her family.

She becomes the first Republican to challenge former President Donald Trump. He launched his campaign for the GOP nomination in November.

The video skews optimistic, as she embraces her heritage as a South Asian woman while casting aside the notion that divisive racism is fracturing the country.

“My mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities. My parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America,” Haley, 51, says.

Over a montage of photos, including one of the 1619 project and a sign “RACISM IS A PANDEMIC,” Haley urges Americans to set aside their critical appraisals: “Some look at our past as evidence that America’s founding principles are bad. They say the promise of freedom is just made up. Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

She underscores her credentials as a former governor of the Palmetto state, stressing the state’s resilience, but most of all, saying the need for change in the Republican party is paramount: “Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, that has to change … It’s time for a new generation of leadership.”

And she’s posturing herself as a new voice unafraid to fight back: “You should know this about me — I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you are wearing heels.”

The video was first obtained by Axios.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Monday fired the U.S. Capitol’s top manager after lawmakers in both parties called for the scandal-plagued architect’s ouster.

Brett Blanton, the architect of the Capitol, was terminated at Biden’s direction, a White House official confirmed.

The official said the administration did its due diligence in the case after a watchdog report revealed what it called multiple allegations of misuse of resources and misconduct in his role. The architect’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Blanton was appointed to the role by former President Donald Trump and took office in 2020. He is now leaving seven years before the end of his term.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle grew infuriated in recent days over the report alleging widespread wrongdoing in his role, including misusing official vehicles for personal purposes and improperly identifying himself as a law enforcement officer when he chased down the perpetrator of a hit-and-run near his home.

Blanton also admitted in a congressional hearing last week that he avoided coming to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the day a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol, saying he thought it wouldn’t be “prudent” to be on the premises that day.

The Office of Inspector General found Blanton’s wife gave an unauthorized tour of the Capitol to what she called “patriots” in the days leading up to the 2020 election while the building was closed to the public.

“The Architect of the Capitol, Brett Blanton, no longer has my confidence to continue in his job. He should resign or President Biden should remove him immediately,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted Monday before Blanton’s firing was reported.

It is not immediately clear who will replace Blanton on a temporary basis given that the role for his deputy is currently vacant. Mark Reed, the current chief of operations who is currently serving in an acting capacity, is next in line.

To replace Blanton permanently, a bicameral and bipartisan congressional commission of 14 lawmakers is convened to offer a list of suggestions. Biden will ultimately choose from that list.

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(WASHINGTON) — As the U.S. military shoots unidentified objects out the sky at a surprisingly fast clip, President Joe Biden has remained largely silent about the most recent takedowns, balancing political headwinds with concerns over public safety and America’s relationship with China.

U.S. fighter jets took down three objects flying over Alaska, Canada and the waters off Michigan over three successive days starting Friday. Even just one shootdown would be considered unusual, let alone three.

While the Biden administration insists it is acting out of an abundance of caution — to protect national security, as well as civilian aircraft – the president is also facing criticism from Republicans and some Democrats about why it took so long to take down a Chinese balloon a week before.

“They do appear somewhat trigger-happy,” Rep. Mike Turner, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday in an interview with CNN. “Although this is certainly preferable to the permissive environment that they showed when the Chinese spy balloon was coming over some of our most sensitive sites.”

While officials from the White House and Pentagon have briefed reporters about the most recent shootdowns, Biden himself has said just one word publicly.

“Success,” he said Friday, in response to reporters’ shouted questions about the object the U.S. shot down in waters off Alaska.

He had no scheduled public events Monday.

The administration official who’s been the face of the response so far has been White House spokesman John Kirby, who made the dramatic announcement about Friday’s shootdown of an unidentified “high-altitude object” and who will appear at Monday’s press briefing.

In contrast with the shootdown of the Chinese balloon, which the Biden administration said had been spying on the United States, officials said they did not know the owner or purpose of the three other, much smaller objects shot down over the last few days.

Instead, U.S. officials said, the president had been concerned about the risk to civil aviation, considering they were all flying at altitudes where commercial planes fly. The Chinese balloon, officials said, had been spotted much higher.

Even Democrats have pushed for more information from the administration, including about why the U.S. had not known about the Chinese’s balloon surveillance program earlier.

“How did we miss them is a great question,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday during an interview on “The View,” adding he was supporting a bipartisan investigation to be led by Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat. “It’s a good question we need an answer to.”

In interviews last week with PBS Newshour and Noticias Telemundo, Biden defended the fact the U.S. had waited until the balloon was over water to shoot it down, saying he had ordered it taken out but that his military advisers said it was too dangerous to act over land.

Administration officials said that while the U.S. military had spotted the Chinese balloon when it first entered U.S. airspace over Alaska, Biden was only informed of its presence once it had traversed Canada and entered airspace over Montana. At that point, the White House said, he ordered it shot down.

“I just think that the idea that there was a dereliction of duty is I think is a – is a bizarre notion,” he told PBS Newshour. “China knows exactly that– what the deal is with us.”

Part of Biden’s reluctance to express more criticism could be rooted in the fact that the Chinese balloon appeared at an inopportune time for him.

Biden has made lower tensions with China and its leader, President Xi Jinping, a hallmark of his foreign policy.

Biden and Xi met in person for the first time as presidents three months ago, and they pledged to work together to better manage the competitive relationship between their two nations.

But the Chinese balloon saga led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel an upcoming visit to China, and communication between the U.S. and Chinese militaries has dropped off, too.

“I’m committed to work with China where we can advance American interests and benefit the world,” Biden said last week during his State of the Union address. “But make no mistake about it: As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.”

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(NEW YORK) — Portions of a report submitted by the Georgia grand jury investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election will be released later this week, a Georgia judge ruled Monday.

The majority of the long-anticipated report, however, will remain sealed, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney ordered.

Portions of the report are set to be released this Thursday, according to the order, including a section “in which the special purpose grand jury discusses its concern that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony to the grand jury.”

The ruling comes after McBurney heard arguments last month regarding the public release of the confidential report, which the grand jury submitted earlier this month after probing the matter for months.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had argued for the report to remain sealed, saying that it was important to “be mindful of protecting future defendants’ rights.”

Willis also said during the hearing that charging decisions were “imminent.”

That section, though, “does not identify those witnesses,” according to the order.

Willis officially launched the probe in February 2021, sparked in part by the now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” the exact number Trump needed to win Georgia.

Though the grand jury does not have the ability to return an indictment, it can make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution. Another grand jury would bring any possible charges, should they be recommended.

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(WASHINGTON) — Organizations across the globe may be largely flying blind in responding to cybersecurity threats, according to a new report from cyber intelligence experts.

A survey of cybersecurity leaders from both public and private sectors found that 79% of them worked at organizations that made security decisions without insights into who may be targeting them, according to Mandiant Intelligence, an arm of Google’s cloud computing services.

The Mandiant Intelligence report, released on Monday, nonetheless also found that 96% of cybersecurity leaders were satisfied with the quality of their threat intelligence despite their self-reported gaps in security awareness. Nearly all of those surveyed acknowledged needing to be more nimble when it comes to responding to malicious hackers.

“A conventional, check-the-box mindset isn’t enough to defend against today’s well-resourced and dynamic adversaries,” Mandiant Intelligence Vice President Sandra Joyce said in a statement. “Security teams are outwardly confident, but often struggle to keep pace with the rapidly changing threat landscape.”

The report underscores critical threats in the cybersecurity landscape from both anonymous hackers and known entities who may be operating in the shadows.

U.S. and South Korean officials issued a joint warning last week that hackers backed by the North Korean government have conducted extensive ransomware attacks on health care providers and other organizations.

Ransomware is a particularly malicious form of cyber intrusion where digital systems and databases are held hostage with demands of electronic payment. U.S. officials previously alleged that North Korea uses money from ransomware operations to fund its pursuit of nuclear weapons and development of ballistic missiles.

The U.S. Treasury Department recently announced sanctions against several ransomware hackers linked to Russia whom officials believe targeted critical infrastructure in the U.S., U.K. and Ukraine. The individuals were part of the hacker group known as Trickbot which targeted U.S. hospitals and health care centers at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to the Treasury Department.

The cybersecurity report released Monday suggested that public and private sector organizations may be more at risk than they think.

The majority of cybersecurity decision-makers, 67%, believe their senior leadership teams underestimate cyberthreats, the report found. Similarly, more than two-thirds of those surveyed believe their organizations should improve their understanding of hackers who pose a threat to their digital systems.

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