Politics

(NEW YORK) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told “The View” Tuesday that the state should take a second look at how local sheriffs are using the red flag law to protect citizens in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

On the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Saturday, Nov. 19, gunfire erupted at Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ nightclub, Club Q. According to police and officials briefed on the investigation, suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly walked into the club with a legally purchased assault-style rifle and began shooting, leaving five people dead and 17 injured.

Aldrich was arrested and is facing five counts of murder and five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, which is Colorado’s hate crime law.

In June 2021, prior to the LGBTQ nightclub shooting, Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb. After his mother’s neighbors evacuated the surrounding area, bomb squad and crisis negotiators persuaded him to surrender. Still, charges against Aldrich were dropped and there were no public records that indicated police or relatives attempted to trigger Colorado’s red flag law.

“The View” co-host Joy Behar pressed Polis on Colorado’s low-rate of using the red flag law and questioned why authorities never took away Aldrich’s weapons. Noting that everyone is currently focused on the shooting victims and healing, Polis said that “if there’s one law to focus on,” it’s Colorado’s red-flag law, a bill which he signed on April 12, 2019.

Polis went on to explain that while Aldrich did allegedly make a bomb threat in the past and was apprehended at the time, charges were never pressed.

“What this should trigger is law enforcement can then seek a red flag or extreme risk protection order just to remove custody of guns from somebody who might be dangerous,” he said. “That’s what we’d like to see more of.”

“This is a new law in Colorado,” he continued. “But it’s really up to local law enforcement, and in this case it really looks like we should take a second [look] at how our local sheriffs used this law to protect people when there’s these kind of threats and danger.”

During a press conference Monday, police identified patrons Thomas James and Richard Fierro – who was in the U.S. Army for 14 years – as the heroes who stopped the suspected gunman. Polis mentioned that the two patrons who attacked the gunman are still recovering and calls their act of heroism “a tremendous thing,” adding that “they were lucky to be at the right place at the right time and make the right decision, otherwise dozens more people would be in mourning.”

After speaking with the families of the five victims who were fatally shot at Club Q, Polis said that the families “are in a complete state of shock.”

“These were people who were just out being who they are in a part of the state, a part of the country where it isn’t always easy,” he continued. “This is a somewhat conservative area. This was a refuge, this Club Q the largest LGBT club in Colorado Springs.”

Polis said that he told the owners of Club Q that he wants to be there to show solidarity.

“There’s never gonna be any motive that makes sense to any of us. It’s an act of evil,” he said of the mass shooting. “People should talk about our love and respect for one another rather than ever trying to set one group of people against another as unfortunately some do.”

“It will take time to heal and to come back from that, but we’re strong,” Polis said. “I’m committed to working with Colorado Springs and the LGBT+ community to make sure that we can heal in a good way.”

Since January 2019, Polis has been serving as Colorado’s governor, making him the first openly gay man to win a U.S. gubernatorial election. As the first openly gay man to govern a U.S. state and Colorado’s first Jewish governor, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked him how it feels to be a part of groups being targeted.

Polis explained that while he usually tries to ignore hateful rhetoric directed towards him or his communities, not everything can be overlooked.

“Sometimes we need to speak out more when people cross the line, and I think that’s a lesson I’m going to take from this, just to be more outspoken,” he said.

“You can have your opinions, left, right, conservative, liberal, you know, whatever they are is fine. But there’s a line to cross when you denigrate people just based on who they love or their faith or their race, and that’s never okay,” Polis continued. “We need the to be very clear in saying that.”

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(ATLANTA) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed poised to grant a Justice Department request to rescind the appointment of a special master in the investigation into the handling of classified material seized in August from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

In a hearing Tuesday afternoon, a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned an assertion from Trump’s attorney that “this is an extraordinary case” that warranted intervention from an outside arbiter to review all the materials seized in the August search.

“Other than the fact that this involves a former president, everything else about this is indistinguishable from any pre-indictment search warrant,” Judge Andrew Brasher said.

The attorney for Trump, Jim Trusty, insisted Trump was looking for no special treatment but asked the court to consider “a political rival has been subjected to a search warrant where thousands of personal materials have been taken.”

Arguing for the Justice Department, Sopan Joshi of the Solicitor General’s office called the appointment of a special master by a district court judge an “extraordinary judicial intrusion into a core executive branch function.”

The judges pressed Joshi and Trusty as to whether there was any similar case where a judge has exercised such jurisdiction to intervene in an ongoing criminal investigation prior to indictment with any showing of “callous disregard” for the rights of the potential defendant.

Neither could name such a case, but Trusty suggested that by having the process play out they could perhaps find evidence that Trump’s rights were violated.

Trusty also sought to take issue with how agents conducted the search, noting that in addition to presidential records and documents with classification markings they also seized items like “golf shirts and pictures of Celine Dion” which he said should have no relevance to their criminal investigation.

But Chief Judge Bill Pryor noted it wasn’t unusual for such personal items to be swept up in a court-authorized search.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily the fault of the government. If, if someone has intermingled classified documents in all kinds of other personal property,” Pryor said.

DOJ is urging the appeals court to overturn special master Raymond Dearie’s appointment and have the roughly 13,000 documents returned to investigators examining whether Trump unlawfully retained highly sensitive documents involving national defense information after leaving the presidency, and potentially obstructed justice in resisting the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

The appeals court previously granted a request from DOJ to stay portions of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that had blocked the government from using roughly 100 documents with classification markings recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation and demanded they be handed over to special master Dearie.

The Justice Department then moved for an expedited appeal to end Dearie’s review in its entirety, saying its inability to access the non-classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago was also significantly hampering its ongoing criminal investigation.

It was the first in-person meeting between top department officials and Trump’s legal team since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith last Friday, which Garland said was warranted in part because of Trump’s announcement he would again run for president in 2024.

Smith has been tasked with overseeing the continuing criminal investigation of classified records seized from Trump’s estate in August as well as the separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden.

In a filing Monday afternoon, the Justice Department formally notified the court of Smith’s appointment and stated he had reviewed the filings in DOJ’s case and that he “approves all of the arguments that have been presented in the briefs and will be discussed at the oral argument.”

Last week, officials said Smith was preparing to make his return to the U.S. from the Netherlands where he was serving as a chief prosecutor of war crimes at the Hague.

In a filing last week, officials from the department accused Trump and his legal team of engaging in “gamesmanship” in their fight to retain the roughly 13,000 documents in Dearie’s possession by asserting that when he ordered the packing of materials in the White House that were then transported to Mar-a-Lago, they were in effect automatically designated as his own “personal” records.

But at the same time, his attorneys said if Dearie rejected that argument for certain documents, they should have the opportunity to claim they are covered by executive privilege and should be shielded from the government.

They argued Trump’s legal team has put forward a “sweeping and baseless theory” to support their claims over the documents under a reading of the Presidential Records Act, saying Trump “appears to be claiming that he can unilaterally ‘deem’ otherwise Presidential records to be personal records by fiat.”

And even if Trump were correct in his claims, DOJ says, it would amount to a “red herring” regarding their right to access the documents as part of their ongoing criminal investigation.

“Documents commingled or collectively stored with the classified materials located at Plaintiff’s premises were lawfully seized by the FBI in accordance with the terms of the court-authorized search warrant because of their relevance to the government’s ongoing investigation,” top DOJ counterintelligence official Jay Bratt said. “That relevance exists irrespective of whether they were personal papers or government records. In the absence of a valid and substantiated claim of privilege, all such documents must now be made available to the investigative team.”

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(FORT PIERCE, Fla.) — Attorneys for former President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked a federal district judge in Florida to demand the Justice Department hand over an unredacted version of an affidavit used to justify the August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

In their request to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who has repeatedly given deference to Trump’s attorneys in their arguments for the seized documents to be handed over to a special master, they argue Trump has a right to the full affidavit in order to assess whether his constitutional rights have been violated.

The filing repeatedly accuses the Justice Department and FBI as responsible for leaking details on what motivated their decision to conduct the extraordinary search, and also faults Attorney General Merrick Garland for his comments at a news conference in which he said the department would be moving for the unsealing of the search warrant given to Trump’s attorneys at the time of the raid.

The Justice Department has previously stated its objection to unsealing further portions of the affidavit, citing a need to protect the safety of witnesses who have cooperated or may provide future cooperation with their investigation — as well as protecting other investigative methods they have undertaken.

They further argue that DOJ’s concerns about Trump disclosing details from the affidavit if it is handed over aren’t warranted because a protective order prevents them from disclosing its details to any outside parties.

It’s unclear when Judge Cannon might respond to their motion — but the timing is notable given DOJ and Trump’s attorneys are set to appear Tuesday afternoon to argue before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on a motion from DOJ to have Cannon’s appointment of special master Raymond Dearie dismissed entirely.

If the federal appeals court panel grants DOJ’s request, it would also effectively eliminate Cannon’s involvement in matters involving the Mar-a-Lago search, including deciding on this 11th-hour request from Trump’s legal team.

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(WASHINGTON) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, briefed reporters from the White House on Tuesday for the last time before leaving the government at the end of the year.

Introducing Fauci at the podium “one more time,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre praised him as a reliable “source of information and facts” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Under seven Republican and Democratic presidents, Dr. Fauci has always led with the science and our country is stronger and healthier because of his leadership,” Jean-Pierre said.

Fauci pressed the idea that Americans should get up-to-date on their COVID and flu shots ahead of winter, making a final pitch in a long effort to explain to Americans the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines.

“My message — and my final message, maybe the final message I give you from this podium — is that please for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family and your community,” he said.

As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci has been a near-constant presence at White House briefings throughout the two years of the COVID pandemic.

In 2020, he served as a scientific check to then-President Donald Trump’s musings on the virus.

He stayed on after the election of President Joe Biden, who elevated Fauci into a top personal adviser on the pandemic.

On Tuesday, he joined Biden’s other top adviser — Dr. Ashish Jha — to discuss the need for Americans to get the bivalent COVID shot.

“Bottom line is that we’re doing everything we can in the next six weeks to help families get their updated COVID shots by the end of the year because it’s the best protection for this winter,” Jha said.

Fauci is scheduled to retire from the government next month after more than five decades of service.

Asked by ABC News’ Karen Travers how he wants people to remember his service in government, Fauci said he’d leave it to others to judge but that he “gave it all I got for decades.”

“I think what I’ve accomplished in my 54 years at the NIH and my 38 years as the director of NIAID, although COVID is really really very important, it is a fragment of the total 40 years that I’ve been doing it,” Fauci said.

“I’ll let other people judge the value or not of my accomplishments,” he continued, “but what I would like people to remember about what I’ve done is that every day for all of those years I’ve given it everything that I have and I’ve never left anything on the field.”

He spoke about his decision to retire in an interview with ABC Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl for This Week in October.

Fauci said Tuesday he would’ve never imagined at the onset of the pandemic that the nation would see “a three-year saga of suffering and death and a million Americans losing their lives.”

Asked about the contradictory statements released by the Trump administration in the early days of the crisis, Fauci said they were “dealing with a moving target.”

“When you are dealing with things like reporting and discussing with the press, making recommendations, making guidelines, you have to make it on the basis of the information that you have at that time,” he said. “But what is happening is we are not dealing with a static situation. We are dealing with a dynamic situation.”

Going forward, he said, public officials have to do a better job of underscoring the evolving nature of such outbreaks.

Fauci also discussed the most difficult aspect of navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, lamenting the politicization surrounding vaccines and other mitigation efforts.

“When I see people in this country, because of the divisiveness in our country, not getting vaccinated for reasons that have nothing to do with public health but have to do because of divisiveness and ideological differences, as a physician, it pains me,” Fauci said, “because I don’t want to see anybody get infected. I don’t want to see anybody get hospitalized. I don’t want to see anybody die from COVID. Whether you are a far-right Republican or far-left Democrat doesn’t make a difference to me.”

It is possible Fauci will be called to testify before Congress despite leaving government.

Republicans, who took control of the House in the midterm elections, have signaled they want to investigate his role in overseeing the government’s response to COVID.

Fauci has said that, amid all the attacks on him, he and his family have faced death threats.

Fauci on Tuesday said he would cooperate fully with any oversight hearings conducted by the new Congress.

“I have no trouble testifying, we can defend and explain and stand by everything that we’ve said, so I have nothing to hide,” he said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Officials from the Justice Department and lawyers for former President Donald Trump are set to clash in front of an appeals court panel Tuesday over the appointment of a special master that was tasked by a lower district court judge with reviewing thousands of documents seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago this summer.

The DOJ is urging the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn special master Raymond Dearie’s appointment and have the roughly 13,000 documents returned to investigators examining whether Trump unlawfully retained highly sensitive documents involving national defense information after leaving the presidency, and potentially obstructed justice in resisting the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

The appeals court previously granted a request from the DOJ to stay portions of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that had blocked the government from using roughly 100 documents with classification markings recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation and demanded they be handed over to special master Dearie.

The Justice Department then moved for an expedited appeal to end Dearie’s review in its entirety, saying its inability to access the non-classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago was also significantly hampering its ongoing criminal investigation.

It’s the first in-person meeting between top department officials and Trump’s legal team since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith last Friday, which Garland said was warranted in part because of Trump’s announcement he would again run for president in 2024.

Smith has been tasked with overseeing the continuing criminal investigation of classified records seized from Trump’s estate in August as well as the separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden.

In a filing Monday afternoon, the Justice Department formally notified the court of Smith’s appointment and stated he had reviewed the filings in the DOJ’s case and that he “approves all of the arguments that have been presented in the briefs and will be discussed at the oral argument.”

Last week, officials said Smith was preparing to make his return to the U.S. from the Netherlands where he was serving as a chief prosecutor of war crimes at the Hague.

In a filing last week, officials from the department accused Trump and his legal team of engaging in “gamesmanship” in their fight to retain the roughly 13,000 documents in Dearie’s possession by asserting that when he ordered the packing of materials in the White House that were then transported to Mar-a-Lago, they were in effect automatically designated as his own “personal” records.

But at the same time, his attorneys said if Dearie rejected that argument for certain documents, they should have the opportunity to claim they are covered by executive privilege and should be shielded from the government.

They argued Trump’s legal team has put forward a “sweeping and baseless theory” to support their claims over the documents under a reading of the Presidential Records Act, saying Trump “appears to be claiming that he can unilaterally ‘deem’ otherwise Presidential records to be personal records by fiat.”

And even if Trump were correct in his claims, the DOJ says, it would amount to a “red herring” regarding their right to access the documents as part of their ongoing criminal investigation.

“Documents commingled or collectively stored with the classified materials located at Plaintiff’s premises were lawfully seized by the FBI in accordance with the terms of the court-authorized search warrant because of their relevance to the government’s ongoing investigation,” top DOJ counterintelligence official Jay Bratt said. “That relevance exists irrespective of whether they were personal papers or government records. In the absence of a valid and substantiated claim of privilege, all such documents must now be made available to the investigative team.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, is scheduled to brief reporters from the White House on Tuesday in what is likely to be his final briefing before leaving the government at the end of the year.

Fauci was expected to press the idea that Americans should get up-to-date on their COVID and flu shots ahead of winter.

As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci has been a near-constant presence at White House briefings throughout the two years of the COVID pandemic.

In 2020, he served as a scientific check to then-President Donald Trump’s musings on the virus.

He stayed on after the election of President Joe Biden, who elevated Fauci into a top personal adviser on the pandemic.

On Tuesday, he was expected to join Biden’s other top adviser — Dr. Ashish Jha — to discuss the need for Americans to get the bivalent COVID shot.

Fauci is scheduled to retire from the government next month after more than five decades of service.

“While I am moving on from my current positions, I am not retiring,” Fauci said in a statement this fall announcing his departure from the government.

“After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field,” he added.

He spoke about his decision in an interview with ABC New Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl for This Week in October.

It is possible Fauci will be called to testify before Congress despite leaving government.

Republicans, who took control of the House in the midterm elections, have signaled they want to investigate his role in overseeing the government’s response to COVID.

Fauci has said that, amid all the attacks on him, he and his family have faced death threats.

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(NEW YORK) — Cases involving former President Donald Trump are playing out in four different courtrooms Tuesday, underscoring the legal challenges he faces as he mounts a third run for the White House.

Four days after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the entirety of the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of classified materials after leaving office, the Justice Department was expected Tuesday to ask a federal appeals court in Atlanta to remove the special master — the independent arbiter appointed to review the materials — from the case.

The special master had been appointed by a federal judge in Florida to review materials seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to determine which, if any, were protected by executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.

The Justice Department already succeeded in extracting documents with classified markings from the review, but now the DOJ is seeking unfettered access to everything taken from Mar-a-Lago in their August raid of the property. Trump has denied wrongdoing.

In New York City Tuesday, the prosecution was expected to rest its criminal case against the Trump Organization. Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who in August pleaded guilty to skirting nearly $2 million in income taxes, testified last week that it was his decision alone to commit tax fraud by paying no taxes on the fringe benefits he received from the Trump Organization, including rent paid on his Manhattan apartment.

Prosecutors say Weisselberg’s actions implicate the company because he was a “high managerial agent” entrusted to act on its behalf. The Trump Organization has denied wrongdoing.

The defense was to present a short list of witnesses, including the company’s outside accountant from Mazars USA, after which closing arguments will take place after Thanksgiving.

Also on Tuesday, attorneys representing Trump were scheduled to appear in New York State Supreme Court at a hearing in the state attorney general’s civil lawsuit against Trump, his children and his company. In September, after a 17-month investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a $250 million civil suit against the Trumps for allegedly “grossly” inflating the former president’s net worth by billions of dollars and cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

James subsequently installed a court-appointed monitor to oversee parts of the Trump Organization while the trial proceeds. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, has called James’ investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

Finally, former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll was scheduled to appear Tuesday in federal court in New York City for a hearing in her defamation lawsuit against Trump. Carroll sued him in November 2019 after Trump denied raping her by questioning her credibility and saying that she was “not my type.” Trump has denied the charges.

A trial is scheduled for February. Carroll says she is also planning to file a separate claim for battery under a New York law that goes into effect on Thanksgiving, allowing alleged sex assault victims to sue regardless of timeframe.

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(NEW YORK) — As investigators continue to gather clues about Saturday night’s shooting in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub that has left 5 people dead and 25 people injured as of Monday afternoon, LGBTQ rights groups have said that there is an increased state of fear and panic.

Sarah Kate Ellis, the CEO and president of GLAAD, joined GMA3 Monday to talk about the fear and aggravation felt in the community and had some strong words for people and groups that have recently increased their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

GMA3: Authorities are going to investigate this, look into whether or not this was a hate crime. But what is your reaction to what we are seeing now in Colorado Springs over the weekend?

SARAH KATE ELLIS: Sure. Motive aside, I think what we’re seeing is a 12-year high in hate crimes, [a] 41% increase against the trans community alone. And I think that we’re seeing three things drive this. One are anti-LGBTQ politicians who have proposed over 300 anti-LGBTQ policies this year or bills this year for no good reason, answering and solving no problem that exists.

Secondly, we’re seeing social media platforms amplify hate. It’s actually part of the business model is that the more viral the hate, the deeper the hate, the worse the more viral it is. So they make money off of it. So they have the tools to stop it, the lies, the misinformation, but they don’t use them.

And then thirdly…is the inaction by government on gun safety reform. Where are we on that and on social media platform accountability? So those three things have driven an environment that makes the LGBTQ community completely unsafe. Even here in New York City on Saturday night, a brick was thrown through the window of an LGBTQ bar in Hell’s Kitchen, the fourth time in one week. We at GLAAD have recorded over 100 either violent or violent threats to drag queen events through this year. So it’s real, it’s happening. And it results in what we saw on Saturday night.

GMA3: Yeah, I know you get chills just hearing you talk about not just the rhetoric, not just the legislation that’s being proposed, but the actual actions that are being taken against this community. What needs to be done? What would you like to see happen?

ELLIS: I need politicians to stop. Just stop using the LGBTQ community as their political football. Stop creating and spreading lies about our community. Stop. Just stop. [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis, [Colorado Rep.] Lauren Boebert, stop it.

Secondly, I need social media companies, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to step up and stop profiting off of this hate and this misinformation.

And thirdly, we need government to speak up and speak out and take action. That’s what we need. And it’s not a secret formula. It’s all here. We have all the resources at GLAAD.org to stop this culture of hate and misinformation and disinformation. I would like to say also that as GLAAD we’re on the ground in Colorado Springs, we’re helping Club Q, a very small community in Colorado Springs that’s LGBTQ. So we’re there helping them get through this right now.

There is a fund called the Colorado Healing Fund. A lot of people are asking how they can help right now, and that’s one way that goes directly to the victims. It’s been vetted and it’s a fund that has been used in the past and in these mass shootings.

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(WASHINGTON) — Fresh off several weeks of celebrations for his family and political party, a jovial President Joe Biden expressed thanks on Monday as he took part in the annual White House tradition of pardoning turkeys from becoming Thanksgiving dinner.

“The votes are in, they’ve been counted, verified. There’s no ballot stuffing, there’s no fowl play,” Biden laughed on the White House South Lawn just before freeing the North Carolina-raised 2022 National Thanksgiving Turkey, Chocolate, and Chip, the alternate, from their imminent futures on dinner plates this Thursday.

“The only ‘red wave’ this season is going to be a German Shepherd, Commander, knocks over the cranberry sauce on our table,” he said, in reference to his family’s dog, who watched over the turkey pardoning tradition from a nearby balcony, while quipping about the recent strides Democrats made during the 2022 midterm election cycle, during which they deflected what many experts anticipated would be sweeping congressional victories for Republicans. Instead, Democrats were able to maintain control of the Senate while hanging onto additional seats in a now GOP-controlled House.

The birds, which weigh 46 and 47 pounds, were raised by National Turkey Federation chairman Ronnie Parker near Monroe, North Carolina. He hosted the birds, along with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican, among others.

The White House on Saturday celebrated Biden’s first-born grandchild Naomi’s wedding to fellow Washington lawyer Peter Neal, before observing another landmark on Sunday: the president’s 80th birthday.

“It’s a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition here at the White House. There’s a lot to say about it, but it’s chilly outside so I’m gonna keep this short. Nobody likes it when their turkey gets cold,” Biden joked during remarks spanning about 10 minutes while the temperature dipped to the mid-40s.

NTF is celebrating 75 years of this national Thanksgiving tradition, which dates back to 1947 with President Harry Truman in 1947. Unofficially, reports point all the way back to President Abraham Lincoln, who spared a bird from its demise at the urging of his son, Tad.

The turkey duo was a fitting pair for Biden: his favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate chip.

“Of course, chocolate … is my favorite ice cream,” he said, “We could have named them ‘Chips,’ and ‘Science’ but anyway, they’re good names as well,” nodding to another Democrat-led accomplishment from the year, a multibillion-dollar bill to boost domestic computer chip manufacturing and more.

The birds will live out the rest of their lives at North Carolina State University, joining the Wolfpack.

“Now, when we told them they were joining the Wolfpack, they got a little scared, but then we explained it was just a mascot for the school as one of the nation’s best poultry science departments in the country,” Biden said.

With all the fun and frivolity, Biden did have some more serious thoughts to share on the holiday and the reason for the season, celebrating that this year will see families gather more freely than in years past, when the COVID-19 pandemic inhibited the holiday season.

“We can’t forget the reason for Thanksgiving in the first place. The pilgrims taught us it’s pretty important in tough times to come together and thank God to be grateful for what we have. That’s what the Thanksgiving tradition is all about. Being grateful for what we have and grateful for fellow Americans who we may never meet, but who — there you go, they’re grateful,” Biden said, making a pitch for people to get their COVID shots.

“And think about the scientists or researchers, doctors and nurses keeping us safe through the pandemic. Two years ago, we couldn’t even safely have Thanksgiving with the large family gatherings,” the president said.

Biden ended the event with a unifying message for a divided country post-midterm elections:

“Folks. Let’s remember, all political fighting goes on, you read about. Let’s remember one thing. This is the United States of America,” he said. “The United States of America. There’s not a single solitary thing beyond our capacity as a nation, nothing beyond our capacity. If we do it together, united, united.”

Following the event on Monday afternoon, Biden and first lady Jill Biden are headed to the turkeys’ home state, to the Marine Corps Air station in Cherry Point, North Carolina, for a Friendsgiving celebration with troops and their families.

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(WASHINGTON) — New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the likely incoming House Democratic leader, said Sunday that he anticipates his party will be united in a new minority even amid policy disagreements.

Jeffries, a longtime allay of outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has sometimes been at odds with members of his party’s left flank. However, in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he boasted of strong relationships with both liberals and moderates.

“Well, I have great respect for Rep. [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez and every single member of the House Democratic caucus, from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to Rep. Josh Gottheimer, my good friend, and all points in between,” Jeffries told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“The thing about us, Jake, is that while we can have some noisy conversations at times about how we can make progress for the American people, what we have seen is that under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, we have constantly been able to come together, time and time again,” Jeffries added, referring to the outgoing House majority leader and majority whip.

In the past, Jeffries has argued that others in the party enforce a difference between “progressive Democrats and hard-left democratic socialists,” and he has embraced the former label.

“I’m a Black progressive Democrat concerned with addressing racial and social and economic injustice with the fierce urgency of now. That’s been my career, that’s been my journey, and it will continue to be as I move forward for however long I have an opportunity to serve. There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism,” he told The Atlantic last year.

Jeffries, who was first elected in 2012, is currently running unopposed to be leader of the House Democrats after Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn all said last week they wouldn’t seek to reclaim their positions in the conference’s leadership team. (Clyburn is running for the No. 4 spot in the intraparty elections set for Nov. 30.)

In a speech on Thursday, Pelosi, who like her deputies has been in leadership for years, hailed a “new generation.”

Looking to a House GOP majority come January, Jeffries said on CNN that he would be open to working with Republicans but would not hesitate to confront what he labeled as “extremism.”

House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has promised to pursue oversight of the Biden White House while challenging Democrats’ past two years of unified rule. Jeffries told Tapper that while he hadn’t “recently” spoken with McCarthy, “I do have, I think, a much warmer relationship with Steve Scalise,” the minority whip.

McCarthy, appearing on Fox News on Sunday, said his slim majority will need to be unified to achieve its priorities, including focusing on China and the southern border.

“We need to work as one because if that continues to move forward, all the investigations we asked to happen, the securing the border, the stopping the movement, none of that can the move forward,” he said.

Jeffries, for his part, said on CNN: “[I] look forward to working whenever and wherever possible … with the entire House Republican conference and the leadership team to find common ground to get things done for everyday Americans to make progress.”

“But, of course, we will fiercely and vigorously oppose any attempts at Republican overreach and any Republican extremism,” he said. “And I’m hopeful that the Republican leadership will take lessons away from the rejection of extremism by the American people all across the land, and not double- and triple-down on it in the next Congress.”

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