Trump Administration

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the House will transmit article of impeachment "soon", but did not provide any further details on when the trial might begin.

"I’m not going to be telling you when it is going," so Pelosi. "The other questions are about how a trial would proceed. We are ready."

President Joe Biden terminated three of Donald Trump's appointees on his first day in office: Michael Pack, the head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media which oversees international broadcaster Voice of America; Kathleen Kraninger, who has been the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since 2019; and Peter Robb the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel.

President Joe Biden has signed 17 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations shortly after his inauguration, including revoking Trump's Muslim ban, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, extending federal eviction moratorium, rescinding Census orders to exclude non-citizens, preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and a federal mask mandate.

United States President Donald Trump has handed out 143 pardons shortly before leaving office. The list includes former advisor Steve Bannon, rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black (illegal gun possession), Kwame Kilpatrick the former mayor of Detroit (corruption), Elliott Broidy the ex-Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party (illegal lobbying for Malaysia), Solomon Melgen a prominent ophthalmologist and Trump's neighbour from Palm Beach, Florida (health insurance fraud against senior citizens) and Paul Erickson, conservative activist and ex-boyfriend of alleged Russian spy Maria Butina (money laundering).

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that President Donald Trump helped provoke the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, blaming the president directly for the attack on the Capitol.

"The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people," so McConnell.

Donald Trump has left the White House for the last time of his presidency, hours before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. Trump boarded Marine One accompanied by Melania Trump and left for the Joint Base Andrews where he's attending his departure ceremony.

Rudy Giuliani has announced he won't be part of Donald Trump's legal team when Trump faces his second impeachment trial for "incitement of insurrection" in the US Senate, citing to his involvement in the "Save America Rally" on January 6 where he called for a "trial by combat".

“Because I gave an earlier speech. I am a witness and therefore unable to participate in court or Senate chamber,” Giuliani told ABC News.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has demanded acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to "immediately cease" installing Trump's National Security Council staffer Michael Ellis as new NSA General Counsel.

"I ask that you immediately cease plans to improperly install Michael Ellis as the new NSA General Counsel. Additionally, with a copy of this letter to the Acting Inspector General, I am also requesting an investigation into the circumstances of the NSA General Counsel selection process. I have serious concerns about your statement that this process was free from political interference," Pelosi wrote. "Public reporting indicates that Mr. Ellis, a relatively recent law school graduate with a limited resume, was selected due to interference by the White House, and was chosen over much more qualified candidates. Moreover, Mr. Ellis has been reportedly involved in highly questionable activities that are disqualifying – including the infamous 2017 “midnight run” to launder intelligence information through Rep. Devin Nunes and with efforts to shield information about President Trump’s July 2019 call with the President of Ukraine."

The United States House has voted in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump. The resolution has been brought to a vote following the storming of the Capitol building.

The Trump administration added Cuba to a list of state sponsors of terrorism Monday, reversing a signature policy move of the Obama administration and potentially hampering President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to broker a rapprochement to Havana quickly.

A U.S. economic embargo of Cuba already curbs Americans’ ability to do business with or visit the communist island. But the new terrorism label could hinder commercial deals with third countries. Cuba relies on to import essential goods and turn off foreign investors in its all-important tourism industry.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Cuba of "repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbour to terrorists."

Betsy DeVos says Trump "rhetoric" was "inflection point." She has become the second Cabinet secretary to resign a day after a pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

On Thursday, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation andwife of the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Elaine Chao, announced her resignation on Twitter.

"Yesterday, our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol building following a rally he addressed. As I'm sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside," Chao wrote. "Today, I am announcing my resignation as U.S. Secretary of Transportation, to take effect on Monday, January 11, 2020." Chao added she would help announced successor Mayor Pete Buttigieg with "taking on the responsibility of running this wonderful department."

Various Trump administration staffers resigned following the violent protests of Pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol Wednesday.

Among those who resigned are President Donald Trump's former acting chief of staff and U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney, deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, White House social secretary Anna Cristina "Rickie" Niceta, White House Council of Economic Advisers Tyler Goodspeed and First Lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and a former press secretary to the president Stephanie Grisham.

Ian Bremmer, president of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, has found that the United States' political situation poses a key risk for 2021, additionally to the Covid-19 pandemic, global data control and cyber conflicts, as well as the US-China conflicts.

"When you think about 2021, of course, you know, coronavirus is going to dominate the news continually. But the United States today is not only the most powerful country in the world, but it's also the most politically divided and economically unequal of all of the world's wealthy democracies. And President-elect Biden will take office in that environment. He will be seen as illegitimate by almost half of the country," Brenner said in an interview with NPR, adding in a Eurasia Group report that a "superpower torn down the middle cannot return to business as usual. When the world’s most powerful country is so divided, everybody has a problem."

Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in Georgia, has stated that it would be unlikely for his office to open an investigation into the weekend phone call he had with the US President Donald Trump.

According to him a criminal probe by the Atlanta-area district attorney could still be launched. In addition, he stated "the Fulton County District Attorney wants to look at it. Maybe that’s the appropriate venue for it to go".

After President Donald Trump claimed Sunday that the number of Covid-19 infections and deaths of the "China Virus is far exaggerated" because of the CDC's "ridiculous method of determination", US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams responded that there was "no reason to doubt" the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's statistics.

"From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers," Adams said in an interview with CNN. "And I think people need to be very aware that it's not just about the deaths, as we talked about earlier. It's about the hospitalizations, the capacity. These cases are having an impact in an array of ways and people need to understand there's a finish line in sight, but we've got to keep running toward it."

The US Congress voted to override President Trump’s veto of the $740bn National Defense Authorization Act, the first time that one of his vetoes was overturned since he took office. The Senate voted 81-13 for the defense spending bill, a two-thirds majority, ensuring that the measure becomes law.

US President-elect Joe Biden has released a statement Saturday, urging President Donald Trump to sign the Covid-19 relief bill that was passed by Congress earlier this week.

“It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet because of President Donald Trump’s refusal to sign an economic relief bill approved by Congress with an overwhelming and bipartisan majority,” Biden said in the statement. "This abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences."

On Thursday House Republicans blocked a bill put forward by Democrats that would have resulted in $2,000 stimulus checks for individuals as part of a Covid-19 financial aid package. President Trump had demanded to increase the proposed $600 stimulus checks to $2000 earlier this week but the GOP has rejected the move.

"On Monday, I will bring the House back to session where we will hold a recorded vote on our stand-alone bill to increase economic impact payments to $2,000. To vote against this bill is to deny the financial hardship that families face and to deny them the relief they need," Pelosi said in a statement.

The United States will purchase an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a cost of $1.95 billion, bringing the total number of vaccine doses to be delivered to the country by the end of July 2021 to 200 million.

“This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021,” so Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in a statement.