Politics

On Thursday, lawmakers passed two gun bills aimed at strengthening laws on background checks. But neither is expected to get past the Senate, where they will need 60 votes to get to the president to sign. The first bill, called The Bipartisan Background Checks Act (H.R. 8) would require universal …

UPDATE: The Food and Drug Administration on Saturday granted emergency use authorization to a single-shot vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. “We are ready to roll it out!” White House Covid adviser Andy Slavitt tweeted after the authorization was official. The authorization comes days after the FDA released a report …

Editor’s Note: This episode was taped early Wednesday, before the events at the Capitol on January 6th. In the first socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast of 2021, which was recorded before the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by …

The U.S. Capitol fell under attack on Wednesday. Hours after President Trump encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol to protest the certification of last November’s election results, thousands of them did just that. They were met with resistance from Capitol police upon reaching the building, but not long after …

The run-up to Congress counting the electoral votes tomorrow has already been quite strange. And let’s be honest, this week is bound to get even weirder. But, rest assured, no matter what happens in Congress on Wednesday, one thing will not change — Joe Biden will become president at noon …

As Americans across the country die from the coronavirus, the Trump Administration will choose not to raise air quality standards, even though scientific research suggests a link between air pollution and Covid-19 deaths, the New York Times reported. Instead, according to the Times, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler will likely announce …

When President-elect Joe Biden enters office, he will inherit two public health crises: the coronavirus, which continues to spread and fill hospitals throughout the country, and the resurgent opioid drug epidemic, which continues to plague American families. The American Medical Association warned in October that “the nation’s opioid epidemic has …

Election Day 2020 is going to be a wild one. There are two big reasons for this. The first is that Covid-19 has led an unprecedented number of Americans to use mail-in ballots, and different states have different procedures for counting them. This usually doesn’t matter, but since there are …

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friends of the show Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, of The Hill’s “Rising.” For Republicans Suck, Matt submits a clip of Jared Kushner that’s made the rounds for it’s repugnant …

On Monday, Senate Republicans confirmed President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, in a 52-48 vote. The confirmation gives Trump his third appointment to the nation’s highest court in his first term in office. Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is in a tough battle to retain her seat, …