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Today congress approved a measure to fund the government into early December, and President Biden signed the bill hours later, staving off a shutdown that was set to occur after midnight. The votes in the House and Senate followed weeks of hand-wringing between the two parties, after Democrats initially sought to move the measure along with another proposal to raise the country’s debt ceiling. Senate Republicans blocked that effort, leaving the country’s ability to borrow unresolved just 18 days before the next major fiscal deadline.

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With only hours to spare, President Biden signed legislation to avoid a partial federal shutdown and keep the government funded through Dec. 3. Congress had passed the bill earlier Thursday. The back-to-back votes by the Senate and then the House averted one crisis, but delays on another continue as the political parties dig in on a dispute over how to raise the government’s borrowing cap before the United States risks a potentially catastrophic default.

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What do you think about investigating Trump’s role in the January 6th attempted coup?

The bipartisan Jan. 6 Select Committee released a list Wednesday of 11 subpoenas sent to organizers of rallies and events preceding the riot at the Capitol building. The subpoenas follow the announcement last week that the committee subpoenaed four people in former President Donald Trump's inner circle about events leading up to the attack and issues surrounding the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.

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YouTube shut down several prominent accounts it accused of spreading vaccine misinformation Wednesday as the video site implemented new policies aimed at curtailing all anti-vaccine propaganda. Many social media sites, including YouTube, had taken aggressive action against users questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and attempted to direct users to authoritative sources. Facebook moved to police content related to all vaccines earlier this year, and YouTube is now taking similar action after many videos sidestepped its rules by attacking vaccines in general.

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Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming lashed out at her fellow Republicans today as they bashed Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for remarks he reportedly made to Chinese counterparts and to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, Cheney began her allotted five-minute round of questions by speaking about the attack on the Capitol before moving to what some of her colleagues were saying about Milley.

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The debt ceiling must be raised and the infrastructure bill must be passed. House Republican leaders mount all-out campaign to sink infrastructure.

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Biden's climate change agenda hangs in balance as Congress debates budget

If Congress passes President Biden’s ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he will go down in history as the nation’s first leader to usher in a transformative climate change agenda. But with the scope of the federal budget in limbo, should those measures be cut from the final package, the U.S. will, once again, come up short on helping to avert climate change catastrophe, according to environmentalists.

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Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature to make permanent the mail-ballot system the state used under emergency powers in both 2020 and the 2021 recall election. That means henceforth every registered voter in California will receive a mail ballot (with a postage-prepaid return envelope) for every primary and general election. Thus California becomes the eighth state (plus the District of Columbia) to move to an all-mail ballot system (with limited availability for in-person voting). Others are Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday threw a wrench into congressional infrastructure negotiations — after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi derailed progressives' voting strategy. Since June, when President Joe Biden reached a bipartisan deal in the Senate on a $1 trillion roads-and-bridges bill, he and Pelosi have vowed to bring it to a vote in the House at the same time as a $3.5 trillion party-line reconciliation bill. Pelosi's move on Tuesday blew up that strategy, and progressives are furious.

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