Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) showed up to vote in the Senate on Monday in a wheelchair and wearing a leg brace after he fell down the steps outside the Senate chamber on Wednesday.
Aides had to help McConnell from the wheelchair into his SUV after the vote, according to video footage posted on X.
Sen McConnell in a boot and a wheelchair tonight for votes https://t.co/ZZhaUIFjjj pic.twitter.com/olSObElKd3
— haleytalbotcnn (@haleytalbotcnn) February 10, 2025
McConnell is 82, the same age as former President Joe Biden. His birthday is next week.
He has had a series of falls and accidents over the past two years, including several while he was the Senate Minority Leader.
After he fell on Wednesday, he was helped up by Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and tried to walk it off, but must have sought medical attention later.
As Minority Leader, McConnell kept a tight grip on the campaign dollars the party gave to Senate candidates, giving him much leverage when seeking support for or opposition to legislation.
He stepped down as Republican leader at the end of the 2024 session, but has said he wants to serve out the rest of his Senate term, which will end in 2027.
McConnell is still the chairman of the Rules and Administration Committee and also sits on the Appropriations Committee and the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.
Which is to say, he still has some considerable power in the Senate even without being leader.
He's not the oldest senator in the chamber right now, either. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is 91 and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is 83.
Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Angus King (I-ME), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) are all 80 or older, but younger than McConnell.
More than half of the chamber is over 60, but that makes sense when you consider that Senate seats are statewide offices and many senators spend years in local or House seats.
The average age in the previous Senate was 64.
President Donald Trump ordered U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the minting of new pennies on Sunday because they cost almost four times their worth to make.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump posted Sunday night on Truth Social. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
According to The U.S. Mint, in 2024 each penny actually cost taxpayers 3.7 cents to mint.
The Mint said it lost $85.3 million in the 2024 fiscal year on the minting of almost 3.2 billion pennies.
The order came out of ongoing investigations by the Department of Government Efficency (DOGE) about ways the government can cut waste, fraud and abuse.
DOGE posted about the cost of making pennies January 21 on X, and Trump picked up on it as an area to cut.
The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost US taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023.
The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced.
Penny (or 3 cents!) for your thoughts.
Sources:https://t.co/Y5LlrpyA62…
— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) January 22, 2025
The cost of minting pennies has been a subject of debate for years.
Originally made from copper, the Mint switched to zinc with a copper overlay when pennies began to cost more than one cent to make.
In recent years, however, the cost of zinc has doubled, making it cost ineffective to produce them that way.
It doesn't really make sense to spend almost four cents to make a penny that is worth one cent. If a cheaper way to make pennies can't be found, it makes sense to use what's already in circulation, then start rounding up or down to five cents.
A commenter on the X post by DOGE pointed out that on overseas military bases, the commissary already rounds up or down to the nearest five cents.
Canada stopped minting pennies in 2012, according to the Associated Press.
But the AP also questioned whether Trump could order the Treasury to stop producing U.S. pennies without an act of Congress.
While it may be a little iffy to do so, the Mint could plausibly just stop minting pennies if it decided to do so.
It certainly seems like the $179 million spent to make them could be better spent elsewhere.
A senior Iranian lawmaker who sits on the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has publicly called for the assassination of President Donald Trump.
Following news that Trump ordered the total destruction of Iran if he is ever assassinated, Iranian MP Mojtaba Zarei stated that he would “not hesitate” to kill Trump even if it ended in Iran's total and complete annihilation.
Iran has been gunning for Trump ever since the assassination of Haj Qassem Soleimani who was an Iranian commander and terrorist mastermind who was responsible for attacks that claimed the lives of hundreds of Americans.
Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani in an airstrike in 2020 and Iran has vowed revenge ever since which necessitated significant security measures for Trump after he left the White House in 2021.
Not only is Trump being targeted by insane lunatics incited by Democrat rhetoric, he is also the target of a rogue nation that is willing to risk total annihilation to kill him.
Iran's continuous threats to assassinate Trump are a diplomatic roadblock that will prevent Iran from making any progress on the international scene.
Trump has already vowed to crush Iran over its nuclear ambitions and their continuous threats on his life aren't going to help Iran get out of crippling economic sanctions.
In fact, the escalating rhetoric has likely made it an even higher priority for the White House to crush Iran and it's radical Islamist leadership.
Zarei stated that, "If an opportunity arises, I will punish you personally! For my part, I’d say that whenever I get the opportunity, I will not hesitate for a moment to kill you, and mind you, I am a political official who speaks this diplomatically. The masses of Iranians are waiting for an opportunity to send the murderer and the mastermind of the assassination of the world’s greatest anti-terrorist figure, Haj Qassem, to hell in a glorious manner and worthy of his legacy, God willing!”
The irony of calling Soleimani an "anti-terrorist figure" demonstrates just how diametrically opposed Iran is to western nations.
Zarei continued by saying, "As a member of the Parliament’s National Security Committee and based on rational, patriotic, religious, political, and security realities, I say that the case of Haj Qassem Soleimani’s retribution will never go under the table and is still on the agenda and on the table. Of course, this is the State’s general policy.”
Unlike previous Democrat administrations, the Trump administration will not be making life easy for Iran, especially as they consider the assassination of a sitting U.S. president "general policy."
When Trump signed an executive order against Iran, he stated clearly that in the event of his assassination at Iran's hands, "They would be obliterated. That would be the end. I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated; there won’t be anything left."
Whether Iran's hypothetical destruction would be nuclear in nature wasn't made clear but considering Trump's use of the word "obliterated," it's safe to assume that Trump's plans include leaving Iran as an irradiated hellscape.
A federal judge has issued an order to temporarily block the Trump administration’s plan to place thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development employees on leave at midnight.
The decision came after a union of government employees sued the Trump administration to restart operations at USAID and resume the flow of foreign aid frozen by President Trump.
Trump froze USAID's operations after massive fraud and corruption were discovered with the agency distributing billions of taxpayer dollars to obviously fraudulent programs.
Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, put a hold on the government from placing over 2,000 USAID employees on administrative leave before February 14th.
This sets up a contentious battle between the Trump administration and government unions over purging thousands of workers who have overseen the robbery of the American people for decades.
The lawsuit was brought by the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees who argued that the Trump administration was engaged in an “ongoing, illegal scheme to gut" USAID.
The lawsuit is correct in claiming that Trump's intention is to "gut" USAID but where the lawsuit is incorrect is its assertion that Trump's actions are illegal.
As Trump is the head of the executive branch, he has sweeping powers to make changes to federal agencies and how they are run.
The effort to destroy USAID is being led by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which struck without warning by shutting employees out of internal systems and email and recalling thousands of workers to the United States.
Trump himself stated, "When you look at USAID, the whole thing is a fraud. Very little put to good use. Every single line that I look at is either corrupt or ridiculous.
USAID was established in 1961 via executive order by President John F. Kennedy which is part of Trump's defense of shuttering the agency unilaterally. Elon Musk pointed this out in a post to X saying, "Live by executive order, die by executive order."
Countering Musk's point on executive orders is the fact that USAID was codified by Congress in 1998 which sets up a potential battle between Congress and the White House.
However, both the Senate and the House are controlled by the GOP which means that Trump will have their backing in dismantling USAID. Many congressional Republicans have already indicated that they support what Trump is doing to clean up corruption.
Congressional Democrats have vowed to fight for USAID with everything they have. Democrats are so hysterical about the dismantling of USAID that it's worth wondering how many prominent Democrats have been enriched by taxpayer dollars funneled through USAID.
Former Secretary of State and failed Democrat 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton couldn't resist a dig at Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over the involvement of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s takeover of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Most of them aren’t old enough to rent a car,” she wrote on X in response to Duffy's announcement of the plan. “And you’re going to let them mess with airline safety that’s already deteriorated on your watch?”
Her comment turned into a Twitter war between Clinton and Duffy.
Duffy responded by saying, “Madam Secretary, with all due respect, ‘experienced’ Washington bureaucrats are the reason our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. You need to sit this one out."
But Clinton did anything but.
In fact, she went on to blame President Donald Trump's administration for the recent aviation crashes even though there's no evidence any of his policies were responsible.
"US airlines had gone 16 years without fatal crashes," she wrote. "Then MAGA fired the FAA chief, gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and threatened air traffic controllers with layoffs. Now there have been two fatal crashes. Hope your unvetted 22-year-olds fix things fast."
Duffy then set the record straight, refusing to let Clinton blame the administration for an American Airlines crash with a military helicopter that killed all 67 people on both aircraft or a Medevac crash in Philadelphia that killed nine people when it crashed into a neighborhood.
“I know you’re lashing out because DOGE is uncovering your family’s obscene grifting via USAID, but I won’t let you lie and distort facts,” Duffy countered. “The FAA administrator announced he resigned over a month before Trump took office, and the air traffic controllers were always exempt from Trump’s civil service buyouts. “
Clinton's spokesperson then jumped in to claim that Duffy's comment about Chelsea Clinton getting millions from USAID was not true.
"Musk deleted the tweet that spread this lie," Nick Merill posted.
Bottom line, whether that's true or not, Democrats are going stark raving mad over Trump's mission to actually make cuts in government wasteful spending--cuts that are sorely needed given the crushing load of debt the government is currently functioning under.
Duffy ended by saying, “I’m returning this department to its mission of safety by using innovative technology in transportation and infrastructure. Your team had its chance and failed.”
Trump knows he has a huge task ahead of him, and he's not wasting even a minute.
A judge in Washington, D.C., has stated that Prince Harry's visa records will be subject to "maximum disclosure as long as it doesn't violate privacy."
The Daily Mirror reported that Judge Carl Nichols requested that the Department of Homeland Security request redactions to Harry's documents or "continued withholdings" in anticipation of the potential release of certain documentation, as The New York Post reported.
This decision is just one component of a high-stakes litigation with the Heritage Foundation.
The conservative-leaning foundation has contended that Harry should not have been permitted to relocate to the United States as a result of his prior drug use.
Heritage is interested in determining whether the Duke of Sussex, as he described in his book Spare, lied on his visa documents about his use of cannabis, cocaine, magic mushrooms, and ayahuasca.
According to the think tank, he should not have been admitted to the United States if he had been truthful, and they maintain that the public has a right to know whether he was treated favorably by immigration officials.
The judge maintained the confidentiality of his rationale for dismissing the think tank's argument, despite the fact that the case was dismissed in September.
Nevertheless, Heritage has been attempting to overturn or vacate the ruling, and Nichols suggested that it might have at least some success while speaking during a hearing on Wednesday.
The Sun quoted him as advocating for the greatest amount of publication that could be achieved without infringing upon Harry's privacy, and he added, "In my view that has to happen."
Harry's files have been perused by Nichols in secret, and he will have a general understanding of their contents.
His suggestion that certain documents could be redacted and subsequently released suggests that Heritage may obtain at least a portion of the information it is pursuing. Specifically, was Harry questioned about his past drug use, and what was he admitted to.
The case was abruptly terminated in September, with the court's rationale for siding with the Department of Homeland Security being kept confidential in order to protect Harry's privacy.
Heritage counsel stated that this denied them the opportunity to contest the interpretation of critical documents in court.
Wednesday's hearing at federal court in Washington, D.C. was the first since President Donald Trump's re-election.
Heritage had argued that Joe Biden's previous administration had been safeguarding Harry, and Trump himself stated in March 2024:
"We'll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they'll have to take appropriate action."
Although there is no indication that the Department of Homeland Security will alter its stance under Trump and cease to pursue the case, Heritage appears to have emerged with a more positive outlook than it did in September.
The prime minister of Sweden termed the shooting at an adult education facility in Örebro on Tuesday the worst mass shooting in Swedish history, killing at least 10 people.
How the incident happened is still being investigated by Swedish police, as The Daily Mail reported.
A shooting was reported in Örebro, a city 160 km west of Stockholm, at 12:33 p.m. local time (6:33 a.m. ET) on Tuesday.The incident happened at Campus Risbergska, a school for unschooled individuals.
Such facilities are called Komvux in Sweden. Komvuxes offer vocational training, Swedish language instruction, and other courses for persons seeking jobs. These programs are vital to Sweden's refugees and migrants.
As the alarms went off and the red lights flashed, students hid under desks in cellphone videos.
“We heard bangs and loud screams. At first we didn’t understand what it was, but then we realized it could be gunfire,” Andreas Sundling, a 28-year-old student at the campus, told CNN affiliate Expressen.
His classmates, he said, took cover behind the doors and waited for the police to arrive and evacuate the classroom, which took about an hour.
“There was blood all over the corridor,” Sundling said.
The assault left at least ten individuals dead and six more wounded, according to the police. The assailant also passed away.
Örebro regional officials provided an update on Wednesday stating that the local university hospital was treating six individuals.
All five patients were adults; three women and two men had gunshot wounds and had surgery. Officials have stated that the five individuals are currently in a "stable but serious" condition, after initially being believed to have injuries that could cause death.
Officials said that no one else required hospitalization during the night.
Many of the students had already departed the campus following Tuesday's national exam, according to teacher Lena Warenmark, who spoke to Swedish state broadcaster SVT.
An individual stormed into Mary Pegado's classroom and ordered her and her kids to evacuate, according to the 54-year-old educator.
“I think of my students,” Pegado told Reuters. “Many of them have fled from countries where things like this happen, and now they experience it here. It is horrible,” she said.
President Donald Trump has matched his highest-ever approval ratings in one of the bluest states in the nation--New York--and has a higher approval rating than Governor Kathy Hochul (D) in the same poll.
The Siena College survey was released on Monday and showed Trump with a 41% approval rating, while Hochul's was 39%.
Trump's approval hasn't been so high since the month before he took office in 2016.
A big part of the upward swing for Trump is his crackdown on illegal immigrants who have committed crimes--79% of poll respondents approved of deporting criminal illegal immigrants.
A majority of 54% believe that Trump will do an "excellent" or "good" job securing the U.S. border.
“President Trump has not been popular in his former home state for more than a decade. And while that is still true, Trump now has his best favorability rating, 41-56%, since the month before he took office the first time, December 2016, when his favorability rating was 41-53%,” Sienna pollster Steven Greenberg said of the results.
Predictably, Republicans view Trump favorably 83% to 13%, while Democrats view him unfavorably 81% to 17%. With independents, Trump is slightly up 48% to 46%.
Trump is already making good on his promises to deport illegal immigrants who have committed crimes and has conducted ICE raids in New York City and other major cities.
Anderson Zambrano-Pacheco, 25, an alleged ringleader of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua, was arrested in the Bronx last week.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made his first visit to the southern border on Monday, declaring a "new era of determination" under Trump.
"Because of President Donald Trump, this is a new era at the southern border, a new era of determination, a new era of cooperation. And at the Defense Department, we are proud to be a part of it," he told reporters after touring the border.
Trump has used threats of tariffs to get countries like Mexico, Canada, and Columbia to cooperate with his border crackdown.
Mexico and Canada have both said they will station thousands of troops at the border to stop the flow of fentanyl and human trafficking there.
The U.S. military is also deploying more troops there. "We are going to get control of this border," Hegseth promised.
In her recently released bestselling memoir, First Lady Melania Trump disclosed that she was "deeply worried" about the health of her son Barron (and husband Donald) when she and the then-president both tested positive for the coronavirus in October 2020.
While the president's physician, Dr Sean Conley, released a statement at the time saying that the Trumps were doing well and would "remain at home within the White House during their convalescence," the president was subsequently hospitalized out of an abundance of caution.
He was given an experimental drug cocktail injection and remdesivir, after which he quickly recovered.
The virus hit the older population and those with certain pre-existing conditions hardest, but that was not well known in the early months of the pandemic.
The first lady said she was "overwhelmed" with worry for her husband and son.
"Barron and I had spent the previous evening chatting in my room, and although he continued to test negative, I feared he might soon fall ill as well," she wrote.
"He was young and healthy, but the uncertainties surrounding the virus were daunting. As any mother would, I worried deeply about my son."
Barron did eventually contract the virus, but had only mild symptoms.
Melania Trump also recovered well, even though she didn't take the same treatments as her husband. She is more than 20 years younger than he is, and younger populations seemed to have an easier time of it if they were already fairly healthy prior to infection.
After Trump recovered, he made an address to the nation urging people to return to work.
"Don't let it [coronavirus] dominate you," he urged, adding, "We're going to be out front. As your leader, I had to do that. I knew there's danger to it, but I had to do it. I stood out front and led."
Trump went on to narrowly lose his re-election bid, and the nation was subjected to months of mask-shaming and other scare tactics by the incoming Biden administration.
Many were strong-armed into getting the COVID-19 vaccines available at the time under onerous rules that threatened their jobs for resisting.
The Supreme Court had to get involved and strike down the mandates in order to preserve the freedom to avoid these untested vaccines, which have now proven to be more risky than anyone thought at the time.
The Army Black Hawk that collided with an American Airlines passenger jet in Washington D.C. was reportedly training for an event in which the White House would be evacuated.
The Army confirmed that three soldiers, who all perished, had been rehearsing a plan that involved the evacuation of the White House when their Black Hawk collided with American Airlines flight 5342 just before 9 pm on Wednesday night.
As soon as news broke that the collision had involved a military aircraft, online commentators immediately began to speculate about the purpose of the helicopter's flight with some commentators correctly speculating that they were conducting a training exercise involving evacuating the president.
Defense officials confirmed that the helicopter was rehearsing for a Continuity of Government contingency plan which would involve evacuating key staff from the White House in the event of an emergency.
COG contingency plans are a set of procedures designed to ensure that government functions are preserved during and after a catastrophic event, like a nuclear or chemical attack on Washington D.C.
Two of the crew members were identified as Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves and crew chief Staff Sergeant Ryan O'Hara but the identity of the third was withheld by the Army at the request of the family.
This immediately drew the attention of Americans as this was an unusual situation. Typically, the identities of deceased soldiers are withheld until "next-of-kin" are notified, but the family is trying to withhold the identity past that point.
Information still began to leak out as it was revealed that the third soldier was a female co-pilot who was reportedly flying during the time of the collision.
Eventually, the identity of the third crewmember was released despite an apparent attempt by the family to scrub all social media and references.
The third crewmember was identified as Captain Rebecca Lobach which immediately drummed up speculation that this tragedy may have been caused by DEI policies pushed aggressively by the Biden administration in the armed forces.
The fact that Lobach's family made the unusual move of requesting her identity be hidden while they worked to scrub her social media suggests there could be something strange happening.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies have been pushed hard by the Biden administration in the armed forces and the most notable sign of these policies is the push to have women in combat positions as well as in critical roles flying aircraft.
President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been talking extensively about DEI in the armed forces ever since Wednesday's tragedy suggesting that Lobach may have been pushed into a situation she wasn't ready for in order to tick off DEI quotas.
Internet sleuths have since discovered that Lobach was a lesbian who attended LGBTQ+ pride events and served as a social aid to the Biden White House which further raises questions about what was wiped from Lobach's social media.
The truth is likely to come out in the coming days as the Trump administration has sworn to transparency and is going to do everything possible to get all the information out to those families grieving the loss of their loved ones in this terrible accident.