Politics

Kept in the dark beforehand and skeptical of claims the Trump administration made afterward to justify killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week in a drone strike, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is promising swift action this week to reassert Congress' war powers and rein in President Trump.

Embattled California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter is set to resign from Congress on Jan. 13 after pleading guilty last month to misusing campaign funds.

Hunter had long decried the charges against him as politically motivated, but in early December he struck a deal to plead to just one count of illegal use of campaign funds. He later said he would resign "Shortly after the Holidays."

Updated at 4:25 p.m. ET

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says he has the votes to establish rules for the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump without support from Democrats.

Updated at 5:11 p.m. ET

Leading Democratic presidential candidates on Tuesday blasted President Trump's decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, casting it as a dangerous escalation in a volatile region.

Former Vice President Joe Biden delivered a speech in New York City in which he labeled the deadly strike as the latest in a series of "dangerously incompetent" steps taken by Trump.

Updated at 4:55 p.m. ET

President Trump and his top deputies offered a full-throated defense on Tuesday of the American strike against Iran's top foreign legion commander, stressing what they called the urgent danger of an attack he had been plotting.

The killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani last week has ratcheted up tensions between Tehran and Washington, prompting vows of retaliatory strikes.

Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET

Facebook says it's banning many types of misleading videos from its site, in a push against deepfake content and online misinformation campaigns.

Facebook's new ban targets videos that are manipulated to make it appear someone said words they didn't actually say. The company won't allow videos on its site if they've been either edited or computer-generated in ways that the average person couldn't detect.

Iran's cultural heritage is suddenly a topic of urgent global interest, after President Trump threatened to strike such sites if the country retaliates for the United States' killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.

Large crowds assembled across Iran over the weekend to mark the death of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. An American drone strike in Baghdad killed the military leader last Friday.

Iran also “all but withdrew” from the 2015 agreement that was supposed to restrict its development of nuclear weapons.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25. And that rate hasn’t changed in 10 years, even though the price of everything from housing to transportation has increased.

But new reporting shows that wages around the country have grown, in part due to state and local measures which increase the minimum wage.

In The Democracy Rebellion, journalist Hedrick Smith travels the country in search of Americans working to level the democratic playing field.

He identifies six states where grassroots movements are doing just that.

In conversation with activists and volunteers, Smith finds an army of Americans mobilizing over issues like gerrymandering, campaign financing and voting rights.

Updated at 2:11 p.m. ET

Former national security adviser John Bolton in a surprise announcement said Monday he'd be willing to testify in the Senate's impeachment trial of President Trump — if the Senate subpoenas him.

"I have concluded that, if the Senate issues a subpoena for my testimony, I am prepared to testify," Bolton said in a statement posted on his website.

Just days after ending his campaign for president, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro is endorsing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The two will hold a rally together Tuesday evening in Brooklyn.

Updated at 7:19 p.m. ET

Congressional Democrats are promising to act this week to limit President Trump's ability to unilaterally order military action against Iran.

In a letter to House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called last week's drone airstrike against Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani "provocative and disproportionate," saying the strike "endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran."

Last month, the House of Representatives voted for only the third time in history to impeach the president. Then something else unusual happened:

Nothing.

President Trump, members of Congress, much of Washington and millions of Americans effectively pushed pause on a once-in-a-generation political saga to take off for the holidays.

So for those just tuning back in for the first full workweek of 2020, nothing substantive has changed in the story — but that also means the coming month may churn into a whirlwind.

Updated at 7:49 p.m. ET

Iran will no longer honor its commitment to limit its enrichment of uranium, stepping away from a key component of the landmark nuclear deal it agreed to with six nations, including the United States, in 2015.

The announcement was reported Sunday in Iranian state media. It marks the latest in the country's retreat from the limitations agreed to in the agreement, known as the JCPOA.