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When protests erupted in China over the weekend, a social media post forwarded countless times quoted a former Chinese leader saying, "the people should be allowed to speak and encouraged to care about state affairs."

That leader was Xi Zhongxun, the late father of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Whether the younger Xi will take the advice given in a speech years ago is unclear.

Several days of extraordinary street protests in cities and universities across the country have highlighted with brutal clarity how unpopular China's "dynamic zero COVID"...

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday became the latest top Republican to condemn Donald Trump’s dinner with white supremacist Nick Fuentes — while declining to condemn the former president himself. Making his first comments on Trump’s dinner with Fuentes and the rapper Ye, both of whom have publicly engaged in antisemitism, McCarthy falsely asserted that the former president had already condemned Fuentes. Trump has said multiple times that he did not know who Fuentes was when the white nationalist attended dinner with him as a guest of Ye...

The Senate is set to pass legislation Tuesday to enshrine same-sex marriage protections in federal law, bringing the bill a critical step closer to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The final vote comes after senators spent months negotiating language related to religious liberty, a bid to attract the necessary 10 GOP votes to break a filibuster. The legislation will also need to clear the House, a likely easy lift since a previous version that did not include language related to religious liberties was approved by nearly 50 House Republicans and all...

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) announced Tuesday that there is “widespread agreement” among leaders in Washington about the need to pass an omnibus spending package next month, despite calls from conservatives to punt such decisions into next year.

But the GOP leader cautioned there are “significant hurdles” to reaching a deal, which means talks could drag right up until Christmas to avoid a government shutdown.

“We had a really good meeting. Laid out the challenges that we’re all collectively facing here. I think there’s widespread agreement that we’d be better off with an omnibus than a [continuing resolution] but there are some significant hurdles to get over to do that,” McConnell told reporters after meeting with President Biden and congressional leaders at the White House.

He said that “for myself and I think the majority of my conference, defense and Ukraine” funding are “at the top of the list” of priorities.

But he said Democrats’ request for increased non-defense discretionary spending is a “sticking point.”

“We’re going to keep talking to each other,” he added.

McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will meet Wednesday with the Democratic chairmen and top-ranking Republican members of the Senate and House Appropriations committees to discuss the outlines of the spending package.

All four Senate and House party leaders met with Biden Tuesday.

“We had a good discussion about funding the government. We all agreed that an omnibus would be better than a CR,” Schumer told reporters after the meeting.

“We each laid out our criteria for the omnibus. Obviously they’re different but we’ve agreed to sit down as early as tomorrow, the four appropriators and the four leaders, to try and resolve the issue and avoid any government shutdown. So it was a good and productive meeting,” he said.

McConnell and McCarthy agreeing on the need to pass an omnibus spending bill instead of a stop-gap spending measure or continuing resolution that would freeze federal funding until next year is a significant development.

Conservatives led by Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have called for a stop-gap to last until 2023 to give Republicans more leverage in the spending talks once they control the House.

But McCarthy, who is running to become the next Speaker, appears to prefer starting off the next Congress with a clean slate instead of having to negotiate a massive spending deal with Democrats while leading a narrow House GOP majority.

Scott, in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner Tuesday, accused Republican leaders of “caving” to Democrats’ spending demands.

“I ran for Senate leader because the current plan of routinely caving in and allowing Schumer and Biden to win must stop and because we must become a party with a plan to rescue America,” Scott wrote, referring to his unsuccessful bid earlier this month to challenge McConnell for the top Senate Republican leadership job.

“Everyone says compromise is crucial in Washington. That’s fine. But it’s about time we stop compromising our principles and start making the Democrats compromise theirs,” he wrote.

Congress is poised to end the threat of a rail strike after President Biden called on lawmakers to force through a tentative contract agreement that some railroad workers rejected.

The move would avert a national rail shutdown that would cripple the nation's economy in the middle of the holiday shopping season. But it would also enrage rail workers who feel they were never given a fair shot at the bargaining table.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) aims to pass legislation this week to block a strike. Lawmakers don’t think they can wait until the Dec. 9 strike deadline to act, as railroads would begin to wind down their operations as soon as this weekend, shutting down key shipments and commuter rail lines.

President Biden said Monday that his administration saw “no path” to resolving the dispute at the bargaining table. Four of the 12 rail unions don’t have a contract with the railroads, including SMART-TD, whose train workers last week voted down the tentative deal negotiated with the help of the Biden administration in September. Though eight unions have ratified contracts, a strike by one union obligates all 12 strike.

"Congress, I think, has to act to prevent it. It's not an easy call, but I think we have to do it. The economy is at risk," Biden told reporters Tuesday during a meeting with congressional leaders.

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, one of the rail unions that saw its workers vote down a contract proposal, said Tuesday that it was “deeply disappointed” by Biden’s decision, noting that the tentative deal doesn’t provide any paid sick days.

“A call to Congress to act immediately to pass legislation that adopts tentative agreements that exclude paid sick leave ignores the railroad workers’ concerns. It both denies railroad workers their right to strike while also denying them of the benefit they would likely otherwise obtain if they were not denied their right to strike,” the union said in a statement.

Those scathing remarks echo workers’ grievances throughout the process — that railroad executives have refused to meet their demands for paid sick leave and more predictable scheduling because they know Congress would never allow a strike to take place.

That threat of government intervention doesn’t exist in less strategically critical industries that have taken part in a wave of walkouts this year.

Railroads transport nearly one-third of the nation’s freight, including massive amounts of fuel, water, produce, car parts and other items. Other modes of transportation such as trucking are stretched far too thin to take on even a fraction of the goods shipped by rail.

As such, Congress is under tremendous pressure from corporate America to intervene, particularly as the holiday season ramps up demand for shipped products.

“Millions of e-commerce orders will be stranded in train cars for partial shipments, and intermodal cargo will back up and return gridlock to the nation's ports,” Retail Industry Leaders Association President Brian Dodge told reporters Tuesday.

Hundreds of influential trade associations are lobbying lawmakers to stave off a strike long before the Dec. 9 deadline. Amtrak suspended several routes in September as railroads closed down some lines about a week before a threatened strike date.

“For us, a strike effectively starts this weekend,” Corey Rosenbusch, president of the Fertilizer Institute, told reporters Tuesday, referring to shipments of fertilizer and other chemicals that would be the first to be shut down for safety reasons.

The Association of American Railroads, which estimates that a strike would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day,

A group of 71 mayors from around the country called on congressional leaders to fast-track immigration protections for Dreamers, ahead of a GOP takeover of the House of Representatives.

In a

More than 60 progressive groups wrote to two top Senate Democrats on Tuesday urging them to investigate ethical concerns about Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito following a recent report that he shared the outcome of a looming 2014 case involving the Hobby Lobby with a conservative activist.

The letter, which was obtained first by The Hill, is led by groups like Demand Justice, the Center for American Progress, End Citizens United and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The organizations are calling on Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who leads the subcommittee on federal courts, oversight, agency action and federal rights, to investigate the reports surrounding Alito’s conduct.

“Justice Alito’s alleged leak of the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby calls for a thorough investigation and, if true, constitutes a shocking betrayal of the Court’s confidences that deserves immediate accountability,” the letter states.

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Rev. Rob Schenck, who at the time led the group Faith and Action, said he learned of the outcome of the Hobby Lobby case weeks before it was made public. Alito wrote the majority opinion in that case, which ruled that some companies with religious objections were exempt from requirements that they offer contraceptives as part of health care plans.

The Times reported that Schenck said the information about the case came from a donor to his organization, Gail Wright, who had dined with Alito and his wife and was part of broader outreach efforts to the justices. Wright denied obtaining or sharing any information.

Schenck has told other media outlets that he was part of an effort to build relationships with conservative justices.

Durbin said in the wake of the Times report that his committee would review the matter, but Tuesday’s letter calls on him to launch a full investigation.

The progressive groups behind the letter raised concerns that if justices skirt accountability, they could be unduly influenced by similar pressure campaigns from activist organizations. Their concerns are amplified by the June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which came weeks after a draft of the majority opinion had leaked to the public.

“It is a disservice to the American people that the justices of our highest Court are not bound by a code of ethics, unlike every other federal judge in the country,” the letter states. “This lack of accountability undoubtedly contributes to the Supreme Court’s historically low approval ratings and to the American public’s declining faith in the institution.”

The letter called for testimony from Schenck as part of any investigation.

“If the Court refuses to do it themselves, then Congress must step in to quickly consider and pass meaningful legislation to bring accountability and transparency to a Court that has evaded it for far too long,” the groups wrote.

A Gallup poll released in late September found 47 percent of U.S. adults said they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the judicial branch, its lowest point ever recorded by the poll. The same poll found 42 percent of respondents said the Supreme Court is too conservative, the highest mark ever for the Gallup survey.

Republicans and effective congressional oversight are historically immiscible, like water and oil. Too many Republicans don’t like government, so, for them, what’s the point? Fixing government to render it into “good government” is an ideological oxymoron. For them, oversight is the perfect tool to tear down, not rebuild or reform.

Wasn’t that the real point of the Benghazi hearings, to tear down then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? Or “Fast and Furious” with then-Attorney General Eric Holder? Independent counsel Ken Starr went fishing for criminal activity in President Clinton’s Whitewater investments; he snagged a small fish, instead, named Monica Lewinski. That didn’t stop him from trying to tear down Clinton. But it backfired with the public.

Of course, there are some good government Republicans, but they are increasingly vanishing or have been vanquished. No, historically, the GOP has been missing the oversight gene in its DNA. Somehow, that gene got mutated. So, instead of having a gene that can appreciate the finer points of discerning, probative oversight, theirs is a self-destructive, tear-down gene that produces unintended comic relief.

An examination of the historical record will prove my point. Luckily, I spent the last four decades at close range with congressional oversight behind the scenes, so you don’t have to do the research yourself.

Keep in mind, these historic head-scratching mistakes I will highlight are already being repeated in the new GOP-majority Congress precisely because it is a political DNA thing. Place this shoot-myself-in-my-own-foot syndrome into the context of the recent midterms, in which the voters sweepingly rejected the toddler mentality of the Trump Republican Party, and one can see why the probability of the GOP politically self-immolating before 2024 is substantial.

The day after House Republicans reached their magic number for a majority in the next Congress, out came two oversight titan-wannabes at a press conference, chairmen-in-waiting Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) of the Committee on Government Oversight and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) of the Judiciary Committee. In tow was their very own version of a Steele Dossier; let’s call it “

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) condemned white nationalist figure Nick Fuentes after former President Trump dined with Fuentes and rapper Ye at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last week.

But McCarthy did not place blame on Trump.

“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes,” McCarthy

Millions of Ukrainians remain without power and water in freezing temperatures after Russian strikes.

Warnings of a crackdown come as Chinese health officials vow to reduce the inconvenience caused by Covid.

Janusz Walus is stabbed and wounded days before he was due to be released on parole.

A woman was arrested in South Korea after human remains were found in a suitcase bought at an auction.

Will Smith revisited his infamous Oscar night for the first time in his first major TV interview since slapping Chris Rock on stage last March.

Speaking to Trevor Noah on the Daily Show Monday night, Smith described how he "just lost it" over Rock's joke about Smith's wife's hair.

"That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time," he said, prefacing his comments by saying his emotions didn't justify his behavior.

"I guess what I would say is you just never know what someone is going through. I was going through something that night...

A rail strike is likely without congressional action, President Biden warned Tuesday morning before meeting with bipartisan House and Senate leaders at the White House to talk about remaining legislative priorities.

"It's not an easy call. But I think we have to do it," he said before the meeting. "The economy's at risk."

Among the meeting participants were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The meeting comes a day after the president...