CNN Politics

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday announced a slate of events around the US Capitol next week to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.

This year brought a dizzying mix of triumphs and setbacks in Washington, where lawmakers have grappled with everything from a deadly pandemic to an assault on democracy itself.

The flurry of lawsuits filed in recent weeks trying to stop the House January 6 committee's subpoenas are revealing, in many ways, the opposite: That the House has been largely successful at sweeping up documents for the probe and interviewing dozens of major witnesses.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's virtual meeting with foreign ministers about the Omicron coronavirus variant last week included the ministers from both Saudi Arabia and Israel, a rare instance where the two countries who do not have formal diplomatic relations participated in the same call.

Several lawmakers and members of the law enforcement community tasked with protecting the US Capitol will mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly insurrection there next month during a live event hosted by CNN, the network announced Thursday.

President Joe Biden kicked off his administration with lofty goals to revamp America's immigration system, but with the end of the year approaching, lawsuits and infighting have stalled policy changes, officials have fielded criticism from allies and critics over management of the US southern border, and efforts to pass immigration revisions seem farther away.

The Biden administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court for permission to end the Trump-era "remain in Mexico" program, which requires non-Mexican migrants to stay in Mexico until their US immigration court dates.

President Joe Biden will hold a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday afternoon "to discuss a range of topics, including upcoming diplomatic engagements with Russia," National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne told CNN.

America is plunging into a fast-worsening and frightening winter bout with Covid-19 that will leave few citizens and communities untouched. But as the highly transmissible Omicron variant roars across the country, the Biden administration is revealing the most tangible signs of a shifting pandemic strategy several weeks in the making. It is preparing a nation exhausted by two years of battling the invisible enemy to live more feasibly alongside it.

After months of relative public silence, former first lady Melania Trump before Christmas emerged from private life to announce a new project: A piece of artwork, a watercolor closeup of her eyes, in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) was now available for purchase.

5. Biden/Trump 2024

As the Supreme Court considers whether to take up former President Donald Trump's January 6 White House records case, Trump's attorney submitted to the court a new filing Wednesday making the court aware of a Washington Post interview with Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee seeking the records.

Oklahoma National Guard members must get vaccinated against Covid-19, a federal judge has ruled, denying a request from the state's Republican governor and others to halt the military's vaccine mandate.

The House select committee investigating January 6 has stood down on its requests for some documents from the Trump White House, after the Biden administration convinced the panel to scale back its pursuits.

The US Air Force flew a reconnaissance mission this week over eastern Ukraine to gather intelligence about the situation on the ground -- two days after Russia announced it would withdraw 10,000 troops from its border with that nation.

In states like Texas and North Carolina, Republican lawmakers in charge of redrawing the political maps for the next decade say that the new plans are "race blind." Their opponents in court say that the claim is implausible and one that, in some situations, is at odds with the Voting Rights Act.

As Americans enter the third year of the pandemic, they can expect to receive significantly less federal aid.

Two Trump-appointed federal judges have rejected claims from January 6 defendants that they're being treated unfairly, because of their conservative politics, compared with left-leaning rioters in Portland, Oregon, in the summer of 2020.

A Supreme Court that has declined to block several types of vaccine mandates is now considering whether to allow the Biden administration to require millions of Americans to get Covid-19 vaccines.