McConnell on Abortion Funding Actions: ‘Executive Orders Can’t Alter the Basic Science of Human Life’

On the eve of the annual March for Life – being held mostly virtually this year – President Joe Biden on Thursday reversed several of his predecessor’s pro-life policies. He lifted restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars to support abortions abroad, and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from a 2020 declaration signed by more than 30 governments that oppose abortion. Read

US Decries Pakistani Court Order Freeing Terrorist Sentenced to Death For Killing Daniel Pearl

The Department of Justice reiterated on Thursday that the U.S. is ready to take into custody and put on trial a man convicted of the 2002 kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, after Pakistan’s top court ordered his release from death row.  Read

Biden’s UN Ambassador-Nominee Grilled Over Speech to Confucius Institute

The confirmation hearing for President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to the U.N. was not all smooth sailing Wednesday, as Foreign Service veteran Linda Thomas-Greenfield was grilled repeatedly about a speech she delivered to a Confucius Institute at a university in Georgia in 2019. Read

UN Ambassador-Nominee: State Dep’t Is Reviewing Pompeo’s China Genocide Determination

The State Department is reviewing the process of the Trump administration’s eleventh-hour determination that the Chinese Communist Party’s actions against Uyghurs Muslims constitute genocide, President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations said on Wednesday.  Read

Blinken: ‘Informed Consent’ is Vital if Our Foreign Policy is to be Sustainable

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that in order for the Biden administration’s foreign policy to be “sustainable,” it is vitally important that it receive the “informed consent” of the American people, especially through their representatives in Congress.  Read

Iran Denies Secret Talks With U.S. Are Underway, But They Have Happened Before

The Iranian regime on Tuesday denied that any talks have been held thus far with the new U.S. administration, two days after a regional paper cited a source in the Iranian presidency as saying that secretive, informal contacts have occurred both before and since President Joe Biden’s inauguration.  Read

Five Republicans Vote to Kill Rand Paul’s Challenge to Constitutionality of Impeachment Trial

 Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday accused “hyperpartisan Democrats” of preparing to drag the U.S. “into the gutter of rancor and vitriol” by putting former President Trump, a private citizen, on trial.  Read

Kerry: US Returning to Global Climate Action ‘With Humility For The Absence of The Last Four Years’

The United States is returning to the Paris climate accord and multilateral climate action “with humility for the absence of the last four years, and we’ll do everything in our power to make up for it,” President Joe Biden’s special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry told an international “climate adaptation summit” on Monday.  Read

Biden Tells CNN That Impeachment Trial for Trump 'Has to Happen'

An impeachment trial for former President Trump “has to happen,” despite the impact that could have on moving his agenda forward, President Joe Biden told a CNN reporter at the White House on Monday night. Read

Biden’s Press Secretary Updates the World on His Favorite Ice Cream…

 President Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream flavor is chocolate chip, but if there is a giant freezer stocked with the stuff at the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki has yet to find it.  Read

‘Sooner or Later’ Chinese Warplanes Will Be Flying Over Taiwan, Chinese Communist Newspaper Says

 A Chinese Communist Party newspaper warned early on Monday that Chinese warplanes will “sooner or later” cross the skies over Taiwan, and advised the Biden administration not to follow its predecessor’s “extreme” policies towards China.  Read

Israel Opens First-Ever Embassy in UAE, as Trump’s Normalization Agreements Advance

Building on the foundation of the normalization agreement brokered by the Trump administration last summer, Israel on Sunday opened an embassy in the United Arab Emirates, and the Gulf state’s cabinet approved the establishment of an embassy in Tel Aviv.  Read

Biden Re-Engages With WHO Without Pressing for Reforms First

As the Biden administration marked the U.S. return to the World Health Organization on Thursday, some conservative critics said it had squandered leverage by not linking re-engagement to critically-needed reforms at the U.N. health agency. Read

Biden Will Revoke Int’l Abortion Funding Ban Shortly, Dr. Fauci Tells WHO

President Joe Biden will “in the coming days” revoke the policy that withholds U.S. federal funding from non-governmental organizations that promote or perform abortions abroad, his newly-appointed chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, confirmed to the World Health Organization on Thursday. Read

Cotton: China's 'Powerful' Sanctions on Trump Officials Are an Attempt to Intimidate Biden Officials

Republican lawmakers called on the Biden administration Thursday to respond forcefully to China’s imposition of substantive sanctions on senior national security officials in the previous administration.  Read

Reversing Trump’s Withdrawal, Biden Says WHO ‘Plays a Crucial Role’ in the Fight Against COVID-19

In a letter to U.N. leaders Wednesday, President Joe Biden retracted his predecessor’s intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization, saying that the U.N. health agency “plays a crucial role in the world’s fight against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic as well as countless other threats to global health and health security.”  Read

‘No Time to Start Like Today’: Biden Signs First Orders, Including One to Rejoin UN Climate Accord

Promising an agenda including “bold and vital” steps, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that there was “no time to start like today,” as he signed the first of a stack of executive orders, including one mandating mask wearing on federal property and another rejoining the Paris climate accord.  Read

Asked About Abortion Funding Plans, Psaki Says Biden is ‘a Devout Catholic’

Asked during her first White House briefing on Wednesday evening about President Joe Biden’s plans regarding federal funding for abortion at home and abroad, White House press secretary Jen Psaki had no immediate news to share, but said she wanted to remind the press corps that the president “is a devout Catholic, and somebody who attends church regularly.” Read

On Eve of Trump’s Departure, US Becomes the World’s First Gov’t to Label China’s Actions ‘Genocide’

In the last of a series of parting blows aimed at Beijing, the Trump administration on Tuesday declared that the Chinese Communist Party’s actions against Uyghurs Muslims constitute crimes against humanity and “genocide,” becoming the first government in the world to make such a determination. Read

Biden’s Secretary of State Nominee: ‘President Trump Was Right in Taking a Tougher Approach to China’

Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken made clear Tuesday he disagreed with many aspects of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, but acknowledged – and pledged to build upon – its progress in the Middle East, and said he believed that “President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China.”  Read

‘Last Day Madness’: Beijing Slams Pompeo Over Wuhan Claims

The Chinese state and its media outlets directed a barrage of invective at outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday.  A foreign ministry spokeswoman described Pompeo's calls for international experts probing the origin of the coronavirus outbreak to examine any possible role played by a Wuhan lab as the “last-day madness of Mr. Liar.”  Read

Biden Administration Won't Lift COVID-Induced Travel Restrictions, As Trump Just Did

President Trump issued a proclamation on Monday night lifting the entry ban on foreign visitors who were recently in Britain, Brazil, or dozens of Europe countries. Read

Experts Probing Virus Origin Quarantine in Wuhan As Pompeo Calls Again For Lab Scrutiny

International experts probing the origins of the novel coronavirus are holding virtual meetings from their Wuhan hotel rooms as they work their way through a mandatory 14-day quarantine period which began last Thursday, after the Chinese government eventually allowed the team to enter the outbreak epicenter city.  Read

US Mideast Allies to Biden: No Return to 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal; No Right to Enrich

The campaign to influence the incoming Biden administration’s policy towards Iran picked up pace over the weekend, with three U.S. allies in the Gulf urging Washington not to return to the 2015 nuclear deal repudiated by President Trump, while France argued that U.S. re-entry was urgent, given the regime’s stepped-up nuclear activities.  Read