White House News

During a recently-released interview, President Obama told Vox that the culprits of an attack in Paris were “a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” Last month, a gunman identified as Amedy Coulibaly took hostages in the Jewish deli Hyper Cacher in…

President Obama is abandoning his controversial plan to tax the interest on 529 savings accounts, the White House announced Tuesday. The 529 plans are savings accounts in which parents and families can invest after-tax dollars. If the money is used for specified college costs, they don’t have to pay federal tax on the interest accumulated in…

In the wake of a State of the Union address heavy on confidence and promise, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough today charted a “urgent” and aggressive future for Democratic power. After declaring that the White House “feels quite good” about the State of the Union, McDonough went on to hint that presumed presidential…

The White House said today that Cuba has released all 53 prisoners it promised to free as part of a deal to normalize relations with the United States. “We welcome this very positive development and are pleased that the Cuban government followed through on this commitment,” a senior Obama administration official said in a statement…

UPDATE: The Obama administration admitted this afternoon that it erred in not sending a more prominent official to the anti-terrorism march yesterday in Paris. During a press briefing, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said: I think it’s fair to say that we should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there. ……

On Fox News Sunday, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey was asked if he agrees with the president’s recent statement that threat of terrorism from Afghanistan is gone. “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as the senior military leader of the nation, tends to be rather cautious and careful,” said Dempsey. “And he…

Jeb Bush’s moves to attract supporters and donors this week put the 2016 race for the White House into sharper focus earlier in the new year than other presidential hopefuls probably anticipated. One apparent result: Mitt Romney, the Republican standard-bearer in 2012, told a group of donors Friday that he is “seriously considering” a third…

Some sick children in Texas just got the surprise of their young lives: Santa Claus dropped by the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas to hand out toys. But this surprise visitor wasn’t just one of Santa’s legion of merry helpers. This was former President George W. Bush, looking like a jolly old elf indeed in…

The nation’s “Ebola czar,” Ron Klain, plans to move back to the private sector less than five months after being tasked to oversee the government response to the possible spread of the deadly virus. Klain is president of Case Holdings, an investment firm, and general counsel for Revolution, its venture capital group. “Ron agreed to…

“Let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy. He’s granted a presidential pardon as of right now.” These are the words that officially saved two turkeys in 1989 when President George H.W. Bush began the "presidential turkey pardon" tradition. Although turkeys…

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House quietly released word that it has 3,400 regulations in the pipeline for next year. For those who’d like to check out the Obama administration’s proposed new government red tape, released Friday, it’s called the Unified Agenda. “The administration has been really aggressive on the regulatory front,” Sam Batkins,…

Congress and the Obama White House looked for billions of dollars a few years ago to offset the costs of a legal settlement with black farmers and American Indians,  to increase education aid to the states and to develop a vaccine for swine flu. To get those billions, they looked to the same coffer: Project…