Monday, Jan. 27

· The Senate impeachment trial continued as President Donald Trump’s legal defense team presented its second round of arguments against removing the president from office. Among the highlights were justification for investigating the Biden family; avoidance of new details on the withheld aid to Ukraine dropped by former national security advisor John Bolton late on Sunday; and an oral argument from former independent counsel Ken Starr that referred to impeachment as “hell.”

· Trump denied Bolton’s firsthand account that he tried to tie military aid in Ukraine to an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden. Trump took to Twitter to say he “NEVER” told Bolton of such ties and added, “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”

· In a 5-4 vote, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the go-ahead to deny green cards to immigrants deemed likely to use any amount of public assistance like food stamps or Medicaid.

Tuesday, Jan. 28

· Trump’s defense team ended its opening arguments. The team called for a speedy end to the trial and worked to block testimony from new witnesses, especially Bolton. Trump’s personal lawyer Jay Sekulow called Bolton’s accusations about aid to Ukraine in his unpublished manuscript an “unsourced allegation” that was “inadmissible” in court.

· The FBI arrested Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department, on a charge that he misled federal authorities about his part in a program to draw foreign-educated scientists to China. The New York Times said this signaled a “new, aggressive phase in the Justice Department’s campaign to root out scientists who are stealing research from American laboratories.”

· The Pentagon again updated its tally of American service members who suffered brain injuries after the Iranian airstrikes on a base in Iraq, bringing it up to a total of 50, 16 more than the count last week.

Wednesday, Jan. 29

· House Democrats released the “Moving Forward Framework,” a five-year, $760 billion project for rebuilding the nation’s highways, bike paths, railroads, harbors, airports, waterworks and other important infrastructure. The New York Times said the framework had “little chance of enactment after bipartisan talks with the White House on the issue failed to gain traction.”

· The Senate opened a two-day, 16-hour period for questioning from senators in the impeachment hearing.

Thursday, Jan. 30

· The House voted to repeal a 2002 war authorization that allows Trump to use federal funds to take military action against Iran without congressional approval. The vote was largely along party lines in the House and is likely to fail in the Republican-controlled Senate.

· The Trump administration added new economic sanctions on Iran, placing the blame on that nation’s Atomic Energy Organization for violating the uranium enrichment limits established by the nuclear de-escalation agreement struck between the United States and Iran in 2015. Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, followed by Iran last year.

· More footage was released of Trump at Mar-a-Lago in April 2018 associating with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two men who allegedly assisted Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in a pressure campaign in Ukraine who Trump previously claimed he does not know. Last week revealed a different meeting between the men in the same month.

Friday, Jan. 31

· After eight days of presentations and questioning, the Senate rejected a measure to call on new witnesses and evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial. The vote was 51 to 49, largely along party lines. Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Susan Collins broke from their party to support the measure.

· A report from the U.S. government's leading oversight authority on Afghanistan reconstruction revealed that the Taliban and other groups carried out a record 8,204 attacks in Afghanistan in the final quarter of 2019, 37% of which caused casualties, showing that violence has not declined in response to heightened 2019 American military intervention in the country, like U.S. aircraft dropping a record 7,423 bombs and missiles and American Special Operations missions increasing by 124% from 2018.

· Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Ukraine to support the country’s defense against Russian aggression and occupation. Pompeo referred to Ukraine as a “bulwark between freedom and authoritarianism in Eastern Europe.”

· The Trump administration added six countries to the president’s travel ban list: Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria; Myanmar, where Rohingya Muslims are threatened by genocide; Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania. All will receive travel restrictions of varying severity. The move brings the total on the list to 13 countries.

Saturday, Feb. 1

· The White House declared a public health emergency following the coronavirus outbreak — which is increasingly looking like a pandemic — in China, barring most non-citizens who recently visited China from entering the U.S.

Sunday, Feb. 2

· The New York Times reported on a growing number of Senate Republicans who are breaking with the official defense that Trump did nothing wrong, instead saying that the president acted poorly but not at an impeachable level. Sen. Rob Portman, for example, said some of Trump’s actions were “wrong and inappropriate” but did not “rise to the level of removing a duly-elected president from office and taking him off the ballot in the middle of an election.”