Monday, Dec. 6

• The Treasury Department sanctioned Alain Mukonda, a national of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as 12 entities linked to him, for allegedly providing support to Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler, who was blacklisted by the U.S. government in 2017 for allegedly fueling corruption in the Congo, where he has made millions off of oil and mining deals.
• The White House announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing by not sending an official governmental delegation to the games, in response to China’s alleged human rights abuses, for example its treatment of Muslim Uighurs in its western Xinjiang region. The Chinese government said such a boycott would be met with “resolute countermeasures.”
• The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Texas over the state’s redrawn congressional and state legislative districts, arguing that the new plan violates a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibiting discrimination against minority voters. The new plans “deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language minority group,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
• The U.S. released a joint statement with Australia, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to express concern following “recent reports of the Ethiopian government’s detention of large numbers of Ethiopian citizens on the basis of their ethnicity and without charge.” Ethiopia later responded by saying the joint statement is “perpetuating a destructive narrative” and that detentions have been “based on credible evidence and testimony.”

Tuesday, Dec. 7

• The Justice Department announced it is ending a reopened investigation into the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy in Mississippi whom a white woman claimed had whistled and made sexual advances toward her, instigating mob violence. The department reopened the investigation in 2018, a year after a 2017 book quoted the woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, as saying she made the story up. The case was closed without prosecution.
• President Joe Biden met virtually with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and warned Putin against any “military escalation” with Ukraine lest the U.S. respond with “strong economic and other measures” against Russia. The White House said the meeting lasted just over two hours.
• Former President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, abruptly ended his cooperation with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger said in a letter that a deposition would be “untenable” for his client.
• Saule Omarova, Biden’s pick to lead serve as Comptroller of the Currency, a key banking regulator, withdrew her name from consideration. Omarova is an outspoken critic of Wall Street and cryptocurrency, but, according to Al Jazeera, “the choice appeared to be too controversial to win backing from moderate Democrats that the candidate would need in the evenly divided Senate.”
• The Treasury Department blacklisted several Iranian officials and two Iranian government agencies — the Special Units of Law Enforcement Forces and Counter-Terror Special Forces — accusing them of “serious human rights abuse and repressive acts targeting innocent civilians, political opponents, and peaceful protesters.”

Wednesday, Dec. 8

• The Senate reached an agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling by creating a one-time law allowing Democrats to raise the nation’s borrowing limit with just a simple majority vote. Lifting the debt limit usually requires 60 votes in the Senate. Experts said the U.S. would no longer be able to meet its debt repayment obligations at some point between Dec. 21 and Jan. 28.
• The Senate blocked a bipartisan resolution prohibiting a $650 million sale of missiles and missile launchers to Saudi Arabia from going through on a 30-67 vote.
• Muslim congressional staff members wrote an open letter denouncing Rep. Lauren Boebert’s recent Islamophobic comments against Rep. Ilhan Omar, in which Boebert compared Omar to a suicide bombing terrorist, calling on Congress to “categorically reject this incendiary rhetoric that endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of Muslim staff across both sides of the aisle.”
• The committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol recommended that Mark Meadows, former chief of staff for Trump, be held in contempt of Congress for failing to work with the committee. Hours later, Meadows sued the panel, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Thursday, Dec. 9

• The White House hosted a two-day virtual summit of over 100 world leaders, at which Biden pleaded with leaders to “lock arms” in defense of democracy and called safeguarding freedoms in the face of rising authoritarianism the “defining challenge” of the current era. “We stand at an inflection point in our history. The choices we make in my view in this moment, are going to fundamentally determine the direction our world is going to take in the coming decades,” Biden said.
• The Centers for Disease Control announced it is expanding access to COVID-19 booster shots, encouraging everyone 16 and older to receive an additional Pfizer shot. “Although we don’t have all the answers on the omicron variant, initial data suggests that COVID-19 boosters help broaden and strengthen the protection against omicron and other variants,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
• Biden spoke on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for about an hour and a half to discuss ways to defuse tensions over the Russian military buildup on its border with Ukraine. Biden told Zelenskyy to details of his Tuesday conversation with Putin and “touched upon the course of internal reforms in Ukraine,” according to Zelenskyy.
• An appeals court rejected Trump’s attempt to prevent the release of White House records linked to the Jan. 6 insurrection to the panel investigating the incident, with the judges on the court ruling that Trump had provided “no basis” for his request. The ruling found that there is a “unique legislative need for these documents and that they are directly relevant to the Committee’s inquiry into an attack on the legislative branch and its constitutional role in the peaceful transfer of power.” The appeals court gave Trump 14 days to appeal its ruling to the Supreme Court.

Friday, Dec. 10

• The U.S. announced new restrictions on Cambodia, with the State Department imposing an arms embargo while the Commerce Department imposed new trade restrictions on military supplies, citing the “growing influence” of the Chinese military on Cambodia, as well as corruption and human rights abuses.
• The Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing the new Texas law banning most abortions to remain in effect, but also allowed abortion providers in Texas to challenge the constitutionality of the law. “We won, on very narrow grounds. Our lawsuit can continue against the health department, medical board, nursing board and pharmacy board,” Whole Woman’s Health, the abortion provider that challenged the law, posted to Twitter.
• The Treasury Department imposed human rights-related sanctions on dozens of individuals, groups and organizations tied to China, Myanmar, North Korea and Bangladesh, and added the Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime to an investment blacklist of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies.”
• The Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into short selling by hedge funds and research firms, according to anonymous sources familiar with the matter who leaked the information to various news outlets.
• Bloomberg reported that Biden ordered federal agencies to immediately stop financing carbon-intensive fossil fuel projects overseas and instead prioritize international collaborations to develop clean energy technology.
• The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued six new subpoenas, all for political associates of Trump who met with him in the days leading up to the incident.

Saturday, Dec. 11

• Biden pledged to provide federal aid to the states devastated by an unprecedented tornado disaster earlier in the week: Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. “The federal government will do everything, everything it can possibly do to help,” Biden said, adding that Federal Emergency Management Agency resources have already been deployed.

Sunday, Dec. 12

• The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection released a 51-page report laying out its case for a contempt of Congress charge against Mark Meadows, presenting evidence of Meadows’s involvement in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.