Monday, Dec. 19

• The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol held its last public session. It voted unanimously to recommend charges to the Justice Department against former President Donald Trump in relation to how his efforts to overturn the 2020 United States election culminated in the insurrection.
• Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso visited the White House for talks with President Joe Biden to expand and strengthen ties to the South American nation, which has historically allied with the U.S.
• The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission each announced a resolution to parallel investigations into manufacturer Honeywell International. The investigations looked into bribes that Honeywell allegedly paid between 2010 and 2014 to a high-ranking official at Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras to secure business. Honeywell said it agreed to pay the U.S. about $200 million to settle the corruption charges.

Tuesday, Dec. 20

• Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ordered a temporary hold on lifting Title 42, a pandemic-era public health rule denying refugees the right to seek asylum under U.S. and international law since March 2020, which was set to expire Wednesday. Nineteen conservative states asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay because they claimed a surge of refugees would take a toll on state-level government services like health care and law enforcement.
• The State Department announced that the Taliban released two Americans that had been held in detention in Afghanistan. “This, we understand, to have been a goodwill gesture on the part of the Taliban,” state department spokesman Ned Price said. “This was not part of any swap of prisoners or detainees. There was no money that exchanged hands.”
• The House Ways and Means Committee voted to publicly release years of Trump’s tax returns, the end of a years-long wrangling with the former president and his legal team. The released report showed that Trump paid no income tax in 2020 and that his income and his tax liability fluctuated dramatically during his four years in the White House.

Wednesday Dec. 21

• Lee Fang, a journalist with The Intercept, reported that Twitter worked with the Pentagon to spread propaganda about the U.S. military’s activities in the Middle East. Twitter allegedly created a “whitelist” exempting accounts run by U.S. Central Command from spam and abuse flags.
• The U.S. confirmed that it will send $1.85 billion more in military aid to Ukraine, dovetailing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington, D.C. This was Zelenskyy’s first known trip outside of Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February.
• The panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol released the transcripts of 35 interviews with witnesses ahead of its final report. The transcripts showed that key Trump allies invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer any substantive questions when they appeared before the committee.
• Congress held a joint session of the House and Senate to hear an address from Zelenskyy, who told them that continued bipartisan support for Ukraine “is an investment in global security and democracy.”
• The Treasury Department announced another round of sanctions against Iranian officials, specifically Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri and other organizations and government officials involved in or complicit with the Iranian government’s alleged human rights abuses, including brutal crackdowns on protesters.
• The House unanimously passed a bill to posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to Emmett Till, a Black Chicago teenager murdered in a notorious hate crime in the 1950s, and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley.

Thursday, Dec. 22

• The panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol released its final report, an 845-page document that says Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
• Biden urged caution over the holiday weekend given the freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall that would go on to hit large portions of the country. “It’s dangerous and threatening,” Biden said. “It’s really very serious weather.”
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned the Taliban that the U.S. will impose “costs” on the group if it fails to reverse its ban on women pursuing higher education in Afghanistan.
• Spurred on by the release of Trump’s tax returns, the House voted to require the Internal Revenue Service to audit a presidents’ tax filings, something the agency is already supposed to do according to internal policies but failed to do with Trump’s returns. The legislation is unlikely to pass in the Senate.
• When faced with a lawsuit from the federal government, Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey agreed to remove shipping containers that he had erected as a makeshift border wall with Mexico. The containers were placed on federal lands including national forests.

Friday, Dec. 23

• The House passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that includes nearly a trillion dollars for military spending — even more than the military requested — and about $700 billion for domestic programs. The Senate passed the bill on Thursday. “This is one of the most significant appropriations packages we have done in a very long time,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “The range of people it helps is large and deep.”
• A federal judge rejected a plea for diplomatic immunity from businessman Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela’s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro. Judge Robert Scola ruled that since “Maduro’s regime has been deemed ‘illegitimate,’ … Any claim to diplomatic immunity asserted by a representative of the Maduro regime must also be considered illegitimate.”

Saturday, Dec. 24

• Christmas Eve. No news to report.

Sunday, Dec. 25

• Christmas Day. No news to report.