2020 Day 1349: More than 1 million people have died from the coronavirus worldwide in less than nine months; top White House officials pressured the CDC this summer to play down the risk of the coronavirus to children as the Trump administration pushed to reopen schools this fall; the Trump administration's distribution of new coronavirus rapid tests have been plagued by confusion and a lack of planning; House Democrats released a new $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief proposal; and Biden and Harris released their 2019 tax returns ahead of tonight's presidential debate. Sep 29, 2020
2021 Day 253: The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on a short-term spending bill to avert a shutdown; the House passed a standalone bill to lift the debt ceiling, which Senate Republicans are expected to reject; Biden canceled a trip to Chicago to promote Covid-19 vaccinations in order to try and broker a compromise with two moderate Democratic senators threatening to sink his economic agenda; and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection issued 11 subpoenas to organizers of the pro-Trump rally outside the White House that turned into the riot. Sep 29, 2021
2022 Day 618: The Education Department scaled back eligibility for its student loan forgiveness plan after six Republican-led states sued to stop Biden from canceling up to $20,000 in student debt for millions of borrowers; the Senate approved a temporary spending package to avert a partial government shutdown; mortgage rates surged to the highest level since 2007; Biden warned that Hurricane Ian may have been responsible for "substantial loss of life"; and Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, testified before the Jan. 6 committee for about four and a half hours. Sep 29, 2022
2025 Day 1714: Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed on a U.S. peace plan for Gaza that Hamas has not accepted; Oregon sued the Trump administration to block the deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland after Trump announced he was authorizing the military to use “Full Force, if necessary”; Trump celebrated the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, saying “It’s about justice, really. It’s not revenge”; Trump falsely claimed the FBI planted 274 undercover agents in the Jan. 6 crowd to incite violence; the Justice Department issued a subpoena for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s travel records around the 2024 election; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s closed-door gathering of nearly all one-star generals and above at Quantico on Tuesday is meant to “get our fighters excited” about his vision of a “warrior ethos"; and Trump and congressional leaders left the White House on Monday without a funding deal, making a government shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday highly likely. Sep 29, 2025
2026 Day 2079: The Supreme Court temporarily allowed the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to “third countries” where they have no connections; former special counsel Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he stood by his decision to charge Trump and “will not be silenced” by threats of prosecution; Sen. Eric Schmitt accused Jack Smith of perjury after the senator confused the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team; a lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election resigned from the Justice Department's "grand conspiracy" investigation; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military to use "advanced intelligence and cyber capabilities to identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference" in the November midterm elections; the Trump administration has spent at least $1.7 million on taxpayer-funded advertisements promoting Trump and his policies ahead of the midterms; consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014; and Trump and the leaders of the largest AI companies signed a "morally binding" set of voluntary safety standards to "self-police" their AI models after Anthropic warned investors that AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity” and OpenAI delayed the release of its next-generation AI model after internal tests showed it was more deceptive. Sep 29, 2026