Tag Archives: State Department

NBC News reports: President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff and current special envoy to Northern Ireland said Thursday that he’s resigning from his diplomatic post. “I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning from that. I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” Mick Mulvaney told CNBC in an exclusive interview. “Those …

Reuters reports: Tony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, attended meetings and briefings at the State Department on Thursday, according to Biden transition spokesman Ned Price. The briefings, standard practice for nominees for the job of nation’s top diplomat, happened despite the lack of an acknowledgment by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump that Biden won the …

The Hill reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is entering quarantine after he came into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, the State Department announced Wednesday. A State Department spokesperson said that Pompeo has since tested negative for the coronavirus but will quarantine “in accordance with [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines.” “He is being closely monitored …

The Washington Post reports: Only a tiny fraction of the more than 900 guests invited to an indoor holiday party hosted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife Susan showed up on Tuesday following an outcry from public health officials and U.S. lawmakers warning that the reception bore all the hallmarks of a superspreader event, said two U.S. …

The New York Times reports: The scope of a hack engineered by one of Russia’s premier intelligence agencies became clearer on Monday, when some Trump administration officials acknowledged that other federal agencies — the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon — had been compromised. Investigators were struggling to determine the extent to which the …

Axios reports: President-elect Joe Biden is considering a high-profile ambassadorship for Pete Buttigieg, possibly sending him to China, people familiar with the matter tell Axios. Why it matters: The 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, whom Biden has compared to his late son, Beau, played a key role in Biden’s nomination. Letting him deepen his foreign policy chops could …

NBC News reports: The mysterious neurological symptoms experienced by American diplomats in China and Cuba are consistent with the effects of directed microwave energy, according to a long-awaited report by the National Academies of Sciences that cites medical evidence to support the long-held conviction of American intelligence officials. The report, obtained Friday by NBC News, does not conclude that the …

The Independent reports: President-elect Joe Biden is reportedly expected to name Cindy McCain as his ambassador to the UK. The widow of the late Republican Senator John McCain has been a fierce critic of Donald Trump and crossed party lines to endorse Mr Biden. Ms McCain, 66, is a known Anglophile and thought to be a frontrunner for the job …

CBS News reports: President-elect Biden is expected to announce that he’s chosen longtime diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, two sources confirm to CBS News. The announcement could come Tuesday. Thomas-Greenfield is part of Mr. Biden’s transition team and is expected to focus on helping to restore trust and professionalism to the State Department, with …

The New York Times reports: Antony J. Blinken, a defender of global alliances and one of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s closest foreign policy advisers, is expected to be nominated for secretary of state, a job in which he will attempt to coalesce skeptical international partners into a new competition with China, according to people close to the process. Mr. …

CNN reports: A stack of messages from foreign leaders to President-elect Joe Biden are sitting at the State Department but the Trump administration is preventing him from accessing them, according to State Department officials familiar with the messages. Traditionally, the State Department supports all communications for the President-elect, which is why many countries began sending messages to State over the …

Reuters reports: The U.S. State Department backed down this week from legal battles over the citizenship of gay couples’ children who were born to surrogates overseas. The government withdrew its appeals without making any public comment in the cases of a family whose daughter had been born to a surrogate in Canada and a family whose daughter was born to …

The New York Daily News reports: The son of a gay binational couple who was born in Canada via surrogacy is a citizen of the United States, an appellate court ruled Friday. “Today, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously upheld a lower court ruling recognizing the citizenship from birth of Ethan Dvash-Banks, a …

Reuters reports: The Vatican said on Wednesday it had denied a request from Mike Pompeo for an audience with Pope Francis, and accused the Secretary of State of trying to drag the Catholic Church into the U.S. presidential election by denouncing its relations with China. The extraordinary remarks from the two top diplomatic officials at the Vatican came after Pompeo …

Politico Europe reports: The U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands has been accused of interfering in national politics after hosting an event for the far-right Forum for Democracy party. The event, held at the American Embassy in Wassenaar on September 10, featured between 30 and 40 “party officials and wealthy entrepreneurs,” according to Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra …

The Christian Post reports: Speaking at the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressed America’s responsibility to model Christian behavior and to be a light unto the world amid pressure from critics who say faith must be kept out of the public square. Jack Graham, the pastor of the Plano megachurch, introduced Secretary Pompeo, …

Politico reports: The Iranian government is weighing an assassination attempt against the American ambassador to South Africa, U.S. intelligence reports say, News of the plot comes as Iran continues to seek ways to retaliate for President Donald Trump’s decision to kill a powerful Iranian general earlier this year, the officials said. If carried out, it could dramatically ratchet up already …

The Washington Post reports: The family of Harry Dunn, the 19-year-old motorcyclist killed by a car driven on the wrong side of an English roadway by the wife of a U.S. official, filed a U.S. federal lawsuit against the driver, Anne Sacoolas, on Wednesday. The lawsuit, which claims wrongful death and seeks financial damages, represents a significant escalation in the …

Via press release from the State Department: The United States strongly objects to Turkish President Erdogan hosting two Hamas leaders in Istanbul on August 22. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S and EU and both officials hosted by President Erdogan are Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The U.S. Rewards for Justice Program is seeking information about one …

Reuters reports: U.S. Ambassador to Britain Woody Johnson has made insensitive and inappropriate comments during his tenure, including about race, religion and sex, the State Department’s inspector general has found, judging that morale in some parts of the mission has dropped. “Offensive or derogatory comments, based on an individual’s race, color, sex, or religion, can create an offensive working environment …