Latest Stories By Jon Greenberg

New information from the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia provides fresh details that call into question early reports about how U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died. Sicknick died the day after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Initial reports, citing law enforcement sources, said that the 42-year-old had been struck […]

Editor’s note: Have you ever wondered if the movie you just saw — that claimed to be based on a real story or historical events — was really accurate? So have we. With this year’s Oscars featuring historically based movies up for Best Picture honors, we wanted to help you sort out the facts from […]

There are a few big chunks of money in the American Rescue Plan Act that have generated a lot of news coverage and are pretty well known. In response to a reader’s request, we present the whopping $1.86 trillion spending plan in pie chart form.  There are the $1,400 checks (or more likely deposits) to […]

Senate rules and Senate politics are working their will on the pandemic relief and stimulus plan.  The total price tag is about $70 billion less than in the House version. The individual stimulus checks will still be $1,400, but won’t be sent to families with joint incomes over $160,000, a 20% haircut from the upper […]

More than a month after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, some Republicans still have trouble saying his November election was valid, giving air to the lie that the election was fraudulent.   In an interview on ABC News’ This Week, Rep. Steve Scalise, second in command of the House Republicans, refused to acknowledge that Biden won fair […]

President Joe Biden’s critics were quick to jump on his words about vaccine supply during his Feb. 16 CNN town hall event in Milwaukee. Perhaps too quick. Kayleigh McEnany, former President Donald Trump’s press secretary, tweeted that Biden said “there was no vaccine when he came into office.”  “That is abjectly false,” McEnany said. In […]

When a rare blast of Arctic air and ice hit Texas and resulted in a massive power outage, the critics of wind power were quick to focus on the wind turbines that came offline. Supporters of wind power argued back that frozen turbines played a minor role in the outage. Texas does have a bodacious […]

By a vote of 57 to 43, the Senate acquitted former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., cautioned that Trump might still face charges or lawsuits for his role in the attack on the Capitol. “We have a criminal justice system in this country,” McConnell said after […]

A decade ago, the Great Recession broadly undermined state and local government finances, which economists say dragged out the recovery for several years.  The coronavirus pandemic, by contrast, has had a more uneven impact, cratering state and local revenues in some places, while barely touching others.  Still, Democrats aren’t taking any chances. They say they […]

Before senators could consider a scrap of evidence in the case against former President Donald Trump, they first had to vote whether to try the case at all. House Democratic impeachment managers argued that even though Trump no longer holds office, the future of the nation hinges on allowing the Senate trial to move forward.  […]

Right now, vaccine rollout is a numbers game. The nation has a pretty good idea of how many doses have gone to each state and county. The government’s COVID-19 vaccination dashboard shows how many people have received their second shot — over 5.9 million as of the time we wrote this.  Getting shots in arms […]

It was an inauguration like none before, squeezed between massive security and a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 Americans. Instead of crowds, a sea of American and state flags filled the National Mall in Washington.  Armed National Guardsmen replaced cheering supporters along Pennsylvania Avenue, the traditional parade route from the Capitol to the White […]