Prince William and Catherine in October.Credit Pool photo by Leon Neal
British royalty will meet with American political royalty next week when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge descend on the East Coast to make the rounds and infuse New York with a dose of English glamour.
Prince William and Catherine will arrive in New York on Sunday for a three-day visit that includes a reception Monday evening at the British consul general’s Manhattan residence with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.
Earlier that day, Prince William will travel to Washington to meet with President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Monday evening event with the Clintons will celebrate Prince William’s work on wildlife conservation, including efforts at combating elephant poaching, causes the Clintons have championed.
Prince William is also scheduled to discuss illegal wildlife trafficking at the World Bank. Meanwhile, Catherine, who is pregnant with their second child, will meet another first lady when she tours an early childhood development center with Chirlane McCray, the wife of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The royal couple’s schedule will also include time with American sports royalty. They will attend an N.B.A. game between the Brooklyn Nets and the Cleveland Cavaliers to see LeBron James in action.
An earlier version of this blog post stated incorrectly the title of Catherine, the wife of Prince William. She is the Duchess of Cambridge, not Princess Catherine. The error was repeated in the headline and caption.
Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, will make a side trip to Washington on Monday, during which he is also scheduled to speak at the World Bank on the issue of wildlife trafficking.Credit Ian Gavan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, will meet with President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday, the White House announced on Friday.
Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, are planning to visit New York from Sunday to Tuesday, and the prince will make a side trip by himself to Washington, during which he is also scheduled to speak at the World Bank on the issue of wildlife trafficking.
“The president welcomes the prince’s work in this global fight against what is both a national security threat and a devastating environmental problem,” the White House said in a statement.
Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, first met the royal couple at Buckingham Palace during a 2011 visit. While in Washington, Prince William will also meet with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill.
The Ready for Hillary bus was parked outside the Barnes & Noble bookstore at Union Square in New York in June.Credit Andrew Renneisen/The New York Times
The pro-Hillary Rodham Clinton “super PAC” Ready for Hillary has won over tens of thousands of small contributors, built a finance committee that includes hundreds of big-name Democratic donors, and raised more than $11 million since it was founded early last year.
But as of Thanksgiving, Ready for Hillary was also in debt. According to disclosures filed late Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, the group had $875,626 in the bank on Nov. 24, but also owed a $1 million loan from Amalgamated, the union-tied bank that is the lender of choice for Democratic candidates, parties and super PACs.
The loan, which was incurred in early October, will be used to help expand the organization’s grass-roots organizing for Mrs. Clinton. The group is likely to show robust small-donor fund-raising in the coming months.
“This investment, used to fund our massive post-midterms direct mail program, will pay dividends from now until Hillary announces her decision” on whether to run for president again, said Seth Bringman, a spokesman for the group.
According to the filings, Ready for Hillary also raised about $900,000 between late September and late November and spent about $1.8 million, including more than 40 contributions of cash or staff time to other Democratic candidates or state or local party committees.
Many of those contributions went to parties or local candidates in states that would be pivotal in any 2016 primary contest: Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Mr. Bringman said the group had also encouraged its donors to give directly to 21 Democratic candidates backed by Mrs. Clinton in the midterm elections and to the party’s gubernatorial and congressional campaign committees.
President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Ashton B. Carter, the nominee for defense secretary, during a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Ash is a big Motown fan. And one of his favorites is a classic by the Four Tops, “Reach Out I’ll Be There.” So, Ash, I am reaching out to you. You have been there for us, our troops, our families, our nation.
— President Obama describing his nominee for defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter.
The United States is barreling toward the strongest year in job growth since 1999, helped by an additional 321,000 jobs in November — a number that easily beat economists’ expectations.
But with the midterms in the rear view mirror and 2016 a political eternity away, the near-term impact of the jobs recovery might be seen in policy, not politics. Strong economic growth holds the promise of continuing the steep, downward slope of the budget deficit and could ease the animus between Republicans and the White House.
That could pave the way to fiscal agreements in the coming year that become far easier as political and financial pressures are eased. In 1997, President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress struck a “balanced budget” agreement that cut capital gains taxes for Republicans and created the Children’s Health Insurance Program for Democrats — not exactly austerity measures.
That pattern could repeat itself in the coming year. The Republican-controlled Congress will again want to balance the budget and cut taxes. Authorization for the federal children’s health program also happens to expire next year, but President Obama has other programs on his wish list, including a surge in infrastructure spending.
All that has become far more doable with Friday’s jobs report. Unemployment has fallen to 5.8 percent from 7.2 percent a year ago. Economic policymakers are likely to focus less on total job numbers and more on raising wages and increasing labor participation. The Democrats’ call for a higher minimum wage and government-created construction work may seem a lot more palatable.
Stephen Colbert with the comedian Amy Schumer at a dinner after the ceremony for the Glamour Women of the Year Awards.Credit Deidre Schoo for The New York Times
Stephen Colbert is winding down “The Colbert Report” as he prepares to take over for David Letterman, and with eight episodes to go, Mr. Colbert has landed one of his biggest interviews yet: President Obama.
Mr. Colbert, whose character is often at odds with Mr. Obama, will interview the president on Monday as part of a live show at George Washington University, titled “Stephen Colbert Presents: Mr. Colbert Goes to Washington D.C. Ya Later, Legislator: Partisan Is Such Sweet Sorrow: A Colbert Victory Lap, ’014.”
It is Mr. Obama’s first time on the show, although he did make a cameo appearance in a “Colbert Show” broadcast from Iraq where the president ordered Gen. Ray Odierno to shave Mr. Colbert’s head.
The university announced the interview and said that tickets would be available only to current G.W. students.
“Washington has been the Report’s second home, and I will be returning on Monday to show it the same affection the British did in 1812,” Mr. Colbert said in the release.
President Obama with Santa Claus and performers at the national Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Ellipse in Washington on Thursday.Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times
Good Friday morning from Washington, where there’s optimism that a package of spending bills will pass, White House reporters received an unexpectedly large bill after a presidential trip, and residents honored former Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. at a variety of memorial services. And in an announcement later in the day, President Obama will officially introduce his selection of Ashton B. Carter as the next secretary of defense.
With funding for the federal government set to expire in less than a week, optimism is growing on Capitol Hill that lawmakers will be able to pass a package of spending bills by the Dec. 11 deadline.
That’s welcome news for the staff and members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, who have spent months laboring to assemble detailed bills and whose work would be wasted should Congress give up and simply extend agency spending at current levels.
“They’re doing good work,” Speaker John A. Boehner said, “but they are not finished.”
It isn’t just the bill-writers who would lose out if their work went for nothing. In encouraging their colleagues to back the spending plan, the appropriators point to significant programs that would be hurt if the measures weren’t passed. Here are a few examples: $530 million less for the National Institutes of Health; $6 billion less for military troop readiness; 1,000 fewer air traffic controllers and 100 fewer airline safety inspectors; $350 million less for embassy security; $28 million less for food safety.
The congressional stalemate over spending has taken its toll on the Appropriations Committees in recent sessions. Staff members have been trapped in their offices over Thanksgiving and Christmas in attempts to hammer out year-end spending deals.
“We have lost staff because it kept them from seeing their families over the holidays,” said Representative Mike Simpson, a veteran Republican appropriator from Idaho.
The Senate election in Louisiana is attracting all the attention in the run-up to the Saturday vote. But the two House runoffs may better reflect the state’s colorful political history, with a cast of characters that includes a former governor who served time in a federal prison.
The multicandidate races in both districts ended in runoffs mainly because Republican candidates split the vote, and both are expected to send a Republican to the House.
But that didn’t stop former Gov. Edwin Edwards — a Democrat who starred in the short-lived A&E reality show “The Governor’s Wife” and spent nearly a decade in prison for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, mail fraud and wire fraud — from running one last campaign.
His long-shot effort to replace Representative Bill Cassidy in the heavily Republican Sixth District, is expected to end on Saturday as his Republican opponent, Garret Graves, a longtime political aide, coasts to victory. (The seat is open because Mr. Cassidy is Senator Mary L. Landrieu’s runoff opponent.)
The race in the Fifth District isn’t a reality TV show, but it could be.
The drama began in April when a Louisiana newspaper posted a video showing the Republican incumbent, Vance McAllister, smooching a female staff member (both were married). That led Democrats to believe that the seat might be in play. Zach Dasher of the “Duck Dynasty” clan and Ralph Abraham, a doctor, entered the race as Republicans, and Mr. McAllister finished in a distant fourth.
Jamie Mayo, the Democrat, led on Nov. 4 with 30 percent of the vote, but the three Republicans won 70 percent combined. Mr. Abraham, who finished second, is expected to win.
When financially struggling news organizations heard this fall that it would cost a reported $60,000 per person to cover President Obama’s Asia-Pacific trip, they experienced sticker shock.
Turns out that would have been a bargain. The actual bills arriving in newsrooms this week have come to about $90,000 apiece.
And that only covered the cost of the charter plane, not hotels, meals or ground transportation. By any measure, it makes Mr. Obama’s journey to China, Myanmar and Australia in November far and away the most expensive presidential trip for the White House press corps in American history.
The jaw-dropping bills seem to stem from the fact that fewer journalists chose to travel on the press charter. The White House travel office presented reporters with multiple price estimates before the trip that depended on how many traveled, both above and below the $60,000 that was publicly reported. But on some legs of the trip, the plane did not have even the lowest projected number of travelers.
The rising cost of a charter plane, in other words, has become a self-defeating cycle: The more the price tag goes up, the fewer news organizations pay to travel. And the fewer journalists that travel and split the overall cost, the more each remaining one’s share goes up.
Former Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. has grabbed Washington’s attention one last time.
The city is in the midst of honoring Mr. Barry, who died last month at 78, with a three-day celebration that began on Thursday and that local officials have promised would be as colorful as the man himself.
It continues on Friday with a procession both solemn and joyful as Mr. Barry’s coffin is carried from downtown and across the Anacostia River through the neighborhoods that he represented on the City Council. It will end at the Temple of Praise, one of several churches that Mr. Barry attended.
The observances will wrap up on Saturday with a service at Washington’s convention center, where thousands are expected to pay their respects. Earlier, Mr. Barry lay in state at City Hall for 24 hours.
But if the official services seem a little strait-laced for Mr. Barry, there were more informal events like the one at the Ibiza nightclub, which honored his memory with a night of dancing to the homegrown funk music known as “go-go.” The name couldn’t sum up Mr. Barry any better.
President Obama will announce the selection of Ashton B. Carterto lead the Pentagon at 10:10 a.m.
The Labor Department releases its monthly employment report at 8:30 a.m.
The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to issue a verdict on whether Gov. Dave Heineman has the authority to approve the Keystone XL pipeline’s proposed route through the state.
President Obama hosts King Abdullah II of Jordan for a meeting at the White House.
We are quite the silly geese here at First Draft, and we definitely proved it on Thursday.
Believe us when we say that we will never again refer to Canada geese as Canadian geese, which is what we did on Thursday in a newsletter item about Gov. Chris Christie and the (alleged) Canada goose population in New Jersey.
The outpouring from our readers was, well, a little surprising — maybe a record — given that we’ve stepped on a lot of political toes in our short history.
“It’s ‘Canada geese,’ not ‘Canadian geese,’ ” a reader from Pebble Beach, Calif., wrote in, adding as an aside, “Although that might be a neat name for a Torontonian aerobatics squad.”
From another email: “They’re called Canada geese, not Canadian. And the ones in Jersey are probably American, not Canadian. Canadian Canada geese go to Florida.” Got it.
Who knew there were so many Canada goose fans? Or that they are so passionately protective of birds that, according to National Geographic, “have become permanent residents of parks, golf courses, suburban subdevelopments” and whose vast flocks have become airport hazards.
The fervor can’t be that, as National Geographic tells us again, “just 50 geese can produce two and a half tons of excrement in a year.”
Vanity Fair runs down how former Prime Minister Tony Blair went from one of Britain’s most popular politicians into one of its most despised public figures.
