The majority of the American public feels that residents of Puerto Rico are not receiving the help they need in the wake of Hurricane Maria, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll released today.
The Trump administration announced Thursday it will be withdrawing the U.S. from Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, per the NYT. The withdrawal will officially begin at the end of 2018, but the Trump administration said it wanted to remain as a nonmember observer, to continue engagement with Unesco and provide American expertise.
Catch up quick: The U.S. has distanced itself from the group in recent years since it has perceived its behaviors as "anti-Israel" — when the organization admitted Palestinians as full members, the Obama administration cut off funding to Unesco in 2011, thereby losing its vote in 2013 since it stopped its funding flows.
Pakistani soldiers freed an American woman and her family of five Thursday who had been held hostage by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network for five years, per the New York Times. The family was in Pakistan early Thursday, and the White House released a statement thanking the Pakistani government for its cooperation once they were safely back in American custody.
The hostages: Caitlan Coleman, originally from Pennsylvania, and her Canadian husband, Josh Boyle, were kidnapped while backpacking in the Wardak Province of Afghanistan, a militant stronghold near Kabul. Coleman was pregnant at the time of their abduction, and she had two more children while in captivity.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Axios at a live event today that Facebook owes the American people an apology ("Not just an apology, but determination") for their role in enabling Russian interference during the election.
At Axios' live event in D.C., Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told Axios that Facebook would run the Marsha Blackburn ad announcing her Senate campaign, which claimed Planned Parenthood sold "baby body parts" and was taken down by Twitter — even though Sandberg said she personally disagreed with the views expressed in the ad. "When you cut off speech for one person, you cut off speech for other people," she said.
Energy secretary Rick Perry will testify late this morning before an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, where he's sure to face questions about his push for changes in wholesale power market regulation that would boost revenues for coal and nuclear plants.
Why it matters: With the rationale for the proposal — that helping keep nuclear and coal plants afloat is needed for grid resilience and reliability — coming under intense criticism, Perry is under pressure to mount a strong defense.
During a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wednesday, President Trump denied an NBC News report Wednesday claiming he asked to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal tenfold, and called the story "frankly disgusting":
"It's totally unnecessary [to increase our nukes] because I know what we have right now... We don't need an increase... and it's frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write."
Chris Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted Monday he and "many" others have been hearing more "serious war talk in and near the White House" related to North Korea.
His takeaway: It's time for Congress to "take Trump seriously as he keeps hinting, over and over, that he wants to go to war with North Korea" and get a new AUMF passed.
President Trump asked Wednesday morning when it would be "appropriate to challenge [NBC's] License." But NBC's main network doesn't have a government license, and Trump doesn't have the power to directly take away the licenses that do exist — for the local stations that run its content.
Why it matters: Trump has regularly attacked the press, and his threat here is serious: to try and take a broadcast network off the air because he doesn't like its recent stories. It's a tactic that echoes Richard Nixon, who targeted licenses held by the Washington Post. But it's legally more complicated than the president's tweet makes it seem.
