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The Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine's leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power, according to people familiar with the discussions.The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kiev maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.

Sen. Joe Manchin indicated he was open to returning to the negotiating table to revise the Build Back Better measure months after the Democrat torpedoed his party’s sweeping $2 trillion spending bill in the deadlocked Senate. Manchin, 74, of West Virginia, told climate activists and energy executives Monday at a private dinner he would support a bill narrowed down to address only climate change, prescription drug prices, deficit reduction and an updated tax code, according to Axios.

Actress Lena Dunham, who has been aggressively campaigning for Hillary Clinton, privately doubted the Democratic presidential candidate for discrediting women who made sexual assault allegations against her husband, former President Bill Clinton, according to a report Wednesday. Dunham, a fierce advocate for Planned Parenthood and other liberal causes, reportedly made the comments at a dinner party on New York’s Upper East Side months ago. The New York Times reported: She told the guests, at the Park Avenue apartment of Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, that she was disturbed by how, in the 1990s, the Clintons and their allies...

President Barack Obama privately derided the controversy over the blockbuster June 6 revelation of the National Security Agency’s far-reaching capabilities as “noise rather than something that’s real and meaningful,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Duncan revealed Obama’s dismissive attitude to the dramatic claims by a former defense contractor, Edward Snowden, in a Washington Post report on a White House program to increase Internet use in schools. Obama made the remark to Duncan on June 6, as they were flying on Air Force One to visit a school in Mooresville, N.C., according to the last few paragraphs of the Post’s Aug....

Sometimes you never know who's listening - even if you're the President of the United States. In what he presumably thought was a private conversation Thursday's night, President Obama candidly told campaign donors that the GOP tried to "sneak" its plan to kill his signature health care law in a recent budget proposal. "I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it,'" Obama said. "'We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?'"

WASHINGTON -- Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead. President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers. But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to...

GLENN DALE, Md. - On a sunny Tuesday, House members who belong to the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus left suits and ties behind, grabbed shotguns and headed for the firing range. In a Washington equivalent of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," more than a dozen lawmakers took advantage of a light schedule at the Capitol to play hooky. The lawmakers got expert shooting advice from Olympic double trap champion Kim Rhode while they mingled with representatives of the outdoor-sports industry who footed the bill for the "Great Congressional Shoot-Out" and barbecue. There was no public accounting for the special interest money. No...

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