Executive Privilege sounds like a high-end frequent flyer club.
| Executive privilege  "Executive Privilege" might sound like a high-end frequent flyer club. But it's actually a concept critical to the functioning of the presidency -- and may hold the key to finding out what really happened on January 6.
The phrase encapsulates the idea that a President has the right to keep confidential advice he receives. This is to stop Congress overstepping its constitutional duty of oversight and meddling in another branch of government. And in a foreign policy crisis, for instance, options and intelligence offered to a commander-in-chief may need to stay secret for years afterwards.
Washington is buzzing about executive privilege now because ex-President Donald Trump is trying to deploy it to block the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection from recreating the chaotic hours in his West Wing on that day. The committee has many questions: How detailed was planning for Trump's attempted coup? How involved was he in plotting the attack on the Capitol? Why didn't he try to stop it?
Former aides who obey Trump's orders face a heavy price for their loyalty. On Tuesday, the House passed a rare contempt of Congress citation against his ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows because he refused to testify. It previously took similar action against Trump's long-time guru Steve Bannon, who now faces a criminal trial.
But executive privilege does not rest with any individual. The clue's in the name — it's up to a sitting president to assert it. Oval Office residents often give broad latitude to their predecessors' wishes in this area, understanding that they might need a similar favor one day. But Biden has already said he'll waive executive privilege on a trove of Trump-era documents in the National Archives.
Trump has an uphill task in convincing the Supreme Court to prevent testimony from his ex-aides and document handovers. He also maintains that by doing so, he's protecting the presidency -- an absurd claim, given that he spent four years dragging the institution through the mud. The world and America The World Health Organization says Omicron is spreading faster than any other Covid-19 variant.
 'Our democracy is a combative democracy' Just a week into the job, new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces an increasingly radical anti-vaccination movement that, according to police, has even plotted to murder elected officials. "We will counter this tiny minority of people filled with hate, that attacks all of us with torch-bearing marches, violence and murder threats, with all the tools of our democratic state based on rule of law," Scholz said in his first address to parliament. "Our democracy is a combative democracy." A familiar pattern It's a well-worn pattern in the US: A major shooting causes outrage, leading to calls for stricter gun laws; a member of Congress introduces legislation that would potentially prevent a similar tragedy from taking place; the bill stalls in the Senate and eventually dies. Repeat.
This time around, a school shooting in Michigan last month has prompted one of the state's Democrats, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, to introduce a bill that would require the safe storage of firearms. Unveiled on Wednesday, it's expected to run into a filibuster in the Senate just like other recent gun-related initiatives.
Filibuster rules, which require 60 votes to push a bill through, are often to blame for federal inaction on the issue of guns. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, has also seen the blocking maneuver hold up his long-shot bipartisan deal on background checks for gun purchases. Yet Democrats aren't unified in opposition to the filibuster: as recently as March 2021 President Joe Biden, a noted institutionalist, opposed changing those rules.
But with this week marking the nine-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the words of then-President Barack Obama should serve as a sobering reminder of how little has been achieved legislatively to prevent future gun violence.
"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," he said at the time. -- CNN's Devan Cole writes to Meanwhile from Washington 'At this point, there's no need for a variant-specific booster' Here's some good news. America's top infectious diseases doc says current vaccines do hold up against the fast-spreading Omicron Covid-19 variant – as long as they are used in conjunction with booster shots.
"The Omicron variant undoubtedly compromises the effects of a two-dose mRNA vaccine-induced antibodies and reduces overall the protection," said Dr. Anthony Fauci. "However ... considerable protection still maintains against severe disease."
Fauci, who has held his job since Ronald Reagan was president, cited studies showing that the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine plus booster combination offered 75% effectiveness against symptomatic Omicron infection. "Our booster vaccine regimens work against Omicron. At this point, there's no need for a variant-specific booster," he said. Thanks for reading. On Thursday, EU leaders gather in Brussels for a European Council summit, the first attended by newly appointed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev meets South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The OECD releases its 2021 Economic Survey for Denmark. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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