President Joe Biden is set to attend the Democratic National Convention's winter meeting in Philadelphia as the party considers overhauling the 2024 presidential primary calendar. The proposed lineup would move South Carolina's primary before New Hampshire's, which angered party leaders in the state.
Here's what else is going on in politics:
Not just former presidents: Potentially millions of people who are currently working in sensitive positions that require a U.S. national security clearance have mishandled classified documents.
Another FBI search: Federal authorities are negotiating searches of former Vice President Mike Pence's Indiana home and Washington office for additional classified documents.
Second Amendment rights: A federal appeals court ruled that a law barring people who are the subject of a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional.
North Korea warns about "overwhelming nuclear force." The country issues tough words in response to U.S. military exercin the region.
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North Korea warns of 'overwhelming nuclear force'
North Korea said it is prepared to respond to U.S. military moves with "the most overwhelming nuclear force," and warned that the expansion of U.S. military exercises with South Korea is pushing tensions to an "extreme red line,"
The statement by Pyongyang's Foreign Ministry came in response to comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said Tuesday in Seoul that the United States would increase its deployment of advanced military assets to the Korean Peninsula, including fighter jets and aircraft carriers, as it strengthens joint training and operational planning with South Korea.
South Korea's security jitters have risen since North Korea test-fired dozens of missiles in 2022, including potentially nuclear-capable ones designed to strike targets in South Korea and the U.S. mainland.
--The Associated
Classified documents much more than a Biden, Pence, Trump problem, analysts say
It's not just former presidents and vice presidents who have been caught mishandling classified and even top-secret documents, according to lawmakers and security analysts. And it's not just those who have left office but potentially millions of people who are currently working in sensitive positions that require a U.S. national security clearance.
"The universe of individuals who not only have access to classified information in one form or another but who have at different times mishandled it spreads across the entire gamut of the federal workforce and of cleared officials in the judiciary and Congress," said Bradley Moss, a Washington, D.C. national security lawyer who handles mishandling of documents cases.
Moss and others interviewed by USA TODAY estimated that there are more than four million people with security clearances, including those in and out of government. In 2017, the Director of National Intelligence put the number at nearly 3 million people, including more than 1.6 million with access to confidential or secret information and another 1.2 million with access to top secret information.
- Josh Meyer
FBI expected to search Pence locations for govt records
Federal authorities and representatives of Mike Pence have been discussing voluntary searches of the former vice president's Indiana home and a Washington, D.C., office for additional classified records, according to media reports.
The anticipated action comes after the FBI searched President Joe Biden's Delaware vacation home Wednesday, the third Biden location where authorities have sought additional government records.
No classified documents were recovered at Biden's Rehoboth Beach residence, but the FBI took some handwritten notes dating to his time as vice president, the president's lawyer said.
Plans for a Pence-related search, first reported Thursday by the Wall Street Journal, follow the discovery last month of a small number of documents bearing classified markings at the former president's Indiana home.
CNN also reported that authorities are expected to search a Washington office linked to Pence.
- Kevin Johnson
From office to beach house: Timeline of investigation into Joe Biden classified documents
House GOP launches another investigation
The House Judiciary Committee is deepening its investigation of political bias with a new focus on Charles McGonigal, a former FBI special agent who pleaded not guilty last week to charges of money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions in connection to a Russian oligarch.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., requested documents, personnel records and communications related to McGonigal by Feb. 16.
McGonigal, who led the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York for 22 years until 2018, is accused of working for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
- Candy Woodall
Law barring guns for people with domestic violence restraining orders is unconstitutional, court rules
A federal appeals court Thursday ruled that a law barring people who are the subject of a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional in a case likely headed to the Supreme Court.
A three-judge panel of the Louisiana-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said the federal law may have been based on "salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society," but that it still conflicts with the Second Amendment.
The ruling from the judges - two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump and a third by former President Ronald Reagan - is a result of the Supreme Court's major guns ruling last year, in which a 6-3 majority said that in order to pass constitutional muster a gun regulation must be consistent with the nation's "historical tradition of firearm regulation."
- John Fritze
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FBI expected to search Pence locations: live updates
