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When Karine Jean-Pierre stepped behind the lectern to take reporters' questions in the briefing room Wednesday, she was the first Black woman to speak for the White House in that capacity in three decades.

She announced that the Senate confirmed Clarke on Tuesday as the first woman and first woman of color to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

"I appreciate the historic nature, I really do. But I believe being behind this podium, being in this room, being in this building, is not about one person. It's about what we do on behalf of the American people."

Front National support is changing France's political landscape

The far-right Front National (FN) won the first round of France’s regional elections on Sunday, taking 28% of the vote and topping the polls in six of the country’s 13 mainland regions.

As well as its size, Sunday’s result is striking because it signals a breakthrough in how the FN vote is spread across the country.

The group of young Muslim men, some still teenagers, became known to the French authorities as the Buttes-Chaumont group after the police in 2005 broke up their pipeline for sending young French Muslims from their immigrant neighborhood to fight against American troops in Iraq. The arrests seemingly shattered the group, and some officials and experts were skeptical that members ever posed a threat to France.

But the shocking terror attacks last week in Paris have now made plain that the Buttes-Chaumont network produced some of Europe’s most militant jihadists, including Chérif Kouachi, one of the three terrorists whose three-day rampage left 17 people dead and who was killed by the police.

“They were considered the least dangerous,” Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies and specialist on French Islamic terror cells, said of the Buttes-Chaumont group. “And now you see them really at the forefront.”

Sean Hannity on Wednesday said that the White House’s explanation for why President Joe Biden stumbled up the steps of Air Force One was the biggest lie ever told in the press room. In response, people on social media vigorously pointed out how wrong he was. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, the deputy press secretary, told reporters on the plane, “It’s very windy. I almost fell coming up the steps myself.”

“Do you believe the lie that ― and I think it’s a lie ― that Joe Biden was pushed to the ground by a gust of wind three times? Because I don’t think there’s ever been a bigger lie told from that podium.”

The attack affected servers supporting its IT systems in North America and Australia, the company said in a news release.

JBS USA is part of JBS Foods, which it says is one of the world's largest food companies. It has operations in 15 countries and has customers in about 100 countries, according to its website. Its brands include Pilgrim's, Great Southern and Aberdeen Black. JBS said it is working with an incident response firm to restore its systems as soon as possible.

The White House addressed the attack during a press conference Tuesday. Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters JBS was a victim of a ransomware attack "from a criminal organization likely based in Russia." She added that the White House is directly dealing with the Russian government on the matter.

a judge appointed by Donald Trump issued a stunning injunction forbidding a lengthy list of White House officials from making contact with social media companies to report misinformation.

The order bars individuals including Xavier Becerra, the US health secretary, Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, and Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, among dozens more officials, from “urging, encouraging , pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms”.

it is a major victory for campaigners who have argued that democratic governments overstepped their power during the pandemic, including restrictions on free speech.

Biden’s comments came after he met with executives of companies that manufacture infant formula, who told the president they knew the shortage would be severe in February after the closure of an Abbott plant in Michigan. Biden suggested he was not informed until April.

The disconnect between the industry’s alertness to the looming crisis and the administration’s lack of awareness was hinted at during the panel discussion itself. Biden asked one panelist directly if his company had been surprised by the “profound effect immediately” of the Abbott closure.“No, sir, we were aware of the general impact that this would have,” said Robert Cleveland, a senior vice president at Reckitt. “From the moment that that recall was announced, we reached out immediately to retail partners like Target and Walmart to tell them this is what we think will happen.”

“We have been doing this whole-of-government approach since the recall,” she said at the White House daily press briefing after Biden met with the executives. “We have been working on this for months, for months. We have been taking this incredibly seriously.”When pressed why Biden himself said he was unaware of the “whole-of-government approach,” Jean-Pierre said that Biden “has multiple issues, crises at the moment” and that administration officials often respond to problems before the president is aware.