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| Happy Thursday, OnPolitics readers! |
| The Internal Revenue Service will begin distributing Child Tax Credit payments today with monthly payments scheduled for the rest of the year. Around $15 billion will be distributed to approximately 39 million families and 65 million children this month, according to IRS estimates. |
| President Joe Biden called on Congress to extend the tax credit payments past their December expiration date, arguing the potential to reduce child poverty in America. |
| Biden is also hosting German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House today in what is likely to be her last visit to Washington as head of state. |
| It's Mabinty, with today's top news. |
About those Jan. 6 Capitol rioters... |
| Prosecutions of the hundreds charged in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot are just getting started, offering Americans an initial look at just how severe the punishments will be for those who stormed the Capitol more than six months ago. |
| The first dozen plea bargains reveal defendants could spend years behind bars for ransacking the historic building – and legal experts say harsher penalties loom for those who assaulted police and destroyed property. |
| The agreements also illustrate that federal prosecutors are playing hardball, using the threat of harsh sentences and requirements for cooperating to convict others, according to legal experts. |
| Exhibit A: Paul Hodgkins, a 38-year-old Tampa, Florida, man could land in prison for more than a year after becoming one of the first four defendants to plead guilty to felonies in the attack. Sentencing guidelines in three other felony agreements call for terms of at least three to five years. Another eight people have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors that could lock them up for six months. |
ICYMI: Stories that are a must-read |
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Shocking details from a new book on Trump |
| The highest-ranking U.S. officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and other top military leaders made informal plans to stop a coup by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to excerpts from a new book. |
| "I Alone Can Fix It," written by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and others feared Trump might take unconstitutional actions should he lose. |
| The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – an advisory body to the president – was planning for a confrontation with Trump over what Milley saw as the former president's stoking of tensions in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a coup. |
| "This is a Reichstag moment," Milley told his deputies in the days before Jan. 6, a reference to the 1933 burning of the German parliament that helped usher in the Nazi regime in Germany, Leonnig and Rucker write. |
| When in doubt, eat more ice cream🍦 — Mabinty |
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