President Joe Biden has honored acclaimed filmmakers, writers and others who have made their mark on American culture, awarding the prestigious National Medals of Arts and National Humanities Medals to 39 recipients.

U2 plans a return to the stage later this year in Las Vegas, minus one member of its original quartet.

Anticipation has been growing all year for one of the fall’s likeliest bestsellers, Colleen Hoover’s “It Starts With Us.”.

President Joe Biden has saluted his “friend of five decades” Walter Mondale, traveling to the University of Minnesota to remember the former vice president and Democratic Party elder whose memorial service was delayed for a year due to the pandemic.

President Joe Biden plans to speak at a memorial service on Sunday for former Vice President Walter Mondale, who died last April at age 93.

President Joe Biden is forcefully accusing Donald Trump and his supporters of holding a “dagger at the throat of democracy” with his election lies that sparked last year’s deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol.

A conservative Christian university in Alabama has withdrawn an invitation for Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham to speak during inaugural activities for its new president.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are both marking the one-year anniversary of the death U.S. Rep. John Lewis by urging Congress to enact laws to protect voting rights.

This combination photo shows Pulitzer-Prize winning authors, from left, Ron Chernow, Garry Wills and Jon Meacham, who are among hundreds of historians who have signed an open letter calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office. The letter comes after last weeks siege of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. (AP Photo)NEW YORK – Pulitzer-Prize winners Garry Wills, Ron Chernow, Jon Meacham and Stacy Schiff are among hundreds of historians who have signed an open letter calling for President Donald Trump to be removed from office after last week's siege of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Others endorsing it include Douglas Brinkley, David Blight, Mary Beth Norton, Rick Atkinson, Diane McWhorter and Rick Perlstein. With days left in Trump’s presidency, the Democratic-led House of Representatives is preparing to impeach Trump this week.

NEW YORK – With Election Day approaching and the pandemic ongoing, Oprah Winfrey is setting aside her usual book club recommendations and instead citing seven personal favorites, ranging from James Baldwin's landmark essays in “The Fire Next Time” to Mary Oliver's poetry collection “Devotions.”Winfrey is calling her choices “The Books That See Me Through," works she values for “their ability to comfort, inspire, and enlighten.”"It’s a mix of fiction, poetry, non-fiction and spirituality, books I know and trust and revisit time and again,” she said in a statement Monday. Winfrey had planned a new choice every two months; her previous selection, Isabel Wilkerson's “Caste,” was announced in early August. Winfrey spokesperson Chelsea Hettrick said the seven books announced Monday would serve as “a bridge between selections,” and that no firm timeline had been set for future choices. “This year has brought such unprecedented change overall. We will re-evaluate in the coming weeks the selection plan and timing for the remainder of 2020,” she said.

Guests for the first presidential debate take their seats, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Over and over, Trump tried to control the conversation, interrupting Biden and repeatedly talking over the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News. The president tried to deflect tough lines of questioning — whether on his taxes or the pandemic — to deliver broadsides against Biden. Give me a name,” Trump said, before Biden mentioned the far right, violent group known as the Proud Boys. Trump then pointedly did not condemn the group, instead saying, “Proud Boys, stand back, stand by. Trump snarled a response, declaring that “I'll tell you Joe, you could never have done the job that we did.

Preparations take place for the first Presidential debate in the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion, Monday, Sept. 28, 2020, in Cleveland. The first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to take place Tuesday, Sept. 29. The health emergency has upended the usual trappings of a presidential campaign, lending heightened importance to the debate. “If Biden is unable to indict Trump for all that he has done, (that) would be profound failure. Despite the upheaval, the presidential race has remained largely unchanged since Biden seized control of the Democratic field in March.

Julia Reed, who wrote about food and culture in the South and promoted her native Mississippi Delta, has died. Reed died Friday of cancer, the editors of Garden & Gun magazine said in a post on the magazine's website. She attended parties with the likes of former Secretary of State and Army Gen. Colin Powell and former Vice President Al Gore, but was a champion of her native Mississippi, according to Meacham. A chapter in her book, Julia Reeds South, eventually led her to dedicate an entire book on how to party and dine in New Orleans, The Times Picayune/New Orleans Advocate reported. She called it Julia Reeds New Orleans: Food, Fun and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll.In addition, Reed served on the board of the Ogden Museum of Art in New Orleans, the newspaper said.

NEW YORK President Donald Trump is adamant that he wants another four years in office. But he offered few clues about what he would do if he remains in the White House. He similarly stammered through an interview last month when pressed by a friendly TV host to talk about what a second term would look like. Trump is reshaping his campaign, announcing Wednesday that veteran GOP operative Bill Stepien will replace Brad Parscale as campaign manager. When asked for the presidents second-term agenda, the White House pointed to Trumps response to COVID-19 but offered little in the way of specifics.

In this June 30, 2020, photo, a man walks in front of the Declaration House in Philadelphia. Countless words have been written about the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson, but few about Robert Hemings, the slave who was on hand as Jefferson famously declared that All men are created equal. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)NEW YORK In the early summer of 1776, Thomas Jefferson worked away in the second floor parlor of a boardinghouse in downtown Philadelphia. His father was the slave owner John Wayles, Thomas Jeffersons future father-in-law; his mother was a slave, Elizabeth Hemings. Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson fathered several children, was Robert Hemings sister, and Jeffersons future wife, Martha Wayles, was his half-sister.