LOS ANGELES — In a visit to Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, top White House officials vowed to take over and speed up building permitting, a core state and local function, for rebuilding after the Los Angeles wildfires.

Administrators for the Environmental Protection Agency Lee Zeldin and Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler also held...Read more

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla rolled out two new water bills aimed at easing the state’s growing climate-driven water shortages and making water supplies more dependable across the state.

The Making Our Communities Resilient through Enhancing Water for Agriculture, Technology, the Environment, and Residences Act — the MORE WATER Act — and the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he would have passed on Kevin Warsh as his nominee to lead the Federal Reserve if Warsh had expressed a desire to hike interest rates.

“If he came in and said, ‘I want to raise it,’ he would not have gotten the job, no,” Trump said Wednesday in an NBC News interview.

The president said there ...Read more

San Joaquin County sheriff’s investigators identified and confiscated two cars believed to have been used in a November mass shooting in Stockton that killed four people and wounded more than a dozen others at a child’s birthday party.

The Sheriff’s Office announced the breakthrough in the investigation on Wednesday in social media posts,...Read more

In a bit of winter irony, two barges carrying 21,000 tons of salt reinforcements for Philadelphia couldn't get through the frozen Delaware River, according to city officials.

At the Pelbano Recreation Center in Bustleton on Wednesday, Director of Clean and Green Initiatives Carlton Williams said the city had used more than 30,000 tons in ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — White House border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday, Feb. 4, that after getting unprecedented cooperation from Minnesota political and law enforcement leaders, the Trump administration is withdrawing 700 federal law enforcement personnel from the state “effective today.”

Homan then said that if Minnesotans want to end Operation...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The sheriffs overseeing some of Minnesota’s largest county jails aren’t saying whether they will go along with a plan to give immigration agents better access to the facilities.

Border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday that the Trump administration was immediately withdrawing 700 federal agents who have been part of the ...Read more

Plans to place a replica of Baltimore’s toppled Christopher Columbus statue on the White House grounds are gaining momentum again — but there is still no confirmation that the move will happen or when it might occur.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that sources said White House officials have designated a specific area on the grounds...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he would donate any money he received in a $10 billion lawsuit that he filed against the U.S. Treasury and Internal Revenue Service over an unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns to the press during his first term in office.

“Any money that I win, I’ll give it to charity, 100% to charity, ...Read more

Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez celebrated what he called a "Mass for Peace" at Our Lady of the Angels on Wednesday, stopping just short of a direct appeal to the Trump administration to draw down its aggressive immigration enforcement efforts as protesters gathered blocks away.

"We are united with everybody in our country praying for ...Read more

Utah lawmakers want to lower gas prices for their state’s residents — but Idaho residents may pay for the change at their own gas stations.

In a proposal that has yet to be formally introduced in the Utah Legislature, lawmakers have pitched a plan to charge states that receive exported Utah gas the same tax that Utah residents pay at the ...Read more

People who knew Nancy Guthrie, mother of the “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie, and her husband Charlie Guthrie when they grew up in Kentucky are calling her disappearance a “tragedy.”

Law enforcement officials in Pima County confirmed Tuesday they were investigating reports that ransom notes had been received by media outlets ...Read more

DENVER — The gun used by the 16-year-old boy who shot two students and then himself at Evergreen High School in September was a family heirloom, investigators with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday.

The Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver that Desmond Holly used in the Sept. 10 attack originally belonged to one of ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — The increasing presence of federal immigration officers in Carlsbad prompted a crowd of concerned citizens to express their fears and frustrations at Tuesday’s Carlsbad City Council meeting.

More than 30 people spoke during an update from local officials on federal activities in the city. Councilmember Teresa Acosta requested ...Read more

Gov. Maura Healey and Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston signed an agreement to strengthen collaboration between the two jurisdictions on offshore wind development in the North Atlantic as the region’s electrical grid has been powered by fossil fuels during the cold winter weather.

“This memorandum of understanding today that Massachusetts ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — As many as 15 FBI agents and employees have been harassed and threatened since identification documents were stolen last month from two vandalized federal government vehicles during unrest in Minneapolis involving anti-ICE demonstrators, according to a criminal complaint.

The disclosure came in a complaint last week in U.S. ...Read more

With Haiti’s politicians unable to arrive at a consensus for governing after the expiration of the Transitional Presidential Council’s mandate this weekend, the U.S. is publicly asserting its support for Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé and signaling it will not recognize alternative power arrangements.

The Trump administration’s ...Read more

NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge appeared unconvinced by President Donald Trump’s third bid to move his hush money case to federal court at a hearing Wednesday, where his lawyers squared off with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.

The renewed bid, if successful, could allow Trump to try to get his historic criminal conviction ...Read more