WASHINGTON — Amid an unpopular war with Iran and slumping poll numbers linked to a sluggish economy, President Donald Trump resorted to name-calling Wednesday in a bid to boost Ed Gallrein in his GOP primary against Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

Trump took a break from overseeing his 12-day-old bombardment of targets inside Iran to make a stop...Read more

KANKAKEE, Ill. — Bob Wehrle sat in his driveway Wednesday morning and looked at the lot where his house once stood. His belongings and debris were scattered across his lawn, and his trailer was frozen in the air, pierced by a tree. It’s difficult to make out where the house ended and began.

Wehrle, 60, said he and his wife moved into their ...Read more

MEXICO CITY — President Claudia Sheinbaum’s attempt to overhaul Mexico’s electoral system fell short of the needed support for approval in the lower house of Congress on Wednesday, marking the first legislative setback in her agenda of priority reforms.

The bill garnered 259 votes in favor, 234 against and one abstention, but well short ...Read more

HEBRON, Ky. — President Donald Trump wants Northern Kentucky voters to know that incumbent 4th Congressional District Rep. Thomas Massie has got to go.

While Trump’s stop in Hebron Wednesday was intended to focus on his message on affordability heading into this year’s midterm elections, the president’s speech often veered into the ...Read more

CHICAGO — For a fleeting moment, as his hand cradled a hailstone just shy of 5 inches, Victor Gensini thought he had found a new record-breaker for the state of Illinois, surpassing a 4.75-inch stone found near the village of Minooka 11 years ago.

The atmospheric scientist was chasing thunderstorms near Kankakee Tuesday night that swept ...Read more

QLAYAA, Lebanon — The bells rang, their peals obscuring the buzz of the Israeli drone overhead as the casket of Father Pierre al-Rahi arrived at the parish he had served.

Only days before, Al-Rahi had stood in the very churchyard where the crowd assembled Wednesday for his funeral. He had announced that the people of Qlayaa would ignore ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California on Tuesday advanced a bill that would ban industrial, hormone-disrupting chemicals from receipts.

During a hearing of the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, lawmakers unanimously voted to advance AB 1604, a bill that would restrict the use of BPA, or bisphenol A, starting in 2027 and ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Everyone recognizes the blue-and-yellow historic markers that commemorate important people, places, and events in communities across Pennsylvania, but this one is different.

It stands on Fairmount Avenue near Fifth Street in Philadelphia, where it recognizes not a fabled inventor or bygone colonial battle but something recent ...Read more

Senate Democrats stepped up pressure on Republicans to conduct public hearings on the conduct of the Iran war, but senior GOP senators were noncommittal on whether they would do so.

The partisan tension comes as the Pentagon announced Tuesday that approximately 140 troops have been injured since the U.S. and Israeli strikes began on Feb. 28, in...Read more

A state Senate committee voted Wednesday morning to move Michigan's regular primary election from August to May, a shift that could alter the political landscape in a battleground state.

Under current law, Michigan's primary, through which nominees for governor, U.S. Senate, U.S. House and seats in the Legislature are chosen by their parties' ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Two key Trump administration officials huddled with Senate Republicans behind closed doors Wednesday to discuss a powerful but controversial surveillance authority that expires next month, an issue that for years has bitterly divided privacy hawks and intelligence-focused lawmakers.

FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John ...Read more

A bill that would allow unaffiliated voters to change their party affiliation at the polls to vote in primary elections passed the Maryland House on Wednesday.

Currently, registered voters must change their party affiliation by the voter registration deadline, 21 days before the election. According to the Maryland State Board of Elections, ...Read more

HAITI — The widow of Haiti’s slain president testified on Wednesday that her husband’s assailants were speaking Spanish when they fatally shot Jovenel Moïse — bolstering the government’s case that a Colombian hit team was recruited by four South Florida men charged with plotting the attack at the couple’s hilltop home outside Port-...Read more

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced Wednesday an agreement to restore $2.5 million of the $50 million in federal education funding cut from 18 Tar Heel school districts.

The Democratic attorney general had filed a federal lawsuit in December accusing the U.S. Education Department of unlawfully terminating $50 million in Full-...Read more

DENVER — A federal judge in Denver criticized agents who testified in his courtroom this week and who didn’t seem to know what his November order limiting the use of warrantless arrests required them to do.

“Those guys were not examples of what we hope ICE officers would know and do in the field,” U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke ...Read more

The Missouri House passed a bill on Wednesday giving top state officials more power to rewrite ballot measures less than two months after the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a similar law.

The bill is essentially a copy of last year’s Senate Bill 22, which critics dubbed the “let politicians lie act.” It will now head to the Senate.

...Read more

The government of Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, was recognized by the U.S. government in ongoing litigation related to the South American nation — another step by Washington toward legitimizing her authority.

The clarification came as part of a “statement of interest” filed in federal court on Wednesday by Manhattan U....Read more

LOS ANGELES — A Christian engineer with L.A. County claims his bosses discriminated against him by forcing him to pass by a Pride flag on the way to his office, the latest legal challenge to the government's policy of requiring many government buildings display the flag throughout June.

Eric Batman, a 24-year veteran of the Department of ...Read more

The Trump administration has been having secret, high-level conversations with several people in Raúl Castro’s inner circle, similar to the discussions held with Venezuela’s strongman Nicolás Maduro before he was captured in a military raid earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., told the Miami Herald.

Though formally ...Read more