WASHINGTON — As some defense hawks eye a massive influx of defense dollars in a possible forthcoming reconciliation measure, initial reactions from defense appropriators and authorizers have been mixed, foreshadowing what could be a rocky road to achieving President Donald Trump’s stated goal of a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 2027.

In ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — U.S. Reps. Norma Torres and Jimmy Gomez conducted a congressional oversight inspection of the ICE facility in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday amid reports of an undisclosed holding area for immigrant families.

The visits comes three days after a federal court judge granted the lawmakers and others a temporary restraining order,...Read more

Rep. Andy Barr has endorsed Trump-backed primary challenger Ed Gallrein over his longtime colleague Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky 4th Congressional District.

The move comes as Barr is seeking the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate to fill Sen. Mitch McConnell’s shoes against former Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Lexington tech ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senate Republican Leader John Thune warned Thursday that Congress is not close to an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security, signaling that another short-term extension may be the only way to avoid a shutdown as Democrats demand “nonnegotiable” ICE reforms ahead of the Feb. 13 deadline.

The Republicans are ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Thursday mocked House Republicans who he said routinely need presidential attention before they can support GOP bills and roasted congressional Democrats amid ongoing talks about possible immigration enforcement restrictions.

The president struck a noticeably partisan tone in his annual remarks at the National ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sutter County officials are asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to choose an earlier date for a special election to fill the rest of Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s term in Congress, which was vacated after the sitting congressman’s death in early January.

County supervisors, in a letter approved this week, asked Newsom to select the ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — A Democratic campaign manager was charged Monday in Chester County with filing fraudulent nomination petitions in the 2024 primary for auditor general, including the forged signature of a Chester County judge, authorities said.

Mariel Kornblith-Martin, 40, of Philadelphia, allegedly filed false nomination petitions when serving...Read more

Far right-wing firebrand Steve Bannon is calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to “surround” polling places in the upcoming midterm elections, a move that would amount to an unprecedented effort to intimidate voters.

The ally of President Donald Trump claimed that ICE agents, who have spearheaded the president’s ...Read more

As an institution that has been watching Ed Martin’s bull plow through various political china shops for two decades now, this page doesn’t mourn his remarkable fall from grace with the Trump administration, as revealed Monday.

Several national publications report that Martin — a former Missouri right-wing gadfly who left a trail of ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Democrats in New Jersey’s 11th District are voting Thursday — yes, Thursday — to pick their nominee and likely successor to Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who was sworn into her new office last month.

Thirteen Democrats are on the ballot for the special election for the blue-leaning North Jersey seat, though two have since ended ...Read more

President Donald Trump’s detractors have portrayed him as a fascist, dictatorial, freedom-hating fiend. The aggressive ICE arrests and protests in Minneapolis, including two shooting deaths of civilians, only added fuel to the narrative that America was devolving into a police state and Armageddon was on its way.

Then Trump pivoted.

Whether ...Read more

It has been 10 months since President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” import tariff announcement in April. Ultimately, that announcement led to U.S. import tariffs rising to an average of 17 percent, their highest level in 100 years.

It is still too early to draw conclusions as to the overall damage those tariffs might inflict on the ...Read more

The debate over President Donald Trump’s tariffs was never really about economics; it was about framing.

Instead of asking whether tariffs generated leverage, revenue or strategic correction, many observers chose a different path: emotional labeling. Tariffs were routinely described as “tantrums,” “outbursts” or “chaos.” Policy ...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

WASHINGTON — Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk, who arrived in the House in 2015 as a tea party-style conservative before becoming a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, said Wednesday he won’t seek a seventh term.

A senior member of the House Administration Committee, Loudermilk joins a wave of GOP lawmakers who won’t be returning ...Read more

President Donald Trump said he intended to stay out of the clash between Netflix Inc. and Paramount Skydance Corp. over Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., saying he would leave the matter to the U.S. Justice Department.

“I haven’t been involved,” Trump told NBC News in an interview. “I’ve been called by both sides. It’s the two sides, but...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