President Donald Trump on Monday said he wanted to lower the number of U.S. troops in Germany to 25,000 in response to what he characterized as German delinquency on military spending. The reduction in troop numbers, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is deeply unpopular among Republican lawmakers and some national security experts. “We’re…
The Senate is unlikely to take up a police reform bill until after the Independence Day recess, Republican leaders said on Monday, raising the prospect that it could be a month or longer before a measure heads to President Donald Trump’s desk. A group of GOP senators, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), is expected…
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said the president did not initially see it as disrespectful to hold his planned comeback rally on Juneteenth, a date which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. "He didn’t see it as disrespectful to be able to do it on Juneteenth," the Republican senator said Sunday on CNN’s…
Criticism of the World Trade Organization by Donald Trump has been "damaging", said the body’s chief, Roberto Azevêdo, conceding that its rules need to be updated. The U.S. president has argued that the WTO is too soft on China. In retaliation, Washington undermined the organization’s highest dispute-resolution forum, the Appellate Body, by blocking the nomination…
President Donald Trump has long had two cherished American institutions standing beside him as he railed against athletes taking a knee during the national anthem: NASCAR and the NFL. This week, they both started to walk away. Bending to the cultural moment, NASCAR and the NFL in recent days reversed course on their approach to…
STOCKHOLM — The Swedish government’s decision to go its own way on coronavirus just got political. In the first party leaders’ debate in parliament since the pandemic began, opposition politicians went after Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on Wednesday, saying Sweden’s spiking death rate from COVID-19 and inability to protect residents of elderly care homes represented…
The United States has surpassed 2 million coronavirus cases, even as states forge ahead with reopening their economies and demonstrators gather en masse to protest police brutality and racial inequality. It took the U.S. nearly three months to officially hit 1 million confirmed cases on April 28, but just six weeks to double it. Reporting…
Joe Biden says he, like many white people, was wrong about racism in America. “I thought we had made enormous progress when we finally elected an African American president,” he told voters in a livestreamed “Young Americans Town Hall” last week. “I thought you could defeat hate, you could kill hate. But the point is,…
Eight out of 10 voters, an overwhelming majority, say things are out of control in the country, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday. The poll revealed a partisan divide with 92 percent of Democrats believing the country is out of control compared to 66 percent of Republicans. Only 15 percent of…
The U.K. government should condemn a "deliberate election strategy" by U.S. President Donald Trump to use anti-racism protests to activate his electoral base, said Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary. Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show to comment on Trump’s response to the protests against the killing by police of George Floyd, that continued…
HUD Secretary Ben Carson urged Sunday morning for the country to "engage in dialogue" on racism, rather than hurling insults and demonizing each other. "What will help the national heal is if we engage in dialogue together," Carson said on CNN’s "State of the Union." "Let’s not make the solution be a Democrat solution or…
Months after Congress approved $175 billion in emergency aid to health providers, the Trump administration has yet to pay out the majority of the funds — nearly $100 billion — amid a series of setbacks and internal uncertainty over how best to distribute the money. The delay has prompted complaints by both Democrats and Republicans…
Rep. Eliot Engel became engulfed in yet another controversy on Tuesday after he was overheard on a “hot mic” saying he only sought press attention at a local event on the unrest over police brutality because of his upcoming primary threat. “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” the New York Democrat told…
NEW YORK — During three days of unrest in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has sided with the NYPD over protesters — a move many, including longtime supporters, see as cementing the mayor’s transformation from police reformer to police defender. Faced with a series of videotaped incidents of aggressive police behavior toward protesters…
Republicans in a crucial New Jersey swing district have a choice in the July primary: pick a millennial woman with organized labor ties or a middle-aged man with connections to President Donald Trump’s campaign. In choosing a candidate they hope will unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Andy Kim in the 3rd District, Republicans are either going…
Officials from Florida to Missouri are hurriedly rewriting their disaster plans, worried that crowding large groups of evacuees in shelters could spread coronavirus during what’s expected to be a busy hurricane and tornado season. Firefighters in Colorado are working social distancing into their strategy for tackling long-duration wildfires. And New York City is spending $55…
BERLIN — Forget Make America Great Again. Here comes Make Europe Strong Again. The German government has settled on “Gemeinsam. Europa wieder stark machen" — which translates into English as "Together. Making Europe strong again" — as its slogan for the country’s upcoming presidency of the Council of the EU, which kicks off on July 1….
OAKLAND — Conservatives from Washington to the West Coast have anointed attorney Harmeet Dhillon as their go-to legal warrior in the culture wars of the Covid-19 pandemic. And they don’t even seem to mind that she’s from San Francisco. During the pandemic, Dhillon has emerged as a conservative thorn in the side of Gov. Gavin…
The Interior Department’s internal watchdog found that a senior official violated federal laws by using his official email to push the EPA to hire one of his family members. The report from Interior’s Office of Inspector General is the second time in six months that it has found that Assistant Secretary of the Interior for…
U.S. coronavirus deaths surged past 100,000 Wednesday, even as President Donald Trump continues urging states across the country to reopen. The U.S. leads the world in reported confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 1.6 million American cases since January, according to a Johns Hopkins University tracker. A day before the U.S. reached the 100,000-death mark,…