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…
Some West Virginians voting in Tuesday’s primary will be allowed to tap on their phones or laptops instead of heading to the polls. Some in Delaware will get to do the same next month. And the trend may spread into November, as the coronavirus pandemic inspires a search for voting methods that don’t expose people…
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…
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,…
LONDON — Never mind whether Boris Johnson should get rid of Dominic Cummings, the real question is whether he can. To the U.K. prime minister, his top aide — whose lockdown journey from London to Durham has dominated headlines for days — is more than just an effective political adviser. He is the linchpin of…
Sam Barnes racked his brain one chilly morning in January 1944, wondering what he might have done wrong. Barnes, a popular African American petty officer working at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois, had been in the Navy for 15 months and had never been disciplined. Why, he wondered, was he being ordered to…
Aides to President Donald Trump are considering a plan to shift the government’s global response to future infectious disease outbreaks to a new unit inside the State Department, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. The proposal, discussed during a National Security Council deputies committee meeting on Thursday, already has set off a turf battle between…
Trump administration officials are preparing plans to extend the federal deployment of more than 40,000 National Guard members performing coronavirus relief work across the country, after scores of lawmakers moved to pressure President Donald Trump to keep the Guards in place past June. Four people familiar with the matter said the administration is prepared to…
Texas’ 24th congressional district is precisely the kind of seat Democrats are targeting in November to cement or pad their House majority: A longtime Republican stronghold in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs where shifting demographics have put it in play. But a dispute over whether the party should embrace an Afro-Latina educator with a hardscrabble upbringing…
A bloc of progressive House lawmakers wants to slash the Pentagon’s budget in defense policy legislation, arguing extra money that would go toward military hardware would be better spent fighting the coronavirus. Twenty nine House Democrats insisted in a letter to leaders of the House Armed Services Committee that the National Defense Authorization Act should…
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told allies in recent days that Joe Biden’s campaign has begun vetting her for vice president, according to a source familiar with the conversations. Harry Reid, the influential former Senate majority leader, has encouraged Biden, a friend, to consider Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. But as Latino lawmakers and donors…
The promise of a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year creates a difficult political and public health question: Who gets the vaccine first? Health care workers would be among the first to receive any vaccine so they can continue to work the pandemic’s front lines. But deciding which groups come next — the…
SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday proposed a slimmed-down $203 billion state budget that relies on help from Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump to avoid $14 billion in trigger cuts, with the state facing its first deficit in eight years after being blindsided by the coronavirus pandemic. The trigger cuts go back…
With reports of new coronavirus cases flattening and the number of hospitalizations falling, New Jersey is now shipping ventilators it received from the federal stockpile to hospitals in other states, Gov. Phil Murphy said during his daily briefing on Wednesday. New Jersey will send 50 ventilators to Massachusetts, which has started to see a spike…
The coronavirus is pitting states against the federal government on issues ranging from testing to stay-at-home orders to how best to restart the economy. After President Donald Trump claimed to have “total authority” over how and when states should ease their restrictions, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made it clear not only that the president…
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Friday he would pledge to recognize the Armenian genocide if elected president. President Donald Trump and past U.S. presidents have chosen to sidestep the issue. "If elected, I pledge to support a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide and will make universal human rights a top priority," Biden said on…
The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill was just the beginning of a Washington lobbying bonanza — but lobbyists are rushing to get a piece of the action in case it evaporates with a cratering economy. Lobbyists are hustling to influence the rules dictating how the first bundle of stimulus money will be spent, and looking…
Amid a rising death toll, a brewing constitutional clash with governors, and news reports criticizing the White House’s early inaction in combating the coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump took about 40 minutes out of his day Tuesday to meet and shoot the breeze with recovered patients at the White House. As cameras rolled and bulbs…
Banks are beginning to open the spigot of the $350 billion small business rescue package that has suffered constant operational breakdowns since its hurried launch by the Trump administration on April 3, increasing the sense of urgency for Congress to replenish funding in the coming days. JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday was the first of the…
Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York warned Tuesday that he and President Donald Trump "would have a problem" if the White House forged ahead with plans to reopen the state absent Albany’s approval, setting the stage for a potential constitutional clash against the backdrop of a global pandemic. "Look, if he pushed it to that…