AP National News

By STEVE PEOPLES and THOMAS BEAUMONT Associated Press MECHANICSBURG, Pa. (AP) — Many days over the past two weeks, no one answered the phone at any of U.S. Rep. Scott Perry’s four offices. Perry’s team did not share details about the Republican congressman’s public appearances until they were over. Even supporters who live in Perry’s

By JOHN RABY and LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has proposed several changes that would affect the struggling U.S. coal industry. Trump issued executive orders this month to allow mining on federal land. He has used his emergency authority to allow some older coal-fired power plants set for

By LEAH WILLINGHAM and JOHN RABY Associated Press FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — The winner of this year’s West Virginia Coal Festival teen beauty pageant walks among the ruins of a community abandoned 70 years ago and imagines the rusted remains of coal tipples and processing plants coming back to life. Ava Johnson knows West Virginia

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary, brushing aside critics and skeptics to become the richest person on the planet. But as Musk gained power in Washington in recent months, his popularity has waned, according to a poll

By SUDHIN THANAWALA and LINDSAY WHITEHURST Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Before dawn on Oct. 18, 2017, FBI agents broke down the front door of Trina Martin’s Atlanta home, stormed into her bedroom and pointed guns at her and her then-boyfriend as her 7-year-old son screamed for his mom from another room. Martin, blocked from

By GEOFF MULVIHILL and KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press State lawmakers across the U.S. are pushing to use more taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuitions and homeschooling expenses even as they try to figure out how to budget in a time of economic uncertainty. A $1 billion-per-year voucher program the Texas Legislature sent to

By MORGAN LEE Associated Press Immigration and civil rights advocates have renewed concerns that immigrants detained at Guantanamo Bay are being held in extreme isolation, cut off from meaningful access to legal counsel or candid communication with relatives, according to a new court filing Saturday. In a lawsuit brought on behalf or two Nicaraguan immigrants

EVANS, Ga. (AP) — Two Georgia deputies were shot during a traffic stop Saturday evening and one of them is dead, law enforcement officials said. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the deputy’s death around 6:30 p.m. and said the other deputy was taken to a hospital, WRDW-TV reported. The suspect was identified as James

By MICHAEL BIESECKER and LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsman was arrested earlier this week by federal immigration authorities inside the family residential section of the U.S. Naval Air Station at Key West, Florida, after she was flagged in a routine security check, officials said Saturday.

By MARC LEVY Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl — separating them indefinitely — and three children ages 2, 4 and 7 who are U.S. citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said Saturday. The three cases

By JOHN RABY Associated Press A federal judge in west Texas joined other courts in temporarily blocking the deportations of Venezuelan immigrants under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act. U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso, Texas, issued the ruling Friday while he ordered the release of a couple accused

By MICHAEL CASEY Associated Press BOSTON (AP) — As a Black teenager growing up in Boston, Wayne Lucas vividly remembers joining about 20,000 people to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the city’s segregated school system and the entrenched poverty in poor communities. Sixty years on, Lucas was back on the

By MARC LEVY Associated Press HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Coal-fired power plants, long an increasingly money-losing proposition in the U.S., are becoming more valuable now that the suddenly strong demand for electricity to run Big Tech’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence applications has set off a full-on sprint to find new energy sources. President Donald

By HILLEL ITALIE and MARIA SHERMAN AP Entertainment Writers NEW YORK (AP) — Out of the many Vietnam War protests she performed at in the 1960s and 1970s, Judy Collins can never forget one in Washington, D.C., where she stood before thousands and sang Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” “It was just me, and Bruce

By JENNIFER PELTZ and HALLIE GOLDEN Associated Press Virginia Giuffre, who accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager trafficked by financier Jeffrey Epstein, has died. She was 41. Giuffre died by suicide Friday at her farm in Western Australia, her publicist confirmed. “Virginia was a fierce warrior

By SUSAN HAIGH and PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press MASSAPEQUA, N.Y. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Education announced Friday it plans to investigate whether New York education officials are being discriminatory by threatening to withhold funding if a Long Island school district doesn’t stop using a Native American-themed logo. The probe by the agency’s civil

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A lawsuit against Florida’s ban on “lab-grown” meat is still alive after a federal judge tossed four parts of the suit on Friday but kept a fifth. Northern District of Florida Chief Judge Mark Walker declined to dismiss a part of the lawsuit that argued Florida’s restrictions give an unconstitutional advantage

By HOLLY RAMER Associated Press CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Nineteen states that refused to comply with a Trump administration directive aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools went a step further Friday, filing a federal lawsuit challenging what they consider an illegal threat to cut federal funding. The lawsuit filed in

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, DEVI SHASTRI and SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MILWAUKEE (AP) — Protesters chanted and marched Saturday outside the FBI after agents arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities. The case has escalated a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration

By The Associated Press The FBI on Friday arrested Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, saying she “intentionally misdirected” federal immigration agents away from a man they were trying to take into custody at her courthouse. The judge’s arrest escalates a clash between the Trump administration and the judiciary over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown. The

By JANIE HAR and KATE BRUMBACK Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The U.S. government is reversing the termination of legal status for international students around the country after many filed court challenges against the Trump administration crackdown, federal officials said Friday. The records in a federal student database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement

By MICHAEL R. SISAK Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione pleaded not guilty Friday to a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Prosecutors formally declared their intent to seek the death penalty, and the judge warned Justice Department officials to refrain from making public comments that could spoil

By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A former Taliban commander pleaded guilty Friday to providing weapons and other support for attacks that killed American soldiers and for key roles in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a reporter for The New York Times and another journalist. Speaking through an interpreter, Haji Najibullah entered

By MIKE CATALINI Associated Press Forecasters on Friday warned low humidity and gusty wind increased the risk that fire could develop across parts of New Jersey, Philadelphia and its suburbs and Delaware as firefighters continued to battle a vast wildfire in the Pine Barrens. The National Weather Service discouraged any outdoor burning with low humidity,

By JILL COLVIN Associated Press PASSAIC, N.J. (AP) — Alleged gang members without criminal records wrongly sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador. International students detained by masked federal agents for writing opinion columns or attending campus demonstrations. American citizens, visa holders and visitors stopped at airports, detained for days or facing deportation for

By JAIMIE DING Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Behind the remains of a town scorched by fire, the foothills are lush with new green and filled with birdsong. Wildlife is returning to the Eaton Fire burn area and scientists are closely tracking it four months after the Los Angeles area wildfires tore through the

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Thousands of people are gathering in New Mexico for a celebration showcasing Native American and Indigenous dancers, musicians and artisans from around the world. Billed by organizers as the largest powwow in North America, the annual Gathering of Nations festival kicked off Friday with a

By TERRY TANG Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — The Trump administration’s plan to strictly require anyone illegally in the U.S. to register with the government and carry documentation is stirring up fears of heightened racial profiling even among legal residents, immigrants’ rights advocates say. For some, it’s a return to a climate from the recent

By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) — Disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos was sentenced Friday to over seven years in prison, sobbing as he learned his punishment for the crimes that led to his expulsion from Congress. Santos, who pleaded guilty last summer to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft,

By SAFIYAH RIDDLE Associated Press/Report For America MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Legendary attorney Fred Gray — once deemed the “chief counsel” of the Civil Rights Movement by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — was honored with a statue outside the Alabama State Bar Association on Thursday. “Growing up in Montgomery on the west side,