AP US Politics News

By STEVEN SLOAN and JOEY CAPPELLETTI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Thom Tillis isn’t holding back during his final year in Washington. “I’m sick of stupid,” the two-term Republican from North Carolina said from the Senate floor recently as he derided President Donald Trump’s advisers for stoking a potential U.S. military takeover in Greenland.

By OLIVIA DIAZ Associated Press/Report for America RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Amid a cold drizzle, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was sworn into office Saturday at the state Capitol as Virginia’s first female governor after centuries of men holding the state’s top office. The inauguration of Spanberger, who defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears to succeed Gov. Glenn Youngkin,

By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ready to restart U.S. mediation efforts between Egypt and Ethiopia with an eye toward resolving long-standing issues of water sharing from the ⁠Nile River. Washington-led mediations began during Trump’s first term, but they effectively collapsed in 2020, when Ethiopia

By COLLIN BINKLEY AP Education Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is delaying its plans to withhold pay from student loan borrowers who default on their payments, backing off a measure that threatened to deliver a financial blow to millions of Americans. The Education Department announced Friday involuntary collections on federal student loans will

By MELISSA GOLDIN Associated Press As protests continue in Minneapolis after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, social media users are falsely claiming that Enrique Tarrio, a former Proud Boys leader, is working for the federal agency. President Donald Trump pardoned Tarrio in a sweeping grant of

By THOMAS BEAUMONT, JOHN HANNA and JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press DALLAS (AP) — Sen. John Cornyn stood in the shadow of the U.S.-Mexico border wall for a campaign event, but the Texas Republican didn’t offer the kind of diatribe about illegal immigration that stokes his party’s core and fueled Donald Trump’s rise to the White

By The Associated Press President Donald Trump took the unusual step on Friday of thanking the Iranian government for not following through on executions of what he said was meant to be hundreds of political prisoners. “Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,” Trump told reporters while leaving the White House to spend the

By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Ben’Ary was driving one of his children to soccer practice on an October evening last year when he paused at a red light to check his work phone. He was in the middle of a counterterrorism prosecution so important that President Donald

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and WILL WEISSERT Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Most American presidents aspire to the kind of greatness that prompts future generations to name important things in their honor. Donald Trump isn’t leaving it to future generations. As the first year of his second term wraps up, his Republican administration and allies

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department’s investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has brought heightened attention to a key drama that will play out at the central bank in the coming months: Will Powell leave the Fed when his term as chair ends, or will he take the

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against California that sought detailed voting records and personal data on its 23 million registered voters, concluding that the government’s request was “unprecedented and illegal.” The Trump administration’s lawsuit, filed last year, contended that California and other states

By CLAIRE RUSH Associated Press PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A group of mostly Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter Thursday to the U.S. Postal Service, voicing concern that mail processing changes could affect postmark dates for mail-in ballots during an election year that will determine control of Congress. Updated agency policy says postmarks might not

By JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema had a romantic relationship with a member of her security detail that led to the breakup of the man’s marriage, his ex-wife alleges in a lawsuit seeking at least $75,000 from Sinema. Matthew and Heather Ammel had “a good and loving

By CLAUDIA LAUER Associated Press Federal immigration agents deployed to Minneapolis have used aggressive crowd-control tactics that have become a dominant concern in the aftermath of the deadly shooting of a woman in her car last week. They have pointed rifles at demonstrators and deployed chemical irritants early in confrontations. They have broken vehicle windows

By KEVIN FREKING Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is halfway home in approving government funding for the current budget year that began Oct. 1 after the Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a three-bill package. Now comes the hard part. Lawmakers still must negotiate a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security amid soaring

By BILL BARROW Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota. But he’d be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that

By DAVE COLLINS Associated Press HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Betsy McCaughey, a Republican former lieutenant governor of New York who switched parties in an unsuccessful 1998 bid to unseat then-Gov. George Pataki, is now running for governor of Connecticut. McCaughey, 77, currently a conservative host on Newsmax and columnist for the New York Post, filed

By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A top ICE official resigned her job on Thursday in hopes of ousting the longest-serving woman in Congress, Democrat Marcy Kaptur, this fall. In a video launching her campaign for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, former ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said she had stopped more

By SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Talk to any Wisconsin Democrat about their hopes for 2026 and it’s not long before the T-word comes up. No, not Trump. Trifecta. Democrats think new district boundaries in the Senate and Assembly ordered by the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court, an open race for governor and

By JEFF AMY Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp delivered his final State of the State speech on Thursday — but it may not have been a farewell. As the rare Republican who has defied President Donald Trump and thrived, Kemp is still trying to mold politics in the battleground state in

By FATIMA HUSSEIN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is imposing a new round of sanctions against Iranian officials accused of repressing nationwide protests that challenge Iran’s theocratic government. Included in Thursday’s sanctions is the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, whom the Treasury Department accuses of being one of the first

By SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court raised 10 times as much last year as her Republican-endorsed opponent, putting in stark relief the challenge conservatives face in winning the race in the battleground state. The reports filed this week offer the first glimpse at one key

By BILL BARROW and JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press Donald Trump is determined to maintain Republicans’ threadbare House majority this fall and avoid a repeat of his first presidency, when Democrats won control of the chamber in midterm elections and went on to impeach him twice. This time, Trump is involved in candidate recruiting, dispensing

By The Associated Press Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado discussed her country’s future with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, even though he has dismissed her as an option to take over after an audacious U.S. military raid captured then-President Nicolás Maduro. Less than two weeks after U.S. forces seized

By MAYA SWEEDLER, EUNICE ESOMONU, HYOJIN YOO, SIMRAN PARWANI and PABLO BARRIA URENDA Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s starting to look like an exodus. Dozens of U.S. House members have announced they are not running for reelection, putting a record number of seats up for grabs at this point in the midterm election cycle.

By LINLEY SANDERS Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s second term has been eventful. You wouldn’t know it from his approval numbers. An AP-NORC poll from January found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of Trump’s performance as president. That’s virtually unchanged from March 2025, shortly after he took office for

By BECKY BOHRER and MARK THIESSEN Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A state appeals court will decide whether to dismiss felony voter misconduct charges against an Alaska resident born in American Samoa, one of numerous cases that has put a spotlight on the complex citizenship status of people born in the U.S. territory. The

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer If the byproduct of a raid on a Washington Post journalist’s home is to deter probing reporting of government action, the Trump administration could hardly have chosen a more compelling target. Hannah Natanson, nicknamed the “federal government whisperer” at the Post for her reporting on President Donald Trump’s changes