Daily news coverage of politics, policy, and issues shaping the nation.
If former presidential aide Sebastian Gorka could save only one possession from his house, he would save the crucifix his father carved from a toothbrush while imprisoned under socialism in Hungary. With powerful stories like this about his family’s escape from socialist Hungary and his father’s sufferings in a Soviet prison, the former deputy assistant…
The Senate sat in judgment of President Andrew Johnson for longer than two months in 1868. More than a hundred years later, in early 1999, it spent more than a month hearing the evidence against, and defense of, President Bill Clinton. Some conservatives now call for Senate Republicans to stop a potential impeachment trial of…
The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development told social conservatives Friday about its work to curb threats to religious freedom around the world. “The assistance that USAID provides to people across the world—it’s an expression of American compassion,” Mark Green said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “But it’s also a reflection…
Air Force Col. Leland Bohannon, a combat veteran, was close to retirement when he entered an unexpected fight—one to preserve his two-decade military career. “There always will be a pending opportunity for you to stand for what God has said in his word as the differences between where society is going and where God has…
If Democrats are successful in impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump, voters will send them home, a leading House conservative said Friday at a gathering of “values voters” in Washington. “Even before this president was sworn in they were talking about impeachment, and they’re bound and determined to do it,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said…
The chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement called out members of Congress for demonizing federal agents while not addressing relevant laws. “The safety and security of our personnel—officers and non-officers alike—is our primary concern. I think that’s why we’ve been so strident with our concerns about the ugly rhetoric that has been utilized around…
Pat McCrory, who faced an NBA boycott as North Carolina governor over his state’s “bathroom bill,” has accused the pro basketball league of hypocrisy after it apologized to China for a team manager’s since-deleted tweet supporting Hong Kong. The National Basketball Association’s apologies to China contrast with its 2016 boycott of North Carolina after McCrory…
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson of being “evasive” and “obstructive” during a closed-door hearing on Sept. 26 in which he refused to shed light on the potential political bias of a Trump whistleblower. “Your disappointing testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 26 was evasive to the point…
Kevin Lunny and his family ran Drakes Bay Oyster Company for about 50 years on the Northern California coastline before the federal government shut down the business over regulations he wasn’t aware of. “We produced nearly half of all the sustainable oysters in Northern California,” Lunny said Wednesday at the White House, before President Donald…
A dollar won’t take you very far in California these days. Today, the state has an average gas price of $4.18 per gallon, more than $1.50 higher than the $2.64 per gallon average from every other state, according to the American Automobile Association. California has the highest gas taxes in the nation at an average…
KYIV, Ukraine—Protesters flocked to Kyiv’s central square, the Maidan, by the thousands Sunday to oppose Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s gambit to make a major concession to Russia for the sake of restarting peace talks to end the war in the nation’s eastern Donbas region. Along an entrenched front line in the Donbas, after five and…
African Americans still have a long way to go when it comes to fairer treatment by the criminal justice system, a New York congressman said at a recent gathering of black lawmakers. “The mass incarceration epidemic is something that has been with us now for almost 50 years,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said during a…
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House, praised the many people who helped him throughout his life—notably a future president named Ronald Reagan. Meese was deputy district attorney for Alameda County, California, when Gov. Ronald Reagan hired the lawyer as his legal affairs secretary in 1967….
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked the Department of Justice and FBI on Tuesday for an update on the criminal referrals he submitted against witnesses who made potentially false accusations of sexual misconduct against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee, when Grassley was chairman in 2018, asked the Justice Department to pursue criminal investigations of…
The White House said in a blistering letter sent Tuesday to top House Democrats that officials in the executive branch will not cooperate with House Democrats’ “constitutionally illegitimate” impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. In the letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone accused Democrats of attempting to both overturn the results of the 2016 election and…
The Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law that makes it a crime to “encourage or induce” someone to enter the country illegally violates the First Amendment. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law is unconstitutional in December 2018. The justices added the case to their docket Friday. “The provisions here are primarily…
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, has invited Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, to testify before his committee amid House Democrats’ move to launch an impeachment inquiry into the president. Giuliani has been vocal about stories of corruption in Ukraine, sounding off on allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden influenced Ukraine's…
The acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection says that nearly 1 million “enforcement actions” took place on the southern border in the past fiscal year. At a White House briefing Tuesday, Mark Morgan revealed the latest border apprehension statistics and what the Trump administration is doing to control the immigration crisis. “CBP’s enforcement actions…
A Michigan municipal election official being charged with six felonies in the discarding of nearly 200 votes is not likely an indication of voting problems nationally, election experts say. But an election integrity watchdog still wants to get to the bottom of the matter. “Whether it changed the outcome is not really an issue when…
The U.S. Commerce Department added 28 Chinese firms to a trade blacklist Monday for being implicated in the abuse of Muslim minorities in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. The decision to blacklist 20 Chinese public security businesses and eight other companies, including a video surveillance firm called Hikvision, will effectively prevent entities from purchasing U.S. products by imposing…