SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A federal audit released Wednesday found that only 25% of some $14 billion in federal funds obligated for Puerto Rico’s power grid after Hurricane Maria razed it almost a decade ago has reached the U.S. territory. Of the $11 billion obligated by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency alone, […]
A federal judge in Arkansas has thrown out a handful of state laws that put extra restrictions on citizen efforts to gather signatures for ballot initiatives, agreeing with challengers that they violated the constitutional free speech rights of voters. The decision handed several victories to the League of Women Voters of Arkansas and other plaintiffs, […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration sued California and Virginia on Wednesday over new laws in both states that restrict the sale of semiautomatic firearms. The two separate lawsuits filed by the Justice Department in federal court say the laws violate the Second Amendment. “The Constitution is not a suggestion, and the Second Amendment is […]
NEW YORK (AP) — The real estate mogul has become the billion-dollar crypto man. President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure report showed he took in about $1.2 billion last year from various crypto holdings, overshadowing a real estate business that brought him fame and helped propel him to the nation’s top office. Whereas it took […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Franklin D. Roosevelt toiled over paperwork there during the World War II’s darkest days. George W. Bush sat behind it to address the nation on 9/11. Beneath it, John F. Kennedy Jr. once crawled and peeked out from behind its front panel while his father worked above, an image so etched into […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, demanding a court order that would require officials to preserve records from investigations that are targeting him. Brennan said in the lawsuit that the records would be essential for him to defend himself against any eventual indictment and make the case […]
NEW YORK (AP) — A Democratic member of Congress is calling for the federal government to investigate the growing “rent now, pay later” industry, saying Americans may not understand the fees and cost structure of these products as the services become more widely available. Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Florida, sent a letter to Consumer Financial Protection […]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Trump administration has lifted restrictions on artificial intelligence company Anthropic’s latest versions of its Claude chatbot, ending a weekslong ban tied to cybersecurity concerns. Anthropic said Tuesday night that its AI model called Claude Fable 5 is now widely available. It’s also restoring access to its most powerful model, Mythos […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday is taking his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar that embeds his personality more deeply into the institution of the American presidency. Gone is the trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the […]
A federal judge has journalists be accompanied by an official escort, in another setback for the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict media access at the Pentagon. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington said that policy violated the First Amendment and he issued a preliminary ruling Tuesday barring the requirement while The New York […]
President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses. Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration looked to the Supreme Court to greenlight its sweeping hard-line immigration agenda and, by and large, it got the backing it was looking for with one key exception — birthright citizenship. After lower courts repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration, the nation’s top court allowed it to terminate […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the stars of the American firmament once advised citizens of all stripes how to express their love of country. Mark Twain’s long-ago words capture how Americans are stepping out this week to wish their nation a happy milestone birthday. “Our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete,” Twain wrote in 1905. “The […]
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump will visit North Dakota on Wednesday to see the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a massive facility exploring the 26th president’s life, built in the rugged, lonely landscape where the young easterner built his conservation values while ranching and hunting in the 1880s. The 96,000 square-foot library officially opens […]
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A ship ran aground in the Strait of Hormuz after not running Iran’s approved route through the water, Iranian state television reported Wednesday. The report identified the affected vessel as a foreign container ship, but offered no other immediate details. It said shippers needed to follow the instructions of […]
LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (AP) — Angelica Mundrain wants the bodies of her son, niece and nephew to be pulled from the rubble of her flattened beachfront apartment. She has spent every minute of the past six days waiting for the heavy machinery needed to remove the slabs of concrete and twisted metal that trapped them. […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration. Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and […]
DALLAS (AP) — More people awaited sentencing Wednesday over a shooting outside a Texas immigration center that has already resulted decades-long prison sentences for others, including a former Marine who received 100 years in prison. The hearing comes nearly a year after the shooting last July outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, which wounded […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Whither the U.S. House? As the nation celebrates its 250th birthday this weekend, the legislative branch has momentarily called it quits. The House leadership on Tuesday abruptly canceled votes and sent lawmakers home early for the holiday recess, Speaker Mike Johnson ’s majority once again ground to a standstill by a Republican […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tourists from Chattanooga check into beach resorts in Cancun. Canadian auto parts feed factories in the American Midwest – and vice versa. Happy Hour revelers raise glasses of Mexican tequila and mezcal at bars in Seattle. It adds up. The United States trades $1.9 trillion a year — $5 billion a day […]
HONOLULU (AP) — Photographs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. adorned with flower lei from Hawaii residents who traveled to Selma, Alabama, to join him on a pivotal Civil Rights march went on public display Tuesday in the state Capitol in Honolulu. The Selma-to-Montgomery marches galvanized passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, […]
The great-grandson of Wong Kim Ark, the Chinese American at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case that established the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, called Tuesday’s ruling a victory for all Americans, saying it reaffirmed that precedent. “I don’t consider this stuff a personal victory,” Norman Wong told The Associated Press. “It’s an […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Trump administration overhaul to a public service forgiveness program for student loans, ruling in favor of advocates who said the program risked becoming a tool for political retribution. U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Massachusetts vacated the U.S. Education Department’s changes, saying they overstepped […]
A second upstate New York resident said Tuesday that federal officers have served him with a warning about online activity that criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An attorney representing David Streever, of Rochester, said Streever was on a trip to Finland when two officers showed up to his home last week and presented his […]
