WASHINGTON — The Postal Service on Friday announced a substantial reorganization meant to increase efficiency as Democratic lawmakers demanded an inquiry into whether changes by President Trump’s appointees could threaten the effective use of mail-in ballots for the November election. Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general and a major donor to Mr. Trump’s campaigns, was named […]
Read MoreThe Washington Football Team released running back Derrius Guice on Friday after he was charged in multiple domestic violence incidents. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department told the Associated Press that Guice was arrested on one count of strangulation, three counts of assault and battery and one count of destruction of property. Strangulation is a Class […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Crisis negotiations between the White House and top Democrats teetered on the brink of collapse on Friday, as both sides said they remained deeply divided on an economic recovery package and President Trump’s advisers said they would recommend that he bypass Congress and act on his own to provide relief. It was not […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — President Trump’s sudden decision late Thursday to restrict two popular Chinese social media services from the United States has created confusion about how broad the bans on doing business with China could ultimately be. That confusion may be part of the point. Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration announced that it would […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — U.S. hiring slowed in July as the coronavirus outbreak worsened, and the government’s jobs report offered signs Friday that the economic damage from the pandemic could last far longer than many observers originally envisioned. The United States added 1.8 million jobs in July, a pullback from the previous two months. At any other […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump. At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — When Vice President Mike Pence, traveling aboard Air Force Two on Wednesday, heard that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had scrapped his planned trip to Milwaukee to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, he saw an opportunity. Before he landed back in Washington after a day trip to Florida, Mr. Pence and […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee can sue to force the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II to testify before Congress, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a 7-to-2 decision that enforcement of congressional subpoenas was crucial to […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Russia’s foreign minister against Moscow paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants and other Afghan fighters for killing American service members, U.S. officials said. Mr. Pompeo’s warning is the first known rebuke from a senior American official to Russia over the bounties program, and it runs counter to […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON – Brent Scowcroft, who played a prominent role in American foreign policy as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and was a Republican voice against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has died, a Bush spokesperson said Friday. He was 95. Scowcroft died Thursday of natural causes at his home […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 11 senior Chinese Communist Party officials and their Hong Kong allies, including chief executive Carrie Lam, over their role in cracking down on political dissent in the southern Chinese territory. These are the first sanctions against officials from China and Hong Kong over suppression of […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — The United States added 1.8 million jobs in July, a pullback from the gains of May and June and evidence that the resurgent coronavirus is weakening hiring and the economic rebound. At any other time, hiring at that level would be seen as a blowout gain. But after employers shed a staggering 22 […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a suit filed by congressional Republicans against Speaker Nancy Pelosi that sought to block the House of Representatives from using a proxy-voting system to allow for remote legislating during the coronavirus pandemic. Judge Rudolph Contreras, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote in […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, on Thursday defended his deployment of tactical agents to face protesters in Portland, Ore., after the standoff prompted accusations that the operation had politicized his agency. Mr. Wolf told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the local government in Portland had created a security […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — The United States government on Thursday became, for a brief moment, one of the biggest and perhaps most annoying telemarketers in Russia. Seeking to publicize new rewards of up to $10 million for information about people trying to attack American voting systems, the State Department sent text messages to cellphones in Russia as […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A Census Bureau memorandum on creating a state-by-state estimate of people illegally in the country is raising new fears of a politicized census — this time involving the population totals that will be used to reapportion the House of Representatives next year. The memo, issued Monday, orders an internal task force to explore […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — As Dr. Deborah L. Birx was taking heat from both President Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week, the Democratic governor of Kentucky spoke up in her defense. Dr. Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, had visited his state in late July, after he issued a statewide mask order and was contemplating […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A bill Democratic and Republican senators plan to introduce on Thursday would ban the sale of advanced armed drones to any nation that is not a close ally of the United States, according to lawmakers and congressional aides. The measure is aimed at halting an effort by the Trump administration to bypass an […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats in Congress say they agree that a new stimulus package must include billions of dollars to help schools struggling financially and logistically to resume education this month and next. But the parties are digging in over profound ideological differences, especially the divide between Democratic demands for public education spending and […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Top Democrats and White House officials on Wednesday remained nowhere close to an agreement for a new rescue package to address the coronavirus’s toll on the economy, growing increasingly pessimistic that they could meet a self-imposed Friday deadline as President Trump again threatened to act on his own to provide relief. Even as […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell has put himself in one of the toughest spots of a political life that has seen plenty of them. Up for re-election in the middle of an unforgiving pandemic, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader is caught in a family feud between a group of endangered incumbents in his party […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Joseph R. Biden Jr. acknowledged on Wednesday that he would not appear in Milwaukee to accept the presidential nomination he has sought on and off since the 1980s, bowing to the realities of a pandemic that has altered every aspect of life in 2020, including the November contest. The decision to cancel major […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Facebook took down a video posted by the campaign of President Trump on Wednesday in which he claimed children were immune to the coronavirus, a violation of the social network’s rules against misinformation around the virus. It was the first time Facebook has removed a post by Mr. Trump’s campaign for spreading misinformation […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — By a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with officials at a California jail in a dispute over the adequacy of its response to the coronavirus pandemic. The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when it acts on emergency applications. The four more liberal justices […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — When Vice President Mike Pence traveled to an event in Florida on Wednesday, he was not accompanied on his plane by a member of the White House press corps, as is typically the case. Instead, seated on Air Force Two in a space normally reserved for a White House reporter was the vice […]
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Calls to protect corporations and schools from legal blame if workers fall ill from Covid-19 contracted on the job have incited a growing backlash as Congress and the White House negotiate over liability protections in economic relief legislation. Businesses, hospitals, schools and the trade groups that represent them have pushed for any relief […]
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