DENVER — After Denver’s top Catholic cleric led a prayer over President Donald Trump in the White House last week, he said he knew the event might be used for political purposes — but he didn’t intend for his participation to be an endorsement of the president.

“We pray for people,” Archbishop James Golka told the Denver Catholic, a...Read more

CHICAGO — Ald. Anthony Beale tilted his head forward at his wooden desk Monday morning, peering over the spectacles that had slid down his nose for an opening salvo in City Hall’s budget negotiations.

Beale, the 9th Ward alderman, stared one by one at Mayor Brandon Johnson’s top finance leaders, feet in front of him — budget director, ...Read more

NEW YORK — The Trump administration’s unceremonious firing of veteran Manhattan prosecutor Maurene Comey was unconstitutional and flew in the face of “ nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent,” a federal judge ruled Monday.

The decision came in a September 2025 suit that Comey, a highly respected former fed, brought against ...Read more

OAKLAND, Calif. — Fresh out of a closed-door City Council meeting in April 2019, then-Oakland Council member Sheng Thao was upset and wanted to strategize about what she had just heard.

She dialed Andy Duong, the well-connected scion helping to run the city’s recycling contractor, and allegedly revealed the city’s private legal strategy ...Read more

As hope that a mass revolt that could help topple the Cuban government fades away, the Trump administration is carefully watching the dynamics in Havana, looking for insiders willing to break away from the communist regime to push for changes on the island.

During the weekend, the administration made the strategy public: In a rare social media ...Read more

Officials on Monday opened applications for a $200 million clean energy auction to help fund solar, wind and other energy projects. But the program isn’t expected to lower residents’ electric bills anytime soon.

The Megawatts for Maryland program aims to increase electricity supply as demand grows, and officials say that more generation ...Read more

High tides inundated Southern California communities with water on Monday, flooding streets from Newport Beach to Long Beach, as the region braces for days of coastal flooding from near-record or record-high sea levels this week.

As high tide peaked Monday morning, water surged from Newport Harbor onto the streets of the Balboa Peninsula, ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Trump administration’s list of people it says may be noncitizens who are improperly registered to vote is at the center of numerous fast-moving legal cases that could force changes to California’s management of next week’s midterm elections.

The list, which the administration has admitted may not be fully ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department accused former FBI Director James Comey of illegally directing the sharing of secret national defense information 10 years ago, according to a court filing unsealed on Monday.

Comey, who President Donald Trump has repeatedly said should be investigated and prosecuted, is alleged to have knowingly ...Read more

Companies with ties to President Donald Trump and his family are staffing up with lawyers and lobbyists, as Democrats threaten sweeping probes if they flip either chamber of Congress in the midterm elections.

With polls and prediction markets favoring a change in power, firms with connections to the Trumps — from cryptocurrency businesses, to...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Court of Appeals has reinstated a jury’s guilty verdict in a $7.2 million Medicaid fraud case after a Hennepin County judge threw out the conviction last year before sentencing.

In a unanimous decision, three appellate court judges found there was sufficient evidence to convict Abdifatah Yusuf of six counts of ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is suing two businesses and related individuals, claiming they defrauded the state out of millions of dollars in federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ellison filed two civil lawsuits. One of the suits filed Monday in Hennepin County District Court names Nasib Bakery...Read more

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the Trump administration obtained assurances from Venezuela’s interim government weeks before María Corina Machado’s surprise return that the opposition leader could enter the country safely and move freely, providing the clearest account yet of Washington’s role in her homecoming after ...Read more

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee issued a 53-page report Monday alleging that five women have accused President Donald Trump of rape or sexual assault while in the company of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, or shortly after meeting the men together, decades before his presidency.

The Committee presented at least one new ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s threat to veto everything that a possibly Democratic-run Congress might send him next year is igniting a debate in the opposition party as it contemplates a legislative agenda in a divided Washington.

The Republican president, who has spent his 11 years in national politics touting deal-making chops he ...Read more

NEW YORK — New Yorkers came out in force on the first weekend of early voting, with over 165,000 people in the five boroughs casting ballots on Saturday and Sunday — nearly 70,000 more than the last midterm elections four years ago.

Statewide, about 435,000 people cast their ballots over the weekend. Early voting runs until Nov. 1.

The ...Read more

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro went to Bucks County on Monday to sign a law banning cell phones in all K-12 schools, starting in the 2027-2028 year.

At Lenape Middle School in the Central Bucks School District, the Democratic governor touted the new law — which requires schools to enact policies prohibiting the use of cell phones from the ...Read more