Politics
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Some federal funding still frozen despite court orders, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey's administration reports
BOSTON — A judge’s restraining order has not prevented the Trump administration from holding up grant funding allocated for several programs in Massachusetts, according to the Healey administration.
Bay State Gov. Maura Healey’s staff says the Trump administration continues to defy the courts by withholding grant funds allocated for rape ...Read more

Washington state leaders tell Trump to 'follow the damn law,' vow to shield state
SEATTLE — Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Thursday reiterated his vows to shield the state from "chaos" coming from the Trump administration, including the freezing of congressionally approved federal funds.
At a news conference, flanked by more than 20 other state officials, Ferguson said $162 million in federal money remains inaccessible, ...Read more

'Not equipped mentally': Trump rips Mitch McConnell after votes against Cabinet picks
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump laced into Mitch McConnell for his mental acuity and accused him of letting the Republican Party “go to hell,” unleashing a rhetorical tirade against the Kentucky senator hours after he voted against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health department.
“I feel sorry for Mitch ... He wanted ...Read more

Is Michigan's 24-hour abortion waiting period legal? Judge to decide in new trial underway
DETROIT — A trial has begun in a case that challenges Michigan abortion-related laws, including a 24-hour waiting period, with testimony focused on whether they place an undue burden on women seeking the procedure in the state.
The bench trial is taking place in Michigan's Court of Claims in Detroit, where Northland Family Planning Center is ...Read more

Rep. Dave Min introduces his first legislation in Congress, and it's climate-related
Rep. Dave Min is pushing his first bill in Congress — a plan to track marine life along Southern California’s coastline.
The legislation would create a program within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to collect data on biodiversity loss and at-risk aquatic species, building on research from the Southern California Coastal...Read more

Bipartisan bill to combat illicit xylazine reintroduced by Rep. Panetta
MONTEREY, Calif. – The bipartisan Combating Illicit Xylazine Act has been reintroduced in the House by author Rep. Jimmy Panetta, CA-19, that would list xylazine as a Schedule III controlled substance while protecting the drug’s legal use by veterinarians, farmers, and ranchers. The bill has bipartisan support in both the Senate and the ...Read more

Trump birthright citizenship order piling up losses in court
President Donald Trump’s executive order to end so-called birthright citizenship for babies of undocumented immigrants was blocked indefinitely by a fourth federal judge, handing the administration another legal setback and signaling an uphill constitutional fight.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston granted a preliminary injunction ...Read more

'Not equipped mentally': Trump rips Mitch McConnell after votes against Cabinet picks
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump laced into Mitch McConnell for his mental acuity and accused him of letting the Republican Party “go to hell,” unleashing a rhetorical tirade against the Kentucky senator hours after he voted against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health department.
“I feel sorry for Mitch ... He wanted ...Read more

Gov. Josh Shapiro sues Trump administration over federal funding freeze, alleging Pennsylvania hasn't received $2 billion
HARRISBURG, Pa. – Gov. Josh Shapiro took the rare step on Thursday of suing President Donald Trump’s administration over its alleged failure to disburse more than $2 billion in federal funds to Pennsylvania, calling the move illegal and unconstitutional in the wake of a federal court ordering the White House to restore the funding.
Shapiro,...Read more

Trump moves to impose reciprocal tariffs as soon as April
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered his administration to consider imposing reciprocal tariffs on numerous trading partners, raising the prospect of a wider campaign against a global system he complains is tilted against the U.S.
The president on Thursday signed a measure directing the U.S. Trade Representative and Commerce secretary...Read more

Trump cuts to medical research funds will hit Missouri hard
ST. LOUIS — Missouri universities are sounding the alarm over the attempt by President Donald Trump’s administration to cut grants supporting biomedical research — a move that could result in the state losing tens of millions of dollars in efforts to tackle diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
A ruling this week by a ...Read more

Medicaid overhaul proves to be politically perilous proposition
WASHINGTON — In their quest to pay for President Donald Trump’s policy priorities, Republicans are eyeing Medicaid, the largest health insurance program for more than 70 million low-income Americans, as a program ripe for cuts. But they face obstacles that could block any sort of overhaul to the nearly 60-year-old joint state and federal ...Read more
Trump vows reciprocal tariffs today without giving details
President Donald Trump said he would announce reciprocal tariffs on Thursday, promising to deliver on his threat to slap tariffs on imports from countries that impose higher duties on U.S. goods.
The move would represent a major escalation of his trade war with economic partners. Trump announced the move on his Truth Social platform. He did ...Read more

A controversial fundraising tool is already shaping Georgia's 2026 election
ATLANTA — A political fundraising tool that allows wealthy donors and corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to key state leaders is giving some Georgia Republicans a head start on races for 2026.
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of financial disclosures filed this month found that some of the biggest donors to what are...Read more

Syria’s mass graves: Accounting for the dead and disappeared is crucial for the nation to heal
Shortly after the fall of Bashar Assad in Syria in December 2024, reports emerged of mass graves being uncovered in liberated areas.
Grim as such discoveries are, they should come as little surprise. The scale of the regime’s torture and killings in its detention facilities became evident years earlier, when in January 2014 a ...Read more

Trump and Maduro refresh a complex relationship governed by self-interest and tainted by Venezuela election fraud
In 2019, President Donald Trump recognized then-Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s interim leader over Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled the country since 2013.
The policy, which led Venezuela to officially sever ties with the United States, was consistent with the first Trump administration’s policy of ...Read more

60 years of progress in expanding rights is being rolled back by Trump − a pattern that’s all too familiar in US history
For many Americans, Donald Trump’s head-spinning array of executive orders in the early days of his second term look like an unprecedented effort to roll back democracy and the rights and liberties of American citizens.
But it isn’t unprecedented.
As we have written, American history is not a steady march toward greater ...Read more

Q&A: Rep. Janelle Bynum on what it means to be a 'disrupter'
WASHINGTON — “This foolishness they have going on here is insanity,” says freshman Rep. Janelle Bynum.
It’s an eventful time to be starting out in Congress, but in this case Bynum, D-Ore., doesn’t mean the early days of the Trump administration; she’s talking about House committee seating charts.
In the Oregon state legislature, �...Read more

Maryland General Assembly wants to change election laws. Here's how
BALTIMORE — Even when she was incarcerated, Gwendolyn Levi was an advocate.
Levi, who spent 16 years in prison, remembered years of gathering with other incarcerated women to talk about pending legislation that impacted all aspects of their lives, both inside and out of the correctional facility.
“We contacted our family, we wrote ...Read more

Commentary: Trump's Gaza proposal -- and the Madman Theory
Is Trump's Gaza suggestion that he intends to relocate the Palestinian population from Gaza and turn the region into “the Riviera of the Middle East” an example of the "Madman Theory" or is it a negotiation tactic?
The term "Madman Theory" is a concept that primarily came into vogue during the presidency of Richard Nixon in the 1970s. ...Read more