WASHINGTON — Even as the House passed legislation Wednesday to provide $28 million aimed at helping to ease a baby formula shortage that has sent families scrambling, it also tried to address a second issue: easing the shortage’s impact on low-income families who use the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Raphael Warnock pitched President Joe Biden to go big with student loan forgiveness during a White House meeting Wednesday.

The three Democrats, who have been leading the effort in the Senate, support $50,000 in student debt relief, which is five times...Read more

WASHINGTON — US Supreme Court justices will received around-the-clock security at home, among other protections, following the leaked draft opinion advocating overturning abortion rights.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland directed the US Marshals Service to step up the personal protection for the nine justices last week, according to the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Even as the House on Wednesday debated a bill aimed at helping to ease a baby formula crisis that has sent families scrambling, lawmakers are grappling with a second issue: how to ease the shortage’s impact on low-income families that use the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC.

...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Republican legislators in North Carolina are not necessarily clamoring to quickly join other GOP-led states in fully outlawing abortion — even with the Supreme Court expected to overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming weeks and allow states to set stricter abortion rules than in the past.

Wednesday was the first day of the 2022 ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Nearly all of former President Donald Trump’s endorsements for Tuesday’s midterm primary elections emerged victorious, except for two candidates.

One of those was North Carolina’s divisive incumbent U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn. The other was Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin.

McGeachin became just the third Trump-endorsed ...Read more

Mastercard Inc. said it would help pay for workers to travel to access abortions if pregnancy terminations aren’t available in their home state.

“We will continue to offer employees access to the same health care, including family planning and reproductive benefits, that is available today wherever they live,” the credit-card company said...Read more

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee contemplated the overturning of Roe v. Wade at a hearing Wednesday, where doctors testified about the potential for prosecution of miscarriages, one House member told an unusually personal story of her pregnancies and Republicans called for the end of “abortion on demand.”

The hearing, in ...Read more

FLAT ROCK, N.C. — Chuck Edwards was on his way to his election night watch party about 2 1/2 hours after polls closed when he received the call from Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who had already returned home from his own party and was ready to concede the race.

Cawthorn had spoken to supporters at his campaign headquarters in Hendersonville about a...Read more

NEW YORK — Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Wednesday he’s mulling a run for an open congressional seat that’s drawn big interest from a number of local politicians looking to take a step up into federal government.

De Blasio posted on Twitter that he’s “forming an Exploratory Committee for the new #NY10.”

That ...Read more

WASHINGTON — More than a dozen Senate Democrats led by Elizabeth Warren are demanding data brokers provide information about mobile phone location data collection that can be tied to abortion clinics.

The Democrats wrote to SafeGraph Inc. and Placer.ai, which sell geographic and foot traffic data based on cellphone location, to highlight the...Read more

State Sen. Chuck Edwards is drawing national attention after narrowly defeating Madison Cawthorn, the embattled first-term congressman from Western North Carolina who earned powerful opposition within his own party, in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

Edwards maintained a lead over Cawthorn throughout Tuesday night, and even though the gap between the ...Read more

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Abortion may soon be a crime in Missouri, but prosecutions aren’t anticipated in Kansas City.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker has all but guaranteed her office won’t bring abortion-related charges, saying she will use her prosecutorial discretion “to limit the erosion of reproductive rights.”

All ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are throwing nearly every tool in their arsenal, including a proposed $28 million in taxpayer dollars, at the baby formula shortage. But it isn’t clear how quickly those solutions will result in cans on grocery store shelves.

The shortage is dire — right now, roughly 40 percent of infant formula is missing from ...Read more

Our phones know more about us than our families and friends do. They know what we watch, what we’ve searched for and whom we’ve emailed, not just recently but stretching back months and years. The leak of a draft opinion indicating the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn Roe v. Wade raises huge concerns for how online searches, text ...Read more

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. — U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn called his Republican primary opponent and conceded on Tuesday night, losing his reelection bid in the Western North Carolina district that sent him to Congress two years ago.

Cawthorn left his campaign headquarters in Hendersonville just before 10 p.m. and called state Sen. Chuck Edwards to ...Read more

The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol doesn’t plan to call former President Donald Trump and is “unlikely” to call former Vice President Mike Pence, either.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee chair, said it’s “not our expectation” to call Trump since the panel already has heard ...Read more

WASHINGTON — If you see an unidentified flying object in the air, let the Pentagon know — and officials have promised to take you seriously.

The Defense Department wants to remove the stigma around reporting such incidents so that it can better investigate them, starting with military personnel, Pentagon officials on Tuesday told members of...Read more

If, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court decides as early as next month to overturn Roe v. Wade, just how quickly Republican-dominated legislatures will act to restrict abortion and how far they will go to eliminate the procedure is uncertain.

But recent rhetoric from state officials and events in state capitols offer some clues.

GOP officials ...Read more