WASHINGTON -- No cellphones, no reading material, no talking. Not even coffee -- just uncomfortable chairs to sit in, water or milk to drink and the monologues of the House impeachment managers and President Donald Trump's lawyers for eight or more hours per day.

These are the rules imposed on 100 senators as they proceed through what could be ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- House prosecutors began their second day of arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on Thursday, as lead manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff drew some unexpected praise from Republicans for his steady performance so far during the hourslong, often tedious presentations.

"Good job," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Doug Jones' Senate campaign is holding an event on Friday, but the Alabama Democrat won't be there. Instead, Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to former President Barack Obama, is hosting the forum on women in leadership in Birmingham.

Jones, the most vulnerable senator in 2020, will be in the Senate chamber for the impeachment trial of...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have overestimated the amount of revenue their tax proposals would generate by hundreds of billions, or even trillions, of dollars, according to a new study.

The former vice president and the senator from Vermont have proposed vastly different tax plans: Biden is ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Defying environmentalists and public health advocates, the Trump administration on Thursday will announce the replacement of Obama-era water protections with a significantly weaker set of regulations that lifts limits on how much pollution can be dumped into small streams and wetlands.

The changes to the Clean Water Act's ...Read more

LONE PINE, Calif. -- In step with President Donald Trump's push for more energy development in California's deserts, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Thursday it wants to transform 22,000 acres of public land in the southern Owens Valley into one of the largest geothermal leasing sites in the state.

The agency has determined that ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Before Sen. Bernie Sanders jetted off from a Des Moines rally early this week to impeachment hearings that have him locked down far from Iowa, the candidate remarked on how prescient his presidential campaign slogan turned out to be.

"'Us, Not Me' is becoming very much a reality in the last two weeks of this campaign," the Vermont...Read more

NEWTON, Iowa -- Matthew Cox arrived at an Elizabeth Warren event here unsure of who he would support in the state's upcoming caucuses, indicating he was still deciding among four Democratic presidential candidates: Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang and Warren.

That made him a prime target for Liv Ellis.

Ellis, a young clipboard-...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's impeachment trial may be requiring senators to stay seated hour after agonizing hour, but there's one group getting more exercise than they've seen in years: Senate pages.

The blue-jacket-clad teens have been running all over the Senate floor, relaying messages between senators and staff, fetching water ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- After a Senate trial opening so contentious after nearly 13 hours that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. felt compelled to tell both sides to cool it, a weary Rep. Adam B. Schiff was perhaps stating the obvious early Wednesday when he admitted, "You're going to have tempers flare."

But when lawmakers reconvened later for the first...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton was among the first senators spotted ordering milk to the Senate chamber for President Donald Trump's impeachment trial Wednesday, and he took small sips to wash down what looked like a Hershey's chocolate bar.

This was the second day of the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history, and the 100...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's comment Wednesday that U.S. troops suffering concussion-like symptoms had "not very serious" injuries clashed with a yearslong, hard-fought U.S. military campaign to spread the message that a brain injury is not something to be minimized.

Trump was referring to at least 11 cases of troops in Iraq reporting...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had sat patiently through nearly 12 hours of back-and-forth arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump when tired, increasingly edgy attorneys on both sides began to grow louder and sharper around 1 a.m.

New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, one of the House managers, ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Bernie Sanders, who has campaigned for years as the candidate for "radical change" who will lead a revolution, now is talking more about he can beat President Donald Trump and has something to offer every voter.

Sanders is enjoying a rise in polling and fund-raising in Iowa and New Hampshire. With the Democratic Party focused on ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Wednesday hardened his opposition to allowing former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in his Senate impeachment trial, citing national security but adding a note of apprehension: "I don't know if we left on the best of terms.

"You don't like people testifying when they didn't leave on good...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's inaugural committee violated nonprofit laws by "grossly" overpaying for events held at a hotel owned by his family business, according to a lawsuit by the District of Columbia's attorney general.

Trump's inaugural committee made an "unfair and unjustified" payment of more than $1 million to the Trump hotel...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court justices on Wednesday sounded ready to rule that states that offer scholarships or subsidies to private schools must include those operated by churches.

The court's conservatives, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., said that excluding private schools because they are religious amounts to unconstitutiona...Read more

WASHINGTON -- It would stand to reason that representatives and senators, dissuaded by the gridlock in Congress, would hesitate to introduce legislation. After all, only 105 laws were enacted during 2019, a poor showing by historical standards.

But that's not what happened last year. In fact, lawmakers are on a pace to introduce more bills and ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- As President Donald Trump's impeachment trial gets underway, both sides are pointing to how the Senate handled the proceeding during the 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says he modeled the GOP rules for Trump on the ones used for Clinton.

Democrats say that's wrong, noting key ...Read more