WASHINGTON — The U.S. will respond as appropriate to a rocket attack last week on an airbase hosting U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

While he stopped short of assigning blame on ABC’s “This Week,” an earlier rocket incident prompted U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed fighters in Syria in ...Read more

NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump is returning to New York on Sunday for the first time since leaving the White House, the New York Daily News has learned.

The #MAGA leader will jet back to the Big Apple and stay until Tuesday, sources said Saturday.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller refused to divulge the purpose of the ex-president’s ...Read more

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan won a confidence vote in Parliament, ending a week of political turmoil and giving a boost to his fragile government.

Khan got 178 votes from members of his Tehreek-e-Insaf party and allies in the 342-seat lower house National Assembly, proving the majority, Speaker Asad Qaiser said in televised meeting in ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Republicans are looking to turn anger over California school closures during the coronavirus pandemic into a red wave for the 2022 congressional elections.

The GOP is laying plans to saddle its top targets in California — Democratic Reps. Josh Harder of Turlock, John Garamendi of Walnut Grove, Katie Porter of Irvine and Mike ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Republicans are gearing up for a looming fight over immigration, a volatile issue the party believes can help unite its fractured base.

While most of the focus in Washington is currently on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, Republicans acknowledge that is an issue that may not be as ripe for them to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to provide strong backing for the Violence Against Women Act in his fiscal 2022 budget request, in light of increased reports of domestic violence during the pandemic and lack of supplemental funding for the law’s programs.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., along with 26 other Senate ...Read more

After oral arguments in a pair of voting rights cases Tuesday, Supreme Court watchers predict that the justices will uphold two laws that make it harder for Arizonans to get their votes counted. The question is the precise legal standard that the justices will set.

Whatever that standard, the court's lean toward voter restrictions only adds to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss three pending appeals stemming from his predecessor’s efforts to block federal grants to cities and states that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

In joint filings with the court on Thursday, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth ...Read more

WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama outlined plans to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure, Republicans blocked them. President Donald Trump declared it to be “infrastructure week” so often that the phrase became a running joke, yet he failed to follow through with legislation.

Now President Joe Biden, eager to act boldly, believes...Read more

The GOP civil war just keeps on raging.

Former President Donald Trump took aim at the Senate’s top Republican and a conservative newspaper editorial board on Thursday over what he described as their attempt to “badly hurt” the GOP by pushing for his banishment from the party.

Trump, a voracious consumer of conservative media, took the ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sided with the government Thursday in a pair of rulings, one that limited the Freedom of Information Act and another that made it harder for immigrants to fight deportation if they have minor crimes on their records.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke for the court for the first time and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The federal courts have spent so long deciding whether House Democrats could subpoena Donald Trump’s personal financial records from his accounting firm that the ongoing legal saga has a new wrinkle: What changes now that he’s a former president?

The House Oversight and Reform Committee reissued the subpoena to Mazars USA ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Justice Amy Coney Barrett issued her first majority opinion for the Supreme Court, a ruling that limits the ability of environmental groups to use the Freedom of Information Act to get government documents.

The 7-2 decision is a defeat for the Sierra Club in a clash stemming from a proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule ...Read more

The U.S. House on Wednesday passed a sweeping law-enforcement reform bill initially introduced after last year’s protests over police killings of unarmed people of color.

The bill, H.R. 1280, passed 220-212, but it faces little chance in the Senate, where with Republican opposition it’s unlikely to get the 60 votes that would be needed to ...Read more

ATLANTA — The Fulton County Commission has rejected the firing of county elections director Richard Barron — sending him back to answer to a majority of an elections board that does not want him.

And now, that elections board will have a new leader: Commissioners voted to appoint former Atlanta City Councilman Alex Wan as a replacement for ...Read more

The Biden administration said it needed more time to decide whether to turn over former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress.

In a court filing Wednesday, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department said they were still weighing how to respond to a subpoena by House Democrats seeking six years of Trump’s personal and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is telling allies he’s strongly considering another run for president in 2024 — and close advisers want him to choose someone other than former Vice President Mike Pence for his ticket, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Trump publicly teased at the Conservative Political Action Conference on ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has made progress tackling management problems in the last two years but “significant” challenges remain, the Government Accountability Office told Congress in its latest annual assessment of “high-risk” challenges across the government.

Of 36 areas identified by the GAO, five are chiefly a concern ...Read more