WASHINGTON — Sen. Marco Rubio is Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, but in the weeks running up to Inauguration Day, the president-elect’s special envoys have been getting most of the attention.

Trump summoned Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff at a press conference last week to report on his push to get an Israel-Hamas ...Read more

A decision by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to ramp up tariffs gradually once he takes office would be “problematic” for the Federal Reserve as it battles the last-mile of inflation, according to Arend Kapteyn at UBS AG.

“We think of tariffs as a one-off price level shift and then it goes away a year later, and then provided it’s ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming economic team are discussing slowly ramping up tariffs month by month, a gradual approach aimed at boosting negotiating leverage while helping avoid a spike in inflation, according to people familiar with the matter.

One idea involves a schedule of graduated tariffs increasing ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a lawsuit Utah filed against the United States that could have affected millions of acres of federal public land in Idaho by transferring property to state management.

Court officials offered no explanation for the denial, which is common for court orders.

Utah sued the federal government last ...Read more

​WASHINGTON — If Democrats want to dust off their 2017 playbook as they mount an offensive against Republicans’ efforts to extend expiring tax cuts, this month has provided them plenty of fodder.

Democrats derided the 2017 tax law, much of which is expiring this year, as a giveaway to the wealthy, a message that played well in the 2018 ...Read more

ATLANTA — In a party-line vote Monday, the Georgia Senate revived a committee created to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The 33-23 vote was among the first of the legislative session. It will allow the Special Committee on Investigations to continue its work weeks after a Fulton County judge ruled that the GOP-led ...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said it will decline to hear a case regarding handgun licensing requirements in Maryland.

“This is great news for Maryland and common-sense gun laws. This law helps prevent tragedies and keeps families safe, by keeping guns away from those who want to harm our communities,” Attorney General Anthony Brown, a ...Read more

MIAMI — Senator Marco Rubio’s contract as an adjunct professor with Florida International University expired on Christmas Day and won’t be renewed, newly filed financial records show.

The Florida politician first joined the university as a visiting professor teaching politics in 2008, after leaving the Florida House of Representatives. A ...Read more

The American flag over President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was flying at full-staff Monday despite government buildings keeping theirs at half-staff in observation of former President Jimmy Carter’s death.

Carter, the nation’s 39th President, died Dec. 29 and was buried in his hometown of Plains, Ga., last week. President ...Read more

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, will testify before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of his confirmation process on Jan. 15, 2025.

Rubio’s nomination is remarkable for several reasons, including the fact that Rubio has been a harsh critic of Trump.

But the...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dealt a major setback to the oil industry on Monday, refusing to block lawsuits from California and other blue states that seek billions of dollars in damages for the impact of climate change.

Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down closely watched appeals from Sunoco, Shell and other energy ...Read more

Democrats torched GOP lawmakers Monday for what they called a lack of progress on restoring the popular tax deduction for State and Local Taxes (SALT) at a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend,

Team Blue says suburban moderate Republicans showed how little leverage they have with Trump when they left the sit-...Read more

Based on the questioning of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, the justices sound inclined to uphold a law requiring the Chinese owner of TikTok to either sell the widely popular app or be banned from this country. It seems the correct reading of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

As we’ve said before,...Read more

Donald Trump, felon, will remain exactly that. A felon. He also will remain a free man, ready to take the oath of office Jan. 20 to be the duly elected 47th president of the United States, able to do the will of the people without concern for his personal legal travails.

That was the upshot of New York Justice Juan Merchan’s deft handling, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court dealt a major setback to the oil industry on Monday, refusing to block lawsuits from California and other blue states that seek billions of dollars in damages for the impact of climate change.

Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down closely watched appeals from Sunoco, Shell and other energy ...Read more

BOSTON — Conservative critics are slamming Sen. Elizabeth Warren for setting up a fundraiser for communities affected by the devastating California wildfires on a platform affiliated with the Democratic Party.

Warren posted a link to her fundraising page on her social media accounts on Saturday, asking her followers to “split a donation ...Read more

ATLANTA — A few hours after attending Jimmy Carter’s funeral in Washington, Gov. Brian Kemp hopped a flight to Florida to take his place at the head table for a meeting of Republican governors hosted by president-elect Donald Trump.

Not long ago, a friendly face-to-face meeting between the former rivals would have been unthinkable given ...Read more

The new U.S. Senate is getting down to business, and one of its first tasks will be to consider Donald Trump’s nominations to federal office.

Trump himself has suggested his preference for recess appointments for Cabinet members. This would avoid the traditional confirmation hearings in the Senate, which are increasingly polarizing,...Read more