WASHINGTON -- Senators and veterans groups are working to convince a few last holdouts to stop blocking a quick floor vote on a bill to extend benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Advocates are lobbying President Donald Trump to sign the bill if the Senate clears it. But Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has questions about ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Progressive Democrats are eager to set the agenda in the new House majority, but they're about to face resistance from a large faction of moderates who want to tame the ambitions of the party's left flank.

How Speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi manages the tension, which is already on display, will frame the 2020 Democratic ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- At least 15 Democrats resisting Nancy Pelosi's speaker bid are holding firm in their opposition and say they plan to vote for someone other than the California Democrat during the Jan. 3 speaker election, providing Pelosi with little room to negotiate a victory.

With the House poised to have 235 Democrats seated on the opening day...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- The November midterm elections will bring a wave of new faces into Congress -- 100 new House members who make up a class with more diversity and more women than ever before.

It is also more pro-gun control. That's a byproduct of the new Democratic majority creating what advocates call a gun-sense majority. According to the group...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge refused Monday to let the Trump administration off the hook for abruptly ending a program offering safe passage for child refugees from Central America to reunite with their parents already in the U.S.

A magistrate judge in San Francisco dismissed some claims from a lawsuit challenging the administration's 2017 ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Election workers in North Carolina's Bladen County tallied the results of early voting before Election Day in violation of state rules and are accused of allowing outsiders to view them, a precinct worker wrote in an affidavit released by state Democrats.

The allegations raise new questions about missteps in an election fraud case...Read more

WASHINGTON -- North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows has emerged as a top pick for White House chief of staff as President Donald Trump has struggled to find someone to fill what has become one of the most perilous jobs in Washington.

Meadows would bring political and conservative chops to the position as Trump gears up for his 2020 re-election ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- A divided Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an abortion-related case from conservative states that sought to defund Planned Parenthood.

It was a sign that at least some members of the newly strengthened conservative majority are not yet ready to move the court to the right on sensitive issues such as abortion.

The court's ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump and his top advisers are considering whether to make Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, his next chief of staff.

Axios first reported the president's consideration of Meadows, one of his fiercest defenders in the House since he took office.

Trump has asked his closest ...Read more

WASHINGTON –– Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, Nick Ayers, will not take over from John Kelly when the White House chief of staff leaves by year-end, a White House official said.

Ayers and President Donald Trump weren't able to come to terms on an agreement for Ayers to stay in the job for two years, the official said Sunday. ...Read more

ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. -- In the run-up to the Nov. 6 general election, North Carolina officials were so concerned about ballot fraud in Bladen County that they sent letters to every voter who requested a mail-in absentee ballot, warning them not to hand it over to someone who might knock on their door.

"Only you or your near relative or legal ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- John Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general who became President Donald Trump's second chief of staff, will leave that post by the end of the month after struggling for a year and a half to bring order to a White House beset by chaos because of the president's impetuous behavior -- and occasionally Kelly's own.

Trump ...Read more