WASHINGTON — As the White House accuses the Smithsonian Institution of “ideological capture,” it’s put members of Congress in a tough spot as they weigh what, if anything, they can do.

A 162-page White House report released last weekend singled out the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, saying it “no longer treats the ...Read more

It often feels like the only predictable thing about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is that he’s unpredictable.

At a NATO summit on Wednesday, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It went quite differently than their public disagreement at the Oval Office last year.

“We’ve actually developed a good ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump fired two Democratic members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an agency charged with helping states facilitate accurate elections, and the Republican member resigned, a White House official said Thursday night.

The departures mark the latest move by the president to put his stamp on how U.S. ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Thursday vetoed a bill that would have enacted new campaign contribution limits in Alaska ahead of the November election.

Lawmakers had narrowly passed the bill in the final hours of the legislative session that ended in May, looking to preempt a ballot measure that seeks to reinstate limits on ...Read more

DENVER — Melat Kiros, who earned the Democratic nomination to run for the seat long occupied by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, may soon face a new opponent in the run-up to November.

Shimon Blau, a pain management physician and Israel supporter, on Thursday turned in signatures required to get on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate — and he ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — One of U.S. Rep. Cory Mills’ GOP opponents is seeking to oust the embattled Central Florida congressman from the primary ballot, arguing that he didn’t sign a key election document and that a judge should declare his candidacy invalid.

Mills had a required candidate’s document notarized while he was in Washington D.C. ...Read more

American Bitcoin Corp. was built around a simple idea: that owning and mining Bitcoin would be enough to mint money.

Instead, the company co-founded by Eric Trump is mired in a deep downturn. As Bitcoin sank into a bear market and demand for artificial intelligence surged, investors increasingly favored miners that could repurpose their ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — Democrat William Lawrence, who's running for one of Michigan's battleground seats in the U.S. House, labeled three prominent members of his party "warmongers" while speaking on a podcast days before the November 2024 election.

Lawrence, a political organizer from Lansing, made the comment on a show he hosted called "...Read more

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — Accusations of outsourcing, lying, losing, desperation and what one candidate described as "magic numbers" flew Wednesday night at a debate featuring the three men who hope to be the Republican nominee for governor this fall.

Twenty-seven days before the Aug. 4 primary election, former Attorney General Mike Cox, U.S. Rep. ...Read more

BOSTON — The Department of Justice is sending election monitors to two Massachusetts cities this year for the September primary, with the Bay State among five other states where federal monitors will be observing voter activity.

The directive was announced this week by Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Harmeet ...Read more

MIAMI — The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is adding Florida’s newly drawn 22nd District to its list of target seats in its effort to win back control of the U.S. House in November.

The DCCC is directing extra resources into roughly 50 open or Republican-held districts nationwide that the party sees as flippable in their favor ...Read more

In the annals of Supreme Court decisions, the public likely remembers what justices wrote for the court in famous cases, such as the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

Or perhaps the public remembers great dissenting opinions that display foresight and speak across the ages. Justice ...Read more

The murder rate in 2025 was the lowest in modern American history.

Preliminary data shows the murder rate fell nearly 20% from 2024, likely making it the lowest rate since reliable national data began to be collected in 1960.

Why was the murder rate so low?

I’m a politics/politicalnews/s-4248524">Read more

By this point in a typical election year, federal intelligence officials would have briefed Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and other election officials on emerging threats to the November election.

Simon would have joined federal agencies in rehearsing responses to worst-case scenarios, from foreign cyberattacks and bomb threats to ...Read more

It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a bombshell.

On July 6, 2026, Politico published the detailed account of a Maine woman who said she had been sexually assaulted by Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner almost five years ago. Platner called the allegation “categorically untrue,” then said he was “taking the time to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he would ask the Supreme Court to rehear a case over birthright citizenship, a long-shot bid to undo a ruling that went against his administration.

Trump has assailed the court over last month’s 6-3 ruling, which invalidated an executive order the president issued last year that sought to restrict ...Read more

Sen. Ed Markey and Congressman Seth Moulton faced off Wednesday in a western Massachusetts primary debate, hitting on everything from Markey’s age to Moulton’s stance on trans athletes to President Trump and issues focused on the region.

The debate aired on WWLP-TV, featuring five local journalists who alternated in asking the two ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and European officials hoping to get clarity on the U.S.-Iran conflict from President Donald Trump at a NATO summit likely left disappointed.

During a Wednesday evening news conference in Ankara, Turkey, the first reporter to question him characterized the Iran standoff as a “strategic dead end for you” and asked ...Read more

NEW YORK — A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of more than $5 million owed to E. Jean Carroll by Donald Trump despite the president’s eleventh-hour bid to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to delay the payout once again.

Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order directing that the money be disbursed from a court-...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Rod Joseph, a Republican congressional candidate in a Broward district that’s home to communities with large numbers of LGBTQ residents, believes that everyone is “born straight” and some people become LGBTQ by choice.

“You cannot be born gay. That’s impossible biologically,” he said.

Joseph said sexuality...Read more