SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a pair of bills Thursday providing $2.5 billion in state aid in response to the wildfires that have decimated neighborhoods, destroyed schools and damaged public infrastructure across Los Angeles County.

“This money will be made available immediately,” Newsom said Thursday afternoon, standing ...Read more

In Japan, a prepared dish costs up to $90 a plate, while in the northeastern United States they are worth thousands of dollars a pound, fresh out of the water.

But the gross-looking, wriggly fish that has become both a delicacy — and a currency — known as "zangi" in Haitian-Creole, is also fueling a new kind of illicit trafficking in the ...Read more

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. is getting a fresh look after President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at declassifying the remaining federal records relating to his 1968 murder.

The order, among a flurry of executive actions Trump has quickly taken the first week of his second term, will also look at the ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York’s top education officials are raising concerns about a potential school cellphone ban as President Trump’s mass deportation plans threaten to separate undocumented children from their families.

At a Brooklyn town hall Thursday night, State Education Department Commissioner Betty Rosa and Board of Regents Chancellor ...Read more

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is asking Haitians to forgive a group of Colombian mercenaries accused of being guns-for-hire in the still unsolved 2021 assassination of their president, Jovenel Moïse.

The men, 17 of whom are currently jailed in Haiti and another one who is serving a life sentence in the United States after pleading guilty ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Some policyholders who lost their homes in the Los Angeles fires are not getting claims advances that are due to them, Insurance Commissioner Richard Lara alleged Thursday.

In response, Lara issued a bulletin reminding all California insurers that the law requires victims who have suffered total losses to get advance payments ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho House Republican leader previewed a slate of large tax cuts Idahoans could see this year, beginning with a potentially historic cut to individual and corporate income taxes.

The cut would bring Idaho’s flat income tax rate to 5.3%, down from the 5.695% that it is currently, which the state estimates would amount to ...Read more

House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly warned Republican lawmakers against subpoenaing the phone records of key Jan. 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson, saying doing so could reveal “sexual texts” that might embarrass some of his colleagues.

Hutchinson served as a whistleblower in the bipartisan House Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack that concluded ...Read more

President Donald Trump is expected to travel to Southern California on Friday to see firsthand the devastation caused by wildfires that have rippled through Los Angeles County over the past two-and-a-half weeks.

As of Thursday afternoon, details of the president’s visit remain scant. What we do know is that the trip will come during Trump’s...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Sacramento Police Department vowed not to engage in any immigration enforcement in accordance with California law two days after the Trump Administration threatened to prosecute local officials who don’t cooperate with federal immigration agents.

In a Jan. 10 community bulletin posted on the Police Department’s ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Although President Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons for defendants who faced charges related to events that occurred at or near the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, the cases aren’t fully going away just yet.

Amid an effort to dismiss hundreds of cases following Trump’s proclamation Monday for more than 1,500 defendants,...Read more

President Donald Trump announced plans to nominate an Idaho resident to be the U.S. Air Force’s second in command.

“I am pleased to announce that Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier will be the next United States Under Secretary of the Air Force,” Trump wrote on social media Friday.

As undersecretary, Lohmeier would be the No. 2-ranked ...Read more

Troops from California's Camp Pendleton have been ordered to immediately deploy to the nation’s southern border, Marine Corps officials announced Thursday.

The 500 Marines and sailors from the I Marine Expeditionary Force will be tasked “to carry out directed missions called for by the president to secure the border and protect and defend ...Read more

A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump's attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour on Thursday was blistering in his criticism of Trump's action as he ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — Evacuations have been lifted after a fire sparked south of the University of California, San Diego on Thursday afternoon. and a second fast-moving fire in the Otay Mountain area is fast growing.

Evacuations were initially ordered for neighborhoods between North Torrey Pines Road and La Jolla Parkway off La Jolla Scenic Drive North...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Southern California’s fire season refuses to quit, even with rain on the horizon.

In the last day, hundreds of weary firefighters have battled multiple fires in the hills around Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including a massive blaze near Castaic, an early morning fire in the Sepulveda Pass that threatened the tony ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday temporarily blocked, nationwide, President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, the first legal roadblock in a flurry of high-profile initiatives in his first days back in the White House.

The ruling came after a hearing in a challenge from Washington...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal civil jury has awarded more than $1.3 million to a man who was injured by a police projectile at a George Floyd protest in the summer of 2020, concluding the first excessive force trial over the police aggression that garnered international scorn and changed the city’s protest response.

Kyle Johnson sued the ...Read more

RICHMOND — A bill that would install a public defender in every judicial jurisdiction in the commonwealth but also expand the responsibility of state prosecutors advanced in a Senate committee this week. But the next hurdle will be finding the money to pay for it.

The Senate Courts and Justice Committee voted Wednesday to advance the ...Read more