WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Health and Human Services Department, will divest his interest from pending complaints he is involved in against the United States and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program if confirmed, according to filings released Wednesday.

However, under the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — After flames leveled nearly 500 homes in Bel-Air and Brentwood in 1961, Los Angeles had a reckoning over firefighting.

By 1964, city leaders had added 13 fire stations, mapped out fire hydrants, purchased helicopters and dispatched more crews to the Santa Monica Mountains. To accommodate growth in Pacific Palisades, they built a...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services directed agency leaders to halt external communications, including press releases, guidance and social media, through Feb. 1, according to a memo from the acting secretary.

The memo, which was sent to agency leaders by acting HHS Secretary Dorothy Fink, outlines that the HHS agencies ...Read more

NEW YORK — A Brooklyn judge cut a Texas scammer a break, giving the man 18 months for trying to defraud George Santos — and blasted the former congressman’s “cowardice” for not showing up in person Wednesday to give a victim statement.

Hector Medina, 37, reached out to Santos in the summer of 2023, describing himself as a fixer who ...Read more

As part of a torrent of decisions he issued this week hours after taking office, President Donald Trump declared that the name of America’s tallest mountain be changed from Denali to Mount McKinley, and that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed “The Gulf of America.”

Trump’s executive order Monday directing the Department of Interior to make ...Read more

CHICAGO — Ex-House speaker Michael Madigan, formerly the most powerful man in Illinois politics, “conspired to enhance and preserve (his) power and line his pockets” for years, prosecutors said at the outset of marathon closing arguments in Madigan’s corruption trial.

“Time and again, Madigan abused the tremendous power he wielded,”...Read more

WASHINGTON — While ticket-splitting remained rare in 2024, it was enough for House Democrats to eat into Republicans’ majority. That will allow the minority party to influence key legislative votes, and keep control of the House within reach in the 2026 midterm elections.

For anyone who thinks 2025 is an “off-year,” past and future ...Read more

MIAMI — Walking out of the gate at Miami International Airport wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat with “Never Surrender” written on the side, Enrique Tarrio returned to Miami after President Donald Trump pardoned him for his role in orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The chairman of the Proud Boys was ...Read more

ATLANTA — On his second day in office, President Donald Trump rescinded policies that prevented federal immigration officials from arresting undocumented immigrants in sensitive locations such as churches, hospitals and schools.

Some metro Atlanta school districts, colleges and universities said Wednesday they are trying to get legal clarity ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is sending 1,500 troops to the U.S. southwest border, and several military transport aircraft are already on their way to help deport more than 5,000 migrants put in detention by the Biden administration, defense officials said Wednesday.

The new deployments come just two days after President Donald Trump issued a ...Read more

Justice Department employees were told to support Donald Trump’s immigration agenda by sharing data collected on people in the country illegally with federal immigration enforcers.

Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, sent a memo to department staff Tuesday night outlining an aggressive stance on enforcement that he said is ...Read more

RICHMOND, Va. — Among the three constitutional amendments the Virginia Senate advanced this week was one that would automatically restore the right to vote to people who have completed their felony sentence.

But lawmakers have also taken up several other bills that would makes changes to elections or how people vote. Experts say that’s in ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Once debris from the Los Angeles County wildfires is cleared and rebuilding begins, attention will likely shift to the financial health of a small but growing California fire insurance provider.

The California FAIR Plan has an outsized share of the state’s riskiest policies because it is the insurer of last resort for home and...Read more

Across the U.S. South, extreme weather usually means boarding up windows against hurricane winds and lining streets with sandbags to hold back floods. This week, freezing temperatures and record-breaking snowfall are instead sending residents from Florida to Texas rushing to warming centers, and causing chaos on roads and runways.

The region�...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Wednesday demanded an apology from the Episcopal bishop who criticized his hardline policies on immigration and LGBTQ rights at the National Prayer Service on his first full day back in the White House.

A day after Trump was forced to grimly endure the tough-talking service by Bishop Mariann Budde, the ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York students may no longer have cellphones with them from “bell to bell” under Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed ban, but public schools will still need to find a way to get messages from parents to kids as the governor released more details about her plan Wednesday.

Hochul has been advocating for some version of a ban since ...Read more

CHICAGO — Citing a “financial shortfall,” Planned Parenthood of Illinois announced Wednesday – on the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade – that it will be closing four clinics across the state, including one on Chicago’s South Side.

The health center shutdowns come as Illinois is already grappling with a surge in patients traveling ...Read more

NEW YORK — More than 20,000 illegal guns have been seized by the NYPD during the Adams administration, the mayor and police commissioner said Wednesday.

The official tally — 20,137 since the start of 2022, including 377 so far this year — is updated daily on the NYPD website. More than 1,400 of the seized weapons were untraceable ghost ...Read more

Many Massachusetts parents have concerns with their students’ college and career readiness as they move through the state’s education system, according to a poll by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education released Wednesday.

The “State of Educational Opportunity in Massachusetts” survey polled 410 parents of K-12 students in ...Read more