LANSING, Mich. — Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the Michigan GOP, and Betsy DeVos, a prominent Republican political donor from the state, are being floated as potential contenders for positions in President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming administration.

Tyson Shepard, executive director of the state Republican Party, confirmed that Hoekstra, who ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said he will nominate Doug Burgum for Interior secretary, a position that will give the North Dakota governor significant influence over plans to boost domestic energy production.

Trump announced the decision Thursday night during a gala at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida ahead of a formal ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday he selected three attorneys who defended him in criminal cases for high-ranking posts within the Justice Department.

In a statement, Trump tapped Todd Blanche for deputy attorney general, the department’s No. 2 official, and named Emil Bove for principal associate deputy attorney ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump says his Cabinet picks are meant to shake up a broken system. Now attention is turning to the deputies and hundreds of lower-level officials who will be needed to put those ambitions into action.

Take the Defense Department. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, 44-year-old Pete Hegseth, is a ...Read more

A Houston man has been arrested after allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in the United States that he hoped would be similar to Sept. 11, the FBI announced Thursday.

Anas Said, 28, was arrested by the feds outside his Houston apartment on Nov. 8 and charged with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

Said ...Read more

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for the mass production of attack drones after Pyongyang accused Seoul of flying unmanned aerial vehicles in the airspace over its capital in what it called a “war provocation.”

Kim oversaw the performance tests of various attack drones under development in his second field inspection in less than ...Read more

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco-based autonomous car company Cruise LLC has admitted to filing a false report to influence a federal probe into a crash last year in which a pedestrian was run over and dragged more than 20 feet, according to authorities.

As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, Cruise will also pay a $500,000 fine, the U.S. ...Read more

CHICAGO — State Rep. Jaime Andrade said earlier this year in a Chicago Tribune interview he didn’t know whether former House Speaker Michael Madigan had helped get his wife a job with the secretary of state in 2018.

On Thursday, however, the jury in Madigan’s corruption trial heard a wiretapped call in which Andrade, a Chicago Democrat, ...Read more

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of impersonating a registered nurse and overseeing the care of some 60 patients at a Burbank hospital, authorities said.

Burbank police detectives say it wasn't the first time that Amanda Leeann Porter, 44, of Virginia, pretended to be a nurse.

Prior to the incident at Providence Saint Joseph Medical ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Citing years of deterioration and crime since George Floyd’s murder, several business owners at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis demand in a new lawsuit that the city and Mayor Jacob Frey begin eminent domain proceedings to take over their properties.

Last week, the owners of Cup Foods filed a ...Read more

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday said that he wants to replace Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, with Jay Clayton, his former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The proposed change, which Trump announced in a Truth Social post, comes as Williams is overseeing several high...Read more

NEW YORK — New York City’s congestion pricing plan is back and set to kick in on Jan. 5, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday.

But the daily toll — which Hochul put on indefinite hiatus this past June, three weeks before it was supposed to go into effect — will be $9 rather than the original planned toll of $15 for at least three years,...Read more

LOS ANGELES — UCLA failed to protect students from a protest melee this spring because a “highly chaotic” decision-making process, lack of communication among campus leaders and police, and other shortfalls led to institutional paralysis, according to a University of California independent review released Thursday.

The highly anticipated ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — In a packed Boise courtroom, Idaho attorney James Craig on Tuesday invoked macabre imagery of abortions as he defended the state’s near-total abortion ban. They’re “gruesome and barbaric medical procedures,” he said in his opening statement, and described the process as one that involves “tearing a baby apart limb from...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, abruptly resigned his Florida congressional seat on Wednesday ahead of the potential release of a House Ethics Committee report about alleged sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old high school girl that a congressional source described to the Miami Herald as ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — The Penn Museum says it is in possession of more human remains from the MOVE bombing — three years after it was first revealed that university researchers had kept remains from the 1985 tragedy.

Penn Museum officials disclosed Wednesday that they had uncovered the remains during an “ongoing comprehensive inventory of our ...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ office ordered all city government agencies Thursday to set up accounts on BlueSky, a social media platform that has seen a marked uptick in new users since President-elect Donald Trump’s election.

BlueSky’s growth comes amid an exodus from X, formerly known as Twitter, amid concerns over far-right rhetoric ...Read more

WASHINGTON — As U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Peru for back-to-back summits with some of the world’s most powerful leaders, his aides expected lots of questions about Donald Trump.

Part of Wednesday’s meeting between Trump and Biden included a discussion on a coordinated approach to diplomacy to make sure they were not working at ...Read more

ATHENS, Ga. — The high-profile murder trial of Jose Ibarra, the suspect accused of killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus, is scheduled to begin here Friday.

The proceedings could move quickly after Ibarra, who has pleaded not guilty, opted for a bench trial instead of a jury.

Riley’s body was ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump says his Cabinet picks are meant to shake up a broken system. Now attention is turning to the deputies and hundreds of lower-level officials who will be needed to put those ambitions into action.

Take the Defense Department. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, 44-year-old Pete Hegseth, is a ...Read more