WASHINGTON — Linda McMahon once claimed an unearned education degree from East Carolina University.

Now the New Bern native is nominated to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Education.

Trump announced Tuesday that McMahon, best known as a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment, is nominated to be the next education ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Maryland counties are sharply divided over whether to assist President-elect Donald Trump with what he says will be the largest deportation program in American history.

A Baltimore Sun survey found widely divergent responses to Trump’s proposal — from Harford County’s pledge to “fully support” his efforts to Anne Arundel...Read more

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Crossing the Divide

I developed the idea for this course in 2016 during an Amtrak writing residency program. I spent over two weeks crisscrossing the United States via train while working on my 2021 book ...Read more

Now that the elections are over, you might be left feeling exhausted, despondent and disillusioned – whether your preferred candidate won or not. You are not alone.

Survey after survey has found that Americans agree that the political system is not serving them.

Americans say they are angry at the political dysfunction, ...Read more

History is full of examples of governments using forced segregation against ethnic minorities.

From settler colonialists coercing Indigenous peoples into reservations, Nazis forcing Jews into ghettos or the United States segregating Black Americans through redlining and zoning policies, displacement and housing have long been at the ...Read more

Shortly after the 2024 election was called in Donald Trump’s favor, he declared that voters had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

As the popular vote margin shrinks, however, this claim seems less plausible. But it puts Trump squarely within the historical tradition of how presidents – and those around them �...Read more

The fate of TikTok in the U.S. has been up in the air since 2020, when President Donald Trump moved to ban the popular video app because of national security concerns.

That set off four years of back-and-forth between the app’s Chinese owners and the U.S. government, with a possible ban scheduled to go into effect one day before Trump’s ...Read more

We commend Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for standing firm and opposing the dismissal of the hush money/Stormy Daniels case that resulted in Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions in New York last spring.

Now Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan should do the right thing and stay Trump’s sentence until he ...Read more

The U.S. fiscal outlook has dramatically deteriorated since the last time we ran a surplus in 2001, and President Joe Biden — like Democratic and Republican presidents before him — shares some responsibility for our high and rising debt. But it’s not too late to start turning things around.

During his time in office, Biden approved more ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced he will nominate Pam Bondi to be his next attorney general, in a social media post Thursday that touted the former Florida attorney general’s history as a prosecutor who “was very tough on Violent Criminals.”

Bondi, if confirmed, would oversee a sprawling Department of Justice ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A woman told police in Monterey, California, that Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, took her phone, blocked her from leaving his hotel room and sexually assaulted her, according to a newly released police report.

The Monterey Police Department on Wednesday night released a 22-page report ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as his new pick for U.S. attorney general.

The announcement — made in a post on Trump’s social media site Truth Social — came just hours after the president-elect’s first choice for attorney general, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name ...Read more

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s campaign committee has reported spending millions of dollars on Stripe Inc.’s payment-processing services in recent years, though it now says that those funds ultimately went somewhere else — and campaign-finance watchers say that’s a problem.

During the 2024 election cycle, Gaetz’s principal campaign ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday tapped former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as his new pick for U.S. attorney general.

The announcement — made in a post on Trump’s social media site Truth Social — came just hours after the president-elect’s first choice for attorney general, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — State police have been opening mail sent to the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office since September after a threatening package containing a manifesto and white powder was mailed to the state’s election official.

The U.S. Postal Service intercepted the package before it made it to the Idaho Capitol, and it was taken to an ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped several sitting members of Congress to serve in his administration — meaning their empty seats will have to be filled.

So far, he has chosen Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to serve as secretary of state and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as his U.N. ambassador. Both positions require Senate ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — The Boise trial in a lawsuit challenging Idaho’s near-total abortion ban concluded Thursday after six days of tense proceedings and emotional testimony from women who said they were forced to leave the state for medical procedures.

The trial seeking clarity on health exceptions for abortions prompted tearful testimony from ...Read more

A California woman accused defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth of sexually assaulting her in his hotel room in 2017 after taking her phone and refusing to let her leave, according to a just-released police report.

The woman told cops that President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon blocked her from leaving the room before forcing ...Read more

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley isn’t on board with several of Trump’s Cabinet picks, she told listeners on her recent podcast episode of Nikki Haley Live.

The former 2024 presidential candidate is concerned about some of Trump’s picks, but said she is looking at the policies for these nominations instead of personalities.

She...Read more