South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung saw his lead in the election campaign narrow sharply in the latest opinion poll released Friday as the conservative ruling party’s Kim Moon-soo made up ground after their first TV debate.

The opposition Democratic Party nominee Lee had the backing of about 45% in a Gallup Korea poll conducted ...Read more

It is with a typically Trumpian focus on packaging that supporters have dubbed the Republican tax-cut legislation the House passed early Thursday “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” But make no mistake: For Medicaid recipients, working people and anyone else who doesn’t dwell among America’s wealthy elite, this is the ugliest mess to emerge from ...Read more

The country has now witnessed and felt the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term. These days were filled with unrelenting, fast-paced executive action.

He signed a record-breaking number of executive orders, though many have been challenged and may be reversed. Working with Congress to pass legislation, though more difficult...Read more

Since President Donald Trump released his 2026 budget blueprint in early May, calling for $163 billion in federal spending cuts, much of the attention has focused on his slashing of foreign aid and boosting of border security. But the proposal also holds important clues — amid some mixed messages — about the administration’s approach to ...Read more

Mauricio Claver-Carone, the Cuba and Venezuela hard-liner tapped as special envoy for Latin America, will leave his position by the end of May, leaving Secretary of State Marco Rubio with some policy wins but without an important ally to navigate the Trump administration.

As a former Western Hemisphere director at the National Security Council ...Read more

CHICAGO — Eight months after a Cook County judge found Trump Tower repeatedly violated clean water laws, the president’s business operators agreed Thursday to pay $4.8 million to settle lawsuits alleging the skyscraper’s cooling system killed untold numbers of fish in the Chicago River.

The glass-and-steel tower, emblazoned with a sign ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — The Republican-controlled Michigan House voted Thursday to hold Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in contempt of the chamber and authorize litigation against her office after Benson failed to comply fully with a subpoena seeking election training materials for training clerks.

Benson has argued over the past ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld, for now, President Donald Trump's decision to fire two agency officials who had fixed terms that were set by Congress.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside rulings that would have reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House Republicans passed their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill early Thursday morning, sending to the Senate a filibuster-proof package that would deliver the major elements of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, from tax cuts and border security to lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

The 215-214 vote ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will attend the Group of Seven summit in June, the White House said, as tensions over trade and his efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine cloud U.S. ties with some of its closest allies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump would attend the gathering from June 15 to 17. ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Now that House Republicans have passed their “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, both parties are poised to make Thursday’s early morning vote a central point of their midterm messaging.

Democrats asserted that the GOP budget hurts working Americans and helps billionaires, declaring that the vote would help ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin and other guests were greeted by protesters as they arrived for a dinner with the president at his golf club outside Washington on Thursday, a day that saw Bitcoin extend its record high amid optimism about U.S. government support for the crypto industry.

Chinese crypto entrepreneur ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s economic package after a series of all-night negotiations and eleventh-hour compromises.

The legislation now heads to the Senate where lawmakers are looking to make their own stamp on the bill. The core of the package — an extension of the president’s 2017 first-...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fire without cause members of the national labor boards for federal employees and workers, despite lower court judges finding that the terminations likely violated federal law.

The unsigned, two-page decision addressed a tangle of lower court orders on the firings of Cathy ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Only four U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002) and Barack Obama (2009).

UK oddsmakers have made President Donald Trump the favorite to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, while offshore sportsbooks list him as the second choice.

Ninety-seven percent of ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Senate’s unprecedented move to revoke California’s ban on gasoline-powered cars by 2035 threatens to upend the U.S.’s status as both an economic powerhouse and a world leader on climate change mitigation, Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters Thursday.

He and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced plans to sue to block...Read more

As Democrats reevaluate their past support for then-President Joe Biden amid new reports that some people around him were concerned for his health and mental acuity while he was in office, Gov. Wes Moore said this week he isn’t wavering.

The Maryland Democrat was a fierce defender and active campaign surrogate for Biden before he dropped out ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A onetime congressional opponent of Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for threatening to have her killed.

William Braddock, 41, was secretly recorded in 2021 saying he had access to a “hit squad” and that he could make Luna “disappear,” according to the U.S. ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Landmark legislation that would rewrite the tax code and levy steep cuts to programs providing health care and food stamps to the poor passed the House early Thursday, a development that was celebrated by President Trump despite the bill facing an uncertain future among Senate Republicans.

The measure, titled the “One Big ...Read more