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

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

LOS ANGELES — More than a week after Election Day, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel is still holding on to her razor-thin lead over Derek Tran in the race for California’s 45th congressional district, as of the latest vote tally posted by the secretary of state Thursday, Nov. 14.

But Tran has further cut into her lead in the nail-biter race. ...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

DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday cheered anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the nation’s top public health agency, highlighting the controversial nominee’s stances on “big pharma” and “corporate ag.”

Polis, a Democrat, faced quick pushback on social media after he said he was “...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

Venezuela’s No. 2 man, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who is often accused by U.S. officials of being one of the top leaders of the a drug cartel, challenged U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio to a lie-detector contest to see which one of the two has a drug connection.

Rubio, who was tapped this week by President-elect Donald Trump to become ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Since he began taking over the Republican Party nearly a decade ago, President-elect Donald Trump has demanded increasing levels of loyalty from lawmakers who serve in Congress.

With few exceptions, they have gone along, refusing to convict him in two impeachment trials and, even after he was convicted of 34 felonies, helping ...Read more

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday he will nominate former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, a longtime political ally who represented a northwest Georgia seat in Congress, to join his Cabinet as secretary of the sprawling Veterans Affairs department.

Collins, a Gainesville lawyer, was one of Trump’s biggest defenders in the U.S. House during ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Matt Gaetz as a lawmaker pushed for measures to change — and sometimes drastically curtail — the policies and power of the Justice Department under the Biden administration, offering a window into how he might lead the sprawling agency as attorney general.

The Florida Republican’s legislation and track record in...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said he’s tapping Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a move that would elevate a prominent vaccine skeptic and pharmaceutical industry critic to a top role on federal health policy.

“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The reaction on the Hill to President-elect Donald Trump announcing that he nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, to become the next attorney general came swiftly.

House Republicans reportedly let out an audible gasp at their meeting at a nearby Hyatt.

One couldn’t stop laughing when reporters asked ...Read more

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

The move, which Trump announced in a Truth Social post, comes as Williams is overseeing several high-profile cases ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent Thursday to nominate noted vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his Health and Human Services secretary, disclosing his pick after the Senate left town for the weekend.

“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of voices are calling for the release of a much-hyped House Ethics report on Rep. Matt Gaetz, who resigned Wednesday shortly after earning President-elect Donald Trump’s nod for attorney general.

House Ethics had been investigating the Florida Republican for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other ...Read more