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

SEATTLE — King County prosecutors charged a 37-year-old Federal Way man with four counts of first-degree assault and one count of fourth-degree assault Thursday, nearly a week after a series of random stabbings in Seattle’s Chinatown International District ended when police arrested him at gunpoint with the help of witnesses.

The charges ...Read more

COLUMBIA, S.C. — High amounts of a toxic chemical are being discharged into the Congaree and Cooper rivers from plastics factories in South Carolina, but state and federal regulators are doing little to control the pollution, a new report says.

A study by the Environmental Integrity Project, a national public interest organization, found that...Read more

A state panel Thursday recommended issuing more than $44 million in grants for scores of addiction prevention and treatment efforts aimed at the deadly opioid overdose epidemic in Georgia.

Dozens of nonprofit groups, universities and other organizations across the state submitted proposals to the Georgia Opioid Settlement Advisory Commission. ...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

A frustrated bankruptcy judge said he has concerns over the process in which satirical news site The Onion won an auction for right-wing provocateur Alex Jones’ Infowars website.

Saying he was dissatisfied with the transparency of the sale process, Judge Christopher M. Lopez said Thursday that he would hold a hearing next week to hear ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — The Black and Latino families whose Palm Springs homes were razed and burned in a brutal urban renewal project in the 1950s and 1960s have tentatively agreed to a $5.9 million settlement, the city announced Wednesday.

Decades after city employees and the Fire Department destroyed an estimated 197 homes on tribal land in downtown...Read more

WASHINGTON — The House Rules Committee may mark up a resolution on Monday that would set terms for a House vote on holding Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in contempt for his failure to testify at a special hearing on the Biden administration’s handling of the 2021 military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The committee listed the ...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

More than two decades ago, researchers spotted a mysterious sea slug swimming more than 8,000 feet deep in the Monterey Bay.

In February 2000, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute were using a remotely operated vehicle to observe sea animals offshore when they discovered a bioluminescent mollusk with a large gelatinous ...Read more

CHICAGO — Chicago rapper Lil Durk pleaded not guilty to murder-for-hire charges at his Los Angeles arraignment Thursday, three weeks after his dramatic arrest in Miami as he allegedly tried to flee the country.

Lil Durk, 32, whose real name is Durk Davontay Banks, was accused of paying five associates of his South Side rap consortium “Only ...Read more

Newly released security footage of Liam Payne shows the One Direction alum hours before his fatal fall last month, chatting with one of the hotel employees now charged in connection with his death.

Video obtained by TMZ shows the staffer, who sources say is bellboy Ezequiel David Pereyra, stacking chairs in the basement of Buenos Aires’ ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — A man disrupted an already tense Michigan Senate committee hearing Thursday on whether guns should be permanently banned from the state Capitol building by using a racial slur to refer to people in Detroit while testifying.

The individual identified himself as Avi Rachlin and said he was representing "Groypers for America," ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Sen. Thom Tillis warned his Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues Thursday morning that they would face consequences if they approved a judicial nominee that he and Sen. Ted Budd are vehemently opposed to.

They did it anyway.

The committee approved, in an 11-10 party-line vote, President Joe Biden’s nomination of North ...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

After a spring semester that saw pro-Palestinian tent encampments pop up on college campuses around the country, the board that governs North Carolina’s public universities could move to draft a policy setting standards for protests that would apply to all 17 campuses under its jurisdiction.

Currently, there is not a single, UNC System-wide ...Read more

MEXICO CITY — In a blistering critique, the top U.S. diplomat in Mexico said the country is not safe and that its leaders should stop denying widespread violence, invest more in security and increase cooperation with the United States.

"To say there is no problem is to deny reality," U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar told reporters this week. "And ...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