BEIRUT — During his first term as president, Donald Trump took a bold if controversial approach to the Middle East.

He moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, forged landmark deals between Israel and some Arab states and tore up the international nuclear deal with Iran.

He imposed his will using a transactional style of...Read more

The United States presents a paradox: Though the media and public opinion suggest it is a nation deeply divided along partisan lines, surveys reveal that Americans share significant common ground on many core values and political issues.

As a political philosopher, I am deeply concerned about the perceived contrast between the public�...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A woman told Monterey police 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.

On Wednesday evening, the Monterey Police Department released a 22-page report revealing ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s first actions upon taking office in January could set the tone for how much he plans to leave the issue of regulating abortion to the states.

Presidents typically make two key global family planning decisions during their first week in office: whether to fund the United Nations Population Fund, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — With Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory and narrow edge in the national popular vote, Republicans believe the president-elect has completely reformed the party coalitions.

Trump swept the swing states this year and cut his margins significantly in Democratic states. But how much has the state-by-state partisan landscape ...Read more

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will have no shortage of targets when they burrow into the bureaucracy in an effort to make the federal government more efficient and cost effective. But one quarry stands out: the Pentagon.

Last week, the Department of Defense failed its seventh audit in a row, unable to account for portions of its $824 billion ...Read more

Is it possible to bridge America’s stark political divisions?

In the wake of a presidential election that many feared could tear the U.S. apart, this question is on many people’s minds.

A record-high 80% of Americans believe the U.S. is greatly divided on “the most important values”. Ahead of the election, a similar ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he's nominating Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Canada.

The development means a Michigan resident will have a role in the coming Trump administration and state Republicans will have to select a new leader in the coming...Read more

SEATTLE — In the early hours of Nov. 6, as it became clear that Donald Trump was poised to win his reelection bid for the presidency, the LGBTQ+ youth chat and text line for crisis line operator Volunteers of America began lighting up with calls and texts from teenagers.

The chat line saw nearly double the number of messages it normally gets ...Read more

CHICAGO — A conservative legal organization is ratcheting up its opposition to the requirement in Illinois that mail-in ballots be counted for 14 days after Election Day by calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse federal court rulings that upheld the law because three Republican plaintiffs lacked the legal standing to challenge it.

The ...Read more

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Republican Nick Begich III has won Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat, flipping it from Democratic to Republican control.

Results of the race posted Wednesday showed Begich defeating Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola, who first won the seat in a special election in 2022 after the death of Republican longtime Rep. Don ...Read more

Do not read Michael Wolff’s new book, a long list of Trump campaign surrogates declared on Wednesday.

The book — an as-yet unreleased and untitled new work by the author of “Fire and Fury” — will be filled with falsehoods and is best ignored, according to Trump’s staff, just like they apparently ignored Wolff’s attempt to ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The center-left New Democrat Coalition elected Rep. Brad Schneider to be its chair in the next Congress, as the caucus with a reputation for reaching across the aisle to strike deals grapples with how to navigate a second Trump administration.

The Illinois Democrat, who has twice flipped his district in the wealthy Chicago ...Read more

Surgeon and author Marty Makary is seen as the leading candidate to run the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under President-elect Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

Makary, a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a health researcher whose latest book focuses on questioning medical orthodoxy on topics from peanut ...Read more

MONTEREY, Calif. – A bipartisan letter urging the Biden Administration to lift restrictions on members of Congress traveling to Ukraine in order to get a clearer picture of American assistance there, among other goals, was led by Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, and Rep. Joe Wilson, Republican, South Carolina, District 2.

The letter ...Read more

Half a dozen groups and employers who oppose abortion are suing Gov. JB Pritzker and other state officials, aiming to stop them from enforcing a law that requires health insurers in Illinois to cover abortions and abortion medications at no cost to patients.

The groups sued Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Department of Insurance ...Read more

The presumptive next Missouri House speaker on Wednesday opened the door for Republican lawmakers to potentially overhaul a ballot measure that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution, despite recent comments he made about respecting the will of voters.

House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, told ...Read more

Pollster Nate Silver wants President Joe Biden to resign from office immediately and make VP Kamala Harris the nation’s first female president, albeit briefly.

“Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now?” the FiveThirtyEight founder posted on social media Wednesday. “It’s a very difficult ...Read more

WASHINGTON — After President-elect Donald Trump chose Mehmet Oz to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, the celebrity doctor's 2022 opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, quickly said he could support the nominee.

Trump on Tuesday nominated Dr. Oz as administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, responsible for the three...Read more