WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday seemed concerned that race may have played too large a role in the drawing of electoral districts in Virginia, to the detriment of black voters. Several justices hearing arguments in the case suggested a lower court failed to apply the correct standard when it upheld new boundaries [...]
WASHINGTON — As commander in chief, Donald Trump will face politically fraught decisions about a nuclear arsenal in need of modernizing. Among the open questions: How much modernization is enough? Can the U.S. get by with fewer of these weapons? Is it time to take some off hair-trigger alert? Trump’s transition website says he “recognizes [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump thundered to Americans, “I am your voice,” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination this summer. As president, he’ll find that Washington has a way of shouting back — even to the point of drowning him out. The seat of the federal government is teeming with interest groups, corporate lobbyists [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. home prices have fully recovered from their steep plunge during the housing bust and Great Recession, according to a private measure. The Standard & Poor’s CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index, released Tuesday, is slightly above the peak it set in July 2006, after rising 5.5 percent in September from a [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promises big tax cuts, a border wall and massive spending on infrastructure. That’s a recipe for bigger deficits that conservative fiscally-minded Republicans have railed against during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Trump’s agenda runs counter to years of promises by congressional Republicans to try to balance the federal budget. It’s [...]
WASHINGTON — During the course of the 2016 campaign, Republican Christine Todd Whitman compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. She warned that a Trump administration would bring the country into “chaos.” And a month before Election Day, the former Bush Cabinet official proclaimed her support for Hillary Clinton. Now, when young Republicans ask her whether [...]
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump pledged in his campaign to throw out what he called stifling regulations, including the stricter financial rules that Congress built to prevent another crisis. Now, as his transition team asserts itself, an all-out repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law — Trump called it a “disaster” and a “disgrace” — seems [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — School voucher programs in the nation’s capital and Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s home state of Indiana could serve as a blueprint for a Trump administration plan to use public money to enable disadvantaged students to attend the public or private school of their choice. President-elect Donald Trump made clear that school choice [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress’s routine of publicly shaming drug company executives over high prices works no better than a placebo: It may make some people feel better, but it doesn’t treat the problem. In the last two years, House and Senate committees issued more than a dozen subpoenas to price-hiking drugmakers, collecting hundreds of thousands [...]
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration urged tech companies to make millions of devices safe from hacking, underscoring the risks posed by an increasingly bewildering array of internet-connected products permeating daily life, covering everything from fitness trackers to computers in automobiles. In a report obtained by The Associated Press, the Homeland Security Department described runaway security [...]