Politics Election category, Page 260

The Utah Supreme Court suspended a judge for six months without pay this week over disparaging remarks he made about President Trump online and in his courtroom. The court ruling points to several instances in which Judge Michael Kwan, who has sat on the justice court bench for the city...

WASHINGTON — A flood of laws banning abortions in Republican-run states has handed Democrats a political weapon heading into next year’s elections, helping them paint the GOP as extreme and court centrist voters who could decide congressional races in swing states, members of both parties say. The Alabama law outlawing...

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge blocked on Friday President Donald Trump from building sections of his long-sought border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam, Jr., on Friday immediately halted the administration’s efforts to redirect military-designated funds for wall construction....

SANTA FE, N.M. — John Pinto, a Navajo Code Talker in World War II who became one of the nation’s longest serving Native American elected officials as a New Mexico state senator, has died. He was 94. Senate colleague Michael Padilla confirmed Pinto’s death in Gallup on Friday after years...

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s new executive order giving the attorney general broad authority to declassify government secrets threatens to expose U.S. intelligence sources and could distort the FBI and CIA’s roles in investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections, current and former U.S. officials said. On Thursday, Trump allowed...

WASHINGTON — A House Republican lawmaker blocked a $19.1 billion disaster aid package on Friday, delaying a bill that would send federal funding to disaster affected areas across the country. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, voted to block the legislation, which has the support of President Donald Trump and passed the...

WASHINGTON — President Trump directed the U.S. intelligence community on Thursday to “quickly and fully cooperate” with Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the origins of the multi-year probe of whether his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia. The move marked an escalation in Trump’s efforts to “investigate the investigators,” as...

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are fed up with the barrage of scam and nuisance calls plaguing them and their constituents and on Thursday, the Senate passed a bipartisan measure to combat robocalls. Senators voted, 97-1, to pass a bill designed to authenticate and block robocalls and enforce penalties on scammers who...

Distorted videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., altered to make her sound as if she’s drunkenly slurring her words, are spreading rapidly across social media, highlighting how political disinformation that clouds public understanding can now spread at the speed of the web. The video of Pelosi’s onstage speech Wednesday...

Joe Biden can take back a key battleground state that President Donald Trump won in 2016, according to ex-DNC Interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile. The former vice president can make up the less than one percentage point Trump won by in Pennsylvania over Hillary Clinton, Brazile claimed. “Look, I think it’s...

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi openly questioned President Donald Trump’s fitness for office Thursday, suggesting a family or staff “intervention” after a dramatic blow-up at a White House meeting the previous day. Both the Republican president and Democratic leaders dug in a day after Trump stalked out of the...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump dropped the pretense of working with congressional Democrats on Wednesday and sent a clear message that his re-election campaign will be centered on condemning overzealous investigations rather than advancing a robust domestic policy agenda. Both sides may have feigned surprise at Trump’s angry outburst, in...

WASHINGTON — Bernie Sanders wants to crack down on outside groups that do political spending, though one is allied with his presidential campaign. Elizabeth Warren has vowed no untraceable “dark money” will help her White House bid, despite being backed by an organization that doesn’t disclose some of its donors....

WASHINGTON — The hacking of U.S. election systems, including by foreign adversaries, is inevitable and the real question is how the country responds, Trump administration officials said Wednesday. The comments by representatives from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security underscored the challenges for federal and state governments in trying...

WASHINGTON — Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin out-prepared President Trump during a key meeting in Germany, putting the U.S. leader at a disadvantage during their first series of tête-à-têtes. The U.S. side expected the 2017 encounter...

ALBANY — New York lawmakers gave final passage to legislation Wednesday that would allow President Trump’s state tax returns to be released to congressional committees that have, so far, been barred from getting the president’s federal filings. The Democrat-led Senate and Assembly both approved the measures Wednesday, sending them to...

WASHINGTON — The curtains in the Cabinet Room were drawn. The Democrats were waiting. President Donald Trump came and went in all of three minutes. Round 2 of the president’s consultations with congressional Democrats on infrastructure went bust in a flash. Prospects for passing a large infrastructure bill evaporated Wednesday...

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday he has no idea who wrote a confidential Internal Revenue Service legal memo that says that tax returns must be given to Congress unless the president asserts executive privilege. Appearing before the House Financial Services Committee, Mnuchin said he was not aware...

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The mystery of whether Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was in the racist yearbook photo that nearly destroyed his career remains unsolved. A months-long investigation ordered up by Eastern Virginia Medical School failed to determine whether Northam is in the picture published in 1984 of a man...

ALBANY — A presidential pardon won’t be enough to clear someone associated with the commander-in-chief of similar state charges under legislation approved by New York state lawmakers Tuesday. The bill, which now moves to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, revises the exceptions to the state’s double jeopardy law in an effort...