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American political news and analysis
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Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has renewed his calls for new Democratic Party leadership, declaring that the party has failed this moment and needs a generational renewal to remain competitive. His comments come amid deepening divisions within the party over strategy and direction.
Vice President JD Vance received about 53 percent of votes in the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio coming in second at 35 percent.
FBI Director Kash Patel is pushing to release documents related to a Democratic lawmaker who has not been accused of wrongdoing, a move that has raised serious concerns within the Bureau about the politicisation of federal law enforcement, according to the Washington Post.
The Trump administration has quietly shifted the tone of its signature mass deportation campaign after two US citizens were killed by immigration officers in January, triggering a sweeping backlash. Kristi Noem was replaced by Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary, and border patrol commander Gregory Bovino was demoted.
Millions of Americans are taking to the streets on Saturday for the third No Kings protest against the Trump administration, with organisers expecting it to become the largest demonstration in American history. More than 3,000 events are planned across all 50 states, with parallel protests in 16 countries.
President Trump on Friday directed the Department of Homeland Security to pay thousands of airport security officers, as TSA staff shortages continued to create wildly inconsistent wait times at airports across the country.
House Republicans have rejected a Senate-passed measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security, dimming prospects for a quick resolution to the government shutdown that has crippled airports across the country and left TSA workers without pay.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine skepticism is posing mounting challenges for the Trump administration, with top health positions remaining unfilled and a court blocking his proposed changes to the childhood vaccine schedule.
President Trump is set to be the first sitting president to have his signature appear on the US dollar, a move that breaks with the longstanding tradition of Treasury secretaries being the only officials whose signatures appear on currency.
David Sacks, the venture capitalist who served as Silicon Valley's primary advocate inside the Trump White House, has revealed he is no longer a special government employee and therefore no longer President Trump's Special Advisor on AI and Crypto.
President Trump has called for new legislation targeting repeat criminal offenders and what he described as "rogue judges that are criminals," in remarks to a Republican gathering that signal the administration's messaging strategy heading into the 2026 midterm elections.
The Department of Justice has agreed to pay former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn $1.25 million to settle his wrongful prosecution lawsuit, in what legal experts are calling an extraordinary use of government resources to provide relief to a political ally of the president.
The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration has told Congress that airports across the United States are experiencing the highest wait times in TSA history, with some major airports seeing queues exceeding four hours. Ha Nguyen McNeill warned that the combination of ongoing staffing shortages and the upcoming World Cup will create a perfect storm for American air travel.
A proposed deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security is on shaky ground after both the Trump administration and congressional Democrats declined to embrace a compromise that would fund the majority of DHS operations while handling ICE enforcement funding separately.
Democrat Emily Gregory has won a special election in the Florida legislative district that includes Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, flipping a seat that a Republican candidate won by 19 percentage points just two years ago in what both parties are reading as a significant bellwether.
North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger, who prominently touted President Trump's endorsement throughout his campaign, has conceded defeat in his primary election after losing to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page by just 23 votes following machine and hand recounts.
The New York Times has accused the Pentagon of disobeying a federal judge's ruling that overturned restrictive press access policies, after the Department of Defense announced an interim policy that the newspaper described as an end-run around the court's decision.
Senate Democrats have failed for the third time to advance a resolution that would force the removal of US troops from hostilities in Iran unless Congress formally approves offensive operations. Senate Republicans blocked the measure, maintaining the administration's ability to continue military action without explicit congressional authorisation.
Costa Rica has agreed to accept migrants deported by the Trump administration as part of the president's ongoing efforts to find governments willing to take in people who have been detained in the United States.
The Trump administration has announced it will pay French energy major TotalEnergies almost one billion dollars to abandon plans to construct wind farms off the US east coast, redirecting the investment toward oil and gas production instead.
The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Monday about whether mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after election day, a decision that could affect laws in more than a dozen states during a midterm election year.
President Trump has announced that ICE agents will be deployed to assist with airport security as the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown continues to leave TSA agents without pay, creating hours-long queues at airports across the country. Meanwhile, surging gas prices have become the dominant political battleground heading into midterm season.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has sharply criticised Vice President JD Vance during a visit to Ohio, in what political observers are reading as an early signal that both men are positioning themselves for the 2028 presidential race.
The US Senate has rejected a Trump-backed measure to ban transgender athletes from competing in women's sports, dealing the president a defeat on a signature cultural issue, while Trump separately threatened to deploy ICE agents to airports on Monday and a New York Times investigation revealed that political operative Corey Lewandowski wielded far broader power inside the Department of Homeland Security than his official advisory role suggested.
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director whose Special Counsel investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia consumed Washington for nearly two years and produced dozens of indictments, has died at 81.
A federal appeals court has ordered the end of the Biden-era SAVE student loan repayment program, leaving millions of borrowers without a viable path to paying off their debt. New Department of Education data reveals that 7.7 million borrowers had defaulted on $181 billion in federal student loans by the end of 2025.
A 31-year-old lawyer named Seth Cohen, who entered government through Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency with no significant experience in nuclear law or policy, has been leading technical meetings at the Idaho National Laboratory and repeatedly downplaying health and safety concerns about radiation exposure.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's restrictive Pentagon press access policy, which threatened journalists with being branded security risks if they sought information not authorised for public release. The ruling came after the New York Times filed a lawsuit challenging the changes.
Gregg Phillips, the far-right conspiracy theorist appointed to lead FEMA's office of response and recovery, has spoken on multiple podcasts about being teleported against his will — including one incident he claims landed him at a Waffle House, CNN reports. "Teleporting is no fun," Phillips has said.
The US Justice Department is seeking to drop civil rights charges against two Louisville, Kentucky, police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. The federal charges stemmed from the officers' roles in drafting the no-knock search warrant that led to the fatal shooting in March 2020.
The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against Harvard University over accusations of antisemitism, after months of investigation and failed attempts to negotiate a settlement with the Ivy League institution.
A Mexican teenager named Royer Perez-Jimenez has died in a Florida jail being used to hold Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, marking the second death in ICE custody in a single week.
A 31-year-old Georgia woman named Alexia Moore has been charged with murder by local police who allege she took pills to induce an illegal abortion. If state prosecutors proceed with the charge, her case would be among the first instances of a woman being prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy in Georgia since the state passed its 2019 law banning most abortions.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sent a questionnaire to Cornell University employees asking for detailed information about potential antisemitism and civil rights violations at the Ivy League institution, the New York Times reports.
Congressional Democrats have initiated impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Pam Bondi after a closed-door briefing on the Jeffrey Epstein case that lawmakers described as a sham, with Bondi refusing to commit to testifying under oath despite a congressional subpoena.
FBI Director Kash Patel admitted under oath at the Senate Intelligence Committee worldwide threats hearing that the bureau has resumed purchasing location data on Americans. The admission came in response to questioning from Senator Ron Wyden and directly contradicts previous testimony from former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said in 2023 that the practice had been stopped.
Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton has won the Democratic primary for the state's open US Senate seat, defeating Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi in a contest defined by heavy outside spending and intraparty tensions over race and immigration policy.
President Trump has let the deadline pass without endorsing either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race, ensuring both candidates remain on the ballot and extending their costly and increasingly personal battle into a May runoff.
A federal judge has ordered more than a thousand Voice of America staffers back to work by Monday, handing the Trump administration a major legal defeat in its campaign to dramatically shrink the US-funded news outlet.
The US Senate is expected to take up the Save America Act, a sweeping voter ID bill that President Trump has elevated to his top legislative priority by vowing not to sign any other legislation until it passes.
Leqaa Kordia, the last person still detained from the Trump administration's crackdown on campus protesters, has been released from a US immigration detention centre in Texas after nearly a year behind bars.
Oil has begun flowing through a California pipeline for the first time since a 2015 rupture caused a major environmental disaster on the state's Central Coast, after President Trump issued an executive order overriding state-level objections to reactivate domestic energy infrastructure.
A federal district court judge in Boston has blocked the Trump administration's reduction in the number of immunisations recommended for children, as well as changes to an influential vaccine advisory committee championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Susie Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer but plans to continue working while undergoing treatment, she announced on Monday.
Prediction markets tracking US Senate control have swung sharply toward Democrats with traders on both Kalshi and Polymarket now pricing Democratic control as more likely than Republican — a dramatic reversal driven largely by the political fallout from the Iran war.
The Kennedy Center board of trustees is set to vote Monday on a proposal to close the performing arts centre for renovations after the item was added to the meeting agenda on Sunday with less than a day notice.
FCC Chair Brendan Carr is facing bipartisan pushback after warning that broadcasters could lose their licenses if they air what the federal agency deems fake news about the Iran conflict, with Republican Senator Ron Johnson calling it an overreach.
The US State Department has dramatically reduced the fee for renouncing American citizenship from $2,350 to $450, reversing a controversial 2014 increase that prompted legal challenges and criticism from advocacy groups representing Americans living overseas.
Wyoming's Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting an immediate lawsuit and drawing condemnation from some lawmakers who called it "an insult to voters and our institution."
Six months after President Trump's executive order raised the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000, the initial chaos of stranded workers and confused employers has subsided but the long-term damage to the US workforce is only beginning to emerge.