On the campaign trail, Donald Trump pitched himself as a dealmaker who would look out for the country’s “forgotten people,” “drain the swamp,” unite the country, “immediately repeal and replace Obamacare,” surround himself with “only with the best and most serious people,” and, of course, “win so much.”

The Trump administration acknowledged on Saturday for the first time that it was in direct communication with the government of North Korea over its missile and nuclear tests

In a series of Saturday morning tweets, Trump blasted the “poor leadership ability” of Puerto Rican officials, who he said “want everything to be done for them.”

“This is an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water”

Until Kelly’s arrival, Ivanka Trump and Kushner were seen internally as the people who always had the last word with the president, especially when it came to personnel matters. Their special status irked some of their colleagues.

The National Security Agency warned senior White House officials in classified briefings that improper use of personal cellphones and email could make them vulnerable to espionage by Russia, China, Iran and other adversaries

Price, in his resignation letter to President Trump, said it was "an honor and privilege" to serve at HHS, specifically citing his work to "reform a broken health care system."

The American Foreign Service Association reported this month that the symptoms among those affected included mild traumatic brain injury, permanent hearing loss, loss of balance, severe headaches and brain swelling.

In the letter, the committee said it was "concerned" that Kushner had not disclosed his private email account

The plan’s scant details make it hard to know what, exactly, is on the chopping block. But within hours of the plan’s unveiling on Wednesday, flash points emerged over measures that supporters said could hurt the housing market, raise borrowing costs and increase the tax burden on families in high-tax states.

But the Bannon-Mercer alliance is likely to be a potent factor in widening the divisions laid bare by the Alabama race and the intraparty battles that have crippled the Republican agenda in Congress.

The company’s presentation “showed an enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is”

The overseas trips bring the total cost to taxpayers of Price’s travels to more than $1 million since May

The move came as House and Senate investigators are pressing Price, as well as other Cabinet members, to disclose the extent to which they have relied on noncommercial travel to travel across the United States and overseas.

The new policy ... covers immigrants who have obtained a green card and even naturalized citizens

...the president offered no measure of the plan’s cost and scant detail about how working people would benefit from a proposal that has explicit and substantial rewards for wealthy people and corporations

Trump, so visible when Harvey and Irma hit, all but ignored the devastation that Maria brought to Puerto Rico, devoting more attention to respect for the flag at NFL games.

Because in addition to not having any previous government experience, the former real estate exec has demonstrated repeated difficulty filling out simple, routine forms correctly. This includes his own voter registration form.

The deleted tweets were archived by ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism website, but are no longer public on Twitter, feeding into an intriguing legal debate about whether Mr. Trump is breaking the law when he expunges his tweets.

“At some point or another, Canada is going to have to strike back in a very aggressive way. Just continuing to take it on the chin doesn’t make any sense”

Iranian reports that the nation tested a new ballistic missile so far does not appear to be true, the official said, adding: "As far as we can see, it did not happen."

“It’s incredibly ironic that the attorney general wants to come here to talk about free speech but is excluding dissenting voices and potentially dissenting questions from his speech.”

Chad, a staunch US ally that has sent troops to battle al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Boko Haram, was a surprising addition to Trump's new travel restrictions.

Trump has faced mounting criticism from lawmakers, Puerto Rican officials, and prominent political figures including Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, who alleged that the president wasn’t doing enough to help the island — and was instead focused on his feud with kneeling NFL players.

It is not clear whether the special counsel has asked for or obtained Trump's tax returns.

And the failure of that alternative to the ACA, combined with the GOP’s reluctance to fix weaknesses in the existing law, leaves states, insurers and millions of consumers who rely on its coverage with substantial uncertainty.

Senate Republicans will decide Tuesday whether to hold a vote on unwinding the Affordable Care Act, even though they lack the votes

His preferred candidate is Luther Strange, the incumbent senator who has consistently trailed in the polls to firebrand conservative Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court justice.

Before 2009, football players standing for the national anthem wasn’t even a thing. The teams stayed in the locker room until after “and the hoooome of the braaaave,” and then ran onto the field.

In a thundering 20-minute speech Monday night that was partly a rally for insurgent Senate candidate Roy Moore but equally a declaration of war on the Republican Party hierarchy, Bannon made clear that this next act of his political career could make the Republican civil war of recent years look tame.

“I do not engage in any illegal activities on behalf of my clients or the causes in which I support,” Mr. Stone said in prepared remarks to the House Intelligence Committee... “There is one ‘trick’ that is not in my bag, and that is treason.”

But it is not illegal for White House officials to use private email accounts as long as they forward work-related messages to their work accounts so they can be preserved.

Though Kelly has sought to instill discipline in a chaotic White House, it's becoming clear there are two things he can't control: what the President says off-the-cuff and what he tweets. The question now is whether Kelly can now persuade Trump to move on from his battle with the NFL, but one official said he shouldn't count on it.

"President should not be telling the Washington Redskins to change their name-our country has far bigger problems! FOCUS on them,not nonsense" —Donald J. Trump 6:09 AM - 8 Oct 2013

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics — also sought to sow discord among religious groups.

While one top Republican senator held out the possibility that the Senate might still vote on the bill, others accepted the reality that the push had sputtered out

Collins' opposition makes it a total of four Republicans who say they won't vote for the bill — two moderates (Collins and Sen. John McCain) and two conservatives (Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz).

Ri Yong Ho ... said President Trump’s comments at the General Assembly last week constituted a declaration of war.

Those comments, along with various eyebrow-raising but predictable vulgarities, can be found in a new, online archive of Trump’s 15 hours of radio banter with the shock jock.

Out of the blue, early in the morning September 5th, about 3 1/2 months after we had moved on, we received an email with a Dropbox link from an anonymous Yahoo account.

But a critical issue — whether or not administrators from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Broward County made distress calls for help to Gov. Rick Scott’s private cellphone — will likely not be cleared up soon. On Sunday, the Florida governor’s office revealed the four key voice mails from the center have been deleted.

The far-right party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, got some 13 percent of the vote — nearly three times the 4.7 percent it received in 2013 — a significant showing of voter anger over immigration and inequality as support for the two main parties sagged from four years ago.

Zuckerberg acknowledged the problem posed by fake news. But he told Obama that those messages weren’t widespread on Facebook and that there was no easy remedy

Starting next month, most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea will be banned from entering the United States... Citizens of Iraq and some groups of people in Venezuela who seek to visit the United States will face restrictions or heightened scrutiny.

The revised bill includes new provisions that would steer more federal funding to Alaska, Arizona and Kentucky. All three states are home to pivotal GOP swing votes who either have opposed or expressed concerns with the bill

Cruz said he and Lee offered amendments to the Graham-Cassidy proposal last week that would go further in bringing down Obamacare premiums. But the changes, he said, weren’t included in the latest draft of the bill.

“It’s the same guy who couldn’t condemn violent neo-Nazis. And he’s condemning guys taking a knee during the anthem. There are bigger issues out there that he probably should be worried about. But for some reason the NFL is on his mind.”

...part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business.

“We are waiting for the right time to have a final battle with the U.S., the evil empire, and to remove the U.S. from the world,” KCNA quoted Ri Il-bae, a commanding officer of the Red Guards, as saying. “Once respected Supreme commander Kim Jong Un gives an order, we will annihilate the group of aggressors.”

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has met regularly with corporate executives from the automobile, mining and fossil fuel industries — in several instances shortly before making decisions favorable to those interest groups

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile ... It also carried in-flight video from the nose-cone of the missile, which has a range of 1,250 miles (2,000km) and can carry multiple warheads.

US Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Guam, escorted by Air Force F-15C Eagle fighters from Okinawa, Japan, flew in international airspace

We believe there is nothing more American than our citizens having the right to express themselves freely on matters important to them.

In a speech on Friday and a series of tweets on Saturday, he urged N.F.L. owners to fire players who do not stand for the national anthem, suggested that football is declining because it is not as violent as it once was and seemed to disinvite the N.B.A. champion Golden State Warriors from the traditional White House visit because of their star player Stephen Curry’s public opposition to him.

—LeBron James

China's Ministry of Commerce said Saturday it would limit refined petroleum exports starting Oct. 1 and ban the import of North Korean textiles immediately. It would ban exports of liquefied natural gas to the North immediately as well.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s FIRED!’ You know, some owner is gonna do that. He’s gonna say, ‘That guy disrespects our flag; he’s fired.’ And that owner, they don’t know it. They don’t know it. They’re friends of mine, many of them. They don’t know it. They’ll be the most popular person, for a week. They’ll be the most popular person in this country.”

The new travel restrictions could include indefinite bans on entry until vetting procedures and security cooperation improves

“It’s a good sign that he’s interacting with people—that’s more than we could say for Spicer or Priebus when they got here”

The Arizona senator said ... that Republicans should instead work with Democrats on a health care bill and that any legislation should go through the regular order of committee hearings and markups.

The rules ... will now permit colleges and universities to raise their evidence requirements to a “clear and convincing standard” of proof. The Obama administration had demanded colleges use a lower “preponderance of evidence” standard.

Morale is low, the Russia investigations only seem to grow in scope, and constant churn at the top has left some staffers without patrons in a workplace known for back-biting and a tribal-like attitude.

—Former foreign policy advisor for President Obama

Mr. Kim called Mr. Trump a “frightened dog” and a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

Price’s practice of using charter jets follows Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s decision to use a government plane to fly to Fort Knox with his wife, Louise Linton, and view the solar eclipse.

Alaska and Hawaii would get to keep the tax credits that keep insurance costs affordable under Obamacare, though the rest of the country would lose them.

And so the U.S. president's laudatory comments about a nonexistent country swiftly invited ridicule online, with many suggesting that Trump had created an entirely new nation by combining two existing ones — Zambia and Namibia.

“I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech,” Kim said in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency

Graham-Cassidy is the first Republican plan that would actively punish (primarily Democratically-controlled) states for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare by redistributing some of their funds to red states that refused to expand coverage.

But asked [...] if he had ever lied from the podium, Spicer said: “I don’t think so.”

Former colleagues of Sean Spicer tell Axios that he filled "notebook after notebook" during meetings at the Republican National Committee, later at the Trump campaign, and then at the White House.

Increasingly optimistic that the callousness they required would be locked down by the September 30 deadline, GOP leaders were confident Wednesday that they will have the cruelty necessary to pass their new healthcare bill.

“They can do it with less money,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who was unable to explain how or why.

The founding fathers never anticipated the rise of Facebook and fake news.

Other Republican plans create a poorly funded version of Obamacare. This one blows the law up entirely.

"He said he wants coverage for all; no discrimination based on preexisting conditions; lower premiums for middle-class families; and no lifetime caps. And guess what? The new bill? Does none of those things."

But Republican leaders pressed toward a showdown vote. And they choked off separate bipartisan efforts to shore up health insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, hoping to give Republican senators no alternative but to vote for repeal.

This news is a big deal primarily because of what it takes to obtain such a wiretap order. The warrant reportedly was issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A FISA warrant requires investigators to demonstrate to the FISA court that there is probable cause to believe the target may be acting as an unlawful foreign agent.

Senate Republicans, abandoning a key fiscal doctrine, agreed on Tuesday to move forward on a budget that would add to the federal deficit in order to pave the way for a $1.5 trillion tax cut over the next 10 years.

The wide-ranging backlash threw the GOP’s repeal push into fresh doubt on Tuesday, even as White House officials and Senate Republican leaders insist they are on the verge of winning the 50 votes needed

...rattling the capital and sending people flooding into the streets for the second time in just two weeks.

Welcome to our world, Kelly.

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."

Cohen arrived for the interview with his attorney Tuesday morning, but left the closed door session after about an hour, informing reporters waiting outside that committee staff had suddenly informed him they did not wish the interview to go forward.

The president also threatens to "totally destroy" North Korea during his first United Nations address.

"I had eaten over 800mg of THC and was way too high for confrontation so I just held back with two other passersby to watch what would unfold."

“They seem to be pursuing this more aggressively, taking a much harder line, than you’d expect to see in a typical white-collar case,” ... “This is more consistent with how you’d go after an organized crime syndicate.”

Trump administration officials, under pressure from the White House to provide a rationale for reducing the number of refugees allowed into the United States next year, rejected a study ... that found that refugees brought in $63 billion more in government revenues over the past decade than they cost.

...using his first moments at the world body to urge the 193-nation organization to reduce bureaucracy and costs while more clearly defining its mission around the world.

...a last-ditch push to obliterate the law could be nearing a showdown vote in the Senate, and a handful of Republicans insist they are closing in on the votes.

The photojournalist, David Carson, later tweeted that he’d spoken to the commander at the scene, who said that he did not hear the chant but that it was unacceptable and he would “deal with it.”

But who needs leaks when lunch reservations will suffice?

“We are not aware of any long queues at the gas stations,” one foreign resident of Pyongyang said. “At least, I haven’t noticed anything. I asked a few Koreans, and they haven’t seen anything either.”

State freedom-of-information laws generally allow requesters who believe they are wrongly denied records to file lawsuits seeking to force their release. If they succeed, government agencies can be ordered to pay their legal fees and court costs. Suing the requesters flips the script: Even if agencies are ultimately required to make the records public, they typically will not have to pay the other side’s legal bills.

At the heart of the clash is an issue that has challenged multiple presidents during high-stakes Washington investigations: how to handle the demands of investigators without surrendering the institutional prerogatives of the office of the presidency.

The first battle will conclude this month in Alabama, where the incumbent senator — establishment-backed Luther Strange — is fighting uphill against former state Supreme Court judge Roy Moore, a conservative evangelical jurist who has twice been removed from the bench for defying legal decisions.

On Saturday alone, in addition to the Juggalo gathering, there was the Mother of All Rallies — an exhortation to the red-cap-wearing faithful to “take our country back” — and, blocks away, a counterprotest opposing white supremacy.

The denial came after the Wall Street Journal reported ... that the administration may revise or craft a new climate deal and emissions standards rather than pull out altogether

...controversial legislation that would protect undocumented immigrants from possible deportation by prohibiting local law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from cooperating with federal immigration officials.

In some places, there has been an instinct to dismiss Mr. Trump as a bombastic, Twitter-obsessed political and diplomatic neophyte. “But the fact is you can’t write off the American president”

Kim Jong Un said his country is nearing its goal of "equilibrium" in military force with the United States

For the first time since the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, a far-right party will soon have delegates in the German Parliament.

The head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics said on Friday that the agency is sticking with its long-standing stance prohibiting anonymous donations to White House legal defense funds, despite recently putting forward language that appeared to undercut that position.

Asked directly about the President's tweet, Ms May said: "I never think it's helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation."

Amid international condemnations of the test, the U.N. Security Council was to meet later in the day to discuss the launch at the request of the United States and Japan

Trump’s tweets were the president’s first comments on the dispute between the White House and ESPN’s Jemele Hill, a black journalist who co-hosts “SportsCenter.”

One Twitter user ... said he was left with "no choice" to burn his hat, saying the president had "violated several campaign promises".

A homemade bomb sent a scorching cloud of smoke and flames through a London subway car Friday, injuring at least 22 rush-hour commuters and sending people scrambling for safety in what police called a terrorist incident.

Trump on Thursday signed a congressional joint resolution condemning the violence of neo-Nazis and white supremacists during a rally in Virginia last month

The legislation imposes sanctions “on any person that conducts a significant transaction with the Russian Federation’s defense or intelligence sectors”

North Korea fired another ballistic missile over Japan on Friday, a direct challenge to the United States and China just days after a new sanctions resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council

Virtually nothing can drive Republicans more bitterly apart than immigration policy, which has vexed the party ever since President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Of course it did.

Trump berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an Oval Office meeting and said he should resign

He went on to claim that Sputnik’s influence on right-wing, pro-Trump, new websites is pervasive: “Many of the most popular articles about things like WikiLeaks and pizzagate and other conspiracy theories were prominently featured on the Sputnik website”

Trump and Democratic congressional leaders reached a tentative agreement Wednesday night to provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants known as “Dreamers" — but after a conservative backlash, the president and his aides sent conflicting signals about how firm the agreement was.

—Ann Coulter, right-wing political commentator

Spicer claims it was his job to say whatever President Trump told him to say.

Russia’s military fired seven cruise missiles Thursday at Islamic State targets in the eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour

While the initial wave of fury could change direction as new details emerge, the torrent represented the first major break of Trump’s devoted base from the president on a core issue.

The DoD has found space to maneuver by separating the argument of climate change from the threats that more extreme sea states, wind and flooding can generate. Essentially, the DoD is moving forward by leaving the semantics of climate change to others.

The White House is making legal arguments about the former FBI director that barely pass the laugh test.

The little-noticed change could help President Donald Trump’s aides raise the money they need to pay attorneys as the Russia probe expands — but raises the potential for hidden conflicts of interest or other ethics trouble.

Liberals and conservatives in Congress on Wednesday set forth two radically different proposals for health care: a huge expansion of Medicare, which would open the program to all Americans, and a rollback of the Affordable Care Act, which would give each state a lump sum of federal money with sweeping new discretion over how to use it.

Though the Senate has virtually eliminated the ability of the minority party to block appointments to the bench from the Supreme Court on down, individual senators can still thwart nominees from their home states by refusing to sign off on a form popularly known for its color — the blue slip.

...citing suspected ties between executives at the firm and Russian intelligence agencies.

Starting on Thursday, however, the fictional state, Veishnoriya, a distillation of the Kremlin’s darkest fears about the West, becomes the target of the combined military might of Russia and its ally Belarus.

The younger Flynn worked closely with his father, whose connections to foreign governments, including Russia and Turkey, have been a subject of federal and congressional investigations.

The president's friends are most worried about Mueller digging into past business deals, which is why his team keeps raising concerns in public and private about the "scope" of the investigation.

New commercial satellite imagery confirms earlier 38 North analysis identifying numerous landslides throughout the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site on the slopes of Mt. Mantap (and beyond) resulting from North Korea’s sixth nuclear test.

In a stunning move, the House of Representatives on Tuesday approved an amendment to the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act that will roll back Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s expansion of asset forfeiture.

...and doubled down on its warning that the United States would “suffer the greatest pain” it has ever experienced for leading the effort to ratchet up economic pressures on the reclusive nation.

The proposal ... called for the wholesale restoration of diplomatic, military and intelligence channels severed between the two countries after Russia’s military interventions in Ukraine and Syria.

The comments come as the White House and Republicans in Congress are working to release the outlines of a plan to overhaul the tax code sometime later this month.

Mexico will no longer send the emergency aid offered to Texas after Hurricane Harvey, to focus on those affected by a deadly earthquake and Hurricane Katia that struck the eastern state of Veracruz last week

Although the “like” has since been undone, screen shots of the post have circulated widely online and @SexuallPosts updated its bio to urge users to “follow the same porn @TedCruz watches.”

A gun researcher who says the federal gun background check system doesn't work has a new idea for preventing voter fraud at polling places: Make every voter pass a federal gun background check.

Some of the lawyers worried that the presence of Kushner, a senior adviser with a broad domestic and foreign policy portfolio, created potential legal complications for Trump, while the probe threatened to limit Kushner’s ability to perform his job

Now that storm clouds are clearing, satellites are able to capture the devastation of Hurricane Irma.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed ... that the social-media giant “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.”

That four of the first five to come out in support of Sanders's bill all came from a relatively small universe of top presidential hopefuls suggests that this will be a litmus test issue in 2020.

U.S. "intelligence missed it when Russian intelligence stole the president of the United States."

Russian smugglers are scurrying to the aid of North Korea with shipments of petroleum and other vital supplies that could help that country weather harsh new economic sanctions

U.S. officials can at least temporarily continue to block refugees ... from entering the United States after the Supreme Court intervened again Monday to save a piece of President Trump’s travel ban.

For scientists, drawing links between warming global temperatures and the ferocity of hurricanes is about as controversial as talking about geology after an earthquake.

The storm spent Sunday grinding along Florida’s southern tip with devastating fury — flattening homes, flooding the Keys and cutting power to more than 6 million customers across the state.

Had Comey never been fired, Bannon told CBS, the bureau’s Russia investigation would not have metastasized into the special investigation currently led by Robert Mueller.

“OK listen, because this is important: Any time Trump says he’s going to make people happy, or that you’re going to be happy in the future, that means he has got nothing and he’s trying to end the conversation.”

While these initiatives lacked the fanfare of some of President Trump’s high-profile proclamations — like his ban on transgender people in the military — they point to a fundamental repurposing of the federal bureaucracy to promote conservative social priorities.

Some moderates said that in cutting a deal with Democrats, Mr. Trump may have done the speaker a favor, demonstrating to hard-line conservatives that they cannot always have their way.

The left has no equivalent to a Rush Limbaugh in influence and sheer lunacy.

The hurricane is expected to rake Florida’s west coast throughout Sunday, a change from earlier predictions that left some residents and officials scrambling to find shelter. The new track could expose St. Petersburg — rather than Miami or Tampa — to a direct hit.

The image posted over the weekend by the younger Netanyahu ... appears to be a local take on a classic anti-Semitic meme suggesting that Jews control the United States. It has appeared widely on extreme alt-right websites.

From Day 1, the White House and its lackeys in certain federal agencies have been waging what amounts to a war on science, appointing people with few scientific credentials to key positions, defunding programs that could lead to a cleaner and safer environment and a healthier population, and, most ominously, censoring scientific inquiry that could inform the public and government policy.

There’s nothing new about calling Trump a loser, but Fox is uniquely qualified to deliver that jok

He warned that the regime’s advances in missile technology are complicating Japan’s ability to intercept them.

In a party-line vote Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee rejected a resolution that would have directed the Treasury Department to turn over the tax returns of Mr. Trump and his many businesses.

While Trump rails against U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, his Florida properties have become a playground for birth tourists from Russia’s upper crust.

In business, his personal life, his campaign and now his presidency, Trump has sprung surprises on his allies with gusto. His dealings are frequently defined by freewheeling spontaneity, impulsive decisions and a desire to keep everyone guessing — especially those who assume they can control him.

The debt and spending bill approved by Capitol Hill on Friday averted imminent fiscal disaster, but it’s added more misery for a Republican Party whose agenda has floundered even with unified control of Washington for the first time in a decade.

It is no accident that of all the foreign policy issues he could have chosen, Mr. Bannon gravitated to China, where he once lived and which he now views as the greatest long-term threat to the United States.

Trump is so insecure that criticizing him seems to make you an enemy in his eyes, and as long as that's the case, and blind loyalty is the thing that is most rewarded, there will never be a successful moderating influence on him.

The Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie once observed that there are “two Americas” — one at home and one abroad. The first is the America of Hollywood, work-in-progress democracy, civil rights movements and Ellis Island. The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures.

In addition to Priebus, Spicer and Hicks, Mueller has notified the White House he will probably seek to question White House counsel Don McGahn and one of his deputies, James Burnham.

There’s a palpable fear that the Big Six will release a plan and try to jam conservatives — just as they did with health care.

The storm might drop as much as 20 inches of rain in some areas. But it is the expected storm surge that most frightens officials across the state. Several counties expanded their evacuation orders to cover more ground, anticipating surges in some places as high as 12 feet if the storm hits at high tide.

Because Syrian troops are now in control of the area, the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State agreed to a Russian request to halt the surveillance, in the interests of deconflicting the rival Russian- and U.S.-backed efforts to defeat the militants

It’s a doctrine called “asymmetric escalation,” employed by states that are conventionally weak. France used it during the Cold War to deter the more powerful Soviet Union, and Pakistan does the same today against a more powerful India.

The United States is in many ways little more than an air force, military trainer and weapons depot for assorted Sunni despots.

“May as well go ahead and announce this,” he said. “I'm not going to get into details because of the security nature of things, but it turns out that we will not be able to do the program here tomorrow. ... We'll be on the air next week, folks, from parts unknown.”

As the rift between the president and Republican lawmakers widened, the president argued that he had no choice but to collaborate with the Democratic minority to get business done

The House vote, 316-90, with only Republicans voting no, came a day after the Senate passed the measure, and came about 48 hours after President Trump sided with Democratic congressional leaders in support of a short-term debt limit extension, surprising Republicans on Capitol Hill.

About 50 million people across Mexico felt the earthquake, which had a magnitude of 8.2

The Park Service was not allowed to post anything about the tour on its Facebook page or social media accounts.

The new wall prototypes will be 18 to 30 feet high and made of materials other than concrete

The same morning, “Katherine Fulton” also began promoting DCLeaks in the same awkward English Mr. Redick used. “Hey truth seekers!” she wrote. “Who can tell me who are #DCLeaks? Some kind of Wikileaks? You should visit their website”

It is expected to hit the Florida Keys and South Florida by Saturday night.

But out of the spotlight, he appears to be crafting a broad strategy aimed at working with China to resolve the North Korea crisis and with Russia to stabilize Syria and Ukraine.

Grandparents, cousins of Americans get reprieve, as do many refugees.

“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out”

Ms. DeVos did not say what changes she had in mind. But in a strongly worded speech, she made clear she believed that in an effort to protect victims, the previous administration had gone too far and forced colleges to adopt procedures that sometimes deprived accused students of their rights.

Irma -- a Category 5 storm that has kept sustained winds of 180 mph longer than any other on record -- knocked out electricity a day earlier to more than 1 million customers in Puerto Rico as it churned off the US territory, and devastated smaller islands

“And he said even last night in a tweet, even a tweet, he would rethink it. Trust me, the guys on the far right, the guys on the conservative side, are not happy with this.”

“When it’s coming out of the mouths of people in power,” she says, “it’s no longer marginal.”

The stabilization effort ... could yield the first bipartisan Obamacare bill since the law was passed seven years ago. It could also provide some measure of certainty for insurance companies that have until Sept. 27 to make final decisions about whether to participate in Obamacare markets next year.

...the three members were “frank” about their mounting concerns and warned Ryan that they and others in the House Republican conference could desert him in the coming months if the leadership fails to enact conservative policies.

In the case of the dossier, Orbis was not saying that everything that it reported was accurate, but that it had made a good-faith effort to pass along faithfully what its identified insiders said was accurate. This is routine in the intelligence business.

On Thursday ... the Judiciary Committee meets with Donald Trump Jr., the first of the president’s inner-circle campaign surrogates the panel hopes to interview as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the election — including allegations of coordination between the president’s team and the Kremlin.

Facebook officials reported that they traced the ad sales, totaling $100,000, to a Russian “troll farm” with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda

The next debt ceiling crisis will hit around December 15, just before the holidays. Democrats might not come to Trump's aid then, forcing an even bigger standoff among Republicans ahead of the 2018 mid-term elections.

In a surprising blow to his own party’s congressional leadership, the president on Wednesday struck a deal with Democrats to package nearly $8 billion in Hurricane Harvey relief with a three-month extension of government funding and increase in the debt ceiling.

Trump confounded his own party’s leaders when he cut a deal with Democratic congressional leaders — “Chuck and Nancy,” as the president informally referred to them — on a short-term plan to fund the government and raise its borrowing limit this month.

...a practice that lawyers for a civil rights group suing the commission over transparency say violates federal law.

To state the obvious, these are potentially dangerous comments from Limbaugh, who is based in Palm Beach, Fla. He is encouraging listeners who might be in Irma's path not to take seriously the official guidance disseminated through the media.

Nunes, who despite stepping aside from directing the House Russia investigation has been leading his own separate investigation, accused Sessions and the FBI of stonewalling him

I was reminded of Bennett’s advisory role in the 2014 Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, about two Hollywood stoners hired by the CIA to kill Kim. ... The movie’s plot closely follows Bennett’s vision for regime change from within

But for years now, we’ve been retreating into our separate tribal epistemologies, each with their own increasingly incompatible set of facts and first premises.

The court is scheduled to hear a case in October, Gill v. Whitford, that could abolish partisan gerrymandering.

Now, with 800,000 lives in the balance and a fiercely anti-immigration current running through the Republican Party, lawmakers are being asked to try again — with a six-month deadline, to boot.

With Texas still reeling from Hurricane Harvey and another storm barreling toward Florida, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to run out of money by Friday

Trump's outsourcing of the official announcement to Sessions was evidence of how central a role the attorney general played in the decision to end the program -- and Trump's aversion to announcing that decision himself.

Trump Jr. will be the first Trump campaign member who participated in a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer to speak with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"To target these young people is wrong, because they have done nothing wrong," Obama wrote in a Facebook post. "It is self-defeating — because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel."

They added that they could find no evidence of a surface crater that would have formed if the cavern carved out within the mountain ... had suddenly collapsed.

“Audiences around the world will benefit from the same candor, wit and insight that Spicer brought to the White House briefing room”

The Trump administration is making policy choices that will reduce enrollment

“I’m here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded”

It's the latest battle pitting the president's conservative advisers against moderates in the White House and Congress — but the first in which Bannon is free to engage in open combat with fellow Republicans from the outside.

If Irma does make landfall as a Category 4 storm or stronger, it will be the first time on record that two storms of that strength hit the United States during the same weather season.

“Let's build the wall and let the dreamers stay. Isn't that called compromise?”

"America is really a great nation and the Americans are a great people if they can endure so many people with such a low level of political culture."

Speaking on Russia-24, Nikita Isaev, leader of the far-right New Russia Movement, said the compromising material should be released in retaliation over the closure of several Russian diplomatic compounds across the US.

...assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience.

According to Shugerman, Pence’s knowledge of the original letter opens him up to charges on three felonies: (1) conspiracy to commit the obstruction of justice; (2) aiding and abetting the obstruction of justice; (3) and misprision of a felony.

Seoul’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that warships including a 2,500-ton frigate, a 1000-ton patrol ship and 400-ton guided-missile vessels participated in drills aimed at retaliating against potential North Korean provocations.

Earlier Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, ... for strategic assets such as U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers to be sent to South Korea more regularly.

No, if Trump cancels DACA, it will be one more attempt to endear himself to his shrinking base with the only thing that truly energizes the dead-enders: vengeance fueled by white grievance. And it will also be an act of uncommon cowardice.

The congressional Russia investigations are entering a new and more serious phase as lawmakers return from the August recess amid fresh revelations about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump’s $1 trillion plan to rebuild America’s infrastructure may be unprecedented in size and ambition, but it mimics a controversial scheme championed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was the governor of Indiana.

Trump's nomination of his former Iowa campaign manager for the post is raising concern in the scientific community and beyond about the politicization of science policy in the Trump administration.

Despite years of economic sanctions and international condemnation, North Korea still conducts modest trade with a host of United States allies, including Brazil, Germany and Mexico. But the North’s biggest partner by far is China

"Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies, will be met with a massive military response — a response both effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters

Kim has timed his nuclear tests and missile launches with exquisite precision, apparently trying to create maximum embarrassment for China.

But conversations with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who argued that Congress — rather than the executive branch — is responsible for writing immigration law, helped persuade the president to terminate the program and kick the issue to Congress

Trump’s habit of singling out reporters for attacks is being adopted by his federal agencies, with the Environmental Protection Agency excoriating an Associated Press reporter in unusually personal terms on Sunday after the reporter wrote a story that cast the agency in an unfavorable light.

Trump and congressional Republicans return to work this week facing enormous pressure to achieve major policy victories and carry out such basic acts of governance as providing disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, avoiding a default on the nation’s debt and keeping federal agencies open.

“My hands are too big!” he said as he attempted to put on a pair of latex gloves.

As he has done in the past, Mr. Trump placed responsibility for responding to the crisis on North Korea’s closest neighbors, China and South Korea.

The test, which the North called a “complete success,” was the first to clearly surpass the destructive power of the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II.

While Mr. Bridenstine has criticized NASA’s spending on global warming science, he has voiced support for some of the agency’s earth observation missions, particularly for studying extreme weather.

A day earlier, black smoke was seen billowing from the chimney at the consulate as the Russians rushed to meet the Saturday deadline

"Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets," the government said

Withdrawing from the trade deal would back up Trump’s promises to crack down on what he considers unfair trade competition from other countries, but his top national security and economic advisers are pushing him to abandon the plan

Trump does not have a web browser on his phone, and does not use a laptop, so he was dependent on aides like Stephen K. Bannon, his former chief strategist, to hand-deliver printouts of articles from conservative media outlets.

"As tough as this was, it's been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch, even for the world to watch. It's been beautiful. Have a good time everybody, I'm going to be doing a little bit of help over here."

Trump is getting a second chance at the post-natural disaster presidential visit.

People spread rumors about what the water was doing each day, but no one knew for sure. The water rose and fell, appearing to follow no logic as it swallowed some roads and made others passable.

...the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Republicans face a Sept. 30 deadline to kill or overhaul the law with only 50 votes

The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus — voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment — have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference

A couple of weeks ago President Trump scrapped Obama-era rules, intended to reduce the risks posed by flooding, that established new construction standards for roads, housing and other infrastructure projects that receive federal dollars.

Trump on Friday said he would announce a decision by Tuesday on whether he will end the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation

Trade negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the United States resume discussions on Friday over the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"I love that program," Sessions said. "We had so much fun doing that, taking drug dealers' money and passing it out to people trying to put drug dealers in jail. What's wrong with that?"

While Mr. Kelly has quickly brought some order to a disorganized and demoralized staff, he is fully aware of the president’s volcanic resentment about being managed

The letter, drafted in May, was met with opposition from Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who believed that its angry, meandering tone was problematic

“He is rescinding restrictions from the prior administration that limited your agencies’ ability to get equipment through federal programs, including life-saving gear like Kevlar vests and helmets and first-responder and rescue equipment like what they’re using in Texas right now,” Sessions said in the speech.

Quebec’s Minister of International Relations Christine St-Pierre called Pablos to express her sorrow and condolences on behalf of the people of the Canadian province. She also offered equipment and manpower.

The president seemed to be responding to statements ... that Comey had started drafting a statement clearing Clinton of charges in the case before she was interviewed by the FBI.