CHICAGO — Eight months after a Cook County judge found Trump Tower repeatedly violated clean water laws, the president’s business operators agreed Thursday to pay $4.8 million to settle lawsuits alleging the skyscraper’s cooling system killed untold numbers of fish in the Chicago River.

The glass-and-steel tower, emblazoned with a sign ...Read more

LANSING, Mich. — The Republican-controlled Michigan House voted Thursday to hold Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in contempt of the chamber and authorize litigation against her office after Benson failed to comply fully with a subpoena seeking election training materials for training clerks.

Benson has argued over the past ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld, for now, President Donald Trump's decision to fire two agency officials who had fixed terms that were set by Congress.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside rulings that would have reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House Republicans passed their “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill early Thursday morning, sending to the Senate a filibuster-proof package that would deliver the major elements of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, from tax cuts and border security to lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

The 215-214 vote ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will attend the Group of Seven summit in June, the White House said, as tensions over trade and his efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine cloud U.S. ties with some of its closest allies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump would attend the gathering from June 15 to 17. ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Now that House Republicans have passed their “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill, both parties are poised to make Thursday’s early morning vote a central point of their midterm messaging.

Democrats asserted that the GOP budget hurts working Americans and helps billionaires, declaring that the vote would help ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Top holders of Donald Trump’s memecoin and other guests were greeted by protesters as they arrived for a dinner with the president at his golf club outside Washington on Thursday, a day that saw Bitcoin extend its record high amid optimism about U.S. government support for the crypto industry.

Chinese crypto entrepreneur ...Read more

WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s economic package after a series of all-night negotiations and eleventh-hour compromises.

The legislation now heads to the Senate where lawmakers are looking to make their own stamp on the bill. The core of the package — an extension of the president’s 2017 first-...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to fire without cause members of the national labor boards for federal employees and workers, despite lower court judges finding that the terminations likely violated federal law.

The unsigned, two-page decision addressed a tangle of lower court orders on the firings of Cathy ...Read more

LAS VEGAS — Only four U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002) and Barack Obama (2009).

UK oddsmakers have made President Donald Trump the favorite to win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, while offshore sportsbooks list him as the second choice.

Ninety-seven percent of ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Senate’s unprecedented move to revoke California’s ban on gasoline-powered cars by 2035 threatens to upend the U.S.’s status as both an economic powerhouse and a world leader on climate change mitigation, Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters Thursday.

He and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced plans to sue to block...Read more

As Democrats reevaluate their past support for then-President Joe Biden amid new reports that some people around him were concerned for his health and mental acuity while he was in office, Gov. Wes Moore said this week he isn’t wavering.

The Maryland Democrat was a fierce defender and active campaign surrogate for Biden before he dropped out ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A onetime congressional opponent of Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday for threatening to have her killed.

William Braddock, 41, was secretly recorded in 2021 saying he had access to a “hit squad” and that he could make Luna “disappear,” according to the U.S. ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Landmark legislation that would rewrite the tax code and levy steep cuts to programs providing health care and food stamps to the poor passed the House early Thursday, a development that was celebrated by President Trump despite the bill facing an uncertain future among Senate Republicans.

The measure, titled the “One Big ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Two Democrats with national security backgrounds are mulling bids for Congress in the toss-up mid-Michigan district held by freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, including the recently resigned U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink.

Brink, who grew up in west Michigan, recently returned to Michigan after 28 years as a ...Read more

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate defied congressional norms and voted Thursday to revoke California’s progressive vehicle emission standards, including a rule that would’ve effectively banned the sale of new gasoline-only cars by 2035.

In a 51-44 vote, the Senate overturned a Biden-era waiver that enabled California and a contingent of...Read more

DENVER — Colorado abortion clinics dealt with trespassing, vandalism, threats of harm and more in 2023 and 2024, in spite of the state’s liberal access to reproductive care, according to a new report.

The latest data by the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers, found that 65% of providers in ...Read more

In late April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expands the federal government’s power over local and state police. The order is a recipe for abuse. The return to the overt embrace of mass incarceration through expanded funding and other support for police and prisons, coupled with the divisive underlying rhetoric of law-...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday passed a joint resolution that would bar California from enforcing vehicle emissions standards that effectively phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.

In a 51-44 vote, the Senate passed a joint resolution that would nullify the waiver issued by the EPA during the final weeks of the ...Read more

U.S. Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Dave McCormick, R- Pa., will debate in Boston in June, and it’ll be moderated by Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream.

The debate is part of a series called The Senate Project, hosted by the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate and the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation, two organizations named...Read more