Politics Election category, Page 52
Yearly cost of Trump’s border missions could exceed $1 billion
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s use of thousands of U.S. troops to aid in immigration enforcement is set to cost the Defense Department from $1 billion to $2 billion this year, Pentagon officials recently told lawmakers. The money will support a bolstered U.S. military force along the U.S.-Mexico border and...
Federal judge reinstates labor board member fired by President Trump
WASHINGTON — A federal judge agreed Thursday to reinstate a board member whom President Donald Trump removed from an independent labor agency. National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agency’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, on Jan. 27. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell...
How Trump justifies his tariffs — from budget balancing to protecting ‘the soul’ of America
WASHINGTON — To President Donald Trump, “tariff” is more than “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” something he says often. Tariffs, in Trump’s view, are also a cure for a number of the nation’s ills and the tool to reach new heights. Most economists see taxes paid on imports...
The House censures Democratic Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s joint address to Congress
WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday voted to censure an unrepentant Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress. Green was joined in the well of the House by more than 20 fellow Democrats as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., read the censure resolution. Green and some...
Trump’s address to Congress draws 36.6 million viewers, down from 1st term
President Donald Trump delivered the longest-ever presidential address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, but the TV ratings fell short of his previous outings. The speech averaged 36.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, an increase of nearly 14% from former President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the...
Appeals court allows removal of watchdog agency head as legal battle rages over Trump firing
WASHINGTON — An appeals court in Washington removed the head of a federal watchdog agency on Wednesday in the latest twist in a legal fight over Republican President Donald Trump’s authority to fire the special counsel. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided...
Fetterman calls out Democrats for ‘unhinged petulance’ during Trump address
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Braddock, called out members of his own party for their protests during President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night. “A sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance. It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday afternoon on the social media...
Trump issues ‘last warning’ to Hamas to release all remaining hostages held in Gaza
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued what he called a “last warning” to Hamas to release all remaining hostages held in Gaza, directing a sharply worded message after the White House confirmed that he had recently dispatched an envoy for unprecedented direct talks with the militant group. Trump,...
Pennsylvania to spend $10 million on new voter registration system
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania is spending more than $10 million to replace its electronic voter registration database with an election management system that will also provide election night results and handle campaign finance filings and lobbyist registration. Secretary of State Al Schmidt announced Wednesday the Civix system should be fully in...
‘Read this e-mail immediately’: CDC tells about 180 fired employees to come back to work
NEW YORK — The nation’s top public health agency says about 180 employees who were laid off two weeks ago can come back to work. Emails went out Tuesday to some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention probationary employees who got termination notices last month, according to current and former...
Employees cut by feds could get Pa., Allegheny County jobs
People who lose their federal government jobs are being recruited to fill positions with Pennsylvania and Allegheny County government. It remains unclear how many of the more than 16,000 federal employees who live in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area will be affected by the cuts. But, on Wednesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro...
Federal judge blocks NIH funding cuts to medical research, including at CMU
A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from drastically cutting medical research funding that many scientists say will endanger patients and cost jobs. The new National Institutes of Health policy would strip research groups of hundreds of millions of dollars to cover so-called indirect expenses of studying Alzheimer’s,...
U.S. Rep. and former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner dies at 70Video
WASHINGTON — Democratic U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner of Texas has died two months after taking office and hours after attending President Donald Trump’s address before Congress in Washington, D.C., officials and his family said on Wednesday. He was 70. While attending Trump’s speech to Congress, Turner was taken to a...
Mayors from Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York will testify before Congress on ‘sanctuary cities’
Mayors from four major cities are set to testify Wednesday in Congress as Republicans take aim at “sanctuary cities,” arguing that they impede the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and protect people who are in the United States illegally. Mayors Michelle Wu of Boston, Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Mike Johnston...
Takeaways: Trump’s address to Congress shows country’s stark partisan divide
WASHINGTON — A president’s speech to Congress — even without the formal gloss of a State of the Union address — is typically a time for a call to national unity and predictable claims about the country being strong. But that wasn’t President Donald Trump’s plan. His speech on Tuesday...
Elissa Slotkin assails Trump’s early actions, offers Democrats a way to fight back
LANSING, Mich. — First-term Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin accused President Donald Trump of driving up costs while pushing for an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends” in Tuesday night’s Democratic response to his first joint congressional address of his second term. Slotkin, just months into her first term in the...
Rep. Al Green shouts down Trump and may face censure by the House for the outburst
WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas wasn’t the first lawmaker ever to blurt out a shout of protest during a presidential address to Congress. But he’s perhaps the only one in recent memory to actually be ejected from the hall Tuesday night by the Speaker of the House....
Greenland’s prime minister says island isn’t for sale as Trump seeks control ‘one way or the other’
NUUK, Greenland — Greenland’s prime minister has a message for President Donald Trump: “Greenland is ours.” Múte Bourup Egede made the statement on Facebook Wednesday, just hours after Trump declared in his State of the Union address to Congress that he intends to gain control of Greenland “one way or...
FBI, DOJ headquarters among more than 440 federal buildings listed for potential sale
NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Tuesday published a list of more than 400 federal properties it says it could close or sell, including the FBI headquarters and the main Department of Justice building, after deeming them “not core to government operations.” The list published by the General Services...
Watch live: President Trump addresses CongressVideo
President Donald Trump will address Congress and the American people as he lays out his plans for the months ahead. Trump’s dizzying first weeks in office have featured a dismantling of the federal government, tensions with America’s allies and a trade war compounding economic uncertainty....
Speaker Johnson tells GOP lawmakers to skip town halls after onslaught of protests
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson is encouraging Republican lawmakers to skip town halls that have been filled with protesters decrying the Trump administration’s slashing of federal government, echoing the president’s claims that the demonstration’s are fueled by professional protesters. The speaker’s advice Tuesday comes as GOP lawmakers often find...
Western Pa. residents flock to Pittsburgh to rally against Trump’s policies
Trisha Cleckley traveled by bus almost two hours from her Beaver Falls home on Tuesday morning to get to Pittsburgh in time to be part of the city’s 50501 anti-President Donald Trump protest. A pro-democracy and pro-human rights national movement, 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, 1 movement. Pittsburgh’s...
Western Pa. braces for sticker shock as tariffs bring uncertainty for consumers, businesses
Ami Robinson said she had been pinching pennies before President Donald Trump’s new tariffs against America’s three biggest trading partners took effect Tuesday. “I think things were already more expensive than they were last year,” Robinson, 40, of Dormont said after leaving the Target store in Downtown Pittsburgh. “It’s just...
Democrats seek to probe Musk conflicts and DOGE firings with resolutions of inquiry in the House
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are introducing a pair of resolutions demanding the Trump administration turn over documents and information about billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest and the firings of federal workers, The Associated Press has learned. It’s the most aggressive move yet by...
Trump takes credit for ‘swift and unrelenting’ action in speech to Congress
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump took credit for “swift and unrelenting action” in reorienting the nation’s economy, immigration and foreign policy Tuesday in an address to Congress and the American people about his turbulent first weeks in office, as Democratic legislators immediately registered their dissent with stone faces, placards calling...
