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U.S. politics: the White House, Congress, the courts and the campaigns, and what each move means.
H.R. 5334 would let the president tariff the biggest buyers of Russian oil, blacklist Moscow's shadow fleet and extend Iran sanctions. Rand Paul gets one amendment vote first.
WatchOne order targets commercial "birth tourism." The other expands the list of babies the administration says the 14th Amendment never covered. The ACLU says both will die the same way the last one did.
Rep. John Rose spent $13 million of his own money and lost. In the redrawn 5th District, a former state agriculture commissioner backed by two ex-governors beat the incumbent Trump endorsed.
HHS proposed scrapping more than 100 pages of federal regulations governing the preschool program for 700,000 poor children, handing oversight to state childcare licensing agencies. A 60-day comment period starts now.
Dr. Erica Schwartz, a retired Navy rear admiral and former deputy surgeon general, takes over an agency that has gone nearly a year without a Senate-confirmed leader since Susan Monarez was forced out 29 days into the job.
The House Ethics Committee found 'substantial reason to believe' the North Carolina Republican harassed two young female staffers and recommended censure. He is finishing his term but leaving the ballot before the September 4 deadline.
The government's own auditors could not verify 96% of the grant savings the Department of Government Efficiency advertised, and found that 108 of the 264 leases it took credit for cancelling were already being cancelled before it existed.
WatchThe Senate Homeland Security Committee meets at 8:30 a.m. to decide whether Anthony Fauci broke the law by invoking the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under subpoena. Paul says he will refer the matter straight to the Justice Department.
Defense Department estimates provided to Congress project an average of 2,500 troops in Washington through January 2029, at a cost covering fiscal years 2027 through 2029.
Trump's former personal lawyer won over Republican holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis only after formally killing a $1.8 billion 'anti-weaponization' payout fund. With Collins opposed and Mitch McConnell absent, the math on the Senate floor is now razor-thin.
The freshman congressman won the Missouri 1st District Democratic primary 59.2% to 36.9% in a rematch that turned almost entirely on U.S. military aid to Israel. Roughly $8.4 million was spent on the race, about $7.2 million of it behind Bell.
An evenly divided 10-judge D.C. Circuit panel restored an April 2025 injunction against Administrator Lee Zeldin's termination of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund awards. Six judges said canceling them 'based solely on a policy disagreement' likely broke the law.
WatchThe 41-year-old former state health director won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary 48.5% to 47.5% over a congresswoman backed by Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer. He faces Republican Mike Rogers in November.
Burke Law Group lists immigration among two dozen practice areas but has no staff specializing in it. The contract starts Aug. 15, two weeks after the previous provider's deal expired unrenewed.
A deep-red state rejected a GOP-backed constitutional amendment by 24 points after $12.8 million, much of it dark money, was spent on the fight over a 68-year-old selection system.
Grenada, Japan, Indonesia, Cameroon and Winnipeg are all losing U.S. missions in a downsizing that is not tied to any war, coup or rupture in relations.
S. 5046 cleared the Senate HELP Committee 13-9 over the objection of its own chairman. It would void the interagency agreements moving special education, civil rights and student aid work to four other departments.
The amendment would abolish the state's merit-selection commission and put justices on partisan statewide ballots for six-year terms. Kris Kobach and Americans for Prosperity are for it; Gov. Laura Kelly, two former governors and the state bar are against.
Separation boards for transgender service members are held behind closed doors on military bases with no cameras, no transcripts and no public access. At least six troops were barred from their own hearings.
Voters approved a mid-decade redistricting amendment in April. The Virginia Supreme Court voided it in May, saying the legislature started the process too late. Candidates who had already launched campaigns on the new lines are now running on the old ones.
WatchVoters in five states go to the polls Tuesday, but the marquee race is the expensive, bitter Senate contest to replace retiring Democrat Gary Peters — a seat the party has to hold to have any shot at the Senate.
The entries run from December 2019 to December 2022 and cover COVID's origins, Fauci's uneasy relationship with Trump, and his own discomfort with becoming, in his words, the most talked-about person in the country.
The coalition, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, argues the administration stretched Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act past its breaking point to impose duties on 60 economies.
Prosecutors dropped charges against all four people accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after Interior Department documents showed the damage came from a botched sealant job.
With gasoline above $4 a gallon and Brent crude sliding, the president singled out the two largest U.S. oil companies by name and said they had better hand some of it back.
The Justice Department issued an order Sunday rescinding the "anti-weaponization" fund and put a second concession in writing. Both Republican holdouts say that satisfies them, clearing Blanche for a committee vote Tuesday.
Plaintiffs who say police used excessive force at the Capitol had until Jan. 6, 2023, to file, the department argued Monday. The earliest claim it found was dated July 29, 2025.
WatchSusan Collins and Patty Murray released the text of a stopgap Sunday that funds most federal agencies at current levels through the second week of December. It strips out $1 billion for 'Trump-class' battleships and blocks money from being shifted to Border Patrol.
In a court filing Friday, the bank said its anti-money-laundering team spent months reviewing transaction patterns before it shut more than 300 Trump-affiliated accounts in 2021. It is the first time a bank has formally tied AML concerns to the president's family business.
After reviewing 1,500 pages of evidence and interviewing 16 witnesses, the bipartisan panel found "substantial reason to believe" the North Carolina Republican broke House harassment rules.