President Trump took executive action on Saturday to circumvent Congress and try to extend an array of federal pandemic relief, resorting to a legally dubious set of edicts whose impact was unclear, as negotiations over an economic recovery package appeared on the brink of collapse. It was not clear what […]

WASHINGTON — As the clock ticked down Thursday on a self-imposed deadline for a breakthrough in coronavirus relief talks with no deal in sight, Jim Cramer, the brash CNBC host, had an on-air proposal for Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Why not try invoking the memory of the late civil […]

When Latrish Oseko lost her job last spring, government aid helped prevent a crisis from becoming a catastrophe. A $1,700 federal stimulus payment meant that when her 26-year-old car broke down, she could replace it. The $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits from the federal government allowed her to […]

He was the star witness in the Russia investigation, whose testimony helped convict two powerful advisers to the president. Now, Rick Gates, a high-level aide on Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign, is preparing to tell his story in a memoir that will be published weeks before the 2020 election. Mr. […]

Things took an awkward turn on Friday night’s episode of “Real Time” when host Bill Maher confronted CNN commentator Paul Begala about his former boss Bill Clinton’s ties to the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “Now, Bill Clinton. People are saying that there are witnesses who saw him on Jeffrey […]

WASHINGTON — As the clock ticked down Thursday on a self-imposed deadline for a breakthrough in coronavirus relief talks with no deal in sight, Jim Cramer, the brash CNBC host, had an on-air proposal for Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Why not try invoking the memory of the late civil […]

The stormy once-in-a-lifetime Florida recount battle that polarized the nation in 2000 and left the Supreme Court to decide the presidency may soon look like a high school student council election compared with what could be coming after this November’s election. Imagine not just another Florida, but a dozen Floridas. […]

WASHINGTON — Since the first days after she was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018, Kristi Noem had been working to ensure that President Trump would come to Mount Rushmore for a fireworks-filled July 4 extravaganza. After all, the president had told her in the Oval Office that he […]

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. knew how to flatter an old friend. He had been sitting in the Oval Office in May 2014, in his telling, convening privately with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Barack Obama when another commitment demanded his attention: Christopher J. Dodd, the former […]

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign staff is making plans to introduce his eventual vice-presidential choice to key party constituencies. Donors are readying finance events featuring the still-unnamed running mate — “date and time to be announced.” An in-person reveal is being discussed. But as the political world awaits his announcement, […]