J.D. Vance as VP pick fuels European anxiety over U.S. backing for Kyiv
When an outraged Ukrainian lawmaker berated J.D. Vance at this year’s Munich Security Conference over the Republicans’ blocking of aid to his country, the U.S. senator listened patiently. But Oleksiy Honcharenko couldn’t change his mind. That task will now fall to European allies and Ukrainian politicians after former President Donald...
Supreme Court grants Texas man stay of execution just before scheduled lethal injection
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for a Texas man Tuesday, 20 minutes before he was scheduled to face a lethal injection. The inmate has long maintained that DNA testing would help prove he wasn’t responsible for the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman...
Houston power outages have repair crews facing threats from residents
HOUSTON — Drawn guns. Thrown rocks. Threatening messages. Houston’s prolonged outages following Hurricane Beryl has some fed-up and frustrated residents taking out their anger on repair workers who are trying to restore power across the city. The threats and confrontations have prompted police escorts, charges in at least two cases...
How to teach Alice Munro: Educators struggle in wake of her daughter’s revelations
NEW YORK — For decades, Robert Lecker has read, taught and written about Alice Munro, the Nobel laureate from Canada renowned for her short stories. A professor of English at McGill University in Montreal and author of numerous critical studies of Canadian fiction, he has thought of Munro as the...
Joe Biden: Cooling political rhetoric doesn’t mean ‘stop telling the truth’ about Trump
LAS VEGAS — President Joe Biden returned to the campaign trail Tuesday for the first time since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, continuing his call to calm the divisive rhetoric on both sides, but also arguing that doing so “doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth”...
Dam fails in Illinois as tornadoes, storms pound Midwest
CHICAGO — Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through the Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard. Hundreds...
Why vice presidential picks matter: significant moments in history and transfers of power
WASHINGTON — Of the 49 vice presidents in U.S. history, nine of them — or nearly 1 in 5 — have risen to the presidency due to death or resignation. The first was John Tyler, who became president after William Henry Harrison died one month into his term. The most...
Violence plagued officials at all levels of American politics long before the attempt on Trump’s life
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Long before a would-be assassin shot and wounded former President Donald Trump, the fuse of political violence had been burning across America. Members of Congress have been shot. One lawmaker’s staffers in Virginia were attacked with a baseball bat. In Louisville, a bullet grazed the mayor’s sweater...
With Roe overturned, Trump’s GOP turns to transgender health care
WASHINGTON — When he ran for office in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump focused heavily on abortion, vowing to nominate Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade — which he did as president. But this year, with Roe now overturned, the 2024 GOP presidential nominee and the Republican...
Sen. Bob Menendez guilty of taking bribes in cash and gold and acting as Egypt’s foreign agent
NEW YORK — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of all charges at his corruption trial Tuesday, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to...
French president accepts prime minister’s resignation but keeps him as head of caretaker government
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the prime minister’s resignation Tuesday but kept him on as head of a caretaker government, as France prepares to host the Paris Olympics at the end of the month. Macron’s office said in a statement that Macron “accepted” the resignation of Prime Minister...
Amazon Prime Day is a major cause of injuries for warehouse workers, Senate review says
NEW YORK — Amazon’s popular Prime Day sales event has been “a major cause of injuries” for warehouse workers who pick and pack customer orders at the e-commerce giant’s facilities across the United States, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders. The report, which draws information from...
6 people found dead in downtown Bangkok hotel; poisoning suspected, police say
BANGKOK — Police in Thailand say the bodies of six people were found Tuesday in a luxury hotel in downtown Bangkok and poisoning is suspected. Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said in a short statement that the dead were reported to be two Vietnamese Americans and four Vietnamese nationals. They were not...
SUV carrying 5 people falls into hot, acidic geyser at Yellowstone National Park
Five people ended up in the hospital after their SUV drove off the road and landed in a geyser at Yellowstone National Park last week. The vehicle went off the road and was fully submerged in 9 feet of water inside the inactive Semi-Centennial Geyser thermal feature near Roaring Mountain,...
Hawaiian residents return home after crews contain wind-swept wildfire on Kauai
KAUMAKANI, Hawaii — Firefighters have contained a wind-swept wildfire that was threatening about 200 homes on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, authorities said late Monday night, and an evacuation notice for the area has been lifted. The fire burned 1.56 square miles of land between Hanapepe and Kaumakani, the County...
Republican convention focuses on immigration a day after a bandaged Trump makes triumphant entrance
MILWAUKEE — Immigration takes center stage as the Republican National Convention resumes Tuesday, with speakers spotlighting a key issue for former President Donald Trump that helped endear him to the GOP base when he began his first campaign in 2015. Meanwhile, Trump and JD Vance. his choice for running mate,...
J.D. Vance is a relative political unknown. He’s been asked to help Donald Trump avenge his 2020 loss
MILWAUKEE — J.D. Vance is supposed to help Donald Trump win the Midwest this fall. But almost immediately after the Ohio senator was announced as Trump’s vice presidential pick on Monday, one thing became clear: Vance, a 39-year-old Republican with less than two years in Congress, is not well-known among...
On an unusually busy news day, did the assassination attempt’s aftermath change the media tone?
If this were a typical presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate on the Republican ticket would have likely dominated media discussions for a week or two. This is not a typical presidential campaign. On Monday, that choice was just part of the mix. On...
Police in Kenya use tear gas to break up new protests calling for the president to resign
NAIROBI, Kenya — Police in Kenya hurled tear gas canisters on Tuesday to break up protests in Nairobi and several other towns and cities accusing the president of poor governance and demanding his resignation despite his dismissal of nearly the entire Cabinet last week. Businesses in Nairobi remained closed for...
Thousands of Philadelphia city workers are back in the office full time after judge rejects lawsuit
Thousands of Philadelphia city employees are back in their offices full time after a judge rejected a union’s request to block Mayor Cherelle Parker’s requirement that they return. District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees had sued the city, claiming the mandate violates its...
The Democratic National Committee says it’s investing $15 million in 7 swing state parties
WASHINGTON — Democrats are trying to offer political counterprograming to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, announcing $15 million to fund campaign operations in seven key swing states — even as some in the party have urged President Joe Biden to bow out of November’s election. The Democratic National Committee...
Kennedy and West 3rd-party ballot drives are pushed by secretive groups and Republican donors
WASHINGTON — Libertarians in Colorado want to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot to create chaos. Petition drives for Cornel West in Virginia and North Carolina are being run by groups with Republican ties. And in Arizona, a convicted fraudster who’s been repeatedly investigated for using deceptive tactics...
Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone’
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people. Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the...
Trump enters Republican convention with a bandage covering his right ear after assassination attempt
MILWAUKEE — Former President Donald Trump, two days after surviving an attempted assassination, appeared triumphantly at the Republican National Convention’s opening night with a bandage over his right ear. Delegates cheered wildly as Trump appeared onscreen backstage and then emerged, visibly emotional, as Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the USA.”...
Outside RNC, conservative group defends its Project 2025 guidebook as Democrats ramp up critiques
MILWAUKEE — At the edge of the cordoned-off perimeter around the Republican National Convention on Monday, hundreds of conservatives filed into the ornate home of the Milwaukee Symphony to hear a parade of luminaries talk policy and Project 2025. Project 2025 is the term for the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 1,000-page...
