Obama administration

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their high-stakes summit at Trump’s Florida beach resort Thursday, with the urgent threat of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and tensions over trade on the agenda for the first meeting between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies.

Criminal prosecution and convictions of polluters have fallen to quarter-century lows under the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, deepening three years of overall enforcement declines, according to Justice Department statistics. And while the administration says it’s focusing on quality over quantity in pollution cases, using its enforcement resources to go after the biggest and worst offenders, an Associated Press analysis...

The Trump administration on Monday said it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be a violation of international law, reversing four decades of American policy and further undermining the Palestinians’ effort to gain statehood. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. is repudiating the 1978 State Department legal opinion that held that civilian settlements...

The number of foreign students coming to U.S. colleges and universities continued to fall last year, according to a new report, but the Trump administration says the drop should be blamed on high tuition costs and not students’ concerns over the nation’s political atmosphere. An annual report from the Institute of International Education found that the number of newly enrolled...

President Donald Trump released the rough transcript Friday of a congratulatory phone call he had with the incoming president of Ukraine, holding it out as evidence he did nothing wrong. Instead, the memorandum shows how White House descriptions of Trump’s communications with foreign leaders at times better reflect wishful thinking than the reality of the interactions. As the House opened...

Watch some of the key moments from the second public impeachment hearing, where former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testified.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, questions Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, on what the Obama administration prepped her on prior to her Senate confirmation hearings.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-New York, questions Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, on what the Obama administration prepped her on prior to her Senate confirmation hearings.

Imagine a credit card bill that takes a decade or longer to pay off. Now imagine that you can’t get rid of it in a bankruptcy if your personal finances go off-track. Finally, imagine there are millions just like you, enough to attract the attention of presidential candidates. This is the $1.6 trillion world of federal student loans, next to...

The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Thursday to condemn the American economic embargo of Cuba for the 28th year, rejecting U.S. criticism of human rights violations there and criticizing the Trump administration’s increasingly tough enforcement measures. The vote in the 193-member world body was 187-3 with the U.S., Israel and Brazil voting “no,” and Colombia and Ukraine abstaining. Last year,...

President Donald Trump has signed off on a plan that continues a dramatic drop in the number of refugees taken in by the U.S. to no more than 18,000 in fiscal year 2020. When the State Department first announced the plan in September religious and humanitarian groups sharply criticized the administration.

President Donald Trump has signed off on a plan that continues a dramatic drop in the number of refugees taken in by the U.S. to no more than 18,000 in fiscal year 2020. When the State Department first announced the plan in September religious and humanitarian groups sharply criticized the administration.

A federal judge has held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt of court for violating an order to stop collecting loans from thousands of former for-profit college students. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim issued the ruling Thursday in San Francisco. She also fined the Education Department $100,000. Kim previously ordered DeVos to stop collecting federal loans from former Corinthian Colleges...

Addressing an LGBTQ community fearful that their gains in equality are slipping, Democratic presidential candidates on Thursday promised an aggressive agenda to end workplace discrimination, improve health care and ensure protections for people who face threats, or worse, because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. At a televised forum in downtown Los Angeles, rivals for the party’s nomination to...

The Trump administration on Thursday proposed a rewrite of rules for dealing with lead pipes contaminating drinking water, but critics say the changes appear to give water systems decades more time to replace pipes leaching dangerous amounts of toxic lead. Contrary to regulatory rollbacks in many other environmental areas, the administration has called dealing with lead contamination in drinking water...

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General said on Friday that his office is reviewing several cases related to the owner of a gas company where former Vice President Joe Biden’s son sat on the board, as part of a review of all the criminal cases closed by his predecessors. U.S. President Donald Trump had pressed for such a review in a phone call...

President Donald Trump is publicly encouraging China to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden, snubbing his nose at an impeachment inquiry into whether a similar, private appeal to another foreign government violated his oath of office. Trump declared Thursday at the White House, “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.” He said he hadn’t previously asked Chinese President Xi...

As Washington plunges into impeachment, Attorney General William Barr finds himself engulfed in the political firestorm, facing questions about his role in President Donald Trump’s outreach to Ukraine and the administration’s attempts to keep a whistleblower complaint from Congress. Trump repeatedly told Ukraine’s president in a telephone call that Barr and Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani could help investigate Trump’s...

President Donald Trump said at the United Nations this week that “protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities.” But his promise rings hollow to advocates for persecuted religious minorities seeking refuge in the United States. Trump’s administration already has slashed the nation’s refugee admissions ceiling to a historic low and on Thursday proposed a further cut for next...

In 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden was at the forefront of American diplomatic efforts to support Ukraine’s fragile democratic government as it sought to fend off Russian aggression and root out corruption. So it raised eyebrows when Biden’s son Hunter was hired by a Ukrainian gas company. The Obama White House said at the time that there was no conflict...