Politics

By Adam Cancryn, Sarah Ferris, CNN (CNN) — House Republicans crowded into the Kennedy Center on Tuesday to hear President Donald Trump lay out his vision for the consequential midterm year ahead. Instead, they got plenty of grievances — and little sense of a plan. Trump, in a meandering speech that stretched for over an

By Daniel Dale, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump abandoned his teleprompter in favor of impromptu musings in a speech at a retreat for House Republicans on Tuesday. And those ad-libbed Trump comments were filled with false claims. Trump littered his meandering address with at least 18 inaccurate statements, most of which have been previously

By Mary Kay Mallonee, CNN (CNN) — The Justice Department on Monday said it has released 12,285 documents – less than 1% – of its Jeffrey Epstein-related files, with more than 2 million documents still being reviewed. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told a federal judge in a Monday court

By Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, Jennifer Hansler, CNN (CNN) — Trump administration officials told lawmakers on Monday that then Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were injured after hitting their heads as they were fleeing US forces trying to arrest them, sources familiar with the briefing told CNN. Maduro and Flores ran

By Devan Cole, CNN (CNN) — Hours after ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was formally charged with narcoterrorism and other offenses in New York, the Justice Department used the indictment at a federal courthouse 1,300 miles away in its effort to defend President Donald Trump’s ability to use a wartime authority to speed up some

By Sarah Ferris, Kate Bolduan, Alejandra Jaramillo, CNN (CNN) — Doug LaMalfa, a longtime Republican congressman from Northern California, has died, House GOP leadership announced Tuesday. He was 65. As a fourth-generation rice farmer and business owner, LaMalfa was a respected voice in Washington on agriculture and rural communities, including as chairman of the Congressional

By Alex Stambaugh, Tami Luhby, Kaanita Iyer, CNN (CNN) — The Trump administration is freezing $10 billion in funds for social services and child care in five Democratic-led states, according to a Department of Health and Human Services official, with the agency suggesting without evidence that the funding has been used fraudulently. The freeze, first

CNN By Jeff Zeleny, CNN (CNN) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection bid for a third term Monday as a welfare-fraud scandal in his state has intensified and become a political flashpoint seized upon by President Donald Trump. “I can’t give a political campaign my all,” Walz told reporters at the state capitol

By Arit John, CNN (CNN) — Democrats are grappling with how best to respond to the Trump administration’s military intervention in Venezuela, as the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro highlighted foreign policy differences within the party and distracted from its focus on affordability issues. Maduro’s capture has forced Democrats to consider how much to criticize

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN (CNN) — The case against ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro hasn’t been able to move forward in the past six years. Now with his capture and first appearance in Manhattan federal court behind him, getting to trial could take even more years, with rings of unusual political and legal battles to

By Annie Grayer, Marshall Cohen, CNN (CNN) — Five years after the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, the fundamental facts of that day continue to fuel deep divisions that have created dueling political realities. On Tuesday, members of the former January 6 select committee – whose final report concluded that President Donald

By Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb, CNN (CNN) — George Conway says he never expected to run for Congress. And if you’d asked, he says, “I would have laughed.” But Conway, a former Republican once married to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, says his decision to run as a Democrat in New York is no

By Gabe Cohen, CNN (CNN) — Federal Emergency Management Agency leaders were told to prepare for a possible gutting of their workforce — by as much as half — in the coming months, according to an internal email sent to top FEMA officials last month. On December 23, dozens of senior FEMA leaders received a

By Natasha Bertrand, Alayna Treene, Kylie Atwood, Zachary Cohen, Avery Schmitz, CNN (CNN) — The US is making plans to try to intercept a fleeing oil tanker that Russia has claimed jurisdiction over, according to four people familiar with the matter, setting up a possible confrontation between Washington and the Kremlin over the vessel’s fate.

By Eric Bradner, Jeff Zeleny, Ted Barrett, CNN (CNN) — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Tuesday that she was actively weighing a bid for governor, a day after Gov. Tim Walz abandoned his re-election campaign as a welfare-fraud scandal in his state complicated his path to a third term. “I love my job, I love

By Lauren del Valle, Holmes Lybrand, CNN (CNN) — During the first hearing in New York in the case against ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, the defendants professed their innocence and accused the US government of abducting the two from their home. Both Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty

By Zachary Cohen, CNN (CNN) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Monday that the Pentagon is taking administrative action to punish Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, by moving to cut his retirement pay for participating in a video where he and other Democratic lawmakers reminded US service members of their duty to

By Jeff Zeleny, CNN (CNN) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection bid for a third term Monday as a welfare-fraud scandal in his state has intensified and become a political flashpoint seized upon by President Donald Trump. “I can’t give a political campaign my all,” Walz told reporters at the state capitol in