WASHINGTON — A day after the Department of Health and Human Services implemented a late-night rollback of $2 billion in mental health and substance use funding, an administration official confirmed late Wednesday that the grants are now being restored.

The cancellation of Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration funding had ...Read more

Federal judges in the Western District of Washington plan to appoint a new U.S. attorney when the term of acting U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd expires next month, setting in motion a potential clash with the Trump administration and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Floyd, a controversial and tough-minded immigration judge, was appointed acting U....Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The attorney for the family of Renee Good said that an ICE agent killed “the best of the best” when he shot the Minneapolis woman a few blocks from her home last week and pledged timely public transparency of the firm’s findings.

Anthony Romanucci arrived in Minneapolis on Jan. 14, hours after he disclosed that his Chicago...Read more

As a federal immigration enforcement surge continues in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday called on Minnesotans to peacefully resist the administration of President Donald Trump and to record videos of immigration agents operating in the state.

The governor delivered remarks on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in an ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump insisted he does not plan to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell despite a Justice Department probe into the central bank’s renovation.

“I don’t have any plan to do that,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Reuters.

Still, the president said he had not arrived at a conclusion about ...Read more

The Florida Senate took a step Wednesday toward reforming the funding model for the state’s $4.3 billion school voucher system, unanimously adopting legislation aimed at fixing problems identified in a recent scathing Auditor General’s report.

Among other things, the measure would move voucher funding into a budget line that’s separate ...Read more

Mabelyn Hernandez-Diaz was still breastfeeding her 6-month-old son in September when Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies approached the vehicle she and her boyfriend, the boy’s father, were sitting in while it was parked in front of a store in Wimauma.

Hernandez-Diaz, a 20-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, held her infant son Aiden ...Read more

Sixty-five percent of Chicagoans think the Trump administration’s recent federal immigration enforcement activities have “gone too far,” according to results from a survey commissioned by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and conducted by NORC as part of the University of Chicago’s ChicagoSpeaks panel.

But Chicagoans were ...Read more

In a major victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic Party, a federal court in Los Angeles ruled Wednesday that California can use its newly configured congressional district boundaries for the 2026 midterm elections, increasing Democrats’ odds of winning five additional U.S. House seats and seizing control of the chamber.

Attorneys ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday rejected a request to extradite a California physician accused of providing abortion medication to a Louisiana patient, marking the latest clash between states with sharply different abortion laws following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

"Louisiana's request ...Read more

A new state report warns that California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to close a projected $2.9 billion budget shortfall fails to confront what it calls “alarming” multibillion-dollar deficits looming in the years ahead.

“The Governor and administration officials have acknowledged the downside risk to the state’s revenue picture and the ...Read more

DENVER — Twelve months into President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation program, Democratic lawmakers in Colorado are preparing a three-pronged package of bills aimed at regulating immigration enforcement and the detention facilities where authorities hold immigrants — and further tightening a law that Gov. Jared Polis tried to sidestep last...Read more

DENVER — A panel of Colorado Court of Appeals judges appeared to seriously consider Wednesday whether discredited elections clerk Tina Peters’ nine-year prison sentence was unfair, while also expressing skepticism that her convictions should be overturned altogether.

During the hourlong hearing, the three judges focused on whether Mesa ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — A top Trump administration lawyer pressed a federal judge Wednesday to block a newly enacted California law that bans most law enforcement officers in the state from wearing masks, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Tiberius Davis, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, argued at a hearing in Los ...Read more

NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Wednesday opened an investigation into New York City’s public school system over a policy that allows students to participate in sports based on their gender identity, federal education officials announced.

The city’s school system is one of 18 school districts, colleges and a state education ...Read more

State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Richland, is all in on his bid for the governor’s mansion.

Johnson said in a news release Wednesday he will not seek reelection to his House seat, even though it is common in South Carolina for candidates to run for multiple offices in the same election.

“Serving my community in the State House has been the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California announced an investigation Wednesday into Elon Musk's xAI, with Gov. Gavin Newsom accusing the artificial intelligence company of becoming a "breeding ground for predators to spread nonconsensual sexually explicit AI deepfakes."

Grok, the xAI chatbot, includes image-generation features that allow users to ...Read more

The U.S. announced the “launch” of the second phase of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to advance a fragile truce that has been challenged by Hamas militants refusing to disarm.

The second phase will see the war-torn enclave “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance...Read more

The number of people who have died from complications of the flu in North Carolina more than doubled in the last two weeks to 134, according to state health officials.

Another 26 people died in the state last week, according to the latest data from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency also revised figures it released for...Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of Barry Croft Jr., one of the ringleaders of a plot to kidnap and harm Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, meaning he will likely remain in federal prison barring a pardon or commutation from President Donald Trump.

The court's order denying Croft's petition for a writ of certiorari was filed in federal ...Read more