LOS ANGELES — After several days of protests outside its controversial pop-up in L.A.'s Silver Lake neighborhood, the restaurant Noma responded to a demand letter from workers' rights activists who have led a campaign that resurfaced past abuse allegations and culminated in last week's loss of event sponsors and the abrupt "stepping away" of ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday proposed its framework for a national artificial intelligence policy, pushing for broad preemption of state AI laws and against “open-ended liability” for AI firms.

The proposal urges Congress to take some steps to protect kids, energy costs and copyright holders, while also requesting streamlined ...Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The five-day heat wave that broke records across California and the West this week is winding down, with temperatures in the Bay Area forecast to fall from the 90s to the 70s in many places over the weekend.

But the effect of the overall hot, dry month of March is likely to be felt all summer, experts say, through increased...Read more

LOS ANGELES — As part of an ICE operation, plainclothes agents on Thursday pulled an accused MS-13 shot-caller out of a downtown federal courtroom, catching attorneys and the judge off guard, and casting uncertainty over the fate of his pending criminal trial.

Mark Sedlander, a defense attorney, said the agents, and at least one deputy U.S. ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The Kentucky House of Representatives on Friday voted to impeach a Fayette County judge after a committee issued articles of impeachment against her earlier this week.

In a 73-to-14 vote Friday, the House approved the articles of impeachment against Fayette Circuit Judge Julie Muth Goodman, sending the matter to the Senate ...Read more

U.S. officials said the White House is sending more than 2,000 additional Marines to the Middle East as it weighs a plan to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, a ground operation that would carry huge risks for President Donald Trump.

At the same time, Trump floated the idea late Friday that the war could end quickly — even as he had ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Anti-immigration bills in the Idaho Statehouse are crashing up against political reality, frustrating some proponents.

The lawmakers behind the slate of proposals say the issue is popular among Idahoans — but they’ve acknowledged a string of setbacks.

Rep. Dale Hawkins, a Republican who brought several of the immigration ...Read more

BALTIMORE — The Maryland Senate passed a bill unanimously Friday that would require every local board of education to implement a policy significantly restricting student use of personal cellphones, laptops, smart watches and other devices, and a ban on student social media use during the school day by the 2027-28 school year. The bill, which ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A tidal wave of presidential words does not policy make.

That was the lesson this past week at the White House, the Capitol and on board Air Force Once, where President Donald Trump got out 35,615 words publicly between Sunday and Thursday, according to CQ Roll Call’s Factba.se. His remarks generated dramatic headlines, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States is considering "winding down" hostilities in the Middle East as the Pentagon is sending thousands of California-based Marines to the region and has requested billions in new funding for the Iran war.

"We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Senators are sticking around Washington this weekend after a busy week on the Hill highlighted partisan divides, intraparty friction and growing tension between the two chambers. One thing is clear — everyone is ready for spring break.

The Senate has largely been wrapped up in an extended debate on the GOP’s marquee voter ID ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday over what the phrase “Election Day” means and whether states can accept ballots in federal elections that arrive after that date.

Republicans challenged a Mississippi state law, passed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, that allows officials to count ballots that arrive up to five ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge this week declined a request by county attorneys to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the mother of 29-year-old Abdul Kamara, who died March 4, 2024, hours after being placed in a restraint device at the Vista jail.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that the lawsuit, filed last year by Fredrika Nabbie, provides ...Read more

U.S. officials said the White House is sending more than 2,000 additional Marines to the Middle East as it weighs a plan to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, a ground operation that would carry huge risks for President Donald Trump.

“I don’t want to do a ceasefire,” Trump said Friday at the White House.

Any effort to seize and ...Read more

Jail officials are carefully watching Joseph Duggar, who once starred on the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” following his arrest for allegedly molesting a 9-year-old girl in Florida six years ago.

Duggar on Friday was being held in a “secure” area of the Washington County Jail in Arkansas while he awaits extradition to Bay ...Read more

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed Richard Lee, one of the City Council’s top budget negotiators, as his Department of Finance commissioner Friday.

The move comes as the mayor and council are in the midst of hashing out the city budget for the upcoming fiscal year — a process that already become tense as the city ...Read more

U.S. President Donald Trump again lashed out at military allies for not joining the war on Iran or helping to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, expressing frustration as the Islamic Republic kept up attacks on Gulf energy assets.

An intervention by NATO to open Hormuz — a chokepoint for about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson pushed back Friday morning against a proposal by Republican state lawmakers for a 30-day break from the state gas tax as gas prices have risen since the start of the war in Iran.

Ferguson, a Baltimore City Democrat, said that the gas tax accounts for about a quarter of the revenue used for ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Researchers investigating the long-term effects of the 2025 firestorms on Los Angeles' beaches have found that rarest of things: good news.

In the year following the Palisades and Eaton fires, levels of harmful metals like lead in coastal sand and seawater have remained far below California’s limits for safe drinking water and...Read more