Stories by Associated Press

The judge’s ruling came after a lawsuit was filed earlier this month on behalf of families with transgender or nonbinary children who allege their health care has already been compromised by the president’s order.

The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, was the only “no” vote among Republicans, mirroring his stands against Trump’s picks for the Pentagon chief and director of national intelligence.

A federal judge on Wednesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump ’s plan to downsize the federal workforce with a deferred resignation program.

Critics complain the independent agency, funded by the Federal Reserve System, lacks sufficient supervision and regularly exceeds its regulatory authority. Defenders argue the bureau’s watchdog mission has strong bipartisan support.

The Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling R&B songwriter was convicted in 2021 in Brooklyn federal court of multiple charges, including racketeering and sex trafficking.

Eight-hundred people who have filed complaints since May against juvenile detention centers in Illinois alleging they were sexually abused by employees. The Illinois lawsuits are part of a wave of complaints against juvenile detention centers nationwide including in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Hampshire.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration’s foreign funding freeze and idling of staffers, a government watchdog warned Monday.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston challenges the Trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health over efforts to reduce funding that goes to so-called indirect costs — including lab, faculty, infrastructure, and utility costs.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted on charges that included seeking to sell an appointment to then-President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital.

President Donald Trump will need the Supreme Court, with three justices he appointed, to enable the most aggressive of the many actions he has taken in just the first few weeks of his second White House term. But even a conservative majority with a robust view of presidential power might balk at some of what the president wants to do.

State Department officials and others were appealing to the Trump administration to allow more USAID workers to remain on the job at least temporarily, including to manage the return home of thousands of USAID direct hires, contractors and their families abroad.

Elon Musk’s DOGE team already has gained access to a database housing personal information on millions of students and parents with federal student loans, according to two people with knowledge of the issue.

With hundreds of billions of dollars in transportation money still unspent from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, such changes could be a boon for projects in Republican-majority states, which on average have higher fertility rates than those leaning Democratic.

Elon Musk, one of President Donald Trump’s most powerful advisers, has orchestrated an unprecedented financial incentive for people to leave their government jobs, promising several months of pay in return for their resignation.

Virginia McCaskey, who inherited the Chicago Bears from her father, George Halas, but avoided the spotlight during four-plus decades as principal owner, has died. She was 102.

The surprising January heat record coincides with a new study by a climate science heavyweight, former top NASA scientist James Hansen, and others arguing that global warming is accelerating. It’s a claim that’s dividing the research community.

The offer — which tells federal employees that they can quit their jobs and receive roughly eight months of pay and benefits — had up until Tuesday not been made available to most national security roles in an apparent cognizance of their critical function to the security of the nation.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman said no court in the country has endorsed the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. “This court will not be the first,” she said.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion came at a White House news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who smiled several times as the president detailed a plan to build new settlements for Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip, and for the U.S. to take “ownership” in redeveloping the war-torn territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

Gene “Daddy G” Barge, an admired and durable saxophone player, songwriter and producer who worked on hits by Natalie Cole, oversaw recordings by Muddy Waters, performed with the Rolling Stones and helped inspire the dance classic “Quarter to Three,” has died in Chicago. He was 98.

Trump’s audacious proposal appears certain to roil the next stage of talks meant to extend the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza.

El Salvador President Nayin Bukele confirmed the offer in a post on X, saying El Salvador has “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system.”

The class-action complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, seeks an immediate halt to the Justice Development’s plans to compile a list of investigators who participated in probes of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as well as Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

In an order signed last week, Trump called for aggressive action to fight anti-Jewish bias on campuses, including the deportation of foreign students who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests. The cases were opened using the department’s power to launch its own civil rights reviews, unlike the majority of its investigations, which stem from complaints.

The White House confirmed the pause to the United States, which followed a similar move with Mexico that allows for a period of negotiations about drug smuggling and illegal immigration. There is a risk that the tariffs could still come into effect, leaving the global economy uncertain about whether a crisis has been averted or if a possible catastrophe could still be coming in the weeks ahead.