Stories by Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services first handed over the personal data on millions of Medicaid enrollees in a handful of states in June. After an Associated Press report identified the new policy, 20 states filed a lawsuit to stop its implementation.

A partisan move by Texas to redraw its congressional maps in the middle of the decade to secure five more GOP seats in the U.S. House set off a clamor to replicate the effort in statehouses controlled by both parties.

The legal battle playing out Friday showed the escalating tensions in a mostly Democratic city that now has its police department under the control of the Republican presidential administration that exists in its midst.

Today, the program provides benefits to almost 69 million Americans monthly. It’s a major source of income for people over 65 and is popular across the country and political lines. It also looks more threatened than ever.

As of Thursday, more than 700 wildfires were burning across the country, two-thirds of them out of control, with more than 28,000 square miles burned in 4,400 wildfires so far this year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. 

President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Recent suggestions by U.S. President Donald Trump that there will be some “swapping of territories” — and media reports that it would involve Ukrainian troops leaving the Donetsk region where they have fought for years defending every inch of land — have stirred confusion and rejection among the soldiers.

President Donald Trump said Monday that he’s deploying the National Guard across Washington and taking over the city’s police department in the hopes of reducing crime, even as the city’s mayor has noted that crime is falling in the nation’s capital.

James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97. Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest.

President Donald Trump signed the tax increase into law last month as part of his signature spending bill.

Any changes in the conduct of a national census, which is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight.

News Media Corp., which owns local newspapers across five states, said it will close 14 operations in Wyoming, seven in Illinois, five in Arizona, four in South Dakota and one in Nebraska.

All transgender members of the Air Force are being separated from the service under the Trump administration’s policies.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, canceled $500 million in government-funded research projects to create new mRNA vaccines against respiratory illnesses that might trigger another health emergency.

A key split is whether the treaty should require cutting plastic production, with powerful oil-producing nations opposed; most plastic is made from fossil fuels. They say redesign, recycling and reuse can solve the problem, while other countries and some major companies say that’s not enough.

The word “gerrymander" was coined in America more than 200 years ago as an unflattering means of describing political manipulation in legislative map-making. The word has stood the test of time, in part, because American politics has remained fiercely competitive.

The Republican-controlled committee issued subpoenas for depositions with former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and eight former top law enforcement officials.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has been one of Trump’s most outspoken critics during his second term, had been in quiet talks with Texas Democrats for weeks about offering support if they chose to leave the state.

Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak’s first five years.

Federal data released Friday, for example, shows COVID-19 is trending up in many parts of the country, with emergency department visits up among people of all ages.

The strike started at Boeing facilities in St. Louis; St. Charles, Missouri; and Mascoutah, Illinois, after about 3,200 local members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted Sunday to reject a modified four-year labor agreement, the union said.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a cornerstone of American culture for three generations, announced Friday it would take steps toward its own closure after being defunded by Congress — marking the end of a nearly six-decade era.

While the jobs numbers are often the subject of political spin, economists and Wall Street investors — with millions of dollars at stake — have always accepted U.S. government economic data as free from political manipulation.

American businesses and consumers woke up Friday to find the contours of President Donald Trump’s foreign trade agenda taking shape but without much more clarity on how import taxes on goods from dozens of countries would affect them.

It’s the third record-breaking year in a row for the exemption rate, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons.

Construction will begin in September on a $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, his press secretary announced Thursday, fulfilling a 15-year ambition by the president to construct an event space on the White House grounds.