Washington | featured news

A 31-point win for the Portland Trail Blazers over the Charlotte Hornets on Jan. 11 isn’t looking like a win in hindsight.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is promising protesters demonstrating against abortion rights that he will veto any bill that “weakens the protection of human life.”
Trump spoke via video Friday to participants in this year’s March for Life on the National Mall.
The first march took place on the west steps of the Capitol in January 1974, the year after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. Thousands braved the cold to attend Friday’s event.

LANSING, Mich. — The governors of Michigan, New York and Washington are asking the Trump administration for guidance on whether states can provide unemployment benefits to federal employees who are working without pay during the shutdown.
Govs. Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo and Jay Inslee — all Democrats — issued a joint statement Friday. They say their states are providing unemployment benefits to furloughed federal workers, but federal regulations prevent them from giving the same assistance to those who continue to work without pay.

DETROIT — Michigan’s attorney general in 2016 promised to investigate “without fear or favor” the scandal over Flint’s lead-tainted drinking water and pledged that state regulators would be locked up for fudging data and misleading the public.
Yet three years later, no one is behind bars. Instead, seven of 15 defendants have pleaded no contest to misdemeanors, some as minor as disrupting a public meeting. Their records eventually will be scrubbed clean.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is staffing up to fend off any potential primary challenger.
The Virginia-based campaign is announcing Friday that former White House official Nick Trainer will lead its delegate and party organization efforts ahead of the 2020 Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.