First Run News

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump Jr. refused on Wednesday to provide a congressional committee details of a July telephone conversation with his father about a meeting last year at which Trump campaign officials had expected to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton. Testifying in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee, Mr.

It was the spring of 1985 when President Ronald Reagan first proposed to put an end to the state and local tax deduction. The idea was, to be sure, politically tricky. The provision had been around since the creation of the federal income tax in 1913, the budgetary expression of America’s celebrated federalism.

MIAMI — A dozen high school students working for Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political network funded by Charles G. and David H. Koch, fanned out across the Little Havana neighborhood one day last week to make the case that the Republican tax bill was something to get excited about. “We believe it’s time to fix our broken tax code and let families keep more of what they earn,” Barbara D’Ambrosio, a sophomore, dutifully told an elderly woman who answered the door in her slippers.

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders moved closer on Wednesday to resolving some key differences between the House and Senate tax bills, though several big issues, including the size of the corporate tax cut, remained in flux. As the Senate voted to begin the process of reconciling its tax bill with the House version, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, threw his support behind allowing a more generous state and local tax deduction in the final legislation. “That sounds like a kind of reasonable idea,”

LOS ANGELES — With thick plumes of smoke, towering flames and mass evacuations, a fast-moving wildfire struck one of America’s major cities on Wednesday. As fires raged out of control across Southern California, a new blaze erupted in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, near iconic landmarks like the U.C.L.A.

LOS ANGELES — With thick plumes of smoke, towering flames and mass evacuations, a fast-moving wildfire struck one of America’s major cities on Wednesday. As fires raged out of control across Southern California, a new blaze erupted in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, near iconic landmarks like the U.C.L.A.

When the floodgates opened on Wednesday to cast Senator Al Franken aside, following a half-dozen accusations of sexual misconduct, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had positioned herself at the crest of the wave. “Enough is enough,” she wrote on Facebook, becoming the first of Mr. Franken’s Democratic colleagues to call for his resignation on Wednesday morning. By lunchtime, more than a quarter of Democratic senators had concurred; by evening, a solid majority. Mr.

WASHINGTON — Support for Al Franken all but collapsed on Wednesday among his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, with dozens calling for him to resign after a sixth woman said he had made an improper advance on her. “Senator Franken should resign,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Wednesday evening, the latest in an avalanche of statements that began with a half-dozen Democratic women and then snowballed throughout the day.

WASHINGTON — Support for Al Franken all but collapsed on Wednesday among his Democratic colleagues in the Senate, with dozens calling for him to resign after a sixth woman said he had made an improper advance on her. “Senator Franken should resign,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Wednesday evening, the latest in an avalanche of statements that began with a half-dozen Democratic women and then snowballed throughout the day.

If he was hoping for thunderous applause from American Jews, President Trump may be disappointed. His announcement on Wednesday that he will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital went down well with those on the political right, who have urged the step for years.