First Run News

For years, lawmakers in Washington have made swelling university endowments a focus of the populist backlash against high tuition and the concentration of rich students in elite universities. Now they are harnessing that anger with a proposed tax on private colleges and universities that have the wealthiest endowments. The House Republican tax plan released on Thursday includes a 1.4 percent tax on the investment income of private colleges and universities with at least 500 students and assets of $100,000 or

WASHINGTON — Tucked away in the Republican tax plan are several provisions that have little to do with overhauling the tax code and more to do with ensuring conservative lawmakers vote for the legislation. The 400-plus-page bill released Thursday includes changes that would codify the rights of unborn children, allow tax-exempt religious organizations to engage in political activities and impose hur

On Nov. 9, 2016, about 12 hours after Hillary Clinton conceded defeat to Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, convened a conference call with her fellow House Democrats. Most of them were still back home in their respective districts and still in shock. Not only would Trump be president, but the Senate remained in G.O.P.

Donna Brazile, the former interim head of the Democratic National Committee, says in a new book that she considered replacing Hillary Clinton as the party’s 2016 nominee with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. after Mrs. Clinton suffered a fainting spell, according to an account published Saturday by The Washington Post. In her book, Ms. Brazile writes of her frequent frustrations with the Clinton campaign, saying that she would tell its leaders that she could invoke powers from the D.N.C.

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina wanted its reputation back. Worn down by about a year of battles and boycotts, its leaders cut a deal in March to repeal a law that had restricted restroom access for transgender people.

SAMMAMISH, Wash. — It is the stuff of liberal fantasies: a vast, defiant territory, sweeping along the country’s Pacific coastline, governed by Democrats and resisting President Trump at every turn. A single election in a wealthy Seattle suburb on Tuesday could make that scenario a reality, handing the party full control of government in Washington State — and extinguishing Republicans’ last fragile claim on power on the West Coast.

TOKYO — President Trump has put a hard-line trade agenda at the center of his 12-day trip to Asia, which begins here on Sunday. Yet Mr. Trump is leaving his two most senior economic advisers back home, as well as the White House economist whose anti-China views inform much of Mr.

TOKYO — President Trump on Sunday said he expects to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia next week to discuss confronting the threat from North Korea, part of a 12-day, five-country tour through Asia that started with his arrival in Japan and is very likely to be dominated by discussions about trade and Pyongyang’s nuclear program. In a speech to American troops after Air Force One landed at Yokota Air Base here on a crisp, sunny morning, Mr.

In August, when Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on Texas, David Clutter was in court, trying one more time to make his insurer pay his flood claim — from Hurricane Sandy, five years before. Mr. Clutter’s insurer is the federal government. As it resists his claims, he has been forced to take out a third mortgage on his house in Long Beach, N.Y., to pay for repairs to make it habitable for his wife and three children.

In August, when Hurricane Harvey was bearing down on Texas, David Clutter was in court, trying one more time to make his insurer pay his flood claim — from Hurricane Sandy, five years before. Mr. Clutter’s insurer is the federal government. As it resists his claims, he has been forced to take out a third mortgage on his house in Long Beach, N.Y., to pay for repairs to make it habitable for his wife and three children.