First Run News

WASHINGTON — For lunch on April 26, Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, dined with top executives from Southern Company, one of the nation’s largest coal-burning electric utilities, at Equinox, a white-tablecloth favorite of Washington power brokers.

WASHINGTON — Days before President Trump has to make a critical decision on whether to hold up the Iran nuclear deal, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis openly split with him on abandoning the agreement, the second senior member of the president’s national security team to recently contradict him. Mr. Mattis told senators on Tuesday that it was in America’s interest to stick with the deal, which Mr. Trump has often dismissed as a “disaster.” “Absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with,” Mr.

It is a little unsettling that the intellectual underpinning of tax policy in the United States today was jotted down on a napkin at the Two Continents Restaurant in Washington in December 1974. That was when, legend has it, Arthur Laffer, a young economist at the University of Chicago, deployed the sketch over dinner to convince Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, aides to President Gerald R.

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders are backing away from a proposal to fully repeal an expensive tax break used by more than 40 million tax filers to deduct state and local taxes amid pushback from fellow lawmakers whose residents rely on the popular provision. The state and local tax deduction is estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over the next decade and its repeal is central to paying for a sweeping tax rewrite

Jason Aldean, the country music singer who was onstage when bullets rained down on concertgoers in Las Vegas on Sunday night, has canceled his tour dates for this weekend. “I feel like out of respect for the victims, their families and our fans, it is the right thing to do,” Mr.

Stock prices for firearm companies rose this week after a gunman killed dozens of people in Las Vegas, an apparent continuation of a morbid trend linked to mass shootings. But investors were more muted than they had been in recent years, a sign of Wall Street’s increasing skepticism about how much influence mass shootings can exert on gun control legislation, especially in a Trump administration. Although the 2016 presidential election eased concerns among gun advocates about tighter rules, gun companies have struggled since the vote, with falling sales and excess inventory. The

WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, was at a loss on Tuesday. After the massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, he challenged the pro-gun bent of his state and co-authored legislation to expand background checks of gun purchasers, only to see the measure fail. “I just think that common sense has to prevail,” a dispirited Mr. Manchin said, explaining why he thinks that now is “the wrong time” to revive his bill.

It was a “watershed” attack, “one in a million,” an all-but-unforeseeable “black swan.” In the aftermath of the mass shooting at the Las Vegas country music festival, event security professionals — many with years of experience thwarting bad actors in bustling crowds — are characterizing the ambush in darkly exceptional, almost fatalistic terms.

WASHINGTON — In the wake of one the deadliest mass shootings in our nation’s history, perhaps the most asked question by Americans is, “Will anything change?” The simple answer is no. The more vital question is, “Why not?” Congress is already doing what it sees as its part. Flags have been lowered, thoughts and prayers tweeted, and sometime this week it will perform the latest episode in the longest-running drama on C-Span: the moment of silence.

“God bless America,” our president said, dutifully, after the bloody Sunday in Las Vegas. It’s a wish worth repeating. It’s an intervention sorely needed in a country seriously lost. God bless America, where shock over a torrent of bullets that sends dozens more to the morgue doesn’t last, if indeed there’s shock at all. This kind of violence is no longer exceptional. But we are. No other affluent country can match our massacres or, in the face of them, our paralysis. We stand out boldly in this regard. We lead. God bless America, awash in self-delusion.