First Run News

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration moved on Thursday to step up its assistance to Puerto Rico more than a week after Hurricane Maria, appointing a three-star general to coordinate with agencies and vowing to give the island all it needed as aides tried to stave off comparisons to the response to Hurricane Katrina more than a decade ago. But on Puerto Rico, the desperation and frustration only grew. Shelters ran out of supplies and residents lined up all night to purchase ice and fuel, only to walk away with a bag of cold water or just a few gallons of gas.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The first public whiff of the drama came two years ago, with a surprise divorce filing by the governor’s wife of more than 50 years. A surreptitious, salacious recording surfaced months later. Then, this past April, Gov.

WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon and two of his longtime benefactors are putting together a political coalition designed to ensure that the victory of a Republican insurgent in the Alabama Senate primary this week was just the beginning of the surprises that await the party establishment. Mr. Bannon brings to the effort the political and promotional skills he showed as President Trump’s chief strategist and advocate for populist stances on issues like immigration and trade.

WASHINGTON — President Trump failed again this week to fulfill his promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health plan. Now he is taking aim at Mr. Obama’s central environmental legacy, the Clean Power Plan. The administration has made clear its desire to repeal the Obama energy plan.

WASHINGTON — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch addressed a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel on Thursday, drawing protests and criticism for speaking at a venue that is the subject of several lawsuits against the president. In his remarks, Justice Gorsuch called for civility in debates over public controversies. On the one hand, he said, the First Amendment guarantees that “Americans can say pretty much anything they want for more or less any reason they want more or less anytime they want.” “But with every right comes a correlative responsibility,” he said.

WASHINGTON — After being rebuked by President Trump for racking up at least $400,000 in travel on chartered flights, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on Thursday that he would pay back taxpayers for his part of the bill and stop flying on private jets. But that does not mean his job is safe. Mr. Trump has grown incensed by Mr. Price’s liberal renting of expensive planes, which he views as undercutting his drain-the-swamp campaign message, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking. Through intermediaries and the media, Mr.

WASHINGTON — After being rebuked by President Trump for racking up at least $400,000 in travel on chartered flights, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on Thursday that he would pay back taxpayers for his part of the bill and stop flying on private jets. But that does not mean his job is safe. Mr. Trump has grown incensed by Mr. Price’s liberal renting of expensive planes, which he views as undercutting his drain-the-swamp campaign message, according to several administration officials with direct knowledge of the president’s thinking. Through intermediaries and the media, Mr.

SAN FRANCISCO — President Trump took aim at Facebook on Wednesday, calling the social network “anti-Trump.” But the social network insists it is pro-democracy and pro-truth — and the German election shows it. The president’s post on Twitter added to the pressure that Facebook has been under, facing accusations of partisanship from both sides of the political aisle.

For a sense of the dilemma confronting Facebook over its ad-targeting system, consider the following word: confederate. As of Wednesday, any prospective advertiser who typed that word into Facebook’s ad-targeting engine would be prompted to distribute their ad to a potential audience of more than four million users who had indicated an interest in the Confederate States of America, according to a test by The New York Times. There are plenty of Civil War buffs, of course, as well as students and scholars who have taken an academic interest in the Confederacy.

WASHINGTON — A key senator investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election sharply criticized Twitter on Thursday for failing to aggressively investigate the Russian misuse of its platform after the company said it had largely limited its own inquiry to accounts linked to fraudulent profiles already identified by Facebook. The senator, Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Twitter’s briefing for congressional investigators “very disappointing,” and accused company officials of ignoring extensive evidence of nefarious Russian a