First Run News

PHOENIX — The tweet landed without warning or elaboration, just days before a presidential visit to Arizona: In the early hours of Thursday, President Trump, not for the first time, savaged Senator Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, calling him “toxic” and “WEAK,” hailing Mr. Flake’s primary challenger and drawing fierce pushback from fellow Republicans. By tiptoeing to the edge of endorsing Kelli Ward, a far-right former state senator, over an incumbent Republican, Mr. Trump further roiled a state and region already badly shaken by his campaign and its aftermath. Well before Mr.

WASHINGTON — There is no annulling this marriage. For several weeks, congressional Republicans have grown more brazen, inch by careful inch, in creating a measure of distance from President Trump.

WASHINGTON — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is scheduled to address a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington next month, less than two weeks before the court is set to hear arguments on Mr.

WASHINGTON — For all his fire-breathing nationalism — the demands to ban Muslims, build a wall on the Mexican border and honor statues of Confederate heroes — Stephen K. Bannon has played another improbable role in the Trump White House: resident dove. From Afghanistan and North Korea to Syria and Venezuela, Mr. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, has argued against making military threats or deploying American troops into foreign conflicts. His views, delivered in a characteristically bomb-throwing style, have antagonized people across the administration, leaving Mr.

BEIJING — The Trump administration plunged America’s Asian alliances into new confusion Thursday with conflicting signals over how to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat, as the chief White House strategist said a military solution was impossible. Three other leading officials of the administration — its top military general on a visit to China, and its defense secretary and secretary of state in Washington — effectively contradicted him, emphasizing that Mr.

WASHINGTON — The two top officers aboard a destroyer during a deadly collision off the coast of Japan in June were relieved of their duties on Friday, the Navy’s Seventh Fleet said.