First Run News

Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke said he supported mandatory buybacks of certain weapons, including the AR-15, in a passionate response during the Democratic primary debate to recent mass shootings in Texas. O’Rourke was asked Thursday night whether his stance on buybacks meant he was in favor of confiscating guns from their owners. “I am, if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on the battlefield.

If the first debate meeting between former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be a dramatic, head-to-head showdown, it hardly materialized. But Warren could benefit from that anyway. Biden entered the presidential debate on Thursday night in Houston as the front-runner in the Democratic primary, with Warren rising in the polls to become one of his more fearsome rivals.

In some sense, everyone on Thursday’s 2020 debate stage was a winner. They made the cut for a primetime event on network TV while about half of their Democratic rivals for the White House did not. But once under the glare of TV lights, not everyone performed the same. These grades are based on how each candidate did, including the substance and resonance of their responses, as well as whether they accomplished what they needed in the context of their campaigns. Grade: B+ In the grand scheme of things, this debate won’t matter much.

HOUSTON — The leading Democratic presidential candidates split sharply over the issue of health care in a debate Thursday night, exposing the gulf between former vice president Joe Biden’s careful moderate politics and the transformational liberal ambitions of Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Biden, facing all of his closest competitors for the first time in a debate, quickly took the initiative to challenge Warren and Sanders for supporting a “Medicare for All”-style health care system that would displace the existing forms of privat

WASHINGTON — Ten Democrats seeking the presidency sparred Thursday night in a sprawling debate that put all qualifying contenders on the same stage for the first time. Here’s a look at how some of their claims from Houston stack up with the facts: Joe Biden: ‘‘We didn’t lock people up in cages, we didn’t separate families.’’ THE FACTS: His comment about cages is wrong. The ‘‘cages’’ — chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants have been temporarily housed, separated by sex and age — were built and used by the Obama a

Justice MORE on Wednesday took issue with the Trump administration's tendency to turn to the Supreme Court for relief from lower court injunctions. Sotomayor and fellow liberal Justice MORE were the lone two judges who dissented in the issuing of the stay of a nationwide injunction of a Trump administration rule that would drastically cut down on the number of people who could seek asylum in the U.S. The Supreme Court on Wednesday

North Carolina voters sent Rep.-elect Dan Bishop (R) to Washington on Tuesday night, closing out the final election of the 2018 cycle with a Republican victory that was simultaneously relieving and pyrrhic. Bishop, a state senator who represented parts of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, beat businessman and war veteran Dan McCready (D) by 2 percentage points. But as Republicans and Democrats digested the results from a district that spans from the Charlotte suburbs to the rural Cotton Belt late Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, both sides had reasons for concern. Republicans sho

Secretary of State MORE. Trump on Wednesday tore into Bolton, mocking him as “Mr. Tough Guy” and blaming him for causing setbacks on North Korea and lamenting that he made “some very big mistakes.” By comparison, Pompeo has maintained a strong relationship with the president and emerged as one of his most trusted allies by falling in line with Trump’s final decisions.  “From day one, Mike has understood that he’s there to advance the president’s agenda and not his own.

President Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. will delay an upcoming increase in tariffs on $250 billion worth of goods from China at the request of Beijing, calling it a “gesture of good will.” Trump tweeted that he would push back tariffs set to go into effect on Oct. 1 to Oct. 15 at the request of Chinese Vice Premier Liu He because the People's Republic of China will be celebrating its 70th anniversary on Oct.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday approved MORE's request to allow the administration to enforce its new asylum rule even as it is challenged in the courts. The decision was issued in an order. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, two of the court's four liberal justices, dissented.  The order is a victory for Trump, who has vowed to take action to stem the tide of immigrants at the southern border, most of whom are coming from Honduras, Guatemala