First Run News

The Senate voted nearly unanimously on Wednesday to allow Congress to strip the president of the power to unilaterally lift existing sanctions against Russia, a matter that had many of President Trump’s allies siding with his harshest critics. The measure, which was approved 97 to 2 — Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, both Republicans, were the only votes against it — bolsters existing sanctions and would allow Congress to thwart any president

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel examining Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, has requested interviews with three high-ranking current or former intelligence officials, the latest indication that he will investigate whether President Trump obstructed justice, a person briefed on the investigation said on Wednesday. Mr. Mueller wants to question Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence; Adm. Michael S.

WASHINGTON — Shaken and angry, Republican members of Congress seized on the brazen daytime shooting of their colleagues on Wednesday to demand that existing restrictions on gun access be loosened so that people facing similar attacks are able to defend themselves. Past shootings have brought calls for more gun control, especially for restrictions on the kind of rifle used in Wednesday’s attack.

The violence has come regularly for years, in one politically charged spasm after another. A member of Congress shot through the head in Tucson. Assaults on the Holocaust Museum, a Planned Parenthood office and the Family Research Council, a socially conservative group.

WASHINGTON — Representative Chuck Fleischmann stood just outside the House chamber in the Capitol on Wednesday morning recounting his harrowing survival of a shooting rampage aimed at a group of lawmakers practicing for an annual charity baseball game. He was still wearing his cleats and red jersey with “Republicans” emblazoned across the front. But for once, such party labels were not the defining trait.

WASHINGTON — He lived out of his van in the Northern Virginia suburbs and took showers at the Y.M.C.A. On Facebook, he posted furious criticism of President Trump and pledged allegiance to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Back home in Illinois, neighbors complained to the police of his practicing his shooting near their home. Shortly after 7 a.m. on Wednesday, the police say, James T.

WASHINGTON — As the majority whip in the House, Representative Steve Scalise is known among his Republican colleagues as a pleasant, persistent force, who gently checks back to see whether a lawmaker who has repeatedly said “nope, not with you” on a coming vote has had a change of heart. Back home in southern Louisiana, Mr.

WASHINGTON — President Trump, a political agitator pressed into the unfamiliar new role of soothing a nation, called for bipartisan unity in his first statement responding to the shooting Wednesday morning of a congressman and three others on a suburban Virginia baseball diamond. Mr.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A lone gunman who was said to be distraught over President Trump’s election opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team at a practice field in this Washington suburb on Wednesday, using a rifle to shower the field with bullets that struck four people, including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives. Mr.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A lone gunman who was said to be distraught over President Trump’s election opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team at a practice field in this Washington suburb on Wednesday, using a rifle to shower the field with bullets that struck four people, including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives. Mr.