First Run News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mindful of President Donald Trump’s intense interest in space, the Pentagon is declaring U.S. Space Command open for business as part of a broader effort to better defend American interests in space. But there’s still no Space Force. Trump planned to participate in a ceremony Thursday marking Space Command’s official establishment, or to be more precise, it’s re-establishment.

President Donald Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of during a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, New Jersey, during the president’s working vaca

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are making swings through New Hampshire this weekend — less than a week before nearly all of the party’s contenders are expected to flock to Manchester for the state Democratic Party’s annual convention. Warren is set to attend a house party Monday in Hampton Falls, which is on the coast of the first-in-the-nation primary state.

WASHINGTON — If a White House official wanted to talk to President Trump, it helped to have a good relationship with Madeleine Westerhout, his 28-year-old assistant. She was known for brusquely deflecting officials senior to her both in title and age who wanted a few minutes of face time with the president with one withering question: “Why are you here?” But it was not what some administration officials saw as Westerhout’s overprotectiveness of the president that led to her abrupt and unceremonious departure from the White House on Thursday.

Republicans are growing increasingly worried they will lose the suburbs for a second election in a row — this time with MORE at the top of the ticket in 2020.  The GOP forfeited the House in 2018, largely after losing suburban women voters, a key voting bloc that turns out at the polls but with whom Trump has proved particularly unpopular since becoming president. The suburbs could also pose a threat to Trump’s reelection chances as well as a number of vulnerable Senate Republicans facing uphill reelection battles in states such as Colorado, Maine, North Carolina and

Sens. MORE in the Democratic presidential race. Warren has been climbing in polls in recent weeks, surpassing Sanders in some surveys.  But Sanders, who in 2016 was the progressive alternative to front-runner MORE in the Democratic presidential race, is holding relatively firmly in the polls. He’s been ahead of Warren and in second place in some surveys, and his team continues to believe it is being underestimated.  At the next presidential debate on Sept.

The news media is taking hits from all sides, underscoring the bitter partisan divide and fierce war over the “official story” coming out of MORE’s Washington. New controversies involving the nation’s largest newspapers, top editors and cable news personalities have unfolded on a near-daily basis, making the press a central character in the 2020 presidential cycle. The outrage over coverage and attacks on the press are raining down from the left and the right, amplified by social media and the 24-hour cable networks, where Washington politics are dominating like never

Numerous Democratic presidential candidates spoke out Saturday after a gunman in West Texas killed five people and wounded more than a dozen others. Former Texas Rep. MORE. Sen. MORE (D-Md.). Montana Gov.

Multiple people, including three members of law enforcement, were reported to have been shot Saturday at a movie theater and on a highway in West Texas. At least five people were reportedly killed. The Midland Police Department wrote initially on Facebook that officers were searching for two suspects along Interstate 20 in Texas. Subsequent reports indicated that only one shooter was involved in the shootings, which occurred in multiple locations after reportedly beginning at a traffic stop along the interstate. "We believe there are two shooters in two separate vehicles.