First Run News

After days of frenzied lobbying and speculation, President Trump decided on federal appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for his second nominee to the Supreme Court.  Brett Kavanaugh is an Ivy Leaguer who worked for the justice he has been nominated to replace, investigated a Democratic president, and served in a Republican White House.  Brett Kavanaugh’s career has traveled a most unusual path through Washington’s scandals.  During her 22 years in the Senate, Susan Collins has opposed judicial nominees put forward by Republican presidents just 1.2 percent of the time.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday selected Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a politically connected member of Washington’s conservative legal establishment, to fill Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court, setting up an epic confirmation battle and potentially cementing the court’s rightward tilt for a generation. A favorite of the Republican legal establishment in Washington, Kavanaugh, 53, is a former law clerk for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

After days of frenzied lobbying and speculation, President Trump decided on federal appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for his second nominee to the Supreme Court.  Brett Kavanaugh is an Ivy Leaguer who worked for the justice he has been nominated to replace, investigated a Democratic president, and served in a Republican White House.  Brett Kavanaugh’s career has traveled a most unusual path through Washington’s scandals.  During her 22 years in the Senate, Susan Collins has opposed judicial nominees put forward by Republican presidents just 1.2 percent of the time.

After days of frenzied lobbying and speculation, President Trump decided on federal appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for his second nominee to the Supreme Court.  Brett Kavanaugh is an Ivy Leaguer who worked for the justice he has been nominated to replace, investigated a Democratic president, and served in a Republican White House.  Brett Kavanaugh’s career has traveled a most unusual path through Washington’s scandals.  During her 22 years in the Senate, Susan Collins has opposed judicial nominees put forward by Republican presidents just 1.2 percent of the time.

Democrats in New Jersey are hoping that MORE's tax-cut law provides them with a boost in the midterm elections. The law caps the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000, a change that hurts people in high-tax states such as New Jersey, which has the highest property taxes of any state. All but one New Jersey Republican voted against the tax law, in large part because of the limit on state and local tax deductions.

Republicans expressed optimism on Sunday that the Senate will confirm any of expected nominees for the Supreme Court, while Democrats sharpened their arguments in response to reports that the president has zeroed in on a few potential nominees. Trump is scheduled to announce his pick on Monday night to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The spotlight on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is about to become brighter as Congress weighs the Trump administration’s request for a huge spending boost even as a growing number of Democrats want the agency abolished. The administration is pressing Congress for $8.3 billion in discretionary funding for ICE in fiscal 2019 — a $967 million increase over this year’s budget.

on Tuesday night with an eye toward pushing allied members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to boost their defense budgets. Despite Trump's push, the heads-of-state confab risks being overshadowed by growing tensions between the U.S. president and European allies, Trump's policies outside of NATO and his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is scheduled to take place days later. U.S.

In busy cafes where young men pack in to watch games while smoking shisha, the support for Sweden may be almost as strong as their dislike for England after a century of historical hurt. Closed off by an Israeli blockade for the past decade, politics seeps into nearly every conversation in the strip, even when it comes to football. And in this game, for many Palestinians, there is a clear good and bad guy. “Of course I will support Sweden,” said 37-year-old Hisham Ahmed. “I can’t imagine a Palestinian supporting England, which created the Balfour Agreement, or not supporting the country that s