A campaign donor to Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to expand cruise ship operations in Key West, where voters have tried to restrict them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For many Americans, the Republican dysfunction that has ground business in the U.S. House to a halt as two wars rage abroad and a budget crisis looms at home is feeding into a longer-term pessimism about the country’s core institutions.

The lack of faith extends beyond Congress, with recent polling conducted both before and after the leadership meltdown finding a mistrust in everything from the courts to organized religion. The GOP internal bickering that for nearly three weeks has left open the speaker’s position — second in line to the presidency — is widely seen as the latest indication of deep problems with the nation’s bedrock institutions.

“They’re holding up the people’s business because they’re so dysfunctional,” said Christopher Lauff, 57, of Fargo, North Dakota.

Part of that business, he said, is approving money for Ukraine to continue its fight against Russia’s invasion, something he says ultimately helps the U.S. — a point President Joe Biden stressed T

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Kevin McCarthy was running out of options Monday as he pushed ahead with a plan to keep the federal government from shutting down, but even including hardline border security provisions wasn’t enough to appease the far-right flank in his Republican House majority.

The speaker is trying to convince his Republican conference that there will heavy political fallout from a shutdown as he plows toward a vote to pass a stopgap measure, called a continuing resolution, that would keep government offices open past the Sept. 30 deadline. GOP leadership is preparing for a vote by Thursday, but McCarthy is warning he’ll keep House lawmakers in Washington into the weekend. Regardless, many are already bracing for a weeks-long shutdown.

“I’ve told all of Congress you’re not going to go home. We’re going to continue to work through this,” McCarthy said Monday at the Capitol. “Things that are tough sometimes are worth it.”

He also suggested that time is still on his side a

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In 2020, North Carolina seemed the model of an evenly-divided swing state. Then-President Donald Trump barely won, beating Democrat Joe Biden by just over a percentage point. Meanwhile, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, won reelection by a relatively comfortable 5 points.

Even last year, as Republicans won two seats on the state Supreme Court, North Carolina’s congressional delegation split evenly between Democrats and the GOP.

But it’s the Republican Party that is making the decisions in the state, thanks to recent seat gains in the legislature and aggressive stances from GOP lawmakers. It has passed voting changes over Democrats’ objections and this week could vote to wrest power from the governor over how the state’s elections are run.

In both cases, Republicans are expected to override the governor’s veto thanks to their legislative supermajorities.

NEW YORK (AP) — As Americans fend off a late summer COVID-19 spike and prepare for a fresh vaccine rollout, Republicans are raising familiar fears that government-issued lockdowns and mask mandates are next.

It’s been a favorite topic among some of the GOP’s top presidential contenders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that people are “lurching toward” COVID-19 restrictions and “there needs to be pushback.” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott posted online that the “radical Left” seeks to bring back school closures and mandates. And former President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to stop the Biden administration from bringing back COVID-19 “mandates, lockdowns or restrictions of any kind.”

“The radical Democrats are trying hard to restart COVID hysteria,” Trump told supporters in Rapid City, South Dakota, during a recent campaign stop. “I wonder why. Is there an election coming up by any chance?”

While some individual schools and colleges have implemented temporary m

The end of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 has had a profound effect on maternal healthcare and abortion access across the country. Fourteen states have now completely banned abortion and two dozen more have bans at 22 weeks or less. As a result, an already grim maternal health care landscape has worsened.

New data reveals an unexpected consequence of these developments: Young women, even those in states where abortion remains legal, say they are foregoing having children because they are afraid to get pregnant because of changes that followed the Dobbs decision that ended Roe.

Polling conducted in August by my organization, All In Together, in partnership with polling firm Echelon Insights found that 34 percent of women aged 18-39 said they or someone they know personally has “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.” Put another way, poor or unavailable maternal health care post-Dobbs is leading people to alter s

The National Labor Relations Board could soon make it much easier for workers to unionize. The board plans to re-establish the Joy Silk Doctrine, which would force employers to recognize and bargain with their employees' union if a majority of workers sign authorization cards.

This would turn the tables in favor of workers and eliminate a key union-busting tactic employers use to stifle organizing. By enabling workers to unionize via card check and preventing employers from dragging out the process into a time-intensive union election, the decision would make it vastly easier for workers to win a union.

Steven Greenhouse explains. Greenhouse is a journalist and the author of The Big Squeeze and Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.

Vladimir Putin's attempts to justify the invasion of Ukraine as a just war to reunite historically Russian lands reflect the expansionist ideology at the heart modern Russia's imperial identity, write Glenn Chafetz and John Sipher.

To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”

The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repr

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — After Ohio voters repealed a law pushed by Republicans that would have limited unions’ collective bargaining rights in 2011, then-GOP Gov. John Kasich was contrite.

“I’ve heard their voices, I understand their decision and, frankly, I respect what people have to say in an effort like this,” he told reporters after the defeat.

The tone from Ohio Republicans was much different this past week after voters resoundingly rejected their attempt to impose hurdles on passing amendments to the state constitution — a proposal that would have made it much more difficult to pass an abortion rights measure in November.

Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their transgender teenage daughter, Sabrina, is not threatened.

“We were like, ‘OK, if we can just get Sabrina to 18 ... we can put all this horrible stuff behind us,’” Aaron Jennen said, “and unfortunately that’s not been the case, as you’ve seen a proliferation of anti-trans legislation here in Arkansas and across the country.”

At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, though judges have temporarily blocked their enforcement in some, including Arkansas. An Associated Press analysis found that often those bills sprang not from grassroots or constituent demand, but from the pens of a handful of conservative interest gr

OKEANA, Ohio - As Kristen King’s husband lay dying in their yard from three gunshots to his head, the 911 operator asked her: Did she know who killed him – or why?

Sobbing, King identified the shooter as her neighbor in the small Ohio town of Okeana. “His name is Austin Combs,” she stammered. “He’s come over, like, four times confronting my husband because he thought he was a Democrat.”

Then she broke down. “Why?” King wailed on the 911 recording, struggling for breath. “He’s the love of my life!”

The Nov. 5 killing of Anthony King was among 213 cases of political violence identified by Reuters since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump on the U.S. Capitol. Three academics who reviewed the cases say they add to growing evidence that America is grappling with the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s.

A key memorandum drafted by Chesebro -- which might otherwise appear relatively innocuous even in how it is discussed in the indictment -- laid the foundation for the scheme grounded, in part, on misrepresenting my work.