Sorted by date Results 26 - 41 of 41
WASHINGTON (AP) — In town halls, television interviews and social media posts, Democratic presidential candidates are touting their support for "Medicare-for-all," higher taxes on the wealthy and a war on climate change. But foreign policy, one of the chief responsibilities of a president, is largely taking a back seat on the campaign trail. Former Vice President Joe Biden is seizing on that opening to position himself as the sole global policy expert in a crowded Democratic field if he decides to run for president. In a series of speeches o...
As he considers running for president, Joe Biden is talking with friends and longtime supporters about whether, at 76, he's too old to seek the White House, according to several sources who have spoken with the former Democratic vice president. The discussions suggest Biden is aware that his age may be the biggest hurdle to launching another bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, especially in an era when many in the party yearn for a new generation of leadership. He would be the oldest person to ever be elected president. Past and...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democrat Sharice Davids of Kansas added her name Wednesday to her party's increasingly diverse slate of candidates advancing to the November ballot. Davids, who would be the first gay, Native American elected to Congress, narrowly won a six-way primary in her eastern Kansas district, shattering the mold for a congressional primary winner in conservative Kansas and embodying the range of ethnicities and sexual orientations of Democratic candidates running throughout the country this fall. Notably, the 38-year-old lawyer a...
KANSAS CITY, Kansas (AP) — The new face of an emerging democratic socialist movement joined its patriarch in the most unlikely place Friday, calling on Kansans unhappy with the direction of the country to get off the sidelines in a pivotal Republican-held congressional district. "We know that people in Kansas, just like everywhere else in this country, just like families in the Bronx, just want a fair shake," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the surprise winner in a New York House primary last month, told a frenetic crowd of more than 3,000 in a K...
TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) — Two luminaries in the democratic socialist movement — one its national leader, the other its new star — descended on solidly Republican Kansas on Friday, taking their emboldened liberal message to an unlikely testing ground before next month's congressional primaries. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who rose to fame following her surprise win in last month's New York congressional primary, see an opportunity to influence Democratic voters in Kansas ahead of the state's Aug. 7 primary. They'...
When more than 1,000 Latino officials __ a crop of up-and-coming representatives from a fast-growing demographic __ gathered in Phoenix last week, no one from the Trump administration was there to greet them. It marked the first time a presidential administration skipped the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials in at least 24 years. But the absence was striking for another reason. As jarring images of severed Central American migrant families played out on television, the White House chose not to make the ca...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says a Democratic House takeover is possible because of vulnerable Republicans in districts President Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016. In Des Moines, Iowa, to address the Polk County Democrats' spring banquet, the California congresswoman dampened talk of landslides, and instead says narrow victories in more districts than expected would fuel a change in House leadership. Rather than a looming Democratic wave, Pelosi likened Democrats' momentum to "a lot of small droplets of w...
Republicans have known for months that their House majority is in genuine peril. But after another bruising showing in a special election, some in the party are reconsidering the once inconceivable notion of losing the Senate. It's a sobering possibility, particularly given Republican' confidence not long ago that they probably would increase their Senate edge after the November vote. Far more Democratic senators are facing re-election in states favorable to Republicans than the other way around. That's why the GOP held out hope of expanding...
OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — Just 18 months after declaring his opposition to banning assault weapons, Nebraska Democrat Brad Ashford has changed his mind. The former one-term congressman, now trying to win back an Omaha-area seat he lost in 2016, used to consider it futile to push for a ban while Republicans held power on Capitol Hill. But the student activism that has followed the rampage at a school in Parkland, Florida, has changed his thinking in a way that other high-profile shootings, including two in his hometown since 2007, had not. A...
HOSPERS, Iowa (AP) — In Sioux County, where swine barns interrupt the vast landscape of corn-stubbled fields, exports of meat, grain and machinery fuel the local economy. And there's a palpable sense of unease that new Chinese tariffs pushed by President Donald Trump — who received more than 80 percent of the vote here in 2016 — could threaten residents' livelihood. The grumbling hardly signals a looming leftward lurch in this dominantly Republican region in northwest Iowa. But after standing with Trump through the many trials of his first...
BISMARCK, North Dakota (AP) — Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota got a hard sell last week from President Donald Trump, who gave Cramer and his wife a personal tour of the West Wing and used the gilded luster of the newly renovated Oval Office to entreat Cramer to challenge popular Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp. It didn't work: Cramer turned down Trump, who had also called him about the race last fall. It's the latest in a string of complications for Senate Republicans, who are clinging to a paper-thin majority and entering a m...
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson, a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, doesn't look much like the renegade outsiders whom political strategist Steve Bannon says he's recruiting for his war on the Republican establishment. But Nicholson has Bannon's backing anyway, thanks to his loyalty to President Donald Trump. As Bannon drafts his team of challengers to the old guard, the new guard is increasingly aligned not by ideology, but by its history of support for the president. Republicans who have criticized the p...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Brushed aside by the Republican-controlled Congress, gun control advocates have shifted much of their campaign for tighter firearms laws to the states — and they've chalked up some modest, unexpected successes. Republican governors in Nevada, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and New Jersey all have signed bills this year tightening access to guns. At the same time, efforts to loosen restrictions have failed in several states where Republicans are in control. For gun control advocates — and for some Republican strat...
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Democrats used a bus emblazoned with the words "Drive for our Lives" to gin up opposition to vulnerable House Republicans who voted against Obamacare with the aim of upending the GOP's majority in next year's midterm elections. The vote to repeal and replace the Obama health care law looms large for 21 GOP lawmakers, including Iowa Reps. David Young and Rod Blum. They represent competitive congressional districts where Democrat Hillary Clinton won or came close in last year's presidential election. The collapse of t...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A group of Republican and Democratic governors are echoing President Donald Trump's criticism of a House GOP health care bill, saying it threatens coverage for the most vulnerable. Instead, they're asking Senate leaders to work together on an overhaul of Democrat Barack Obama's health care law. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, seven governors, including three moderate Republicans, argue that "true and lasting reforms are best approached by finding common ground i...
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — Republican governors complain that a GOP proposal to replace former President Barack Obama's health care law would force millions of lower-income earners off insurance rolls or stick states with the cost of keeping them covered. Governors, especially those from political battleground states, were generally cool to the bill put forth in the Republican-controlled U.S. House. Some signaled that they would continue working on their own legislation to compete with the measure introduced Monday. "We've said all along, '...
