Politics

WASHINGTON — Lora Shiao, a career American intelligence officer, will be the next acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the government’s central clearinghouse for intelligence on terrorist threats, Trump administration officials said on Saturday. Ms. Shiao, who is currently the center’s third-ranking official, replaces Russell Travers, who was abruptly replaced last week amid planned […]

But as it became clear there was bipartisan opposition to President Trump’s push for a payroll tax holiday, Mr. Mnuchin got onboard and the cash idea quickly transformed from pipe dream to reality, to the centerpiece of Senate Republicans’ roughly $1 trillion rescue plan. The optics were jarring, since it is Republicans who usually accuse

But even as he has seemed to take the crisis more seriously, Mr. Trump has continued to make statements that conflicted with the government’s own public health experts and focused energy on blaming China, quarreling with reporters, claiming he knew that the coronavirus would be a pandemic even when he was minimizing its threat only

The Shabab formally pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda in 2012. But long before that, its members fought Western-backed governments in Mogadishu as the group sought to impose its extremist interpretation of Islam across Somalia. In defending the fragile government, the United States has largely relied on proxy forces, including about 20,000 African Union peacekeepers from

The lecterns were separated by an epidemiologist-approved six feet. The candidates greeted each other with an elbow bump instead of a handshake. The first topic was, of course, the coronavirus, and the candidates’ arguments reflected their starkly different worldviews. Mr. Biden cast the fight against the virus as something like a war, requiring a well-tested

Across the country, citizens were ordered to hunker in their homes to avoid catching a deadly virus even as some people thought it was nothing worse than a seasonal cold. In the midst of fear and sickness, politicians had to decide how to hold scheduled elections, and the global pandemic was subject to political spin.

Defending American troops from accurate, short-range and easily concealed rockets would require an influx of troops to either defend the perimeter of bases like Taji, or to crew air defense weapons capable of intercepting the rockets. Iraqi officials already have pushed back on the placement of Patriot missile batteries, installed to help intercept Iranian ballistic

“Our feeling was that Senator Sanders should have said something earlier and should have been stronger about it,” said Bethany Khan, a political strategist for the union. And then there was Cuba: In February, Democratic officials in Florida reached out to propose convening some conversations between Mr. Sanders and Latino leaders in South Florida, many

WASHINGTON — Faced with steep shortages of medical supplies to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the White House is scrambling to coordinate with the private sector to import and manufacture testing swabs, face masks and hand sanitizer. A lack of nasal swabs has been a pressing obstacle as the United States tries to accelerate testing for

WASHINGTON — American taxpayers will have until July 15 to file their tax returns, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday, a move intended to offer additional reprieve to individuals and companies in the middle of the coronavirus. The move follows an earlier decision by the Treasury Department, at the direction of President Trump, to