President Trump is brandishing the U.S. economy like a weapon, threatening to put more than a trillion dollars of trade on the line with economic wars on multiple fronts. In a high-stakes confrontation that lasted over the weekend and into Monday, Mr. Trump promised to put tariffs on the United States’ closest trading partners, which…

President Trump and the leaders of Mexico and Canada struck last-minute deals today to postpone hefty tariffs that the U.S. planned to impose tomorrow on goods from the two countries. The agreements temporarily averted a North American trade war. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced this afternoon that Trump had agreed to postpone tariffs against…

The New York attorney general, Letitia James, has warned New York hospitals that complying with the White House’s executive order that seeks to end gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth could well violate state law. The warning, in a letter the attorney general’s office sent Monday morning to health care providers and other organizations, puts…

President Trump on Monday delayed his planned tariffs on Canada and Mexico for 30 days after winning concessions from both countries to stem the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States, postponing, at least temporarily, a painful and potentially destabilizing trade war. Tariffs of 10 percent are still set to go into effect…

In a beige-walled courtroom in eastern Iowa, a man who has been William Woods for his entire life faced a man who had been known as William Woods for much of his. That hearing on Friday brought an end to what prosecutors called “a Kafkaesque plot that resulted in the false imprisonment, involuntary hospitalization and…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed during a visit to the southwestern border on Monday to use thousands of U.S. active-duty troops to help stem migrant crossings, a top priority for President Trump. Mr. Hegseth and Thomas D. Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, toured El Paso by air Monday morning in a line of Army Black…

In Elon Musk’s first two weeks in government, his lieutenants gained access to closely held financial and data systems, casting aside career officials who warned that they were defying protocols. They moved swiftly to shutter specific programs — and even an entire agency that had come into Mr. Musk’s cross hairs. They bombarded federal employees…

When Albany Democrats began discussing a rewrite of New York’s special election law in recent days, seemingly out of the blue, they framed it publicly as a matter of good governance. But behind the scenes, their motivation was far more political, and was driven by Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat,…

Over the last few months, University of California officials have boasted that they have admitted the most racially diverse class ever to their sprawling system. They have managed to do this, they say, despite a 28-year-old state ban on considering race in college admissions, known as Proposition 209. But a lawsuit filed on Monday by…

Joseph Lynskey had never spent much time in a firehouse and was not sure what to expect. But he certainly had not anticipated being greeted at the door by the commissioner of the New York Fire Department and a long line of firefighters and lieutenants waiting to shake his hand. “I’m Joe,” he said to…