President Trump on Saturday signed executive orders imposing sweeping tariffs on the country’s three largest trading partners, a move that risks unleashing a damaging trade war. Trade wars were a feature of Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House, too. But his latest tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, which are set to take…

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. The new authority follows a…

President Trump ordered airstrikes on Saturday against the Islamic State in northern Somalia, the first major U.S. military operation overseas since he took office. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement that the military’s initial assessment was that “multiple operatives” in the remote Golis Mountains in the country’s north were killed in the strikes,…

Burned shells of abandoned cars and metal debris sat scattered along the charred streets. Soot stained homes that had been engulfed in flames. A crater in a sidewalk outside a Macy’s department store smoldered. Residents in Northeast Philadelphia on Saturday stood in disbelief at the devastation they witnessed in their neighborhood after a small medical…

Democratic lawmakers, activists and strategists across the ideological spectrum are engaged in a fierce debate over how badly damaged the 2024 election left the party’s brand, a consequential internal argument that is already shaping early efforts to rebuild. While there is none of the denialism that gripped Republicans after President Trump lost in 2020, Democratic…

The Trump administration plans to scrutinize thousands of F.B.I. agents involved in Jan. 6 investigations, setting the stage for a possible purge that goes far beyond the bureau’s leaders to target rank-and-file agents, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. The proposal came on a day that more than a dozen prosecutors…

White House officials said they were pleased that the Defense Department has cooperated fully in providing the administration with video content documenting the border deployment and the deportation flights. (According to the Defense Department, its videos are produced by career military public affairs officers, some of who also have experience filming for news organizations.) “The…

Will a different city emerge from the Los Angeles fires? Time and again fires have fast-tracked urban change. London after the Great Fire of 1666 rewrote its safety laws, widened streets and erected new public buildings, like the domed St. Paul’s Cathedral. Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871, which decimated downtown, invented the modern…

Karen Bass was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 on a pledge to reduce homelessness, drawing on her decades of experience in government. She won decisively and proceeded, with some success, to begin moving people off the streets and into shelter. But the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades this month has…

Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic chairman, was elevated on Saturday to lead the Democratic National Committee, taking the helm of a rudderless party staring down an uncertain future. Mr. Martin, a seasoned party operator who comes across as a low-key, mild-mannered Midwesterner, ran on pledges to broaden the party’s appeal — especially among working-class voters…