As voters in nine states determine whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, opponents are using parental rights and anti-transgender messages to try to undermine support for the ballot proposals.

Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says he has no issue with kicker Harrison Butker forming a political action committee designed to encourage Christians to vote for “traditional values.”.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell has defeated U.S. Rep. Cori Bush in a Democratic primary in St. Louis.

Pittsburgh's most storied steel company, U.S. Steel, is on the cusp of being bought by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp. in a deal that's kicking up an election year political maelstrom.

The Senate has passed legislation that would compensate Americans exposed to radiation by the government by renewing a law initially passed more than three decades ago.

A federal agency is examining soil beneath homes in a small suburban St. Louis subdivision to determine if residents are living atop Cold War era nuclear contamination.

After months of negotiations and delays, the Senate has voted to move forward on legislation that would provide wartime aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies have testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about child safety on their platforms.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell is dropping his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley in 2024, and will instead make a run at a fellow Democrat — U.S. Rep. Cori Bush.

As Congress considers payments to victims of Cold War-era nuclear contamination in the St. Louis region, people who were targeted for secret government testing from that same time period believe they’re due compensation, too.

The U.S. Senate has endorsed a major expansion of a compensation program for people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing and the mining of uranium during the Cold War.

A Black prosecutor who stepped into leadership during protests over the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown is running for Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley's Missouri seat.

Top executives at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank largely avoided taking responsibility for their banks’ dramatic failures at a Senate hearing Tuesday, instead using their time to assign blame to events they said were largely out of their control.

The Supreme Court will be the next stop for a legal fight over the pill used in the nation’s most common abortion method.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley has tried to force a Senate vote on legislation that would ban TikTok from operating in the United States.

Missouri's Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey wants a transgender medical center to pause medications for minors amid multiple investigations.

Two years to the day since U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s now-famous raised-fist salute to rioters at the U.S. Capitol, a Marine veteran who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2022 has announced that he’ll try to unseat Hawley in 2024.

TikTok would be banned from most U.S. government devices under a government spending bill Congress unveiled early Tuesday.

Democrats celebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 campaign that could prove more challenging.

Congress is returning to an extremely volatile post-election landscape.

Members of Congress have officially objected to the results in four of the last six presidential elections.

President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the National Archives is facing unusual scrutiny at her confirmation hearing over the agency’s role in the investigation into sensitive documents seized at Donald Trump’s Florida home.

The nominee to head the National Archives is set to face an unusually contentious Senate confirmation hearing this week.

House Democrats are voting this week on changes to a 19th century law for certifying presidential elections.

Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters says he hopes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will back his close campaign in Arizona.

For much of the year, small cracks in Donald Trump’s political support have been growing.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell played a pivotal role in the Senate ratifying NATO membership for Sweden and Finland.

Republican leaders got their wish with the defeat of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens in the U.S. Senate primary.

Anti-abortion groups are looking to the courts, lawmakers and elections to facilitate more abortion restrictions and bans after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June left the issue up to states.

As the U.S. Senate primary campaign nears its end in Missouri, all three of the leading Republican candidates are making it clear that if elected, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell won't have their support.

Republicans Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas led the Senate challenge on Jan. 6, 2021, to Joe Biden's victory.

The Senate has unexpectedly launched a new push to protect same-sex marriage in federal law.

Eric Greitens resigned as Missouri governor in 2018 amid criminal charges and legislative investigations.

The end of Roe v. Wade started in the Senate.

The House has sent President Joe Biden the most wide-ranging gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades.

Even the staunchest defense hawks in the Republican Party stood virtually united by Donald Trump’s side when the then-president was impeached in late 2019 after pressuring Ukraine’s leader for “a favor” and withholding $400 million in military aid.

The Biden administration’s nominee for U_S_ ambassador to Ukraine is promising senators she'll work to make Russia’s war there a “strategic failure."

U.S. senators are demanding that the Army put more money and effort into repairing poorly maintained and substandard base housing for military service members and their families.

High-profile surrogates for Republicans running in Ohio’s hotly contested Senate primary are fanning out across the state ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a new panel to tackle disinformation.

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, whose ex-wife recently accused him of physical abuse, says he will not drop his political comeback bid for the U.S. Senate.

A milestone Supreme Court confirmation that endured a flawed process.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is endorsing former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel in the heated Republican primary for the open U.S. Senate seat in the Midwestern battleground.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson had to endure hours of public scrutiny from skeptics during her Senate hearings this past week, and that's something familiar to many Black women.

After more than 30 hours of hearings, the Senate is on track to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

The historic Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who's the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court, have been joyful, combative and clarifying.

It’s not just Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson who is being watched as she makes history as the first Black woman to be considered for the job.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faced down a barrage of Republican questioning about her sentencing of criminal defendants on Wednesday, as her history-making bid to join the Supreme Court veered from lofty constitutional questions to attacks on her motivations as a judge.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully defended her record as a federal judge Tuesday, pushing back on Republican assertions that she would be soft on crime and declaring she would rule as an “independent jurist” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the high court.

History was made the instant Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The first full day of questions for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson opened with some very big ones — on judicial philosophy, terrorism and race.

Judge Ketanji Brown is pledging to defend the Constitution and decide cases “without fear or favor” if she is confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Ketanji Brown Jackson has held private meetings with almost half the members of the Senate.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, is going before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the path to her historic confirmation seemingly clear.

President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee will face sharp questions from Republican lawmakers this coming week about the work she did as a public defender representing four Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson may not get any Republican votes.

For all their angst about the possibility of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in the state, GOP leaders haven’t coalesced behind an alternative.

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol has previewed some of its findings in a federal court filing.

Over three days, Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference seemed intent on avoiding Donald Trump’s grievances about the last election, and some ignored him altogether.

Leading Republicans spent much of the first three days at a conservative political gathering avoiding Donald Trump’s chief grievances or ignoring him altogether.

Congress has given final approval to legislation guaranteeing that people who experience sexual harassment at work can seek recourse in the courts.

A rift over the Republican National Committee's symbolic vote to censure former President Donald Trump’s House GOP critics has exposed the competing forces fighting to control the party.

Former President Donald Trump says Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell “does not speak for the Republican Party.”.

It's not often that Ted Cruz finds himself having to mend fences with the right.

A year after the Jan. 6 attack, Congress is more deeply divided than ever, and it shows in how lawmakers are choosing to mark the day.

As President Joe Biden announces two more ambassador nominees, the White House and Democrats are warning that maneuvering by some Senate Republicans to block all but a small fraction of Biden’s diplomatic and other national security appointees is doing serious harm to U.S. diplomatic efforts around the globe.

In 2021, few in the publishing industry worried that no one cared about books anymore.

Donald Trump’s first post-White House book will be, like so much else about him, a departure from other former presidents.

A federal lawsuit accuses the National Rifle Association of violating campaign finance laws by using shell companies to illegally funnel up to $35 million to Republican candidates, including former President Donald Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and others.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has defended a Justice Department memo aimed at combating threats and violence against teachers, administrators and other school officials.

Attorney General Merrick Garland is defending a memo aimed at combating threats against school officials nationwide.

Former President Donald Trump struggled during his first year in office to get his nominees confirmed in a timely fashion in the Senate.

President Joe Biden’s pick for ambassador to Beijing has told lawmakers considering his nomination that Americans should “have confidence in our strength” when dealing with the rise of China, a nation he says the U.S. and its allies can manage.

A publishing division is being started by the conservative media company the Daily Wire.

Roger Marshall won't let people forget he’s a doctor.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he will not again help Democrats extend the government’s borrowing authority.

The architect of an upcoming Washington protest that aims to rewrite history about the violent January assault on the U.S. Capitol is hardly a household name.

A U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri, Republican state Attorney General Eric Schmitt, is flexing the power of his office by filing a slew of lawsuits, including against Democratic cities and schools to stop mask mandates.

Allies of former President Donald Trump are calling those charged in the Jan_ 6 riot at the U_S_ Capitol “political prisoners.”.

Following the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, many big corporations pledged not to donate to members of Congress who objected to the results of the presidential election.

A bill that would make Washington, D.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been a political lightning rod since the early days of the pandemic.

FILE - In this Jan. 20, 2021, file photo, former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen walk from the plane to greet supporters after arriving back in his hometown of Columbus, Ind. Conspicuously absent from the list: Mike Pence. The former vice president is steadily reentering public life as he eyes a potential run for the White House in 2024. Ad“Obviously Mike Pence has a very different persona, a very different tone. The anger at Pence took a dangerously personal turn on Jan. 6 when rioters paraded through the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as a mob outside set up a makeshift gallows.

FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2020 file photo, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt speaks during a news conference in St. Louis. – Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt on Wednesday announced he's making a bid to replace Roy Blunt in the Senate, setting up a Republican primary against disgraced former Gov. Voters first elected Schmitt to the state Senate in 2008 to represent a suburban St. Louis district. He was elected state treasurer in 2016, then took over as the state attorney general after Josh Hawley vacated the seat to join the U.S. Senate in 2019. He won another term as attorney general in 2020.

“A lot of white, working-class Democrats thought we forgot them,” Biden said after touring a union training facility during a late September swing through Westmoreland County. Still, that proposition — which Republicans dismiss as a “liberal wish list” — will be tested in places such as Westmoreland County. “There’s a lot of people who are still registered Democrats, who still hold on to those working-class Democratic values," Bretz said. Trump won 62% of white voters without a college degree in November, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of the electorate. Ad“We are a working-class party now," Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted on election night.

Greitens' political future seemed doomed by scandal when he resigned as Missouri governor. – O'Eric Greitens' political future seemed doomed by scandal when he resigned as Missouri governor. Also like Trump, Greitens defeated establishment Republicans in the primary before winning in November. Many see Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft as the early favorite to win Blunt's seat, if Ashcroft opts to run. But Missouri Republican Party Treasurer Pat Thomas said Greitens retains “a definite following” among state Republicans.

A conference attendee takes a selfie photo in front of a statue of former president Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)WASHINGTON – A conference dedicated to the future of the conservative movement turned into an ode to Donald Trump as speakers declared their fealty to the former president and attendees posed for selfies with a golden statue of his likeness. Trump on Sunday will be making his first post-presidential appearance at the conference, and aides say he will use the speech to reassert his power. “If we do, we will lose the working base that President Trump so animated. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., lit into Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. “And I assure you that it will solidify Donald Trump and all of your feelings about the MAGA movement as the future of the Republican Party.”

Trump himself is headlining the three-day session in a Sunday speech that will be his first public appearance since leaving the White House on Jan. 20. Trump has been keeping a relatively low profile since he moved from the White House to Palm Beach a month ago. “I think the broader point will be: Here's where the Republican Party and conservative movement and the America First movement goes from here," said senior Trump adviser Jason Miller. Here we’ll see the president address the fact that the only divide in the Republican Party is between the elites and the conservative grassroots in the party." “In opposition, when you don’t have the White House, there are many more voices that lead the party,” Cotton said in an interview.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund appears before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs & Senate Rules and Administration joint hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, to examine the January 6th attack on the Capitol. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)WASHINGTON – Security officials testifying at Congress' first hearing on the deadly siege of the Capitol cast blame and pointed fingers on Tuesday but also acknowledged they were woefully unprepared for the violence. The security officials lost their jobs, and Trump was impeached by the House on a charge of inciting the insurrection, the deadliest attack on Congress in 200 years. But then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testified that he only learned about it the day before Tuesday's hearing. But in closing, Klobuchar restated the testimony: “There was clear agreement this was a planned insurrection.”ONE OFFICER'S PERSONAL STORYThe hearing opened with Capitol Police Capt.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund testifies before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs & Senate Rules and Administration joint hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021, to examine the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Sund said he hadn’t seen an FBI field office report that warned of potential violence citing online posts about a “war." Sund said he did see an intelligence report created within his own department warning that Congress could be targeted on Jan. 6. ”Sund and Irving disagreed on when the National Guard was called and on requests for the guard beforehand. A House subcommittee will examine damage to the Capitol on Wednesday and will hear testimony from currrent security officials, including Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, on Thursday.

In a letter signed last week they wrote that “the First Amendment does not apply in impeachment proceedings, so it cannot provide a defense for President Trump." Another showed Biden talking about taking Trump “behind the gym” to “beat the hell out of him,” like in high school. Trump used the word "fight" while trying to undermine the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost. Dozens of legal challenges to the election put forth by Trump and his allies were dismissed. AdStill, Trump's lawyers said they were making a valid point by highlighting Democrats' use of the word "fight."

“Where are they counting the (expletive) votes!” they hollered as they streamed inside, wielding wooden beams and a metal baseball bat, forcing the officer to retreat, according to footage shown this week at Donald Trump's impeachment trial. Outside, others were setting up a makeshift gallows on the Capitol lawn for Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence. They say the clips prove that without Trump’s attempt to overturn the election results, the Capitol riot would never have taken place. The trial was continuing Friday with a presentation from Trump's lawyers, who have decried the use of the video footage as unnecessary. AdOne of those people, Jessica Watkins, suggested as Biden’s inauguration neared that she “was awaiting direction from President Trump,” prosecutors said in court papers this week.

“Countless politicians have spoken of fighting for our principles.”AdBut the presentation blurred the difference between general encouragement to battle for causes and Trump’s fight against officially accepted national election results. Trump's lawyers made an abbreviated presentation that used less than three of their allotted 16 hours. Their quick pivot to the Democrats’ own words deflected from the central question of the trial — whether Trump incited the assault on the Capitol — and instead aimed to place impeachment managers and Trump adversaries on the defensive. But in trying to draw that equivalency, the defenders minimized Trump's months-long efforts to undermine the election results and his urging of followers to do the same. Trump's lawyers say that goal only underscores the “hatred” Democrats feel for Trump.

NEW SURVEILLANCE FOOTAGETo reconstruct the siege for senators, Democrats aired never-before-seen security footage from inside the Capitol that showed the attack unfolding. Ad“Vice President Pence had the courage to stand against the president, tell the American public the truth and uphold our Constitution. Many Republicans had been appalled by Trump's treatment of his most loyal soldier during his final days in office. REPUBLICANS HOLD FIRMThere appears little chance enough Republicans will break with Democrats to convict Trump at the end of the trial. AdThe video evidence was “nothing new here, for me, at the end of the day,” said Hawley, who maintains the trial is unconstitutional.

Neera Tanden also admitted to spending “many months” removing past Twitter posts, saying, “I deleted tweets because I regretted them." He said that included Tanden calling Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton "a fraud” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart” than Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said Tanden had tweeted more over the past four years than even Trump did. Still, Senate discussion of Tanden's nomination is likely to center more on her past tweets than her budget priorities. Cotton has said they were “filled with hate.” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn suggested previously that she'd face “certainly a problematic path” to nomination.

This cover image released by Gallery Books shows "Beautiful Things" a memoir by Hunter Biden. Biden, son of President Joe Biden and an ongoing target for conservatives, has a memoir coming out April 6. (Gallery Books via AP)NEW YORK – Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden and an ongoing target for conservatives, has a memoir coming out April 6. The book is called “Beautiful Things” and will center on the younger Biden's well publicized struggles with substance abuse, according to Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. “Beautiful Things” was circulated among several authors and includes advance praise from Stephen King, Dave Eggers and Anne Lamott.

Vice President Kamala Harris, right, ceremonially swears in Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, accompanied by his wife Tanya Mayorkas, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021, at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Complex in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)WASHINGTON – The Senate confirmed Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday as President Joe Biden's homeland security secretary, the first Latino to fill a post that will have a central role in the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, a sweeping Russia-linked cyber hack and domestic extremism. His nomination was stalled in the Senate by Republicans who wanted to question him further on Biden's plans for immigration policy. Mayorkas is uniquely qualified to make sure the Department of Homeland Security is working to protect people from all backgrounds, all communities and all walks of life,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said from the Senate floor. “He has nominated a very good secretary for DHS, a secretary that understands that policies affect border security,” he said.

Thousands had gathered that day as Congress voted to formally certify President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in November. Hawley and Cruz led objections in the Senate to Biden’s victory, despite the widespread recognition that the effort would fail. And both senators used their objections for political fundraising,” the Democratic senators said in their letter. Cruz helped force a vote on Biden's victory in Arizona, while Hawley helped force one on Biden's victory in Pennsylvania. “This latest effort is a flagrant abuse of the Senate ethics process and a flagrant attempt to exact partisan revenge."

In a first vote, the Senate confirmed Biden's nominee for director of national intelligence, Avril Haines. The new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., urged colleagues to turn the spirit of the new president’s call for unity into action. The three Democrats complete a Senate narrowly split 50-50 between the parties, but giving Democrats the majority with Harris able to cast the tie-breaking vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to soon transmit to the Senate the House-passed article of impeachment against Trump, charged with incitement of insurrection, a step that will launch the Senate impeachment trial. Progressive and liberal Democrats are eager to do away with the filibuster to more quickly advance Biden’s priorities, but not all rank-and-file Senate Democrats are on board.

Homeland Security Secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas testifies during his confirmation hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Hawley said he made the move because Mayorkas, in his confirmation hearing, would not commit to spending the $1.4 billion appropriated to expand the border wall with Mexico. Alejandro Mayorkas was asked about it Tuesday at his Senate confirmation hearing. ___10:30 a.m.One of President Donald Trump’s national intelligence directors is introducing President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for the job at her confirmation hearing. Avril Haines faces a confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate intelligence committee.