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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official. Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. The firing is the latest upheaval in military leadership and in the country’s intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment...

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would meet with Vladimir Putin even if the Russian leader will not meet with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in comments that suggested Washington and Moscow could soon hold a summit.Trump's comments followed a statement from Putin earlier in the day that he hoped to meet with Trump next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates. But the White House was still working through the details of any potential meetings, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.When asked by a reporter if Putin would need to meet with Zelenskyy in order to secure a meeting...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s given his advisers instructions to obliterate Iran if it assassinates him. “If they did that they would be obliterated,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters while signing an executive order calling for the U.S. government to impose maximum pressure on Tehran. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.”

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced Friday in his felony hush money case, but the judge declined to impose any punishment, an outcome that cements his conviction but frees him to return to the White House unencumbered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.Trump’s sentence of an unconditional discharge caps a norm-smashing case that saw the former and future president charged with 34 felonies, put on trial for almost two months and convicted on every count. Yet, the legal detour — and sordid details aired in court of a plot to bury affair allegations —...

Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book “War.”In the famed Watergate reporter’s latest book, Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.”

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly swerved from a message focused on the economy into non-sequiturs and personal attacks, including declaring several times that he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump wound back and forth between hitting his points on economic policy and delivering a smattering of insults and impressions of President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron as he held a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania. The former president has seemed to struggle to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has diverged during campaign appearances away from...

WASHINGTON (AP) — At the top of his first speech as her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz turned to Vice President Kamala Harris and declared, “Thank you for bringing back the joy.” The next day, Harris took the theme a step further, branding the Democratic ticket “joyful warriors.” Contrast that with former President Donald Trump, who opened a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida a few days later by saying, “We have a lot of bad things coming up,” and predicting the U.S. could fall into an economic depression unseen since the dark days of 1929 or...

CHICAGO (AP) — Donald Trump falsely suggested Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race as the former president appeared before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago Wednesday in an interview that quickly turned hostile. The Republican former president wrongly claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian...

CHICAGO - Donald Trump falsely questioned Kamala Harris' race during an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago that quickly turned hostile on Wednesday. The Republican former president claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage.

BUTLER, Pa. (AP) — The man who was killed at a rally for former President Donald Trump was Corey Comperatore, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Sunday. Comperatore was a former fire chief from the area who loved his family, Shapiro said. “Corey died a hero. Corey dove on his family to protect them last night,” the governor said.

NEW YORK -- Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said definitively that rival Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, an acknowledgement the Florida governor made after years of equivocating answers.“Of course he lost,” DeSantis said an interview with NBC News posted Monday. “Joe Biden's the president.”DeSantis has often sidestepped questions about whether he believes the 2020 election results were legitimate. But in recent days he has started publicly questioning the lies that Trump and his allies have made about the election's legitimacy.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general said there was no credible evidence the election’s outcome was...

NEW YORK (AP) — Legally, the most important words former President Donald Trump said after he was charged with 34 felonies by the Manhattan District Attorney last week were “not guilty.” But, politically, the most significant may be “election interference.” Trump’s repetition of those words, which have been taken up by other top Republicans, show how he is trying to turn his historic position as the first former president charged with crimes to his advantage. It’s another example of what’s been a consistent refrain throughout his political career — claiming without evidence that an election is being rigged against him....