Churches should have the First Amendment right to endorse political candidates and still keep their tax-free status, say House Republicans, who quietly tucked a provision into a sweeping spending bill that would deny the IRS money to enforce the 63-year-old law prohibiting such outright politicking from the pulpit. Republicans repeatedly have failed to scrap the…
Read MoreThe U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to cut $600 million from the organization’s nearly $8 billion annual peacekeeping budget. The move comes amid pressure from the Trump administration, which contributes more than a quarter of the department’s annual budget. But U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who took office Jan. 1, has also called for major U.N.…
Read MorePresident Donald Trump is forming a National Space Council to be led by Vice President Mike Pence. The president signed an executive order Friday to revive a council last in place in 1993. Trump says the announcement sends a clear signal to the world about the United States’ leadership in space. He says…
Read MoreClimate change will have an impact, not just on the temperature, but on the economy, according to a new analysis. A group of researchers has just released a study focused on the future economic effects of climate change in the U.S. Using six different economic variables, the team is predicting, with county by county accuracy,…
Read MoreOfficials from 10 states are calling on the administration of President Donald Trump to end an Obama-era program that granted temporary immunity to undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children. In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the officials urged the administration to end the 2012 Deferred Action…
Read MoreA New York jury ruled Thursday in federal court that a skyscraper with apparent ties to the Iranian government can be seized by the U.S. government, in what prosecutors are calling the single largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture case in American history. The jury found that the Alavi Foundation, which owns about 60 percent of the…
Read More