nationwide

President Donald Trump will kick his reelection campaign into high gear Tuesday in perhaps the most awkward of places: Inside the Democratic-controlled House, where he became only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.

The 45th chief executive formally launched his bid for a second term last summer with a rally in Florida. But his fourth address to a joint session of Congress — and third State of the Union — will put him face-to-face with the House Democratic caucus that rebuked him, guaranteeing a made-for-television clash that seems a fitting Season 4 premiere for a presidency that continues to operate stunningly like a reality television show.

Nine months out from Election Day, the latest fundraising reports provide new clues about both parties’ prospects in the battles for the House and Senate. 

In the fight for the House, vulnerable Democrats continued to raise eye-popping numbers as their party tries to hold on to its majority. Republican leaders last week sounded the alarm about their candidates’ fundraising, and the latest reports show why.

OPINION — “This is the diverse party. We are a diverse country. I am from a majority-minority state, California. So as far as I’m concerned, if we aren’t talking about race, dealing with race and actually addressing the problems of America today forthrightly and strongly, we’re not going to get the support of people, and we don’t deserve the support of people.”

That was presidential hopeful Tom Steyer, when I spoke with him recently, during his second stop through North Carolina in two weeks.

After the Trump administration proposed opening Florida’s coastal waters to oil and gas drilling, even elected Republicans in the state sent a loud message to Washington: Stay away from our coasts.

The proposal was set aside by the White House, but not disposed of. And Democrats plan to keep voters in the battleground state reminded that the plan remains on a shelf at the Interior Department, ready to be put into effect in President Donald Trump’s second term if he is reelected.

Just a few days to go, and it’s anyone’s guess who will win the Iowa caucuses. What’s the biggest thing on Iowans’ minds as they decide among a jumbled contest among the Democrats? Impeachment? Electability? Personal likability?

The last time we spoke with caucus expert and political scientist David Redlawsk, he was just starting a six-monthlong sabbatical in Iowa. Amid the electoral hubbub of the Iowa State Fair in August, Redlawsk said Iowans were just not sure what to do with all these candidates, as more than 20 Democrats, and even some Republicans, made their cases in the Hawkeye State. 

Marijuana legalization campaigns will increasingly run through state capitols as Congress remains stalled, advocates say.

A bill in the House to legalize marijuana faces an uncertain future, and the Senate has not moved legislation that would allow marijuana businesses to bank. Meanwhile, opportunities to legalize marijuana through state ballot initiatives have winnowed; while nine other states and the District of Columbia approved commercial sales through ballot initiatives, just 23 states and the district allow such initiatives.

Democrats felt comfortable supporting President Donald Trump’s renegotiated trade agreement with Canada and Mexico because labor unions, mostly, did.

The unions said the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement would be an improvement over its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

ANALYSIS — Sometime soon, the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump will likely end and the Senate, notwithstanding who might get called as a witness, will acquit him.

The president, of course, will claim victory and, having escaped punishment, will presumably return to doing what he has been doing for months — looking for ways to discredit Democrats, even if it involves help from foreign governments. The rest of us will also jump quickly from impeachment and back to the presidential race, hardly missing a beat.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can implement its divisive “public charge” rule, which seeks to withhold citizenship from immigrants the government deems likely to rely on public benefits like Medicaid and Section 8 housing. 

In the 5-4 vote, conservative-leaning justices voted to grant the administration its request to stay a lower court injunction on the rule while the merits of the case continue to be debated in the lower courts. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen G. Breyer voted against the stay. 

President Donald Trump, seeking to court evangelical voters, addressed thousands of activists gathered Friday on the National Mall for the nation's largest annual anti-abortion rally.

Trump, who this week revealed his “Pro-Life Voices for Trump” coalition for his 2020 reelection campaign, has strong ties to the anti-abortion community and is the first president to speak onstage at the event. Activists see him as a key ally in delivering policy priorities aimed at limiting abortion that he promised in 2016.