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Jury acquits militia that occupied Oregon wildlife refuge — but the saga is far from over

In a stunning conclusion to a five-week trial, a jury acquitted seven defendants who faced a slew of conspiracy and weapons charges related to their armed takeover of a wildlife refuge earlier this year.

U.S. marshals tackled the attorney for the group’s leader and used a Taser on him.

By seizing the Republican presidential nomination for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night,

Rarely if ever has a party seemed to come apart so visibly. Rarely, too, has the nation been so on edge about its politics.

They fear their party is on the cusp of an epochal split — a historic cleaving between the familiar form of conservatism forged in the 1960s and popularized in the 1980s and a rekindled, atavistic nationalism,

Trump isn't your typical conservative.

"I think what a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards." House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Thursday,

and the fact that his message has earned him millions of Republican votes suggests a fracture between the grassroots and leadership.

A hasty effort to make peace between Donald J. Trump and Republican Party leaders veered toward the point of collapse on Friday as Jeb Bush announced he would not back Mr. Trump in the general election

Mr. Trump has struggled to make peace with senior lawmakers and political donors whom he denounced during the Republican primaries, and upon whose largess he must now rely.

Republican control of the Senate said in a briefing for lobbyists and donors on Thursday that the party’s

“I have the business, let’s call them talents, and I think I’ll probably go the political route,”

He has been one of the most visible Trump supporters on Fox News and reportedly met privately with Trump for 90 minutes last week.

Haley has publicly criticized Trump; Capito has not. The latter has more than 14 years of experience on Capitol Hill and hails from an economically depressed state that’s been receptive to Trump’s populist message.

Why Republicans in Congress AreOpposing or Supporting Trump

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was one of the 16 other Republicans to run for president and has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said Friday that he could not support him.

Mr. Ryan has serious policy differences with Mr. Trump, and he wants to protect the Republican majority in the House as well as his own political future, which could possibly include a run for president.

Here is something for Reince Priebus, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders to consider. At high schools and colleges with Latino or Muslim students, spray-painting “Trump 2016” on a wall or poster is properly taken as a racially charged incident. When white students chant “Trump! Trump!” at a basketball game against a team including minorities, it is properly taken as a racial taunt. Young people understand the logo of the Republican nominee — the very name of the Republican presidential candidate — as conveying a message of exclusion.

CHICAGO—Expressing dismay and confusion over voters selecting Donald Trump as the next president of the United States, area liberal Ryan Garlock reportedly told a group of his friends Wednesday that he no longer recognizes his fanciful, wildly inaccurate mental picture of the country he lives i

“I just can’t believe that almost 60 million people would vote for someone who called immigrants rapists and attacked women and disabled people. The America [selectively constructed from my own experiences and personal values, and which only exists in my mind] that I love would never do that.”

Garlock’s sentiments were reportedly echoed by all 1,273 of his Facebook friends.

There is a crisis of identity. Donald Trump now leads a coalition including the Republican establishment — and people who despise the Republican establishment. The insurgent president-elect — lacking relevant experience, adequate personnel and actual policy proposals — cannot exercise power without the help of those he ridiculed.

Trump has chosen to incorporate this conflict into the structure of the West Wing.

This is less a team of rivals than an ideological cage fight.

“In an ideal situation, we would repeal and replace Obamacare simultaneously, but we need to make sure that we have at least a detailed framework that tells the American people what direction we’re headed,”

vote gives Senate and House committees until Jan. 27 to write legislation that would repeal major provisions of the health care law.

convinced Mr. Trump to leap into the fray. Not only did he try to steel Republican spines, but he threatened Democrats who might stand in his way, saying he would campaign against them,

Trump Open to Shift on Russia Sanctions, ‘One China’ Policy

President-elect Donald Trump suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia and wasn’t committed to a longstanding agreement with China over Taiwan

n an hourlong interview, Mr. Trump said that, “at least for a period of time,”

about

The House on Friday passed a budget resolution allowing Congress to bypass a Democratic filibuster in the Senate if and when they vote to gut the health law. The vote was 227-198, with nine Republicans joining all the Democrats in opposition.

But the next step will be much harder—actually repealing the Affordable Care Act. House and Senate committees must draft and pass legislation in accordance with the budget resolution

“My colleagues, this experiment has failed. This law is collapsing as we speak,” Speaker Paul Ryan declared in a floor speech. “And we have to step in before things get even worse.

t the beginning of the 18th century, Poland was one of the largest states in Europe, a sovereign, multi-ethnic republic. By the end of the century it had vanished from the map, absorbed by the expanding empires of Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Poland was brought down not by invading armies, but by the weaknesses of its political system, which could be paralyzed by a single noble’s veto and thus easily compromised by outside powers offering bribes.

In short, the Kremlin appears to have directly interfered with an American election in order to boost a presidential candidate with a Russia-friendly foreign policy.

This go-it-alone mentality works against the ways that, historically, workers have improved their lot. It encourages workers to see unions and government as flawed institutions that coddle the undeserving, rather than as useful, if imperfect, means of raising the relative prospects of all workers.

It also makes it more likely that white workers will direct their frustration toward racial and ethnic minorities, economic scapegoats who are dismissed as freeloaders unworthy of help—in a recent survey, 64 percent of Trump voters (not all of whom, of course, are part of the white working class) agreed that “average Americans” had gotten less they they deserved, but this figure dropped to 12 percent when that phrase was replaced with “blacks.” (Among Clinton voters, the figure stayed steady at 57 percent for both phrases.

This is one reason that enacting good policies is, while important, not enough to address economic inequality. What’s needed as well is a broader revision of a culture that makes those who struggle feel like losers.

for all our love of rugged individualism, government played a large and underappreciated role in reshaping the American economy before — and it could do so again.

The government also played a crucial role on the other side of this transformation: bolstering workers’ human capital. From the Land-Grant College Act of 1862, which created a network of public universities, to the offer in the G.I. Bill of Rights to pay for the college education of veterans returning from World War II, the federal government invested aggressively in higher education.

Between 1910 and 1940, the high school graduation rate of American 18-year-olds increased to 50 percent from 9 percent.

unwarranted arrogance about economics isn’t Trump-specific. On the contrary, it’s the modern Republican norm. And the question is why.

The Trump team is apparently projecting growth at between 3 and 3.5 percent for a decade. This wouldn’t be unprecedented: the U.S. economy grew at a 3.4 percent rate during the Reagan years, 3.7 percent under Bill Clinton. But a repeat performance is unlikely.

For one thing, in the Reagan years baby boomers were still entering the work force. Now they’re on their way out, and the rise in the working-age population has slowed to a crawl. This demographic shift alone should, other things being equal, subtract around a percentage point from U.S. growth.

Scott Pruitt confirmed to EPA

The Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency Republicans desperately want to rein in after what they charge was eight years of dangerous activism under the Obama administration that hurt businesses, jobs and the economy.

Next up will be Commerce nominee Wilbur Ross, Interior nominee Ryan ZInke, Housing and Urban Development nominee Dr. Ben Carson, and Energy nominee Rick Perry.

Majority Rule Means the Power to Stop, Not J

GTON — When Richard J. Durbin joined the Senate in 1997, his

Republicans abruptly abandoned the inquiry when polls suggested the public was turning against it, and the investigation was generally regarded as a bust.