President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning made a formal request to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption and fraud charges. Trump asked Herzog to consider fully pardoning Netanyahu in a letter that Herzog’s office shared. Trump wrote that Netanyahu has been a "formidable and decisive" leader for Israel in a time of war and has led Israel "into a time of peace." "Prime Minister Netanyahu has stood tall for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted," reads the letter...

Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, is expected to swear in Democratic representative-elect Adelita Grijalva on Wednesday afternoon, ending a seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming Arizona legislator from taking her congressional seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Johnson’s office announced Grijalva will take the oath of office at approximately 4pm EST on the House floor, ahead of a vote to reopen the federal government. The ceremony comes 49 days after Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, longtime congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died in March...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said a proposal for offshore drilling in the state would be “dead on arrival” as reports have emerged about the Trump administration selling new oil and gas leases in the region. According to The Washington Post, President Donald Trump’s Interior Department is “planning to open the California coast to oil drilling lease sales for the first time in decades.” Under these plans, the Interior Department would conduct six lease sales between 2027 and 2030, a move that Newsom pledged to challenge in court...

For the second day, the Federal Aviation Administration will continue to enforce its mandate to cancel 6% of flights at 40 high-traffic airports, as the U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on a Senate-passed bill to end the government shutdown. As of Wednesday morning, 890 flights within the U.S. had been canceled, and more than 750 flights had been delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware...

A nonprofit linked to a Chuck Schumer-affiliated super PAC is spending $1 million on ads targeting 2026 Senate Republican candidates over looming health insurance premium increases. Why it matters: Senate Democrats' government shutdown fight over health care costs is over. Now the party is trying to move that fight to the campaign trail. Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with the powerful Senate Majority PAC, is making the seven-figure ad buy in Maine, Ohio, Alaska and Iowa. Each are targets for Senate Democrats in next year's midterms...

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) said he will call President Trump, who has gone after him intensely as his political star has risen, in the coming weeks. “Do you plan to call President Trump?” WNBC’s Melissa Russo asked Mamdani in an interview that aired Tuesday. “I will be reaching out to the White House and — as we prepare to actually take office, because this is a relationship that will be critical to the success of the city,” Mamdani responded...

As President Donald Trump tries to reclaim the political narrative on inflation and affordability, new polling shows voters are increasingly viewing him the way they once viewed his predecessor: as the person responsible for an economy that feels more expensive and harder to navigate than ever. In the days following Democrats’ sweeping victories in off-year elections, Trump attempted to reassure voters that he has inflation under control. He cited a Walmart promotion as evidence that Thanksgiving meals are now “25 percent cheaper” than during the Biden administration. “My costs are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social...

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on a bill Wednesday that would secure funding and reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Now on Day 43, the stalemate has furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers, stalled federal food assistance programs and crippled airport operations nationwide...

I sit at the lunch table knowing my food is getting cold, too busy writing to eat. My two table mates are eager to tell me their stories. They are both veterans, attending an Armed to Farm training for beginning farmers. One went out of her way to welcome me, fetching a chair from a nearby table...

A signer of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter was a key adviser for Netflix’s House of Dynamite film on a potential nuclear war, which aimed to raise questions about the danger of atomic weapons and which has earned critiques from the Pentagon. The movie is about an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of unknown origin, presumably armed with a nuclear warhead, being launched at the U.S. out of the blue and heading for Chicago...