WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are rejecting for the 10th time a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government. They are insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits. The repetition of votes on the funding bill has become a daily drumbeat in Congress. It underscores how intractable the situation has become as the vote has at times been the only item on the agenda for the Senate floor. House Republicans have left Washington altogether. The impasse has lasted over two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, even more without a guaranteed payday and Congress essentially paralyzed.… Continue Reading

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is depleting an agency that was already hit hard in the Trump administration’s previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s students and schools. The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced by more than half its size when President Donald Trump took office. The cuts threaten disruption in areas from special education to civil rights enforcement and after-school programs.… Continue Reading