Pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown, the White House is insisting that Congress provide $5 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border despite lawmaker resistance from both parties. Without a resolution, parts of the federal government will shut down at midnight Friday. "We're going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration," White House senior adviser Stephen Miller said Sunday. Get More

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, facing federal investigations into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest, will be leaving the administration at year's end, President Donald Trump said Saturday. In his resignation letter, obtained by The Associated Press, Zinke said "vicious and politically motivated attacks" against him had "created an unfortunate distraction" in fulfilling the agency's mission. Trump, in tweeting Zinke's departure, said the former Montana congressman "accomplished much during his tenure" and that a replacement would be announced next week. The Cabinet post requires Senate confirmation. Zinke is leaving weeks before Democrats take control of the House, a shift in power that promises to sharpen the probes into his conduct. Get More

Thousands of people persisted through rainy conditions in the Washington, D.C. area, Saturday to lay more than a quarter million wreaths on graves at Arlington National Cemetery. President Donald Trump arrived about 2:15 p.m. via motorcade amid dense cloud cover and rain at Arlington. Carrying an umbrella and wearing boots, he walked down a row of headstones and greeted service members in uniform. Wreaths Across America annually brings together individuals and community groups to lay wreaths on thousands of graves at more than 1,400 sites, including Arlington National Cemetery. Get More

Just 7 years old, Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin was picked up by U.S. authorities with her father and other migrants this month in a remote stretch of New Mexico desert. Some seven hours later, she was put on a bus to the nearest Border Patrol station but soon began vomiting. By the end of the two-hour drive, she had stopped breathing. Jakelin hadn't had anything to eat or drink for days, her father later told U.S. officials. Get More

A federal judge's ruling that the Obama health law is unconstitutional has landed like a stink bomb among Republicans, who've seen the politics of health care flip as Americans increasingly value the overhaul's core parts, including protections for pre-existing medical conditions and Medicaid for more low-income people. While the decision by the Republican-appointed judge in Texas was sweeping, it has little immediate practical impact because the Affordable Care Act remains in place while the legal battle continues, possibly to the Supreme Court. HealthCare.gov, the government's site for signing up, was taking applications Saturday, the deadline in most states for enrolling for coverage next year, and those benefits will take effect as scheduled Jan. 1. Get More

President Donald Trump is facing escalating criminal investigations in Washington and New York that are examining not only whether his campaign coordinated with the Kremlin but also whether he illegally bought the silence of two women who say they had sex with him. A look at the nearly three dozen people charged by special counsel Robert Mueller and unanswered questions about what may lie ahead for the president — labeled "Individual-1" in court papers — and his administration. Get More

Saudi Arabia issued an unusually strong rebuke of the U.S. Senate on Monday, rejecting a bipartisan resolution that put the blame for the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi squarely on the Saudi crown prince and describing it as interference in the kingdom's affairs. It's the latest sign of how the relationship between the royal court and Congress has deteriorated, more than two months after Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul. The assassins have been linked to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. U.S. Senators last Thursday passed the measure that blamed the prince for Khashoggi's killing and called on Riyadh to "ensure appropriate accountability." Senators also passed a separate measure calling for the end of U.S. aid to the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Get More

Hospital officials who treated the 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in U.S. Border patrol custody said she appears to have died from sepsis shock, according to the most detailed timeline of her death released by the Department of Homeland Security. Autopsy results that will provide the official cause of death were still pending early Monday, NBC News reported. Sepsis is the body's extreme response to an existing infection somewhere in the body that can lead to rapid organ failure and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Get More at NBC News

A mother who had her toddler yanked from her arms by New York police in a widely seen video said in an interview published Sunday that she went into "defense mode." "In my head, I told myself they're not going to let me leave," Jazmine Headley told The New York Times. "I was so afraid. I was combative with my thoughts." The video captured the chaotic scene that unfolded Dec. 7 as officers tried to remove Headley from a crowded Brooklyn social services office, where she had sat on the floor for two hours because of a lack of chairs. Police were called when she refused a security guard's order to leave. Headley told the Times she was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and talking to her son, who was in a stroller. She said she refused, pointing out trash and recycling bins against the wall on the other side of her son's stroller. Get More

President Donald Trump keeps changing his story in the swirling investigations into Russia election interference and hush money payments to women who say they had affairs with him. He insists that payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 campaign were "private transactions" and that any crime committed would be the fault of his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, not him. That's a change from what the president said before. Trump previously had denied knowledge of payments and dismissed any hint of a crime. In the special counsel's probe into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump tried to cast doubt on whether his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI. Flynn in fact pleaded guilty to doing just that. Get More

Twice as many high school students used nicotine-tinged electronic cigarettes this year compared with last year, an unprecedented jump in a large annual survey of teen smoking, drinking and drug use. It was the largest single-year increase in the survey's 44-year history, far surpassing a mid-1970s surge in marijuana smoking. The findings, released Monday, echo those of a government survey earlier this year. That survey also found a dramatic rise in vaping among children and prompted federal regulators to press for measures that make it harder for kids to get them. Get More

Racial justice. Obstruction of justice. Social justice. The Justice Department. Merriam-Webster has chosen "justice" as its 2018 word of the year, driven by the churning news cycle over months and months. The word follows "toxic," picked by Oxford Dictionaries, and "misinformation," plucked by Dictonary.com. Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster's editor at large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday's announcement that "justice" consistently bubbled into the top 20 or 30 lookups on the company's website, spiking at times due to specific events but also skating close to the surface for much of the year. Get More

A real estate investment firm co-founded by President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, is betting big on the administration's Opportunity Zone tax breaks but isn't that interested in steering its investors to the poorest, most-downtrodden areas that the program seeks to revitalize. New York-based Cadre, in which Kushner still holds at least a $25 million passive stake, made it clear to potential investors in recent marketing materials that it doesn't plan to look for development deals in most of those zones because of their "unfavorable growth prospects." Instead, Cadre says it will target a "small subset" of zones in such cities as Los Angeles, Seattle and Miami where both populations and incomes are already set to rise faster than the national average. Get More

Shortly before a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl died in U.S. custody, her father signed a form stating that his daughter was in good health. But it's unclear how much the man understood on the form, which was written in English and read to him in Spanish by Border Patrol agents. The death of Jakelin Caal highlights the communication challenges along the U.S.-Mexico border as agents come in contact with an increasing number of migrants who speak neither English nor Spanish. Her father's native language is the Mayan tongue known as Q'eqchi'. His second language is Spanish. It's unclear whether something was lost in translation or whether it would have made a difference in saving Jakelin after the two were detained and underwent a health screening along a remote stretch of U.S.-Mexico border. Get More