Trump, GOP congressional leaders to plot agenda in January

Eager for more legislative achievements before Washington's focus shifts to the midterm elections, President Donald Trump plans to start the new year by meeting with Republican congressional leaders to plot the 2018 legislative agenda, the White House said. After returning to Washington from Florida, where he is spending the holidays, Trump will host House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky at the rustic Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland during the weekend of Jan. 6-7.

Trump, GOP Hill leaders to meet at Camp David in January

Eager for more legislative achievements before Washington's focus shifts to the midterm elections, President Donald Trump plans to open the new year by meeting with Republican congressional leaders to map out the 2018 legislative agenda, the White House said. After returning to Washington from Florida, where he is spending the holidays, Trump will quickly host Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin at the rustic Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains during the weekend of Jan. 6-7, the White House said.

After chaotic start, Republicans make their mark in Congress

After a halting start, the Republican-controlled 115th Congress - sometimes in collaboration with President Donald Trump, often despite him - has enacted surprisingly far-reaching conservative achievements in its first year, among them a long-promised rewrite of the tax code, oil drilling in the Arctic and a series of lifetime appointments to the judiciary. For the new year, Republican leaders in the House have their sights on decades-old programs for the poor that they say are too easily exploited by those who do not need them.

Letter: Don’t forget who wins and loses with tax bill

As we are inundated ad nauseam with countless images of the grinning "Three White Men," in their self-congratulatory post legislative win celebrations and photo ops, let us not forget who will benefit, and who will be left behind in the wake of the GOP's, "huge tax cut." The clear winners, of course, are the 1 percent, the huge corporations, healthy young employed Americans, and Wall Street.

Congressional Republicans end year with legislative wins, but 2018 holds risks

After a year of legislative fits and starts, the Republican-led Congress can claim victory on an agenda of tax cuts, judicial confirmations and a substantial regulatory rollback. It's a list of accomplishments that seemed to surprise even party leaders, who warily entered a political marriage of necessity with President Donald Trump, but now say they have made their peace with his unpredictable style of governing.

@PKCapitol: Will the tax bill help or hurt Republicans? It depends.

Interpretation of the news based on evidence, including data, as well as anticipating how events might unfold based on past events Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks at the White House Wednesday following the passage of tax legislation, with Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Sen. Tim Scott . A couple with two children from Indiana, where Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly faces a difficult reelection next year, explain to the audience that with combined wages of $73,000, they stand to save $2,000 under the Republican tax cuts enacted Wednesday.

New year to be a challenge for Republicans in Congress

Ready to leave for the Christmas recess, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., walks to a news conference to discuss the GOP agenda for next year and and his accomplishments in the first year of the Trump Administration, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 22, 2017. Their tax bill triumph in the rear-view mirror, Republicans running Congress face a 2018 in which they'll need Democratic votes to get almost anything done.

Young immigrants to wait until 18 to learn their fate in US

The fate of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants living here illegally and facing deportation will be decided next year, a Republican senator says. Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said Wednesday he received assurances from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the Senate will vote in January on bipartisan legislation.

Mitch McConnell: 2017 a year of ‘extraordinary accomplishment’

"This had been a year of extraordinary accomplishment by any objective standard," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during his year-end press conference at the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declared 2017 to be a year of "extraordinary accomplishment" by Republicans capped off by the tax bill that will soon be signed into law by President Trump.

Mitch McConnell ‘warming up’ to Trump’s Twitter habit: ‘I haven’t been a fan until this week’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., discusses the GOP agenda for next year and touts his accomplishments in the first year of the Trump administration. McConnell said on Friday he's changing his mind, at least over the most recent string of tweets from the White House, which have touted the GOP's recently-passed tax cut bill and other Republican legislative accomplishments.

Did Democrats lose their leverage on DACA?

In the end, the calendar won -- and that has some recalculating who will have leverage in January for negotiations on immigration. Congress finished up its business for the year Thursday night and left town without resolving major outstanding issues -- including a resolution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lawmakers had repeatedly pledged to fix before the end of the year.

Health care is the issue that won’t go away

AP file photo Retired family physician Jay Brock of Fredericksburg, Va., joins other protesters against the Republican health care bill in July outside the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., on Capitol Hill in Washington. A year after a big change in leadership, a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 48 percent named health care as a top problem for the country.

Is an anti-Trump wave ahead for Republicans in 2018? Signs say yes.

Senator Mitch McConnell , House Speaker Paul Ryan, and other lawmakers watched Senator Orrin Hatch sign the final version of the GOP tax bill. WASHINGTON - President Trump is spending the holiday season reveling in his tax overhaul victory, but the new year may bring bad tidings as evidence mounts of a coming backlash in the 2018 midterm elections.

How Republicans pulled off the biggest tax overhaul in 30 years

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, second from left, speaks during an event to celebrate Congress passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with, from left, President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and fellow Republican members of the House and Senate on the South Lawn of the White House on Dec. 20, 2017.

Congress deals pair of blows to ‘Obamacare’

Two Republican senators abandoned their fight Wednesday for legislation this year to help contain premium costs by resuming federal subsidies to insurers, as Congress dealt a pair of blows to President Barack Obama's health care law. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Tennessee's Lamar Alexander ran into opposition from both parties to inserting the language into a must-pass bill preventing a weekend federal shutdown.