Mark Landler

Donald J. Trump, exuding confidence after his resounding primary victories in the East, promised a foreign policy on Wednesday that he said would put “America first.”

President Barack Obama, confronting a national epidemic of heroin and prescription drug abuse, met with recovering addicts, doctors and law enforcement officials to underscore his determination to tackle a problem some critics say he left until too late in his administration.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday challenged Republicans to offer a plausible rationale for refusing to consider a Supreme Court candidate to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, and he pledged to nominate someone with an “outstanding legal mind” who cares about democracy and the rule of law.

An epic Washington political battle took shape Sunday after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia as Senate Republicans dug in and said they would refuse to act on any Supreme Court nomination by President Barack Obama. But the White House vowed to select a nominee within weeks.

President Barack Obama plans to substantially increase the deployment of heavy weapons, armored vehicles and other equipment to NATO countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a move that administration officials said was aimed at deterring Russian from further aggression in the region.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that he was ordering a significantly expanded military campaign against Sunni militants in the Middle East that includes American airstrikes in Syria and the deployment of 475 more military advisers to Iraq. But he sought to dispel fears that the United States was embarking on a repeat of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president's decision to schedule an address during prime time Wednesday, from the state floor of the White House, underscores the gravity of the challenge from the Islamic State group. It comes after an intense internal debate and diplomatic outreach to assemble a coalition to target the Islamic State.

President Barack Obama, declaring that it was "time to turn the page on a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," announced Tuesday that he planned to withdraw the last U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

The day after a deadly assault in Syria that bore many of the hallmarks of a chemical weapons attack, a sharply divided Obama administration began weighing potential military responses Thursday to President Bashar Assad's forces.