WASHINGTON (AP) — President Lyndon B. Johnson knew the legislation he was about to sign was momentous, one that took courage for certain members of Congress to pass since the vote could cost them their seats. To honor that, he took the unusual step of leaving the Oval Office and going to Capitol Hill for the signing ceremony. It was Aug. 6, 1965, five months after the “Bloody Sunday” attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, gave momentum to the bill that became known as the Act...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will face another day of grilling on Capitol Hill, with senators getting their first opportunity on Thursday to confront or praise the Pentagon chief over his handling of the Iran war. Hegseth battled with Democrats — and some Republicans — a day earlier during a nearly six-hour House Armed Services Committee hearing, at which he faced sharp questioning over the war's costs in dollars, lives and the diminishing stockpiles of critical The a...

MILTON, Mass. (AP) — Perched in a tower atop a hill, Matthew Douglas climbs a staircase and emerges from a hatch on the roof, where a heavy glass ball in a metal cradle has burned a thin streak into a strip of paper, recording the previous day's sunlight. It’s part of a routine he and other weather observers at Blue Hill Observatory and Science Center, a weather station 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Boston, have followed every day for the last 141 years. Using largely unchanged analog...