As the commander of a rebel group allied with Al Qaeda during Syria’s long civil war, the man known by his nom du guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, welcomed foreign jihadists, dispatched suicide bombers to blow up military posts and vowed to create an Islamic state. A decade ago, he told a journalist that Muslims should…
President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer on Friday after weeks of turmoil at the Pentagon, injecting a political element into selecting the nation’s top military leader. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q. who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be…
Elon Musk’s role as President Trump’s cost-cutting czar and his immersion in right-wing politics appears to be diverting his attention from Tesla at a perilous moment for the electric car company. Tesla’s car sales fell 1 percent last year even as the global market for electric vehicles grew 25 percent. Mr. Musk has not addressed…
Pete Marocco has spent much of this month hunkered in an office suite on the seventh floor of the State Department overseeing the dismantling of the architecture for how the United States delivers foreign aid. But he did have time to greet a foreign guest who had been making the rounds in Washington during the…
Prince Rahim al-Hussaini, a son of the Aga Khan IV, was named as his successor on Wednesday, inheriting the role of the spiritual leader of millions of Ismaili Muslims around the world. The late Aga Khan, 88 — a billionaire who was known for both his entrepreneurship and his philanthropy — died on Tuesday. Prince…
It was a hectic Monday morning for Peter Mandelson, who was packing up his home before heading to Buckingham Palace for an audience with King Charles III, on the eve of becoming Britain’s ambassador to the United States. But the stress of leaving London may not compare to what awaits Mr. Mandelson when he lands…
The Senate confirmed Chris Wright to lead the U.S. Department of Energy on Monday, putting the former oil executive in a key position to help shape President Trump’s energy policies. Mr. Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking firm, was confirmed by a vote of 59 to 38, with support from…
The State Department has fired about 60 contractors who work for its democracy, human rights and labor bureau, a division whose programs have often been criticized by authoritarian leaders, according to two U.S. officials and two former officials. The dismissals deal a severe blow to the bureau, because the contractors were mostly technical or area…
The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra, was fired on Saturday, prematurely ending a five-year term that was scheduled to run through late 2026. “With so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, agencies like the C.F.P.B. have never been more critical,” Mr. Chopra wrote in a letter he posted…
Senators of both parties sharply questioned Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, during a tense and at times combative hearing on Thursday that could signal a challenging confirmation fight. Over more than two hours, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sounding by turns skeptical and outraged, pressed Ms. Gabbard about…