Legislative auditors in Arkansas found that the purchase last year of a $19,000 lectern by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s office potentially violated state laws, according to a report released on Monday. But the findings may be moot after the state attorney general, Tim Griffin, said last week that state purchasing laws do not apply to the governor or other executive …

Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday said he planned this week to advance a long-stalled national security spending package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other American allies, along with a separate bill aimed at mollifying conservatives who have been vehemently opposed to backing Kyiv. Mr. Johnson’s announcement, coming after he has agonized for weeks over whether and how to advance an …

The cost of a proposed NASA mission to gather rocks on Mars and return them to Earth is spiraling upward and slipping further into the future. So on Monday, space agency officials asked for ideas on simplifying the mission and trimming its price tag. “The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said …