House OKs budget package to avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON — The Democraticcontrolled House voted Tuesday to pass a $1.4 trillion government-wide spending package, handing President Donald Trump a victory on his U.S.-Mexico border fence while giving Democrats spending increases across a swath of domestic programs. The hard-fought legislation also funds a record Pentagon budget and is serving as a must-pass legislative locomotive to tow an unusually large haul of unrelated provisions into law, including an expensive repeal of Obama-era taxes on high-cost health plans, help for retired coal miners, and an increase from 18 to 21 in nationwide legal age to buy tobacco products. The spending legislation would forestall a government shutdown this weekend and give Trump steady funding for his U.S.-Mexico border fence, a move that frustrated Hispanic Democrats and party liberals.

45 days for ex-Trump campaign official

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former Trump campaign official Rick Gates to 45 days in jail despite what she said was “extraordinary” cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and other Justice Department investigations. The jail sentence, which U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said was needed to deter others and to reflect the seriousness of his crimes, is to be served intermittently during three years of probation that she also imposed.

Manafort in hospital

NEW YORK — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been hospitalized while serving his federal prison sentence. His attorney, Todd Blanche, said Manafort’s family and friends are “extremely concerned about his health.”