CHICAGO — The prospects for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s corporate head tax proposal reached a new nadir Monday as fed-up aldermen tried to block his wish to buy more time before holding a key vote on the measure.

Johnson’s handpicked Finance Committee chair, Alderman Pat Dowell, moved to recess a meeting instead of considering the revenue ...Read more

BOSTON — The hiring of a transgender person to Massachusetts' Commission on the Status of Women is a first, the new board member testified, and comes as a shock to one state representative.

Commission member Giselle Byrd, appointed by Gov. Maura Healey in August, said last month during a hearing over a proposed transgender act (S-2155), that ...Read more

Ex-Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph Emerson was sentenced to time served Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon, for trying to shut off a plane’s engine midflight.

Emerson, now 46, made international headlines in 2023 for wrestling with pilots to pull levers that could have caused the plane, holding 83 passengers, to crash or at least ...Read more

CHICAGO — A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview to proceed as a class action, authorizing two former detainees to represent potentially hundreds of current and future immigration arrestees processed at the facility.

The complaint, filed...Read more

WASHINGTON — The perennial battle over EPA’s biofuels mandates is coming to a head soon as the agency works on finalizing updates to the Renewable Fuel Standard’s blending obligations.

So far, the EPA’s proposal for the 2026 and 2027 RFS mandates has drawn the support of farm-state lawmakers — who often find themselves at odds with ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Trump administration can revive a policy from the president’s first term of denying asylum claims by preventing migrants from crossing the border from Mexico.

The Trump administration asked the justices to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, ...Read more

WASHINGTON — U.S. defense contractors have launched a lobbying and public relations blitz to defeat a provision in the Senate-passed NDAA that would set strict new rules for how the Pentagon accesses their intellectual property.

The issue is among the last unresolved matters facing House and Senate negotiators who aim to reconcile before ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s indictment of James Comey was riddled with problems that may give the former FBI director legal grounds to have it dismissed, a federal judge ruled Monday.

“The record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially ...Read more

NEW YORK — Three people have been arrested in a plot to bribe a federal juror in the upcoming case of Goran Gogic, a former heavyweight boxer accused of playing a key role in a massive international cocaine trafficking ring, prosecutors revealed.

The trial, set to start in Brooklyn Federal Court on Monday, was put on hold, with the entire ...Read more

The United States will designate Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Nov. 24, a dramatic escalation in Washington’s confrontation with strongman Nicolás Maduro and his closest allies.

The move is being widely read in Venezuelan political circles as an ultimatum: a final window for Maduro to negotiate his ...Read more

A lopsided congressional vote ordering release of the Jeffrey Epstein files was looming as soon as Tuesday after President Donald Trump abruptly changed his tune on the measure after months of stonewalling.

With Trump’s support, it was unclear if any Republicans at all would vote against a bill that GOP leaders tenaciously fought against and ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Two stark-white cruise ships loomed over a muddy Amazonian estuary, an odd sight from a beach where two children waded in the water.

The diesel-powered vessels towered over the impoverished riverfront neighborhood where trash littered the ground and a rainbow sheen from household and street runoff glistened on top of rain ...Read more

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a Trump administration appeal that argues migrants have no right to seek asylum at the southern border.

Rather, the government says border agents may block asylum seekers from stepping on to U.S. soil and turn away their claims without a hearing.

The new case seeks to clarify the ...Read more

MIAMI — President Donald Trump has endorsed Emilio González for Miami mayor, adding to the roster of major GOP politicians throwing their support behind the former city manager and deepening the partisan divide that has shaped the officially nonpartisan race ahead of the Dec. 9 runoff election.

“It is my Great Honor to endorse Emilio T. ...Read more

CHICAGO — Out on his farm in Dundee Township, Cliff McConville sees geese landing in the fields where his turkeys and chickens graze. It’s a sight that often unnerves poultry producers, as migratory waterfowl carry and spread a highly infectious strain of bird flu that has been resurging in the United States for the last three years.

So far...Read more

CHICAGO — Out on his farm in Dundee Township, Cliff McConville sees geese landing in the fields where his turkeys and chickens graze. It’s a sight that often unnerves poultry producers, as migratory waterfowl carry and spread a highly infectious strain of bird flu that has been resurging in the United States for the last three years.

So far...Read more

A special tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced exiled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death, finding her guilty of crimes against humanity for her role in the violent crackdown on student-led protests last year.

The three-judge panel found the ousted leader guilty of ordering the killings of students and instructing law enforcement agencies ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Republicans in California have diverging opinions on President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement policies, according to a study published by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute on Monday.

The Trump administration has deployed a sweeping crackdown on immigration, launching ICE raids across the country and removing ...Read more

NEW YORK — Top officials at City Hall and the NYPD worked to undermine sexual harassment and retaliation accusations made by a female sergeant and three other cops against Timothy Pearson, one of Mayor Eric Adams’ top advisers, court papers filed Friday allege.

After Sgt. Roxanne Ludemann first accused Pearson of sexual harassment and ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Kris Edwards waited at home with friends for his wife, Erika “Tilly” Edwards, to go out to dinner, but she never made it back to the house they had purchased only four days earlier. Around 9 p.m. on June 29, a hit-and-run driver killed Tilly as she walked to her car after a fundraiser performance in Hollywood.

“I’ve just...Read more