DENVER — Colorado’s program for issuing commercial driver licenses to immigrants with temporary legal status has been shut down for nearly two months and remains indefinitely suspended as state officials conduct an audit in response to a federal government crackdown on illegal trucking.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has ordered ...Read more

NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell on Wednesday asked a federal court to throw out her sex trafficking conviction and 20-year prison sentence for aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual exploitation of teenage girls.

In a habeas petition filed in Manhattan Federal Court, the former socialite — representing herself — argued new information arising...Read more

Underlying U.S. inflation rose in November at the slowest annual pace since early 2021, an unexpected improvement in a report muddled by the government shutdown.

The core consumer price index, which excludes the often-volatile food and energy categories, increased 2.6% in November from a year ago, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data ...Read more

Pope Leo XIV has announced fellow Chicagoan, Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Ill., will serve as the next archbishop of New York, replacing Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has led the state’s 2.8 million Catholics for more than 15 years.

“I am grateful to Pope Leo for appointing such a splendid priest and bishop to serve you, and have pledged to...Read more

China’s top diplomat held separate talks with his counterparts in Thailand and Cambodia as Beijing seeks to mediate a border clash after a new bout of violence between the two countries threatened to derail a ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was briefed by envoys from Thailand and Cambodia ...Read more

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A group of economists predicts Kentucky will soon see a revenue shortfall, one that is about half of what they projected three months ago for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. From now until the middle of 2028, the state’s income will likely see shy, moderate growth, the economists said.

Optimistic, pessimistic and ...Read more

NEW YORK — Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and more than 100 other local politicians are putting pressure on some of New York City’s largest private hospitals to settle a labor dispute with their unionized nurses before their contracts expire at the end of the year.

In an open letter shared exclusively with the Daily News on Wednesday, Mamdani ...Read more

CHICAGO — The federal prosecutor who had been heading up a high-profile case alleging a Chicago gang member solicited the murder of Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino is leaving the U.S. attorney’s office just weeks ahead of a scheduled trial.

Bradley Tucker, who joined the U.S. attorney’s office in June 2022 and had been assigned to the ...Read more

MIAMI — A Muslim civil rights group filed a lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his executive order last week that designated it and another organization as “foreign terrorist organizations,” arguing the move was unconstitutional and “discriminatory.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, is a Muslim ...Read more

MIAMI – Florida’s surgeon general wants to do away with all state vaccine mandates. But the first step in his plan targets four specific vaccines.

Earlier this month, the Department of Health had a meeting during which officials unveiled a proposal to drop the requirement for the chickenpox; the Hepatitis B; the Haemophilus influenzae type ...Read more

After years of debate, investigations and conspiracy theories, the Department of Justice is scheduled on Friday to finally release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The release will come nearly 20 years after federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida cut a remarkably lenient plea deal with Epstein that allowed him to avoid a lengthy ...Read more

The U.S. and Ukraine’s European allies have put together a plan of security guarantees containing detailed, robust and serious measures to ensure that any peace deal with Russia holds, according to officials familiar with the proposals.

An 800,000-strong Ukrainian army would provide the first line of postwar deterrence, with weapons and other...Read more

Russia will be paying for its invasion of Ukraine for years to come even if the fighting ended tomorrow, as the government plugs a widening gap in the military budget with increasingly costly borrowing.

As U.S. President Donald Trump pushes for a deal to end the war, the future bill for Moscow keeps growing. In one of the final bond auctions ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee is facing a steep fine for his notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas, with the city's Ethics Commission saying he must pay $138,424 in a case involving pricey meals and expensive nightclub "bottle service."

On Wednesday, the commission decided 4 to 0 that Lee, who represents the northwest San ...Read more

It’s pitch-black and frigid in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Michigan City, Indiana, by the time a small group of volunteers and immigrants gather in a circle, arms resting on each other’s shoulders and heads bent in prayer.

A pastor tells three Chicago-area men, who just hours ago had been released from an ICE detention ...Read more

ST. LOUIS — Over a year ago, Missouri voters approved enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution. Lawyers won court cases, blocking clinic restrictions. Providers promised that Missourians could access abortions close to home.

But today, appointments are hard to come by at the three Planned Parenthood clinics — in Kansas City, ...Read more

Alex immigrated to the U.S. as a toddler and has long felt haunted by his undocumented status.

In 2017, when he turned 15, he was finally old enough to apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, only for it to slip from his grasp right before he started the paperwork, when it was rescinded by the Trump administration.

Then, ...Read more