WARRENTON, Mo. — Distributing food stamps soon could get even harder for Missouri’s food aid system, which a federal judge has already called “broken and inaccessible.”

States depend heavily on federal funds to operate their food stamp programs, which help feed about 42 million people nationwide. But a new federal law has restructured ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — “GOD IS GOOD!” the principal shouted to the 300 students buzzing in the auditorium at Annunciation Catholic School. They quieted immediately. “ALL THE TIME!” they responded.

It was two months after bullets flew through the adjacent church’s stained-glass windows, terrorizing students in their first Mass of the new ...Read more

Larry Humphreys, a retired Federal Emergency Management Agency worker in Moultrie, Georgia, says he and his wife won’t be traveling much next year after their monthly health insurance premium payment increases more than 40%, to $938.

Humphreys, 68, feels betrayed by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. “As federal employees, we ...Read more

The Trump administration plans to weaken environmental protections for threatened fish in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and pump more water to Central Valley farmlands, according to letters obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The letters show Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration strongly criticizing the Trump administration ...Read more

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has issued a draft proposal that would allow nearly 500,000 gallons of wastewater daily at Blue Origin’s Merritt Island facilities that would affect the Indian River Lagoon.

The permit would allow Jeff Bezos’ rocket company to operate an industrial wastewater treatment facility that could ...Read more

In almost every election cycle, politicians toot their own horn when it comes to rising wages, pointing to higher paychecks as proof that the average worker is thriving. But under the Biden administration, millions of Americans—faced with mounting grocery bills, rising rent, and shrinking savings—could see that these higher paychecks did not...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. — In September, the Turning Point USA chapter at the University of South Florida’s Tampa campus held a vigil to honor its founder, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered days earlier.

Thousands stretched down the street and attendees waited in the heat with signs and flowers. The chapter, part of the national ...Read more

Eliza Brader worries she soon will need to prove she’s working to continue receiving Medicaid health coverage. She doesn’t think she should have to.

The 27-year-old resident of Bloomington, Indiana, has a pacemaker and a painful joint disease. She also has fused vertebrae in her neck from a spinal injury, preventing her from turning her ...Read more

Northeast of the capital city of Des Moines in central Iowa, the 400-student Collins-Maxwell Community School District is one of many across the state shifting to a four-day school week.

Like many rural K-12 schools, the district has struggled to find teachers, and it sees the four-day week as a useful recruiting tool. It also wants to curb ...Read more

SEATTLE — Seattle drivers spent more time in traffic this year than they did in 2024, as construction on major corridors continued and remote work ebbed.

Motorists spent nearly three extra days behind the wheel, as the typical driver in the metro region lost 68 hours to traffic congestion in 2025, up 8% from 63 hours last year, and 19 hours ...Read more

ABHA, Saudi Arabia — From the air, Abha's mountains emerge as a shock of emerald green rising from a sea of sand. Terra firma brings other surprises: a bracing wind that has me grabbing for a jacket — a piece of clothing all but ignored in other parts of Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, so much of Abha, the capital of the southwestern province of Asir...Read more

As California students continue to lag behind pre-pandemic achievement levels, candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom say that state bureaucracy is to blame for a lackluster education system in one of the most powerful economies in the world.

Teachers and elected officials agree: Education is being underfunded. Organizations such as the...Read more

Gov. Maura Healey is condemning President Donald Trump for threatening to withhold funding for SNAP from 21 blue states, which the White House says refuse to comply with USDA anti-fraud data requirements.

Following an event at the Department of Public Health headquarters in Boston on Wednesday, Healey called the Trump administration’s move �...Read more

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new vaccine approval philosophy upends established regulatory practices and could put the health and safety of Americans at risk, according to an article written by a dozen of the agency’s former leaders.

The revamped framework was described in an internal email written by Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s ...Read more

The Trump administration will increase vetting of applicants for H-1B visas, with a specific instruction to reject anyone who was involved in “censorship” of free speech.

The instructions were outlined in a State Department cable sent to U.S. missions abroad on Dec. 2.

“BE ON THE LOOKOUT: APPLICANTS RESPONSIBLE FOR OR COMPLICIT IN ...Read more

The number of immigrants confined in federal detention facilities has surged past 65,000, perhaps the highest figure ever and a two-thirds increase since President Donald Trump took office in January.

The 65,135 in custody across the nation represents a shattering of the 60,000 threshold, which was last passed briefly in August before dropping ...Read more

More than 900 flights were delayed Wednesday at Denver International Airport as a winter storm dumped several inches of snow on the metro area.

As of 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, 939 flights at DIA were delayed and 11 were canceled, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Flights headed in and out of DIA were being delayed by an average of ...Read more

A number of pro-Palestine groups slammed Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for his decision to retain Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner in an open letter, accusing Mamdani of abandoning a cause central to his political identity.

Dozens of groups signed onto the Tuesday evening letter, including Students for Justice in Palestine’s national and ...Read more

Joesley Batista, co-owner of a sprawling business empire led by the meat-processing giant JBS NV, is quietly positioning himself as a connector trying to defuse political tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela’s ruling regime.

Batista traveled to Caracas last week in a bid to persuade President Nicolás Maduro to heed Trump�...Read more