National & World Headlines
The next round of COVID-19 vaccines will target one of the latest versions of the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration's decision was announced Friday, one day after a panel of outside advisers supported the recipe change. The FDA told vaccine makers to provide protection against the omicron strain, known as XBB.1.5. Today’s shots include the original coronavirus and an earlier version of omicron. The three U.S. companies that make the shots said they had geared up to make many millions of new doses available for the fall. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will eventually decide who should get the new shots.
June 16, 2023U.S. officials say the Department of Energy is among a small number of federal agencies compromised in a Russian cyber-extortion gang’s global hack of a file-transfer program popular with corporations and governments. They say the impact is not expected to be great. Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters that the hacking campaign was short, opportunistic and caught quickly. A senior CISA official said neither the U.S. military nor intelligence community was affected. Known victims to date include Louisiana’s Office of Motor Vehicles and Oregon's Department of Transportation.
June 16, 2023-
Former West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw has died at age 84. McGraw spent five decades in public service. McGraw was elected as a Democrat to fill an unexpired six-year term on the Supreme Court in 1998. He lost his bid for a full 12-year term in the 2004 election. He later was elected a circuit judge in Wyoming County before retiring in 2021, citing the physical impairments of Parkinson’s disease. McGraw also served five terms in the Legislature, including four years as Senate president. After losing in the 1984 primary for governor, he later served on the Wyoming County school board and as a county prosecutor.
June 15, 2023 -
A U.S. Army base in western Louisiana has been renamed in honor of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black veteran of World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. While serving in France in 1918, Johnson was wounded 21 times while he fought off a German night raid. His brave actions were recognized nearly a century later when he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2015. Fort Johnson was previously named after a Confederate commander, Leonidas Polk. The names of nine Army posts that commemorated Confederate officers are being changed as part of the military’s efforts to address historic racial injustice.
June 13, 2023 Hopes have been dashed for an imminent end to a Senate standoff that has delayed the promotions of more than 200 military officers and could delay the confirmation of President Joe Biden’s pick for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has been blocking the nominations to pressure the Defense Department to rescind a policy that reimburses service members who have to travel out of state for abortions and other reproductive care. A proposal to hold a Senate debate over Pentagon abortion policies was seen by some senators as the best prospect for getting Tuberville to lift those holds, but his office said Monday that Tuberville was opposed.
June 12, 2023-
Speaker Kevin McCarthy is suddenly confronting a new threat to his power. Angry hard-right conservatives have brought the House chamber to a halt, reviving their displeasure over the debt ceiling deal struck with President Joe Biden. McCarthy brushed off the disruption as healthy political debate — not too different from the 15-vote spectacle it took in January for him to finally convince his colleagues to elect him as speaker. But it's a foreshadowing of the next budget fight as Congress tries to fund the government at the levels agreed to, or risk a federal shutdown in fall.
June 07, 2023 Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives are making a pitch to overhaul how elections are run in the District of Columbia. They are employing a conservative playbook to tighten voting rules that has been used in Georgia, Texas and other GOP-controlled states. Democrats characterized the effort as an abuse of the authority Congress has over the District and a first step in imposing voting restrictions and stripping voter protections nationwide if Republicans regain full political power in Washington during next year’s elections. The D.C. attorney general says there has been no evidence of widespread election irregularities or voter fraud in the district.
June 07, 2023-
Supreme Court tossed out heart of Voting Rights Act a decade ago, prompting wave of new voting rulesA U.S. Supreme Court decision a decade ago that tossed out the heart of the Voting Rights Act continues to reverberate across the country. Republican-led states continue to pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the court left the provision intact. The conservative-leaning court has continued to take other cases challenging elements of the landmark 1965 law. The justices are expected to rule in the coming weeks in a case out of Alabama that could make it much more difficult for minority groups to sue over gerrymandered political maps that dilute their representation.
June 06, 2023 -
Fending off a U.S. default, the Senate has given final approval to a debt ceiling and budget cuts package. It's now on its way to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law before a fast-approaching deadline.
June 02, 2023 -
The House has approved the debt ceiling and budget cuts package, sending it to the Senate. President Joe Biden negotiated the deal with Speaker Kevin McCarthy to avert a U.S. default crisis. They worked to assemble a coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans to push it to approval over blowback from conservatives and some progressives. The U.S. was facing a potentially disastrous default in less than a week if Congress failed to act. Despite deep disappointment from hard-right Republicans that budget cuts don't go far enough, it was approved on a bipartisan House vote with Democrats. The Senate is expected to act quickly by the end of the week.
May 31, 2023 -
The Air Force has announced the permanent location for many more U.S. Space Force units — and none of them are in Huntsville, Alabama. This suggests the service may be moving ahead with at least part of the design it originally sought for the new force before it became entangled in politics. Four more Space Force missions will now be based in Colorado Springs, a notable choice during a larger and now politicized battle over where to locate the permanent headquarters of U.S. Space Command. Colorado Springs, which is housing Space Command’s temporary headquarters, was the Air Force’s preferred location. But Donald Trump, in the final days of his presidency, selected Alabama instead.
May 31, 2023 -
NASA is publicly addressing the subject of UFOs a year after launching a study into unexplained sightings. And it insists it's not hiding anything. The space agency televised Wednesday's four-hour meeting featuring an independent panel of experts. The team includes 16 scientists and other experts selected by NASA including retired astronaut Scott Kelly, the first American to spend nearly a year in space. NASA says several committee members have been subjected to online harassment for serving on the team. They say that detracts from the scientific process. A final report is expected by the end of July.
May 31, 2023 -
The head of the U.S. Border Patrol says he's retiring. Chief Raul Ortiz has seen through a major policy shift seeking to clamp down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border following the end of Title 42 coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Ortiz said Tuesday in a note to staff obtained by The Associated Press he'll leave June 30. It’s unclear who'll replace Ortiz. Ortiz says he leaves “at ease,” knowing Border Patrol has “a tremendous uniformed and professional workforce” and "outstanding leaders." The border has not seen the high numbers of crossings or chaos anticipated by even President Joe Biden with the end of the Title 42 restrictions. And the number of crossings has dropped.
May 31, 2023 -
Even with new spending restraints included in the congressional debt limit deal, the U.S. government’s deficits are still on course to keep climbing to record levels over the next few decades. The projections are a sign that the two-year truce between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy might be only a pause before a far more wrenching set of showdowns over the federal budget. Why will the debt likely keep rising? It is due to the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says. But both Biden and McCarthy ruled out any Social Security and Medicare cuts before this round of budget negotiations really got going.
May 30, 2023 -
The debt ceiling deal has come with just days to spare before a potential first-ever government default. On Sunday, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a final agreement and they are urging Congress to quickly pass it. Biden pronounced the development “good news” in remarks at the White House announcing the agreement. This followed a tentative compromise announced late Saturday. The deal risks angering some Democratic and Republican lawmakers as they begin to unpack the concessions, which include spending cuts. McCarthy and Biden spoke Sunday evening as negotiators drafted legislative text. They face a June 5 deadline when Treasury says the U.S. would risk a debt default.
May 28, 2023