National Politics

By Tami Luhby, CNN Nearly 107 million US households — about 61% — owed no federal income tax in 2020, a huge spike from pre-pandemic times. But that increase should be short-lived. The coronavirus-fueled upheaval in the economy, which cost more than 20 million jobs in April 2020, and the sweeping federal relief packages drove

By Devan Cole, CNN North Carolina is one step away from raising the minimum age at which children in the state can wed from 14 to 16 after lawmakers there approved a measure that would change several key rules around child marriages in the state. Senate Bill 35 was unanimously passed by the state’s Senate

By Eric Bradner, CNN Some Texas school districts and students are seeking ways around Republican Gov. Greg Abbott‘s ban on mask mandates as the state grapples with a spike of coronavirus cases. One of those cases is Abbott himself: The second-term governor, who has played to his party’s base and blocked health mandates intended to

By Whitney Wild, CNN The US Capitol Police official who was in charge of intelligence operations on January 6 before briefly becoming acting chief has returned to her previous role despite criticism over security breakdowns during the insurrection. Yogananda Pittman is back in her position as assistant chief of protective and intelligence operations, where she

By Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins, CNN Visiting Brussels earlier this summer, President Joe Biden was single-minded in his message to American allies. “America is back,” he declared in the lobby of the European Union’s headquarters, repeating a mantra he had uttered at nearly every stop of his first trip abroad, during which leaders welcomed

By Jennifer Hansler, Ellie Kaufman, Nicole Gaouette, Oren Liebermann and Kylie Atwood, CNN As reports of harassment and beatings at Taliban checkpoints continued to surface Wednesday, the US Embassy in Kabul warned it could not ensure safe passage for Americans to the airport to escape Afghanistan, despite the Pentagon underscoring alleged Taliban assurances that it

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN Slightly more than half of US workers favor Covid-19 vaccine mandates in their workplaces, new polling finds, although far fewer have seen such requirements implemented by their employers. A 55% majority of Americans who are employed full-time, part-time or are self-employed say they’d support their employer requiring all employees to be

By Nikki Carvajal and Maegan Vazquez, CNN President Joe Biden on Wednesday suggested for the first time that he’s willing to keep US forces in Afghanistan until all American citizens who want to leave are out of the country, but stopped short of making the same commitment to the United States’ Afghan partners. In an

By Kara Scannell New York prosecutors charged Kenneth Kurson, the former editor of the New York Observer newspaper who was pardoned by President Donald Trump, with two state felonies for eavesdropping on his then-wife by installing spyware on her computer. The charges, announced Wednesday by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, come seven months after Kurson,

By Devan Cole and Liz Stark, CNN A widely used pesticide that could cause potential health issues in children will no longer be used on food in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday, reversing a Trump-era decision not to ban the controversial chemical. “Today EPA is taking an overdue step to protect public

By Marshall Cohen and Hannah Rabinowitz The sentencing for one of the January 6 US Capitol rioters was abruptly postponed Wednesday after new videos emerged of the man allegedly fighting with police, an unexpected twist in the case because prosecutors hadn’t previously accused him of committing violence that day. Robert Reeder of Maryland was charged

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a look at the life of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate. Personal Birth date: January 19, 1982 Birth place: South Bend, Indiana Birth name: Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg Father: Joseph A. Buttigieg, an English professor Mother: Anne Montgomery, a

By Kate Sullivan and Jason Hoffman, CNN White House officials on Wednesday insisted the US could begin offering Covid-19 booster shots to fully vaccinated Americans in the fall while also continuing its efforts to help vaccinate the rest of the world, stressing the importance of doing both simultaneously to end the global pandemic. “Look, I