National Politics

By Haley Britzky, CNN The head of the US government watchdog for the war in Afghanistan said Tuesday that while there are a number of things the US could learn from the nearly 20-year conflict in Afghanistan and apply to the war in Ukraine, he’s not optimistic that officials will actually do so. “I’m not

By Eric Bradner and Omar Jimenez, CNN Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, after years of battles with teachers’ and police unions, is seeking to survive the first round of voting Tuesday in her bid for a second term. Lightfoot is facing eight challengers in the race. Since no candidate is expected to top the 50% necessary

By Chandelis Duster, CNN The US Department of Agriculture’s Equity Commission on Tuesday presented more than 30 recommendations it hopes will extend opportunities to communities of color and help resolve longstanding discriminatory practices across the agency, according to a copy of the interim report first obtained by CNN. In particular, the report calls for greater

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter The Supreme Court on Tuesday will take up two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program — an initiative aimed at providing targeted debt relief to millions of student-loan borrowers — that has so far been stalled by legal challenges. Republican-led states and conservatives challenging

By MJ Lee and Jeremy Diamond, CNN Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is launching the Biden administration’s high-priority effort to out-compete China in a key sector: Semiconductor chips. And amid tensions with China marked by the dramatic downing of a spy balloon and new warnings that Beijing is considering providing lethal aid to Russia, Raimondo’s sales

By Jack Forrest, CNN The White House has directed federal agencies that they have 30 days to remove TikTok from all government-issued devices. Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in guidance issued Monday that all executive agencies, and those they contract with, must delete any application from TikTok or its

By Oren Liebermann, CNN The Navy has renamed a warship in honor of a Black sailor and statesman who had been born into slavery, as part of the US military’s ongoing effort to remove names that commemorate the Confederacy. The guided missile destroyer USS Chancellorsville, which was named after a Confederate victory in the Civil

By Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju and Alayna Treene, CNN Speaker Kevin McCarthy faced questions from his leadership team Monday night over his plans to publicly release security footage from January 6, 2021, multiple sources told CNN — a process that he said could take some time to disseminate widely even as Fox News host Tucker

By Sean Lyngaas and Holmes Lybrand, CNN A ransomware attack on the US Marshals Service has affected a computer system containing “law enforcement sensitive information,” including personal information belonging to targets of investigations, a US Marshals Service spokesperson said Monday evening. “The affected system contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, administrative

By Ted Barrett, CNN Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia told CNN Monday he will vote to rescind a controversial Washington, DC, crime law — which critics argue is soft on violent criminals — when it comes up for a vote in the Senate, likely next week. Manchin becomes the first Democrat to publicly

By Jeremy Herb, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen and Pamela Brown, CNN The Department of Energy’s low-confidence assessment that Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China is still a minority view within the intelligence community, three sources familiar with the intelligence community’s findings tell CNN. While the FBI has also assessed — with

By Steve Contorno and Kit Maher, CNN Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ new book, “The Courage to Be Free,” leans into the culture wars that established him as one of the early Republican favorites for the GOP nomination for the presidency. While more sparse on biographical details than most political memoirs, the 256-page book offers some

By Elise Hammond, CNN Millions of Americans have student loan debt, amassing to more than $1.6 trillion by the end of last year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It’s the result of a decades-long explosion in borrowing coupled with soaring education costs. The Federal Reserve data shows people under the age

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN Chinese hackers are too frequently going “unidentified and undeterred,” and software companies aren’t doing enough to secure their products from cyber-attacks that “can do real damage” to US interests through the loss of trade secrets, a top US cyber official said Monday. “The risk introduced to all of us by unsafe

By Jennifer Hansler and Jeremy Herb, CNN US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Monday that China will have to “be more honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan with the origin of the Covid-19 crisis” if the US and China are going to be able to work together. Burns added that the