More of the US is in drought than any time since 2012
CNN
More than 61% of the contiguous US is in some classification of drought this week, according to the US Drought Monitor.
It is the largest portion of the country in a state of drought since 2012, the year when the continental US saw an all-time record of 65% during September.
And in recent weeks, drought has increased significantly. In the last month alone, the percentage of the continental US in drought has jumped from 55% to more than 61%, an increase of nearly 170,000 square miles; an area larger than the size of California.
A young, well-liked facilities manager at the Kennedy Center has gone from being described as “in charge of HVAC and toilets” to head of the renowned arts institution.
Democrats in Florida are hoping to capitalize on the party’s recent special election overperformances and come out on top Tuesday in a special state House election for a Palm Beach district that includes President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to limit mail-in ballots, a move that would reinforce the justices’ pattern of shrinking voter protections and that has, at bottom, favored Republican interests and the Trump administration.
An Air Canada plane traveling from Montreal collided with an emergency vehicle on the runway at New York City’s LaGuardia Airport in the late hours of Sunday night, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of people.
Top Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill believe their party is unified behind a plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. Now, they need to sell the plan to Democrats.
Markwayne Mullin will serve as Donald Trump’s next Department of Homeland Security secretary, elevating the US senator to helm the agency at the center of the president’s controversial immigration enforcement effort and an ongoing shutdown.
President Donald Trump’s sudden turnabout and, according to him, rapidly advancing peace talks made for an abrupt shift in the administration’s approach to the Iran war.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared dubious of state laws that allow the counting of mail ballots that arrive at election offices after Election Day as justices heard oral arguments in a challenge to Mississippi’s five-day grace period for mail ballots.
The chief district judge in New Jersey appointed Robert Frazer, a career prosecutor, to serve as US attorney for the state, ending for now a dispute over the legality of the office’s leadership that threatened to derail criminal investigations.
Tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent on expenses for hair and makeup artists and a horse for the advertisement showcasing outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in front of Mount Rushmore, according to invoices seen by CNN.
President Donald Trump was presented Sunday with a potential off-ramp to the more than month-long Department of Homeland Security shutdown: fund every part of the department except enforcement operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two sources familiar with the conversations told CNN.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are heading to 13 airports today to help with crowd management as travelers at some airports wait in hours-long security lines amid the DHS shutdown. Follow here for the latest.
A consortium of the nation’s top architectural and historic preservation groups is targeting President Donald Trump’s plans to temporarily close and extensively renovate the Kennedy Center, filing a new lawsuit Monday that asks a federal judge to indefinitely halt the project.