The Department of Homeland Security is planning to drastically increase the fee for hiring high-skilled foreign workers within the United States to $100,000, according to a preview of a proposed rule published Monday.

President Donald Trump covertly traveled across Europe in a military plane in July after Iran threatened his life, according to a bombshell report Monday night by The Washington Post that revealed press and White House officials remained on a decoy Air Force One.

The Supreme Court’s ruling halted a June decision from Talwani in a case brought by more than 20 Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. But that ruling does not apply in a separate case, filed in the same Massachusetts federal court.

Since President Donald Trump has gutted much of the federal government’s consumer protection work, state attorneys general are increasingly left to fight high prices and investigate businesses themselves. The change follows Trump’s dismantling of the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau and persisting concerns about the high prices of housing, groceries and fuel.

The Lumbee Tribe voted Tuesday against constitutional amendments that would have paved the way for the tribe to build a casino in southeastern N.C. 

The budget allocates a total of $22 million to the North Carolina Collaboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill for research related to PFAS.

According to the CDC, an estimated 31 million people are bitten by ticks each year, with most encounters taking place between April and October. But in 2026, ER visits began rising as early as March. Weekly ER trips for tick bites are also up in every U.S. region except for South Central as of June 28, the online tick tracker shows.

Families are facing rising grocery prices at the same time that many of the most vulnerable are losing access to the nation’s largest food assistance program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. More than 4 million Americans lost SNAP benefits between February 2025 and this February, according to analyses of the most recent federal data. The numbers are expected to increase.

Thousands of local service providers and volunteers are working hard to keep communities functioning and we’ll talk to two of them — Sara Walker and Melissa Evers of Wake County Meals on Wheels –

As law enforcement agencies increasingly embrace AI, some civil liberties advocates, legal scholars and policing experts warn that the technology could amplify surveillance, introduce hidden biases into investigations and make it harder to challenge evidence in court.