Dem Senate candidate calls to ‘shut the White House down,’ impeach 2 Supreme Court justices

April 22, 2026 1:17pm EDT / Fox News

The progressive candidate also called for impeaching Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito

By Robert McGreevy, Fox News

Graham Platner, the frontrunner for the Maine Senate Democratic primary, said he would push to subpoena a wide swath of White House officials and to impeach Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito during a recent interview with NBC News.

“I want to shut the White House down,” he told NBC in an interview released Wednesday. “I want us to, for the next two years, be dragging every single person in the White House, every single person in all these agencies that have been conducting themselves in illegal and unconstitutional ways. They need to be dragged by subpoena in front of Senate committees over and over and over again.”

Among those he claimed were committing crimes or acting unconstitutionally were officials involved in deploying U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to U.S. cities and those involved in bombing campaigns in the Caribbean against alleged narcoterrorists, operations he referred to as “murder.”

He also said there is a “compelling case” to impeach both Thomas and Alito.

DEMOCRATIC MAINE SENATE CANDIDATE GRAHAM PLATNER CONFRONTED BY MS NOW HOST ABOUT TATTOO CONTROVERSY

“The relationship between Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow is not hard to see as clearly corrupt, and Justice Thomas doesn’t even recuse himself from cases that impact Crow’s businesses,” he said. “These are absolutely reasons for removal.”

Senatorial candidate Graham Platner speaks at a town hall at the Leavitt Theater in Ogunquit, Maine, on Oct. 22, 2025.(Sophie Park/Getty Images)

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, the Supreme Court and the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, for comment.

In 2024, Justice Thomas amended his 2019 financial disclosure after a ProPublica report revealed that he had received gifts in the form of travel and lodging from GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow. The report revealed that Crow had paid for lodging and transit on his private plane for trips to Bali, Indonesia and Sonoma County, California.

Thomas claimed he originally omitted the meals and rides from reports because he believed they fell under the personal hospitality exemption. The exemption stems from Judicial Conference guidance which states that “personal hospitality” from a friend does not need to be reported if the friend did not have business before the court.

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“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years,” Thomas said in a statement at the time.

“As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them. Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” he wrote.

The report also revealed that Thomas sold a trio of Savannah, Georgia, homes to Crow for $133,000 in 2014. Thomas said he did not list the sales because, after spending over $50,000 on renovations to one of the homes, the sale amounted to a financial loss.

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Platner did not specify in the interview what he believed Alito should be impeached for.

In 2023, Alito defended himself from criticisms over a 2009 trip he took on a private jet paid for by billionaire Paul Singer. Alito did not disclose the trip or recuse himself from future business Singer had in front of the Supreme Court. Alito argued that the trip “would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.”

Thomas is not the only Supreme Court Justice to amend his financial disclosures.

In 2021, Justice Sonia Sotomayor updated her 2016 disclosure to include six trips to public universities paid for by the schools that she’d previously omitted. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also updated a decade’s worth of disclosures during her nomination process. Omissions included her husband’s consulting income, her teacher’s salary and a gift she incurred from giving a speech.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke at the 60th commemoration of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 15, 2023. The bombing in 1963 killed Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.(Butch Dill – Pool/Getty Images)

Fox News Digital asked Platner’s campaign if he would support impeaching other justices, including Sotomayor and Jackson, but did not immediately receive a response.

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Platner also echoed an increasingly popular view on the left that the Democrats should support an expansion of the Supreme Court, telling NBC that he’s “definitely open to doing more, including to adding seats.”

While stating he supported the judicial impeachments, Platner added that the Democrats should not waste their time on impeaching President Donald Trump.

“If we don’t have the votes in the Senate to convict, I don’t think we should waste our time with it,” he told the outlet.

Graham Platner points to a covered tattoo that was previously recognized as a Nazi symbol during an interview in Portland, Maine, on Oct. 22, 2025.(WGME via AP)

He also said that he does not want to see Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., repeat his term as the Democrats’ leader in the Senate. Schumer has publicly backed Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Platner’s primary opponent.

Platner floated four names to replace Schumer: Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

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Platner, a self-described progressive, is backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. He’s a combat veteran who did three tours in Iraq as a Marine and a tour in Afghanistan with the Maine National Guard.

He’s currently leading in the polls against both his Democratic primary opponent Mills and the incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins. But his campaign has not been entirely smooth sailing.

He’s had to confront numerous controversies in recent months, most notably perhaps the revelation that he once sported a large chest tattoo that resembled Nazi iconography.

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In October, Platner covered up a skull-and-crossbones tattoo on his chest that strongly resembled the Totenkopf symbol used by Hitler’s SS forces. Platner claimed he got the tattoo as a veteran while drunk in Croatia and didn’t know it was akin to the Nazi symbol until media reports in 2024. He says he plans to remove it.

Platner also fessed up to running an edgy Reddit account that reportedly disparaged Black people and police and praised a raid executed by Hamas terrorists.

Anthropic investigating possible breach of its Mythos AI model

April 22, 2026 12:05 PM EDT / CBS News

By Mary Cunningham

Mary Cunningham is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. She previously worked at “60 Minutes,” CBSNews.com and CBS News 24/7 as part of the CBS News Associate Program.

Anthropic is investigating a possible breach of Mythos, a new model the artificial intelligence company rolled out to a small pool of companies earlier this month to help them detect software vulnerabilities.

The AI company behind the chatbot Claude is looking into a report of unauthorized access to Mythos from one of its third-party vendor environments, an Anthropic spokesperson told CBS News in an email.

Anthropic works with a small number of third-party vendors to develop its AI models. So far, the company has not detected any breaches outside of its vendor environment or any compromises to the Anthropic systems.

Anthropic confirmed its investigation into the possible Mythos breach on Wednesday, a day after Bloomberg reported that a small group of unauthorized users had gained access to the tool, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Anthropic released Mythos to a limited group in April as part of an effort called Project Glasswing, billing the new model as more effective than competing AI systems at detecting software vulnerabilities.

At the time, Anthropic only shared the tool with a small group of major companies, including Amazon, Apple, Cisco, JPMorgan Chase and Nvidia, amid concerns that the new model could be exploited by hackers. The goal was to help these companies harden their defenses before bad actors can gain access to Mythos or similar AI models.

Federal officials, security experts and leaders at global institutions like the International Monetary Fund have all raised concerns about what might happen if Mythos falls into the wrong hands. While Project Glasswing is intended to help companies insulate themselves from cybersecurity threats, some experts are concerned that Mythos could also be used to exploit IT infrastructure at banks, hospitals, government systems and other organizations.

“We need to prepare ourselves, because we couldn’t keep up with the bad guys when it was humans hacking into our networks,” Alissa Valentina Knight, CEO of cybersecurity AI company Assail, previously told CBS News.” We certainly can’t keep up now if they’re using AI because it’s so much devastatingly faster and more capable.

Edited by Aimee Picchi

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/key-takeaways-on-anthropics-concerning-new-mythos-ai-model/

Trump administration and Spirit Airlines in advanced discussions over bailout, sources say

April 22, 2026 / 12:51 PM EDT / CBS News

By Kris Van Cleave

Emmy Award-winning journalist Kris Van Cleave is the senior transportation correspondent for CBS News based in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also serves as a national correspondent reporting for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms.

Kris Van Cleave

The Trump administration is in advanced discussions with budget carrier Spirit Airlines about a bailout, sources familiar with the negotiations told CBS News.

The financing package could include a loan of up to $500 million, in exchange for warrants that would allow the federal government to take a potentially substantial ownership stake in the beleaguered airline, the sources said.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is one of the chief proponents pushing the Trump administration to take an ownership stake in the carrier, multiple sources told CBS News.

The deal is not done and is subject to change, but could be finalized imminently, the sources said. The negotiations were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The talks come after Mr. Trump weighed in publicly Tuesday, suggesting that while he preferred another airline acquire Spirit, he wanted his administration to look at a rescue package.

A spokesperson for Spirit Airlines declined to comment, and said that the carrier was operating as normal.

The Department of Transportation also declined to comment. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said Tuesday that, while no decision had been made, “the clock is ticking.”

While the federal government has stepped in to help the airline industry broadly in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, propping up a single carrier is an unusual move.

“A lot of people work for Spirit. We care about the people that work for Spirit in this industry,” Duffy told CBS News. “The question will be, can we do anything to save Spirit and make it viable, or would we be putting good money into a company that inevitably is gonna be liquidated? And that’s a decision that our teams look at and the president has to be briefed on and, and we’ll make a decision together.”

Spirit Airlines is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and employs about 15,000 people. About 6,000 of those employees are based in Florida.

Prices rise when budget airlines leave

Prices generally rise when an ultra low cost carrier exits the market. Spirit ended its last two routes at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport in December 2025. Both routes — St. Paul to Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and St. Paul to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — involved Delta hubs. Within days, Delta raised fares, in some cases by as much as 50%.

When fellow ultra low cost carrier Frontier Airlines departed a market, average fares on that route increased, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium.

In 149 markets where Frontier stopped flying between 2023 and 2025, average fares increased 15.5%, or about $18, per ticket. Prices rose only about 2.5%, or about 93 cents, in markets where Frontier continued to fly. Nearly 79% of those 149 routes saw average fares increase the following year. In the 91 routes that Frontier exited between 2024 and 2025, 85% saw fares rise, by an average of $26 per ticket.

In some markets, the prices were more pronounced: Flights between Fort Meyers, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, jumped $127 in the year after Frontier left, while trips between Cincinnati and Philadelphia increased by $83.

“Budget airlines are like weights when it comes to airfares,” said Atmosphere Research Group airline analyst Henry Harteveldt. “They help keep fares down on the airlines that compete with them. When there are no budget airlines on a route, airfares take off faster than the planes themselves.”

Olivia Rinaldi contributed to this report.

Virginia vote hands Democrats redistricting edge, triggers GOP blame game ahead of House fight

2026-04-22T12:32:45-04:00 / Fox News

The referendum could give Democrats a 10-1 edge in Virginia’s congressional delegation ahead of the midterms

By Paul Steinhauser Fox News

Published April 22, 2026 12:32pm EDT

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Republicans are pointing fingers after their narrow loss in Virginia’s high-stakes congressional redistricting referendum, which could give Democrats a significant boost in the battle for the House of Representatives majority in this year’s midterm elections.

Even though they were outraised and outspent by Democrats by a nearly three-to-one margin, Republicans came close to sinking the ballot initiative, which gives the Democrat-controlled Virginia legislature — rather than the state’s current nonpartisan commission — temporary redistricting power through the 2030 election.

Tuesday’s passage of the referendum could result in a 10-1 advantage for Democrats in Virginia’s congressional delegation, up from their current 6-5 edge. The referendum, which follows President Donald Trump’s push for rare but not unheard-of mid-decade redistricting in Republican-led states over the past year, still faces a challenge in the state Supreme Court. But if it survives the legal hurdles, Democrats could gain four additional left-leaning U.S. House seats ahead of the midterms as they try to win back control of the chamber from the GOP, which currently holds a razor-thin majority.

Acknowledging the spending disparity, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who was one of the leaders of the GOP effort to sink the ballot initiative, told Fox News Digital at a rally on the eve of the vote that “they have outspent us three to one. They’ve raised over $70 million. And yet this is a close vote.”

DEMOCRATS NARROWLY WIN CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING SHOWDOWN IN VIRGINIA

Former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin speaks at the Virginians for Fair Maps rally in Bridgewater, Va., on Saturday, April 11, 2026. Virginia voters will decide if Virginia Congressional districts will be redrawn to counter the Texas redistricting.(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Some Republicans are frustrated there wasn’t more help offered.

“We didn’t get the help we needed to sink the referendum,” a Virginia-based Republican strategist who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News Digital. “National Republicans could have and should have done more.”

Another Virginia-based Republican consultant, who was also granted anonymity, said, “It is bit shocking that there wasn’t a little bit more money spent earlier because once you peel back the top layer of the ballot language and stop Trump, the ‘yes’ campaign had nothing.”

“If we had a bit more money to educate, I think we could have won more of the persuasion bucket. And then, for sure, if we could have had a very well-funded ballot chase program to go turnout low proposition voters in southwest Virginia, a combination of aggressive field, text, and mail, we might have won.”

And Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore told reporters on Wednesday, “I think they should have put more in it. This would have, you know, for ten million or twenty million more dollars, we could have been in play.”

While Trump headlined a tele-rally on the eve of the referendum election, some fingers were also pointed towards the president and his political team.

“Victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. So there’s going to be plenty of finger pointing and plenty of blame being assigned why this didn’t work out,” another GOP strategist who also asked for anonymity to speak candidly.

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Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger speaks during a Virginians For Fair Elections canvassing event in Woodbridge, Va., on April 18, 2026.(Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The strategist emphasized that “ultimately, if you’re the White House, you started this redistricting fight last year and you better be sure that you’re giving all the people out there on your side the resources they need to finish the battle if this is going to be such a centerpiece of your historically narrow House majority.”

But a strategist with ties to the Republican team in Virginia that fought to sink the referendum disagreed, telling Fox News Digital “we got a lot of help from the Republican ecosystem… we received help from all corners.”

And the strategist shot down the idea that if Republicans had spent more money, it could have sunk the referendum. Referring to the team that pushed the referendum to victory, the strategist said “they’re just going to find more money. Democrats always do.”

And pointing to Trump, the strategist said “if the president had engaged right away, that would have made the entire debate about the president in a state that he lost in 2024….Our goal was to make this as much about Virginia as possible. Democrats tried to make it as much about the president as possible.”

Asked if the GOP did enough to help, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina told reporters on Wednesday, “Our team collectively made significant investments and we won half the vote.”

Hudson pointed to the margin, which was an overperformance compared to Trump’s nearly six-point defeat in Virginia in the 2024 presidential election.

The Republican National Committee(RNC) gave assistance to the Virginia GOP as well as to Republican groups fighting the referendum. And the RNC placed operatives in the field in Virginia.

RNC National Press Secretary Kiersten Pels told Fox News Digital that “this map is an unconstitutional partisan power grab designed to disenfranchise millions of voters and tilt the playing field.”

“The RNC will continue this fight in court to protect Virginia voters and ensure fair representation across the Commonwealth,” Pels added.

Virginia was the battlefield in the high-stakes fight between Trump and the GOP versus Democrats over congressional redistricting.

Aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats reclaimed the House majority in the 2018 midterms, Trump a year ago first floated the idea of rare, but not unheard-of, mid-decade congressional redistricting.

Texas and California were the first major showdowns over redistricting, with Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, and Utah also getting into the scrum.

HEAD HERE FOR LIVE UPDATES ON THE CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING BATTLE

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has called a special session of the state legislature to start meeting on April 28, 2026, to handle congressional redistricting.(Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images)

Now the spotlight turns to Florida.

Matt Gorman, a veteran Republican strategist based in Virginia, told Fox News Digital that pointing fingers is absolutely useless. “The fact of the matter is we have to fight the next battle, and that’s in Florida.”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Two-term Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature are hoping to pick up an additional three to five right-leaning seats through a redistricting push during a special legislative session that kicks off next week.

And with the Democrats’ victory in Virginia, pressure is growing on DeSantis to deliver.

Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in the swing state of New Hampshire. He covers the campaign trail from coast to coast.

Colorado prosecutor charges border officer with assault

2026-04-22 7:40 PM UTC / Reuters

By Jasper Ward

April 22, 2026 7:40 PM UTC Updated 14 mins ago

节点运行失败

A view shows a patch of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the uniform of an officer in downtown Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 10, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Blake

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) – A Colorado district attorney has announced charges against a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who allegedly assaulted a ​woman during a protest outside a federal immigration facility last year.

Videos ‌of the incident in southern Colorado were shared widely on social media. The woman told CBS News Colorado she was filming the officer before he “lifted me off ​the ground somehow, in a chokehold.”

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Sean P. Murray, the district attorney ​for Colorado’s Sixth Judicial District, identified the officer as Nicholas ⁠Rice, who was involved in immigration enforcement activity in the state last ​October.

“Officer Nicholas Rice has been charged by summons and complaint with assault ​in the third degree and criminal mischief,” Murray said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the charges were related to an October 28 incident at U.S. Immigration and ​Customs Enforcement’s facility in Durango, Colorado.

CBP did not immediately respond to ​a request for comment and it is unclear if Rice is still on duty.

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The October ‌protest ⁠outside the facility was held after a Durango man and his two children were arrested by immigration agents while on the way to school. An ICE official later said the man was wrongly identified by agents.

Rice’s ​charges came less than ​a week ⁠after prosecutors in Minnesota charged an ICE agent with assault for allegedly pointing his gun at two people in a ​car along a highway in Minneapolis in February.

ICE and ​CBP are ⁠part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has been on the front line of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The crackdown has resulted in protests ⁠in ​targeted cities that expanded nationwide following the fatal ​shootings by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January of two U.S. citizens – Alex Pretti and ​Renee Good.

Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; editing by Donna Bryson, Rod Nickel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Mexico’s president weighs action after CIA agents killed in crash following drug lab raid

April 22, 2026 / 2:58 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that she is considering possible sanctions against the government of Chihuahua — a state bordering Texas — for allowing CIA agents to participate in an operation to dismantle drug laboratories because any security collaboration with the U.S. should be approved by Mexico’s federal government.

Sheinbaum’s comments come after days of contradictions of several authorities following the death of two U.S. officials in a vehicle crash over the weekend as they returned from destroying a clandestine drug lab in northern Mexico.

The two Americans killed in the crash were employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, multiple people familiar with the matter told CBS News. The CIA declined to comment.

“There cannot be agents from any U.S. government institution operating in the Mexican field,” the president stated during her morning news briefing. She noted that such activities are not part of the current security protocols or the formal understanding between the two nations.

Sheinbaum said the federal government is still investigating a potential violation of national security laws in the still-murky incident.

Two Mexican investigators also were killed in the crash, which Mexican authorities said occurred while the convoy was returning from an operation to destroy drug labs of criminal groups.

Methamphetamine labs were found in the mountains between Morelos and Guachochi, Mexican officials said. Chihuahua State Investigation Agency

In a news release, the state attorney general’s office identified the two Mexican casualties as first commander of the state investigation agency Pedro Román Oseguera Cervantes and officer Manuel Genaro Méndez Montes.

There have been discrepancies in the public accounts of what happened from U.S. and Mexican officials, which experts say underscores heightened U.S. involvement in security operations in Mexico and across the region.

The U.S. agents killed were “instructor officers” who “were carrying out training tasks” as part of binational anti-drug cooperation, state prosecutor Cesar Jauregui told reporters. Jauregui called the targeted labs “one of the largest sites found in the country where chemical drugs were produced.”

Sheinbaum acknowledged Wednesday that the Mexican army participated in the operation – as its mandate includes supporting individual states. However, she emphasized that the federal government was unaware of the U.S. agents’ presence.

Sheinbaum ruled out the possibility that the incident constitutes a new strategy by the Trump administration – which has demanded greater action from Mexico in the fight against cartels.

However, she said she sent a letter to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico requesting that he provide all available information regarding the incident. She also said she plans to speak with the Gov. of Chihuahua, Maru Campos. “It is very important that something like this not be allowed to go unaddressed,” she said.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson expressed his condolences on social media but he and other officials provided few details of the incident.

“We honor their dedication and tireless efforts to confront one of the greatest challenges of our time,” Johnson said. “This tragedy is a solemn reminder of the risks faced by those Mexican and U.S. officials who are dedicated to protecting our communities.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly proposed to take action on Mexican cartels – an intervention that Sheinbaum has said is “unnecessary.”

Sheinbaum has resisted the Trump administration’s threats to use airstrikes or ground troops to fight Mexican cartels, instead promoting intelligence sharing with the U.S. while local security forces attack crime groups.

Elite Mexican troops operating with U.S. intelligence killed drug kingpin Nemesio”El Mencho”Oseguera in February, unleashing a wave of violence that left over 70 dead.

Mexico has announced the dismantling of numerous drug labs in recent months after Mr. Trump threatened possible military action to curb drug trafficking.

In February, Mexican naval personnel discovered a hidden drug laboratory in the country’s Durango region and “neutralized” over 5,000 pounds of methamphetamine. In January, authorities announced more than 1,500 pounds of meth were seized from clandestine laboratories in the states of Durango, Sinaloa and Michoacán.

contributed to this report.

Nearly half of U.S. kids are breathing unhealthy air, report says. These are the cleanest and most polluted cities.

April 22, 2026 / 2:25 PM EDT / CBS News

By Emily Mae Czachor News Editor
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

Read Full Bio

For 152 million Americans, including nearly half of the nation’s children and teens, just breathing air in the places they live can be harmful. According to the American Lung Association’s latest State of the Air report, 44% of the U.S. population reside in areas with unhealthy levels of pollution, including 33 million who are younger than 18.

Experts have warned for years that kids are particularly susceptible to the consequences of pollution exposure. Young people are deemed more vulnerable because they have developing lungs, relatively large air consumption needs compared with adults and spend more time outdoors.

“We recognize that there’s a connection between air pollution and exposure in children and chronic diseases,” said Kevin Stewart, the director of environmental health at the American Lung Association and one of the report’s co-authors. “The problems aren’t necessarily immediate, in terms of just sending a child with asthma to the hospital. It also can affect the induction of asthma in children who ordinarily wouldn’t have gotten it, or reduce lung function over their lifetime because they’ve been exposed as children.”

The new report evaluated air quality in different parts of the country by measuring the presence of ozone and particle pollution in the atmosphere, over short-term and longer periods of time. Ozone pollution is also known as smog; particle pollution is known as soot.

Counties were graded based on how much smog and soot the researchers detected, in addition to the length of time the pollutants were there. The report is based on data collected between 2022 and 2024. As its authors noted, air quality conditions over that two-year period appeared to show improvements in some ways and setbacks in others.

Nearly 4 million more people across the U.S. were breathing unhealthy levels of smog between 2022 and 2024 than they were between 2021 and 2023, which was the time frame used to compile last year’s State of the Air report. And, although the latest report showed more than 61 million people living in counties that earned “F” grades for unhealthy short-term spikes in soot pollution, and another 75 million living in counties with “F” grades for soot pollution year-round, both numbers were better than they were before.

Stewart called that good news, but noted “there are still some areas in the country that show some obvious problems.” Southern and southwestern states, as well as a number of metropolitan areas in Texas, specifically, experienced notable particle pollution, he said.

Most polluted U.S. cities

Bakersfield, California, continued to rank highest on the American Lung Association’s list of cities with the worst particle pollution year-round. It was also third-highest on this year’s lists of cities with the worst short-term particle pollution and ozone pollution.

The five most polluted cities, according to the American Lung Association report, are:

1. Bakersfield-Delano, California
2. Brownsville-Harlingen-Raymondville, Texas
3. Eugene-Springfield, Oregon
4. Fresno-Hanford-Corcoran, California
5. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, California (tied with Visalia, California)

Another major annual air quality review, by the Swiss technology company IQAir, placed El Paso, Texas, and Los Angeles, California among the most polluted areas in the U.S. That report examined pollution around the world and found that concentrations in the U.S. increased by 3% between 2024 and 2025.

Cleanest U.S. cities

The American Lung Association’s report also ranked American cities with the cleanest air. When looking at year-round particle pollution, Bozeman, Montana, topped the list ahead of Casper, Wyoming, which held the first-place position in 2025.

The five cleanest cities are:

1. Bozeman, Montana
2. Casper, Wyoming
3. Kahului-Wailuku, Hawaii
4. Urban Honolulu, Hawaii
5. Burlington-South Burlington-Barre, Vermont

Data centers

In addition to the more traditional sources of pollution, like power plants and vehicle exhaust, the new air quality report warned that data centers used to train, maintain and operate artificial intelligence models are increasingly contributing to air pollution, too.

“We’re trying to raise the warning sign for the public to make sure that any data centers that are created are using state-of-the-art pollution controls,” whether they burn fossil fuels or rely on backup generators as their main power source, said Stewart.

The American Lung Association also cited policies by the Trump administration, which has faced pushback this year over its decision to deregulate emissions and repeal the landmark scientific finding that linked greenhouse gases to human health problems.

Known as the “endangerment finding,” the policy was repealed by the Environmental Protection Agency in February, when President Trump announced that greenhouse gases emitted from cars, power plants and other large-scale sources would no longer be regulated by the federal government. Emissions of common air pollutants fell massively since the Clean Air Act was signed into law in 1970, according to the EPA, but additional data show it has been rising again in recent years.

“Contrary to its mission, EPA has recently acted to weaken, delay or revoke key health protections that will leave America’s children more exposed and more vulnerable to the consequences of many different pollutants, including ozone and particle pollution,” the report’s authors wrote, adding that the agency “must not devalue the benefits of removing deadly pollution from the air children breathe.”

Republicans eye ending government shutdowns forever over fears Dems will do it again

April 22, 2026 2:28pm EDT / Fox News

Senate Republicans are worried that Democrats will force a government shutdown in the fall, and are eyeing ways to prevent government funding from being weaponized ever again.

Republicans are in the early stages of funding federal immigration enforcement through the party-line budget reconciliation process — a maneuver that would cut Democrats out of the process altogether.

The push comes as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) remains closed after Democrats more than 60 days ago refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) unless Republicans agreed to stringent reforms, including warrant requirements and agents unmasking.

SENATE TAKES FIRST STEP TO FUND ICE, BORDER PATROL IN BID TO CUT DEMS OUT OF THE FUNDING PROCESS

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks at a press conference with Senate Republican leaders following a policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2026.(Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said “it was a great idea,” and claims conversations were ongoing about how to include a measure in the reconciliation package that could survive the strict Senate rules dictating what can and can’t be done through the partisan process.

He told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon that Republicans tried and failed during the government shutdown last year to pass legislation that would prevent future shutdowns.

“If we could figure out a way to execute on that — anything that we can do that would ensure that the Democrats don’t decide once again to play partisan political games with the function of our government would be a good outcome,” Thune said.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has pushed legislation to prevent shutdowns, was skeptical about whether Republicans could actually get that kind of measure into the broader package.

HOUSE CONSERVATIVES RAGE AGAINST SENATE DHS SHUTDOWN DEAL

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., questions acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. and Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate during a joint Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs committees hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 30, 2024.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“I would support that,” Hawley told Fox News Digital. “Will that happen? It seems to me to be pretty unlikely. But I think this package is baked, the text is out, it is what it is.”

He warned that Congress likely “would be facing this again” when the current fiscal year ends in September because “the Democrats are in a hostage taking sort of mood.”

“And sadly, the hostages they’re taking are for working people of this country,” Hawley went on. “And if they shut down the government again in September, which they very well may, well, that would just be disastrous, I think.”

Democrats, however, view the GOP’s reconciliation push as a prime opportunity to go on the offensive.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said his party will unload several amendments that target affordability issues in the country.

SENATE REPUBLICANS UNVEIL IMMIGRATION FUNDING PLAN WITH $140 BILLION PRICE TAG AS GOP AIMS TO SPEND LESS

When asked if Democrats had overplayed their hand on immigration enforcement reforms now that Republicans plan to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three and a half years, Schumer countered that Americans wanted changes and that Republicans were “tied in a knot.”

“They’re twisting themselves in a pretzel,” the senior senator from New York said. “They’re giving us an opportunity to emphasize the number one issue facing the American people in terms of reconciliation. So we Democrats are staunch and united in what we did.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference after a weekly Democrat policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2026.(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

If Republicans can’t stop shutdowns, another option could be ensuring that federal workers are at least paid.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News Digital that he’s been pushing the House — which has so far not voted on the Senate’s carve-out DHS funding bill — to include his Shutdown Fairness Act, which would pay federal employees during closures and possibly act as a sweetener to conservatives frustrated by the Senate’s bill.

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“I mean, they’re pretty upset about, I guess, not really being informed in terms of what the Senate was gonna do here,” Johnson said. “We were just doing what we could do to fund the agencies so we don’t deplete the flexible funding we had in reconciliation, but the box ticking on that.”

“So, the sooner we pass the partial DHS funding bill — I just think if Democrats would allow that bill to be passed by unanimous consent, I think they [wouldn’t] have a hard time voting for that exact same bill if all we’re adding is something their unions are lobbying hard to get,” he continued.

Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.

By

Tierney Sneed

1 hr 8 min ago

PUBLISHED Apr 22, 2026, 2:56 PM ET

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This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and partially redacted by the source, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

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White House staff are still following the “preservation” mandates of the Presidential Records Act, the Justice Department told a federal court as it pushes back on a new lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s disavowal of a Watergate-era documents law.

The filings made public the White House’s official approach to records retention now that the Justice Department – via an opinion from the department Office of Legal Counsel – told President Donald Trump that he was no longer had to comply with the Presidential Records Act.

White House Counsel David Warrington issued a memo on April 2, the day after the OLC opinion was published, that was released publicly with Tuesday’s court filings.

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The law requires that presidents and their staffs preserve records related to government activity, and that those records be turned over to the National Archives at the end of each administration – with provisions of the law eventually making some of those documents available to the public.

The new White House memo did not address what steps President Trump or Vice President JD Vance should take to preserve records, nor did it lay out plans to ultimately turn White House documents over to the Archives.

Critics have raised concerns that Trump will take with him when he leaves office the same kinds of highly sensitive government records that he brought to Mar-a-Lago after his first administration, leading to charges against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly mishandling classified documents.

Acting attorney general Todd Blanche – who represented Trump in the criminal case – rejected the idea that the OLC opinion would undermine government transparency.

“There is no dispute that this administration in just 14 months has been a lot more transparent than the last administration or in any administration,” Blanche said in response to a question from CNN’s Paula Reid at a Tuesday press conference.

“So if critics are suggesting that that somehow we’re not being transparent, I don’t find that credible in any way, shape or form,” Blanche added.

In the new documents-preservation memo, Warrington told White House staff that, even though the administration no longer considers itself bound by the Presidential Records Act, they should “preserve any material related to the performance of their duties,” while noting those records might be needed in future litigation.

Physical documents and work-related emails sent via official White House accounts should be saved, Warrington said, but he also made a distinction for when staff members are required to retain text messages.

“Text messages reflecting personal conversations, workplace gossip, ministerial tasks or other workplace minutiae” need not be preserved, he said. But staff must save messages “when they are the sole record of official decision-making, government action, or contain unique information not available elsewhere.”

The American Historical Association and American Oversight, a left-leaning government watchdog group, are seeking an emergency court order that would require the preservation of presidential records and that would make clear the PRA’s demands apply to messaging apps, including encrypted services like WhatsApp and Signal.

The Justice Department laid out several reasons the request should be denied, including with an argument that the historians are not currently facing imminent harm because the White House is still following a policy “consistent” with the Presidential Record Act. Additionally, the Archives is continuing to preserve the presidential records it already holds, DOJ said, pointing to a declaration from an Archives employee.

“Plaintiffs’ claim to irreparable harm hinges on the possibility of indiscriminate document destruction … but the record is entirely to the contrary,” the administration said.

Senior US District Judge John Bates has scheduled a hearing for May 5.

De La Hoya, Ali’s grandson warn US lawmakers against boxing law overhaul

2026-04-22 17:51:40 UTC / Reuters

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Boxing promoter and former boxing champion Oscar de la Hoya attends a U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on federal boxing laws, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 22, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

[1/2]Boxing promoter and former boxing champion Oscar de la Hoya attends a U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on federal boxing laws, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 22, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard Purchase Licensing Rights

April 22 (Reuters) – Former boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya appeared before the U.S. Senate on Wednesday and argued against a potential transformation of the current system governed by the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act that, since ​2000, has aimed to protect fighters from exploitative practices.

The hearing — titled “Return to Your Corners: Have Federal Boxing ‌Laws Gone the Distance or Slipped the Jab?” — was held a month after the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act which, if it becomes law, would allow for the creation of a single entity to combine promotion, rankings, titles and sanctioning under one roof.

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“This ​is a fundamental shift in power that, if enacted, would put corporate profits first and fighters second,” De La ​Hoya told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. “We should be clear about who benefits ⁠from this.”

Thirty years ago, Congress set federal boxing standards by passing the Professional Boxing Safety Act. Four years later, Congress tightened ​those standards by enacting the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. Together known as the Ali Act, the federal framework for professional ​boxing was designed to address conflicts of interest in the boxing market and strengthen boxers’ bargaining power.

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Last month the House passed the Revival Act to make it easier for boxing to be organized in the same manner as other professional sports leagues.

‘FIGHTERS WILL HAVE FEWER CHOICES’

De La Hoya told ​the hearing that, like him, many fighters enter the sport young, trusting and without resources, and that once they are locked ​into the wrong deal, it is very difficult to get out. That is, he argued, exactly why the Reform Act exists.

“Fighters deserve real protection ‌and real ⁠opportunity — not to have to fight the system as well,” said De La Hoya. “If this bill passes, fighters will have fewer choices, less leverage, and less control over their careers. And when that happens, it will not be the sport that failed them. It will be us.”

Nico Ali Walsh, a professional boxer and grandson of former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, also argued to ​preserve the current Reform Act.

Walsh told ​the hearing the Reform ⁠Act was built on a simple principle: the people controlling fighters should not also control the entire marketplace those fighters depend on.

“That separation exists to prevent conflicts of interest and exploitation,” said Walsh. “The ​new Muhammad Ali Boxing Revival Act would undermine that principle.

“If this bill is passed in ​its current form, ⁠it should not have my grandfather’s name on it, as it would betray the principles his Act was created to protect.”

WWE President and TKO Group board member Nick Khan spoke in support of the Revival Act, which would allow for the creation of a new, ⁠centralized, alternative ​professional boxing system called Unified Boxing Organizations.

“The existing Act, as it currently stands, ​would remain in place,” said Khan. “This is an added option. It creates the framework for Unified Boxing Organizations, otherwise known as UBOs, that can do what ​major sports do — promote competition, develop talent, and enforce consistent standards under one roof.”

(This story has been corrected to fix the day to Wednesday, from Tuesday, in paragraph 1)

Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto Editing by Toby Davis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.