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A sign with a notice of closure is seen pinned on the fence to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 12, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)  WASHINGTON —  The Trump administration cannot carry out layoffs that it announced after the government shutdown began Oct. 1 and is barred from issuing any new layoff notices under a court order issued Tuesday.  U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said at the end of an hour-long hearing in the Northern District of California she granted the preliminary injunction because the reductions in force are unlawful and “intended for the purpose of political retribution.” Illston referenced a  social media post by President Donald Trump that said, “I can’t believe the radical left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.” Michael Velchik, a Justice Department attorney representing the government, argued against the judge issuing a preliminary injunction.  Velchik said statements from Trump and other ...

Bananas and cereals at a grocery store in Fairfax, Virginia, on March 3, 2011. (USDA Photo by Lance Cheung.) A coalition of Democratic state officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday, asking a federal judge to force the release of food assistance funds for 42 million people that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has said cannot be paid during the ongoing government shutdown. Attorneys general representing 22 states and the District of Columbia and three governors launched  the suit days before benefits are expected to be cut off for low-income Americans enrolled in the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, on Nov. 1.  Despite holding $6 billion in a reserve fund, USDA  said last week  it would not process November SNAP benefits without fiscal 2026 funding approved by Congress. The USDA’s refusal to provide November benefits runs contrary to precedent from other recent shutdowns, and even the department’s own Sept. 30 contingency plan...

Children playing with colorful wooden building blocks. (Getty Images)  WASHINGTON — Funding for scores of Head Start programs hung in the balance as the government shutdown continued Monday without an end in sight.  Unless a deal is reached to end the ongoing funding lapse that began Oct. 1, more than 65,000 children in 140 local Head Start programs across 41 states and Puerto Rico will not get their federal grant funding come Nov. 1, according to the National Head Start Association. The federal government spent about $12.3 billion on the program  in fiscal 2025 . Community programs that receive Head Start funding have different start dates for when their grants are available.  Head Start helps fund roughly 1,600 community programs that served more than  790,000 children during the 2023-2024 program year.  The program is managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the employees in that agency who would disburse those awards are c...

A prison dorm at Holman Correctional Facility on Oct. 23, 2019. Forty people have been executed in the United States in this year, the most since 2013. (File) Alabama’s execution of Anthony Boyd on Thursday added to the growing number of executions for the year. Boyd was the 40th person executed in 2025 with another two months left in the year, according to figures obtained from the Death Penalty Information Center website . It is the largest number of executions in the nation since 2013. The executions are also heavily concentrated geographically, with nearly all originating from southern, Republican-leaning states. This is especially true for Florida and its geographic neighbors. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE “Florida, though, has carried out 14 executions so far, so it is leading the country in the number of executions,” Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in an interview prior to Boyd’s execution. “The state has three m...

Canned foods on grocery store shelves. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch) WASHINGTON — The stakes of the ongoing government shutdown rose Monday as the U.S. Department of Agriculture doubled down on its position that food benefits for November could not be paid and a union for federal workers implored lawmakers to pass a stopgap measure. As the government shutdown entered day 27, President Donald Trump’s administration sought to add pressure on U.S. Senate Democrats to approve the House Republicans’ stopgap government funding bill by refusing to use USDA resources to stretch critical food assistance benefits to the most vulnerable Americans.  USDA confirmed over the weekend it  will not follow its own contingency plan — which the department has removed from its website — to tap into its multi-year contingency fund to cover food assistance for more than 42 million people for November.  The department also pinned a fiery message to its website blaming Democra...

A coalition of Georgia housing rights organizations build a makeshift home outside the state Capitol in March to promote a tax credit bill that would save money on home construction expenses for nonprofits. Mayors across the country say the housing crisis has become one of their most important challenges. (Photo by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder) In U.S. cities big and small, mayors are finding their tenures shaped by housing shortages, and efforts to build more homes, so that people of any income can afford a place to live. In a series of conversations, mayors of big cities such as Atlanta and Seattle, as well as of midsize Midwest cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, told Stateline that housing is the No. 1 priority for mayors to tackle. “Housing is by far one of the most important issues facing every mayor in America. It impacts everything from safety to the workforce to transit,” said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who also is the immediate past president of the ...

President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during an event announcing broad global tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, 2025.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — More than 200 Democratic lawmakers and one Republican are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down President Donald Trump’s sweeping global emergency tariffs. The 207 members of the U.S. House and Senate argued in an amicus  brief late Friday that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose tariffs. The lawmakers urged the justices to agree with a lower court finding that Trump’s wide reaching import taxes triggered under IEEPA violate the Constitution, which grants duty powers to Congress. “IEEPA contains none of the hallmarks of legislation delegating tariff power to the executive, such as limitations tied to specific products or countries, caps on the amount of tariff increases, proced...