CHICAGO — Cook County Forest Preserves has used a $40 million yearly windfall from voters to buy up and conserve more land, pay for maintenance and add programming while bolstering its pension funds, the district reported Tuesday.

Voters overwhelmingly gave the preserves the OK to raise property taxes by 0.025% in a 2022 referendum. While at ...Read more

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie has introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Massie read the articles of impeachment on the House floor Tuesday, saying Hegseth had violated the War Powers Resolution by going to war with Iran without approval from Congress.

He said Hegseth “has demonstrated that he will remain a ...Read more

CHICAGO — A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent made the risky move Tuesday of taking the witness stand in his own rape trial, where he repeatedly denied sexually assaulting or robbing Chinese sex workers and said they threatened to frame him after he refused to help with immigration issues.

Luis Uribe, 45, is on trial at the Dirksen U.S...Read more

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace is calling for the public execution of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mom accused of killing all three of her children back in 2023.

“Her children are dead, she should be dead too,” the Republican rep told TMZ.

“She should get the death penalty. It should be public, it should be a public execution,” she ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center on Tuesday said a system brewing in the Atlantic could become a tropical depression later this week.

As of the NHC’s 2 p.m. EDT tropical outlook, a trough of low pressure located about 800 miles east-southeast of Bermuda was continuing to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

“...Read more

DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday told judges they can stop livestreaming court proceedings for the next 90 days — a move that directly contradicts state law and escalates an ongoing power struggle between the state’s highest court and its lawmakers, who have repeatedly mandated that most criminal court proceedings be streamed...Read more

DETROIT — The Gordie Howe International Bridge, in its first full month of operation, nearly became Michigan's busiest border crossing with Canada.

About 343,500 vehicle trips were made across the new public span in August 2026, according to data from the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association. That fell just short of the roughly 345,500 ...Read more

WASHINGTON — A bold military push by Iran and its proxies to create a choke hold on global oil supplies has once again caught the Trump administration off guard, threatening a market shock and a steep political backlash in the U.S. midterm elections.

A drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s most crucial pipeline, which siphons crude oil from the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — More than 40 dead cormorants, the black birds known for perching on rocks and stretching their wings to dry, washed ashore on Venice Beach this weekend.

“We don’t usually see that many,” Nicole Mooradian, spokesperson for L.A. County Department of Beaches and Harbors said.

Carcasses lay strewn along the shoreline as the ...Read more

The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to immediately close the performing arts venue, a few hours after a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump’s name could not be restored to its facade, according to sources familiar with the situation. It remains unclear when the venue might actually close since U.S. District Judge ...Read more

President Donald Trump lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday for blocking his efforts to give the U.S. Postal Service power to determine who can receive and cast mail-in ballots, while top Illinois Democrats and national voting rights experts hailed the ruling and said it would prevent chaos for the Nov. 3 general election.

In an ...Read more

A former Christian aid worker who confessed to molesting more than 30 boys in Haiti has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing children while carrying out missionary work in the Caribbean country.

Jeriah Mast, 45, of Millersburg, Ohio, pleaded guilty to two counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors in Haiti, the U.S. Department of ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — A federal judge said Tuesday that District Attorney Larry Krasner may have broken the law while overseeing a contentious post-conviction case, and he said he referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to investigate whether Krasner should be charged with crimes including conspiracy or obstruction of justice.

U.S. ...Read more

BOSTON — The judge in the Lindsay Clancy triple murder trial indefinitely impounded the list of jurors who sat for the weeks-long proceedings, citing the potential harm releasing it could cause.

“There is a risk of immediate and irreparable injury should the list be made available to the public at this time,” Judge William Sullivan wrote ...Read more

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel refused to say whether agents would be present at the polls during the midterm elections in a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Tuesday.

The comments came as members from both parties questioned Patel over issues ranging from elections to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and...Read more

Prosecutors won’t seek the death penalty in the murder trial of Nick Reiner when it gets underway next year.

The 33-year-old son of Emmy Award-winning performer Rob Reiner and his photographer wife, Michele Singer Reiner, is charged with fatally stabbing the show business royals in the couple’s Los Angeles home on Dec. 14. He pleaded not ...Read more

CHICAGO — Authorities have charged a school bus aide with reckless conduct and carrying a gun in a public place near a school after a 12-year-old boy found the weapon in a bag and fired it from the bus window Monday afternoon outside Bridgeport’s Minnie Minoso Academy.

Steven Dixon, 22, also faces three misdemeanor counts of child ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — Two of Florida’s best-known conservative sheriffs blasted the proposed Amendment 3 Tuesday, calling the property tax rollback a “train wreck,” “draconian,” and an “emergency” as campaigns on both sides of the contentious issue ramp up ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Alongside about two dozen sheriffs and ...Read more