Rail unions slam President Biden's plan to block possible strike

The number of migrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol after illegally crossing the southern border dropped by roughly 40% in January, when the Biden administration announced a revamped strategy to discourage unlawful crossings, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News.Border Patrol agents recorded approximately 130,000 apprehensions of migrants who entered the U.S. between official ports of entry along the border with Mexico, compared to the near-record 221,000 apprehensions in December, the internal preliminary figures show. The number of Border Patrol apprehensions in November and October totaled 207,396 and 204,874, respectively.The statistics indicate that January saw the lowest levels...

Senior advisers to President Joe Biden are expected to gather this weekend at Camp David to sharpen the president's State of the Union message, which will be delivered Tuesday night. Longtime Biden aides including senior White House advisers Bruce Reed, Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn will join chief White House speechwriter Vinay Reddy. Mr. Biden is expected at Camp David Saturday evening and Sunday.Two sources familiar with the planning tell CBS News historian and author Jon Meacham, who has served as an occasional outside adviser to Mr. Biden during the 2020 campaign and his presidency, is also heading to Camp David...

Washington — Brian Deese, President Biden's top economic adviser, is leaving the White House, the latest significant departure from the president's team at the midway point in his term.The announcement of Deese's departure comes one day after the departure of White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has been replaced by former COVID-19 czar Jeff Zients. Deese has served as director of the National Economic Council since Mr. Biden took office, and had been expected to step aside at some point this year. Deese's last day is expected to be in mid-February, according to a White House official. In a...

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is seriously considering a White House bid, is traveling to Charleston, S.C., on Monday to attend a local law enforcement roundtable, a senior Pence adviser tells CBS News. He'll touch down in South Carolina just nine days before Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to announce her 2024 presidential campaign. Pence's ninth trip to the Palmetto State since he left office will focus in part on renewed efforts by Congress to pass police reform legislation after five officers were accused of killing 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in Memphis...

Washington — President Biden played host to former President Bill Clinton to mark the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the first piece of legislation that the 42nd president signed into law after taking office in 1993.In an event Thursday at the White House, Mr. Biden and Clinton put the spotlight on legislation that guaranteed many American workers up to 12 unpaid weeks off to recover from major illness or childbirth or to take care of sick family members. Clinton signed the bill into law on Feb. 5, 1993."After all these years, I still have more people...

Add traffic and parking tickets to the growing list of legal and political woes facing embattled Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, who may owe more than $3,400 in unpaid citations, according to records from New York City and Florida.A car registered to Santos was cited six times in 2016 and 2017 in Florida. Two tickets for running red lights were paid, but four toll violations racked up late fees and were ultimately sent to collections agencies according to Florida records. Santos, who represents New York's 3rd Congressional District, now owes $1,299.10 for those tolls.Traffic violations may not...

The spike in fentanyl-related overdose deaths in the U.S. has fueled a national conversation and a redoubling of the government's efforts to curb its smuggling. In 2021, 90% of some 80,000 opioid-related deaths involved fentanyl, federal statistics show.Most fentanyl is being smuggled,  into the U.S. along the southern border, often in vehicles driven by American citizens, as cartels and other criminal groups in Mexico have turned the production of the synthetic opioid into a clandestine industry that has become the primary source of fentanyl in the U.S., according to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Since President Joe Biden took office, Republicans have...

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially passed their new early primary calendar on Saturday, which drastically shakes up the order of states to first cast votes in the presidential nomination process. The plan, which was supported by President Joe Biden, makes South Carolina the first state on the presidential primary calendar on Feb. 3, 2024, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada three days later. The proposal would also move battleground states Georgia and Michigan up in the calendar.Iowa, whose caucus has kicked off the process for Democrats since 1972, is now out of the early window according to the DNC. Supporters of...

Washington — The House is set to vote Thursday on a resolution to remove Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments about Israel, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy set to deliver on a pledge to oust her from the panel now that Republicans are in power.House Republicans want to make sure the Minnesota Democrat doesn't have a seat on the influential foreign policy panel, citing past tweets and comments she made that invoked antisemitic tropes. The resolution to remove her from her seat on the committee cites Omar's criticism of pro-Israel...

States are preparing to remove millions of people from Medicaid as protections put in place early in the COVID-19 pandemic expire.The upheaval, which begins in April, will put millions of low-income Americans at risk of losing health coverage, threatening their access to care and potentially exposing them to large medical bills.It will also put pressure on the finances of hospitals, doctors, and others relying on payments from Medicaid, a state-federal program that covers lower-income people and people with disabilities.Almost three years ago, as COVID sent the economy into free fall, the federal government agreed to send billions of dollars in...

Jerusalem — Israel's West Bank settler population now makes up more than half a million people, a pro-settler group said Thursday, crossing a major threshold. Settler leaders predicted even faster population growth under Israel's new ultranationalist government.   The report, by WestBankJewishPopulationStats.com and based on official figures, showed the settler population grew to 502,991 as of Jan. 1, rising more than 2.5% in 12 months and nearly 16% over the last five years.   "We've reached a huge hallmark," said Baruch Gordon, the director of the group and a resident of the Beit El settlement. "We're here to stay."The milestone comes...

Intelligence shows Chinese president Xi Jinping has instructed his country's army to be "ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion" of Taiwan, CIA Director William Burns said this week, though he cautioned that it was not clear whether Xi had actually decided to use military force for unification.  "Our assessment at CIA is that I wouldn't underestimate President Xi's ambitions with regard to Taiwan," Burns said, adding that Xi had watched Russian president Vladimir Putin's experience in Ukraine "very carefully," and come away "a little bit unsettled and sobered" by Moscow's performance on the battlefield.  "We know as a...

Departures to three U.S. airports has been paused while the Federal Aviation Administration issues a ground stop to "support the Department of Defense in a national security effort." The FAA confirmed to CBS News that departures to Wilmington International Airport, Myrtle Beach International Airport and Charleston International Airport have been paused. No further information was shared. Reports and verified photos on social media show the suspected Chinese spy balloon, which is carrying surveillance equipment and was first spotted over Montana on Thursday, was recently in the skies in the South Carolina area. President Joe Biden said earlier Saturday that the United States was "gonna take care of" the balloon, but did not elaborate on what that might mean. China has acknowledged that the high-altitude balloon belongs to Beijing, but has referred to it as a civilian device "used for scientific research such as meteorology" that blew off-course. A second balloon has reportedly been sighted over Latin America. This is a developing story and will be updated. 

"Face the Nation" Guest Lineup:Sen. Cory Booker — (R) New JerseySen. Ted Cruz — (R) TexasGary Cohn — Vice Chairman of IBM, Former Director of the National Economic Council during the Trump AdministrationPlus, a bipartisan panel with new members of Congress:Rep. Robert Garcia — (D) CaliforniaRep. Zach Nunn — (R) IowaRep. Summer Lee — (D) PennsylvaniaRep. Mike Lawler — (R) New YorkHow to watch "Face the Nation"Date: Sunday, February 5, 2023TV: "Face the Nation" airs Sunday mornings on CBS. Click here for your local listingsRadio: Subscribe to "Face the Nation" from CBS Radio News to listen on-the-goFree online stream: Watch the show on CBS' streaming network at 10:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET.With the latest news and analysis from Washington, don't miss Margaret Brennan (@margbrennan) this Sunday on "Face the Nation" (@FaceTheNation). And for the latest from America's premier public affairs program, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Johannesburg — Russia will test launch one of its most advanced new hypersonic missiles during joint military exercises this month with China and South Africa off the South African coast, a Russian state-run news agency said Friday. A Tsirkon, or Zircon, missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and cruising at speeds up to Mach 9, or about 7,000 miles per hour, will be fired from the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov during the joint naval exercises, according to Russia's TASS news agency.TASS quoted "a source close to Russia's defense industry" as saying a "training launch" of the missile would see...

The supply of free treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 purchased by the federal government could end as soon as this summer, the White House's top pandemic official said Thursday, as the Biden administration prepares to transition the medicines to the private market."All I can say, because I literally don't know, we don't have the specific dates, is that it's going to happen sometime over the summer into early fall. And you'll see that transition and we'll kind of give people as much notice as we can possibly give," Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House's COVID-19 Response Coordinator, told a webinar...

U.S. military officials said Thursday they released and sent to Belize a onetime al Qaeda courier who had completed his sentence. The transfer of Majid Khan ended an imprisonment that included torture at clandestine CIA sites and 16 years at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.Khan, a Pakistani citizen who grew up outside Baltimore, wound up in the Central American nation under a Biden administration agreement with that government. Khan's lawyers said he should have been freed last February under a pretrial agreement.Khan, who is in his early 40s, said in a statement through his legal team that he deeply regretted...

Washington — The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee is seeking information from the FBI about Charles McGonigal, the former top counterintelligence official in the bureau's New York field office who was charged last week with violating U.S. sanctions on Russia and other related offenses.Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, and Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, wrote a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday seeking material and information about McGonigal as part of an investigation into allegations of political bias at the bureau.The Republicans are also requesting a briefing to discuss the FBI's investigation into McGonigal, including whether the...

The pandemic sparked a restlessness in American life, with many families opting to move in search of more space or a lower cost of living. That trend continued in 2022, with hundreds of thousands of people uprooting their lives and moving to new states. But some regions are benefitting from an influx of new residents — a trend that can help those areas grow their economies and expand their tax bases — while others are witnessing a net loss of residents. About 25 U.S. states saw more people move within their boundaries last year, while about 25 states lost residents or...

The pandemic-driven shift to remote work has blurred the line between employees' professional and personal lives, making it harder for workers to disconnect after hours. But a spate of new legislation across the globe is popping up to counteract this erosion of boundaries.In Kenya, for example, the Employment (Amendment) Bill would give workers "the right to disconnect" after working hours. "Where an employer contacts an employee during the period when there is no mutually agreed out-of-work hours, the employee — (a) shall not be obliged to respond and shall have the right to disconnect; and (b) may choose to respond, for...