SmartNews

Secretary of state Marco Rubio will take on additional responsibilities as the next national security adviser, becoming the first person since Henry Kissinger to serve in both roles simultaneously, but a White House veteran cast doubt on his ability to do both jobs effectively.

Rubio's position in Donald Trump's administration expanded after the president said he would nominate his first national security adviser, Mike Waltz, to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but longtime national security official Brett McGurk told "CNN News Central" that the jobs were too demanding in the current era for one individual to perform those duties.

UPDATE: On May 5, 2025, MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire announced the claim about Kash Patel had not been verified. "This was a misstatement. We have not verified that claim," he said.

Once thought to be eradicated, the screwworm could be screwing up our food supply as soon as this summer, according to a Bloomberg report.

The screwworm affected live stock ranchers from the 1930s through the 1980s.

A woman caught using racial slurs against a kindergarten-age boy in Minnesota has raised a quarter of a million dollars after video of the incident went viral, according to reports.

Cell phone video spread widely on social media Wednesday showing a man confronting a white woman at a playground at Soldiers Field Memorial Park for allegedly calling the boy the N-word, and she then repeats the slur to the man filming the video and accuses the child of stealing from her, reported the Star Tribune.

The new jobs report contained some surprisingly good news, but a global economic analyst issued a "preemptively gloomy" prediction for the coming months.

Hiring slowed in April over the previous month, going from 228,000 in March to 177,000 last month, and a Commerce Department report this week showed the U.S. economy shrank over the first three months of this year, but CNN's Rana Foroohar warned that president Donald Trump's tariffs have not fully taken effect.

In an exclusive interview with People magazine, actor Kelsey Grammer recalled his sister's final moments before she was murdered.

“For a long time, the grief was so dominant that I couldn’t access happiness,” Grammer told people. "The book helped me get to a new place with that.”

Citing a lesson to be learned from a popular children's book, former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Steele issued a warning to those who have capitulated to Donald Trump that they have created a monster that can never be satisfied.

Steele, currently the co-host of MSNBC's "The Weekend," wrote for the outlet that the president in 2003 was photographed reading "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," to children and he seemed to miss the point of the book or, more likely, identified with the demanding mouse.

As Steele noted, the book is a cautionary tale about giving in to demands which only grow more ridiculous, which explains a lot about the re-elected president and his second-term power grab.

Prosecutors in the case against Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger have asked the court for permission to conduct their own psychological testing and the trial judge rejected a defense motion to rule out the death penalty.

Ada County judge Steven Hippler denied a motion to strike the death penalty in the quadruple murder case despite Kohberger's recent autism diagnosis, and CNN attorney Jean Casarez explained the latest developments in the high-profile criminal case.

The Democratic National Committee is launching a new program aimed at recruiting and training volunteers in Republican districts to pressure their House members to oppose President Trump's so-called “big, beautiful bill," according to an Axios report.

Congresspersons Tom Barrett (R-MI), Don Bacon (R-NE), Mike Lawler (R-NY), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) are just four of those being targeted in the new endeavor.

President Donald Trump reiterated his threats against Harvard University in his ongoing campaign against higher education.

The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in federal funding to the venerable institution after its board refused demands for control over its governance structure and hiring practices, as well as periodic "audits" of faculty and student viewpoints, and the president has been threatening to revoke the university's tax-exempt status.