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US Senate negotiators consider requiring AI firms to mitigate known major risks

2026-09-11T19:15:24.635Z / Reuters

AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights

WASHINGTON, Sept 11 (Reuters) – U.S. Senate negotiators are debating legislation that would put responsibility on tech companies to design safe AI products, according to two Senate aides, and involve federal courts if the U.S. government wants to block their release, according to a Senate aide and a lobbyist involved in the negotiations.

The proposal would create what is called a “duty of care” for AI developers, according to two Senate aides. Companies would need to design their products with the goal of preventing “catastrophic risks,” according to a Senate aide.

Negotiators aim to give the U.S. government the power to block the release of certain AI models that are deemed unsafe, according to a source familiar with the deliberations and one of the Senate aides. Companies would be able to challenge that decision in federal court, and the exact structure of how much power the U.S. government would have is still being discussed.

Part of the measure would also block states from enforcing their own laws governing certain risks posed by AI models, according to the two Senate aides. One of them gave a few examples of such risks, including the possibility that a bad actor could use an AI system to design nuclear or biological weapons.

All of it is still being negotiated. The bill would apply to AI models with the most advanced capabilities. The U.S. companies with the most advanced AI models include Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), Anthropic and OpenAI.

Even if negotiators reach agreement, the congressional calendar will complicate passage. The House of Representatives is scheduled to be in session for only one week before the November 3 midterm elections, while the Senate is expected to be in Washington for three weeks.

The proposal is being discussed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz and Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat involved in the negotiations. The Senate Commerce Committee has oversight of the U.S. Commerce Department, the agency with in-house AI safety researchers. Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, has also weighed in on the legislation.

Thune’s spokesperson declined to comment on the negotiations. Cruz in a post on X said he is working on legislation with Klobuchar and Thune to “address catastrophic risks involving biological or nuclear threats.”

“I’m continuing to work toward a bipartisan agreement on legislation for government oversight of the greatest risks posed by AI models,” Klobuchar said in a statement sent to Reuters. “That includes requiring developers to work with government experts to verify and test models to make sure AI is safe.”

“Meaningful legislation would require the most powerful AI models undergo testing by scientists and experts at our national laboratories to assess whether they could enable sophisticated cyberattacks or aid the development of biological or nuclear weapons,” Cantwell said in a post on X.

The talks come amid mounting pressure on the U.S. Congress and U.S. President Donald Trump to address risks posed by advanced AI systems.

Concerns have intensified following reports of AI agents deviating from human instructions and hacking external systems, as well as public warnings from AI researchers who have left leading companies, citing concerns about the technology’s potential dangers. Lawmakers in both parties have called for greater oversight in recent days.

Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

How lower-paid workers are getting their biggest pay raise in years

September 11, 2026 / 2:25 PM EDT / CBS News

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Megan Cerullo Reporter, MoneyWatch
Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

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Although overall pay growth for U.S. workers has slowed, in July one group saw their fastest wage growth in more than three years — by jumping ship and changing jobs, according to the Bank of America Institute.

Job switchers receiving larger pay hikes were mostly lower-paid, hourly workers, the research firm said in a recent report. In July, the three-month moving average wage increase for job changers hit a three-year high of 12.5%, according to the report.

Pay bumps for switching jobs remain below pandemic levels, the firm notes. Still, economists say they’re encouraged by the acceleration in wage growth among lower-paid workers.

“The fact that we’re seeing these workers see a strong jump in pay associated with job changing suggests there’s a pickup in pay for lower-income workers, and there’s increased mobility among those who are paid hourly,” Bank of America Institute economist Taylor Bowley told CBS News. “We are seeing a narrowing in what used to be a strong pay differential between lower-income and higher-income workers.”

In August, lower-income households’ after-tax wages rose 4.7% year over year, while higher-income households’ pay rose 3.5%.

Faster wage growth doesn’t mean flourishing

Lower-paid workers tend to be concentrated in leisure and hospitality, transportation and warehousing, and in some parts of the retail sector.

Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are “functionally unemployed,” meaning they are unemployed and looking for a job, working part-time involuntarily, or earning poverty-level wages (less than $26,000 annually before taxes), according to the nonpartisan Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour, the same level as in 2009, while high inflation since the pandemic has eroded consumers’ purchasing power.

Separate BofA Institute research on the job-switching pay premium found that higher-income earners typically see greater gains when they stay with their employers, while younger or lower-paid workers typically see higher wage gains by moving to another employer.

Gad Levanon, chief economist at The Burning Glass Institute, a provider of labor market and career insights, said job switchers often leave their employer for a better or higher-paying opportunity, so it’s not surprising they earned substantially higher pay increases than non-job switchers.

“There’s a bit of a selection in that the switchers could simply be better workers than the ones who aren’t leaving. Therefore, when they switch, they get a higher raise,” he told CBS News.

Switching jobs also may involve taking a higher-level position at another company.

AI spurs “job hugging”

Levanon added that the quit rate among white-collar workers in industries like finance, insurance, real estate, technology and consulting tends to be lower than for hourly workers, largely because job growth in such industries is weak.

This is “partly because AI is automating many of these jobs,” he said.

Many such workers are clinging to their jobs, a practice known as “job-hugging,” as their careers appear most exposed to AI-driven changes in hiring, according to ADP Research.

“So there’s kind of a glut of people who want to work in those industries, and people aren’t getting a lot of outside offers. They have a lot of competition, so they stay put,” Levanon said.

Bowley said employers are facing what she called a skills mismatch as they report struggling to recruit workers with the precise qualifications and abilities that they seek.

“That gives people who are looking for a job more bargaining power, and incentivizes businesses to pay more for the type of workers they’re looking for for that role,” she said.

Indeed, the AI data center buildout also could be contributing to the higher pay hikes for some job switchers, Bowley said. The high-tech centers powering rising AI usage require construction workers, electricians and HVAC specialists, for example. Such roles command a wage premium compared to traditional commercial or residential construction, research from Revelio Labs shows.

Edited by Alain Sherter

Arizona accuses L’Oreal of concealing cancer risks linked to hair relaxers

2026-09-11 6:07 PM UTC / Reuters

By Diana Novak Jones

September 11, 2026 6:07 PM UTC Updated 24 mins ago

[1/2]The logo of French cosmetics Groupe L’Oreal is seen on the L’Oreal group’s headquarters building in Clichy, near Paris, France, April 14, 2025. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Sept 11 (Reuters) – Arizona has sued L’Oreal SA and its U.S. subsidiary, alleging the ​cosmetics company hid evidence that its hair relaxer products could cause cancer in women, as ‌it faces thousands of similar lawsuits from users and their families.

Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit late Thursday in state court, making Arizona the first state to sue over alleged cancer risks linked to hair ​relaxers. The lawsuit accuses L’Oreal of violating state consumer protection laws by marketing the products, which ​are used predominantly by African American women, without warning consumers about the alleged ⁠risks of ovarian and uterine cancers.

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The state is seeking penalties and damages, as well as a court ​order forcing L’Oreal to stop selling the products unless it warns of the cancer risk.

In marketing the ​products to women and children over decades, L’Oreal and associated companies “exploited centuries of social pressures and discriminatory beauty standards affecting people of African descent, all while prioritizing profit over consumer safety,” Arizona’s lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit comes as the company faces more ​than 12,000 similar lawsuits filed by women or their families that have been consolidated in a Chicago ​federal court as part of a multidistrict litigation proceeding, a procedure designed to more efficiently manage lawsuits filed in multiple ‌jurisdictions.

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A ⁠spokesperson for L’Oreal USA said the company is confident in the safety of its products and believes the claims are without legal or scientific merit.

A 2022 STUDY

The products, which have been marketed under the names Dark and Lovely, Optimum and other brands, promise to permanently straighten textured hair.

The first lawsuits hit the docket ​after the 2022 release ​of a study done ⁠by the National Institutes of Health that found women who used the products several times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine ​cancer.

L’Oreal’s spokesperson said Friday the study made no finding of a causal connection ​between the ⁠use of those products and any conditions alleged by the plaintiffs.

The lawsuits seek damages to compensate the women for their pain and suffering and economic damages for medical bills and the cost of the products, among other ⁠things.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/arizona-accuses-loreal-concealing-cancer-risks-linked-hair-relaxers-2026-09-11/

The ​lawsuits name L’Oreal, as well as Revlon and other makers ​of the products. Revlon has also denied a connection between cancer and the products.

The multidistrict litigation continues to move forward, court records ​show, and trials could begin next year.

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Reporting by Diana Novak Jones, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

America built a fortress after 9/11. Then the threat started hiding in plain sight

2026-09-11T13:04:34-04:00 / Fox News

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Javed Ali drove past the Pentagon on his way to work in northern Virginia.

Roughly half an hour later, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building.

From his office in Falls Church, Ali could see smoke rising from the Pentagon. A year later, in a turn that captured how dramatically the country had changed, he was walking into the still-damaged building himself — now working in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism office.

TRUMP CONFIRMS PENTAGON PLANS FOR 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11 ATTACKS, DISPUTES REPORT ON GROUND ZERO ABSENCE

Thousands of brave Americans still dying from 9/11 toxic exposure effects decades later.(iStock)

“It was a very eerie and odd and surreal moment in my career,” Ali told Fox News Digital.

Ali’s career would eventually take him from the DIA to the newly created Department of Homeland Security and later the FBI, giving him a front-row seat to the enormous national security architecture America constructed after the deadliest foreign attack on U.S. soil.

Twenty-five years later, that architecture presents something of a paradox.

By one of its clearest measures, the post-9/11 system appears to have made another attack on the scale of 9/11 far harder. The United States has not suffered another terrorist attack remotely approaching the scale and complexity of 9/11, which killed 2,977 people. U.S. intelligence and military operations dismantled much of the al Qaeda network that planned it, while new agencies, surveillance authorities, watchlists and intelligence-sharing systems were designed to ensure that another group could not exploit the same seams in American defenses. The 2026 U.S. intelligence community assessment said counterterrorism operations have degraded al Qaeda and ISIS’s ability to quickly rebuild their leadership and plan large-scale attacks against the U.S. homeland.

But success against the threat of 2001 did not eliminate terrorism. It helped change it.

AMERICAN YOUTH RADICALIZED ONLINE, BUSTED IN SUSPECTED TERROR PLOTS AFTER HATING COUNTRY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

A boy points towards the center of the reflecting pool at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022.(Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Today’s most difficult threats increasingly involve individuals radicalized online, small cells with little warning signature, foreign terrorist organizations seeking to inspire attacks from afar, and an expanding layer of cyber and state-sponsored threats capable of reaching deep inside the United States without hijacking an airplane.

The question 25 years after 9/11, therefore, is not simply whether Americans are safer.

They are safer from one kind of attack — while increasingly exposed to others.

AN AI CYBERATTACK COULD TURN OFF AMERICA’S LIGHTS BEFORE WASHINGTON EVEN UNDERSTANDS WHY

Aerial view of the Pentagon building in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025.(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Building a security state after 9/11

The scale of the American response was extraordinary.

Just over two months after the attacks, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Transportation Security Administration. TSA says its creation amounted to the largest civilian undertaking in U.S. government history at the time, with the federal government rapidly assuming responsibility for airport passenger and baggage screening.

The following year, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security, combining all or part of 22 federal agencies and offices. DHS began operating in March 2003 and today employs more than 260,000 people across missions ranging from border and aviation security to cybersecurity, intelligence and emergency response.

The changes went far beyond new agencies.

President George W. Bush discusses creating the Department of Homeland Security following 9/11.(Getty Images)

The 9/11 Commission found that the pre-attack breakdown was deeper than the familiar failure to “connect the dots.” Responsibility had been scattered across agencies, information was not consistently shared, and no single entity was empowered to integrate intelligence and drive joint action across the foreign-domestic divide. The commission concluded that “responsibility and accountability were diffuse.”

Washington spent the next two decades trying to close those gaps.

Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that post-9/11 wars and related obligations have cost roughly $8 trillion. It estimates that more than $1.1 trillion has been spent on homeland security efforts to prevent and counterterrorism inside the United States since DHS was created.

Al Qaeda didn’t disappear overnight

Ali said it can be easy, with 25 years of hindsight, to forget how persistent the original threat remained.

Even after the United States invaded Afghanistan, killed or captured senior al Qaeda figures and put the organization under extraordinary pressure, the group continued attempting to find ways back into the homeland.

During Ali’s years at DHS, he said officials repeatedly confronted plots involving al Qaeda and its affiliates, including a 2006 plot originating in Britain to bomb transatlantic airliners traveling to North America.

The threat then evolved again.

Usama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan in May 2011. But rather than marking the end of the era of jihadist terrorism, the following years produced a new and in some ways more difficult challenge.

ISIS grew out of al Qaeda in Iraq, expanded rapidly amid the wars in Iraq and Syria and declared a self-described caliphate in June 2014. At its height, the group controlled vast territory and millions of people in Iraq and Syria while encouraging or directing attacks far beyond its borders. The State Department reported that ISIS had emerged from al Qaeda in Iraq and expanded dramatically during 2013 and 2014.

For U.S. counterterrorism officials, Ali said, the center of gravity increasingly shifted from identifying trained operatives sent by an organized group to finding individuals who might be radicalizing inside Western countries.

Then came another shift: attacks by lone offenders across different ideologies, often with no direct operational relationship to an organization overseas.

“Mostly lone actors, lone offenders, not tied to groups overseas, not traveling overseas, and not being directed by people overseas,” said Ali, now an associate professor of practice at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.

DHS CHIEF ANNOUNCES CHANGES TO ITS SEAL TO REFLECT THAT DEPARTMENT IS ‘AT WAR EVERY SINGLE DAY’

A U.S. Navy SEAL provides cover for teammates advancing on a suspected al Qaeda and Taliban location during missions in Afghanistan supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.(Mai/Getty Images)

The terrorist organization became a phone screen

The transformation is now reflected in the government’s own threat assessments.

The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said setbacks to the ability of Islamist terrorist groups to conduct “large-scale complex attacks” have pushed them toward information operations and propaganda designed to inspire or enable people in or with access to Western countries.

The assessment said there were at least three Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States in 2025 and that law enforcement disrupted at least 15 U.S.-based Islamist terrorist plotters that year. Roughly half of those disrupted plotters had some online contact with Islamist terrorists or were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations, according to the assessment.

The vulnerability was demonstrated on New Year’s Day 2025, when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a U.S. citizen from Texas, drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people. The FBI described the attack as an act of terrorism and said Jabbar had become increasingly isolated before adopting extremist views.

In the days after that attack, the FBI said lone actors and small cells who radicalize online had posed the greatest terrorism threat to the homeland in recent years precisely because they can be so difficult to detect and disrupt.

That presents almost the inverse of the 9/11 problem.

The 9/11 plot required 19 hijackers, overseas leadership, financing, international travel, flight training and years of planning. The challenge for investigators was collecting pieces of information held across different agencies and assembling them quickly enough.

A lone actor may offer far fewer pieces to collect in the first place.

Ali said many recent attackers or alleged plotters had not previously come onto the radar of the FBI or local law enforcement, leaving authorities with the extraordinarily difficult task of identifying people who may not commit an obvious crime until they move toward violence.

“So yes, we are safer from a certain type of threat,” Ali said, “but again, we are not immune from terrorism, and other types of threats are much more difficult to identify or stop.”

KASH PATEL REVEALS THE CHILLING HOLIDAY TERROR PLOTS FBI FEDERAL AGENTS QUIETLY STOPPED

A handout released to Reuters by IntelCenter shows members of Somalia’s Islamist rebel group al Shabaab in Mogadishu Jan. 1.(IntelCenter Handout/Reuters)

A security system built for yesterday?

That changing threat has also fueled a broader debate over whether the institutions created after 9/11 became too large, too expensive or too focused on the dangers of the previous era.

Morgan Murphy, who served as press secretary to the secretary of Defense during the first Trump administration and later worked in the Trump White House, argues that Washington built too much bureaucracy around the 9/11 threat while other vulnerabilities grew.

“TSA agents still pat down grandma and gum up travel while Beijing wires our living rooms with cheap TVs and selfie sticks through the supply chain handed to them by Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden,” Murphy said. “We spent two decades frisking American passengers while our adversaries plugged themselves into our homes and businesses.”

“The genius of America after Pearl Harbor was that we built to fight. After 9/11, we built to process,” Murphy told Fox News Digital, “Real security means sovereignty at home and lethality abroad — a sealed border, an untangled supply chain, and enemies who fear us.”

Theo Wold, who served as acting assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy during the first Trump administration, offered a similar critique, arguing that post-9/11 Washington relied too heavily on large bureaucracies, expansive government authorities and wars in the Middle East.

“George W. Bush and the D.C. governing elite responded to 9/11 the way their politics demanded: create large, unwieldy bureaucracy, push for special legal authorities with limited oversight and activate ground wars in the Middle East,” Wold told Fox News Digital.

“Those wars didn’t make us safer, the legal authorities were wielded against Americans, and the bureaucracy is full of waste and has proven nearly unworkable,” he said.

Wold argued that the lesson from the past quarter-century should be a more narrowly targeted national-security model.

“Now we know better. Americans are safest when we are nimble and focus ruthlessly on targeting real enemies,” he said.

The next threat may not look like 9/11

The challenge now extends beyond terrorism.

ICE arrests a suspected al Qaeda member released into the U.S. by the Biden administration.(ICE)

The 2026 intelligence assessment warns that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and non-state ransomware groups continue seeking access to U.S. government networks and private critical infrastructure for espionage, financial gain and possible future disruption. It also warns that artificial intelligence is accelerating cyber capabilities and that several state adversaries are developing missile systems capable of threatening the homeland.

The security landscape that began with al Qaeda operatives training to fly passenger jets has therefore expanded into something far less geographically defined: terrorist propaganda transmitted to an individual’s phone, malicious code inserted into a computer network, attacks on critical infrastructure and state adversaries capable of reaching Americans from thousands of miles away.

For Ali, however, the evolution of the threat should not lead Washington to conclude that the original threat has vanished.

One of the central lessons of the years before Sept. 11, he said, was that emerging terrorist organizations have to be confronted before they have the time and space to develop operational capability.

“When these terrorist threats start to emerge, whether it’s overseas or here, you have to put pressure on them before they gather momentum to carry out operations,” Ali said.

The danger, he argued, would be allowing counterterrorism to fall so far down Washington’s list of priorities that the country begins recreating the complacency that existed before 9/11.

“Terrorism as a tactic is probably never going to be defeated,” Ali said.

Twenty-five years after he watched smoke rise from the Pentagon, Ali’s answer to whether America is safer reflects the contradiction at the heart of the post-9/11 era.

The United States built a massive system to prevent the next 9/11.

It appears to have made another 9/11 far harder to execute.

Two flags flutter on a fence in front of Lower Manhattan and One World Trade Center at the Tear Drop 9/11 Memorial at sunset on June 13, 2026, in Bayonne, New Jersey.(Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

The harder question now is whether that system can recognize the attack that doesn’t look anything like it.

Efrat (Effie) Lachter is a reporter for Fox News Digital with more than 15 years of experience covering conflict, global affairs, human rights and political accountability.She has directed and produced more than 200 documentary segments across more than 40 countries, documenting conflicts, humanitarian crises, corruption, human trafficking, gender-based violence and the human stories behind major world events.

Lachter’s reporting has taken her into conflict zones and crisis areas across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa. Her work has included uncovering human trafficking networks, revealing an ISIS underground torture prison in Syria, documenting the war in Ukraine and interviewing senior political figures and world leaders. She was also among the Western journalists who entered Russia after the war began to bring testimonies from Putin’s opposition. Lachter is the recipient of the 2022 Peres Center for Peace Award and was a 2023–2024 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan. She also won two Rockower Awards for Excellence in Reporting. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in political science.

See how your income tax bracket could change for 2027

September 11, 2026 / CBS News

By

Federal tax brackets are projected to rise 3.2% next year, allowing Americans to earn more before their income is taxed at higher rates, according to new estimates from Bloomberg Tax.

The IRS adjusts its tax brackets each year for inflation, a step that can provide some financial relief to people whose income is taxed at lower rates. While the agency hasn’t yet announced its new inflation-adjusted tax brackets — an announcement it usually makes in October or November — Bloomberg Tax on Friday issued its forecast for the 2027 tax changes.

The analysis is based on the same inflation measure the IRS uses, known as the “chained Consumer Price Index.” However, because the Department of Labor didn’t report October 2025 inflation data due to the government shutdown at the time, Bloomberg Tax said it calculated the index using an 11-month average.

The IRS didn’t immediately respond to a request for information about when it plans to announce its inflation-adjusted brackets for the upcoming tax season.

Taxpayers are likely to see income thresholds for the seven IRS tax brackets increase by 3.2% next year, up from 2.7% for the current tax year, according to Bloomberg. The new brackets are important because they help taxpayers avoid so-called bracket creep, a hidden tax hike that can occur if income bands fail to keep pace with inflation.

The bigger inflation boost comes as prices have ticked higher in 2026, largely due to the Iran war, which has sent diesel to over $6 a gallon, a record, while gasoline remains above $4 a gallon. August’s Consumer Price Index report showed that inflation rose by a higher-than-expected 3.4% on an annual basis.

Without annual inflation adjustments, workers who get a cost-of-living pay increase could be pushed into a higher tax bracket even though their standard of living hasn’t changed.

Under Bloomberg Tax’s projections, the 12% bracket for married couples would cover taxable income from $25,601 to $104,050, with the top of that range rising $3,250 from 2026. Only the portion of a couple’s income that falls within that range is taxed at 12%, with income below $25,601 taxed at the 10% rate.

Single filers will also see their tax brackets adjusted for 2027, according to Bloomberg Tax.

The standard deduction will also see an increase next year, rising to $33,200 for married couples filing jointly and $16,600 for single filers. That compares with $31,500 and $15,750, respectively, in the current tax year.

Edited by Alain Sherter

Nashville airport to be renamed for Dolly Parton after unanimous vote

September 11, 2026 2:32 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Nashville International Airport will be renamed after the late Dolly Parton after its board unanimously voted to change the name.

The Metro Nashville Airport Authority board voted 6-0 on Friday to begin the process and said a final name has not been chosen.

“We are working closely with the appropriate parties to thoughtfully determine how Dolly Parton’s name and legacy will be incorporated,” the airport authority told CBS News in a statement.

The vote came just weeks after the legendary singer and Tennessee native died at the age of 80 following a private cancer battle.

Dolly Parton performed at the Glastonbury Festival in 2014. Ian Gavan / Getty Images

Gov. Bill Lee proposed the name change, saying it would be fitting for the Nashville airport to “bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter and greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith and kindness.”

An online petition to rename the airport after Parton, which was launched more than a year before her death, has more than 175,000 signatures, as of Friday.

When asked about the petition on “CBS Mornings” in January 2025, Parton said she thought the idea of the airport being renamed to honor her was “just a joke.”

“I’m very flattered,” Parton told co-host Gayle King. “But it’s a nice compliment, and I appreciate it. I’ve been blessed.”

Travelers make their way to the gates at the Nashville International Airport. Seth Herald / Getty Images

The Nashville airport’s code is BNA, which stands for Berry Field Nashville and was named in honor of Col. Harry S. Berry, local CBS affiliate WTVF reported. The name change would need to be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration.

“We are grateful for the tremendous support and enthusiasm from our community and Dolly’s fans around the world,” the airport’s board said in a statement.

Some U.S. airports named after performers, politicians, or athletes include the President Donald J. Trump International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida; Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport; Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky; and John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California.

Other efforts to honor Parton in her home state include legislation introduced by Tennessee state Sen. Jessie Seal to designate Sept. 25 as “9 to 5” Day, a nod to Parton’s famous anthem.

CIA declassifies intel warnings to White House prior to 9/11 attack

2026-09-11T19:16:02.080Z / CNN

By Katie Bo Lillis

5 min ago

PUBLISHED Sep 11, 2026, 3:16 PM ET

Federal agencies National security

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The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn on September 11, 2001.

Marty Lederhandler/AP

The now-infamous warning to then-President Bill Clinton was tucked at the bottom of a presidential intelligence brief delivered on September 10, 1998: A group associated with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”

In the end, there were no explosives. Just four planes, two piloted into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and one intended for the US Capitol that crash-landed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers heroically fought back against the terrorists.

The CIA on Friday declassified and released more than 100 pages of presidential daily briefing papers provided to Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush that dealt with the threat from al Qaeda and bin Laden in the run-up to 9/11, providing for the first time to the American public an eerie snapshot of the information two presidents saw but failed to act on.

They show a drumbeat of warnings over the course of years that bin Laden was considering an attack in the United States or on American sites overseas. Fragments of intelligence suggesting he wanted to attack a shopping mall in Washington, acquire nuclear bomb materials, launch chemical weapons attacks or kidnap an American — whose name is redacted — flicker through the pages.

The documents do not fundamentally change intelligence historians’ understanding of what the US government knew before the attacks, or how it had failed so badly to predict them. A 2004 report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States found that although the intelligence community had warned two successive White Houses of the threat from al Qaeda, it failed to adequately predict or communicate the scope and urgency of those threats. And a silo’ed intelligence apparatus kept intelligence analysts at different agencies from putting the pieces together in a meaningful way.

In pictures: America marks 25 years since 9/11

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In pictures: America marks 25 years since 9/11

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Visitors pay their respects at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville.

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A woman and child pay respects at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum during a ceremony on Friday, September 11, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

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Former President Joe Biden, former first lady Laura Bush, former President George W. Bush, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Vice President JD Vance stand during the ceremony in New York

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Ryan Gould, grandson of Flight 93 victim Patrick Joseph Driscoll, holds his son next to the Wall of Names at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

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New York firefighters pay their respects at the memorial in New York.

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President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive at an observance ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, DC.

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People listen to the national anthem at the memorial in New York.

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A woman mourns at the reflecting pool in New York.

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Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama arrive at the ceremony in New York.

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Visitors pay their respects at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville.

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An American flag hangs between two fire trucks in New York with One World Trade Center visible in the distance.

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Former President Joe Biden, former first lady Laura Bush, former President George W. Bush, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Vice President JD Vance stand during the ceremony in New York

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In pictures: America marks 25 years since 9/11

It was also a time of profound uncertainty for the CIA, scholars of the era say. The agency’s main raison d’être, the Soviet Union, had fallen, and it wasn’t entirely clear how the agency should reorient itself or what it should focus on. A running joke in Washington during the Clinton era was that a small plane that crashed on the White House lawn was the CIA director trying to get in touch with the president. The unit in the CIA responsible for tracking bin Laden — a small office called Alec Station — was small.

“Even if one element of the agency is screaming about a threat, it’s still a pretty big organization,” noted Jeffrey Rogg, an intelligence community historian at the University of Texas in Austin.

But the documents still represent a historically significant and fascinating release from the CIA, which closely guards presidential daily brief materials as some of its most sensitive classified material.

A final warning from the CIA dated August 6, 2001, was headlined: “Bin Ladin [sic] Determined To Strike In US.” It reported that al Qaeda members had resided in or traveled to the US “for years” and that the group “apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks.”

And FBI information at the time indicated “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

70 full field “Bin Ladin related” investigations were underway in the US at the time, the report said.

But, it acknowledged, “we have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting,” including reporting from 1998 “saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft.”

The final document in the release is dated 4 a.m. on the morning of September 12.

The report cites a “Kandahar-based Arab,” who said the attacks were the result of two years’ planning. They were, he said, “the beginning of the wrath.”

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Fed rate hike in September is all but guaranteed after CPI report, economists say

September 11, 2026 / 1:40 PM EDT / CBS News

A hotter-than-expected inflation report has sharply raised the likelihood that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates in September, which would mark its first rate hike since 2023.

The Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 3.4% in August, in line with July’s reading but higher than the 3.3% economists were forecasting. One-third of the monthly increase was due to gasoline prices, which have jumped 27.4% from a year ago, according to the Labor Department.

More concerning for the Fed, core prices rose 0.3% from July, higher than expected and an acceleration from the previous month’s 0.2% increase. The reading, which excludes the volatile gas and food categories, suggests inflationary pressures are broadening beyond energy as higher fuel prices ripple through the economy.

After the CPI report was released, the likelihood of a rate hike at the Fed’s Sept. 16 meeting jumped to nearly 90%, up from 70% on Thursday, according to CME FedWatch. The inflation reading makes it more likely the Fed will raise borrowing costs as it works to bring inflation back toward its 2% target, economists said Friday.

EY-Parthenon now projects the central bank will raise rates by 0.25 percentage points at next week’s meeting, bringing the federal funds rate to a target range of 3.75% to 4%.

“We are changing our Fed call from a hold to a 25bps hike at the FOMC meeting next week,” EY-Parthenon chief economist Greg Daco wrote in a Friday note. Some Fed officials are likely to “argue in favor of a rate hike on the basis that the ‘speed’ of the disinflationary process is not satisfactory.”

The Fed is scheduled to announce its interest rate decision at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Sept. 16.

More rate hikes in store?

The last time the Fed hiked rates was in July 2023 in an effort to quell prices after the pandemic pushed inflation to its highest level in decades.

A September hike may not be the last, with Capital Economics projecting a second 0.25 percentage point increase in December followed by another in March 2027.

An interest rate hike would raise borrowing costs for consumers, making mortgages, credit cards and auto loans more expensive. On the flip side, it would provide a boost to savers through higher returns on their CDs and high-yield savings accounts.

The August inflation data was captured before the recent run-up in fuel prices, with oil surpassing $100 a barrel and diesel pushing above $6 a gallon this week.

“The renewed march higher in oil, gasoline and diesel prices adds to concerns that higher energy prices could spill over to other goods and services and inflation expectations,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic said in an email Friday. “As such, we are now looking for the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points at next week’s policy meeting.”

A divided Fed

A handful of members of the 12-person Federal Open Market Committee, which sets rates, have already signaled they are willing to hike if price pressures don’t show signs of improvement.

At its last meeting in July, the Fed held rates steady, although three members dissented and voted to raise rates. Some Fed officials, including Fed governor Christopher Waller, have also indicated that they would support a rate hike in September if inflation does not make meaningful progress toward the Fed’s 2% target.

The Fed’s decision comes as it navigates ongoing price pressures from the Iran war, which has led to a global oil shortage and caused a spike in energy costs.

Inflation is now a full percentage point higher than it was before the conflict in the Middle East started at the end of February.

Brent crude, the international standard, was trading at around $105 a barrel on Friday, while the national average for diesel, widely used across the transportation, construction and agriculture industries, broke above $6 a gallon this week.

The Russia-Ukraine war is also weighing on oil prices. A barrage of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure has hampered Russia’s refining capabilities, sparking a fuel shortfall.

White House weighs how to use Defense Production Act to expand US oil refining capacity, sources say

2026-09-11T16:42:44.34Z / reuters.com

Sept 11 (Reuters) – The White House is weighing how to use the Defense Production Act to expand U.S. oil refining capacity as the conflict with Iran exposes the country’s vulnerability to global crude supply disruptions and price spikes, according to two sources familiar with the administration’s plans.

Considering such an extraordinary step highlights how the Trump administration is under growing pressure to show it can contain the impact of surging fuel prices on consumers and businesses ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The Reuters Power Up newsletter by columnist Ron Bousso provides everything you need to know about the global energy industry. Sign up here.

The proposal to use the act came up during a recent meeting between President Donald Trump and nearly a dozen U.S. refiners, where White House officials sought to determine how federal support could best be used to add capacity, the sources said. No final decisions were made, and participants left the meeting with the expectation that the conversations would continue, according to the sources.

Refining executives told officials that federal money would be better directed toward making refineries more efficient or expanding existing plants rather than financing an entirely new refinery, which would be considerably more costly and take years to complete, the sources said.

The Defense Production Act, considered a tool of last resort that has never been used to add refining capacity, gives Trump broad powers to direct industrial resources and provide financial incentives for companies to expand production of materials deemed important to national defense. The latest discussions build on a presidential determination issued in April that authorized the use of the act to support and expand U.S. petroleum production, refining and logistics capacity.

The United States is one of the world’s largest oil refining powers, with a vast network of plants capable of processing millions of barrels of crude a day, but the national average diesel price has climbed above $6 a gallon for the first time and gasoline prices remain elevated.

“America’s refining capacity is essential to ensuring the United States has continuous access to secure, affordable, and reliable energy. Expanding that capacity is a top priority for the President and his energy team, who are evaluating concrete options to increase our refining capacity through regulatory reform, faster permitting, and additional investment,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said when asked about the proposal.

REFINING CAPACITY NEAR MAXIMUM LEVELS

U.S. refiners are already running near full tilt, with utilization reaching 98%, according to the latest data. The high utilization underscores the challenge facing the administration: refiners are producing at near-capacity levels, but tight global supplies and strong demand are keeping fuel prices high.

U.S. refining capacity has also declined over the past decade as unprofitable plants have shut, concentrating more of the nation’s refining capacity on the Gulf Coast.

In recent weeks, the White House has increasingly pointed to expanding domestic refining capacity when asked how it plans to respond to fuel-price spikes caused by the Iran conflict, making the push both a longer-term effort to buffer against global supply disruptions and part of its broader response to affordability concerns ahead of the elections.

The administration is also pushing to increase access to foreign oil supplies.

Trump recently secured a 35% U.S. government equity stake in North American Blue Energy Partners, a private Venezuelan oil company that received rights to develop 17 oil fields with about 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. The agreement gives the U.S. government rights to purchase Venezuelan crude, including 20% of the company’s output at production cost.

The White House says millions of barrels of new Venezuelan production will eventually be processed through U.S. refineries.

TEST CASE

A proposed new refinery in Brownsville, Texas, has emerged as a test case for Trump’s call to expand U.S. refining capacity. It was unclear whether the project would receive any Defense Production Act funding.

America First Refining plans to build a 168,000-barrel-per-day facility at the Port of Brownsville, which Trump announced in March as the first new U.S. refinery in nearly 50 years. The project is backed by India’s Reliance Industries, which has agreed to a 20-year deal to buy the refinery’s output.

The project also has ties to Trump’s family and administration. Donald Trump Jr. is a passive minority investor in America First Refining, according to company and investor disclosures reported by ProPublica, while Cantor Fitzgerald, whose founder Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary, is serving as financial adviser to the company, according to company announcements.

America First Refining did not respond to requests for comment.

Afghan woman deported from US in first use of secretive terrorism court

2026-09-11 19:42:49 UTC / Reuters

By Nate Raymond

September 11, 2026 7:42 PM UTC Updated 14 mins ago

United States Department of Justice logo and U.S. flag are seen in this illustration taken April 23, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Purchase Licensing Rights

Sept 11 (Reuters) – An Afghan woman accused of supporting the Islamic State has been deported from the United States in the first case to be pursued by the U.S. Department of ​Justice through a little-known court created 30 years ago to deport “alien terrorists.”

Nazira Haji ‌Zada, a 47-year-old who had been residing in Texas as a lawful permanent resident of the United States, was deported after agreeing not to continue to fight against her removal in the Alien Terrorist Removal Court following her ​arrest in July, the department said on Friday.

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The Justice Department had accused her of ​helping conceal a failed, Islamic State-inspired plot to commit a mass shooting on ⁠Election Day 2024. She was never charged with any crime, but her son and son-in-law ​pleaded guilty to related charges last year.

Her case had been filed in a court that had ​gone unused in the decades since its creation by Congress in 1996. That court allows the government to rely on classified evidence in deportation cases.

Her attorney initially argued the secretive process violated her due process rights. Defendants ​in such cases are not allowed to review the classified evidence used against them.

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But according to ​court documents unsealed on Friday, Haji Zada agreed last month that she was an “alien terrorist” subject to removal. ‌The ⁠court’s chief judge, Joan Ericksen, subsequently approved her deportation.

“This landmark case, resulting in the prompt removal of this alien terrorist to her country of origin, is a win for national security and the rule of law,” U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

The case marked the latest in ​a series of aggressive ​moves by President Donald ⁠Trump’s administration to carry out deportations as part of an immigration crackdown.

It was unclear, though, whether the Justice Department would use the obscure court ​again anytime soon.

Matthew Farley, a public defender who represented Haji Zada, ​in a statement ⁠said her “choice to consent to removal should not be seen as an endorsement of this court’s legitimacy.”

“Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that ⁠will be ​used against them is a plain violation of due ​process,” he said. “We are confident that the Alien Terrorist Removal Court will be struck down as unconstitutional as soon as a ​judge is asked to address the issue.”

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Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Daniel Wallis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.