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By Evan Perez, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — Jason Reding Quiñones, the top federal prosecutor in Florida’s southern district, arrived in Washington, DC, last month for a meeting with top Justice Department officials as White House pressure continued to build over bringing criminal charges against one of President Donald Trump’s top political foes.

For months, Reding Quiñones had been promising that his office would deliver on one of Trump’s top priorities: pursuing criminal charges against a number of former government officials — chief among them former CIA Director John Brennan — who were involved in investigations of him from 2016 to 2024, according to people briefed on the investigation.

Prosecutors in Reding Quiñones’ office opened the meeting with an even firmer assessment of the investigation, which they previously warned was not a strong case.

With Reding Quiñones sitting near her, Maria Medetis Long, the seasoned prosecutor who has led the probe since its start, told acting Deputy Attorney General Colin McDonald and Trent McCotter, his top deputy, that the case against Brennan was too weak to bring, and the evidence didn’t support the charges of lying to Congress that Justice officials and House Republicans have sought, people briefed on the matter said.

Not everyone in the room agreed with Medetis Long, some of them said. Her assessment got a frosty reception, particularly since for months Reding Quiñones had sought to reassure his bosses in Washington that the case, while slow-moving, was making progress.

“That’s not good enough,” was the message she received, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

By this time, Attorney General Pam Bondi had already been fired — in part because of the slow pace of the prosecutions Trump wants.

In April, at an earlier meeting with Bondi, on the day Trump fired her, Reding Quiñones had told her that prosecutors in his office could bring the charges over lying to Congress against Brennan by the end of the year, people briefed on the matter said. The broader conspiracy case, however, appeared moribund at the time.

The probe into Brennan is a major test as the former CIA director has been a vocal critic of Trump and helped to oversee the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded Russia sought to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election, one of the president’s biggest political grievances.

A push to prosecute other perceived Trump enemies James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general, in Virginia faltered after a judge tossed the indictments against them. Federal prosecutors in North Carolina have since brought new charges against Comey alleging a social media post showing sea shells arranged to display the numbers “86 47” represented a criminal threat against Trump. Comey has denied he intended to threaten the president.

Now, with Acting Attorney Todd Blanche under the president’s tight leash as he seeks to keep the job, the latest update from Florida set the stage for a major shakeup to deliver on what Reding Quiñones has been promising since last fall.

Medetis Long was removed from overseeing the investigation days after she delivered her assessment at the meeting in Washington. Blanche then put Joe diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer, in Florida on the case. DiGenova is a former Washington, DC, US attorney who briefly represented the president in one of the probes that he is now investigating.

Since then, any perceived progress on the investigation has been essentially reset, with investigators starting anew to build a broad case against Trump’s biggest target.

The Justice Department declined comment on ongoing investigations.

The department previously said o

By Alicia Wallace, CNN

(CNN) — When the April jobs report is released at 8:30 a.m. ET, it is expected to show that the US labor market added 65,000 positions.

If so, that’s roughly one-third of the 178,000 jobs created in March.

While in comparison the April total may seem like a sharp deceleration or a tepid month of employment growth, when viewed in isolation, it could seem solid or resilient — maybe even normal.

There are plenty of logical explanations for the stark shift and the undulating payroll numbers for the first few months of 2026; however, there’s also something much bigger afoot: The job market is in the throes of an evolution.

“The labor market is absolutely transforming, and it’s not going to look the same as our pre-2020 trends,” Nicole Bachaud, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told CNN in an interview.

There’s not a clear picture yet, she said, of what the new normal is.

The US job market and the broader economy have been subject to a slew of exogenous shocks during the past six years – chief among them being a once-in-a-century global pandemic.

In the backdrop, however, is a series of changes more structural in nature (some of which have even been helped along by those outside shocks):

• The US population is aging. Labor force growth is slowing as members of the large Baby Boomer cohort retire; industries such as health care and social services have greatly expanded as a result.
• There’s been a sharp reduction in net immigration. Trump administration policies of immigration restrictions and mass deportations have shifted the trajectory of what was a decades-long driver of labor supply. This shift also reduces labor demand through a drop in consumer spending.
• Technological innovations, notably artificial intelligence, are reshaping jobs, industries, and the economy. Although still early days, the adoption of AI is contributing to changes in the occupational mix; has been directly cited as a reason (or, perhaps, scapegoat) for layoffs; and has shown potential to influence economy-shaping dynamics such as productivity and wages.

A roller coaster-like effect

Getting a firm read on the labor market in 2026 has been like riding a roller coaster: The economy added an estimated 160,000 jobs in January and lost 133,000 jobs in February before bouncing back to that March total. (These monthly tallies are still subject to revision.)

The volatility can be partly attributed to several factors, including weather, labor strikes, lower-than-typical post-holiday layoffs, and recalibrations to how the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates payroll changes at new and closed businesses (referred to as the birth-death model).

Those fluctuations in the top-line payroll number could very well continue in the months to come, largely because of the birth-death model changes, said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US.

“In fact, we moved away from really placing an emphasis on any given month, and we’re looking at a smooth three-month average now,” he said.

From January through March, the average monthly gain is sitting at 68,333.

The consensus estimates, at 65,000 jobs added, fall right in line with that average.

The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.3%, FactSet estimates show.

Job growth slows as structural changes take hold

April’s projected job growth, however, is likely still running “above trend,” noted Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, which is forecasting a total of 45,000 jobs were added last month.

“The e

By Chelsea Bailey, CNN

(CNN) — It’s been 30 years since Kristin Smart’s family last saw her smile light up a room.

The college freshman vanished from California Polytechnic State University’s San Luis Obispo campus over Memorial Day weekend in 1996, sparking a decades-long investigation that led to the trial and conviction in 2022 of Paul Flores for her murder.

But even after years of searching, authorities have never recovered Smart’s body and she was declared dead in 2002.

Smart’s family said they feel Flores continues “to stand in the way of our daughter being returned to us.”

“We continue to pray for the day when we can finally lay her to rest in the presence of those who love her,” the family said in an open letter on their website.

A new search warrant served Wednesday at the Arroyo Grande, California, home of Flores’ mother is the latest sign investigators remain committed to finding answers, even after securing a conviction for Smart’s murder.

San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson said his office has been “continually working the case.”

“I said when Paul Flores got convicted that the case wasn’t over, and it’s never going to be over until we return Kristin to her family,” Parkinson said in an interview on the Up + Adam podcast recorded Wednesday.

Parkinson is expected to hold a press conference Friday morning about the latest search, according to the sheriff’s office.

Here’s what we know and how Smart’s case has unfolded over the years.

A new search for answers

Investigators swarmed Flores’ mother’s home on Wednesday and Thursday, scouring the packed garage and examining the deck.

The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office confirmed in a statement the home belonged to Susan Flores. CNN reached out to attorneys who previously represented the family and to Susan Flores but did not immediately hear back. She has not been accused of wrongdoing by prosecutors in the case.

Tim Nelligan, an expert in soil vapor testing, told The Associated Press on Thursday he was on the premises, gathering samples in Susan Flores’ yard as well as a neighbor’s yard.

Nelligan declined to discuss the investigation but said his “team has, in general, ‘come up with a methodology to assess soil vapor’ and its relation to ‘human cadaver decomposition.’”

The search is going to be “extremely thorough” and could take two or three days, Parkinson told podcast host Adam Montiel.

“We’ve proven already that Paul did it. We believe that Kristin, at one time, was on Paul Flores’ father’s property. We know she’s been moved, so where she moved to … we’re hunting that down,” he said.

Flores and his family have been at the center of the search for Smart since the earliest days of the investigation into her disappearance.

Officials have said Flores, who was a 19-year-old freshman at the time, was Read more