By Lauren Fox, Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — Speaker Mike Johnson is actively working to unite his conference behind another Republican-only policy bill ahead of the midterms, with members clamoring for more wins and eager not waste what they fear could be the waning days of their majority.

Despite facing one of the smallest House margins in history, Johnson has outlined an extraordinarily aggressive legislative plan for 2026 that, if successful, Republicans believe could help preserve their fragile hold on the chamber next year — and potentially protect the speaker’s own political survival. And the Louisiana Republican is moving quickly, telling CNN he held a “productive” meeting last week with key chairmen and has spoken with Senate GOP Leader John Thune in recent days.

“We want to use all the tools that we have in the arsenal. And I’m very bullish, very optimistic. I think we can do something,” he said last week, discussing the prospect of Republicans passing a party-line package under a process known as reconciliation.

Johnson has instructed chairmen to come up with a menu of ideas they’d like to see in another GOP economic bill. But whether the bill is focused on health care, tax policy or further deficit reduction is still not clear. And it will be difficult for Johnson to start cobbling together a new bill when he is still constantly quelling internal fights about GOP priorities on the floor and begging members to show up for votes with no room to spare in their narrow margin. Last week alone, GOP leaders lost a floor vote they didn’t even realize was in trouble and were forced to pull several other measures from their agenda.

Johnson’s agenda 2.0 plan is a long-shot effort that comes with no shortage of potential downsides for him and for the party. Trying and failing — like Republicans did with their Obamacare repeal effort in 2017 ahead of Trump’s last midterm — could highlight GOP ineptitude just months before the election. And conservatives are already telegraphing they want to see significant cuts to a federal budget that moderates are struggling to defend on the campaign trail.

“You never know ‘til you try,” Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said. “If you spend half your time in Congress and half your time running … that’s stupid.”

Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio is another fiscal hawk with big dreams of enacting across-government cuts in the style of the Department of Government Efficiency in the next bill. But he also offered a reality check: “We barely had the votes to defund NPR. I don’t know how aggressively we’ll be able to reform some of the things.”

Many Republicans agree that choosing not to use a legislative tool that allows them to pass conservative bills with just their own party’s votes would be a major waste in a GOP-controlled Congress. But that is where the agreement ends.

GOP lawmakers acknowledge it will be much more difficult to deliver another package after Congress passed Trump’s tax break, spending cuts and immigration bill last year. To start, there is no clear idea of what the bill would include. One major faction of House Republicans, known as the Republican Study Committee, is pushing for housing policies and an expansion of health care savings, which they say would also cut $1 trillion from the federal deficit. They even have a name: “Making the American Dream Affordable Again.”

“I think we have some really good proposals that leadership is looking at, that’s in line with what the president wants to do, some creative ideas,” the group’s chairman, Rep. August Pfluger of Texas, told CNN, saying the ide

Por Simone McCarthy, CNN

China registró su tasa de natalidad más baja de la historia en 2025, mientras su población se redujo por cuarto año consecutivo, profundizando un desafío demográfico que podría afectar a la segunda economía más grande del mundo durante décadas.

La tasa cayó a 5,63 nacimientos por cada 1.000 personas en 2025, por debajo del mínimo de 6,39 por 1.000 de 2023, informó este lunes la Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas de China. La caída sugiere que el leve repunte de nacimientos en 2024 fue una excepción y no una reversión de la tendencia descendente constante desde 2016.

La economía de China creció un 5 % en 2025, según informaron también las autoridades, en línea con el objetivo anual del Gobierno de “alrededor del 5 %”.

La expansión anual fue impulsada por un auge de las exportaciones chinas que compensó las tensiones comerciales con Estados Unidos y el débil consumo interno. China acumuló un superávit comercial récord de US$ 1,2 billones el año pasado, a pesar de la guerra comercial intermitente del presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, con la segunda economía más grande del mundo.

Pero los datos también mostraron una desaceleración económica en el cuarto trimestre, con un crecimiento de solo el 4,5 % respecto al año anterior, el aumento trimestral más lento desde finales de 2022.

Las autoridades destacaron la “notable estabilidad” de la economía, y el jefe de la oficina de estadísticas, Kang Yi, dijo que esto se logró a pesar de “una situación compleja y grave marcada por rápidos cambios en el entorno externo y crecientes desafíos internos”.

“En 2025, la economía de China resistió la presión y mantuvo un progreso constante, logrando nuevos resultados en el desarrollo de alta calidad”, dijo Kang en una conferencia de prensa.

A pesar del crecimiento económico anual en línea con los objetivos, las cifras de natalidad suponen un revés para los esfuerzos de Beijing por revertir el impacto de décadas de estricto control natal impuesto por el Estado bajo la ahora abandonada política del “hijo único” y convencer a más jóvenes de tener hijos.

Con los 7,92 millones de bebés nacidos en China el año pasado superados por 11,31 millones de muertes, la población total disminuyó en 3,39 millones, según los datos. La población del país —aún la segunda más grande del mundo, detrás de la India— se sitúa en 1.400 millones para 2025.

Los funcionarios consideran que los cambios demográficos de China representan un gran desafío, ya que la fuerza laboral del país se reduce y crece la población de adultos jubilados que cobran pensión.

Años de estricto control poblacional bajo la política del “hijo único”, eliminada en 2016, han acelerado tendencias observadas en otros países como Japón y Corea del Sur, donde la caída de la natalidad se atribuye a mayores niveles educativos, cambios en la visión del matrimonio, rápida urbanización y el alto costo de criar hijos.

El envejecimiento de la sociedad china se profundizó en 2025, con una población mayor de 60 años de 323 millones, lo que representa el 23 % de la población, un punto porcentual más que en 2024, según los datos.

Según proyecciones de Naciones Unidas, la mitad de la población del país podría tener más de 60 años para 2100, una realidad con posibles implicaciones de gran alcanc

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — In the end, the Supreme Court’s blockbuster case on whether President Donald Trump may temporarily fire members of the Federal Reserve may come down to a single, 26-word sentence.

After repeatedly allowing Trump to remove leaders of other independent agencies, the conservative court seemed to draw a line around the central bank in a much-debated paragraph last spring, writing that the Fed — with its enormous sway over the economy — is shielded from political manipulation because it is “uniquely structured” with a “distinct historical tradition.”

The scope of that unusual exception will be put to the test Wednesday when the court hears oral arguments in the case of Lisa Cook, a Fed governor Trump attempted to fire over the summer following allegations that she had committed mortgage fraud by reporting two different homes as her primary residence. (Cook has denied any wrongdoing.)

It is among the most important cases the court has heard on presidential power and the economy in years.

“What the court has in front of it is the question of how much this carveout really is a barrier to presidential control of the Fed,” said Lev Menand, a law professor at Columbia University who published a book on the central bank in 2022. “This case is about a lot more than Lisa Cook. We’re going to find out what’s the relationship between the central bank and the president.”

If Trump ultimately is successful in dismissing Cook, it would mark the first time a president has fired a Fed governor in the central bank’s 111-year history.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, raised the stakes further this month by opening a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. That fight isn’t before the Supreme Court, but it is likely to sit in the back of the justices’ minds.

Cook has warned that a decision for Trump would “eviscerate the independence” of the Fed and trigger “chaos and disruption” for US markets.

Because of that, she and her attorneys have relied heavily on those 26 words the court wrote about the Fed last year.

Trump is unlikely “to persuade the court to adopt his arguments,” Cook told the justices in a brief last year. “Especially after this court went out of its way to single out the Federal Reserve’s unique status and distinct history.”

Still on the job

For its part, the administration has focused on more technical points, asserting that Cook was entitled to no more review of the allegations than she received before Trump tried to remove her.

“That the Federal Reserve Board plays a uniquely important role in the American economy only heightens the government’s and the public’s interest in ensuring that an ethically compromised member does not continue wielding its vast powers,” the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court last fall.

Trump fired Cook in August after a member of his administration alleged she had committed mortgage fraud by reporting two different homes as her primary residence — a practice that can yield better loan terms. Other documents Read more

By Andy Rose, CNN

(CNN) — It was billed as an address on economic successes, but President Donald Trump’s speech last Tuesday in Detroit also focused on economic punishment for communities that don’t help him with his immigration agenda.

“Starting February 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens, and it breeds fraud and crime,” Trump said.

Trump did not make clear exactly what he meant by the withholding of “payments” and whether that could include spending like Medicaid funds and education grants. When reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews last Tuesday asked Trump what funding he is threatening, he simply replied, “You’ll see.”

Trump’s threat is a broader version of one his administration has made many times already, attempting to cut funding to local governments it declared as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” but those efforts have been stopped repeatedly by judges.

It’s a battle with high stakes for local governments, who say their ability to respond to emergencies, improve infrastructure and protect children from abuse are among the programs imperiled by the threat to cut off funds.

“We’ve beaten the administration in court before — and we’re not afraid to keep doing so,” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois posted on X last week.

As the president raises the stakes again, here is a look at the lengthy history of his financial threats to immigration opponents.

What is a sanctuary jurisdiction?

There is no federal legal definition for a city, state or county to have a sanctuary designation. When the Department of Justice created its own list in 2025, it said its definition includes places with policies “that obstruct or limit local law enforcement cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” restrict immigration agents from interviewing detainees in local jails and provide benefits to illegal immigrants.

That includes communities where law enforcement is prohibited from responding to a “detainer,” a request from immigration enforcement to keep a person who is already detained in a local jail for up to 48 additional hours so federal agents can take custody of the suspect.

The US Supreme Court has never weighed in directly on whether local agencies have to cooperate with a detainer. A federal appeals court ruled in 2014 that detainer requests were voluntary and law enforcement could be held liable for holding suspects at ICE request if that request turned out to be unfounded. But a different appeals court upheld a Texas law in 2018 requiring local authorities in that state to cooperate with ICE requests.

The creation of the sanctuary jurisdiction list proved to be controversial at first, even with many supporters of the president’s immigration policy. It initially included hundreds of cities and counties in 35 states and Washington, DC, including solid red states like Tennessee and Nort

Por Mohammed Tawfeeq, Aqeel Najim y Jonny Hallam, CNN

El Gobierno de Iraq anunció el domingo que las fuerzas estadounidenses habían completado una “retirada total” de las instalaciones militares dentro del territorio federal del país, lo que excluye la región semiautónoma del Kurdistán, donde las tropas estadounidenses permanecen.

El Ministerio de Defensa de Iraq informó que el último contingente de asesores estadounidenses partió de la base aérea Al-Asad, en la provincia de Anbar, en el oeste de Iraq, que albergó tropas estadounidenses durante más de dos décadas.

Las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses han estado reduciendo su presencia durante varios años, después de que el Gobierno iraquí solicitara su retirada en 2023.

La coalición liderada por Estados Unidos para luchar contra el grupo Estado Islámico también se retiró del cuartel general del Mando de Operaciones Conjuntas, dejando las instalaciones bajo control total de las fuerzas de seguridad iraquíes, añadió el comunicado del ministerio.

Las fuerzas estadounidenses aún permanecen en la base aérea de Harir, en la provincia de Erbil, ubicada en la región del Kurdistán. El Gobierno central de Iraq no controla completamente la región kurda en el norte del país, ya que es una entidad federal autónoma con su propio Gobierno, parlamento y fuerzas de seguridad, reconocida por la constitución iraquí.

La presencia militar estadounidense en Iraq ha fluctuado considerablemente desde la invasión de 2003. En su punto máximo, Estados Unidos tenía 170.000 soldados en Iraq. En 2011, el expresidente Barack Obama retiró las fuerzas estadounidenses del país. Alrededor de 5.000 soldados fueron desplegados en Iraq en 2014 a petición del Gobierno iraquí, que buscaba asistencia estadounidense en la lucha contra ISIS.

Desde diciembre de 2021, cuando las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses anunciaron el fin de su papel de combate en el país, Estados Unidos ha mantenido aproximadamente 2.500 soldados en Iraq en funciones de asesoramiento y asistencia.

El ministerio iraquí publicó el sábado un video que muestra a altos mandos militares iraquíes caminando por pasillos y corredores vacíos dentro de la base aérea Al-Asad.

El Comando Central del Departamento de Defensa de Estados Unidos dijo a CNN el domingo que “la declaración anterior del Ministerio de Defensa iraquí que indica la transferencia fue verídica”, sin proporcionar más detalles.

La retirada se produce en medio de tensiones regionales entre Estados Unidos e Irán, mientras el presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, considera si atacar a Irán en medio de mortales protestas callejeras contra el régimen autoritario del país.

Las fuerzas estadounidenses estacionadas en la base de Al-Asad han sido atacadas decenas de veces a lo largo de los años por Irán y grupos respaldados por Irán.

En enero de 2020, Irán lanzó un ataque con misiles balísticos contra las fuerzas estadounidenses en Al-Asad en represalia por un ataque con drones en el aeropuerto de Bagdad que mató al comandante militar más poderoso de Irán, Qasem Soleimani. El intenso bombardeo duró alrededor de dos horas y solo tuvo como objetivo las áreas estadounidenses de la base compartida.

Tras los ataques terroristas del 7 de octubre de 2023 en Israel, grupos milicianos alineados con Irán lanzaron una serie de at