USA TODAY US Edition
In the U.S., the push to free her is growing
Wearing his only well-fitted suit, Harold Jezler pushed through a crowd of government officials, journalists and executives inside a ballroom blocks from the White House. • The acupuncturist scanned the room as guests in suits and evening gowns shook...
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As treatment center unravels, chaos grows
Robert was at work when the call came. ● It was his wife, and she h was frantic. She said she’d just hung up with their daughter’s therapist at Asheville Academy, the residential treatment center where they’d sent their 14-year-old to live four months...
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Here’s where Earth’s glow is growing
Our night sky is getting brighter and brighter – not because of the moon, but because of artificial lighting. • While outdoor lighting is a necessary part of modern society, its widespread use has reshaped natural darkness, affected human and animal...
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Drones set to deploy to safeguard schools
DELTONA, FL From 2022 until 2024, there were 1,000 school shootings across the country, 10 times more than just a decade earlier. And about 800 people were killed or wounded in those shootings. • With brutal realities like that, schools are...
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Mother’s Day isn’t always a celebration
Kendall Williams, 53, won’t be seeing her youngest son this Mother’s Day. But that’s nothing new. Williams has been estranged from her son, who is 30, since September 2023, when she decided to cut off contact because she felt the relationship had...
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U.S. Catholics relate to Leo as one of them
It’s been nearly 1,000 years since King Henry IV stood barefoot in the Italian snow to beg forgiveness after clashes with Pope Gregory VII and over two centuries since Napoleon imprisoned Pope Pius VII in France. Now, a new battle is underway between a...
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Third-country deportations face scrutiny
Pheap Rom thought he was being transferred to another detention center when he saw “Eswatini” on his paperwork last fall. Instead, the 43-year-old Cambodian refugee was put on a plane to the small African kingdom and held for months in a...
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Cuban Americans are split on path to future
Ninety miles from Florida shores sits Cuba, an island that’s recently become a focus of President Donald Trump, and remains a continual pressure point for Cuban Americans, some of whom told USA TODAY they feel increasingly severed from the country...
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Gambling 101
When Michael Farber was a hospitality major at Kent State University, one class persuaded him to take a gamble and move to Las Vegas. • Farber, a 2015 graduate who works for a beverage distributor in Vegas, said the university’s Casino Management...
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Gen Z keeps editing themselves
“TO BE CRINGE IS TO BE FREE.” It’s a slogan that Generation Z loves in meme form, but in practice, they’d rather play it safe. Gen Z − the cohort born in the years 1997 to 2012 − is obsessed with cringe, or more aptly, with avoiding it. From the...
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Festival weighs USA’s 250th amid divisions
Ronnie Mack leaped onto a small stage in the dimly lit public library. He stared at the two dozen people sitting in the audience. Then he took a deep breath before telling them he’d been wrestling with a question. • On this recent and unseasonably warm...
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Americans waver on love for royalty
A red carpet unfurled on the tarmac. Musicians with brass instruments performed “God Save the King.” Along Pennsylvania Avenue, British flags flapped in the wind. King Charles and Queen Camilla landed in the United States on Monday, April 27, for...
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Inside the world of mom influencers
Women in pink pantsuits and floral, ankle-length skirts dropped their spoons into their empty Chobani yogurt cartons and opened their phone cameras as Becky Kennedy began her keynote speech at the Mom 2.0 Summit on April 17. • Kennedy, a clinical...
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Gunfire turns glitz into chaos
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump had taken his seat on the dais just a few minutes earlier and was talking with other VIPs when a series of loud bangs rippled through the jampacked Washington Hilton ballroom. Chaos erupted at one of Washington’s...
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Do nickels still make common cents to use?
Last year, the United States Mint pressed the last penny. ● Penny preservationists warned that the death of the one-cent coin might seed dire consequences: coin shortages at checkout counters; confusion over how to pay bills not ending in zero or five;...
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Women-only retreats in a fight for survival
Reshma Saujani used to get invitations by the dozens to speak at networking events about her experiences as a woman building two nonprofits, struggling with fertility and running for Congress. • So far this year, the founder of Moms First has received...
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Companies aim to stamp out carbon footprint
From driving electric vehicles to installing solar panels, many Americans are trying to reduce their carbon footprint. For Earth Day on April 22, USA TODAY takes a closer look at the companies doing the same. To better understand which U.S. companies...
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Grieving Louisiana city desperate for answers
SHREVEPORT, LA – Residents of this historic riverfront city remained shaken a day after a gunman opened fire and killed eight children in the nation’s deadliest mass shooting since January 2024. They were looking for explanations and authorities were...
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With no competitors, Keytruda cash rolls in
Just a few weeks after President Donald Trump’s December promise that prescription drug prices would plummet “fast and furious,” Patricia Brown checked into a California clinic for an infusion of Merck & Co.’s blockbuster cancer drug, Keytruda. ● When...
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Grocery prices go up, down, à la carte
Grocery prices are on the rise, but not all foods are seeing increases, according to a new price analysis of some common food staples. CouponFollow analyzed the monthly consumer price index average food price data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and...
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NY bodega motivates kids about A’s, B’s, C’s
Around 5 p.m., the corner bodega at Heberton Avenue and Ann Street comes alive. ● Peals of laughter spill out onto the sidewalk, mixing with the jingle of a passing soft-serve ice cream truck and shouts of kids playing in neighboring yards. A gaggle of...
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IN U.S. TERRITORIES, A LACK OF IDENTITY
Kevin Méndez can still smell the scent of freshly baked bread wafting out of his local panadería. He still hears the nighttime chirps of the coqui frog and pictures the skateboard-toting children crowding palm-tree-lined streets at the end of a school...
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CAN BIG BEND STOP THE WALL?
PRESIDIO, TX – For Denisse Carrera, it’s the dark, starry nights. For Mike Davidson, it’s his 49 years paddling the Rio Grande. For Bill Ivey, it’s the ghost town business he built with his father, and now his son. In a state with a historic...
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AI school flips learning on its head
Matt Shenker recently witnessed a group of fourth and fifth graders at Alpha School Scottsdale doing what he said boys that age do: calling each other fat and making jokes at each other’s expense. ● At most schools, a teacher or staff member would step...
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Vast migrant centers planned across U.S.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have spent months advancing a controversial effort to drastically expand its detention space by buying up warehouses nationwide and converting them into holding centers. Internal documents show the...
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Growing number are fighting the addiction
Ryan didn’t open his phone with the intention of finding porn. But when the 11-year-old came across it on his social media feed, he was intrigued. As he watched, he experienced a rush of curiosity and excitement. • Soon, his brain was hooked on that...
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Earthlings set return to moon after long void
Humanity is headed back to the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century – but first, a flyby. • Four astronauts are set to orbit the moon during NASA’s Artemis II mission. Hitching a ride atop the Space Launch System rocket, the...
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Fei-Fei Li sparks AI boom but keeps humanity at heart
On Feb. 18, Fei-Fei Li made headlines. The company she cofounded, World Labs, announced it had raised $1 billion – with a B – in funding. Now it’s poised to bring artificial intelligence into 3D. That’s the “spatial intelligence” that will make it...
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Angel City plays to win for women, their community
If you’re heading to your first Angel City Football Club home game at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, you will experience a vibe. Girls wearing too-large player jerseys − their dads in pink wigs. PodeRosas, a group of Spanish-speaking supporters, chanting,...
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Generation Z and the demise of the house party
We used to be a proper country. Where dancing on sticky living room floors, sneaking beers from our parents’ refrigerators and bumping music on stereos were hallmarks of adolescence. • Gen Z, apparently, doesn’t know that. Or at least not to the same...
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Pressure building in airport impasse
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers deployed to ease security lines at airports across the country, the pressure on the White House and Capitol Hill to end the monthlong shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security reached its highest...
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Young people may wonder: Why even try?
For decades, the American dream meant upward mobility, but many young people today define it as simply achieving stability. • To them, securing housing, a stable career, health care and education are essential steps toward living comfortably, according...
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When tragedy hit, this grandma helped teens heal
At 4 a.m. every Wednesday, Peggy Winckowski wakes up to make breakfast. She reminds her husband, Bill, to stay in bed and she gets ready. “I don’t walk out of that bathroom without my face on,” she says. “I’m going to have my earrings on. I’m going to...
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Sarah Bond believes gaming has power to connect us all
Sarah Bond fondly remembers sitting next to her father playing King’s Quest II – solving puzzles, navigating mazes and unlocking doors – all in an effort to rescue the beautiful maiden, Princess Valanice, from captivity. • At age 6, Bond had no idea...
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‘Dark’ things unfold with sheriff on watch
JASPER, AL − On a brisk December morning in Walker County, Alabama, the temperature in Sheriff Nick Smith’s office is a welcome shelter from the cold. Down a flight of stairs from where Smith sits, into a chill that grows with every step, Anthony...
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Can nuclear power end water crisis?
In the middle of the desert sits a sign: “Caution docks may be slippery.” They are not. In fact, there’s not a drop of water to be seen at Antelope Point Marina, which once sat near the shore of Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir. The...
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New era of protests is missing its music
In late January, Bruce Springsteen released “Streets of Minneapolis,” memorializing Minnesota residents shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, weaving “ICE Out Now” chants into a chorus of Trump-era resistance. A few weeks later, U2...
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Mother turns her unthinkable loss into advocacy
Maybe, for the first time since her son’s death, Rachel Goldberg-Polin can grieve. ● Or so she told her therapist. ● But how would it happen? ● Goldberg-Polin imagines herself in a grocery store. In the cereal aisle, she’d spot a box of Cap’n Crunch on...
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‘Only in America’: A love of country drives her mission
Every Fourth of July, Emma Bloomberg had a tradition when she was growing up. She and her little sister, Georgina, would stand before their father and recite the Declaration of Independence. • The document’s ornate, English Roundhand script wasn’t easy...
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Colleges get dressed for NIL success
When the University of Tennessee athletic department switched its apparel provider from Nike back to Adidas last summer, the biggest clue as to why was hidden within a sentence seven paragraphs into the university’s announcement. ● Tennessee’s new...
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Aaron Parnas rises to his media moment
Vice President Kamala Harris skirted tradition in September when she picked liberal prodigy Aaron Parnas instead of a cable news host to helm the first tour stop for her tell-all 2024 campaign book, “107 Days.” “Thank you for giving me the best job in...
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Foreign spies swapping sex for secrets
The foreign woman was attractive, well-dressed and confidently at ease. • She struck up a conversation in person with the former American soldier – at the time, a senior defense contractor – answering his questions about the company she said she worked...
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Channing Dungey knows how to make television magic
Channing Dungey loves stories. It started with books – she was reading at age 2 – and blossomed thanks to Saturday nights with her mom. “I grew up with a mom who loved old movies,” she says. Channing, mom Judith, and little sister Merrin would gather...
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Following a dream, from ‘trailer girl’ to country superstar
When Lainey Wilson was 9 years old, she wrote a song called “Lucky Me.” • She still remembers every word. • That same year, she got her first pair of bellbottoms, her first horse and her first glimpse of the stage that would indelibly shape her future:...
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New gold rush sweeps across American West
SDENVER loshing chilly river water around his black plastic pan, Kevin Singel tilted it this way and that, catching the sun, looking for a telltale glint: flecks of gold. • “Right there,” exclaimed the longtime prospector and guidebook author. “We got...
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Revolution was born in America’s historic taverns
An 18th century traveler through the southern part of New Jersey might stop at the Indian King, a respite on a long journey along Kings Highway, then and now a main thoroughfare connecting several towns. ● At the Indian King, that traveler could find a...
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Shopping cart roundup targets urban blight
As Julian Montague drove around Buffalo, New York, he noticed them everywhere. ● Tipped over at intersections, crushed by snowplows in parking lots, waiting alone at bus stops. Shopping carts had wandered away from their stores. ● Montague, an artist,...
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In America, ‘you kind of do the math’
Hilary Hodge suffers from severe allergic asthma. But in 2012, she saw hope in biologic medication. There was one catch: She was living in the United States at the time, and biologics would cost her $36,000 a year. A few years later, she moved to...
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Will Trump focus on economy or legacy?
The state of President Donald Trump’s union is troubled. • When he delivers the annual State of the Union address on Feb. 24, the audience in the House chamber will likely include members of a Supreme Court that just outlawed the stiff tariffs that...
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A golden finish for Americans in Milan
MILAN – Alysa Liu arrived at the Olympic figure skating venue Thursday night, Feb. 19, hopping up and down, more excited for her teammate Amber Glenn than herself. She had watched Glenn’s stellar long program on the shuttle bus over to the Milano Ice...
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Snow’s hidden wonders celebrated amid Games
Call it beautiful, annoying, inspiring or dangerous, snow is anything but boring. And that’s even before you start learning more about the science behind it. Olympians and everyday Americans know snow is a complex and fickle phenomenon, influenced by...
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Biologists help condors soar
A6-year-old California condor hopped from an open crate and trotted a half-dozen steps toward the cliff, spreading its two-tone wings in the winter sun before launching over the upper end of Grand Canyon. • Condor No. 987’s return to the wild after...
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Civil rights icon lived for justice
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases, and shamed corporations for their lack of corporate diversity and failure to support voting rights, has...
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Squeaker or tsunami?
Big numbers and high stakes are riding on the ballot in November: 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats, 39 governorships − and the country’s course for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term. ● Who will win? In the math of the midterms, a...
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Cold can turn a stay in jail into a death sentence
As temperatures outside the DeKalb County Jail plunged into the teens, a tragedy was unfolding inside the Georgia jail. • Lamar Walker was begging for help and slowly freezing to death, according to a federal lawsuit filed by his family. • Walker, 34,...
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‘Girl time’ sets patient on the road to healing
Jennifer Taylor’s breast cancer story started like thousands of other women’s: by finding a lump. ▪ Her doctor guessed it was hormonal but sent her for a mammogram and an ultrasound just to be sure. In the days leading up to her mammogram appointment,...
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Amid WWII, Iowa farmed humanity
Jean Shey was 12 when she first questioned her father’s judgment. ▪ He wanted to serve lunch to the Germans. Not neighbors – prisoners of war in her town of Algona, Iowa. ▪ Five of them. Men captured overseas while her friends’ brothers were fighting...
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Grandkids’ caregiving fight taken to court
Baby Briana’s arms twitched and her legs flopped against the cold concrete. She stopped breathing. The 16-month-old needed an ambulance to arrive within minutes and someone to pump air into her lungs with infant CPR until it got there. Briana’s life...
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‘American Icons’: Bud rides again
For the second consecutive year and 10th overall, the power of the Clydesdale reigned over USA TODAY’s Ad Meter. The Budweiser icon, this time aided by an American bald eagle, pushed Anheuser-Busch to the top rating in USA TODAY’s annual viewer survey...
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Dad discovers truth of jailed son’s death
COMPTON, CA – The man in the suit arrived in an unmarked car on a spring morning in 2020 with the worst news James Brown had ever heard. His 30-year-old son Jamall was dead. Brown hadn’t heard from him in the days since he was detained on a parole...
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TOP 25 SUPER BOWL MOMENTS
SAN JOSE, CA − Should the Seattle Seahawks have simply run the ball? It’s a question that’s been posed countless times over the past decade-plus but has returned to the forefront with a vengeance this week as Seattle prepares to play the New England...
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Kids delve into sports betting
Seventy-five dollars is all Sam needed for his next round of sports bets on his BetMGM app. Well – it wasn’t officially his. He was 17 years old, and the legal gambling age in his home state of Arizona is 21. Sam used his mom’s ID behind her back to...
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Hefty bills catch patients off guard
During a routine visit to a medical office in suburban Boston, Suzanne Maguire had a small plug put in her tear duct to treat persistent dry eye. She paid $600 for the procedure, which took just a few minutes. Weeks later, the Arlington, Massachusetts,...
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Detainees describe horror at facility
LAREDO, TX – They stole a few hours’ sleep under glaring LED lights, crowded in by dozens of other detainees. They shivered through fevers and flus and prayed deadlier diseases weren’t stalking their confines. Then, just as they feared their...
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Deep divisions remain over aid in dying
When Susan Rahn dies, she wants a party. ● The 55-year-old grandmother from Webster, New York, has Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. ● Rahn considers herself lucky for having lived far beyond her expected lifespan at the time of her diagnosis over a...
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Appeals court weighs further cuts to CFPB
A federal appeals court will soon decide whether the Trump administration can fire a majority of the staff at an agency tasked with helping consumers and take other actions that could gut the bureau. The Trump administration has delayed funding and...
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