News - Friday, December 5, 2025

Autumn Witt Boyd still remembers the soft crackle of the speakers in Judge Curtis Collier’s chambers – the way they let his clerks follow everything happening in the courtroom down the hall. When the proceedings wrapped and the sounds from the bench faded, she and the other clerks would gather in the library, knowing he was on his way back.

Carrie Stefaniak keeps a scrap of paper taped to the side of her printer, where her eyes land when she looks up from a brief. It holds a line she wrote down during one of the first sentencings she watched after leaving private practice to become U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier’s career law clerk.

When Notre Dame High School senior McKinna Wiles first stepped into the federal courthouse in Chattanooga, she expected to spend her internship doing what she’d seen interns do in movies – fetching coffee, shuffling papers and observing the real work from a distance.

Federal judges are drawn from the ranks of experienced lawyers with diverse personal and professional backgrounds. They bring to the bench their professional training and experience, personal history and lived experiences.

As a result of these experiences, they form certain beliefs and sympathies and develop certain preferences and biases. But, as judges, they must put aside these beliefs, sympathies, preferences and biases if they conflict with their obligation to apply the law fairly and impartially.

For many, this time of year is already packed with travel, school events and holiday prep. But if life has you listing your home this winter, whether for a job move, a growing household or a fresh start, there are smart ways to make the season work in your favor.

Thanks to market swings, evolving tax laws and new technology, it might be a good year to consider tax-loss harvesting – a strategy that can help reduce taxes and improve long-term returns.

What is tax-loss harvesting?

When you sell an investment for less than you paid, you might be able to use that loss to offset gains from other investments, potentially reducing your overall tax bill.

Ole Miss and Tennessee football programs now have one more thing in common, in addition to best-ever quarterbacks with the last name Manning: They’ve both been jilted by Lane Kiffin.

I will argue that Ole Miss is the more seriously aggrieved.

Getting run out of their own stadium by their in-state rival on Senior Day isn’t the way the Tennessee Volunteers wanted to end the regular season.

An inconsistent stretch of SEC play ended with a thud as Tennessee suffered a 45-24 loss to Vanderbilt at Neyland Stadium. Vanderbilt outscored Tennessee 24-3 in the second half to secure the first 10-win season in program history and beat the Vols for the first time since 2018.

If you build it, will they stay home?

It’s a possibility, especially if the product continues to be as bad and boring as it was Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Nissan Stadium was half empty Sunday, as a good number of holders of the 54,000 tickets distributed decided they had better things to do than sit through a blustery, 40-degree day and watch the Titans lose for their 11th consecutive time at home. 

Turnovers plagued the 2024 Tennessee Titans. Will Levis’ struggle with interceptions (12 in 12 games) is well-documented, and backup Mason Rudolph’s efforts (9 in 8 games) were no better as the Titans struggled to find three wins a year ago.

There are many luxury electric SUVs to choose from, but they are often out of reach financially for most buyers. This is especially true now that the $7,500 federal tax credit has been eliminated. 

But there are some options if you’re working with a modest luxury budget. Two of the most compelling are the Audi Q4 E-tron and Cadillac Optiq.

So much has been given to you. You have a place to sleep, food to eat and clean water to drink. You have friends and family, people who look out for you and folks who know your face. 

You have received much in life, and as you’ll see in the new book, “A Talent for Giving” by John Studzinski, you have much to give.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration's bid to halt an order requiring it to release millions of dollars in grants meant to address the shortage of mental health workers in schools.

The mental health program, which was funded by Congress after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, included grants meant to help schools hire more counselors, psychologists and social workers, with a focus on rural and underserved areas of the country. But President Donald Trump's administration opposed aspects of the grant programs that touched on race, saying they were harmful to students and told recipients they wouldn't receive funding past December 2025.

MADRID (AP) — Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare on Friday said it had restored services following an outage that took place in the morning and brought down several global websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and others, the second such crash to affect the company in less than three weeks.

NEW YORK (AP) — Netflix struck a deal Friday to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the Hollywood giant behind "Harry Potter" and "Friends," in a $72 billion deal that would bring together two of the biggest players in television and film and potentially reshape the entertainment industry.

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday fined X, Elon Musk's social media platform, 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc's digital regulations, in a move that risks rekindling tensions with Washington over free speech.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's White House is taking on the role of media critic and asking for help from "everyday Americans."

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the White House launched a web portal it says will spotlight bias on the part of news outlets, targeting the Boston Globe, CBS News and The Independent as its inaugural "media offender of the week."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The man accused of planting a pair of pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties in Washington on the eve of the U.S. Capitol attack confessed to the act in interviews with investigators, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation changed little in September, likely easing the way to a widely expected interest rate cut by the central bank next week.

Prices rose 0.3% in September from August, the Commerce Department said Friday in a report that was delayed five weeks by the government shutdown. It was the same increase as the previous month. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2% in September from August, the same as the previous month and a pace that if it continued for a year would bring inflation closer to the Fed's 2% target.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumers' mood improved slightly this month, with worries about inflation easing a bit, but remains gloomy.

The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, released Friday in a preliminary version, rose to 53.3 early this month from a final reading of 51 in November. The index beat the 52 mark that economists had forecast but is down considerably from 71.7 in January.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — U.S. Steel said it will resume making steel slabs at its Granite City Works plant in Illinois as demand rebounds.

The company shut down the last blast furnace there in 2023, and it even moved to wind down its steel processing mill there in September.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will be expanding its ban on travel for citizens of certain countries to more than 30, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, in the latest restriction to come since a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration has set forth a new national security strategy that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America's dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

The document released Friday by the White House is sure to roil long-standing U.S. allies in Europe for its scathing critiques of their migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the "prospect of civilizational erasure" and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Cedric Gray isn't concerned about Tennessee Titans fans wanting the first overall NFL draft pick for the second straight year.

The second-year linebacker and everyone else in the Titans locker room were focused on getting their second win of the season.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea lobbied all week and offered to add a 13th game to the schedule, "in the parking lot" if they had to, for one more shot at impressing the College Football Playoff selection committee.

He said Sunday the idea was no joke. His school's chancellor and athletic director already were working behind the scenes trying to schedule a last-ditch effort for Vanderbilt's most successful football team in school history.

NEW YORK (AP) — Much has been made about the global touring economy in the last few years. Take, for example, that tours grossing over a billion dollars is a new phenomenon in the 2020s — a benchmark first crossed by Taylor Swift in 2023 with her landmark Eras Tour and an accomplishment recently reached by The Weeknd. But who are the most popular touring artists of the last two decades based on ticket sales? The results may surprise you.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration's push to expand control over independent federal agencies comes before a sympathetic Supreme Court that could overturn a 90-year-old decision limiting when presidents can fire board members.

Lawyers for the administration are defending President Donald Trump's decision to fire Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter without cause and calling on the court to jettison the unanimous 1935 decision in Humphrey's Executor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has dealt a setback to Justice Department efforts to seek a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, temporarily barring prosecutors from using evidence they had relied on when they initially secured criminal charges.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — NASCAR Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress could be called to the witness stand as early as Monday in the federal antitrust suit lodged against the top motorsports series in the United States. Childress' testimony should shed more light on the animosity between teams and series executives during the contentious two-plus years of negotiations on a new revenue sharing agreement.

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts' highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state's lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users.

The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Republicans in key battleground U.S. House districts are working to contain the political fallout that may come when thousands of their constituents face higher bills for health insurance coverage obtained through the Affordable Care Act.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Changes that Disney made to a popular program that lets qualifying disabled people skip long lines at its California and Florida theme parks are too restrictive, disabled fans contend in a federal lawsuit and shareholder proposal that seek to expand eligibility.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is planning a $12 billion farm aid package, according to a White House official — a boost to farmers who have struggled to sell their crops while getting hit by rising costs after the president raised tariffs on China as part of a broader trade war.

HONG KONG (AP) — China's exports rebounded in November after an unexpected contraction the previous month, pushing its trade surplus past $1 trillion for the first time, according to data released Monday.

Exports climbed 5.9% from a year earlier in November while imports rose just under 2%.

NEW YORK (AP) — Paramount has gone hostile in its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, challenging Netflix which reached a $72 billion takeover deal with the company just days ago.

Paramount said Monday that it is going straight to Warner Bros. shareholders with a bid worth about $74.4 billion, or $30 per share in cash. Paramount, unlike Netflix, is also offering to buy the cable assets of Warner Bros., and asking shareholders of the company to reject the Netflix bid.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday that a deal struck by Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery "could be a problem" because of the size of the combined market share.

"There's no question about it," Trump said, answering questions about the deal and various other topics as he walked the red carpet at the Kennedy Center Honors.

BRUSSELS (AP) — A top European Union official on Monday warned the United States against interfering in Europe's affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

European Council President António Costa's remarks came in reaction to the Trump administration's new national security strategy, which was published on Friday and paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties.

NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Greenland is hosting meetings with American officials at the end of a year in which U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up talk of a U.S. takeover of the mineral-rich island, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

The meetings Monday and Tuesday include those of a "joint committee" between Greenland and American officials, and a "permanent committee" that involves the Danish government, Greenland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Science said. Similar meetings were held last year in the United States.

Michael R. Bloomberg has believed mayors have plenty to teach each other since he was mayor of New York City and supported the effort to share good municipal ideas through his nonprofit Bloomberg Philanthropies since he left office in 2013.

However, as more nations get bogged down in what the media entrepreneur and philanthropist calls "ideological battles and finger-pointing," Bloomberg says mayors can do even more. He is expanding his support for them internationally, with the Bloomberg LSE European City Leadership Initiative, a collaboration with the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Hertie School in Berlin. And other philanthropists are investing in building stronger municipal governments to strengthen urban communities.