According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

The U.S. is sending 615 more troops to Iraq as the stage is set for an Iraqi-led battle to reclaim Mosul, the northern city that has been the Islamic State group’s main stronghold for more than two years. The offensive, starting as soon as October, looms as a decisive moment for Iraq and for President Barack Obama’s much-criticized strategy to defeat IS.   read more

While the Department of Veterans Affairs claims its recent move to lease more of its facilities gives it added flexibility, a government accountability officer told Congress on Wednesday her agency would like to see evidence of that. Rebecca Shea, of the Government Accountability Office, told members of Congress that while VA has improved its decision-making process for determining when to lease rather than own a building, it has not proven the benefits it claims to receive from the decision.   read more

Tyson Reed and his mother, Linda Reed, sued Kern High School District, KHSD Officer Luis Pena, and teacher Brett Bonetti on Sept. 22 in Kern County Superior Court, alleging disability discrimination and civil rights violations that occurred when a school police officer Tasered Reed twice for being late to class after having an anxiety attack.   read more

A West Texas congressional district sprawls 58,000-plus square miles and two time zones, from San Antonio to just outside El Paso. Yet neither the Republican who represents it nor the Democrat trying to reclaim the seat actually lives there. The home of Republican Rep. Will Hurd, 39, is in Helotes, just outside the borders of a district that is larger in land area than 29 states. The challenger, former Rep. Pete Gallego, spends most of his time away from the district in Austin.   read more

New Orleans has the right to remove Confederate monuments that are the center of a heated debate, the city’s attorneys told an appeals court Wednesday, but opponents who want a delay said removing them could cause irreparable harm. Those pushing to keep the monuments got a skeptical reception from the judges, who raised harsh questions about their chances of prevailing.   read more

California doctors will be required to check a database of prescription narcotics before writing scripts for addictive drugs under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed Tuesday that aims to address the scourge of opioid abuse. The measure attempts to crack down on a practice known as “doctor-shopping,” in which addicts visit multiple providers to obtain prescriptions for addictive drugs.   read more

Airline pilots and air traffic controllers are on schedule to switch to text communications at most of the nation’s busiest airports by the end of the year, a milestone that holds the potential to reduce delays, prevent errors and save billions of dollars in fuel cost, says the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA estimates Data Comm will save airlines more than $10 billion over the next 30 years and the government another $1 billion.   read more

Texas police who found 8 kilos of cocaine during a random search of a Greyhound bus “created a checkpoint that trespassed on the Constitution” so the drugs cannot be used as evidence, a federal judge ruled. “Brief stops at checkpoints are reasonable if they are for a narrow particular law enforcement purpose directly connected to the use of the roads,” Hughes wrote, citing Supreme Court precedent.   read more

The U.S. Labor Department is investigating possible abuses of employees by Wells Fargo in connection with the bank’s alleged efforts to open millions of unauthorized accounts to meet sales goals. The scandal over millions of deposit and credit card accounts allegedly opened without customers’ permission has widened. The Labor Department review comes atop investigations by congressional committees and federal prosecutors.   read more

The two federal agencies tasked with listing endangered species have finalized revisions to the petition process, but environmentalists see the changes as limiting and burdensome. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service claim the latest changes are part of the Obama administration’s efforts since 2011 to make the Endangered Species Act listing process more transparent, easier to implement and more effective.   read more

Unless it does more, the United States probably will fall short of goals set under last year’s Paris agreement to dramatically reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, according to a new study. The U.S. pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels. But taking into account current efforts by state and local governments, the nation will only reach about four-fifths of that goal, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Climate Change.   read more

Ohio cannot remove voters from registration rolls for failing to vote, the Sixth Circuit ruled. A three-judge panel determined that Ohio’s “supplemental process” for purging voters from registration rolls violates the National Voter Registration Act. The two-step process begins when a voter fails to respond to an address confirmation mailer, and ends when the individual fails to vote in consecutive federal elections.   read more

While that is not a hardship for more affluent communities — about one in five American homes are not on city sewer lines — the legacy of rural poverty has left its imprint here: Many people have failing septic tanks and are too poor to fix them. Others, like Rudolph, have nothing at all. That is not so uncommon. Nearly half a million households in the United States lack the basic dignity of hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, or a working flush toilet.   read more

More than one-third of calls to a suicide hotline for troubled veterans are not being answered by front-line staffers because of poor work habits and other problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the hotline’s former director. Some hotline workers handle fewer than five calls per day and leave before their shifts end, even as crisis calls have increased sharply in recent years, said Greg Hughes, the former director of the VA’s Veterans Crisis Line.   read more

The Justice Department announced Monday it’s awarding more than $20 million for law enforcement agencies around the country to establish or enhance their use of body cameras, a move that comes after several fatal shootings of black men by police that have prompted widespread protests. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the grant at the opening of a Justice Department summit in Little Rock focused on reducing violent crime.   read more

To much of the world, Charlotte is the Queen City — a gleaming downtown, state-of-the-art stadiums, sparkling new mass transit, the nation’s banking capital. But a very different Charlotte came into the spotlight in the past few days. Move outside the city’s core and there are neighborhoods such as the one where a black police officer shot and killed a black man, Keith Scott, setting off violent protests.   read more