Italy's lawmakers on Tuesday began work on a contested immigration crackdown, part of the right-wing government's plan to discourage thousands of migrants who risk voyages in smugglers' unseaworthy boats to reach Europe.

A Trump-era Cabinet official on Tuesday said the intelligence community should be more aggressive in concluding the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab, telling Congress the bank of evidence indicating a spillover from nature is "nearly empty and tenuous."

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged Tuesday that the conditions along the southern border will deteriorate next month when the government's Title 42 pandemic authority to immediately expel illegal border crossers disappears, but told a congressional hearing that his department is working to adapt to the changed conditions.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy convened House Republicans behind closed doors Tuesday to unveil his proposal to raise the nation's debt limit as part of a package to limit future federal spending increases to 1% and other policy changes in an opening bid to draw President Joe Biden into negotiations.

Former Rep. Liz Cheney has a memoir and a "warning" coming out this fall. In "Oath and Honor," she will write about her estrangement from former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.

President Biden on Tuesday will sign an executive order intended to expand access to child care as well as reduce its costs, although White House officials did not put a price tag on the plan.

Officials in Ripon, Wisconsin, have moved the building where the Republican Party is said to have been founded across town to boost visibility as conservatives descend on the state for the GOP national convention next year.

RON DESANTIS'S (ALMOST) IMPOSSIBLE TASK. What is the hardest job in politics? Without doubt, at this moment, the hardest job in politics is running against Donald Trump in a Republican presidential primary.

PENN HILLS, Pennsylvania — When the Penn Hills police and paramedics arrived at the modest suburban Pittsburgh home in the 8100 block of Chaske Street on Jan. 14, they found the father of 7-month-old Zhuri Bogle desperately performing CPR on his infant daughter. It was 6:44 a.m., and with the exception of a few flurries swirling in the brisk winter air, the sky was still as dark as midnight.

As he did in 2016, Donald Trump is proudly campaigning for his old office by blasting conservative attempts to reform Social Security and Medicare, and on his very active Truth Social account, the former president has only insults to aim at the Republicans who warn about the $32 trillion federal budget, a full quarter of which was accrued under the Trump administration.