It began with an audacious premise: that Abraham Lincoln's original vision for a coast-to-coast railroad, signed into law in 1862, had never truly been fulfilled. More than 160 years later, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are betting $85 billion that they can finish the job. The two companies submitted their merger application to the Surface Transportation Board in December, proposing to combine Union Pacific's vast western network with Norfolk Southern's eastern reach int

The testimony was damning in its simplicity. "Everything was a lie to get paid," said Damian Labeaud — a self-described "slammer" who spent years deliberately driving cars into eighteen-wheelers on New Orleans highways, on behalf of personal injury attorneys who would then sue the trucking companies for millions. Labeaud's words, delivered last week from the witness stand in federal court, cut to the heart of what prosecutors are calling one of the most audacious insurance fr

The framework for a safer American airspace exists on paper. The politics of building it remain, for now, one vote short. Sixty-seven people died when an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided over the Potomac River in January 2025. Fourteen months later, the legislation designed to prevent it happening again has stalled in the House, defeated not by opposition, but by a last-minute Pentagon withdrawal that cost supporters the two-thirds maj

Washington has a new instrument of culture war: the Operations Specification. On February 13, the Federal Aviation Administration issued OpSpec A134 — "Merit-Based Pilot Hiring" — a mandatory directive requiring every U.S. commercial carrier to formally certify that its pilots were hired purely on qualification, experience and technical aptitude. Airlines that fail to comply, the Department of Transportation warned, will face federal investigation. Transportation Secretary Se