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Sept. 27, 2025, 4:52 PM EDTBy Tim Stelloh, Katie Wall and Erick MendozaAt least four people are dead after torrential rainfall and flooding in Arizona that officials described Saturday as catastrophic.Three of the deaths were in the small community of Globe, Gila County emergency manager Carl Medford told NBC News.Additional details about the deaths were not immediately available. Medford said that search-and-rescue teams were still looking for people.Authorities in Scottsdale said they recovered the body of a man near a vehicle that had been submerged in floodwaters. A spokesperson for the city’s police department identified him Saturday as Ander Polanco, 38.Polanco’s family had reported him missing Friday, the police department said in a statement. His body was found Saturday morning after the waters receded.The National Weather Service said that between 1 and 2 inches of rain fell across much of the metropolitan Phoenix area Friday. The city’s airport recorded 1.6 inches — the highest single-day total in seven years, the agency said.Video from the community of Miami, east of Phoenix, showed what appeared to be large hail and a road submerged in raging floodwaters. The weather service said that hail larger than an inch was seen across the region.Other video showed self-driving vehicles apparently stuck in floodwaters at Phoenix’s airport.Officials in the nearby community of Globe declared a state of emergency during a council meeting Saturday. Council members described the damage as devastating.“This is something that we could never even imagine, and here we are living it,” council member Freddy Rios said.Rios said the extent of the damage was unclear. In a statement earlier, the city said its historic downtown was unsafe, with compromised buildings and hazardous chemicals and debris, including propane tanks.Another council member, Mike Stapleton, described residents who were trapped and climbing on roofs. He said he heard an account of a pregnant woman swimming out of a flooded restaurant.Tim StellohTim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Katie WallErick Mendoza

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At least four people are dead after torrential rainfall and flooding in Arizona.



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Sept. 27, 2025, 2:07 PM EDTBy Kelly O’Donnell and Alexandra MarquezAt least 15 FBI agents were fired Friday in connection with their actions during the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, a source familiar with the terminations told NBC News.The agents had been assigned to help secure federal buildings during the demonstrations, when a tense standoff developed between a large crowd of protesters and a limited number of FBI personnel. Some agents were photographed kneeling, which the source described as a tactic meant to de-escalate the conflict.Protests erupted nationwide in 2020 after Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. The murder, captured on video, fueled demonstrations that called for racial justice and police accountability.The FBI declined to comment on the firings, citing personnel matters. The FBI Agents Association said in a statement that it “strongly condemn[s]” the firings as “unlawful,” saying they violated “the due process rights of those who risk their lives to protect our country.”The association sharply criticized Patel, accusing him of breaking the law with these and other firings at the FBI in recent months.“Leaders uphold the law — they don’t repeatedly break it. They respect due process, rather than hide from it,” the FBIAA statement said. “Patel’s dangerous new pattern of actions are weakening the Bureau because they eliminate valuable expertise and damage trust between leadership and the workforce, and make it harder to recruit and retain skilled agents — ultimately putting our nation at greater risk.”Police officers from Ferguson, Mo., join protesters to remember George Floyd by taking a knee in the parking lot of the police station on May 30, 2020.Robert Cohen / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via APThese firings come just weeks after three former top FBI officials sued Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleging that Patel fired them to stay in President Donald Trump’s good graces.One of them, former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, said in August that he was not given a reason for his termination, though he served the agency for almost 20 years.Earlier this year, Driscoll spoke out against the Trump administration’s efforts to fire agents who had worked on cases involving participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.At the time, Driscoll said he’d also refused a request from senior administration officials to provide a list of every FBI employee who investigated Jan. 6 rioters.One of the president’s first executive orders at the start of his second term was to pardon roughly 1,500 criminal defendants who had been charged for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Patel defended the firings. He said the FBI “will only bring cases that are based in fact and law and have a legal basis to do so, and anyone that does otherwise will not be employed at the FBI.”Kelly O’DonnellKelly O’Donnell is Senior White House correspondent for NBC News.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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Sept. 27, 2025, 12:27 PM EDTBy Natasha KoreckiCHICAGO — In the run-up to former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment, there was no question who would step up to represent him.Friend and former colleague Patrick Fitzgerald, who served as U.S. attorney in Chicago for over a decade, would spring from retirement to be his man.Nationally, Fitzgerald is best known for his role as special prosecutor in the investigation into a CIA leak that brought charges against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.But to Chicago, Fitzgerald is something of a legend. The George W. Bush appointee left an indelible legacy as a scrupulous, hard-charging prosecutor who disrupted the kinds of crooked backroom deals that were long a trademark of Illinois politics.Over his nearly 12-year tenure as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, his prosecutions took down the Chicago mob, put two consecutive governors — one Republican, one Democratic — behind bars and won a conviction against a top donor to Barack Obama just as Obama was running for the White House. He jailed longtime “untouchables” in Chicago and Springfield political circles while prosecuting international cases, including a Hamas funding scheme and major terrorism cases.Still in the Chicago area, Fitzgerald retired as a top partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom two years ago and was enjoying spending more time with his family while doing some teaching. He’s entering the national spotlight to be Comey’s attorney out of longtime loyalty to a dear friend, those close to him say.But he’s potentially embarking on what could become a political firestorm. President Donald Trump made clear in his own social media post that he wanted his attorney general to bring charges against Comey.“Comey implicitly trusts Pat Fitzgerald. They’ve been best friends, or really good friends, for years,” said Robert Grant, former FBI special agent in charge of the Chicago office at the time Fitzgerald served as U.S. attorney. “They’re that close, and he also has a tremendous amount of respect for Pat.”When Fitzgerald landed in Chicago in 2001, he was dubbed “Eliot Ness with a Harvard Law degree.” But before that, he was the first to bring a case against Osama bin Laden — in 1996 — years before bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It was one-term Illinois Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (no relation) who recommended Patrick Fitzgerald for the post, at the time saying he wanted someone to lead the office who was unassailable and unafraid to root out public corruption.“Pat was out of central casting to be the incorruptible guy that was in aggressive pursuit of the facts and dispensing justice and vindicating the public’s right for honest government,” said Patrick Collins, a former federal prosecutor who led the case against former Gov. George Ryan, a Republican.“As a line assistant who was intensely involved in a prosecution and worked in an office that had a reputation for prosecuting without fear or favor, having Pat Fitzgerald as your boss — he had your back,” he added. “We always knew that cases would rise or fall on the facts.”Fitzgerald’s and Comey’s personal styles couldn’t be more different. For years, Comey has publicly clashed with Trump, who fired him during his first White House term. Most controversially, Comey held a news conference days before the 2016 presidential election to disclose new findings of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Comey also frequently posts on social media — including a video on the day of his indictment vowing to take on Trump.Comey responds to indictment saying ‘I’m innocent’00:57For his part, Fitzgerald is unassuming and does not relish being in the limelight, those close to him say. Fitzgerald, an Amherst College and Harvard Law graduate, had “a steel-trap mind” when they worked together, Grant said, describing a photographic memory that would allow him to rattle off cellphone numbers of defendants years after prosecuting a case. But his demeanor was shaped by humble beginnings in Brooklyn, where he grew up the son of a hotel doorman.“There’s a little bit of hubris you see in Comey that you don’t see in Pat,” Grant said. “When you first meet Pat, he’s so down-to-earth that you don’t realize what a brilliant mind there is behind that genial exterior. Whoever that prosecutor is, she’s up against a damn good lawyer.”Lindsey Halligan, the new interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, presented the case to secure Comey’s indictment on her own, according to a source familiar with the grand jury proceedings in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday. A senior Justice Department official told NBC News that career prosecutors in Halligan’s office sent her a memo saying they believed probable cause did not exist to secure the indictment.Trump tapped Halligan — who has no prosecutorial experience but was on his defense team in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — after the previous acting U.S. attorney left the position under pressure from the president to prosecute Comey.When he gained national exposure for prosecuting Libby, Fitzgerald became something of a media darling. He was sometimes referred to jokingly as “prosecutie,” according to one of his friends, and in 2005, much to his dismay at the time, he was named in People magazine’s “sexiest men alive” issue.The straight-laced prosecutor appeared visibly uncomfortable when reporters asked him about the designation at a news conference.“I almost enjoy going back to the leak questions I can’t answer,” he said at the time. “I played a lot of practical jokes on people for a lot of years, and they all got even at once. OK, new topic.”Fitzgerald’s investigations during his time in Chicago broke open a seminal case against the criminal organization known as the Chicago Outfit. Dubbed “Operation Family Secrets,” his office brought sweeping charges against more than a dozen mobsters and exposed evidence of 18 previously unsolved murders dating back decades. He also dug into Chicago City Hall, then under the longtime grip of Mayor Richard M. Daley. A massive investigation into an illicit trucking operation sent dozens to prison and exposed the underbelly of city corruption.Fitzgerald had plenty of detractors.Many of their criticisms stemmed from one of the highest-profile cases to come of his office: the prosecution of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The yearslong investigation culminated in the stunning 2008 arrest of a sitting governor. Though several of his aides were already convicted of related crimes, Blagojevich, a Democrat, spoke openly on the phone — with the FBI listening — about how he could extract a personal benefit in exchange for naming the successor to what was then Obama’s vacant Senate seat.In one of the best-known lines of the case, Blagojevich was recorded relishing a potential payout from using his power as governor to name the next U.S. senator: “I’ve got this thing, and it’s f—–g golden.”Blagojevich was also later convicted of trying to shake down a children’s hospital executive for a $25,000 campaign contribution in exchange for an increase to pediatric reimbursement rates, as well as holding up action on a horse-racing bill while he illegally sought a $100,000 campaign contribution.In laying out the charges on the day of the governor’s arrest, Fitzgerald declared Blagojevich was on a “public corruption spree” that would make “Lincoln roll over in his grave.”Fitzgerald faced criticism for making extrajudicial remarks and potentially prejudicing a jury. For years, Blagojevich assailed Fitzgerald for bringing the weight of the office against him. Trump first commuted Blagojevich’s sentence, then pardoned him earlier this year.Then there was the Libby case, which involved extensive travel to Washington, D.C., while managing the Chicago office and its myriad blockbuster cases. According to law enforcement officials who worked under him, he never dropped the ball back home. At the same time, Fitzgerald drew national attention as he handled the investigation, which sought to uncover who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA agent.At one point in the case, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to disclose her sources. Fitzgerald took heat from conservatives who called him overzealous in attempting to notch a conviction against Libby, who had served as then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence, and in 2017, Trump pardoned him, saying he had heard Libby was treated unfairly.In a statement at the time, Fitzgerald defended the prosecution, saying Libby “lied repeatedly and blatantly about matters at the heart of a criminal investigation concerning the disclosure of a covert intelligence officer’s identity.”Those who worked with Fitzgerald in Chicago defended him as zealously apolitical, noting he served under presidents of both parties. They held up his body of work as evidence he was no friend to those on either side of the aisle.“I worked with him for nine years. I have no idea if he’s a Republican or a Democrat, and it quite frankly never came up. He’s entirely about justice and doing the right thing,” said Eric Sussman, a defense attorney who worked as an assistant U.S. attorney under Fitzgerald.Sussman prosecuted a corruption case against onetime media baron Conrad Black, another high-profile defendant sent to prison in that era after he was convicted of diverting proceeds from his newspaper sales for his personal use. Like with Blagojevich, Trump would eventually pardon Black.“Pat really professionalized the office and made sure that everyone underneath him operated with the same professionalism, integrity and commitment to doing the right thing in Justice,” Sussman added. “That carried over not just to the attorneys in the office, but to how people in Chicago perceived him and perceived the office that he ran.”Natasha KoreckiNatasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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Nov. 13, 2025, 10:49 AM ESTBy Rebecca Cohen and Jay BlackmanPresident Donald Trump on Wednesday night signed a bill that reopened the government after 43 days, paving the way for airlines to restore regular flight schedules and air traffic controllers, who have not been receiving pay as they worked through the shutdown, to return to work.But it remains unclear when full flight schedules and paychecks will be restored after the Federal Aviation Administration was forced to mandate flight restrictions at 40 high-traffic airports last week. On Wednesday night, the FAA ordered that cancellations would remain at 6% on Thursday, after two days at that rate and an initial plan to ramp up to 10% by Friday. As of Thursday morning, nearly 1,000 flights within the U.S. had already been canceled for the day, and more than 900 were delayed, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. On Wednesday, only 900 flights were canceled — the lowest number since the FAA flight reductions began. It is not immediately clear if the flight disruptions were all connected to staffing issues. Airlines have said they are ready to ramp up as soon as they receive government clearance, which includes the FAA lifting the mandate on flight restrictions. And as soon as enough air traffic controllers return to work, ensuring that the increased number of planes can fly safely.“As the federal government reopens and controllers receive their backpay, the FAA will continue to monitor staffing levels and review key trend lines,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a Wednesday statement.It’s promising that staffing triggers have decreased in the last few days, after weeks when controllers were calling out “stressed” under the pressure of working without knowing when their next paycheck would arrive. Government officials have said that air traffic controllers are expected to receive about 70% of their missed pay within 48 hours of the government reopening, with the remaining 30% coming within the week.Airlines cannot cancel and then un-cancel flights, so they need every puzzle piece to fall into place before the schedule returns to normalcy.Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on CNBC on Wednesday that he thinks flights will return to normal by the weekend. Southwest said in its statement, “We’re optimistic that the FAA will allow airlines to resume normal operations within a few days.”Fortunately, fears of an especially messy Thanksgiving travel week — when 31 million Americans are set to fly — have been thwarted, as airlines are ready to go more quickly than previously thought.Even when flights are operating at 100% again, however, the issue of understaffing at air traffic control locations nationwide remains.The industry still needs more than 3,000 air traffic controllers to fill staffing gaps and ensure that employees — many of whom were already working six-day workweeks before the government shutdown — can return to business as usual.“When the government is funded again nothing will change at BNA,” said Garld Graves, a retired air traffic controller with 28 years of experience, referring to Nashville International Airport“What the agency has been doing because of the shutdown — cutting flights, approving staffing triggers — is something that should have been happening all along at places that are short staffed,” he told NBC News.He said he hopes that the FAA and Duffy “will continue to argue, fuss and fight, like they have promised during the shutdown, to create better opportunities to improve staffing levels and give controllers what they deserve.”Airlines for America, the trade association representing major U.S. airlines, echoed Graves’ wishes and called on Congress to “ensure future funding bills do not allow aviation to become collateral damage in Washington’s policy debates.”“The FAA’s Airport and Airway Trust Fund currently has $5 billion that could be used to pay air traffic controllers during future shutdowns,” the organization said in a statement. “We ask Congress to consider legislation that would implement a long-term solution.”Rebecca CohenRebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.Jay BlackmanJay Blackman is an NBC News producer covering such areas as transportation, space, medical and consumer issues.
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