President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order for federal grants that will prioritize projects with labor agreements, wage standards, and benefits such as access to child care and apprenticeship programs.

Biden said the ideas in his order “are common sense.”

“Economists have long believed that these good job standards produce more opportunities, better outcomes for workers and more predictable outcomes for businesses as well,” he said from an Ann Arbor, Mich., union training center where he made the announcement. “A good union job is building a future worthy of your dreams.”

The Biden administration is trying to make the case that economic growth should flow out of better conditions for workers. His administration has stressed the vital role that organized labor will likely play for Democrats in November’s election. In her matchup against Republican Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris is depending on backing from the AFL-CIO and other unions to help turn out voters in key states.

Biden has prided himself on his support of labor unions, joining striking Michigan union workers on the picket line last year. On Friday, he came on stage to chants of “Thank you, Joe!”

Trump has tried to make inroads with organized labor as well by having Teamsters President Sean O’Brien speak at the Republican National Convention. The Teamsters have yet to formally endorse any candidate, though Harris is expected to meet with them.

Biden said that under his administration “we buy American. And we’re making sure federal projects are made in America projects.”

Pakistani in Canada accused of U.S. plot

A Pakistani man was arrested in Canada this week and accused of plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the latest conflict in the Middle East, federal authorities announced Friday.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Muhammad Shahzeb Khan had attempted to travel from Canada, where he lives, to New York City with the “stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible.”

The 20 year-old, who is also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was apprehended Sept. 4 and charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to the terror group, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

Kennedy off ballot in Michigan, N.C.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scored a pair of legal victories Friday in the battleground states of North Carolina and Michigan, and a setback in Wisconsin, in his quest to get his name off of the ballots in some states after he suspended his campaign and endorsed former President Donald Trump.

North Carolina’s intermediate-level Court of Appeals issued an order granting Kennedy’s request to halt the mailing of ballots that included his name, upending plans in the state just as officials were about to begin sending out the nation’s first absentee ballots for the Nov. 5 presidential election.

In Michigan, its intermediate-level Court of Appeals ruled that Kennedy should be removed from the ballot, reversing a decision made earlier this week by a lower court judge.

And in Wisconsin, a Dane County circuit court judge denied Kennedy’s request for a temporary restraining order to put on hold the state elections commission’s decision to keep him on the ballot.

Carlson under fire for Holocaust-denier guest

Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star turned podcaster, has come under fire for hosting a Holocaust revisionist on his show, drawing rebukes from conservative lawmakers as well as the White House.

The comments were made by podcaster Darryl Cooper on Carlson’s show “Tucker on X” on the social platform. Carlson, who has hosted the show since Fox News severed ties with him in 2023, introduced Cooper as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.”

Cooper, who has a podcast and newsletter called “Martyr Made,” proceeded to make a variety of false claims about the Holocaust and World War II, including that millions of people in concentration camps “ended up dead” merely because the Nazis did not have enough resources to care for them, rather than as a result of the intentional genocide that it was.

Carlson’s endorsement of Cooper has sparked considerable outrage from the Biden administration and among some conservatives.

However, Republican Sen. JD Vance, the running mate of former President Donald Trump, has declined to denounce Carlson.

Vance is scheduled to be interviewed live by Carlson on Sept. 21.

IRS nets $1.3B from new enforcement

The IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high-wealth tax dodgers since last fall, the agency announced Friday, crediting spending that has ramped up collection enforcement through President Joe Biden’s signature climate, health care and tax package signed into law in 2022.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel traveled to Austin, Texas, to tour an IRS campus and announce the latest milestone in tax collections as Republicans warn of big future budget cuts for the tax agency if they take over the White House and Congress.

Yellen said in a speech in Austin that in 2019, the top 1% of wealthy Americans owed more than one-fifth of all unpaid taxes.

Student dies in shooting at Maryland school

A student at a Maryland high school died after being shot by another student during an altercation on Friday in a school bathroom, Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said.

Warren Curtis Grant, 15, died after the shooting at Joppatowne High School, the sheriff said at a media briefing.

A 16-year-old student whom police identified as the shooter fled shortly afterward but was caught minutes later nearby.

18 students die in school fire in Kenya

A fire in a school dormitory in Kenya has killed 18 students and 27 others have been hospitalized, with 70 children unaccounted for, the country’s deputy president said Friday.

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said only 86 out of more than 150 children had been accounted for, and urged community members who may have sheltered some of them to help account for them.

The cause of the fire Thursday night at Hillside Endarasha Primary school in Nyeri County was being investigated, police spokesperson Resila Onyango said.

Father-son cops admit Jan. 6 rioting charges

Two former Central Florida cops with ties to the far-right Proud Boys pleaded guilty Friday for their roles in the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Kevin and Nathaniel Tuck — who are father, 52, and son, 32, and worked for the Windermere and Apopka police departments, respectively — both admitted to entering a restricted building on Jan. 6, 2021, when swarms of supporters of then-President Donald Trump invaded the Capitol complex to stop the certification of the 2020 election. The mob was motivated by Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged against him.

They both pleaded guilty to charges that carry a maximum one-year federal prison sentence.

The younger Tuck could face up to an additional five years in prison after admitting to a charge of civil disorder.

Starliner heading home, without astronauts

After months of turmoil over its safety, Boeing’s new astronaut capsule departed the International Space Station on Friday without its crew and headed back to Earth.

NASA’s two test pilots stayed behind at the space station — their home until next year — as the Starliner capsule undocked 260 miles over China. The return flight was expected to take six hours, with a nighttime touchdown in the New Mexico desert.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore should have flown Starliner back to Earth in June, a week after launching in it. But thruster failures and helium leaks marred their ride to the space station.

— From news services