Jetblue Hikes Checked Luggage Fees For The Second Time This Year

JetBlue raised its checked luggage fees for the second time this year, hiking prices to at least $50 one way. Because U.S. airlines often move in lockstep, other carriers could bump their rates, too.

In a statement, JetBlue attributed the increase to “help offset fuel and operating costs,” the same reasons cited in March, when it raised fees by as much as $9. The new pricing structure went into effect for bookings made on or after Nov. 3.

The fees vary by travel dates, destination and time of payment. The lowest amount ($50 one way) applies to the first checked bag purchased more than 24 hours before departure during off-peak travel periods in the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean or Canada. Passengers who wait to pay for their luggage and fly during peak times — “about 50 percent of the calendar year,” said Katy Nastro, travel correspondent at Flighty, a flight-tracking app — will spend $70. During peak periods, the first bag will set travelers back $55 if purchased more than 24 hours before departure.

The carrier also raised luggage prices on transatlantic flights to Europe (starting at $80), as well as additional checked pieces (from $70). Bags are complimentary for JetBlue credit-card holders and passengers in higher fare classes.

“This isn’t giving off a premium vibe,” Nastro said. Paying “$50 to $85 for a checked bag is more in line with what an ultra-low-cost carrier would charge, not a full-service airline.”

Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, said JetBlue’s move could spark fee changes throughout the industry, similar to earlier this year.

“It took all of nine days for every other major U.S. airline to either match or exceed what JetBlue had raised their bags to,” Potter said. “Unfortunately, the clock is very much ticking before the next airline does it again.”

On Tuesday, one world-famous Midwesterner hosted another in a private audience at the Vatican, and the photos of their rendezvous have been delighting observers online.

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wore a black zip-up sweatshirt, hood up, with a black jacket, a black hat, a white shirt and a loosely knotted tie. Dylan also wore black leather gloves, which he looks to have removed to shake hands with the pontiff.

The whole ensemble is a variation on what the famously taciturn Dylan has been wearing to perform and appear in public in recent years; the pope, too, wore a version of his own signature look, appearing in a cream-colored cassock and mozzetta with a zucchetto cap of the same shade. Together, the pair looked uncannily like the duo you don’t want to see at the end of your hospital bed.

President Donald Trump spent months telling voters he was on the ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But when Republicans suffered historic losses, he insisted he wasn’t.

Trump declared himself on the ballot — or urged supporters to pretend he was — 63 times before Election Day, a Washington Post analysis found. He delivered the message in speeches, interviews and Truth Social posts.

He repeated the message more than 50 times in October and early November alone, making it a central focus of his rallies as he barnstormed the country in the weeks before Election Day.

As recently as Monday, Trump told South Carolina voters during a tele-rally: “Get out and vote tomorrow, and pretend I’m on the ballot. And really, I am on the ballot.”

By 10:37 p.m. Tuesday, his message had changed.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump’s reversal came after months of warning that Republicans struggled to turn out his supporters when his name was absent from the ballot. Between August 2025 and November 2026, he made that argument 61 times, according to The Post’s analysis.

Methodology: The Post used AI to analyze Trump’s in-person public statements using data from Factbase, as well as his Truth Social posts. The Post used a large language model, OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna, to tag the statements based on what, if anything Trump said about his presence on the ballot: statements that he is on the ballot, that his supporters should pretend he is on the ballot, that Republicans perform better in elections when he is on the ballot, and counterfactual claims that they would have performed better if he had been on the ballot. This classifier had an accuracy rate of 100 percent on a human-labeled test set of 100 statements.

Idaho has an official state bird (the mountain bluebird) and a state song (“Here We Have Idaho”), and now they’ll have … an official state gun.

Voters in the Gem State approved a new state gun Tuesday, picking — from six choices — the lever-action repeating rifle Winchester Model 1873, historically nicknamed “the Gun That Won the West.”

About 60 percent of households in Idaho have guns, according to a Rand study in 2020, and the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Idaho last on its list of states, saying it has “the worst gun laws in the country, with some of the highest rates of gun suicides and household firearm ownership.”

Idaho House Majority Leader Jason Monks (R) told the Idaho Statesman he had pushed the measure in honor of the country’s 250^th anniversary.

“Obviously, without guns, there would be no America,” he told the Statesman. “We’d still be a British colony.”

Turns out 10 other states already have embraced official state guns, according to a list compiled by the National Rifle Association. Those include Texas’s rare Colt Walker revolver or Missouri’s Hawken rifle, which was developed for the bison, grizzly and elk of the American West.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said before the election that he expected to seek another term as Senate Republican leader regardless of whether his party retained or lost control of the chamber. A spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that Thune is running for minority leader.

Thune, 65, has served as majority leader for nearly two years since winning a competitive race to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) as the Republican leader in the Senate. No Republicans have said they will challenge Thune ahead of next week’s leadership election, although a challenger could still emerge.

“As we head into 2027, Senate Republicans will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat Party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done,” Thune wrote on X early Wednesday morning. “Thankfully, we still have President Trump in the White House, and we’ll work with him to stop the worst impulses of Democrat extremism. We cannot let their fringe positions become the mainstream.”

I’ve been at The Washington Post for nearly 20 years, and even now, the anxiety about putting my words and feelings out in the world for public scrutiny remains. Doing the same thing for recipes that mean a lot to me is that much more nerve-racking.

That was especially the case with my Wine-Braised Chicken With Mushrooms, one of the first real dishes I learned to cook, thanks to a recipe handed down from my grandmother to my mom, and then to me. It’s a one-pan meal that manages to be both simple and sophisticated, featuring lightly breaded chicken thighs cooked with wine and sliced mushrooms in a Dutch oven. The delectable braising liquid demands a good bread on the side to sop it all up with.

Through email, my live weekly cooking chat and recipe comments, I’ve heard from many readers over the years who love this dish as much as I do. “OMG amazing,” wrote one reader, who added, “My husband and mom who was over loved it too.” Wrote another, “After dinner was told ‘I’d eat that again’ by [significant other], which is pretty high praise considering her ex was a professional chef.” “Great dish,” according to a different reader. And simply, said another, “Delicious!”

Ready to get cooking? Find the full recipe at the link below, along with more than 10,000 other Post-tested dishes.

Get the recipe: Wine-Braised Chicken With Mushrooms

Or try another of our braised chicken recipes: Braised Chicken With Artichokes, Peppers and Sausage | White Wine-Braised Chicken and Artichokes | Red Wine-Braised Chicken Thighs With Root Vegetables

The stock market rose Wednesday morning after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The S&P 500, a broad index of 500 large U.S. companies, was up 1.8 percent as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, on track for its best day in three months.

Oil prices fell. Brent crude, the global benchmark, dropped below $100 a barrel for the first time since Oct. 7.

Solar companies were among the biggest gainers, with First Solar up 11 percent.

But not every sector did well. Shares of some artificial intelligence companies fell after Democrats who want to pause or limit data center construction won the governor’s races in Texas, Georgia and Ohio. Defense contractors including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also fell.