What happened

Fox News on Thursday said it had parted ways with financial journalist Maria Bartiromo, effective immediately, thanking her for “her work over the last 12 1/2 years.” She last appeared on air Aug. 9. Asked about reports that Bartiromo was fired for leaking confidential news coverage plans to the White House, a Fox News spokesperson told reporters only that the move was a “business decision.”

Who said what

After joining Fox Business in 2014, following a long career at CNBC, Bartiromo became “one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies at the network,” CNN said. She was fired, Status reported, because she “effectively betrayed” Fox by telling the White House that network bosses had instructed staff to “steer clear of giving credence to Trump’s delusional claims” in an “unhinged” July primetime speech on election security. Bartiromo “wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies,” Puck’s Dylan Byers reported, and when executives told her no, she “took a screenshot of the guidance and sent it to senior White House officials.”

What next?

Fox Business rebranded Bartiromo’s namesake programs and took down her contributor pages. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” Trump said in an online post. “Social media lit up with speculation that Bartiromo might be in line to become White House press secretary,” CNN said. But asked about that possibility yesterday, Vice President JD Vance said, “No, I don’t think so.”

What happened

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Thursday canceled all House business for the final two weeks of September, leaving just four days for voting and other legislative activity before the Nov. 3 midterms. That’s a reversal from just days ago. “Republicans are here to work,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “We are going to work all the way through September.”

Who said what

Johnson’s decision to shrink the calendar “comes as candidates agitate to get back on the campaign trail,” Politico said. It also “severely” curtails “what had been a full legislative calendar for September,” though “GOP leaders continue to struggle to maintain control of the House floor.”

The government is now funded through December. But among other consequences, the canceled workdays are “threatening to delay a bipartisan push to crack down on sexual misconduct in Congress,” Axios said. The reforms are “something that everybody wants,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (N.M.), the top Democrat on a task force set up to address the issue, told Axios.

What next?

After the House wraps up its next four-day workweek on Sept. 17, lawmakers “will return again for a lame duck session on Nov. 9,” kicking off five final weeks of scheduled “legislative business before the end of the 119th Congress,” said ABC News.

What happened

The Missouri Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that congressional maps redrawn by the Republican-led state legislature can’t be used in the November elections, likely thwarting a GOP effort to unseat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D). Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) “incorrectly” dismissed a “legal, sufficient and timely” referendum petition on the redistricting submitted in December, the court said in its opinion, so the new districts “did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters” in November.

In another “notable victory for Democrats,” The Associated Press said, the Maryland Supreme Court also agreed to let voters decide whether the Democratic-controlled state legislature can redraw congressional districts for the 2028 election, in a bid to defenestrate Rep. Andy Harris (R).

Who said what

President Donald Trump’s “quest for a midterm election advantage triggered an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle,” the AP said. Thursday’s rulings were among “only a few nationally to go against Republicans.”

The Missouri Supreme Court’s “surprising decision creates an unprecedented set of electoral circumstances,” because last month’s primaries “took place under the new lines,” Politico said. For “months, Missouri Republicans had signaled their intention” to stall “as long as possible while implementing the new maps,” and Hoskins waited until the day of the primaries to “declare the referendum insufficient.” The court’s “unprecedented decision” thrusts Missouri “into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said in a statement. She vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What next?

The Missouri court “did not specify how candidates would be determined for a general election,” The New York Times said. “Redistricting opponents had suggested that candidates who won their primaries” could “remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts.”

What happened

The NBA on Wednesday punished the Los Angeles Clippers with the largest sanctions in league history after finding that owner Steve Ballmer and other team executives violated salary cap rules to funnel millions of dollars to star forward Kawhi Leonard. The Clippers were fined $30 million and stripped of five first-round draft picks, from 2029 to 2033. Leonard was fined $700,000, and Ballmer was banned from all team and league activities for a year.

Who said what

A one-year independent investigation found that the Clippers had improperly “covered personal expenses for Leonard,” CNN said, and “funneled off-court endorsement opportunities” to him through corporate partners who were rewarded with lucrative “team business.” Paying Leonard via a team sponsor would strike at the “very heart of the NBA’s most important financial rules” to ensure a “roughly level playing field” across the league, The Wall Street Journal said. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement he was “deeply disappointed by the flagrant violations,” and “the severity of the penalties reflects” their “seriousness.”

What next?

The Clippers “vehemently reject” the NBA’s “heavily biased investigation,” the team said in a statement, and “intend to vigorously challenge these findings and penalties through every avenue available to us.” There is “no appeal or arbitration process available to the team,” The Athletic said, citing a league source.

What happened

New York City on Wednesday announced that AI tools will be banned in public grade and middle schools and sharply limited for high school students. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office called the one-year moratorium the country’s “most expansive” limits on AI in schools. The “sweeping new policy” for the nation’s largest school district will also bar individual screens for students until third grade, The New York Times said. “So-called companion chatbots” will be “banned in all grades,” and “all high schoolers will be taught about AI literacy.”

Who said what

“The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary,” Mamdani said in a speech Wednesday. “We do not see it that way.” A “backlash” from parents “against the growing use of digital devices and AI in the classroom” has pushed many school districts to enact new restrictions, the Times said. The Los Angeles school district — the nation’s second-largest — just began “temporarily blocking access to generative AI tools on student devices across all grades,” The Associated Press said. Other schools are “working to teach children how to incorporate the technology while preventing them from relying too heavily on it or using it to cheat.”

What next?

New York’s new rules will be in place for this school year, which begins next week, and can be extended or amended.

What happened

The Department of Homeland Security has assigned hundreds of agents to an “intensive, weekslong hunt” for noncitizen voters, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Such “election fraud is exceedingly rare,” but DHS is “pulling agents” from “investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism” to scour state voter rolls, sometimes by “effectively posing as individual voters.”

Any suspected noncitizen voters, or people who registered to vote before they became citizens, are referred to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit. HSI agents were assigned this week to a new “Criminal Voter Fraud surge initiative,” CNN reported. ICE is also “preparing to award” a multimillion-dollar outside contract for a “massive national database of voters,” that will include “voter registration,” as well as voting history and potentially party affiliation, Wired said.

Who said what

The Trump administration has been aggressively “targeting noncitizen voting to allege it could be a source of significant fraud during the midterm elections,” The Associated Press said. “Given the decades of evidence showing how rare noncitizen voting is, it’s unclear what the administration will discover” in its new efforts or “how verifiable any findings will be,” the Times said. President Donald Trump has already used his repeated “falsehoods about election fraud” to “sow doubt and distrust in the electoral process” and “justify sweeping voting restrictions” he is attempting to enact.

What next?

An immigrant rights group sued the Trump administration in federal court Wednesday, seeking to block DHS from “using federal databases that it alleged are being used to target naturalized citizens who are eligible to vote,” the AP said.

What happened

The House on Tuesday passed a Senate-approved stopgap funding bill that will avert a government shutdown at the end of the month. The “lopsided” 370-48 vote punts the expected fiscal 2027 “spending fight until after the midterm elections,” The New York Times said, and allows lawmakers to “quickly return to the campaign trail for the critical final weeks before the elections.”

Who said what

The stopgap measure is “simple by design,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “No poison pills, no divisive wish lists and no political gimmicks.” At a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the “bill was much improved from the product that passed the House earlier this summer on a mostly party-line basis,” according to The Associated Press. In its bipartisan rewrite, the Senate “made some changes, some that we don’t support,” GOP Whip Steve Scalise (La.) told The Washington Post. But “it’s much more important for the country to avoid a government shutdown.”

What next?

Once President Donald Trump signs the bill, the government will be funded at current levels through Dec. 11. That gives lawmakers time to “find compromise on a full-year measure,” said the AP, which will “likely be quite difficult.”

What happened

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at a summit in Kyrgyzstan that Moscow will continue supplying “the assistance you need” and “the necessary goods” during “this difficult period.” Since President Donald Trump “launched his war against Iran” in February, Russia “has backed the Iranians with intelligence, including on U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf,” and “drone components,” said The New York Times. Moscow has also been secretly helping Iran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles, the Financial Times reported. The U.S. and Iran traded airstrikes last night, in their “first serious combat since July,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Russia’s transfer of the “strategically important military technology” to build supersonic missiles “would require political approval from Russia’s top leadership,” Conflict Armament Research analyst Fabian Hinz told the Financial Times. Such missiles would be a “qualitatively new strategic weapons system capable of threatening U.S. Navy ships,” former CIA military analyst Jim Lamson told the Financial Times. Iran has already done considerable damage to U.S. military bases in the Middle East with a new ballistic missile it calls “the Kheibar Shekan, or ‘Castle Breaker,’” USA Today said. The missile, likely developed “with the help of Chinese and Russian technology,” can “evade American air defenses and strike with far greater precision.”

What next?

Tehran vowed to respond to last night’s airstrikes with more “crushing and devastating blows” and claimed its own counterstrikes killed several U.S. personnel in Jordan and Iraq.

What happened

The U.S. Postal Service is poised to roll out a “secretive, rushed” and error-riddled online portal for states that could “derail” mail-in voting in the midterm elections, according to a whistleblower complaint released Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). The tool was created in three months, sometimes in defiance of court orders, to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit mail voting before the midterms, a USPS official said in the complaint. The “slapdash” development effort and a “zero percent failure” verification requirement mean “potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

Who said what

A federal judge in Boston has temporarily halted USPS from forcing states to use its new Federal Ballot Mail Portal system. But if the stay is lifted or overturned, USPS would require states to submit lists of mail ballot recipients and get approval for envelope and ballot designs with individualized barcodes. If the system worked as designed, the whistleblower said, entire batches of tens of thousands of ballots would be rejected if there were a problem with “even one barcode on one single ballot.” Blumenthal told reporters the new system is “intended to fail.”

What next?

Blumenthal gave Postmaster General David Steiner until Friday to respond to the claims detailing “USPS’s ​seemingly illegal plot to interfere in November’s midterms.” A USPS spokesperson said the Postal Service was “carefully reviewing” the allegations but will roll out the portal “soon” to states that want to use it.

What happened

A jury in Las Vegas on Monday found former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur. During the three-week trial, prosecutors leaned on Davis’ public admissions that he procured and handed a fellow Crips member the gun that killed Shakur. Davis’ lawyer said his client’s admissions, including in his 2019 memoir, were “fiction” to “make money” from Shakur’s murder.

Who said what

Prosecutors said Davis and his nephew, Orlando Anderson, “went hunting” for Shakur after Anderson was beaten amid a bitter bicoastal rap feud between Shakur’s Death Row Records label, allied with the Bloods gang, and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Records, protected by the Crips. Both factions were in Las Vegas for a Mike Tyson fight.

The case “had languished” for years “as important evidence, including the murder weapon, remained missing and key witnesses” refused to cooperate, The New York Times said. Davis “began speaking to the police” in 2008 to avoid serious drug charges, but the plea deal that made him “untouchable” was rendered moot after he “began repeatedly addressing the shooting publicly” under the “mistaken belief that he was fully immune from prosecution.”

What next?

Davis, 63, faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 13.

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to finish his 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom, ruling in a 5-4 decision that the congressionally chartered historical preservation group that won in two lower courts lacked standing to challenge the project. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented with the three liberal justices, calling the ballroom construction “likely unlawful” because it hadn’t been approved by Congress.

Who said what

“The White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” Roberts wrote, and it’s crucial to “ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.” The court’s majority “insisted it was not resolving the legal arguments over the president’s power to unilaterally make major changes to the White House,” Politico said. But their unsigned opinion “effectively” gives a “green light” for “construction crews to continue their nearly round-the-clock work” to complete the project before the legal questions are resolved, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

In court documents, the White House said the $400 million ballroom’s framework should be completed by November and the full project done in August 2028.

What happened

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll submitted his resignation to President Donald Trump on Monday, leaving the Army with no Senate-confirmed top leadership as it battles Iran and other challenges. Driscoll had “clashed repeatedly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the ouster of key combat-tested Army leaders,” The New York Times said. Hegseth’s string of “firings and feuds” has “left the Army essentially rudderless.” He ousted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, a Driscoll ally, in April.

Who said what

Driscoll “brought up concerns” with Trump about “Army transformation and readiness and Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the generals who were responsible,” a source told CNN and The Atlantic. Driscoll was a “major force behind trying to cut the red tape for military contractors to quickly develop more drones and counter-drone capabilities,” The Associated Press said. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, whose “meteoric rise under Hegseth” led to his role as acting Army chief of staff, is “pulling the plug on a drone modernization program” championed by Driscoll.

Driscoll “was until recently seen as a potential candidate to replace” Hegseth if he resigned or “fell out of favor” with Trump, the Times said. Hegseth may have “banished another enemy, Driscoll,” said The Atlantic. But his prize is that “more than ever,” he “now owns every aspect of the Pentagon’s dysfunction.”

What next?

Driscoll is “expected to leave the Pentagon in coming days,” The Wall Street Journal said. Senior administration officials said Hegseth’s choice to replace him, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, “likely would struggle to be confirmed” by the Senate, the Times said.

What happened

NASA on Sunday launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a $4.3 billion repurposed spy satellite designed to capture panoramic views of the cosmos, cataloguing Earth-like exoplanets and helping solve some of the biggest mysteries of astrophysics: dark matter and dark energy. The bus-sized telescope, named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, blasted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket en route to an observation point a million miles away.

Who said what

Roman is “NASA’s latest and greatest cosmic cartographer,” The New York Times said. Set to send back a “whopping one terabyte of data each day,” the telescope “promises a panorama so wide and so crisp that it would take more than half a million high-definition TVs to display in full.” While 2021’s James Webb Telescope, like a zoom lens, is designed to “probe very deeply and with exquisite sensitivity ​into the universe,” Roman’s “vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual,” senior project scientist Julie McEnery said.

The new telescope’s real “superpower is speed,” The Associated Press said. The Hubble Space Telescope, “still churning out celestial glamour shots after 36 years,” could scan the entire Milky Way in a century; Roman can do it in a month.

What next?

Roman is scheduled to arrive at its L2 orbit point in about 100 days. “Its mission is planned for five years,” Reuters said, “though NASA said the telescope may have enough fuel for five additional years.”

What happened

President Donald Trump late last week said his administration had reached the “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY” with Venezuela. The agreement, later confirmed by acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez, gives the U.S. rights to 65 billion barrels of the country’s oil reserves. Trump on Sunday described the oil as a “Gift from Venezuela,” and said it would start refilling the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve “very shortly.” But “no text of any agreement has been released,” The Associated Press said, and “many questions” remain unanswered.

Who said what

Trump has been withdrawing oil for “months to keep prices from rising even higher” during the Iran war, and the strategic reserve “now sits at its lowest level since 1982,” The New York Times said. But refilling the reserve with this Venezuelan oil is “something of a pipe dream.” Experts have “repeatedly warned that Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure will take years and billions of dollars to repair,” the AP said, and it’s unclear “who would pay for infrastructure investments.”

The details we know “aren’t cause for enthusiasm,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board said in an op-ed. The Trump administration, through the Pentagon, is “essentially getting in bed with a foreign dictator and her favored capitalist,” energy company CEO Alejandro Betancourt.

What next?

Oil companies “will remain cautious even if the terms of the deal, once released, pass legal muster,” Bob McNally, an energy adviser to former President George W. Bush, told the AP. “A future president could withdraw, and Caracas has twice thrown foreign investors out.”

What happened

The U.S. on Sunday struck two missile launchers on Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, its first confirmed airstrikes on Iran since July 29. U.S. Central Command said Iran was preparing to fire sea mines into the strait, days after President Donald Trump declared the international shipping lanes clear of mines.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the U.S. strikes killed “several” military personnel and civilians, and warned of “severe repercussions.” Jordan said it successfully intercepted eight missiles that entered its airspace Monday morning, headed for U.S. airbases.

Who said what

The resumption of airstrikes heightened the “risk of a return to all-out conflict,” The Wall Street Journal said, something Trump “has been working to avoid.” The administration recently pivoted to sanctions as it “weighs diminished munitions stockpiles” after six months of war, The Associated Press said.

The “heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force” and other “four-star commanders” warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this month that “prolonging large-scale operations against Iran is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland,” The Washington Post reported. The U.S. military is “experiencing a ‘beyond critical’ shortage of advanced missile interceptors in Europe,” the AP said last week, citing a U.S. defense official.

What next?

As the war “grinds on, Trump’s talk of finding a quick end” appears to be “fading,” the AP said. He has “repeatedly declared that the ‘Strait of Hormuz is open,’” but Iran continues to strike cargo ships. Brent crude oil jumped 2.8% to $90.57 a barrel after Sunday’s attacks.

What happened

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly testified in his Senate confirmation hearing last year that a 2019 trip to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines,” but new documents obtained through freedom of information requests “refute that testimony,” The Associated Press said Thursday. Kennedy was a “prominent anti-vaccine activist" at the time, and "critics said the visit fueled anti-vaccine sentiment" before a measles outbreak that killed 83 Samoans. In one letter, Kennedy “explicitly told the Samoan prime minister he wanted to study” the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine there and “used the words ‘vaccine’ or ‘vaccination’ eight times,” said The Guardian.

Who said what

“RFK’s platform is built on lies” that “leave a trail of dead children,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “There are consequences for lying to Congress.” Watchdog group American Oversight on Thursday asked the Justice Department to investigate Kennedy’s testimony for false statements. The Health and Human Services Department told the AP that “any claim or insinuation” Kennedy “lied under oath or to Congress” based on these letters is “not only false but outright defamatory.”

What next?

“Lying to Congress is a crime, whether or not the witness is under oath,” Georgetown law professor Josh Chafetz told The Guardian. But this Justice Department is “unlikely” to prosecute Kennedy.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” inside the U.S. government, needling Canada amid an intensifying trade war. Trump’s order directed the Interior Department and the Board on Geographic Names to remove and replace Lake Ontario on all federal maps and documents within 30 days, though he told reporters the name change was “effective immediately.”

Who said what

Trump’s Lake America rebrand “most likely requires only federal entities to recognize the change,” The New York Times said. “It does not have to be recognized by other countries.” New York, the only state that borders the lake, “won’t be calling it that,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), and neither will any Canadian entities. The name, from the “Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” is “more than 400 years old,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on social media. “America is changing,” but Canadians “know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”

What next?

The hydronym snub is “likely to harden public sentiment against the Trump administration in Canada,” The Wall Street Journal said. But Trump suggested he wasn’t satisfied with Lake America and the Gulf of America. “Now, all we need is an ocean,” he told reporters. “Maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”

What happened

Federal courts on Thursday dealt President Donald Trump setbacks in several ongoing legal battles with broad implications. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued a new block on the U.S. Postal Service carrying out Trump’s executive order to limit mail voting. In Northern California, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin ordered the Pentagon to end its “illegal and baseless” blacklisting of Anthropic. And U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., stalled administration plans to quickly inscribe Trump’s name back on the Kennedy Center.

Who said what

After Anthropic said it didn’t want its AI used for domestic surveillance or autonomous killing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth labeled it a supply-chain risk using an “obscure government-procurement statute” designed to thwart “foreign sabotage,” Reuters said. The administration’s “contemporaneous words and deeds confirm” it was actually acting to “make a public example out of Anthropic,” Lin wrote. The “empty invocation of national ​security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”

Talwani issued a 14-day block of USPS mail voting action a day after lifting an earlier hold in response to a Supreme Court ruling. The “whipsaw of action” could “confuse voters,” The New York Times said. But “each delay has reduced the administration’s chances of clearing the legal hurdles to execute” Trump’s order before the midterms. Now that the USPS’ “likely unconstitutional regulation” is finalized, Talwani wrote, “compliance is practically impossible” before ballots go out “as early as next week.”

What next?

After Cooper threatened to block the Trump inscription if the Kennedy Center stuck to its Sept. 8 start date, the Justice Department last night said it would delay action until at least Oct. 8.

What happened

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a first-of-its-kind drug for advanced pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest types of cancer and among the hardest to treat. The FDA’s expedited approval of daraxonrasib, a daily pill developed by Revolution Medicines and sold as Rasonque, followed a clinical trial in which patients on the drug lived a median 13.2 months, twice as long as those who underwent chemotherapy, and with fewer side effects. Some “patients who have gotten the drug through clinical trials have lived for years,” The New York Times said.

Who said what

Daraxonrasib has “electrified cancer specialists and patients,” the Times said. It’s “not a cure, but it is the first treatment to substantially extend the lives of patients” with a disease long considered among the “most hopeless in medicine.” Nearly all pancreatic tumors are fueled by a mutated cellular protein, KRAS, that’s stubbornly resistant to interventions. Daraxonrasib “uses what’s essentially a molecular glue to bind with multiple KRAS subtypes” and shut them down, The Associated Press said. Revolution is “studying its technology for several other forms of cancer, including lung cancer.”

What next?

Revolution said Rasonque is “now available in the United States at $39,800 for a 30-day ​supply,” Reuters said. The “vast majority of the cost is expected to be covered through insurance,” the Times said.

What happened

A catastrophic mix of floodwater and mud crashed through Himalayan valleys in Nepal and China-administered Tibet on Wednesday, killing at least 359 people, officials said this morning. More than 1,300 people were reported missing, including 517 foreigners in Nepal and 260 foreigners in Tibet. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue teams reach areas cut off by washed-away roads and bridges and buried under up to 6 feet of mud.

Who said what

“There are no human-made things, no human settlement left,” Sagar Pandey, CEO of a tourism operator that serves Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims who flock to the area, told Reuters. “Everything is just flat.”

Scientists around the world are “trying to solve the mystery of what caused such a destructive flood,” The Wall Street Journal said. The “leading hypothesis” is that a “large piece of a glacier broke off and tumbled hundreds of feet into the valley below, where the ice was pulverized into water by the sheer velocity of the fall.” The impact of the “enormous chunk of ice — possibly a half-mile wide,” registered as the “equivalent of a 5.2-magnitude earthquake and crushed the ice into a fast-moving mix of water, ice and rock that pulverized everything in its path,” said The New York Times.

What next?

Searchers are using helicopters to seek out survivors and drop supplies to hard-hit areas.

What happened

Social media giant Meta on Wednesday agreed to pay up to $17.1 billion and implement new safeguards for underage Instagram and Facebook users as part of a landmark settlement with 47 states and other U.S. jurisdictions. Meta also reached a $1 billion settlement with Texas over similar allegations that it endangered children by designing its platforms to be addictive, like cigarettes.

Meta agreed to limit users under 18 to two hours a day on its combined platforms, lock them out from midnight to 6 a.m., block “beauty filters,” hide “likes” and improve age verification tools. A federal judge in California approved the settlement Wednesday evening.

Who said what

Meta’s “dramatic capitulation” could “signal an inflection point for a social media industry that has largely escaped regulatory scrutiny over the harms its products have caused children,” The New York Times said. It also “effectively ends a bellwether federal trial” underway in California in which four states were seeking roughly $200 billion from Meta.

“In a unique setup,” Meta “will pay out only 70% of the settlement,” The Wall Street Journal said, withholding $5.3 billion, unless YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat agree to also pay the states $5.3 billion and join it in implementing stricter one-hour daily limits for underage users. “This framework will only work if all our peers join us,” Meta chief legal officer C.J. Mahoney said in a blog post.

What next?

The $18 billion settlement, representing “about one month of revenue for Meta,” will be paid out over 10 years, Reuters said. “It could provide a template for resolving thousands of other lawsuits against social media companies.”

What happened

Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday won the Republican primary to succeed her late brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, defeating hard-right Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) 52% to 48%. At President Donald Trump’s urging, Gov. Henry McMaster (R) last month appointed Graham to serve out the last six months of her brother’s term.

Trump’s pick for Oklahoma governor, businessman Mike Mazzei, also narrowly beat state Attorney General Gentner Drummond in Tuesday’s GOP runoff primary. In Georgia’s heavily Democratic 13th Congressional District, former school board chair Everton Blair Jr. won a special election to fill out the term of Rep. David Scott (D), who died in April.

Who said what

The South Carolina runoff was “seen as a test of Trump’s endorsement power,” The Wall Street Journal said, and he “flexed his political muscles in the final days of the campaign” to get Graham “over the finish line.” Trump “did more to support her than he had for any other Republican candidate this year,” The New York Times said, and it took the strength of his “political capital” — including a rally and $830,000 from his MAGA Inc. super PAC — to “overcome her inexperience” and a “flubbed” debate answer about national security.

What next?

Once Blair and Aisha Wahab, the Democrat who won last week’s special election in California, are sworn in, the GOP’s thin House majority will shrink to just four members, 218 to 214.

What happened

Dolly Parton, the country music superstar who wrote and recorded iconic songs like “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene,” died Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, after “bravely facing a brief battle with cancer,” her publicist said. She was 80. Over her six-decade career, Parton wrote more than 3,000 songs, sold more than 100 million records, and won 11 Grammys, along with numerous other accolades. She also gifted more than 300 million books to children worldwide through her Imagination Library program.

Who said what

From “hardscrabble beginnings to glittering stardom,” Parton’s life was the “stuff of make-believe,” said The New York Times. Her songs “vividly captured details of her impoverished Appalachian upbringing” and “shared her views on love, faith, loss and regret,” said Rolling Stone. Parton’s “curvy physique, massive blond wigs and skin-tight outfits” served her “self-deprecating wit,” The Associated Press said, and she was the “rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.”

Parton’s legacy is “not celebrity but humanity,” Country Music Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young said in a statement. She was a “champion of equality and literacy” and a “picture of dignity, even when dressed outrageously.”

What next?

“At Dolly’s request, a small, private service will be held for immediate family,” Parton’s family said in a statement. “In lieu of flowers,” fans and friends can donate to Imagination Library.

What happened

Canada on Tuesday released a list of more than 700 U.S. products it plans to tax at up to 50% in response to 50% tariffs President Donald Trump imposed on $20 million of Canadian goods over the weekend. The “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate counter-tariffs” will be paired with $5.4 billion in support to protect Canadian workers and businesses, said Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne in a press conference. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Canada was “targeting products” that will “put political pressure” on the Trump administration in certain states.

Who said what

Trump’s “trade war with Canada is escalating as the midterm elections approach,” voters are angry over rising costs and “control of the U.S. Senate hinges on states along the border,” like Michigan, Ohio, Maine and Alaska, The Associated Press said. Senior Canadian officials maintained that Ottawa “did not design the new measures around the U.S. electoral map.”

But Canada’s retaliatory tariffs “targeted products made in states with hotly contested congressional elections,” The Wall Street Journal said. Ottawa is “trying to show the Republican Party that there’s a systemic cost to doing this sort of thing,” former U.S. trade official Ed Gresser told the Journal.

What next?

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs don’t take effect until Sept. 8, so “there’s still time to pull back from the brink of an even bigger trade war,” the AP said. “Voters hate tariffs,” and Trump must be “hearing from political folks that if he wants any chance of salvaging the midterms he can’t start a trade war with Canada,” Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told the AP. “My guess” is “cooler heads do prevail somewhere in the next few weeks.”

What happened

San Francisco 49ers principal owner Jed York on Monday pleaded no contest in Ohio to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct and possessing criminal tools, after being arrested over the weekend at an East Palestine trailer park on suspicion of “engaging in prostitution.” As part of a plea deal to reduce the prostitution charge, York was fined $1,150, completed an online course and was credited with time served for one day in the Columbiana County Jail.

Who said what

The “criminal tool in ​York’s possession was believed to be a cellphone used to reply to a prostitution advertisement,” Reuters said. The cellphone was returned to him but “$160 that was seized was to be given to the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force,” The Associated Press said. Columbiana County Prosecutor Vito Abruzzino told the AP that prostitution cases typically ended in plea deals. The 49ers said in a statement the issue was a “legal matter” that “has been resolved” and there would be no “further comment at this time.”

What next?

The NFL said the case “will be reviewed under the personal conduct policy.” But it’s yet to be determined “whether York will emerge with the same punishment that a player would receive for the same offense,” said NBC Sports. “Owners are supposedly held to a higher standard than players,” but “there’s a perception” they are often “held to a lower standard in practice.”

What happened

The world’s ocean temperatures reached 70 degrees Fahrenheit over the weekend, the hottest on record, Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Monday. The previous daily average record was set in March 2024, but oceans may not have been this warm in “millennia,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

Global ocean temperatures typically peak in March or April, so this off-season record is “another clear signal of an ocean under growing stress,” said Copernicus deputy director Samantha Burgess. The brewing “super” El Niño is “adding heat to the system, but it is doing so on top of decades of human-driven warming.” The seas are likely the warmest they have been “for the entire Holocene period, and possibly even as far back” as “125,000 years ago,” University of Ottawa environmental studies professor Ryan Katz-Rosene said on social media. “Should be major news!”

“An ocean this warm destabilizes weather patterns and threatens food security, economic prosperity and marine life,” former NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco told The Associated Press. “A warmer ocean is not our friend.”

What next?

“Warmer seas help to fuel more extreme weather,” supercharging storms and intensifying heatwaves, the BBC said. This year’s El Niño “is expected to keep strengthening until Christmas” and is “on course to be the strongest in centuries.”

What happened

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday overturned a federal judge’s block of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting and make other election changes. The 6-3 emergency ruling was on procedural grounds and did not address the constitutionality of Trump’s order, much of which is still blocked through a different injunction from the same federal judge in Boston, Indira Talwani. The U.S. Postal Service issued a final rule late last week confirming that, if the courts allow, it would refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that did not comply with Trump’s order.

Who said what

The Supreme Court ruling “means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots,” The New York Times said. But it “does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the court’s unsigned majority opinion said. “On that score, time will tell.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent that the ruling “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty” into the upcoming midterms and furthers the court’s “Kafkaesque nightmare” regarding “election-related challenges.” Monday’s ruling “may not lead to a single election procedure changing” before November, The Associated Press said, “but it has already thrown into uncertainty the method that nearly one-third of the country uses to vote,” including Trump himself.

What next?

“Time is running out” for Trump’s voting changes, the AP said. After the first mail ballots are sent from North Carolina on Sept. 4, it “would be virtually impossible for all states” to fully comply.

What happened

Chinese robots ran faster and jumped higher than human record-holders this weekend, at the opening of the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. One humanoid ran the 100-meter sprint in 9.39 seconds, surpassing Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second world record, while another covered 400 meters in 38.15 seconds, smashing Wayde van Niekerk’s 43.03-second record. Both robots were made by Beijing’s X-Humanoid, as was a third that reached 2.88 meters in the standing high jump, besting Javier Sotomayor’s 2.45 meters.

Who said what

The five-day Olympics-like event is a “spectacle demonstrating China’s rapid progress in advanced robotics,” The Associated Press said. China “makes the majority of the world’s humanoid robots,” but they are “still mostly used for demonstrations, performances and research — at least for now.” The sprinting performances were a “sharp improvement” over last year, Reuters said, though “braking was an issue, as the machines slammed into ​a thick mat” after the finish line and had to be carried off on stretchers.

What next?

More than 2,000 humanoid robots are competing in 30 sporting events including soccer, table tennis and boxing. There are also 21 “scenario-based contests” like “EV charging, restaurant work” and “industrial assembly,” Reuters said, and the “real test” is whether the humanoids can “handle packaging ‌and warehouse operations while reliably performing precision tasks” that evaluate “their ability to work like humans in less flashy jobs.”

What happened

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Thursday vowed to halt all of President Donald Trump’s nominees until his administration eases a wetlands conservation policy aimed at protecting the breeding grounds of ducks and other waterfowl. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last weekend said it would at least temporarily retain the Biden-era program, which bars farmers from draining land near protected federal conservation easements.

Who said what

“My farmers are furious and so am I,” Cramer said in a statement to The Hill. The Trump administration’s “blind defense of a Biden rule favored by environmental extremists” just “confounds me,” particularly when farmers are “hurting so badly” amid “rising fuel and fertilizer costs resulting from limited traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.” But “other Republicans and hunters staunchly oppose any changes that would allow farmers to drain wetlands” and potentially “cause steep declines in duck populations,” said E&E News. The Upper Midwest’s Prairie Pothole region “supports more than half of North America’s ducks,” said the Washington Examiner.

What next?

“There will be no pause in my aggression” on the issue, Cramer told E&E News. “I have put a hold on all nominees, period, of all agencies. So I hope Clarence Thomas stays healthy.” Such holds “don’t necessarily prevent confirmation” of a president’s picks, said The Hill, but “they can cause a significant setback.”

What happened

California state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D) on Thursday secured victory in the special election to serve out the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) term in the House. With nearly all ballots counted from Tuesday’s vote, Wahab led fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez 53% to 47%. Swalwell resigned in April after multiple women accused him of sexual assault and harassment. The FBI seized his phone and laptop at the San Francisco airport and searched his Washington, D.C., home last weekend as part of a federal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, CNN and other news organizations reported.

Who said what

Wahab, a progressive who ran on housing affordability, will be the first Afghan American to serve in Congress. She was long “favored to win” the safely Democratic seat, the Los Angeles Times said, but the “race became more competitive” after the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC “spent millions on ads attacking her.”

What next?

Wahab and Hernandez will face each other again in November to compete for a full two-year term. In a statement, Hernandez, a public transit executive and former mayor of Dublin, California, said the next election “will be in the new district lines, adding 26,000 Dublin voters who didn’t have the chance to vote for me in August.”

What happened

Twenty migrants deported from the U.S. arrived in Liberia on Thursday, the first of 1,200 foreign nationals the West African country agreed to accept under a newly announced deal with the Trump administration. Most of the first migrants were from Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, Liberian officials told Reuters.

The Trump administration on Thursday also sent its first deportation flight to Haiti since winning a court battle to lift Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians. The 161 deportees on board “included TPS holders” and people “not born in Haiti,” The Associated Press said, citing Haiti’s National Office of Migration. They were flown to the northern city of Cap-Haitien “because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous.”

Who said what

The Trump administration has secured third-country deals with an estimated 35 countries, including at least 12 in Africa. Many deportees are “asylum-seekers with U.S. court orders protecting them from being returned to their home countries because they could face persecution or torture,” the AP said. They often arrive in “countries they have never been to” and eventually are “left with little choice other than to return to the home countries they were fleeing from.” Five of the 20 detainees who arrived in Liberia “refused to deplane,” The New York Times said, and “had to be restrained for several minutes by American federal agents.”

What next?

Liberia said the deportees would be received “as guests” who could leave “when they so desire” or apply for asylum. Other African countries taking third-country nationals have “made similarly humanitarian-sounding assurances,” The American Prospect said, but many of the deportees “end up living on the streets,” and some “have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge.”

What happened

Moderna and Merck said Wednesday their experimental mRNA cancer vaccine successfully reduced recurrence of melanoma, and prevented the deadly skin cancer from spreading to other organs, in a large trial. The results “mark the first successful late-stage trial for a personalized mRNA cancer therapy,” The Wall Street Journal said, “validating decades of research” and “paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment” for people diagnosed with melanoma and other cancers.

Who said what

The ongoing study involves 1,137 high-risk melanoma patients whose cancer was surgically removed and genetically sequenced. The treatment combines Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda with intismeran, a “made-to-order mRNA vaccine” created by analyzing and weaponizing “mutations found in the patients’ own tumors,” CNN said. The companies didn’t detail the results, but an earlier mid-stage trial showed that pairing intismeran with Keytruda reduced the risk of melanoma recurrence or death by 49% versus Keytruda alone. Moderna’s stock closed up 177% Wednesday.

What next?

Moderna and Merck said they planned to “present the details” of their latest “large, closely watched trial” at an “international medical meeting and to regulators,” The New York Times said. Investors and researchers “will be watching closely to see how effective and tolerable the vaccine proves to be,” the Journal said.

What happened

The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday it had halted “all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions” with Iran “until future notice” due to “escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security.” Hours earlier, the UAE had accused Tehran of firing two missiles into its territory. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called that accusation “baseless” and possibly a “false flag operation.”

Iranian Gen. Ali Abdollahi later warned “countries on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf” that “any assistance” given to the U.S. military “amounts to participation” in its war. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night threatened that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions” or other entities to “provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

Who said what

The UAE is one of Tehran’s “biggest economic lifelines,” The Wall Street Journal said, and Trump’s “effort to squeeze Iran into submission will depend heavily” on Dubai. It’s unclear if the U.S. “played a role in the embargo decision,” The New York Times said, but it was announced “hours after a call” from Trump to the Emirati leader.

What next?

If “implemented broadly,” the UAE’s trade severance could significantly harm Iran’s economy, the Journal said. But “severing those links will be difficult” and “could hurt Dubai’s role as a freewheeling global hub for commerce.”

What happened

The U.S. gross national debt on Wednesday hit $40 trillion for the first time, just five months after reaching $39 trillion. The new debt figure is an “ominous milestone for an economy that sits on a shaky fiscal foundation after decades of borrowing to pay for the rising costs of the military, social safety net programs” and, especially since last year, President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, The New York Times said.

Who said what

The “federal government’s IOU has now more than doubled in less than a decade,” from $19.95 trillion when Trump was first sworn in, Reuters said. Much of that debt funded the Covid-19 response, including $8.4 trillion added under former President Joe Biden. But Trump has also “largely ignored the dwindling number of fiscal hawks in his Republican Party,” and his “landmark second-term” tax-and-spending bill “will ​add another $4.7 trillion in debt.”

The bipartisan “inability of lawmakers to confront the debt comes with long-term risks,” the Times said. The “best-case scenario” in an “unsustainable” fiscal trajectory, said Margaret Spellings of the Bipartisan Policy Center in a statement. “AI disruption, a recession, global war or any number of other events could quickly push us over the edge from a challenge into a full-blown crisis.”

What next?

The “exploding debt” is “already affecting Americans’ pocketbooks by raising borrowing costs” and squeezing wages, said The Associated Press. The U.S. is expected to hit the current $41.1 trillion statutory debt limit “sometime between late winter and mid-summer” of 2027, forcing Congress to “again vote on whether to raise or suspend it.”

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday lifted his order blocking the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for about 5,000 Ethiopians living in the U.S. The Supreme Court in June “curtailed the ability of judges” to review the administration’s efforts to “end TPS designations ⁠for 13 countries,” Reuters said, and U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s new order “lifted the last judicial block.”

Who said what

“All TPS terminations are in effect!” Homeland Security Department General Counsel James Percival said on social media after the ruling. The “crisis in Ethiopia is still ongoing,” said Diana Konaté at African Communities Together, one of the plaintiffs, “and this decision puts the lives of thousands” of TPS holders “at severe risk.”

Between Haitians, Somalis, Venezuelans and other groups, Trump’s DHS has moved to end TPS “for an estimated million-plus” people, “straining industries” like home care, nursing care and construction, Axios said. TPS expiration dates are also “looming for thousands of others,” including “some 170,000 people from El Salvador and 101,000 from Ukraine.”

What next?

Murphy ruled that the Supreme Court had rendered most of the plaintiffs’ objections moot, but he allowed them to “continue to litigate over whether ⁠DHS’s action ​was motivated by racial or national origin animus,” Reuters said.

What happened

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced a three-day pause on 50% tariffs he had threatened to impose on $20 billion of Canadian imports. “Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!” he said on social media, about 90 minutes before the midnight deadline. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two sides had made “substantial progress,” but there’s “important work still to be done.”

Who said what

Trump’s tariffs “would have risked escalation into a trade war between the North American neighbors,” The Wall Street Journal said. But the “political impact would likely have been bigger than the economic one,” The Associated Press said. Canada had “threatened to retaliate” with “levies of its own,” and Trump would be “taking a risk by imposing a hefty new tariff” on consumer goods ahead of midterm elections, with U.S. voters “already frustrated with the high cost of living.”

What next?

Trump has “previously announced deals with other countries, only to have them fall through,” The New York Times said. But the U.S. and Canada both have “reason to step back from the brink,” the AP said. Long-term government borrowing costs “hit their highest in decades” on Tuesday, Reuters said, as “Trump’s policies — from tariffs to war — upend the global order.”

What happened

Tuesday’s primaries in Florida, Wyoming and Alaska delivered another surprise win for democratic socialists, another loss for a House incumbent and a mixed bag for candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump. His pick for Florida governor, Rep. Byron Donalds, won the Republican primary and will face Democrat David Jolly, a former GOP member. But in Wyoming’s GOP gubernatorial contest, Trump-backed Megan Degenfelder lost to state Sen. Eric Barlow.

Trump’s candidate to replace Donalds in the House, Catalina Lauf, was defeated by conservative talk radio station owner Jim Schwartzel in a crowded GOP primary. And Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who previously had Trump’s backing, became the “fourth House Republican to lose his primary this year,” Semafor said, “solving a problem for colleagues who wanted him and his scandals” gone.

On the Democratic side, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a new member of the Democratic Socialists of America, beat the better-funded Alexander Vindman to face Sen. Ashley Moody (R) in November. Nixon’s win was a “stunner,” CNN said. But the “progressive insurgency fell short in two other closely watched” Florida races, as Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jared Moskowitz prevailed in newly drawn districts.

Who said what

Tuesday’s results were the “latest indication that Trump’s endorsement — the most coveted asset in Republican campaigns — is no guarantee of victory,” CNN said. They were also another “lesson in why not to write national narratives out of every race,” Semafor said.

What next?

“Very few” of the contested seats “will be competitive in November,” Semafor said. In an exception, former Rep. Mary Peltola (D) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) will face each other — and likely another Dan Sullivan — in Alaska’s four-way ranked-choice Senate election.

What happened

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s second request to throw out a jury’s $5 million civil judgment that he assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump paid Carroll the $5 million plus interest last month, a “few days after the court initially turned away” his appeal, The New York Times said. The court on Monday “formally declined” his “long-shot request to the justices that they reconsider.” There was no stated reasoning and no noted dissents.

Who said what

Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the American people “demand an immediate end to all of the witch hunts, including the Democrat-funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes.” Trump, they added, will “keep winning against liberal lawfare.” The “jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said after the ruling.

What next?

Trump’s appeal of a separate $83 million judgment for Carroll is “pending at the Supreme Court,” said CNN. The “justices are on summer recess,” the Times said, and “not expected to consider whether to take up that case until late September at the earliest.”

What happened

A federal judge in Maryland on Monday blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to keep the FBI headquartered in Washington, D.C., saying the decision illegally discarded the General Services Administration’s congressionally approved 2023 decision to build a new complex in Maryland. The administration said last year that the FBI would move from its longtime headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the Ronald Reagan Building a few blocks away, the previous home of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Who said what

Congress, through a pair of laws, required the GSA to pick a site for the FBI headquarters “from ​among three suburban ⁠locations outside of Washington,” Reuters said. The Biden administration picked Greenbelt, Maryland, ending “almost 15 years” of debate on where to base the law enforcement agency. Maryland sued after Trump tried to reverse course, and U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang agreed, barring the administration from moving the FBI to the Reagan Building or diverting about $1 billion in funding approved for the Greenbelt campus.

What next?

Chuang’s ruling is “almost certainly not the end of the lengthy dispute,” The New York Times said. “In the meantime, the FBI continues to operate from its old headquarters, an aging colossus veiled in netting to keep concrete from falling on passers-by.”

What happened

The Trump administration on Monday said it was temporarily halting construction on a contentious border project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. In a video on social media, Customs and Border Protection chief Rodney Scott said he had “put a pause on all activity in that park, as far as construction goes, until I can get down there” to West Texas to “do a personal evaluation” and “talk to some stakeholders.”

Who said what

Scott’s announcement “comes amid massive outcry from local residents, businesses and law enforcement officials,” The Texas Tribune said, and “bipartisan frustration” over CBP’s shifting accounts of its plans for the treasured national park. CBP earlier this year “backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall” through Big Bend, The Associated Press said. But it is “still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights” and vehicle barriers.

The deployment of bulldozers last week drew “national attention and bipartisan criticism” from across Texas over the project’s “speed” and “seeming disregard for a prized piece of untrammeled wilderness,” The New York Times said. Local sheriffs argue the project is “costly and unnecessary in a desolate and undeveloped area where few migrants have ever crossed.” The CBP’s Big Bend Sector “covers a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border,” CNN said, but “sees only about 1% of border apprehensions.”

What next?

CBP did not say how long it would pause construction. If Scott “doesn’t alter the trajectory after visiting,” Jeff Leach, the owner of Big Bend’s Basecamp Terlingua hotel, told CNN, “this place is going to go nuts and the national pressure will only increase.”

What happened

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy and son-in-law, reportedly met Sunday with Hamas political leader Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt as the White House and regional allies attempt to revive the Trump-backed proposal for peace in Gaza. Representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and Trump’s Board of Peace also attended the meeting.

Who said what

Trump said last month that Hamas had agreed to his Gaza road map, but the plan “​​appeared to hit a dead end” when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected it, The New York Times said. Hamas leaders on Sunday “reaffirmed their commitment to disarm and demilitarize” as Israel withdraws from Gaza, Axios said. Kushner “used the rare direct meeting to press Hamas for tangible steps,” warning that “Israel doesn’t trust the group to follow through.”

Hamas told mediators it was waiting for Israel to agree to the plan so they could “work out a timetable for implementation,” The Associated Press said. Instead, Israel “has resumed airstrikes in the past few days,” Reuters said.

What next?

Kushner and Board of Peace members Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair are set to meet with Netanyahu on Monday. The Israeli leader “faces a challenging election on Oct. 27” with a “coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza,” the AP said, and it’s “not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.”

What happened

A week of relentless storms caused widespread destruction in the Midwest and killed at least seven people in Indiana and another one in Ohio, officials said Sunday. President Donald Trump approved Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Braun’s disaster emergency declaration for the entire state. Across the country in Hawaii, Hurricane Lala grazed the state over the weekend, battering the islands with heavy rains and winds, but did not make landfall.

Who said what

Lala “continued to punish” Hawaii over the weekend with “strong gusts and pounding rain, reaching a total of nearly three feet” in places, The Associated Press said. The Ka’u District on the southeastern side of the Big Island “appeared to suffer the worst damage,” The New York Times said. There were no confirmed deaths, Gov. Josh Green (D) said, though officials are still investigating. “But boy, a lot of work ahead.”

Days of heavy rains in Indiana “caused significant flooding along the White River,” including in Indianapolis, The Wall Street Journal said. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis “had never issued a flash flood emergency — its most dire flood alert — until Wednesday,” the Times said. “It issued the warning three times that day.”

What next?

As the Midwest shifts to recovery efforts, the “heavy rainfall has moved eastward” to the central Appalachians, the Journal said, bringing the “threat of flash flooding to West Virginia” on Monday.

What happened

President Donald Trump said on social media Sunday night he had instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” America’s annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing their cost, his own “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s disinclination to join the U.S. in the Iran war. The defensive drills, which began this week, are “totally inappropriate and hostile,” he said, as North Korea “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he is president.

Who said what

This is the “latest example” of Trump “appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader that previous administrations have cast as an adversary,” The Associated Press said. North Korea has been “pushing hard to enlarge its nuclear and missile arsenals since Kim’s high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.” Trump may intend this as “part of a larger effort to create a diplomatic opportunity” with Kim, Jenny Town at the Stimson Center think tank told Reuters, but the “haphazard nature of this move is unlikely to make much of an impression in Pyongyang.”

The Pentagon was “taken aback” by Trump’s “convoluted social media post,” The New York Times said, citing a senior U.S. military official. “We need South Korea as an ally more than ever to maintain deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and to reinforce our industrial base in critical sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors,” Hudson Institute Asian security expert Patrick Cronin told The Wall Street Journal. “We should not punish Seoul for our lack of a strategy in the Middle East.”

What next?

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are scheduled to last until Aug. 27.

What happened

President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Thursday to add his name back to the building’s facade and follow through with his plan to close most of the center for two years of renovations. This apparent “attempt to find a creative workaround” to the federal law governing the Kennedy Center also “aggressively” tests U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May ruling that blocked the center’s closure and ordered Trump’s name removed, The New York Times said.

Who said what

The board decided the center’s facade would now read “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” and its grounds would be renamed “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” according to Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the ex-officio board member who successfully sued to get Trump’s name excised. The new decisions are a “transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling,” Beatty said in a statement.

The Kennedy Center has become an “unlikely — and highly visible — metaphor for presidential power” in Trump’s second term, The Associated Press said. His name was removed in June, but a “massive tarp” has shielded the court-ordered void from public view. Board member and longtime Trump ally Paolo Zampolli told the Times his goal was to reinscribe Trump’s name “as big as it can get.”

What next?

As with the Kennedy Center’s prior legal issues, the board’s decisions will be subject to Cooper’s approval.

What happened

The Department of Homeland Security secretly surveilled and infiltrated labor unions and progressive groups during ICE’s surge in Minnesota, beginning four days after an immigration agent killed protester Alex Pretti in January, according to newly released government documents filed Thursday. The filing, from a defense attorney for one of 15 indicted protesters, documents “an array of invasive tactics” used to gather information on “many groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes,” The New York Times said, evidently “crossing the line that has traditionally stood between investigating criminal activity and political dissent.”

Who said what

DHS opened two investigations, according to the filing. “Operation Puppet Master” involved “extensive use of undercover informants” to “probe gatherings at churches,” union halls and other places, Talking Points Memo said, while “Operation Whipple Shield” was a “sweeping campaign to obtain financial records from people and groups organizing against” the ICE surge. The “surveillance reports in particular documented what largely appeared to be political activity protected by the First Amendment,” the Times said.

What next?

“So far, none of the organizations targeted” in the operations “have faced charges,” the Times said. But “prosecutors showed grand jurors a PowerPoint slide asserting that 18 groups — including the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest federation of labor unions — were part of a conspiracy to impede the work of immigration officers,” and the subpoenaed financial records went “well beyond the civil unrest in Minnesota.”

What happened

The Navy is sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from the South China Sea to the Middle East to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, U.S. officials said Thursday, amid growing concerns over deteriorating mental health and living conditions aboard the Lincoln after more than 260 days at sea. The ship, which hasn’t made a port call in more than 200 days, has been supporting U.S. military actions against Iran since January.

Separately, President Donald Trump signed a national security memorandum directing the Navy to “tear out a complex system for launching jet fighters from its aircraft carriers and instead go back to using steam catapults,” The Wall Street Journal said. This “would likely cost billions of dollars,” The Associated Press said, and “revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.”

Who said what

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said reports about deplorable conditions on the Lincoln have been “completely misrepresented.” But “concerns about the ship’s roughly 5,000 service members mounted” amid reports of “family members describing suicidal ideation and food shortages,” NOTUS said, and several attempts “to jump overboard.” At least one sailor did go overboard earlier this month, before being rescued, U.S. officials told CNN. “The Navy considered the incident a mental health episode.”

What next?

Trump’s directive to retrofit new aircraft carriers with steam catapults comes as the U.S. military is “trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment,” the AP said, and “as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.”

What happened

President Donald Trump was sued in federal court on Wednesday over a new Trump Media offering that sells early access to his social media posts for up to $100,000 per month. The First Amendment “guarantees equal access to the president’s public announcements,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept argued in their suit.

Who said what

“A president selling priority access to news he himself generates for the benefit of a private company he controls” is “blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a statement. Trump owns more than 40% of Trump Media, Truth Social’s parent company.

Trump often uses Truth Social to “announce policy decisions, executive orders, personnel changes and war declarations,” CNN said, and “clearly, the company — and Wall Street — believe the special access holds significant value.” Trump Media on Wednesday called the plaintiffs “left-wing activists” who are “trying to wrongfully weaponize the courts to censor” Trump and “harm our shareholders.”

What next?

Trump Media, which reported a $238 million quarterly loss this week, “needs the money — and a lot more” — and “the clock is ticking,” The Associated Press said. Its lenders can “demand” early repayment of $1 billion in late November, and after Trump leaves office, it’s “not clear” why traders would still “pay as much $1.2 million a year for sneak peeks at his posts.”

What happened

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt “will be departing her role at the end of the month,” President Donald Trump said on social media Wednesday. Leavitt said on X she “made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House” after returning from maternity leave last month and realizing she couldn’t do the job and “be the best mom my two young children deserve.” Trump said it was a “decision I totally understand and respect.”

Who said what

The “youngest White House press secretary in history,” Leavitt has been one of Trump’s “closest advisers” and “fiercest defenders” in his second term, The Wall Street Journal said. She’s leaving “at a critical time for the White House,” The New York Times said, with Trump facing “multiple headwinds, foreign and domestic,” and midterm elections in “which he will need to sell policies” that Leavitt was “among the most effective at defending.”

What next?

“Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisers, and an influential voice within the Republican Party,” Trump said. The White House did not say when he would name Leavitt’s replacement — a position that “does not require Senate confirmation,” said Axios.

What happened

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to outfit immigration agents with gloves that can deliver electric shocks to debilitate people they are trying to detain, the Department of Homeland Security said in a procurement notice this week. Local law enforcement has been using the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (GLOVE) devices “more often in jails than in the streets, where ICE officers have increasingly used force to extract people from cars” and confront protesters, said The Associated Press.

Who said what

The GLOVE user manual says it can inhibit subjects from “performing coordinated muscle movement.” Demonstration videos “show it inflicting pain,” NPR said. Many of the police officers subjected to the device “grimace or yell, and almost all of them fall to the ground.”

DHS calls the gloves a “de-escalation device.” But “critics worry they could instead be used to intensify ICE’s already-aggressive enforcement tactics,” The New York Times said. GLOVE maker Compliant Technologies warns the devices “should not be used in response to verbal defiance, or for punishment,” said the AP, or “against some populations that ICE agents routinely encounter: the elderly, small children, pregnant women and the severely handicapped.”

What next?

The “size of the purchase suggests ICE plans to give the device to most or all of its officers,” the AP said. ICE agents have already shown “they are willing to disregard the law and are too quick to use force, with devastating and at times fatal consequences,” said the ACLU’s Jenn Rolnick Borchetta in a statement. Adding gloves that can covertly shock people is “a recipe for more harm to the public and less accountability.”

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Tuesday issued a second preliminary injunction, this one nationwide, barring the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out President Donald Trump’s executive order to limit mail-in voting before the November midterms. The president “has no authority to regulate elections,” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani ruled, and protecting voters from “chaos” and confusion “heavily outweighs the executive’s attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation.”

Who said what

Under Trump’s order, USPS is “supposed to compile lists of eligible voters from states and deliver absentee ballots only to people on those lists,” NPR said. Talwani initially blocked the order in the 23 Democratic states that had sued, and Trump appealed that ruling last month. Her expanded injunction “creates another legal hurdle”, should Trump “get the initial injunction lifted by the U.S. Supreme Court,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

Trump has pushed Congress to limit mail-in ballots and other voting rules, but the Senate “bowed to political reality” early Saturday and adjourned for five weeks “without any concrete steps toward passing the voting restriction bill,” The New York Times said. Right-wing broadcaster Wayne Allyn Root urged Trump to enact his voting limits by declaring a “national security emergency for elections.” Trump, calling in for an interview, replied that “stranger things have happened.”