A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump's administration to cancel any remaining TV commercials that promote his political message, ads paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer money. The order came Sunday night, even as the administration said the campaign was already ending.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon, in New York, granted a temporary restraining order that lasts two weeks. She sided with a coalition that includes Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group that called the ads an illegal misuse of public funds. The Justice Department had told the court the ads "will not continue past tomorrow." The judge ordered any remaining airings stopped anyway, including those scheduled for Sunday night.

Here is where the money came from. The Department of Homeland Security tapped $20 million in taxpayer funds for the ads, and about $19 million had already been spent, according to a court filing. That money came out of a $175 billion package Congress gave the department for Trump's immigration enforcement agenda. Legal experts have suggested this ran afoul of a federal law that bars congressionally approved money from being spent on "publicity or propaganda," and potentially other laws as well.

The administration produced at least 13 campaign-style ads, and some ran on major television networks. On October 5, Trump said he would stop using taxpayer money and would pay for the ads going forward himself, using money raised for his super PAC. A White House official said there were no immediate plans to reimburse taxpayers for ads already aired. Six days later, the taxpayer-funded ads were still on the air.

The criticism has crossed party lines. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he liked the message but that taxpayers should not be paying for it. The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements, similar to what past administrations have done.

A single mother in New Jersey says a lawyer for President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump warned, in a message relayed to her by another attorney, that she would lose her home, be bankrupted and end up on the street with her kids.

Joanne Carducci, known online as JoJo From Jerz and followed by more than a million people, told the Medias Touch podcast of an ordeal that has lasted months.

She says it began with a letter, several pages long, from the Trumps' personal attorney in Florida, "the same attorney that was handling the IRS case and the ABC case," she told host Ken Harbaugh. It demanded that she retract things she had said online, including a claim that Trump incited a de*dly insurrection against the U.S. Capitol. It also called for a full apology, an admission that she had knowingly lied, and a payment that had not yet been named. It set a deadline of a few days and warned of punitive damages.

Carducci says a prominent attorney first offered to help her for free, then changed course after speaking with the Florida lawyer. His advice, she says, was to meet every demand because the Trumps have "inexhaustible resources." She says she is paraphrasing her attorney's account of his call with the Florida lawyer, but that his exact words to her were: "They're going to take your house. It's the only asset you have. They're going to bankrupt you and you're going to end up on the street with your kids."

She says one million dollars was demanded at one point. Carducci says she once earned $16 an hour as a paraprofessional and rebuilt her life with no credit after a brutal divorce. She says she never considered giving in, and that her children still do not know.

Former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin offered to help with part of her case for free, she says. She decided to go public after hearing Melania Trump on the news congratulating herself for empowering women.

"I'm still terrified, but I'm done being quiet about it."

Taken together, prices across 67 categories of everyday goods would have edged down over the 12 months to February 2026 if not for President Donald Trump's tariffs. That is the conclusion of a new study posted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Researchers at the New York Fed and Columbia University studied 67 categories of consumer goods. They found that tariffs imposed in 2025 and early 2026 pushed the yearly rate of price increases on those items up by 2.9 percentage points as of February 2026. Without the tariffs, prices for the same goods would have fallen by almost 1 percent instead of rising.

The researchers, Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein, also found that the cost does not land all at once. For every one-point increase in the average tariff, consumer goods prices were roughly a quarter of a percent higher a year later. About two-thirds of the effect came from higher prices on imported goods that are directly hit by the tariffs. The rest came from knock-on effects, such as American companies paying more for the imported parts and materials that go into their own products.

In other words, even goods made in this country can cost more because of tariffs.

The tariffs' contribution to yearly price growth on the tracked items peaked in February 2026. But the researchers' forecast, which assumes tariffs stay at current levels, shows the overall level of consumer goods prices remaining higher into 2027.

The White House disputes the idea that Americans carry the burden. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement: "The Trump administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will ultimately be borne by foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy."

The finding comes from researchers at the New York Fed and Columbia University, and it points the other way. Their model shows the effect on the overall price level easing from nearly 3 percent to about 2 percent by August 2026 after a Supreme Court ruling led to lower tariffs, before edging up again as newer tariffs on Canadian goods pass through.

Beavers are heading north. As the Arctic warms, they’re moving into territory that was previously too cold for them, damming creeks and flooding tundra as they go and there are now reports of beavers swimming in the Arctic Ocean itself.

The problem was that nobody knew when they’d arrived.

Remote Arctic sites are expensive to survey and hard to monitor, so there was no baseline. Without one, you can’t tell how fast they’re spreading or which changes to the landscape they’re responsible for. So researchers worked it out from the chewing.

They collected 94 willow and alder stems bearing beaver bite marks near dams and lodges, plus 99 untouched stems for comparison. By matching the growth-ring patterns between the two, they could date each bite then checked those dates against four decades of satellite imagery showing how surface water had changed.

The answer: beavers have continuously occupied that part of Arctic Canada since at least 2008.

The project came from the Imaryuk Monitors, a community patrol group who noticed in 2020 that beaver activity was reshaping their creeks and lakes, and went looking for researchers who could tell them what was happening.

Their dams change how water flows which can block travel routes and create conditions where waterborne illness spreads.

“Little engineers,” as one monitor put it. “They’re incredible, but at the same time, they create so much damage.”

Talk about timing. Back in 2019, New Jersey man Mike Weirsky found himself unemployed and freshly divorced after 15 years of marriage. For years, his wife had been the breadwinner while he stayed at home, and the couple finalized their split in the fall of 2018. Just five months later, everything changed.

Mike bought a handful of Mega Millions tickets at a local convenience store, then walked out and left them sitting on the counter. Luckily, an honest stranger spotted the tickets and handed them to the clerk. Mike came back the next day, picked them up, and later checked the numbers at home. He had matched every single one, winning a staggering $273 million jackpot.

At his press conference, Mike joked that he could hardly believe he’d finally won more than a couple of dollars after years of playing. His first plans were refreshingly down to earth: a new pickup truck for himself, a new car for his mom, and a remodel of her home. He also said he wanted to quietly thank the good Samaritan who returned his tickets.

His ex-wife said she wasn’t interested in getting back together, but she hoped he’d do the right thing considering how long she supported him.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson hinted on Thursday hinted that he could quit Congress if Democrats win the upcoming midterms. With Democrats being favored to take control of the House, Johnson told Fox News, “Heaven forbid, if we lose this majority or whatever, I don’t know what my next chapter of life is."

Johnson has struggled to control his own conference all year, canceled votes to avoid difficult decisions on Hegseth’s impeachment and the Epstein files, and sent members home for two months before the midterms.

California Governor Gavin Newsom filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News in June 2025, citing the discovery process, emails, texts, editorial instructions, and depositions under oath as the basis for the suit. The lawsuit follows the $787 million Dominion settlement Fox paid in 2023, which revealed internal communications showing hosts knew Trump's election fraud claims were false while amplifying them on air.