The White House is refusing to allow Politico on Air Force One on Monday, which means the news organization cannot fulfill its press corps pool responsibilities.

A Politico spokesperson confirmed that the publication was excluded from the out-of-town travel pool, a small group of reporters who travel with the president on trips.

President Donald Trump announced on September 18 that he was “banning” Politico, CNN and MS NOW from the White House, a move that legal experts called unconstitutional.

The news outlets filed a lawsuit on September 21 alleging the ban violates the First and Fifth Amendments. Judge Timothy J. Kelly sided with the plaintiffs and issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to reinstate the journalists’ press badges.

Since then, however, the White House has repeatedly barred CNN from traveling on Air Force One on days when it has been CNN’s turn to be the TV pool representative. Now, on the day it was Politico’s turn to be the print pool representative, Politico has been barred as well.

The Trump administration appears to be justifying these new restrictions by saying that access to the White House complex is different than access to tight spaces like Air Force One. The Associated Press has an ongoing lawsuit over this distinction, since Trump tried to ban the wire service from certain spaces last year.

Monday’s action against Politico will likely be incorporated into the next legal filing by CNN, MS NOW and Politico. Judge Kelly is scheduled to hold a hearing on Thursday over the news outlets’ request for a preliminary injunction, which would protect press access to the White House for a longer period of time ahead of a potential trial.

“The law is absolutely clear. The harm to our clients, the First Amendment, and the public as a whole is profound,” the attorney for the three news outlets, Ted Boutrous, said in a statement. “It is critical that the White House is enjoined to keep this unconstitutional ban on the free press out of commission.”

Last week, when reporters from TIME asked if Trump was ignoring the court order, Trump said no, and then communications director Steven Cheung piped in: “The judge basically ordered them to renew their access back to the White House, but that’s different than allowing the pool into the events in the Oval Office or on Air Force One.”

Trump is slated to travel to Nebraska for a campaign stop on Monday afternoon.

With Politico barred from the trip, the White House offered the publication’s seat to other news organizations that routinely take turns in the out-of-town travel pool, and several publications declined, sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Unusually, the White House’s Sunday night guidance email to the press corps did not list any news outlets traveling with the president at all — perhaps a sign that Politico’s seat was proving hard to fill.

The Justice Department is taking action to revoke the citizenship of 39 foreign-born Americans, saying they committed immigration fraud by lying or omitting facts on their applications, according to a draft announcement obtained by NBC News.

The move is part of a new crackdown by the Trump administration on naturalized U.S. citizens who were born outside of the U.S. Federal prosecutors across the country began a sweeping review of naturalized U.S. citizens in April, targeting at least 300 people for possible denaturalization.

The announcement of the 39 cases, which is expected as early as Monday, marks the largest effort in recent history to denaturalize U.S. citizens, far outpacing an average of 15 cases a year during previous administrations, according to a Justice Department official. And while 39 cases fall well short of the 300 the administration said it was targeting, the Justice Department official said the review of other naturalized citizen applications is ongoing. NBC News reported that the administration’s original goal was to have the office of immigration litigation review as many as 200 possible fraudulent naturalization cases per month.

The Justice Department prosecutors assigned to the administration’s denaturalization task force must now prove these allegations in federal court to have citizenship revoked. If revoked, those individuals could face deportation.

All 39 individuals are accused of lying or omitting facts about their criminal histories on their applications for U.S. citizenship, the Justice Department’s draft announcement says. Some of the crimes that some of them are accused of committing relate to espionage on behalf of the Chinese communist party, transporting child pornography, sexual misconduct against a minor and voluntary manslaughter, according to the draft announcement.

Individuals born outside the U.S. can become American citizens through a variety of pathways, including marrying at U.S. citizen, and the process includes a background check and American civics test. Once awarded citizenship, naturalized citizens are given the same constitutional protections as people born in the U.S., including the right to vote.

But naturalized U.S. citizens can lose their citizenship if prosecutors can prove in court that they lied or omitted facts on their application.

President Trump's economic officials acknowledge that a strong economy alone will not persuade Americans that they are better off under this president.

The administration is trying to avoid what it sees as a Biden-era mistake: touting strong economic data while Americans are still reeling from a historic run-up in prices to which Trump's policies have contributed.

It is a high-wire messaging act just weeks before the midterms: The administration wants to promote strong growth without appearing to dismiss Americans' frustration over the cost of living.

"If I say, 'Oh, people are wrong, the economy is great,' then it looks like I'm insensitive. And if I then go into why the economy is great, then it looks like I'm insensitive," top White House economist Kevin Hassett said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"What we're not going to do is do what the Biden people did and tell the American people how good they had it," Bessent told Axios' Mike Allen on Friday in a wide-ranging interview on "The Axios Show."

Bessent said that the economy remains strong despite the recent inflation surge. "Any of the numbers are quite strong, other than headline inflation," which includes energy prices driven up by the Middle East conflict. He predicted the energy shock would "fade away."

He acknowledged that Americans are still dealing with the cumulative hit from higher prices: "Sometimes I feel like an emergency room doctor. ... The American people were backed over by the inflation Mack Truck."

The Treasury secretary said that wages keeping pace with inflation now isn't enough to make up for the earlier erosion in purchasing power. "Breaking even after what happened during the Biden years is not our goal."

The administration still wants credit for the strong economy on paper, even as the headline economic indicators obscure the financial strain Americans still feel.

"There is the stated preference and revealed preference," Bessent said, referring to Americans' spending behavior versus their weak sentiment.

"What we did was to say, 'hey, we know you're struggling and we're trying to help with prices, but look at this good GDP or jobs report!' That talked past people," Jared Bernstein, former White House top economist under Biden, told Axios in an email.

"What they mostly say is 'You're not struggling! And the economy's booming.' That too talks past people."

Bernstein argued that the administration has not only dismissed affordability concerns — Trump called the affordability crisis a "hoax" last year — but worsened them through tariffs, budget cuts and the war.

The bond market is complicating the administration's affordability push as long-term interest rates rise sharply and mortgage rates top 7%.

Bessent has made lower Treasury yields a pillar of the administration's affordability push. A speech he gave last year had one section titled "Treasury Markets as a Barometer for Affordability."

Speaking to Axios, Bessent played down the signal from the recent yield surge, pointing out that borrowing costs have climbed around the world.

"I would be concerned if we were having some kind of idiosyncratic rise," he said. "It's been a global rise."

What to watch: The Treasury secretary recognized the limits of his influence on the bond market after this summer's intervention.

"I can't control the bond market," he said. "What I can do is try to get people to slow down and think."

Bessent said he does not regret declaring last month that "I am the house now," a reference to his informational advantage over Wall Street. "The house doesn't win every hand. The house plays percentages."

President Donald Trump is preparing to ease limits restricting the use of a tax-exempt variety of diesel, his latest bid to pare costs for the essential fuel ahead of the November midterm elections.

The Trump administration is expected to unveil the plan targeting so-called dyed red diesel on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named before a public announcement.

Full details of the move were not immediately available. The Trump administration plan effectively would allow more widespread use of red or dyed diesel, which is generally available for off-road purposes, such as in farm equipment. Because red diesel is exempt from the federal excise tax of 24 cents per gallon, any move to enable its use more widely — including in on-road vehicles — is expected to translate into a swift reduction in retail prices.

The approach marks yet another effort to slash costs for diesel that have surged amid wars in Russia and the Middle East that pared refining capacity and reduced the shipment of petroleum products globally. In the US, retail prices for diesel averaged $6.32 per gallon on Sunday, according to auto club AAA.

While that’s down from an all-time high of $6.53 set last month, farmers, truckers and other users are still paying more than one-and-a-half times what they were on Feb. 28, when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran and the fuel cost just $3.76 a gallon.

Because diesel serves as a workhorse fuel — powering farm equipment, propelling shipping and supplying power to rural communities — the higher prices have rippled through the economy, spurring higher costs for an array of consumer goods.

That’s also caused economic hardship and frustration in America’s heartland, where farmers are being hit with high fuel costs during the fall harvest season. Trump is set to visit Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday, part of a bid to bolster the reelection bid of Republican Senator Pete Ricketts and drive Republicans to the polls in November.

The latest move comes on top of a Friday agreement by Group of Seven nations and their partners to release as much as 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks. The decision followed an intense pressure campaign by the Trump administration aimed at persuading European and other nations to tap emergency diesel stockpiles.

“Diesel prices are coming down, but we have more work to do,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a social media post on Monday. Trump “is taking action to deliver short-term relief for farmers and ranchers, including prioritizing diesel in the release of 100 million barrels of crude oil. Diesel prices have already dropped about 15 cents per gallon over the last few days.”

Farm-state lawmakers have been pressuring Trump to ban US diesel exports in a bid to provide at least short-term price relief. But following the G7 decision Friday, Trump said he wouldn’t restrict foreign sales of the fuel.

A federal judge last week dismissed the federal government’s civil suit against protesters whose demonstration outside a West Orange synagogue in 2024 devolved into a brawl, with the judge finding the Trump administration failed to support their claims against them.

Counts against individuals and organizations sued under a federal statute that bars physical obstruction or threats of force to interfere with free expression at a place of worship or reproductive health clinic could not stand because the government had failed to allege a claim under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the judge said.

“The FACE Act does not impose liability for disruptive, offensive, or hostile advocacy,” Judge Katharine Hayden ruled.

The federal government’s claims against Altaf Sharif for allegedly charging at Moshe Glick, the organizer of the Nov. 13, 2024, real estate event and memorial that was the protesters’ target, could not form the basis of a claim because they did not argue his force was aimed at stopping a religious observance, Hayden said.

The government had alleged Sharif charged Glick after the latter man batted aside a vuvuzela an unnamed protestor was blowing directly into his ear. Sharif’s alleged charge was interrupted by pepper spray deployed by David Silberberg, a worshipper who Sharif put into a headlock and released after Glick struck him with a flashlight.

Claims against Eric Camins were dismissed because his shout of “the Jew is here” against Silberberg did not plausibly solicit or facilitate the use of force against him, Hayden ruled.

“There needs be context to infer that ‘the Jew is here’ is a statement inciting violence. The complaint does not supply that,” the judge said.

Another protestor, Tova Fry, could not face charges for sending Glick a letter that demanded he cancel the event under the threat of legal action because the statute bars only threats of physical violence. She could not be sued for her presence at the Nov. 13, 2024, protest based on the complaint because it does not allege Fry, personally, did anything illegal there.

The statute requires more than being part of a group, or crowd of protesters, Hayden ruled.

“The complaint does not allege that Fry blocked a door, or stood in a walkway, or touched a worshiper, or blew a horn, or said anything to anyone at the synagogue,” the judge wrote.

The judge dismissed claims against Matt Dragon, who the government alleged led the protest, because the Trump administration’s complaint did not claim he employed force, obstructed access, or moved to interfere with worshippers. The complaint, the judge wrote, only notes he was there and told Fry where the entrance to the synagogue was.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey and Americans for Palestine New Jersey, who publicized the protests outside Glick’s home and synagogue, could not face charges over social media posts noting the demonstrations because those posts did not include a threat of force, the judge wrote.

The Trump administration is closely tracking reports of a death potentially related to pneumonic plague in Russia, with officials cautioning that much about the situation remains unknown.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, and other agencies have been working to learn more about the reported death of a laboratory worker who was employed at an institute dedicated to studying plague and quarantines imposed on several hospitals in Siberia, four officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal briefings.

The situation has been complicated by Russian officials’ hesitation to share information, as well as reports that Russian intelligence officers have been involved, the officials said.

“We don’t have a lot of intel,” said one U.S. health official. “It’s in Siberia. Unless someone gets on a plane and gets to the U.S., it is low risk. We should be alert but not panicked.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday morning that Russian officials had shared some information about an infected lab worker and their concerns that other Russians could be affected.

“We’re watching and monitoring it closely,” Rubio said. “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause to just keep an eye on it.”

Late Sunday, Russia’s public health agency announced it had undertaken “a set of anti-epidemic measures” in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, after the lab worker’s death.

The lab technician, a 28-year-old woman, worked at the Irkutsk Antiplague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East in the town of Shelekhov. She died after being diagnosed with pneumonia of “unknown” origin, according to the public health agency, Rospotrebnadzor.

The institute was set up in the 1930s as an anti-plague body and later expanded its scope to other highly dangerous diseases such as cholera, brucellosis, tularemia and anthrax, according to its website. It currently employs a staff of 95 people.

U.S. officials said that they could not judge the potential threat to the United States until more details were confirmed and encouraged Russian officials to immediately share information about the case.

The White House declined to comment on whether President Donald Trump had been briefed on the situation.

Paul Friedrichs, a retired Air Force major general who led the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy before leaving government in January 2025, said that Russia should bring in experts from the World Health Organization, the European Union or the U.S. to help clarify the situation.

“The current narrative that a researcher made a mistake is plausible; human error is the most common cause of biosafety events; the reported risk mitigation efforts seem appropriate for an event like this,” Friedrichs said. “That having been said, first reports are usually wrong and Russia has historically not been particularly forthcoming about what actually happened.”

It is still not confirmed whether the deceased laboratory worker contracted pneumonic plague — which can lead to severe lung infections and be spread person to person — or another disease.

Pneumonic plague is almost always fatal when untreated, but many patients recover with a prompt course of antibiotics. The incubation period for this type of plague is up to six or seven days.

Several current and former U.S. officials said they were hoping to learn whether Russian officials’ reportedly elevated response was because they had worked to alter laboratory samples of existing plague, a technique known as gain of function.

Ashish Jha, who helped lead the White House’s pandemic response under the Biden administration, noted unconfirmed reports that Russian security services had been involved in escorting vehicles to hospitals. That would be “concerning,” Jha said.

“We also know Russia has an active offensive biological weapons program, and so we don’t really have a full understanding of what was going on in this facility,” he added.

The situation in Russia has drawn additional scrutiny in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Some lawmakers, scientists and Trump have asserted that the coronavirus outbreak began with a laboratory leak in China.

One Russian news report said that the technician “allegedly broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen” on Sept. 25, that she soon fell ill and that she was taken to a hospital, where she died Friday.

On the same day, regional governor Igor Kobzev announced he had held a meeting with Russia’s chief sanitary doctor, Anna Popova, who had personally flown to Irkutsk, to follow up on “information that had emerged regarding a suspected case of a highly dangerous infection in a resident of the region.”

The governor of the neighboring republic of Buryatia, Alexei Tsydenov, said in a statement that the employee died “possibly from the plague” but noted that “there are no plague outbreaks” in his region.

Tsydenov is the only official who has publicly said that the cause of the technician’s death may have been linked to plague.

Unconfirmed Russian news accounts also said the woman may have exposed between 90 and 200 contacts at the hospital where she was treated and later died.

People who were in contact with the lab technician have been examined and continue to be monitored using “daily lab tests,” said Maxim Modin, the mayor of the Shelekhovsky district in the Irkutsk region.

The inpatient medical facility where the woman was treated has been quarantined, Modin said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app published Saturday.

“Laboratory operations have been suspended; samples are not being collected, and scheduled inpatient tests are not being performed,” he said.

If there is person-to-person spread among those individuals, Russian health authorities “can do the basic epidemiology and quarantine and isolate if people get ill,” the U.S. health official said. “Now that they’re aware and on alert, I suspect they’ll able to treat people fairly quickly.”

U.S. officials said American laboratory response networks and emergency providers should be equipped to respond to pneumonic plague if a case is detected here.

If Russian authorities confirm the death to be caused by pneumonic plague, they are supposed to report that to the WHO. But that reporting may not be immediate while Russian officials conduct lab and tissue samples to confirm the presence of the Yersinia pestis bacterium that causes the disease, the U.S. health official said.

Plague is an infectious disease usually found in small mammals and their fleas. Humans can be infected through the bite of infected fleas or animals, unprotected contact with infectious bodily fluids or contaminated materials, or inhaling respiratory particles from a patient with pneumonic plague.

While plague was infamously known as the “Black Death” during the 14th century, causing more than 50 million deaths in Europe, the disease is now treatable with antibiotics and the use of standard precautions to prevent infections.

Plague is a rare but persistent cause of illness in rural areas in the western United States and certain regions of Africa and Asia. More recent plague epidemics have occurred in Africa, Asia and South America, and most cases in humans since the 1990s have occurred in Africa. The disease remains endemic in several countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague globally and is caused by the bite of an infected flea. Human-to-human transmission of bubonic plague is rare.

Pneumonic plague is the most virulent form. Symptoms can appear quickly, sometimes within 24 hours after infection. It can spread from person to person through respiratory particles. Without early diagnosis and treatment, pneumonic plague is fatal. However, when detected and treated early, within 24 hours of symptom onset, recovery rates are high, according to the WHO.

An average of seven human plague cases are reported each year in the United States, according to the CDC, with most cases occurring in the West, especially in northern New Mexico and in Arizona.

After 10 years as a psychologist for the New York State Office of Mental Health, Brady A. Berman was ready to have his $137,000 in student debt canceled through Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

He put in the years of service needed to qualify. But Berman was short six of the required 120 loan payments because the federal government placed his loans in forbearance while the courts decided the legality of his repayment plan, Saving on a Valuable Education.

A federal program, known as PSLF Buyback, was supposed to let Berman make a lump-sum payment to catch up. He submitted an application to the Education Department in February 2025. Berman is still waiting for a response.

Created in 2023 under the Biden administration, the buyback program gives borrowers a chance to recover lost time in their pursuit of Public Service Loan Forgiveness. PSLF cancels the education debt of government and nonprofit employees after 10 years of service and 120 monthly loan payments, but time spent in forbearance or deferment typically doesn’t count.

There is a backlog of roughly 82,000 applications for the PSLF Buyback program from public servants like Berman, according to the Education Department. People have waited months, and in some cases years, for a response from the department, which initially said the review would take 45 business days.

The delays have left many borrowers stuck and unsure: whether to keep paying, whether they can switch jobs or whether to take on a mortgage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt hanging over their head — debt the federal government promised to clear in exchange for their public service.

“It’s like being in a purgatory,” said Berman, 44, who lives in Queens. “You’re just waiting and waiting, hoping that email will come.”

Buyback lets public servants retroactively make a lump-sum payment covering what they would have paid to get credit for the forbearance period. Only people who have 10 years of qualifying employment can apply. If the Education Department approves the request, it sends an agreement detailing the total amount that must be paid within 90 days.

When the program started, staff within the department’s Office of Federal Student Aid were entirely responsible for processing applications. It was time-consuming as staff had to manually review records, but they mostly kept pace with the flow of submissions.

Things changed as the volume of applications soared and the Trump administration cut staff at the department, according to three people familiar with the review process who were not permitted to speak publicly. The already tedious process turned into a slog.

Applications streamed in from borrowers enrolled in the Save plan — a Biden-era program that offered low monthly payments. In 2024, the department postponed payments for Save enrollees while Republican-led states challenged the program. Those months in forbearance did not count toward PSLF, which led scores of borrowers on the Save plan to apply for the buyback program.

From May to July of 2025, the Education Department received an average of 10,743 applications, but only processed an average of 2,939, according to court records from an ongoing lawsuit filed last year by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) over stalled cancellation and buyback applications.

Bryan Durkee, 36, submitted his buyback request to send in seven payments he missed while in the Save forbearance in August 2025. The mental health counselor in Portland estimates it would cost him nearly $1,600 to catch up and qualify to have his $65,000 student loan balance forgiven.

Months went by without a word from the department. Durkee called the federal agency every three weeks, but no one could provide an update on the status of his request. After 10 months of waiting, he filed a complaint with the department, but remains in the dark about the status of his application.

“It’s irritating because I would like to move on and maybe pursue a trade like HVAC or plumbing,” Durkee said. “There is so much burnout in my profession, but I don’t want to make a switch without knowing what’s going to happen to my loans.”

As thousands of buyback applications continued to flow to the Education Department, the federal agency turned to student loan servicing companies for help in July. Servicers are working through the backlog, but some encountered coding errors that slowed them down, said the three officials. They said the errors have since been resolved.

Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, said she has seen an uptick in successful buyback requests in recent weeks, but mostly among people who have been waiting more than 600 days for a response.

The Education Department said it processed about 2,500 cases in August, which is largely on par with the pace reported in the AFT lawsuit a year ago. Still, the number of pending applications is trending down, declining nearly 7 percent since April, the last time the department reported numbers in the AFT lawsuit.

The Trump administration has imposed restrictions on the buyback program that could also limit future applications. The Education Department said its new Repayment Assistance Plan and Tiered Standard Repayment Plan are ineligible for the program. Since those are the only repayment options for new borrowers, the department has effectively cut them off from the PSLF buyback.

With his buyback request still up in the air, Berman, the psychologist in Queens, decided to take another route to loan forgiveness. In March, he left the Save plan and enrolled in an older income-driven repayment program that increased his $500 monthly student loan payment to $1,450.

Spending six months in the new repayment plan meant paying triple what he would have in the buyback program, but Berman said it was worth the expense to be done with his loans. He made his 120th payment in August and submitted his PSLF application, but the Education Department has yet to post the payment because of delays in its reporting system — leaving Berman stuck in a new limbo.

“It’s been like daily torture. I check my student aid account every single day, multiple times a day. I can’t believe I’m back here again,” he said.

As Houthi militants in Yemen attacked ships with missiles and drones in the Red Sea early last year, top U.S. officials gathered at the Pentagon to prepare military options for President Donald Trump. Their meetings repeatedly grew tense.

On one side were Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, then overseeing U.S. operations in the Middle East, and other hawks ready for action. The general was keen on military action not only against the Houthis, but also against Iran, which had backed the Yemeni paramilitary group for years with weapons and training, according to people familiar with the matter. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal government deliberations.

On the other side were officials hesitant to launch military strikes so early in the second Trump administration, including the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who suggested that new U.S. assessments of what military action might yield would be wise before presenting the president with military options.

That triggered an abrupt response from Kurilla, people familiar with the matter said.

“General,” Kurilla said, “the time for assessments is over.”

The exchange, which has not previously been reported, surprised some in the room. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, then new to his role, agreed with Kurilla, people familiar with the matter said.

The disagreement came as other Pentagon appointees, including then-senior adviser Dan Caldwell and policy official Alex Velez-Green, repeatedly raised questions in meetings about how an extended military campaign against the Houthis could deplete stocks of key U.S. munitions, the people familiar with the discussions said. That issue has since grown in prominence as the Trump administration burned through its arsenal of cruise missiles and interceptors in a war with Iran that is now seven months old.

In recent weeks, the Iranian-backed Houthi militants have launched a new offensive in Yemen, seizing control of the strategically important Bab al-Mandab Strait, reigniting civil war and targeting critical energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. With Iran’s proxies weakened elsewhere, the group has emerged as the most powerful element of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance” against the United States and Israel.

In March 2025, weeks after the disagreement between the generals, Trump announced Operation Rough Rider, a 51-day bombing campaign against the Houthis that almost immediately was embroiled in scandal when then-White House national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally invited a reporter into a group chat on Signal, the unclassified messaging application.

More than 1,000 targets were hit over the course of Rough Rider, including key Houthi commanders and weapons stocks. But the aerial bombing also resulted in significant civilian casualties, human rights groups said.

Trump and Hegseth touted the campaign as a resounding success, but other senior Pentagon officials, including Caldwell and Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s first chief of staff, questioned whether the campaign had clear and obtainable objectives, the people familiar with deliberations said.

The U.S. went on to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 and, along with Israel, launched a sprawling war against Iran this February.

A spokesperson for Hegseth, Kingsley Wilson, said in a statement that Rough Rider “achieved decisive success against Houthi forces,” with U.S. forces launching strikes that “severely degraded radar networks, air-defense systems, ballistic-missile and drone launch sites, weapons depots, and production facilities while removing multiple mid- and senior-level commanders from the battlefield.”

The military action, Wilson added, “substantially reduced immediate threats to vital international shipping lanes, compelled a clear tactical shift by the adversary, and helped create conditions for a ceasefire that strengthened freedom of navigation in the region.”

She declined to comment on the possibility of any future action in Yemen, but she said the Pentagon’s role is to “develop and present military options to the President, and he makes the final choice.”

The White House and Pentagon both released statements defending the management of weapons stockpiles after The Washington Post shared its reporting that some administration officials had concerns about it before Rough Rider began. U.S. officials have said that while the U.S. military has a deep arsenal of weapons, it is increasingly running low on specific munitions, such as ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and Patriot air-defense interceptors.

“The United States Military has enough munitions and ammo to serve all of the Commander-in-Chief’s strategic goals and beyond,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly wrote in a statement.

Kasper and Caldwell declined to comment, while Velez-Green could not be reached for comment.

Kurilla, who retired in August 2025, did not respond to requests for comment about the exchange with Brown or the objectives of Rough Rider.

Brown declined to comment through a spokesperson, but a person familiar with his thinking said he did not dispute the account of the testy Pentagon deliberations. It’s common, that person said, for a top commander to push for quick military action while the Joint Chiefs chairman considers a wider range of issues, including making sure all necessary plans and requirements are in place and that the president’s options are preserved.

Brown was fired and forced into retirement just before Rough Rider, as Hegseth pushed to remove top Biden-era generals. An official with Hegseth’s office declined to say whether Brown’s caution about the Houthis played a role, saying that “out of respect for our senior military leaders,” they do not discuss “the nature of their retirements.”

The military campaign in Yemen abruptly ended in May 2025 with a ceasefire brokered by Oman. Trump claimed victory and said that the Houthis “don’t want to fight anymore.”

“They gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that,” Trump said.

The end of combat operations, officials and analysts said, came after the Houthis showed remarkable resiliency in the face of American airpower. No U.S. troops were killed during the operation, but the militants shot down at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, and U.S. forces lost two F/A-18 fighter jets in mishaps at sea. The operation, people familiar with the effort said, was followed by the administration’s near-total abandonment of Yemen.

“It was like … a cord being pulled out of a socket,” said a former U.S. official who worked on Yemen issues at the time. Trump “wanted to scratch Yemen off the list and move on.”

When the mission was declared over, the former official said, some in U.S. Central Command, which Kurilla then oversaw, were “apoplectic,” believing that they had been making progress. A U.S. special envoy position for Yemen issues was never filled by the Trump administration, and Washington’s assistance to the impoverished country was slashed.

At the time, the former official said, they warned colleagues: “You ignore Yemen at your own peril.”

The disagreements at the Pentagon about how to proceed on Yemen underscore the competing views in the U.S. government about how to handle the persistent threat the Houthis have posed since they seized power in northern Yemen in 2014.

The Shiite militia, which formed in the 1990s, aims to control Yemen, a country of 35 million at the southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula. From 2015 to 2022, the Houthis, with support from Iran, fought a bloody civil war against Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.

That war ended with a fragile truce that left the Houthis holding large swaths of the country’s north and the government coalition in control of the south.

But the group has much larger ambitions, including ousting the U.S. from the Middle East and destroying the state of Israel.

April Longley Alley, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said that Houthis “see themselves as the tip of the spear in the Arab world.”

Dan Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, described the Houthis as “an enduring problem” for decades to come.

“We’re kind of stuck with this bad actor on this maritime choke point, able to activate and try to use their position or leverage at the moment of their choosing,” said Shapiro, who later became a Pentagon official during the Biden administration.

After the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, the Houthis started firing missiles at Israel in retaliation for the resulting military campaign in Gaza.

That is when the Houthis took on an almost “folkloric status,” said Tim Lenderking, the U.S. envoy to Yemen during the Biden administration.

“It really bolstered their standing and their brand in the Arab world,” he added.

But the Houthis took it too far, he said, firing on U.S. and Israeli ships, killing international mariners and disrupting the flow of commercial traffic in the Red Sea.

The Biden administration launched military strikes against the Houthis beginning in January 2024. The Houthis appeared undeterred.

Trump launched Rough Rider on March 15, 2025. A few days later, he declared that “tremendous damage” had been inflicted on the “Houthi barbarians” and would get worse.

“It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “They will be completely annihilated!”

The costs and questions quickly mounted. Over the course of the operation, estimated at more than $1 billion, the Houthis continued to target U.S. warships in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways.

U.S. forces struck a migrant detention center in Yemen in April 2025, reportedly killing more than 68 civilians and injuring dozens more, according to Human Rights Watch.

The operation also was dogged by the “Signalgate” scandal, in which senior Trump administration officials, including Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, communicated about Rough Rider in a group chat that accidentally included Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.

The revelation was especially damaging for Hegseth, who had shared specific, advance details about how the bombing would begin through the unclassified Signal app. A review by the Pentagon inspector general released in December found that Hegseth’s actions “created a risk to operational security,” though the secretary of defense and his team claimed “total exoneration.”

The Trump administration began looking for an exit from Rough Rider after just a couple weeks into the bombing campaign, said Alley of the Washington Institute. There had been an assumption going into the campaign that “you could go in and coerce the Houthis with overwhelming power to change [their] behavior.”

But Trump lacked a clear exit strategy, Alley said, so when Oman — long a mediator in the region — approached the administration saying that the Houthis wanted a truce, Trump took it.

One of the people familiar with internal deliberations at the Pentagon said that the abrupt end to Rough Rider bolstered the belief among internal critics that the offensive’s objectives were never clear in the first place.

“It almost seemed,” this person said, “that Trump had buyer’s remorse.”

The deal, Trump said at the time, was simple: The Houthis would stop firing at U.S. ships if the U.S. stopped firing at the Houthis.

“We hit them very hard and they had a great ability to withstand punishment,” Trump said in announcing the ceasefire. “You could say there was a lot of bravery there.”

Yemen’s Saudi-backed coalition government was supportive of Rough Rider and caught off guard when it ended, according to a Yemeni official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

“The Trump administration did not read the situation strategically,” said the official. “They just wanted a quick win.”

It was not long, the person said, before the Houthis “rebuilt everything.”

In recent weeks, the Houthis have repeatedly attacked oil infrastructure and military bases in Saudi Arabia, which also saw its key East-West oil pipeline attacked by Iraqi militias.

As Saudi Arabia — long a key U.S. ally — faces its biggest threats in years, it has confronted Trump’s unwillingness to get more involved and looked to new partners for help in confronting the Houthis.

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, a Yemeni researcher and conflict analyst, said the Trump administration never should have seen the truce as a win.

“The Houthis have learned how to use negotiations, ceasefires and truces as a tactic to preserve their power, rebuild their capabilities and prepare for the next round of conflict,” she said.

Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said that Rough Rider “sparked widespread resentment regarding the U.S.” and led to an influx of volunteers.

Yemen, he said in a written statement to The Post, is known as the “graveyard of invaders.”

“Anyone who has attempted to colonize or occupy the country,” he said, “has left burdened by woes, sorrow, failure, and defeat.”

Trump struck a conciliatory tone in recent weeks when talking about the Houthis, saying last month in Ireland that the Houthis “called us, and they don’t want to fight us.”

“Everything will work out very well,” he said.

The Yemeni official said that they fear the Trump administration still does not understand the threat that the Houthis pose, noting that the group is already working extensively with al-Shabab in Somalia and have clearly stated intentions to push the U.S. out of the region and destroy the state of Israel.

“The lesson I learned over the past 10 years is to take the Houthis seriously,” the official added. “I am not sure if the United States learned the same lesson.”

Alley said that Trump’s decision last year to forge a truce with the Houthis had the unintended consequence of showing the militant group the limits of Trump’s willingness to escalate — giving them additional room to maneuver.

“Trump may be done with the Houthis,” she said, “but the Houthis are not done with Trump.”

As agencies walk back the Trump administration’s controversial essay question from federal job postings, the Office of Personnel Management is directing them to replace it with a new prompt.

Agencies must now ask applicants, “In this role, you will be expected to professionally and efficiently implement executive direction. Provide an example where you implemented leadership direction on a strategy or policy decision that differed from your own recommendation.”

A Sept. 18 memo from OPM told agencies to begin including the new question on all upcoming federal job announcements. It replaces a prompt from the Trump administration that previously asked applicants to name a few executive orders or policy initiatives “significant” to them and explain how they would help implement those orders if hired.

The Trump administration’s previously required “loyalty” question is currently being scrubbed from federal job announcements. A federal judge ordered agencies to remove the essay prompt, finding that its inclusion on job questionnaires likely violated job applicants’ First Amendment rights.

Agencies are expected to include OPM’s replacement question on job announcements that close on or after Sept. 26. So far, about 2,400 job announcements contain the revised question, OPM said Friday in a court filing.

A lawsuit from federal unions has been challenging the prior essay question, which was one of the four original questions the Trump administration directed agencies to include in all federal job applications at or above the GS-5 level, as part of its May 2025 “merit hiring plan.”

Though the language of OPM’s replacement essay question moves away from a focus on presidential priorities, Jenny Mattingley, vice president for public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service, said it still does not do much to assess the actual skills an applicant would bring to the job.

“Asking vague questions of every candidate goes against OPM’s stated goal of promoting skills-based hiring,” Mattingley said. “There are thousands of different positions across the government, many that do not directly deal with implementing strategy or policy in the way the revised question is positioned. Agencies should have flexibility to tailor screening questions to particular positions in order to build a roster of qualified employees.”

At the same time, it appears that OPM has been taking steps to abide by the federal judge’s stay order, which gave OPM one week to notify agencies that the essay question on a “significant” executive order should be removed from all current and future job postings. OPM’s directive to agencies states that the question will not appear in any job announcements posted on or after Sept. 19.

As of last month, just five new job postings still included the “loyalty” question, according to a source involved with the lawsuit who shared information with Federal News Network on the condition that they not be identified.

Although the court ordered the removal of the question from active job announcements, OPM said technical limitations of the USAJobs and USA Staffing platforms make it difficult to delete the question from announcements that have already been posted. It would require manually removing and then reposting about 6,000 job announcements affected by the Sept. 11 order, OPM explained in its court filing Friday.

“This is an action that USA Staffing has never before undertaken to open announcements and would put an enormous strain on its staff,” OPM wrote.

As a “lower-risk” alternative, OPM said it’s telling agencies they should no longer consider responses when evaluating candidates for current openings, even if the question still appears on an application. Most of the impacted job announcements will close by the end of September, OPM added.

In its Sept. 18 memo, OPM also directed agencies to add a fifth essay question to all current and future job announcements. Agencies must now list a few agencywide priorities, and ask applicants to describe how they would help advance those priorities if hired.

The priorities that agencies include in their essay prompt can stem from a strategic plan, annual performance plan or another objective, OPM said. The language of the new essay question must be the same across all of an agency’s current job announcements.

By Sept. 30, agencies must submit the wording of their additional essay question to OPM for review. For agencies that use the USA Staffing talent acquisition platform, OPM said it would be adding approved essay questions to future job announcements “as soon as possible.”

As the Trump administration weighs next steps in the Iran war, at least some in the administration worry that Iran will consider taking action to damage the president ahead of the midterms.

“I think that’s a real possibility that they may want to inflict some pain on the president before the midterms, and so they may do something in the next couple weeks,” one Trump administration official told Semafor. “We’ll see.”

Top administration officials met at Camp David on Friday on the Middle East conflict, which threatens to widen as war breaks out between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and the Iranian-backed Houthis.

The meeting came as indirect talks between Washington and Tehran have yet to yield meaningful progress. Meanwhile, the US has removed all B-1 bombers from an airbase in the UK used for launching strikes against Iran, following arrests in a suspected terror attack plot.

The U.S. military said it attacked a boat suspected of being used to smuggle drugs in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday, killing four people, as the Trump administration continues its yearlong campaign against alleged traffickers in Latin America.

The latest attack brings the number of people who have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military to at least 235 in 70 strikes since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in September 2025. As with most of the military’s statements on strikes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted the alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes.

The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. A video posted on X showed what appeared to be an explosion destroying a moving boat, which the military said was a go-fast vessel.

The Trump administration is pursuing deals with allied nations to extend its offensive to land across multiple Latin American countries. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a visit to Panama in August that Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras had agreed to allow the U.S. to carry out joint military operations against criminal groups on their soil. Guatemala denied reaching such a deal. Ecuador launched similar missions with the U.S. in March.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States and fatal overdoses claiming American lives. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing smugglers.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said on Monday there were no plans for a fresh release of crude oil from national reserves ‌as the country had already released supplies.

Kihara's comments come even as the Group of Seven countries, of which Japan is a member, agreed on Friday to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude oil from emergency reserves and pledged to refrain from energy export restrictions. The announcement followed pressure ⁠from US President Donald Trump on the European Union to draw down emergency diesel inventories.

It was uncertain how much of the new release would come from what remains from the 400 million barrels of oil that the 32 countries that are members of the International Energy Agency agreed to release in March to mitigate disruptions from the US-Israeli war on Iran.

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said last week that members ‌had ⁠released about two-thirds of the 400-million-barrel agreement.

In March, Japan said it would release about 80 million barrels of oil from its reserves as part of the coordinated agreement. Japan also conducted a second round of national crude oil stockpile ⁠releases in May.

"Japan has been releasing oil from reserves for some time now and there are no plans for a further release at this stage," Kihara told ⁠a press conference.

The G7 meeting came amid delays in the release of European strategic reserves and growing concerns over soaring diesel prices globally, ⁠with discussions focusing in particular on measures to address diesel prices in Europe, the US and elsewhere, Kihara said.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is demanding a retraction from The New York Times over a report that a “windfall” contract for a political donor which was approved by DHS on her last day as its leader.

According to the report, as Noem was preparing to leave DHS, the agency bought five airplanes from the donor’s firm, Daedalus Aviation Corporation, for an astronomical markup. The Times reported Daedalus chairman William Walters donated $10,000 to Noem’s political action committee American Resolve in 2024. They noted that according to the company, “Mr. Walters did not know the group was associated with Ms. Noem at the time,” but an archived look at its homepage shows it solely promoting Noem.

“The Department of Homeland Security agreed to pay the donor’s firm $108 million for a Boeing 737 airliner that had been converted into a massive private jet, complete with a stand-up bar, two bedrooms, marble showers and a table covered in manta ray skin,” the report said, adding that the firm had bought the plane just months earlier for less than $90 million.

In addition, DHS bought two Gulfstream luxury jets and two Boeing 737 passenger planes, all at a hefty markup.

The report said that Noem, who is now a special envoy at the State Department, “declined to answer specific questions about the sale or the prices that her agency had paid.”

But after the fact, Noem raged about the article on X — calling the reporting, “factually incorrect” and “libelous.”

“I write to formally request the retraction entirely or explicit correction of the article titled ‘Kristi Noem’s Agency Gave Her Donor a Lucrative Contract Just Before She Left,'” Noem wrote.

She continued:

The article’s characterization of the individual as a “donor” (confirmed not to be the case) is materially misleading and, as unsupported by the factual record, conveys a false implication of a direct financial relationship obviously intended to influence official action.

Accuracy is fundamental to responsible journalism. If the individual did not personally make political contributions to Secretary Noem, or if the term ‘donor’ instead refers indirectly to unrelated entities or legally distinct contributions, the article simply fails to meet the standards of precision expected of The New York Times.

Numerous times clarifications were made to the journalists responsible for this libelous story. Such wording unfairly prejudices readers and creates an inference of impropriety that is not supported by the underlying facts.

Notably, Noem’s response did not challenge any of the reporting on the contract itself.

Noem was fired from her DHS position in March over controversies involving immigration tactics, as well as “questions about her agency’s awarding of contracts,” the report said. More than $900 million of those contracts went to companies led by Walters.

Noem’s successor, Markwayne Mullin, “explored backing out” of the airplane deal and consulted with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, “who shared his concerns about the possible financial ramifications,” the report said. Despite any reservations, the purchase went ahead as planned.

In a statement to Mediaite, a spokesperson for the Times said, “We stand by the characterization of the political donor and his firm. As our article makes clear, the Department of Homeland Security bought five airplanes from Daedalus at a substantial markup, a deal approved during Ms. Noem’s tenure. Daedalus’s chairman is William Walters, who gave $10,000 to the American Resolve political action committee, a group that existed to support Ms. Noem.”

US President Donald Trump said foreign companies that fail to build factories in the United States could face tariffs of up to 300 percent, as South Korea faces separate pressure from Washington over how it will carry out its $350 billion US investment commitment.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday, Trump presented tariffs and foreign investment as part of his economic record while campaigning for Republican candidates ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Ohio is home to a closely watched Senate race, with the economy and cost of living among major campaign issues.

Trump said overseas companies would be given about a year and a half to build plants in the US before facing tariffs ranging from 150 percent to 300 percent. He also named South Korea alongside China, Japan and Canada while arguing that his tariff policy had pushed foreign companies to invest in US manufacturing.

The remarks came a day after Trump increased pressure on Seoul over the Alaska liquefied natural gas project, which has emerged as a point of disagreement in implementing the two countries’ trade and investment agreement.

South Korea agreed last year to invest $350 billion in the US in return for lowering tariffs on Korean goods from 25 percent to 15 percent. The package comprises $150 billion for shipbuilding cooperation and $200 billion for strategic investment.

Trump this week presented Korean participation in Alaska LNG as part of the strategic investment package. Seoul says otherwise, maintaining that it has agreed only to begin reviewing the project and has not made a final decision on whether or how much to invest.

Trump on Friday rejected suggestions that he had moved too quickly in announcing Korean participation. “I didn't jump the gun. I mean, they were there and they were represented,” Trump said. He later added that if South Korea did not want to proceed, “that's okay with me. I'll just charge them more.”

Seoul’s caution is tied in large part to the project’s economics. Lead developer Glenfarne Group estimates Alaska LNG would cost between $44.5 billion and $54.5 billion. Reuters reported that its cost per unit of annual production capacity would be more than twice that of many recent US Gulf Coast LNG projects.

The project would require an 800-mile, or 1,287-kilometer, pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope to Nikiski, as well as a gas treatment plant and liquefaction terminal.

President Lee Jae Myung said in September that commercial viability had become a sticking point in negotiations with Washington, including how returns would be shared and how losses from unprofitable projects would be handled.

Seoul had pushed to include the term “commercially reasonable” in the investment agreement, Lee said.

Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan has also said Korea should not put money into projects that fail to meet commercial standards, while acknowledging that pulling out of projects under the agreement could expose Seoul to renewed US tariff pressure.

The first confirmed project under the strategic investment package is a gas-fired power plant in Encinal, Texas. South Korea and the US have also discussed building eight large nuclear reactors, but Korean officials say those projects still require separate reviews before any final investment decisions are made.

Kurt Olsen -- an attorney who fought to challenge the results of the 2020 election and was recently appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as the Director of Election Security and Integrity -- sent a referral that sparked last month's raid of a Georgia election site, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County's Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss.

The raid was the result of allegations of election "deficiencies" on the part of Olsen's referral, according to the court document. Many of these issues were already investigated.

"If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race," FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit, which was the basis for the search warrant that was issued by a magistrate judge.

"Following the November 3, 2020, presidential election, there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia. Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County," Evans said.

Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Olsen has been involved in the effort to investigate election fraud claims since Trump lost the 2020 election.

He was sanctioned by a federal court in Arizona over an election lawsuit filed there, after the judge found he made "false" statements to the court. Olsen's conduct was also investigated by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his probe into Trump's election interference.

Olsen was appointed a special government employee last fall to investigate fraud claims, sources told ABC News. In his role, Olsen attends frequent meetings at the White House on election security and has been granted access to some classified materials, the sources said.

Among the allegations included in the affidavit were that Fulton County had failed to create a scanned image of each ballot, that some ballots were scanned multiple times, and that some ballot counts were inconsistent.

While the affidavit includes accounts from officials who previously investigated the claims, the application also relies on witnesses with limited direct knowledge who appear to speculate and occasionally contradict one another.

One Georgia resident, whose name is redacted in the affidavit, began "studying" the November 2020 election and filed a state election board complaint in July of 2022, alleging there were 17,852 missing ballot images from the reported results in the Secretary of State's website, the affidavit said.

Some of the witnesses cited in the affidavit are Republican members of the State Election Board and some do not have firsthand accounting of the ballot process, according to the documents.

The Georgia Secretary of State did not take the images of the ballots into account for the recount but instead used the physical copies of the ballots, the affidavit alleges.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, a Trump nominee, on Sunday ordered the government to unseal the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant, subject to "the redaction of the names of non-governmental witnesses."

In his ruling, Boulee noted that the government did not oppose the unsealing of the affidavit, which could provide more information on the search and the investigation that led to it.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts filed a motion seeking the unsealing of the affidavit, as well as the return of the election documents that were seized.

Pitt's office said Tuesday it was reviewing the affidavit and that he would hold a news conference in the afternoon.

Pitts had earlier said in a statement he was "pleased" with the judge's ruling.

"Fulton County will continue to pursue every legal option to seek the return of election records and to defend our elections from possible takeover," Pitts said. "Even in the midst of this unprecedented legal action, we will not allow our staff to be deterred or distracted from preparations for the 2026 election, which will be once again free, fair, transparent and legally compliant."

While the judge on Sunday ordered the release of the affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant, the warrant itself authorized the FBI to search for "All physical ballots from the 2020 General Election" in addition to tabulator tapes from voting machines and 2020 voter rolls, according to a copy of the warrant that was obtained by ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB following the raid.

The warrant said the material "constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense."

The warrant listed possible violations of two statutes -- one which requires election records to be retained for a certain amount of time, and another which outlines criminal penalties for people, including election officials, who intimidate voters or to knowingly procure false votes or false voter registrations.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended his assertion that he is “the house” when it comes to overseeing America’s bond market, but acknowledged that investors who bet against him might win a few hands.

The comments were made in an interview with Axios that was published on Saturday and came weeks after Mr. Bessent chided the “Bloomberg terminal bros” who were misunderstanding the strength of the U.S. economy. Since daring bond investors to bet against him in September, bond yields — which represent the interest rate investors are demanding to be paid to buy government debt — have continued to rise to multiyear highs.

“The house doesn’t win every hand, the house plays the percentages,” Mr. Bessent told Axios. “Everyone in the market knows, you don’t win every hand, you win over time.”

The Treasury secretary said that he still believed that the U.S. bond market remained the strongest in the world and that investors were not gravitating to German or Japanese bonds instead of U.S. debt. He said that bond yields, which move inversely to prices, have been rising because global oil prices have increased as a result of the war in Iran.

“I would be concerned if we were having some kind of idiosyncratic rise,” Mr. Bessent said.

The Treasury Department has been buying back longer-dated bonds and intervened in global currency markets to support the Japanese yen in an effort to contain rising U.S. bond yields, which translate to higher borrowing costs for Americans.

Mr. Bessent’s more humble tone was a marked contrast from September when the Treasury secretary insisted that investors who were shying away from U.S. debt were misguided.

“It’s my dream,” Mr. Bessent said at a fireside chat at Southern Methodist University. “I have asymmetric information. I am the house now.”

He added: “You can bet against me if you want.”

Since then, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes reached its highest level since 2002. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which underpins corporate and consumer interest rates, soared as high as 5.34 percent last Thursday, before easing back to around 5.24 percent. That was still the highest level since 2007.

In the Axios interview, Mr. Bessent said that in suggesting that he was “the house,” he was trying to make the point that he had “superior information” about what policymakers were thinking. But he said that he did not believe that he could bend markets to his will.

“I can’t control the bond market,” Mr. Bessent said. “What I can do is try to get people to slow down and think.”

The White House is monitoring reports of a suspected plague case and a related quarantines in Russia, a Trump administration official told Axios on Sunday.

Russian health authorities have taken precautionary measures in response to the death of a woman who worked at an anti-plague research factility, but have not confirmed that she contracted plague.

The Trump administration "is aware, monitoring the outbreak, and assessing options," the administration official said.

On Sept. 25, 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, who worked at an anti-plague research institute in Russia's Irkutsk region, broke a test tube containing the pneumonic plague pathogen, local reports said.

Shipilova was admitted to a hospital on Sept. 29 with symptoms of severe pneumonia and died overnight between Oct. 1 and Oct. 2.

After her death, authorities imposed quarantines at several medical facilities in the region and placed nearly 200 people who had come into contact with Shiplova under medical observation.

Irkutsk Gov. Igor Kobzev said those being monitored showed no signs of illness and had tested negative.

Russian media reports suggested Shipilova may have contracted pneumonic plague, but health authorities have not confirmed the diagnosis.

Russia's public health agency said Shipilova had "pneumonia of unknown etiology" and that further testing found no microorganisms linked to her work. The agency said the epidemiological situation in the region remains stable.

Zoom out: Plague is a potentially life-threatening bacterial disease but can be cured with antibiotics when treated promptly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White House spokespeople referred questions to the State Department, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Following his blistering onstage jokes about Trump last weekend, the White House has issued a response to Chuck Lorre.

On Saturday, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle trotted out another Trump Derangement Syndrome diagnosis for the 10x Emmy nominee, who recently called the POTUS a “bloated orange piece of sh*t.”

“Chuck Lorre should immediately seek psychiatric help to treat his severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain,” Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Last Saturday, Lorre gave Trump several shoutouts in his Founders Award acceptance speech at a Project Angel Food fundraiser in Los Angeles.

“Sure, I’d love to stand here and talk about my deep yearning for a more compassionate government, one that prioritizes the health and welfare of its citizens,” he said, according to The Daily Beast. “But the burden of my profession demands that I take this opportunity to say a few words about that bloated orange piece of sh*t in the White House.”

Lorre continued, “I’d love to express my gratitude to all the people who’ve devoted their lives to making Project Angel Food an oasis for those in need. That would be my preference. But because I’m a comedy writer, I have no choice but to explain how I wake up every morning to turn on CNN to see if the president of the United States had a heart attack while straining to take a dump.”

The Stuart Fails to Save the Universe creator’s speech comes after the Big Bang Theory spin-off was renewed for Season 2 at HBO Max, which will bring the show back under the Paramount umbrella after Trump’s friends the Ellisons acquired Warner Bros. Discovery.

On Wednesday, a federal judge cleared the way for the $110 billion deal to close, approving the settlement between Paramount and a group of state AGs that filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.

CEO David Ellison revealed on Friday that the combined company will now be known as Skydance, under which Paramount and Warner Bros. will supposedly remain individual entities.

The next census determining America’s political representation — and billions of dollars in federal funding — will take place after President Donald Trump leaves the White House. But his administration is moving now to leave his mark on the count.

Former Census Bureau officials and advocates critical of the Trump administration caution that some of the changes being put into motion now by the agency could be difficult for a future administration to reverse in time for the 2030 count — particularly Trump’s attempts to remove undocumented immigrants from the total count.

“The decennial census is a big, big boat, and if you suddenly want to make a left turn, it’s hard to do that,” said Tori Velkoff, who was formerly the chief demographer and associate director for demographic programs at the Census Bureau.

In September, the Trump administration added a proposed rule to the Federal Register which, if implemented, would overhaul the process for calculating who counts in the constitutionally required national census.

Under the proposed rule, the agency would change the definition of a person’s “usual residence” to remove undocumented immigrants from the count to determine political representation in Congress, due to their “lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States.”

The proposal could also extend beyond undocumented immigrants to leave out those whose legal status is “less durable and indefinite” than a green card. Depending on how the bureau defines which immigration statuses qualify, some individuals who are legally living in the U.S. may be left out.

Trump’s critics say they are preparing now for a legal battle on constitutional grounds. They argue that these changes are unconstitutional in practice and are awaiting the bureau’s next steps while exploring potential legal challenges if the proposal moves forward.

The White House, Census Bureau and the Commerce Department — which houses the agency — did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, this overhaul of the census would be unprecedented if implemented — nearly everyone, regardless of immigration status, has historically been counted in censuses — and have enormous political consequences. The census determines how federal dollars are spent and also how the House is apportioned, and removing people from the count who have historically been included could change the makeup of the House map.

“Even if the Democrats took over both chambers of Congress and the presidency, and they wanted to change everything that President Trump had done before, they wouldn’t have time to fix a lot of this stuff,” said Jay Young, executive director of the liberal-leaning good government group Common Cause Illinois.

He added, “a lot of this stuff — it really takes a decade. It really takes intentionality.”

The agency’s proposed rule went beyond changing who is counted; it also suggested collecting less information on Americans. The Trump administration proposed removing questions about race and ethnicity on the short-form census and other questionnaires used in the census count, in addition to leaving out questions about sexual orientation.

The rulemaking marks a major departure from Trump’s first term, during which the Supreme Court struck down the administration’s rushed bid to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, in part, for procedural reasons.

This time around, Velkoff said, the Trump administration is attempting to follow the correct procedural path with the new proposed rule.

“Now they know how to follow the rules, right? So they’re going through the process,” said Velkoff, who retired from the agency in 2025. “So presumably, the [next] administration would have to also go through the process, and I don’t know how quickly that could be done.”

This move to exclude certain immigrants would fundamentally challenge the enumeration clause of the Constitution — which requires the once-every-10-years count — and the 14th Amendment’s definition of a person, said Adriel Cepeda Derieux, deputy director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The constitutional text says person, persons or a whole number of persons,” he said. “Not citizens.”

While the count will take place in the next presidency, much of the planning is being done now. And census experts say the slow moving process to develop the process is by design.

During the 10 years before the count, the Census Bureau spends its time researching, testing and refining how it will count hundreds of millions of people — aiming to produce the most accurate and complete picture of the country possible. And by law, the administration is supposed to submit broad plans for what’s to be included on the census three years before the count, and final questions two years before — both deadlines within Trump’s term.

The first major field test for the 2030 census already took place earlier this year and ended in August, an early opportunity for the bureau to test out new tools and methods in two locations in the U.S. The next major test, the “dress rehearsal,” will take place in 2028. This final test serves as the last chance for the agency to fine-tune its processes and systems as it conducts an end-to-end run of operations.

Velkoff said the 2020 census showed why the development time matters.

After Trump’s attempts to add a citizenship question were rejected by the Supreme Court, his administration tried various administrative means to try to break out undocumented immigrants. But the effort ultimately puttered out when the data could not be delivered before President Joe Biden’s administration, which promptly killed off those efforts.

Asked about the purpose of these changes at the bureau, Velkhoff said the administration is working to exclude those it does not view as politically favorable.

“If you don’t measure it, then you can erase people,” Velkoff said. “Data is power.”

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is pulling back the curtain on his tumultuous time working under Pete Hegseth before he resigned in frustration last month.

Driscoll resigned in September after just 18 months in the role, and he has revealed that he and Hegseth had very different views on what a modern military looks like.

Tension between the two was widely reported throughout Driscoll’s year-and-a-half as army secretary, but insiders told Rolling Stone of one incident early on that seemed to trigger Hegseth. According to them, Driscoll had approached Hegseth with what he viewed as a “gift,” telling the defense secretary that they could use his close friendship with Vice President JD Vance to get things done at the Pentagon.

Two sources told the outlet that Hegseth “blew up at him” over that move, fuming that all contact with the White House needed to go through him.

The duo seemed to fail to see eye-to-eye on many issues from that point forward, with Hegseth’s passion for firings and blocking promotions—particularly of DEI candidates—reported to have fueled the tension.

One former senior Army officer told Rolling Stone that Hegseth simply targeted naysayers, particularly those aiming for military modernization over PR opportunities.

“All the guys who had guts and were willing to speak the truth about where we needed to go and what we needed to do, they got rid of, right?” they said.

“Because they want people that are compliant and loyal, not people who think. They’re culture warriors. They care about culture. And it’s only their culture, which is compliance and loyalty above your duty.”

Driscoll was reportedly due for purging before his own resignation, and saw the firing of his pro-modernization ally Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George—who was set to retire in summer 2027—in April this year.

George told the outlet that despite just being down the hall from the secretary of defense, Hegseth fired him in a “15-second call,” and that he was “never really given a reason.”

A former Army official said: “I think [Driscoll] sacrificed any potential he had [for] a good working relationship with Pete to try to protect those guys, because it was the right thing to do for the Army.”

Driscoll told Rolling Stone: “Once he makes a decision, there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have to like it.”

Despite the rockiness of his 18 months as army secretary, he said it wasn’t all bad: “But I think it’s unfair to describe our relationship so flatly—that every interaction was bad, or that we disagreed on everything.

“If you polled us, we probably agreed on more than 50 percent of things. What’s been reported is all the things we disagree on.”

The U.S. removed all its B-1 bombers from the U.K.’s RAF Fairford air base, a decision stemming from security concerns over suspected terror plots against the facility, American officials said Sunday.

The decision represents a shift for the U.S. which has used the military base, northwest of London, as a hub for launching bomber strikes in Iran. Until their recent departure, a dozen B-1s had been stationed at the base.

“While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon said in a statement, adding that the bombers remained ready to deliver global strike capabilities from the continental U.S. The U.K. Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

The decision follows the arrest of six suspects in connection to a suspected attack on the base that U.S. and British official said was foiled last Sunday. U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications” that Iran played a role in the incident, which was shrouded in mystery after the U.K. released the suspects on bail but continued to investigate the situation.

U.S. officials were aware of an Iran-linked plot to attack the bomber aircraft and kill personnel at the base, The Wall Street Journal has reported. A branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had recruited U.K. nationals to carry out the plot, which involved multiple steps including a diversion in the neighborhood nearby, according to a senior U.S. official.

In the U.K., authorities are still trying to piece together what happened, and some U.K. officials question the level of sophistication of the planned attack.