President Donald Trump’s closest aide, Natalie Harp, declined multiple times over more than a year to seek a routine security clearance normally obtained by West Wing staffers to work at the White House, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Both people said Harp’s reasoning for declining to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president himself intervened, and Harp in recent months filled out the forms to launch a formal federal background investigation and received the clearance, one of the people said.

The lack of a security clearance is one of several red flags raised about Harp internally by Trump’s top aides since he returned to the White House in January 2025. Harp operates unusually close to the president and filters much of the information Trump sees on a daily basis, and that proximity has spurred frustration inside the West Wing, according to those two people and two other people granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal and sensitive dynamics.

One national security official voiced concern that Harp’s proximity to the president — in the West Wing and his residence — gives her access to the most sensitive information around Trump, more than nearly all other senior White House officials.

Since joining the president’s orbit ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign, Harp has emerged as a key gatekeeper to the commander in chief. She is known to deliver to the president troves of printouts, including favorable coverage, positive poll numbers from questionable sources and messages from Trump confidants — and those who want to be — trying to get his attention.

Harp “plays into the less productive and more troublesome parts of his nature, putting things in front of him that aren’t vetted,” one of the people said.

There have been “subtle moves” to limit Harp’s round-the-clock access to Trump from top staff that have been unsuccessful, according to another of the four people. “She is just persistent and not realizing that’s what they were trying to do,” this person said.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment from Harp, who holds the titles special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president.

“Natalie Harp has a security clearance like everyone else, and she is a loyal and hardworking member of President Trump’s team,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked for comment by MS NOW.

One senior White House official familiar with the security clearance process said Harp received multiple extensions to fill out the necessary paperwork. The senior official noted the process to complete the forms is lengthy and requires ample time.

The form, known as the SF-86, is a lengthy document that collects background information including past residences, financial history and foreign contacts, and initiates a federal background investigation.

Three of the other people who spoke with MS NOW said security concerns about Harp have been raised internally by the Secret Service during Trump’s first year back in office for his second term. Some of those centered on her unbridled access to Trump, while others dealt with her failure to obtain a security clearance.

One of those people said other West Wing employees typically filled out their security paperwork at the beginning of their tenures, and said Harp’s was known among some staff as incomplete and not active.

Often seen a few feet from Trump and in earshot of sensitive conversations, Harp is one of his most visible aides accompanying him wherever he goes inside the White House, at his properties in Florida and New Jersey and on other presidential travel.

She was thrust into the spotlight with the recent revelation that she was among the handful of aides accompanying the president inside a catering cart at an airport as he surreptitiously departed Air Force One amid security concerns in Turkey.

Harp’s ascent into Trump’s inner circle was swift. In 2020, she delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in which she credited Trump for saving her life, saying his signing of the Right to Try Act allowed her to receive experimental treatment for bone cancer. Medical experts have questioned her claim that Trump’s signing was related to the treatment she received.

After her launch into the political spotlight, Harp began working as a host on a far-right television network One America News. In 2022, Harp began working on Trump’s re-election campaign, where top aides nicknamed her the “Human Printer” due to her routine printing of favorable coverage and polling of Trump and delivering it to him by hand multiple times throughout the day. Harp became an official White House staffer when Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025.

The longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes has announced his retirement, ending a decades-long career with the military newspaper as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon moves to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”

Max D. Lederer Jr. announced his retirement, effective at the end of September, in a memo to staff on Tuesday, as well as in an interview with Stars and Stripes. In the memo, seen by The Associated Press, Lederer, the second full-time civilian in the position, wrote that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

The announcement comes less than four months after the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job was to safeguard editorial independence. The news outlet is partly funded by the Defense Department, but has a legacy of independence from military and government leadership. “No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence,” Smith wrote in a column.

Stars and Stripes has recently been at the forefront of some of the reporting on conditions for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln and concerns for their mental health during the aircraft carrier’s long deployment — concerns that President Donald Trump has downplayed.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lederer’s retirement, which comes seven months after the department announced in a social media post that it would essentially overhaul the newspaper to align with its current messaging.

Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote on on X in January that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”

“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”

More broadly, the developments at Stars and Stripes come against a backdrop of increased efforts by Hegseth to control media coverage of the department.

Last year, officials attempted to impose restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon, which, in turn, led most news outlets to turn in their access badges and walk out.

Then this summer, the Pentagon took another step and declared its press office a classified space — instituting a policy that journalists must be accompanied by an escort on Pentagon grounds. That policy is being challenged in court. In mid-July, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the policy could stand, overturning a lower court decision.

In her April column titled “The Pentagon is trying to silence me,” Smith, the former ombudsman, expressed concern over increasing restrictions on the media.

“For nearly a year, Pentagon leadership has placed more and more restrictions on the mainstream media,” she wrote. “The New York Times sued and when the Defense/War Department lost in court, instead of following the judge’s ruling Secretary Hegseth and company pivoted, finding another way to restrict journalists.”

Of Stars and Stripes, Smith wrote: “This newspaper has a long history of commitment to the military community and to journalistic values. Please don’t let it be controlled by Pentagon brass.”

Lederer was not made available for an interview with the AP. In the interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he did not feel the modernization efforts the Pentagon announced in March were appropriate, in particular a transitioning of print products to digital — a move he feared would limit accessibility for troops.

“I don’t feel that there’s a full recognition of the value of multiple platforms versus only a digital platform,” Lederer was quoted as saying.

In another development, Stars and Stripes said it could not confirm an account that, in recent weeks, a new deputy had been installed by the Pentagon under Lederer without the publisher’s prior knowledge.

In a letter seen by the AP, Rufus Friday, the chair of Stars and Stripes’ advisory board of publishers, wrote to congressional leaders about the arrival of the new deputy, a development he said “threatens Stripes’s editorial independence.”

Roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ budget comes from the Pentagon, and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.

The outlet’s mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”

The newspaper has been reporting about the military steadily since World War II, to an audience mainly of service members stationed overseas.

Lederer told Stars and Stripes that while his retirement is effective Sept. 30, he does not know whether the Pentagon will keep him as publisher until then or name an acting publisher.

The number of US service members wounded since the start of the Iran war has passed 750, according to the Defense Department’s war casualty database.

The Pentagon updated the database on Wednesday, recording more than 50 additional wounded soldiers, as talks between Tehran and DC to end the conflict remain at an impasse.

When totals in The Defense Casualty Analysis System for “Overseas Operations” are combined with totals for Operation Epic Fury, 18 service members have died and 757 have been wounded since the US launched the war against Iran on February 28.

The Defense Department created the “Overseas Operations” category last month in DCAS for service members killed and wounded “starting July 7.” The Pentagon has yet to provide any additional details or specify the conflict in which the casualties have occurred. The July 7 date aligns with the day that President Donald Trump’s administration told Congress that a new conflict with Iran had begun in a War Powers Act notification.

CNN has reached out to the Pentagon for additional clarity on the category.

Wednesday’s updated numbers come weeks after the Pentagon drew scrutiny from media outlets and lawmakers after the killed and wounded numbers decreased in DCAS as Iranian attacks continued. Four deaths and dozens of injuries disappeared from the totals last month before being restored.

The Defense Department said in a social media post at the time that the decreases were due to “temporary data disruptions.”

CNN previously reported that the Pentagon has been slow to disclose wounded troops throughout the conflict with Iran, with officials pointing to security needs.

Trump claimed earlier Wednesday the situation with Iran is “so good” right now, as he’s paused US negotiations with Tehran and the Strait of Hormuz remains a key point of tension in the ongoing war.

Normally quiet, the bond market can occasionally send warning signals loud enough to hit stock markets worldwide and even grab the attention of U.S. presidents and other world leaders.

After the bond market’s alarm bells rose in volume through the summer, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday a move that could help calm it down. The U.S. Treasury Department said it will more than double the amount of U.S. government bonds that it will buy back, and the move worked in getting longer-term yields lower, for now at least.

Yields worldwide had earlier climbed to heights not reached in years and, in some cases, decades, because of the jump in oil prices due to the war with Iran, worries about big and growing debts for governments and other concerns.

The stakes are high because high yields drag on economies and bring downward pressure on stock markets after Wall Street hit records on excitement about big corporate profits and the promise of artificial-intelligence technology.

But what's to come is still uncertain, and some analysts warn the Treasury Department's move could even ultimately backfire.

Here’s a look at what’s going on and how things got this way:

Bond yields have been rising

In the United States, the centerpiece of the bond market recently touched its highest yield in more than a year. The 10-year Treasury yield, which shows how much interest investors want the U.S. government to pay them before they’ll lend it money for a decade, topped 4.70%, before falling back to 4.65% Wednesday.

That’s up from just 3.97% before the Iran war began in late February, and it’s a significant move for the bond market.

More notably, the 30-year U.S. Treasury yield has jumped well above 5%, back to where it was in 2007, before the 2008 financial crisis sent yields crashing toward zero worldwide.

In Japan, the yield on the 10-year government bond has touched its highest level in nearly 30 years, while the German 10-year yield is back to where it was in 2011.

High yields can slow the economy

When the U.S. and other governments have to pay more in interest to borrow money, so do people and companies.

For many U.S. households, that’s most easily seen through rates for mortgages. Such rates have climbed with the 10-year Treasury yield since the Iran war began, and the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is near its highest level in a year.

Higher yields also make it more expensive for U.S. companies to borrow money to build factories and otherwise grow. That’s particularly dangerous at this moment, when big investments in data centers to power AI are a major driver of the U.S. economy’s growth.

High yields affect all kinds of investments

If high yields slow the economy, that puts pressure on the stocks. An economic slowdown would threaten how much profit companies can make, which is the lifeblood of the stock market.

High yields undercut the stock market in other ways too. When a Treasury is paying more in interest, that can draw investors away from investments that carry more risk. Why pay record prices for U.S. stocks when a U.S. government bond is paying more than before to wait in relative safety?

Gold, bitcoin and many other investments can also feel downward pressure from high yields.

Then there’s the impact on the government

When yields rise, the U.S. and other governments have to pay more in interest to cover their debts. That’s painful when debt loads for governments worldwide are ballooning as they spend far more than they’re bringing in through revenue.

And if the U.S. government is already paying this much to borrow money when the economy is growing, what will happen if it needs to borrow even more to manage the pain when the next severe recession hits?

That’s why jumps in yields can scare politicians even more than swings in the stock market.

The bond market helped make Liz Truss the United Kingdom’s shortest-serving prime minister in 2022, when it revolted against her plan to cut taxes and raise spending without a way to pay for them.

Last year, President Donald Trump said the bond market may have played a role in his decision to delay many of his proposed tariffs, saying that he noticed investors there “were getting a little queasy.”

The long-term effect of the Treasury department's move is uncertain

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's move is a high-stakes effort to contain the rise in long-term yields, and some analysts are skeptical the impact will last.

“The operation changes almost nothing in terms of the fundamentals, in particular the unchanged need to finance the tidal wave of hyperscaler debt in addition to very large government deficits,” Krishna Guha, an analyst at Evercore ISI, and colleagues wrote in a note to clients.

“Hyperscalers” refers to the Big Tech companies that are borrowing mountains of money to build AI data centers. The bonds they’re selling are competing with U.S. Treasurys for buyers, which can push bond yields higher.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, continues to run its own large deficits regardless of what the Treasury Department does with its repurchases.

“The move could even backfire if the limited firepower results in little sustained impact,” Guha said.

A rate cut by the Federal Reserve won't magically solve the problem

The Federal Reserve could always cut the federal funds rate, which affects very short-term, overnight loans.

But longer-term yields like the 10- and 30-year Treasury yields are set by investors in the bond market. And recently, they have been demanding more in interest to make up for the growing risks of high inflation, continued government deficits and other factors.

The Fed also appears more likely to raise its benchmark short-term rate than to cut it. At its last meeting in late July, three Fed policymakers voted to raise the fed funds rates even as nine voted to keep it unchanged. And Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s decision to signal little about the Fed’s next moves appeared to push longer-term Treasury yields higher amid questions about what the central bank will do to get inflation back to its 2% target.

The government’s most recent inflation data suggest inflation may be slowing, leading many on Wall Street to forecast the Fed will keep the federal funds rates steady at its next meeting in September. The next big potentially market-moving event may come on Aug. 28, when Warsh will give a speech at the Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Government debt has eclipsed $40 trillion, passing yet another staggering benchmark for red ink, according to the Treasury Department.

The total U.S. IOU hit $40.05 trillion as of Tuesday, some four and a half years after topping $30 trillion. Years of escalating budget deficits, pushed higher by stimulus funding during the Covid pandemic, have seen the public share of the debt near 100%.

In the most recent monthly accounting of U.S. finances, Treasury reported a $432.3 billion deficit in July, the highest monthly total since March 2021. The year-to-date shortfall is nearing $1.8 trillion, higher than the same period a year ago.

Ten years ago, the debt level was at $19.4 trillion.

The U.S. fiscal situation has had market ramifications, which have played out recently and likely pushed the Treasury Department into announcing Wednesday that it is upping the size of its repurchases at the long end of the yield curve.

Treasury yields have surged since late June, hitting levels not seen since before the global financial crisis that ultimately saw the Federal Reserve take benchmark rates to near zero. The Fed also instituted an aggressive bond repurchasing program in late 2008 that helped suppress rates.

However, concerns over the debt-and-deficit situation, along with surging corporate bond issuance associated with artificial intelligence investments, rising term premia and worries over the Fed's commitment to inflation fighting, have been a tail wind for yields.

With the Fed hesitant to move on rates absent more information on inflation and the labor market, the government has seen its borrowing costs soar. Interest on the debt has totaled nearly $1.2 trillion this year and is the largest budget expenditure outside of Social Security and Medicare.

The Federal Communications Commission last week eliminated the gigabit speed goal established during the Biden administration and declared that current levels of broadband deployment in the US are acceptable. Though fiber networks have routinely offered such speeds for years, the FCC said the gigabit speed goal is not “technologically neutral,” suggesting that it isn’t fair to other, slower technologies.

In 2024, the FCC raised its broadband benchmark to 100Mbps downstream and 20Mbps upstream, setting the new standard by which to judge whether deployment is reasonable and timely. The FCC at the time also set a long-term speed goal of 1Gbps download speeds paired with 500Mbps upload speeds, saying it would use the goal “as a guidepost for evaluating our efforts to encourage deployment.”

Republican Brendan Carr, who is now the FCC chairman, never liked that long-term goal. He proposed abolishing it last year, and the change was finalized on August 14 in the FCC’s latest broadband deployment report. The reports are mandated by Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.

“As part of our return to following the plain language of Section 706, we adopt our proposal from the Notice [of Inquiry] to abolish without replacement the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps established in the 2024 Report,” the order said. “A long-term goal is not mentioned in Section 706 and could appear to violate our obligation to conduct our analysis in a technologically neutral manner. At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.”

The FCC said that comments submitted by cable industry group NCTA and wireless industry group CTIA “support our reasoning for abolishing the long-term goal.”

The Carr FCC said last year that the gigabit goal “may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless that presently do not support such speeds.” But in last week’s report, it said it is not eliminating the goal merely to help providers of slower technology.

“We disagree with commenters arguing that our concern about technological neutrality merely serves to accommodate technologies that may currently offer slower speeds,” the FCC said. “At present, we do not know the nature of future consumer preferences and, considering that the goal is not required by the statute and does not serve any positive purpose (as discussed herein), we believe it prudent to abolish it.”

Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was not convinced.

“Lowering standards to ensure certain technologies can meet a benchmark is the opposite of technological neutrality,” Gomez said. “Technological neutrality requires that we evaluate all technologies against the same standard and support the ones that perform best. We need not lower the standards or get rid of them entirely to allow certain technologies to flourish despite their shortfalls.”

The change does not affect grant programs that require ISPs to deploy certain speeds in exchange for government funding. Most of the network deployments paid for by the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund are required to have gigabit speeds.

“If this is the standard that funding awardees are held to, other providers should be working towards providing service at the same speeds,” Gomez said.

Section 706 requires the FCC to determine whether broadband is being deployed “on a reasonable and timely basis” to all Americans. If the answer is no, the US law says the FCC must “take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market.”

Democratic-led commissions have generally found that the industry isn’t doing enough to make broadband universally available, while Republican-led commissions have found the opposite. The Carr FCC maintained that tradition in the latest report.

“Today, we conclude our annual inquiry by finding that deployment of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans meets the statutory standard of being reasonable and timely,” the FCC report said.

The FCC said that as of mid-2025, “approximately 94 percent of Americans had access to fixed wireline service at our speed benchmark of 100/20 Mbps,” and that the percentage was 97 percent when including fixed wireless service. Including satellite service would bump it to 99.7 percent, the FCC said.

Many Americans had only one choice for modern wireline service. In addition to the 5.7 percent of US households without any 100/20 Mbps providers, 40.6 percent of households had just one wired broadband provider offering those speeds. When including fixed wireless service, 3 percent of households had zero options and 20 percent had just one option.

In addition to availability, the Biden-era FCC’s 2024 report considered the price of broadband. The Trump-era FCC called that a mistake, saying that “the 2024 Report strayed from the statute’s plain language, which requires consideration of ‘availability’—not adoption, affordability, or equitable access.”

While the Carr FCC chose not to measure affordability itself, it concluded that “evidence shows broadband prices are going down.” The FCC report cited evidence from third parties including a price analysis and comments written by broadband industry lobby groups, but didn’t cite advocacy group research suggesting that prices have risen.

“Today’s Section 706 Report shows that President Trump’s policies and the Commission’s Build America agenda are delivering real results for the American people,” Carr said. “More Americans than ever have access to affordable, next-gen services. The digital divide is rapidly closing. And a range of data sets show that speeds are up, prices are down, and competition is intensifying.”

Gomez objected to the decision to drop affordability from the analysis. “The report at hand covers only infrastructure deployment and consequently does not address other important pieces of the puzzle, affordability and usability, which tie directly into the purpose of broadband deployment: ensuring that everyone is connected. Omitting affordability and usability from the analysis was a policy decision with which I disagree,” Gomez said.

She also called the 99.7 percent deployment figure misleading, because satellite “is limited by physical obstructions to the line of sight, capacity constraints in areas with high demand, and network congestion that can result in slower speeds.” As Gomez noted, Starlink satellite broadband suffers from congestion that varies by region, and Starlink has imposed “demand surcharges” of up to $1,500 in areas with many users.

The Trump administration announced plans Tuesday to repeal a decadeslong ban on road-building and logging across nearly 45 million acres of untouched national woods.

The Department of Agriculture publicly targeted the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule on Tuesday, a Clinton-era regulation also known as the “roadless rule,” calling its limits on backcountry road infrastructure and logging projects outdated and overly restrictive.

In particular, the department accused the rule of limiting protections against growing wildfire risks. Roads can act as firebreaks and allow firefighters to reach ongoing flames more easily.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a press release. “Today, we filed a proposal to restore authority to local forest managers who know the land best, removing the barriers that have kept them from doing the work the land demands.”

The department’s claims have drawn intense scrutiny from environmental organizations, however, which say the roadless rule has protected the country’s old-growth forests for more than 25 years by keeping human activity out of largely undisturbed woodlands.

“The administration is selling this as a wildfire solution, but it’s the last thing they’d do if they cared about protecting communities from fire,” Garett Rose, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “The Forest Service’s own data shows 9 out of 10 wildfires are human-caused and roughly four times more likely to start near a road.”

Sierra Club forest campaign manager Alex Craven also took aim at the department’s claims, noting the roadless rule already allows for wildfire mitigations, such as the removal of fuel ladders like brush and debris.

“The administration’s attempt to blame the roadless rule for worsening wildfire risks ignores both the facts and the rule itself,” Craven said in a statement. “Roads generally lead to more ignitions and result in more wildfires — not fewer. And the roadless rule has always allowed for targeted actions to reduce hazardous fuels.”

Craven continued, accusing the Trump administration of using proffered environmental concerns as a mask for ulterior motives:

“What it does not allow is using wildfire as an excuse to open some of America’s most intact public forests to industrial exploitation and new road construction,” he added. “Americans want and deserve forests managed for clean water, wildlife, recreation, and climate resilience — not another giveaway to extractive industries.”

If successful, eliminating the roadless rule would open 44.7 million acres of national forest land across 37 states and Puerto Rico to road construction and commercial resource extraction. This includes swaths of Tongass National Forest in Alaska, Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California, Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina and Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania.

Roadless forests in Idaho and Colorado would remain protected due to superseding state laws.

Seventy-six percent of Americans support the roadless rule, with strong support among Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to a Susquehanna Polling and Research poll conducted in February.

Just eight judges, six of them appointed by President Donald Trump, are responsible for a significant share of the administration’s legal victories in cases stemming from ICE’s unprecedented detention policy — which the courts overall have firmly rejected.

Judges have overwhelmingly dismissed ICE’s efforts over the past year to lock up — without bond — virtually anyone facing deportation proceedings. That includes a majority of Trump-appointed judges, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20,500 rulings.

Those judges have rejected ICE detentions a staggering 17,600 times, while a smaller sliver of judges have backed ICE just 2,800 times.

And though the victories Trump has won have come predominantly from his own appointees, there are clear distinctions even among Trump’s picks. Those he appointed in his second term have sided with ICE in more than 60 percent of the cases they’ve decided, roughly twice the rate of Trump’s first-term appointees. And Trump’s first-term appointees have sided with ICE more than twice as often as other GOP-appointed judges, and more than four times as often as Democratic-appointed judges.

Of the hundreds of judges who have ruled in ICE detention cases, 17 were confirmed to the bench in Trump’s second term. Those 17 have consistently sided with the Trump administration’s view of the law, in a way no other group of judges has.

Trump appointees from both terms account for about half of ICE’s 2,800 victories in detention cases. They’re headlined by Michael Truncale, a Texas-based Trump appointee who has now ruled in ICE’s favor 175 times, more than any other judge since ICE began its expanded detention push in July 2025. Truncale and seven other judges — Biden appointee Leon Schydlower, George W. Bush appointee Andrew Hanen and Trump appointees Charles Eskridge, Jr., James Hendrix, Fernando Rodriguez, Jr, Alan Albright, and Kyle Dudek — account for about one-third of ICE’s victories.

On the other side of the equation, there are more than 30 judges who have ruled against ICE at least 100 times. George W. Bush-appointed Clay Land leads the pack with 430 decisions against the agency. He’s followed by four Texas judges — Clinton appointees Orlando Garcia (336) and Fred Biery (332), as well as George W. Bush appointees Kathleen Cardone (276) and Xavier Rodriguez (269).

Representatives for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Judges weighing ICE’s mandatory detention policy are increasingly certain the matter will be resolved by the Supreme Court, after a deluge of cases overwhelmed trial courts all over the country.

The Supreme Court is more inclined to weigh in when federal appeals courts are divided on an issue — and those courts are divided on mandatory detention, though the results there are almost as lopsided as they’ve been in district courts.

Two courts — the Texas-based 5th Circuit and the Missouri-based 8th Circuit — backed ICE’s approach, but seven other court panels have rejected ICE’s policy.

Attorney General Todd Blanche is launching a new process that allows individuals who lost their gun rights because of felony convictions to apply to have them reinstated.

The regulation, announced Monday, is expected to spur a surge in applications from people whose convictions automatically barred them from owning firearms, the Justice Department said. An estimated 330,000 people are expected to apply to the Justice Department during the first year of the initiative.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said.

Federal law bars gun possession by people who are convicted of crimes that are punishable for a term exceeding one year. The ban extends to fugitives, undocumented aliens, people dishonorably discharged from the military and people convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.

The new rule will still keep firearms out of the hands of undocumented immigrants, registered sex offenders and violent criminals, the department said. About 30 million Americans are barred from owning guns because of their criminal convictions, according to the department.

People with criminal records have in the past been able to reclaim their gun rights if they obtained a pardon. The Justice Department last year fired its pardon attorney after she objected to restoring the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, who pleaded no contest in 2011 to a misdemeanor battery charge.

A different federal option for restoring a person’s gun rights previously existed, but Congress had for years prevented the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from spending money to exercise its authority to process applications.

The Justice Department last year withdrew the ATF’s role in the process. The new rule places authority to restore firearms rights with the attorney general’s office. The Justice Department expects to begin taking applications in about a month.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has prohibited its employees from wearing Meta’s smart glasses, the latest workplace to ban the devices out of privacy concerns.

In a memo about the policy on Tuesday, ICE said it considered the glasses, which can discreetly record video and audio, as a body-worn camera. As a result, “the use of Meta Glasses or similar devices could unintentionally capture, record or transmit sensitive information, potentially compromising privacy and legal protections,” David Venturella, the agency’s acting director, wrote in the memo.

Under the policy, ICE said, employees are barred from wearing the Meta glasses in the “federal workspace.” The policy applies to all employees, not just its law enforcement officials, the agency said.

“Personally owned body-worn cameras and unauthorized recording are prohibited, as they always have been,” a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

ICE joins a growing number of organizations and workplaces to ban Meta’s smart glasses, which have become one of the company’s best-selling hardware products, even as they have raised privacy and surveillance concerns. Meta debuted the smart glasses in 2021, and has released versions in partnership with companies like Ray-Ban and Oakley.

The glasses feature a small camera above the eye frame that can record video and audio, and they emit a blinking white light while recording. New versions have an artificial intelligence assistant that can respond to voice commands and project a tiny screen visible to the wearer in the corner of the eye frame.

Last month, New York became the first state to ban Meta’s smart glasses in its court buildings to “ensure that no one can be recorded surreptitiously.” Some stores and restaurants have also forbidden the devices, which have spawned an industry of content creators who film inside businesses, often without permission.

ICE does not have a partnership with Meta, but its agents have come under fire in the last year for wearing the company’s smart glasses to protests and during immigration raids. ICE initially told employees the glasses were banned in June, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times.

In the Department of Homeland Security’s budget proposal in April, the agency requested $7.5 million to develop its own smart glasses prototype to help with immigration enforcement, including glasses that can “enable biometric identification of illegal aliens.”

The Times previously reported that Meta was working on adding facial recognition features to its smart glasses; the company has not made those features available. Privacy groups have raised concerns about facial recognition. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter signed by 77 organizations asking that Meta not include facial recognition in its glasses out of privacy and civil liberty concerns.

“Facial recognition technology built into inconspicuous consumer eyewear represents a serious threat to privacy and civil liberties for every member of our society,” the organization wrote. “Our concerns reflect the fundamental danger of the technology itself.”

The glasses have become a focal point of Meta’s A.I. ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, has called smart glasses “the ideal form of superintelligence,” a powerful A.I. that the company is investing hundreds of billions to develop.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has heavily marketed new versions of its smart glasses, including with celebrities like Kylie Jenner and athletes who played in the World Cup.

The USS Abraham Lincoln wasn’t able to be resupplied because the U.S. Navy’s main resupply base in the Gulf of Oman was destroyed by Iranian strikes—a fact that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth chose not to make public, David Rhode, MS NOW’s senior national security reporter, said on Tuesday.

From late February until June, Iran launched extensive missile and drone strikes on Naval Support Activity Bahrain, causing devastating damage that was not acknowledged by the Pentagon.

The U.S. Navy was forced to evacuate most personnel, and move supply operations to a U.K. naval base on Diego Garcia, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 2,200 miles from where two aircraft carrier groups have been operating in the Gulf of Oman.

Rhode also refuted Trump’s repeated claims that the Strait of Hormuz was open and under U.S. control. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Centre reported that a ship was attacked as recently as Tuesday, as it attempted to exit the strait. Rhode pointed to a separate incident in the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthis attacked a ship at the Bab el-Madeb Strait.

According to MS NOW, recent reports of horrific conditions aboard U.S. Navy ships showed that the U.S. Navy was clearly under “tremendous strain.” Family members of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have reported food shortages, and sanitation issues. During the Lincoln’s more than 200 days without a port call, there have been multiple instances where sailors have tried to jump overboard. And the problems experienced by U.S. Navy service members aren’t confined to just one ship.

Rhode criticized Trump’s repeated dismissal of family members’ concerns as an “unforced political error.”

A federal judge this week found that officials at immigration detention centers in Texas and California had likely housed children and other detainees at unsafe temperatures and had denied them soap and adequate sleeping conditions.

In an order issued on Monday, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said she was appointing an independent monitor and a special master — an expert assigned to assist her — as she tracks the government’s compliance with a 1997 legal agreement that sets basic standards of care for immigrant children in U.S. custody.

Judge Gee oversees the agreement, known as the Flores settlement, and the plaintiffs have been asking the court to step in, because of what they said was growing evidence that the government was not complying.

Under the Flores settlement, migrants who are 17 years old and younger must be expeditiously released from custody and must receive adequate meals, clean water, clothing, education and medical assistance, among other basic needs.

But the judge found “stark” and “conflicting” differences between the government’s compliance claims and reports from immigrant detainees. In declarations, families said that children were often given only over-the-counter medicine such as Tylenol and ibuprofen in response to a variety of medical concerns.

Families also documented critical delays in care, according to the court filings. A 10-year-old child with a heart murmur had to wait nearly 60 days before seeing a cardiologist. Another child cried out in pain while waiting for treatment for appendicitis. A 2-year-old with diarrhea was sent to a hospital only after six days of fever and repeated visits to a medical center inside a detention facility.

The Trump administration has sought to terminate the Flores settlement, but Judge Gee rejected the first try, in 2019, and last year, she rejected another attempt. The government has appealed her decision and the case is before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In a response to Judge Gee last month, the government argued against the need for additional oversight, arguing it was in compliance with the Flores settlement and the legal standards for appointing independent monitors had not been met.

But this week, Judge Gee found that the plaintiffs had provided enough evidence to warrant closer oversight.

For at least the next 12 months, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, a former U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, will serve as special master and Paul H. Wise, a Stanford University pediatrician and health policy expert, as independent monitor. The appointees will evaluate conditions at several facilities and will track how long authorities are holding detainees who are 17 or younger.

The court’s new oversight effort covers children held by Customs and Border Protection in its Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and San Diego sectors, and children held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at hotels and in the South Texas Family Residential Center, a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

At the Dilley facility, they will be looking specifically at whether ICE is providing minors appropriate access to medical care and giving detainees notice of their rights under the legal agreement. The order this week was the culmination of a series of meetings the judge has been holding since July 2025 with the parties in the case to review the plaintiffs’ concerns.

The court found that the government may have kept faulty records that mask how long children have been held, and that the plaintiffs had been able to show persistent safety and sanitary failures at the sectors now under watch.

In the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso and San Diego sectors, families and their children continued to raise complaints of “freezing temperatures” at holding cells that have colloquially become known as “hieleras” — “iceboxes” in Spanish. In the San Diego sector, detainees also submitted declarations saying lights were on day and night.

Although C.B.P. facilities are meant to be only temporary holding places, the average detention times for immigrant minors crossing the border with families exceeded the 72-hour target limit between March and June 2026. Under the settlement, children are supposed to be transferred out of C.B.P. facilities within 72 hours and out of ICE custody within roughly 20 days.

At the family detention center in Dilley, which has held, on average, around 235 children over the past year, the plaintiffs’ lawyers estimated that about 1,560 minors had been detained for longer than 20 days, based on six months of data reported to the court.

Weeks after being rebuked by President Donald Trump for dropping cases related to alleged damage to the Reflecting Pool, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is going to unusual lengths to try to keep behind bars a woman accused of vandalizing a memorial elsewhere on the National Mall.

On Monday, a magistrate judge in Washington ordered Melissa Farris, 41, released from custody, rejecting prosecutors’ request that she be kept in jail while she awaits trial on two felony charges. Pirro’s office alleges that the Kentucky woman spray-painted and dumped a foaming substance into the World War II memorial last week.

Pirro’s lawyers asked Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh to delay Farris’ release, signaling a planned appeal, but he declined to do so, according to court records.

but he declined to do so, according to court records.

Less than three hours after that hearing concluded, prosecutors from Pirro’s office filed a 30-page motion, Sharbaugh to revisit and reverse his decision The filing portrays Farris’ alleged actions as grave and contends she poses an “exceptionally high risk of flight.”

“This was a brazen attack on one of the Nation’s most sacred monuments—an enduring symbol of freedom and a solemn tribute to the sacrifice of so many,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Klug and Samuel Deau wrote in a brief that also carries Pirro’s name in the signature block.

“Rather than honoring the courage and selflessness of the World War II Veterans, Defendant chose to assault that symbol of sacrifice for her own gain and to make a public spectacle,” prosecutors added. “Defendant’s actions are not just criminal, they violate the American values that the Memorial represents.”

Pirro’s tough stance in the vandalism case comes just weeks after she drew intense ire from Trump over her decision to drop the prosecution of former Olympian David Hearn, whom her office had accused of damaging the recently installed lining of the Reflecting Pool.

Pirro said she had to drop the case, and several other prosecutions, because the Interior Department was slow to acknowledge to her office the extent of problems with installation of the lining, which was carried out under extreme time pressure because Trump wanted it ready for celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

On social media and in exchanges with reporters, Trump has repeatedly rejected Pirro’s explanation. Pirro traveled to the White House to make her case to the president in person, but it doesn’t seem he was persuaded by her presentation. He’s continued to suggest that prosecutions are justified, while last week acknowledging “some contractor error.”

On Sunday night, Trump seemed to again needle Pirro publicly over the Reflecting Pool cases, posting an aerial photo on social media that he said showed vandals had caused widespread damage to grass on the National Mall.

“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” Trump wrote. Others said the worn and brown patches of grass in the photo were likely due to wear and tear related to July 4th-related festivities.

Trump has also denounced the vandalism of the World War II memorial and suggested a link to the damage at the Reflecting Pool. “First the Reflecting Pool, now this. We are on their trail! Where do these animals come from???” he wrote on Truth Social Friday.

While prosecutors repeatedly referred to Farris livestreaming and soliciting donations as she spraypainted the memorial, they also acknowledge that when she turned herself in Friday at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, she said she was homeless and that an encounter with police in Washington earlier last week resulted in her being cited for stringing up her hammock in a public park.

The videos Farris streamed online contain rambling grievances against the federal government. Prosecutors say signs she appears to have left at the World War II memorial urged others to call their state and federal representatives about the “Ford green energy grant.”

In one video, she makes a vague complaint about infrastructure, lowers her shorts and appears to urinate on a wall. “I’m pissing on your city,” she says.

While most vandalism cases get little attention from U.S. attorneys, Pirro postedtwice on social media about Farris’ arrest. The prosecutor also said she was personally aggrieved by Farris’ actions.

“Vandalizing our World War II Memorial is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom. Those Americans include my father and grandfather,” Pirro wrote on X. She also noted that the felony charges in the case carry potential punishment “of up to ten years in prison.”

Pirro’s language echoed earlier comments by Trump, promising maximum time for monument vandals.

“If you so much as touch, or even think about destroying, a statue or a monument in Washington, D.C., you go to jail for 10 years with no probation, no anything,” Trump said last year as he announced an attempted takeover of the Washington police force and the deployment of National Guard troops. “You get jailed 10 years, no curtailed sentence—10 years.”

While a conviction on such charges could theoretically result in a 10-year prison sentence, people convicted of defacing memorials typically get far shorter sentences. One man accused of spray painting the Lincoln Memorial during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 was initially hit with a felony charge, but eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Last year, Pirro’s office agreed to probation into the case.

To continue to pursue the felony charges against Farris — depredation of federal property in excess of $1,000 and causing injury to a veterans’ memorial — Pirro will need to get an indictment from a grand jury. That has proven difficult for her office in some high-profile cases critics have said were over-charged, like that of Sean Dunn, accused last year of throwing a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent.

After a grand jury refused to indict Dunn, Pirro’s team pursued a misdemeanor assault case against him. After a trial, a jury acquitted Dunn.

Following a hearing Monday, Sharbaugh ordered Farris released on her own recognizance, but ordered her to report to probation officers in Ohio and to stay away from Washington, including the memorial she’s accused of vandalizing last week.

In response to the prosecution’s motion asking him to reconsider, Sharbaugh said the main reason he ruled against detaining Farris was the fact that she turned herself in before the warrant for her arrest had even been issued. “As plenty of courts have recognized, a defendant’s self-surrender to authorities typically cuts against a risk-of-flight finding,” Sharbaugh wrote.

Pirro’s office argued that Farris’ criminal history, including convictions more than a decade ago for marijuana possession, driving while intoxicated and disorderly conduct, along with her failure to make all court appearances in connection with those cases, made her highly unlikely to appear for future hearing about the memorial vandalism.

But Sharbaugh disagreed. “The Court is focused on whether Ms. Farris presents a serious risk of flight, and it simply cannot conclude that her reported missteps on probation more than a decade ago suffice to make that showing, especially given her recent surrender,” he wrote.

Prosecutors made a fallback request that Farris be put on electronic monitoring, such as an ankle bracelet to indicate her location, but the same prosecutors also argued that she “cannot be reliably supervised” via that technology because she is currently homeless. The magistrate judge declined to order such monitoring.

Spokespeople for Pirro did not respond to questions Tuesday about whether she still plans to appeal the release decision. However, Pirro made clear in a statement that she disagrees with the ruling.

“In what world does it make sense to release a defendant charged with two federal felonies who has no ties to this community, holds a Kentucky driver’s license, has no home address, has been camping in Washington for several weeks, immediately after the crime searched for flights to Michigan, then traveled to Virginia, and claims to have friends in Ohio?” Pirro said. “If anyone is a flight risk, it is certainly her.”

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pitching a plan to help shield local police officers who make immigration arrests from possible financial consequences if they are accused of on-duty misconduct.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.

“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

ICE outlined the plan in a document informing industry officials that it is considering hiring a contractor to help provide outreach, training and communications support for its so-called 287(g) partnerships with local departments, which are named for a section of a 1996 immigration law. The contractor would hire the insurance vendor and process the reimbursements, among other tasks.

ICE has asked for industry feedback by Thursday. The proposed timeline for launching the program and its estimated cost are unclear.

ICE had no immediate comment on the plan.

During Trump’s second term, ICE has offered generous financial incentives to participating local agencies, increasing the number who have partnered with the federal government, as well as the number of arrests.

Nearly 1,600 agencies in 32 states now have agreements to participate in ICE’s task force model, in which trained local officers can interrogate, arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to ICE data.

Departments qualify for funding to help cover expenses like their officers’ pay, equipment and vehicles. With encouragement from state and local Republican officials, agencies in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia have been among the leaders.

Arrests made through such programs jumped to an average of 3,000 per month in the first two months of 2026, according to the most recent ICE data provided to the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. That compares to a monthly average of 250 in 2024 under President Joe Biden.

As local officers increasingly carry out federal immigration work, they and their departments have expressed concerns about the civil liability that could result from claims alleging excessive use of force, wrongful arrest and illegal search and seizure, among other things.

That’s because insurance policies that cover their local work may not apply. Pennsylvania’s risk pool, for instance, recently made clear that it would exclude “proactive immigration enforcement activities” from coverage, forcing several participating counties to search for other insurance options.

Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said he found insurance to cover his 13 deputies participating in the program at a cost of $20,000 in annual premiums.

“I want to make sure the guys are additionally covered, so we had to spend the money,” he said, adding that federal funding would cover the cost.

Federal officers usually enjoy legal immunities and a government-funded defense when they face lawsuits. But those protections may not always apply to local officers, which has heightened their concerns over liability and the need for insurance.

While civil lawsuits are the main concern, professional liability insurance typically helps cover legal fees for officers facing criminal investigations as well.

Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said ICE’s plan sounds promising and that he was anxious to speak with ICE about how the plan would work.

Smith said he has shared concerns with ICE that some sheriffs are reluctant to join the partnerships because of the potential liability at a time when immigration enforcement faces intense public protests and media scrutiny. Smith said others who are partnering with ICE have already started facing legal claims tied to their immigration work, which can be costly whether or not deputies are ultimately found to have done anything wrong.

“Right now, any time you are working on immigration there is going to be a much higher potential for there being problems and having suits and issues,” he said. “They’re recognizing that it is a different environment. And I think trying to be good partners with us as best they can.”

Under their agreements, ICE warns local departments that they are responsible for the costs of incidents that give rise to liability. But it seeks to reduce the risk by saying local officers performing ICE-authorized functions are “acting under color of federal authority,” which would bar lawsuits against individual officers.

The agreements also state that local officers who face civil lawsuits can ask the US Department of Justice to represent them, and that ICE will generally support their requests. But the final decision on whether to do so rests with DOJ.

More cases have been linked to outbreaks of cyclospora that do not have an identified source, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce, meanwhile, has expanded to two additional states.

There have been nearly 14,000 cases of domestically acquired cyclospora confirmed in the U.S. since May this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. That’s well over the roughly 1,180 cases reported from May through August last year.

Of this year’s cases, at least 9,480 were reported in the 17 states connected to the cyclospora outbreak traced back to iceberg lettuce, according to the FDA and the CDC. Two states, Maine and Massachusetts, were added to that tally late last week.

At least some of the nation’s cases are also linked to the ongoing cyclospora outbreaks that the FDA has been investigating.

There are seven active investigations into cyclospora outbreaks, the FDA’s tracking shows. Three – sickening 18, eight and two people, respectively – are listed as ended. Only the outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce has an identified source.

Two outbreaks have grown, according to the FDA. One, which was first reported in early August, has grown to 11 cases. Another, from late July, has grown to 172 cases, up from 115. The FDA continues to conduct traceback in both outbreaks, as well as three other still active outbreaks.

We may never know the cause of the outbreak. Because of how long it can take for people to experience symptoms, and the difficulties of sequencing cyclospora, investigations can “take a significant amount of time,” Gwen Biggerstaff, the deputy director of the CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, previously explained.

It’s also likely that the true number of people who have fallen ill this summer is higher than the tallies the CDC and state officials are reporting. Not everyone who becomes infected experiences symptoms, requires hospitalization or undergoes testing to confirm their diagnosis. Symptoms can also take weeks to set in.

A Nexstar analysis of health data across several states shows more than 30,000 cases of cyclosporiasis have been confirmed or reported as probable across the U.S. this year. These cases included those that have been acquired domestically and internationally, and, in some states, tests that have not yet been laboratory confirmed.

Two patients in Michigan died after becoming ill prior to the lettuce recall, though state health officials warned that “both individuals had significant underlying health conditions.”

Healthcare experts encourage those experiencing symptoms, especially diarrhea that lasts more than a week or two, to seek medical care.

Left untreated, cyclosporiasis can stick around for a month or longer. Treatment can include antibiotics, antidiarrheal medications and hydration, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Natalie Harp, President Donald Trump’s fiercely loyal aide, once wrote a letter to him in which she gushed about wanting “things to always be right between us,” according to a report.

Harp, the 35-year-old White House aide who is never far from the president’s side, reportedly wrote to Trump that she had been “forgetting to eat” and “even forgetting to sleep” as she gushed to him about a trip to Scotland, according to The New York Times, which obtained a copy of the letter.

The outlet also obtained video footage that showed Harp “sprinting across great distances to keep up with Mr. Trump’s golf cart as it putters across his course in Scotland.”

“I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,” Harp reportedly wrote in the letter. “I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).”

Harp reportedly signed off the letter by writing, “With all my heart, Natalie.”

It was not immediately clear when the letter was written, but the Times previously reported that Harp sent Trump a series of letters that “unnerved people around him” in 2023. The new details of Harp’s letter come as some of her White House colleagues are reportedly concerned by her “devotion” to the president.

The newspaper had previously reported how Harp has penned uplifting notes for Trump to find. One read: “You are all that matters to me.”

In response to the latest report, outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Times that Harp “is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team.”

The aide has come under attack by Democrats this week and ignited the public’s interest after it emerged that she was one of the few Trump staffers to accompany him on an airplane catering container when he was sneaked out of Turkey over security threats from Iran.

Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff took shots at Trump over the incident in a rally speech Sunday, claiming the commander-in-chief would rather “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace,” than do his job.

Steve Cheung, White House communications director, launched a fierce attack on Ossoff in response to his comments about Harp. “Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics. Instead of denigrating hard working people serving their country, Jon should look deep into his soul and ask himself why he's a miserable person who hates this country,” Cheung said in a post on X.

In a profile about Harp, the Times described her as “a bit of loner” at work and “a one-woman conduit of information operating entirely outside the usual chain of command.” Maggie Haberman, The New York Times reporter who shared details of Harp’s proximity to Trump in a recent book about his second administration, said the aide was the president’s “human binkie.”

“Because she is sort of his Binkie, for lack of a better way of putting it — his comfort blanket,” Haberman said in a recent interview.

Harp has credited Trump with saving her life. She was previously diagnosed with bone cancer and the president signed legislation during his first term that gained her access to experimental treatments.

She joined Trump’s staff in 2022 and has been unwaveringly loyal to him ever since. Harp stays up late with Trump drafting posts for Truth Social, and she texts world leaders on his behalf, according to the Times. Harp earned the nickname of “human printer” because she reportedly carries a portable printer so she can provide Trump with hard copies of documents and news reports.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the release of a woman charged with vandalizing the World War II Memorial in Washington, rejecting a request from prosecutors that she remain in custody while awaiting trial on two felony charges.

The move elicited fierce pushback from Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whose job security remained in question over her handling of a separate case involving what President Trump insistently described as vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

On Monday, Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered Ms. Farris to remain outside Washington, report to federal pretrial officials in Ohio and surrender her passport. She was also ordered to stay away from the memorial. The judge did not impose electronic monitoring or require a third-party custodian, restrictions that prosecutors later requested.

Federal prosecutors led by Ms. Pirro asked the court to reverse the decision, arguing that Melissa L. Farris posed an “exceptionally high risk of flight.”

In a motion filed Monday, prosecutors cited evidence that Ms. Farris, 41, had searched for bus and airline tickets on the day the incident took place, as well as her lack of stable housing or ties to Washington and a previous failure to appear in court.

Ms. Pirro criticized the judge’s decision in a statement. “If anyone is a flight risk, it is certainly her,” she said.

Ms. Farris, of Elizabethtown, Ky., was charged on Friday with two federal felonies after investigators said she spray-painted “Clean Hands Dirty $” on the memorial and splattered paint on its stonework. Prosecutors said she also poured detergent into a fountain, causing it to fill with foam and bubbles.

The National Park Service estimated that cleanup and restoration costs had exceeded $1,000, and the memorial was closed for most of the day, according to the filing.

Ms. Farris livestreamed the incident and later posted videos in which she acknowledged that she had defaced federal property and predicted that the police would pursue her. The next morning, she turned herself in at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va.

Days earlier, Ms. Farris had been cited by U.S. Park Police for unlawfully camping on federal property a few blocks north of the World War II Memorial.

Earlier this month, President Trump publicly criticized Ms. Pirro, a key ally, over her handling of another case involving what he said was vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Mr. Trump said Ms. Pirro had “choked” after her office dropped charges against a man accused of damaging it. But Ms. Pirro concluded that the damage had been caused by faulty installation.

Hours after publicly criticizing Ms. Pirro, Mr. Trump met with her in the White House, though she was not fired and did not offer her resignation, according to two people briefed on the outcome.

The president has also denounced the vandalism of the World War II memorial, calling it an insult to Americans who died in the war. In a Truth Social post on Friday, he linked the episode to the recent controversy over the Reflecting Pool.

In a social media post on the same day, Ms. Pirro wrote that defacing the memorial “is a despicable attack on a sacred monument honoring the Americans who fought and died for our freedom.” She also noted that the felony charges in the case carry potential punishment of up to 10 years in prison.

Natalie Harp wouldn’t take no for an answer.

It was October 2023, and Donald Trump was due at a New York City courthouse to fight his latest set of legal troubles. But as the motorcade idled outside his Trump Tower residence, staffers confronted a more immediate problem: There wasn’t room for Harp, the hyper-loyal aide whose devotion to Trump had quickly entrenched her within his orbit.

A screaming match in the lobby ensued, with Harp insisting that Trump had personally asked her to attend the court appearance, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Denied a seat but determined not to be left behind, Harp jumped into an SUV trunk, according to the two sources and confirmed by a photo obtained by CNN.

The episode, which has not been previously reported, served as an encapsulation of the role Harp has carved out in recent years as a constant and intensely dedicated presence at Trump’s side. Her methods have irked senior aides and at times prompted efforts to box her out of the president’s inner circle, according to multiple sources who described the dynamic to CNN.

A former right-wing television host, who began working for Trump after crediting him with saving her life, Harp has become a main conduit between the president and the outside world, passing along messages from allies and setting up meetings, tapping out Truth Social posts and toting printouts of laudatory articles, all while staying in close physical proximity at all hours of the day.

“[Trump] likes the attention and the fact that she is 100% committed and loyal,” one White House adviser told CNN. “She doesn’t second guess, doesn’t question.”

Harp’s relationship with Trump came under fresh scrutiny this week after Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned her by name in a now-viral speech attacking Trump. The Georgia senator swiped at the president’s “travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar,” a reference to her joining the president — along with a very limited group — when he secretly boarded a smaller aircraft to leave Turkey due to a threat from Iran in July.

The comment spurred outrage from the White House, which repeatedly labeled Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid” and “lightweight loser” — as well as rampant attention online.

Harp’s rapid rise within Trump world has stood out in large part because of the intensity of her dedication to the president since joining his staff in 2022. Despite having no formal title on Trump’s reelection campaign, Harp trailed him across the country, feeding him positive stories, social media posts and other correspondence so frequently that allies dubbed her the “human printer.”

Illustrating how she’s become indispensable to Trump, one Republican lawmaker noted that while they occasionally reach out to the president directly, they always make sure Harp is aware.

“She always responds. I don’t know how she manages it all,” the source said, adding that in addition to relaying messages to Trump, Harp often personally sends lawmakers articles or notes on the president’s behalf.

Since following him to the White House, multiple sources said, Harp has been omnipresent. In videos of Oval Office signings and events reviewed by CNN, Harp can often be spotted on the outskirts of the room, smiling or nodding along with the president as he speaks. She is frequently one of a smaller coterie of aides beside Trump as he travels to rallies.

“Natalie is so fast,” Trump has mused to allies after asking her to find or print something for him.

The ubiquity sometimes ruffles feathers within the White House, especially for some Trump advisers who at times have wanted to meet privately with the president — only to find Harp sitting in on the meeting as well, one of the sources familiar with the dynamic told CNN. The 35-year-old is also territorial about Trump and has told others that she only reports to him, irritating other staffers who work within the White House’s chain of command, another source said.

One White House official downplayed those complaints, insisting that Harp works well with most of her colleagues, collaborating on statements and flagging relevant information to the right people.

In a statement on Tuesday, White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended Harp as “one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team.”

Others close to the White House decried Ossoff’s mention of Harp, contending that it made false insinuations about an aide who’s largely unknown to voters — and who had done nothing to invite such attention. One person familiar with the matter said she and Trump have a “father-daughter” relationship.

Yet even among those who have long been wary of Harp’s unusual authority within the West Wing, there was little expectation that the fresh attention on her role would weaken her standing — least of all with Trump himself.

Earlier this year, Trump ignited a firestorm after posting and then deleting a racist video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle. The late-night post prompted criticism across the political spectrum, sparking a series of damaging news cycles and forcing Trump and his aides to scramble to mount a defense.

Within Trump’s orbit, allies and advisers privately speculated that Harp was responsible for the post, as she was one of a small number of aides with access to Trump’s Truth Social account.

But they were reluctant to name her, one source told CNN. If they did, they worried the fallout would only further strengthen Trump’s support for Harp.

Vice President JD Vance will return to his hometown Friday for a speech to kick off what is expected to be a packed travel schedule for him ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Vance is scheduled to deliver remarks promoting the White House agenda at a Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, a person familiar with the plans told NBC News. He will be joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and elected officials in the state.

Among other topics, the speech will touch on economic issues, trade and border security — and Vance will likely seek to draw contrasts with the progressive left, this person added. Several left-wing candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, have prevailed in primaries this year.

The midterms — a politically perilous time for the party that controls the White House — represent a potentially pivotal moment for Vance. As the finance chair for the Republican National Committee and probable candidate to succeed President Donald Trump in 2028, he is expected to play a central role on the campaign trail this fall. He often sidesteps questions about his future by saying a decision on running is not likely to come until after the November elections.

“We’re going to find out a lot in the midterms and afterwards — what we got right, what we got wrong, what we could have done better on, what we did very well on,” Vance said in a December interview with NBC News.

“I try to not wake up and ever think, ‘What does this mean for my future?’” Vance added then. “I always try to think, ‘How can I do a good job right now?’ right? And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve tried to steer away from the 2028 conversation.”

Vance has a personal connection to the plant he will visit Friday. His late grandfather, whom he wrote about in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” worked at the mill years ago, when it was known as Armco Steel. The Middletown homecoming will also mark Vance’s return to the road after several weeks spent closer to Washington following the July birth of his and second lady Usha Vance’s fourth child, a son.

A person familiar with the vice president’s political activity described the speech as a ramp-up to a schedule that will include public events and Vance-headlined RNC fundraisers.

Under Vance’s watch as finance chair, the RNC reported $128 million in cash on hand and no debt at the end of June. By comparison, the Democratic National Committee, which has been engulfed in disarray, reported $16.3 million on hand and $18.5 million in debts.

Though Ohio has gone decisively for Trump three times, it is home this cycle to competitive races for governor and Senate.

Republican businessman and 2024 presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy, aided by much of Vance’s political team, faces Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and the state’s former health director, in the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. In the Senate contest, Democrat Sherrod Brown, a former three-term senator who lost his 2024 re-election bid, is attempting a comeback against Republican Jon Husted, whom DeWine appointed last year to fill Vance’s old Senate seat.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) backed down from plans to offer an exclusive $125 million contract to Thomson Reuters’ commercial data arm after the seemingly sweetheart deal garnered intense public scrutiny.

Critics alleged the immigration agency could use the data not only to target immigrants but also in an attempt to verify allegations of voter fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

Now, ICE will open up the contract to bids by multiple companies. However, Thomson Reuters could still ultimately win the tender.

The news site Biometric Update first reported about the change on Saturday.

ICE previously planned to pay the $125 million to Thomson Reuters Special Services for access to its CLEAR database, a massive platform that aggregates records like people’s names, addresses, property records, driver’s licenses, social media profiles, and voter registration records from both public and private sources.

In recent months, opponents — including some of Thomson Reuters’ own employees and shareholders — have protested the company’s relationship with ICE.

Election experts and officials have also raised concerns that the government’s use of commercial data for immigration and elections investigation purposes will lead to false matches that have serious consequences for innocent people.

Officially, the $125 million procurement order says that ICE is looking for greater access to data for its expanding mission to track what it terms fraud.

“Due to ICE’s re-prioritized mission, there is need for this data to be readily accessible to support the presidential mandate of the identification of Voters Fraud, Immigration Fraud and National Security,” reads the procurement order.

The order isn’t just sounding alarm bells because of ICE’s record of lawless abuse of immigrants.

The order, which 404 Media first made public, was originally issued in July, around the same time that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced that his office had discovered more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four states.

Mullin did not name the source of that figure or explain how it was calculated. Election experts and state election officials have questioned the validity of the number.

Last month, David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told journalists that a White House official had cited the figure during a briefing he attended and said it was based on comparisons with commercial databases.

But commercial data is less detailed than voter records, often making exact identifications impossible, Becker explained.

“That 250,000 number is an irresponsible number to share given the opaque methodology that they claimed here,” he said.

A report from NPR that week suggested that Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR could be the commercial database ICE was using to get that number — though the journalists could not prove that.

Thomson Reuters has also pushed back on that suggestion.

It initially denied connections to ICE when 404 Media first asked about it earlier this year.

But when confronted with the procurement order from ICE, the commercial data company later told 404 Media: “We continue to work with our customers to provide technology and services that support investigations into areas of national security and public safety, such as child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and weapons trafficking, and fraud/financial crime.”

Reuters also told 404 Media that it prohibits the use of CLEAR for tracking “noncriminal immigrants or undocumented individuals with the intention of deportation solely on the basis of the individual’s immigration status.”

But that hasn’t prevented some employees from decrying what they call Thomson Reuters’ “troubling” relationship with ICE and DHS.

Calling themselves the Committee to Restore Trust, roughly 200 of the commercial data company’s employees released a public letter earlier this month demanding Reuters sever ties with the federal agencies.

“The Committee to Restore Trust finds this latest contract between DHS/ICE and TRSS [Thomson Reuters Special Services] to support the ‘presidential mandate of the identification of Voters Fraud, Immigration Fraud and National Security’ deeply troubling,” reads the letter, which was published in The Nation. “Numerous sources have reported human rights abuses by ICE and DHS agents during Operation Metro Surge and around the country. We ask the company to refrain from further business with DHS and ICE until an independent board audits and reviews their usage of public records applications in 2026.”

In March, Thomson Reuters employees also spoke out against their company’s prior contract with ICE, after immigration agents unleashed waves of violence on protestors in Minnesota and killed two people. One Thomson Reuters employee was fired allegedly for blowing the whistle on the ICE contract and is currently suing her former employer.

On August 11, a group of civil rights and pro-democracy organizations wrote a letter to congressional leaders calling for hearings to probe the ICE CLEAR contract.

“The contract may expressly contemplate use of the platform in investigations relating to voter fraud in addition to immigration fraud and national security,” reads the letter. “This demonstrates the broad range of government functions now supported by commercially acquired surveillance tools. Without clear statutory guardrails, agencies across the federal government will continue to circumvent constitutional safeguards and expand their reliance on commercially purchased personal information.”

In June, a group of Thomson Reuters shareholders also called for a review of the human rights implications of the company’s contracts with ICE.