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The U.S. official overseeing Donald Trump's contested White House ballroom quietly held talks with Vladimir Putin's aides during a June trip to Russia, in what looks like an off-the-books attempt at diplomacy on the war in Ukraine.

Rodney Mims Cook Jr., 70, chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event often called Putin's answer to Davos, becoming the first U.S. official to appear there in nearly a decade. According to the Financial Times, Cook met privately with Kremlin figures including Anton Kobyakov, a senior Putin aide, and was given a diplomatic passport and briefings before he traveled.

A very excitable former official in Donald Trump’s first administration went off on the president and the GOP for heading into the midterms with nothing to appeal to voters.

Appearing on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” former State Department official Matt Bartlett was asked by host Jonathan Lemire, “What if you were a campaign manager right now? What is the message for Republicans heading to, you know, who's up for election this November at a time when the president's poll numbers are so low and Americans are so unhappy about prices, about the war in Iran, the list goes on and on.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro is pushing exceedingly hard to keep an accused World War II memorial vandal behind bars.

After Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh declined prosecutors' request to delay suspect Melissa Farris' release, the U.S. attorney's office filed a 30-page appeal within three hours, asking Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to overturn the ruling, and Politico reported that "Pirro is going to unusual lengths" to keep her locked up.

A former Justice Department civil rights attorney says the Trump administration's antisemitism investigations into three Ivy League schools were rigged from the start — with settlements demanded before the evidence was even in.

According to MS NOW, Haley Van Erem, who spent nearly a decade in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division before joining the antisemitism task force and departing in May 2025, told Congress the findings against Harvard, Brown and Columbia were "predetermined" by political priorities that blew past standard investigative procedures.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond demanded Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) place his own secretary of state on leave after the official's arrest on suspicion of public intoxication.

Secretary of State Benjamin Lepak was taken into custody by Edmond police Friday night outside a McDonald's drive-through, OKC Fox reported. Lepak is part of a Republican family that the governor has repeatedly awarded government jobs to.

Melania Trump is locked in a behind-the-scenes standoff with 35-year-old White House aide Natalie Harp over access to the president, according to Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff.

Harp has become a near-constant fixture at Trump's side, which Wolff says has effectively pushed the first lady out of her own husband's daily orbit, according to The Daily Beast.

Peace talks between Washington and Tehran are officially dead, according to a statement released by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, despite the president having claimed talks were ongoing just days earlier.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Investor and market expert Lawrence McDonald highlighted a series of “red flashing signals” Tuesday during an appearance on Fox Business, signals that he warned were “very similar” to conditions leading up to the 1987 global market crash known as Black Monday.

Founder of The Bear Traps Report and a former Lehman Brothers vice president who co-wrote the bestselling account of the bank's 2008 collapse, "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense," told Fox Business host Cheryl Casone that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were producing weaker results even as bond markets flash global warning signs.

A San Diego Padres coach's arrest at a Texas airport is sparking outrage after his family said he was taken into custody by ICE agents while simply flying home to see his kids.

According to The New York Times, Oswaldo Pirela, the Padres' minor-league catching coordinator, was detained by immigration authorities at El Paso International Airport around 4 a.m. on Sunday, said his wife, Kemberly Avila. Pirela, 34, was flying home to his family in Arizona. The Padres' Triple-A affiliate is based in El Paso. Avila said she has been in touch with her husband, and that the team has stepped in.

President Donald Trump's popularity fell to the lowest point so far in his second term, just as voters head to the polls in three states – including his home state of Florida.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump's net approval now sits 31 points underwater, a stunning reversal from the plus-6 rating he held at the start of his second term – marking a 37-point collapse.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr faces a First Amendment lawsuit from ABC, which accused him of waging a "deeply un-American" campaign to revoke the network's broadcast licenses.

ABC and its parent, the Walt Disney Company, filed the complaint Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking an emergency injunction to halt the FCC's early license renewal proceedings against the network's eight owned stations.

A legal analyst says the Supreme Court has handed President Donald Trump the tools to quietly sidestep one of the Constitution's oldest anti-corruption rules.

On Slate's "Amicus" podcast, legal writer Mark Joseph Stern argued that the court's expansion of executive power has let Trump slip past the emoluments clauses, the twin provisions meant to stop a president from cashing in on the office through foreign or domestic payments.

Julie K. Brown, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose reporting helped lead to Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in 2019, celebrated a “victory for transparency” Tuesday in the wake of a federal judge’s order to make a critical trove of Epstein-related files public, files that she suspected would hold “new material.”

Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice who’s currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, was dealt a fatal blow last week after U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska rejected her “final arguments” in a failed bid to keep a trove of documents under seal related to a defamation lawsuit filed against her by Virginia Giuffre in 2015.