Daniel Hampton

Update: This story has been updated to include a Treasury Department license easing sanctions on Russian diesel, issued hours after Trump’s announcement.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to send nearly 5 million tons of diesel fuel to world markets, but his post made no mention of the sanctions that Putin himself said are keeping that fuel off those markets.

Hours later, the Treasury Department quietly moved to ease them. The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued a general license authorizing transactions involving the sale, delivery and importation of Russian-origin diesel, “including importation into the United States,” through April 7, 2027. The license is dated Friday and was signed at 2:43 p.m. EDT, about two hours after Trump’s post.

In a Truth Social post after a call with Putin, Trump said Russia would “immediately” supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, another 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter,” followed by 3 million tons “within a short period of time,” depending on the condition of Russia’s refineries. That adds up to 4.8 million tons.

“Between our TOTAL CONTROL of the Strait of Hormuz, and this great announcement on Russian Energy, Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!” Trump wrote.

Eight days earlier, Putin told an audience in Russia that his country had diesel to spare but couldn’t sell it abroad.

“We have enough diesel fuel. But it will not come to international markets because the bans, the sanctions are in effect against our oil and petroleum products,” Putin said, according to TASS.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the same link last month, telling reporters after Trump claimed an energy truce between Russia and Ukraine that “the second necessary step is, of course, to lift the sanctions,” according to CNN.

Those restrictions include a U.S. ban on imports of Russian petroleum products dating to a 2022 executive order, as well as Treasury sanctions imposed last year on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. The new license covers transactions barred under the U.S. sanctions programs targeting Russia, as long as they relate to diesel, and runs well past the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Its only stated exception bars debits to U.S. accounts held by Russia’s Central Bank, National Wealth Fund and Ministry of Finance. Trump’s post did not mention the license, and it was not immediately clear whether the Kremlin had confirmed the terms Trump described.

Russia has also banned its own diesel exports since July after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged its refineries. Last month, Trump publicly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop hitting them, and he has repeatedly blamed Ukraine’s strikes for record U.S. diesel prices, which have topped $6 a gallon.

The announcement is the latest in a string of fuel moves weeks before the midterms. On Monday, Trump signed an order opening tax-deferred red-dye diesel to truckers. Last week, he claimed Europe had agreed to release a “massive amount” of diesel, a deal University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers said amounted to “almost nothing new.”

CNN anchor Dana Bash on Friday turned the cash-for-access allegations against Kimberly Guilfoyle back on Donald Trump Jr., reminding viewers that a Russian oligarch helped pay for his wedding celebrations.

The jab came after White House correspondent Betsy Klein reported that allies of President Donald Trump and of Trump Jr., Guilfoyle’s former fiancé, see the episode as “embarrassing.” Guilfoyle is now the U.S. ambassador to Greece.

Bash called it “interesting that Don Jr. says this is embarrassing,” noting that his wedding was “paid for at least at the time in part by a Russian.”

“It’s all very interesting,” Bash said. “Let’s just leave it there.”

ProPublica reported last month that Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, footed hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills for the festivities around Trump Jr.’s May wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas. Anderson called it “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend.” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah later urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Trump Jr. Kremlev said this week that Trump Jr. had paid him back, adding that he didn’t understand why.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle asked Eric Deters, a Kentucky Trump donor, to wire $100,000 toward her American Express bill shortly before her July 2025 confirmation hearing.

“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she allegedly wrote. Deters never sent the money, and he told CNN’s Jake Tapper there was “no question” it was a quid pro quo.

Guilfoyle’s attorney, Jesse Binnall, said she disputes the messages' authenticity. CBS News reported, citing sources, that White House officials were told the texts are real.

Separately, the Daily Mail reported that the State Department’s inspector general is now investigating her tenure in Athens. Binnall has said that “any implication of wrongdoing by the Ambassador is unsupported.”

Florida voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2024 recoiled when shown one of the TV ads his administration paid for with public money, with one saying it left him physically ill, according to a focus group conducted by The Bulwark.

Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell convened voters who backed Trump two years ago but now disapprove of his job performance, the kind of voters she said Trump has to win back. Before the moderator could finish describing the ad, Ramiro, 58, of Miami, cut in with “Oh my God.”

The spot shows Trump vowing to “demolish the deep state” and “rout the fake news media,” and it closely mirrors a 2024 Trump campaign video. It has aired during NFL and college football broadcasts with the tag “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

“The second that ad started and he started talking I literally just got nauseous, because I couldn’t wait for it to be over, ’cause he’s in your face with nothing but lies, and anything that he says now you know is just a lie,” said Paul, 63, of Palm Coast.

Bob, 65, of Spring Hill, said he saw the ad the same day his Eagles lost to the Rams. In his view, it would only work if the disclaimer instead read “definition of a narcissist.” Dena, 53, of Palm Bay, called Trump “power hungry.” Ramiro said it might be worth Republicans not winning “for the next ten years” to “wash these people out.”

Longwell wrote that Trump may have spent public money on ads that “cemented his loss,” noting that some in the group said they intend to vote Democratic.

The focus group follows polling showing broad opposition to the spending. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 86 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of Republicans, say spending taxpayer money on election ads featuring the president or his Cabinet is inappropriate.

After bipartisan backlash, Trump said his super PAC, MAGA Inc., would cover future ads, but the White House said he would not repay taxpayers for spots already aired. The ad shown to the focus group had cost about $7.2 million in public money on its own as of Oct. 6, The New York Times reported, citing AdImpact. A lawsuit filed by Common Cause and others alleges the administration shifted $20 million in border security funds to pay for the ads.

The White House has defended the spots as public service announcements, telling Axios they are “clearly not political” because Trump “is not on the ballot and the ads don’t have a call to action.”

Critics were apoplectic about President Donald Trump's family Wednesday after an ABC News analysis found that defense companies backed by his sons have landed more than $6 billion in active or promised government contracts since the brothers invested.

The analysis landed a day after Trump announced a $6.6 billion deal with Anduril Industries for a submarine parts plant in Baltimore County, with the Navy covering $2.9 billion. 1789 Capital, a venture firm that lists Donald Trump Jr. as a partner, took a major stake in Anduril last year. ABC also flagged drone makers and other firms that won their first federal contracts after the brothers got involved, including Unusual Machines, which won its largest-ever Pentagon deal last year after Trump Jr. joined as an adviser.

"The American people were fleeced. Accountability is coming," wrote California Gov. Gavin Newsom, widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender.

"$6 BILLION. Of taxpayer money," posted the progressive outlet The Tennessee Holler.

Several critics pointed to the GOP's long pursuit of Hunter Biden. Former Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath put the numbers side by side.

"Remember how the right lost its mind over Hunter Biden making roughly $3 million from Burisma? For some perspective on scale: $3 million is to $6 billion what $500 is to $1 million," she emphasized.

"This is the definition of corruption," wrote commentator Ed Krassenstein.

House Democrats railed that Trump and his sons "have raked in BILLIONS while Americans struggle to make ends meet."

Military historian Phillips O'Brien argued that the findings should change Democrats' approach to the defense budget.

"Corruption of this kind is why the Democrats need to freeze or cut back US defense spending if they take control of Congress," he wrote.

Michael Weiss, author of the bestselling book, "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," added simply, "A racket across the board."

The scrutiny comes as Trump Jr. is already facing calls for a Senate subpoena over reports that a Putin-linked Russian businessman helped pay for his wedding celebration, which prompted the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board to warn the family to "better lawyer up."

A Pentagon official told ABC News that "outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role" in funding decisions. A spokesperson for the Trump brothers called efforts to portray their investments as improper "a deliberate distortion of the facts."

President Donald Trump's own words could be the thing that sinks his ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, according to a legal analyst who's tracking Thursday's critical court hearing.

On a Wednesday livestream, "Legal AF" podcast host Michael Popok pointed to a new filing from the three outlets that cites a recent Time magazine interview. In it, the filing says, Trump griped extensively that he shouldn't "be forced to bear" what he considers "constantly bad stories."

When reporters pressed him last month, Trump initially said there was no particular reason for the ban before tearing into each outlet.

"I think Donald Trump's interview with Time Magazine is going to be his undoing," Popok said, calling it the "shocking development" in the case and arguing that Trump's words are being used "to hang him in a courtroom."

The outlets sued after Trump abruptly expelled them from the White House last month. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, temporarily restored their access, and on Thursday he is set to consider a preliminary injunction that would keep them in place while the case plays out.

Popok predicted an easy win for the outlets.

"It's going to be a winner for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico for sure. No doubt about it," he said.

He also argued that the outlets will need to broaden their lawsuit. Since Kelly's order, the White House has repeatedly kept CNN off presidential trips on its scheduled pool days, and on Monday it blocked Politico from its turn as the print pool reporter. White House communications director Steven Cheung has argued that Kelly's order covers access to the White House, not the pool or the president's plane.

The administration is defending the ban in court, arguing that Trump can bar outlets he decides fall short of the "minimum requirements of professionalism."

President Donald Trump's threat to fire two of his top political advisers has stunned his own political orbit, and CNN reporters say the fallout could reach well beyond the two men.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday that he would "terminate" James Blair and Chris LaCivita "if there's a conflict," after The New York Times reported that the pair had each been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to advise the pro-Russian government of Republika Srpska, a self-governing region of Bosnia, ahead of its Oct. 4 elections. Trump insisted the two are "outside consultants" who "do not work for me."

CNN's Alayna Treene called the episode "astonishing," pointing to how deeply both men are woven into Trump's operation.

"James Blair really is in charge of the president's entire political operation, even though it's being run on the outside of the White House," Treene told anchor Dana Bash.

Blair runs MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC that had $415 million on hand at the end of August, according to the Times. LaCivita, Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager, is a senior adviser to the group.

Treene said Trump has never liked people potentially using his name to make money. She called his public threat to fire them "a huge deal for people who have been loyal to him from the beginning," coming less than a month before the midterms as Republicans already face alarm in vulnerable races.

CNN's Jasmine Wright said a MAGA-world operative who had been furious about the Times story the night before texted her an exaggerated "wow," spelled with seven w's, after Trump's post. She said the episode hits two sore spots at once: whether the people running Trump's midterm push are truly focused on it, and a growing debate on the right over whether advisers who consider themselves "MAGA first" should be working for foreign governments.

"These are two people who are constantly on Air Force One," Wright said.

LaCivita's firm was notably paid $1.6 million by Albania's opposition to advise the campaign of former Albanian leader Sali Berisha, the Times previously reported. And Republika Srpska's government has spent more than $4 million on Trump-linked lobbyists since the start of last year, according to the Times.

President Donald Trump's defenders have waved off his remark about Iran bombing Los Angeles as a joke, but a forensic psychologist who analyzed his body language claims the footage tells a different story.

Speaking at a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, on Monday, Trump argued that the costs of his war with Iran were "a small price to pay" for keeping the country safe.

"They can take out a city," he said. "Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego."

On MS NOW's "Morning Joe" the next day, the hosts noted that Trump's allies unsurprisingly dismissed the line as a joke.

Dr. John Paul Garrison, a Georgia-based clinical and forensic psychologist who analyzes Trump's appearances as "Dr. G" on YouTube, replayed the clip frame by frame in a new video and said he found none of the usual signals that Trump was kidding.

"There's nothing body language-wise that would suggest he was joking. There was no smile. He wasn't looking around at the audience and laughing or putting his arms up or doing anything that would make you believe that what he said was a joke," Garrison said.

"This goes to show how impaired his decision-making abilities are, because he seems to think that's an acceptable loss," Garrison added.

He argued the reaction in the room troubled him more than the remark itself.

"I think the scariest part of this is actually that the audience seemed okay with what he's saying," Garrison said.

Garrison also flagged moments from later in the rally, when Trump called aide Natalie Harp onstage to hand him an executive order expanding the sale of tax-free red-dyed diesel. Garrison pointed to Trump's jaw shifting as he signed, his struggle to recall the word "Jumbotron," and Trump comparing Harp's appearance to "The Price Is Right." He characterized all of it as signs of slipping impulse control and judgment.

Garrison has stressed that his videos are opinion rather than a psychological evaluation, as he has never examined Trump and is not a neurologist. The president's physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, declared Trump in "excellent health" in a May memo, and Trump has repeatedly boasted he has passed multiple cognitive tests.

A formal review has reportedly been launched into the British financial watchdog's handling of the whistleblower who exposed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's business ties to Jeffrey Epstein, days after the banker took his own life. His death has drawn alarm from lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Simon Andriesz, 57, a former managing director at Lutnick's old brokerage BGC, died by suicide on Sept. 23 in Thailand, according to his family. His death was first reported by The Banker and confirmed by Andy Agathangelou, founder of the Transparency Task Force, a financial reform group Andriesz had worked with.

Britain's Financial Conduct Authority has since asked Lea Paterson, a newly appointed non-executive director, to review how the regulator dealt with Andriesz, PunchUp, the Daily Beast's investigative unit, reported. The watchdog expects to complete the review by the end of the year.

An FCA spokesperson said the agency was "very sorry to hear of Mr. Andriesz's death" and that Paterson would examine its interactions with him "to learn any lessons for the future."

Andriesz spent roughly a decade accusing BGC of serious misconduct, allegations the firm denies. He won $500,000 in a 2024 arbitration against BGC, and some of his disclosures contributed to a $3 million federal penalty against the firm in 2019. He also told the FBI in 2020 and 2021 that Lutnick had undisclosed business ties to Epstein, pointing to 2018 emails about a shared stake in an advertising startup called Adfin. Lutnick later told House Oversight he did not know until this year that Epstein was an Adfin co-investor, the BBC reported.

Those disclosures clashed with Lutnick's long-running public account, as he had claimed he cut ties with Epstein after a disturbing 2005 encounter, but acknowledged under Senate questioning in February that he met Epstein again in 2011 and even had lunch with him on his private island in 2012. The revelations set off bipartisan calls for his resignation, though the White House stood by him.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), one of the few Republicans publicly scrutinizing the Lutnick-Epstein connection, flagged Andriesz's death on X, crediting him with uncovering the Adfin emails and taking them to House Oversight. In February, Massie told CNN that Lutnick "should just resign," adding that "the prince lost his title for less than what we've seen Howard Lutnick lie about."

In a Sept. 26 letter to Andriesz's representative, John Robertson, FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi acknowledged the banker never got the "clarity, understanding and closure" he had sought from the agency.

"Simon spent years trying to get people to listen," Robertson said. "The tragedy is that the serious questions are only being asked now that he is gone."

A cross-party group of MPs is pushing for an independent inquiry rather than an internal FCA review, warning that the regulator should not be "marking their own homework".

BGC said it has "long disputed" Andriesz's allegations but does not intend to relitigate them "at this sad time," and it offered condolences to his family. The Commerce Department did not respond to PunchUp's request for comment.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

A Republican super PAC ad attacking Democrat Sherrod Brown over transgender surgery for minors stars a woman who isn't from Ohio and had her surgery as an adult, News 5 Cleveland reported.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a leading GOP group, has run multiple ads accusing the former senator of "forcing childhood sex change surgery." Two of the newest feature Soren Aldaco, a social media influencer and detransitioner.

"Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids like me," Aldaco says in one.

In the ads, Aldaco says she was told she was transgender at 15, received hormone shots and later underwent a botched double mastectomy without her parents' consent. But Aldaco had that surgery in Austin in June 2021, when she was 19, according to court records from her malpractice suit, which the Texas Supreme Court allowed to proceed this summer. She lived and was treated in Texas, not Ohio, News 5 noted.

Ohio already bans gender-affirming surgery for minors. Rep. Anita Somani, a Columbus-area Democrat and OB-GYN, told the station the ads "are lies."

Republican strategist Bob Clegg defended the spots, arguing Aldaco is making a broader point about medical intervention, and he brushed off her age at the time of surgery.

"How many mature 19-year-olds have you met?" Clegg said.

He also noted that the GOP-controlled Ohio Supreme Court is reviewing the state's ban, which he called only a "temporary prohibition." The attacks stem from Brown's 2023 comment that medical decisions should be left to families and doctors.

Brown has answered with his own ad, in which Ohioans point out that such surgeries on minors are already illegal in the state.

The ads come as Republicans spend heavily to hold Senate seats in states Trump won easily. Brown leads Sen. Jon Husted 49% to 46% in a recent New York Times/Siena poll.

Conservatives who blasted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for casting a white man as her Medicaid freeloader ran into a problem, as a new report pulled her own state's numbers.

About 60% of people enrolled in ARHOME, the Arkansas Medicaid program covered by Sanders' new work requirements, are white, according to state Department of Human Services data cited by the Associated Press. About 18% are Black.

That puts white enrollees ahead of Black enrollees by more than 3 to 1, in the very program the ad was promoting.

The spot features "Brad," a young white gamer covered in cheese puffs while taxpayers cover his health care. It set off a revolt on the right last week, led by Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh.

"Republicans don't have the balls to do this ad with 'Shaniqua' as the villain," Walsh posted. "Even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand."

Broader Medicaid figures tell the same story. White residents make up about 57% of Arkansas' entire Medicaid population, according to KFF data cited by the Arkansas Advocate.

Nationally, Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the population and about 18.5% of Medicaid recipients, AP reported. Experts tie that overrepresentation to generations of structural economic disparities. White beneficiaries still outnumber Black beneficiaries nationwide, by about 38% to 19% among those under 65.

Even some Republicans balked at the critics. Robert Coon, an Arkansas political consultant who told the AP that work requirements are popular in the state, called the suggestion that Brad should have been Black "overtly racist" and "inaccurate."

For her part, Sanders hasn't budged. After the backlash, she posted on X that able-bodied people shouldn't collect welfare simply because they choose not to work.

"We should never confiscate money from hard-working Arkansans to give it away to those who simply choose not to work at all," campaign manager Jordan Powell told the AP.

Attorney General Todd Blanche insists there's nothing unusual about the Justice Department sending more than 1,000 monitors to polling places next month, but one legal journalist said this week Blanche was flat-out lying, and that his own history lesson leaves out the most important part.

Blanche defended the plan on "Fox News Sunday," telling host Shannon Bream that critics were fear-mongering.

"Since the '60s, the Department of Justice has monitored elections. Every single election has been monitored," Blanche said.

On Monday's episode of All Rise News and Legal AF, Adam Klasfeld told viewers they "may not be shocked to learn that Todd Blanche was lying." Klasfeld argued that Blanche skipped over that the practice grew out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and its purpose was to protect voters rather than police them.

"Election monitors from the U.S. Department of Justice were sent to guarantee access to the ballot during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and to remove barriers to the ballot based on race, sex, disability, or any other protected characteristic," Klasfeld said.

The Trump DOJ, by contrast, has framed its effort around fighting voter fraud, especially noncitizen voting, which studies show is exceedingly rare. Civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon has accused some election officials of knowingly leaving noncitizens on the rolls, and she has called the deployment the "biggest DOJ election observer effort in history."

The roughly 1,000 monitors planned for November dwarf the 289 the department sent in 2022 and the 714 it sent in 2024, according to Democracy Docket, which reported Friday that the NAACP has sued for records on the plan.

CNN reported last month that several monitors deployed during this year's primaries had helped challenge Trump's 2020 loss, including one who advised the Georgia Republicans who tried to cast electoral votes for him.

The monitors have already caused friction in at least one deep-red state. In Wyoming, a county clerk refused DOJ observers' requests to interview voters and examine vote-counting machines during the August primary, though the department disputes that account.

The push comes as the administration presses on other fronts, after the Supreme Court blocked Trump's order restricting mail-in voting last month.

Blanche also told Bream that claims armed federal agents would be sent to polling places were "completely false."

Federal immigration agents have detained at least 70 American children and teenagers since the start of this Trump administration, and about 20 of them were handcuffed or zip-tied, according to a ProPublica investigation published Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security has said otherwise, telling the outlet that "ICE does not zip tie or restrain children."

CBS News obtained images showing the bruised wrists of a 14-year-old U.S. citizen who was zip-tied during an October raid at an Idaho horse track while watching her younger siblings. The FBI's Boise office first called reports of zip-tied children completely false, then amended that to say no "young" children were restrained once a news outlet showed it the photo.

Months earlier, agents handcuffed a 15-year-old with disabilities outside a Los Angeles school. They said they mistook the teen for an alleged gang member.

ProPublica cataloged 506 U.S. citizens held against their will, then said the list is an undercount. At that same Idaho raid, witnesses estimated more than 200 citizens were detained. Only the 30 that reporters could identify by name made the tally.

More than a hundred Americans were held after agents questioned their citizenship, and nearly all of those were people of color. Thirty-six spent at least a day in custody without reaching a lawyer or family. About a dozen citizens were deported, mostly children.

Other DHS denials met the same fate. The agency said last fall's Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago produced no administrative arrests of citizens. ProPublica found more than 120 detained in Illinois at the surge's height. Raw Story reported then on South Shore residents who said agents broke down doors and held them in zip ties, children among them.

A federal judge reached his own findings Monday, ruling that ICE agents gave false testimony and falsified records to conceal an illegal arrest in New York, an operation that left a U.S. citizen with head injuries requiring stitches.

DHS defended its agents when presented with ProPublica's findings. "DHS enforcement operations are highly targeted. We do our due diligence," the department said, adding that anyone obstructing agents will face consequences including arrest.

Former officials reacted with anger and disbelief.

"I've never seen so many U.S. citizen encounters in all my years," said Darius Reeves, who ran ICE's Baltimore field office before retiring last year. "It's an embarrassment."

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito once dismissed complaints about the court's emergency docket as a manufactured controversy, but his new book concedes the docket has reshaped how the court works, and he does not expect that to change.

In 2021, Alito used a speech at Notre Dame to push back at critics who call the emergency docket the shadow docket, saying the "catchy and sinister" label painted the justices as a dangerous cabal using improper methods. He insisted the complaints were not serious criticism and that the rising number of emergency orders was not the court's doing.

That speech is reprinted in "So Ordered: An Originalist's View of The Constitution, The Court and Our Country," released Tuesday, alongside a new postscript. Alito wrote that emergency petitions now nearly match the full-briefing, argued caseload the justices handle each term, and told the Associated Press the surge has transformed the court's work.

He again pointed away from the court, arguing that presidents increasingly govern by executive order, drawing lawsuits and "robust" lower-court rulings that send cases racing upward.

Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck, the scholar most associated with popularizing the shadow docket term and a critic Alito has singled out, counted the gap as wider than Alito described. In his One First newsletter, Vladeck put last term's totals at 133 full-court emergency rulings against 56 merits rulings, with 21 grants of emergency relief. Five years ago, he wrote, the averages ran closer to 70 rulings and eight to 10 grants. He noted he figures "prominently" in Alito's discussion.

Trump's agenda has run straight through that docket.

The administration's request last week was its 41st, matching its entire first term. In August, the justices divided 5-4 to let the $400 million White House ballroom makeover proceed, after Chief Justice John Roberts first granted a temporary stay and after the Justice Department recast the project as national security infrastructure. Alito was among three dissenters in February when the court ruled against Trump's emergency tariffs.

On the tone coming from the White House, Alito told the AP that harsh criticism of the court's substance is fair, but "rhetoric is a different story."

A thread from MIT biosecurity researcher Kevin Esvelt arguing that Russia's response to a suspected plague death doesn't match a routine lab accident drew a wave of reaction from prominent scientists and physicians Monday.

Russian authorities have been responding since late September to the death of a 28-year-old lab technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East. Nearly 200 people were placed under medical observation, according to The Moscow Times.

Esvelt wrote that the scale of the response is "inconsistent with a lab-acquired plague infection, which would have been treated with prophylactic antibiotics," citing quarantines across several hospitals, reported FSB involvement, and hazmat use. He added that Russian authorities "have surely sequenced the Irkutsk pathogen, but refuse to identify it," and said a physical lockdown implies either engineered pan-resistance or that the pathogen is not plague at all.

He also wrote that none of it means a pandemic is coming.

Russian officials have confirmed none of that. Rospotrebnadzor says the worker was diagnosed with pneumonia of unknown origin, that expanded testing found no microorganisms linked to her work, and that no accident occurred at the institute. The World Health Organization says no cause of death has been officially confirmed. RFE/RL reported there is no public evidence the lab was developing plague as a weapon, and that Russia says such facilities are defensive.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday the reports were not cause for alarm, but "for focus."

Even so, Esvelt's thread sent the internet into a frenzy.

Ashish Jha, the former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, vouched for Esvelt as one of the smartest people in the world on engineered pathogens: "Kevin's tweets are worth your time."

Mathematical biologist Alex Washburne called him a "biodefense brother from another mother."

Physician Brian Goldman had a message for skeptics: "To the pooh-poohers, read this."

Journalist Annie Jacobsen, who writes on national security, simply wrote one word: "This."

Activist Drew Pavlou, who is not a scientist, went furthest, writing that there is a "disturbingly high possibility" the outbreak is an escaped pandemic weapon and calling for Russia's borders to be sealed.

And environmental justice advocate Jay C. Ford reacted, "New nightmare fuel just dropped."

A confused President Donald Trump appeared to blend the name of his own endorsed governor with one of his favorite political targets at a Monday night rally in Nebraska, one of several stumbles during a speech that ran nearly 90 minutes, according to The Daily Beast.

The 80-year-old president traveled to Grand Island's Pinnacle Bank Expo Center to boost Gov. Jim Pillen and Sen. Pete Ricketts on the first day of early voting in the state, Nebraska Public Media reported. It was his first Nebraska campaign stop since 2022.

After reading a scripted attack on Pillen's Democratic challenger, former state Sen. Lynne Walz, Trump drifted away from the teleprompter.

"Probably, and I've known some bad governors, probably the worst governor in history, Jim Walz," Trump said.

He quickly tried to recover, adding that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz "is, is the worst."

Trump went on to call Lynne Walz a disaster "just like her uncle or whatever the hell he is," and said the family comes from "a bad bloodline." The real relationship is far more distant, however. Lynne Walz is married to a third cousin of the Minnesota governor, The Washington Sun reported when she launched her campaign.

The flub was just one moment that drew attention.

Trump struggled to identify the giant video screens outside the venue, calling them "telerons or whatever the hell they call it" before someone corrected him with "Teletron." Earlier, he admitted he had no idea what red dye diesel was moments before signing an executive order expanding access to it. Furthermore, his gaze at aide Natalie Harp also set off a wave of reaction online.

When the speech ended, Trump walked past the opening in the curtain set aside for his exit and strolled the length of the stage to "YMCA" as Secret Service agents followed, The Daily Beast reported.

The stop is part of a swing through reliably Republican states where GOP Senate candidates are struggling, a strategy that has left some in his own party baffled. Ricketts is locked in a close race with independent Dan Osborn.