David Edwards

Suicide attempts in the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group climbed to eight during its combat deployment, far above what carriers usually see, an official said.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao disclosed the figure in a letter dated Tuesday to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), according to CNN, which obtained the letter.

The outlet said the number had not been previously reported. No sailor died by suicide during the deployment, Cao insisted.

"Since the beginning of Lincoln's deployment, there have been a total of eight suicide attempts across the strike group," Cao wrote to Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This number includes the Lincoln crew and sailors from the carrier air wing, strike group and destroyer squadron staff, escorting destroyers and all embarked aviation squadrons."

"Eight attempted suicides is incredibly high," a U.S. military official told CNN. "The strain of combat ops is much higher than normal deployments. No port calls, constant alerts, etc."

The official said recent carrier strike group deployments have seen one or two attempts a year.

CNN reported that between 6,000 and 7,000 sailors served in the strike group across about a half dozen ships. The carrier stayed out of port for more than six months while carrying out combat operations against Iran.

The strike group's rate of attempts was roughly in line with the rate for the entire active-duty Navy in 2024, when the service recorded 356 attempts among about 337,000 sailors, according to CNN. The official was comparing the Lincoln with other carrier deployments, not the Navy as a whole.

"We have not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship," the Navy said in an earlier statement to CNN.

"A small number of mental health cases were treated with no loss of life," Cao said in an August statement, according to the Washington Examiner.

CNN had previously reported that two sailors from the strike group jumped overboard in recent months. Both were rescued, U.S. officials said. Cao's count of eight is higher than the two incidents reported earlier in the summer.

Cao confirmed in the letter that an air wing sailor went overboard in early August. The CNN report said that the sailor was recovered and treated aboard the carrier.

"Additionally, one sailor attempted to go overboard in March and was stopped by his shipmates," Cao wrote.

At Joint Base Andrews on Aug. 14, a reporter told President Donald Trump that families of Lincoln sailors were concerned about conditions aboard the ship.

"No, they're not," Trump said. Asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, he answered, "No, no, not nearly long enough."

"The Fake News media should STOP exploiting military families!" Pentagon deputy press secretary Jacob Bliss wrote on X that day.

"It was fake news reporting from CNN," Trump later said of the reports of distress by the families.

Gillibrand responded to Cao's letter in a statement to Newsweek.

"What Trump and Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members," Gillibrand said.

The Lincoln left the Middle East in August and is expected back in San Diego in the coming weeks.

A federal judge rebuked President Donald Trump's White House minutes into a hearing on its media ban, saying reporters were denied the due process courts require.

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly made the remarks Wednesday as he opened a hearing on a lawsuit brought by CNN, MS NOW and Politico, according to live coverage from CNN, one of the plaintiffs.

Kelly, whom Trump appointed in 2017, is hearing the outlets' request for a temporary restraining order, a short-term court order, NBC News reported.

The order would restore their reporters' White House press passes.

Courts have held that the White House cannot revoke a journalist's access without notice and a chance to appeal, CNN reported. Kelly said that process "wasn't played out here."

"I just say to both sides that's where I am," Kelly said. "Before we get to any core First Amendment issues, there is a due process claim and a due process issue that seems to me the first stop in figuring out how to resolve the motion."

Kelly also said he is bound by two earlier appeals court rulings on revoked press passes, the Sherrill and Karem cases, Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News reported on X. Both rulings cut against Trump's position.

Trump announced the ban on Sept. 18, saying he didn't like the outlets' "negative stories," and the Secret Service seized their reporters' passes the next day, CNN reported earlier this week. The White House sent the outlets letters explaining its reasons on Sept. 22.

MS NOW's copy of the letter, filed in the case, gives the outlet until 5 p.m. Friday to contest the decision.

Ted Boutrous, the attorney for the three outlets, told Kelly the letters announced the White House's standards "after the fact," leaving the outlets no chance to follow them. Boutrous said he "didn't think they were real" at first, Klasfeld reported, noting the letters carry no letterhead or signature.

The MS NOW letter is signed simply "White House Press Office."

"I don't know how a letter they got after the pass was revoked could provide them with the standards that they'd have to conform their conduct to. It's a piece of paper they got saying you've already violated that," Kelly said later in the hearing, according to Jeremy Barr, a media reporter for The Guardian.

"There's not a semblance of due process," Boutrous said as he opened his argument, calling the ban "a severe punishment on the plaintiffs," according to reporter Scott MacFarlane.

Boutrous called Trump the media outlets' "lead witness" because the president keeps saying the ban is about their stories.

"The President wears his heart on his sleeve … he says he's doing this because the coverage is too negative," Boutrous said.

"Not only do we have an expressed statement that this is content discrimination and antipathy toward the reporters …" the attorney argued, according to MacFarlane. "It's coming from the President."

"It's just so over the top … it's clear retaliation," Boutrous pointed out.

Boutrous told Kelly the harm to the outlets could not be undone. He noted that CNN had been scheduled to serve as this week's television pool, filming the president's events and sharing the footage with other networks.

The White House's letter to MS NOW cites national security to justify the ban, accusing the outlet of "publishing sensitive or classified information" and pointing to its reporting on an FBI leak investigation and the Iran conflict.

"They are literally arguing that reporters shouldn't scrutinize national security," Boutrous said, according to CNN. "That's the sin."

Boutrous said the administration was using "national security" to mask a "blatant violation" of due process, treating the phrase as "magic words."

Boutrous also said the articles the White House cited were "just garden variety reporting." Only one of the CNN stories on the list was written by a reporter with a White House pass, and the White House renewed that reporter's pass after the story ran, he said.

When the Justice Department's turn came, attorney Michael Velchik argued that reporters should already know the White House's standards, including on "professionalism." He said reporters "can't have a get out of jail free card" just by pointing to Trump's past criticism of their work.

Velchik urged Kelly to hold off on a ruling until the Friday deadline in the letters.

"None of us are that naive. They're going to keep playing games," Boutrous shot back.

"All of a sudden … this is a national security issue," Boutrous noted in his rebuttal, which observed that Trump did not cite national security when he previously attacked CNN's coverage.

Boutrous argued that "suddenly, the lightbulb went off" for Trump to invoke national security only after the outlets sued.

The hearing ended "abruptly" without a ruling, Klasfeld reported. Kelly took the arguments under advisement, meaning he will decide later. He appeared to acknowledge the case is time-sensitive, MacFarlane wrote.

Kelly concluded by telling the lawyers he will "try to get an answer as soon as I can."

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) lashed out at Republican senators pushing to investigate President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., over his ties to a Russian oligarch.

Emmer objected in a post on X on Wednesday, targeting senators who want Congress to examine Trump Jr.'s dealings with the oligarch.

Umar Kremlev, the oligarch who leads the International Boxing Association, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Trump Jr.'s wedding celebrations in the Bahamas in May, ProPublica reported this month.

"Don Jr is a private citizen and businessman so this unwarranted attack will go nowhere," Emmer wrote. "Now just mere days before leaving town, some senators want to waste time creating a new Russia hoax and attacking Don Jr."

"The Senate is still sitting on the SAVE America Act, reconciliation 3.0, Clarity Act, and hundreds of good conservative House bills that need to be passed," Emmer argued.

"This partisan distraction is NOT what the American people voted for!" he insisted.

The push began with one of Emmer's fellow Republicans, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), who on Tuesday sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a three-page letter urging it to subpoena Trump Jr., The New York Times reported.

"A toaster is a wedding gift," Curtis wrote in a social media post. "A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else."

"Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden's foreign relationships," Curtis continued. "We should not unplug it now."

Curtis also urged the committee to take another look at Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.

"I say bring it on," Hunter Biden wrote on X Tuesday.

"I'll sit next to Don Jr. and testify any time, any place. Eric and Jared can join us too," he added, referring to Trump Jr.'s brother, Eric Trump, and brother-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Emmer cheered a House investigation of Hunter Biden in January 2024, when he wrote on X that House Republicans had "finally secured a deposition date" for him.

"This is a HUGE win in the @HouseGOP's mission to provide transparency and accountability for the American people," Emmer wrote at the time.

Since Curtis's letter, three more Republican senators, including two Judiciary Committee members, have backed an investigation, the Daily Beast reported, citing The Associated Press. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said the wedding events showed "colossally bad judgment at best."

"I would support Sen. Curtis's request," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said, according to the outlet.

"It doesn't make any difference if you're Republican or Democrat, if you're Trump or you're Biden," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who does not sit on the committee.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday that he would take Curtis's request seriously but such requests take time, the Times reported.

"If you were going to ask me when you're going to have a hearing, there's no way I could answer that today," Grassley said.

Trump Jr. holds no government job, but ProPublica noted reports that he helped vet Cabinet picks for his father's second term. The Wall Street Journal called him the president's "most essential political adviser."

Kremlev is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who gave him a state honor in April, ProPublica reported. His payments covered the rental of a private island and a fireworks show, according to the outlet. After the president's second inauguration, Kremlev sent him an open letter seeking help in his boxing group's dispute with the International Olympic Committee.

"It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend," Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, said in an Instagram statement, according to ProPublica.

"I hear he's paid him back," the president told reporters in the Oval Office on Sept. 19, referring to his son and Kremlev, the Times reported.

Trump Jr.'s camp has not confirmed he repaid Kremlev, according to the Daily Beast.

A panel of Republican-appointed federal judges drew accusations of defying U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after ordering Missouri to switch congressional maps while voting was already underway.

The accusation came in an emergency filing submitted to the high court on Tuesday by attorney Abha Khanna, who represents the group behind a referendum challenging the new map.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Missouri must use districts favored by President Donald Trump in November. Missouri used those districts in its August primary, but its own Supreme Court later ruled the map invalid under state law, and officials have since printed ballots under the older 2022 map, the filing said.

The panel consists of Judge James Loken, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, and Judges David Stras and Justin Smith, both Trump appointees, according to the Associated Press.

Smith joined the appeals court in June. Before that, the AP reported, he represented Trump in an unsuccessful Supreme Court appeal of a $5 million jury verdict won by the writer E. Jean Carroll.

"This Court's stays are not invitations for a lower court to repackage the same relief and try again," Khanna wrote.

The Supreme Court stayed the district court's first order requiring the new map on Sept. 10. The appeals panel then directed the same judge to issue a new, permanent order using nearly identical wording, according to the filing.

Khanna also argued the panel had no authority to decide the case at all, because federal law sends challenges to congressional maps to a special three-judge district court.

"The panel cannot manufacture jurisdiction by treating the same order as a preliminary injunction on one page and a [temporary restraining order] on the next," the filing said.

The filing leaned on Purcell, a principle that discourages federal courts from changing election rules close to an election.

Election officials from all 116 of Missouri's local jurisdictions told the appeals court that reverting to the new map is now "impossible," Khanna wrote.

"Instead of crediting local election officials' own assessment that they cannot switch maps at this late hour, the Eighth Circuit deemed the changes 'feasible' based entirely on its own speculation," the filing said.

"That is the electoral disorder Purcell exists to prevent—on steroids," Khanna noted in the filing.

Reprinting ballots would cost from a few hundred dollars in small jurisdictions to between $15,000 and $30,000 in larger ones, and not every jurisdiction would need new ballots, the panel found, according to a brief filed Wednesday by the Republicans who sued.

Ballots for military and overseas voters went out on Sept. 18, and in-person absentee voting began Tuesday, Khanna wrote. Richard von Glahn, the referendum group's executive director, cast his own ballot that day under the 2022 map.

The opinion was unsigned and joined by Loken and Smith. Stras, one of the two Trump appointees, wrote separately that the referendum group and von Glahn have no legal right to bring the appeal, Courthouse News reported.

"For that reason, I would dismiss the appeal," Stras wrote.

The Republicans who sued built their opposition on that point, telling the justices the group's interest in the referendum is a general grievance shared by any citizen, not a personal injury.

The panel put its order on hold until 5 p.m. Central Time on Sept. 28, the opposition brief said.

It chose that date so the referendum group could not wait until the Dec. 21 filing deadline and run out the clock on the election, according to the brief.

A pro-Trump network serving as the White House's backup camera crew aired motorcade footage that the head of the White House press corps says put President Donald Trump at risk.

Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents' Association, made the accusation on X on Wednesday. The footage came from Real America's Voice, the pro-Trump network the White House named as a backup television crew for the president's trip to New York.

Conservative commentator Nick Sortor posted the video late Tuesday, thanking the network for showing "RAW footage of how difficult it is to keep President Trump safe." The clip showed New York police vehicles escorting Trump through the city at night as he headed to the airport.

"For decades, the [White House Correspondents' Association] has advised poolers not to air video of taillights because it's a potential risk to the security of the motorcade," Jiang wrote, quoting Sortor's post.

The arrangement she is criticizing dates to Monday, when the major television networks refused to staff the White House pool in protest of the administration's decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the building, Politico reported.

"This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place," Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who chairs the television pool, wrote in an email to pool subscribers obtained by Politico.

A White House guidance email sent Sunday night listed no television pool at all, according to Politico.

It named Hearst, which runs local stations around the country, as a secondary crew in Washington, and Real America's Voice as the secondary crew for the New York trip.

Jiang had warned two days earlier that the substitute arrangement leaves every other newsroom with nothing, after a conservative writer said Real America's Voice was providing the coverage.

"RAV is getting unilateral TV coverage for itself, but it does not have the ability to POOL or share it with anyone. In spaces like the Oval there's not enough room for every outlet, which is what makes the pool necessary to ensure everyone (including RAV) has the footage," Jiang wrote.

It was not immediately clear how widely Hearst or Real America's Voice would distribute their footage, Politico reported.

The regular pool of five networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News — takes turns covering the president and then shares the video with newsrooms that cannot fit in tight spaces like the Oval Office.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued the administration Monday to restore their reporters' access, the outlet reported. Secret Service officers had confiscated their credentials.

"All eyes are on Real America's Voice today," Real America's Voice White House correspondent Taylor Mitchell noted on Monday.

Democrats and libertarians alike condemned the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire after it said it supports the assassination of "basically every elected Democrat" in the state.

The party posted the message on X Tuesday. The post, which the account later edited, remained online Wednesday with more than 317,000 views. Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) responded Tuesday night by calling on the state attorney general and federal law enforcement to investigate.

"We openly support the assassination of basically every elected Democrat in New Hampshire. But if you don't have the balls to do that then you should probably vote GOP," the party wrote.

"I condemn, with every fiber of my being, the threats of and calls for murder from the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire," Goodlander wrote.

"If you want to light Democrats on fire, please do," the party's account wrote in another post, answering a user who had asked, "When's the time to burn it to the ground?" The exchange appears in screenshots Goodlander shared.

"Calling for the killing of fellow Americans because you disagree is not liberty. It is absolutely anti-American," Goodlander argued. "You can disagree with someone as deeply as humanly possible. But in the United States of America you cannot call for their killing and go unpunished."

"I am calling on the New Hampshire Attorney General … and federal law enforcement to fully investigate these threats and hold anyone who broke the law accountable," Goodlander added.

State House Minority Leader Alexis Simpson (D-NH) also reported the post to the attorney general's office and the Legislature's director of security, InDepthNH reported, citing a Facebook post.

The outlet reported that party chair Jeremy Kauffman wrote the post.

The attorney general's office was contacted after Kauffman previously threatened the life of former Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky, but no state action was taken, according to InDepthNH.

"Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero," the party's account posted in September 2024, when Harris was vice president, New Hampshire Public Radio reported.

The Libertarian National Committee, the national party's governing body, voted 15-2 in May to cut ties with the New Hampshire party, citing its "numerous anti-libertarian positions" and its 2024 endorsement of President Donald Trump, according to the Boston Globe.

"When these psychos took over the state party, they had a simple goal: destroy libertarianism. Racism didn't work so they've escalated," David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote on X.

"They are sociopathic malcontents leeching on to a movement for the ego of their political cult leader," Caryn Ann Harlos, a former secretary of the Libertarian National Committee, wrote in reply to Goodlander.

A digital extortion group says it has stolen personal data on every FBI employee and applicant, including home addresses, phone numbers, and details about their spouses.

The group, known as ShinyHunters, made the claim to 404 Media on Tuesday and handed the outlet a sample file containing the personal details of 5,000 alleged FBI employees.

That sample listed each person's name, address, phone number, and date of birth, and in some cases information about a spouse, according to the report. A representative for the group said the hack happened Monday night.

"We hacked the FBI. We hold data on all FBI employees and applicants," the representative told 404.

"This is extremely bad," national security journalist Michael Weiss wrote on X, sharing the report.

Criminals in the same ecosystem as ShinyHunters have previously used stolen phone records to track, intimidate, and harass the FBI agents investigating them, 404 Media reported. The outlet said the material would also be valuable to foreign intelligence services seeking to understand how the bureau works.

The outlet checked some sample phone numbers against the open-source intelligence tool OSINT Industries and found they matched people with the same names listed in the file.

Some of those numbers belong to Justice Department personnel, 404 Media co-founder Joseph Cox wrote on X, after running records through a compromised-data tool built by the security firm District 4.

Reuters partially verified personnel information from the sample by running names and postal addresses against credit bureau records and previously breached data held by the dark-web intelligence firm District 4 Labs. The news agency found matches in at least nine cases.

Reporters could not establish where the data came from, however, or whether the hackers took it from the FBI's internal systems as they claimed.

ShinyHunters also defaced the FBI's jobs website on Tuesday, according to 404 Media.

"[T]his site has been seized by ShinyHunters," the message read, mimicking the seizure notices the bureau places on websites it shuts down.

"All FBI data was compromised including PII/PHI [personally identifiable information and protected health information] on incumbent and former FBI employees and all applicant information," the message continued. "We have a lot more than we claim here."

"Thank you for your attention to this matter," the message concluded, echoing a sign-off President Donald Trump frequently uses on Truth Social.

The FBI's jobs site said Tuesday that it and the Special Agent Applicant Portal were "currently unavailable," 404 Media reported. BleepingComputer later said the site was offline for "maintenance."

The representative said the group exploited a previously unknown flaw in the Oracle business software PeopleSoft, then reached Amazon Web Services GovCloud servers and downloaded between two and three terabytes of material, according to 404 Media.

ShinyHunters targeted the bureau after an FBI announcement in May detailed the group's methods and urged targets not to pay, Reuters reported. The group typically threatens to publish stolen data unless victims pay a large fee.

"[W]hat we plan to do is not something I'd call extortion, maybe coercion," the representative said, when asked whether the group would try to extort the bureau. "This is not financially motivated."

The FBI did not immediately respond to 404 Media's request for comment.

The bureau's cyber division faced cuts that would reduce its personnel by half, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) warned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September 2025, citing information his office had received.

FBI Director Kash Patel countered that arrests and convictions had increased under the Trump administration, CyberScoop reported.

Patel's own personal email account was breached in March by Handala Hack Team, an Iran-linked group that published more than 300 emails and photographs, CBS News reported.

"The information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information," the FBI said at the time.

A federal judge has blocked the deportation of a Venezuelan man shot in the back by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Austin, his attorney said.

Immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said Tuesday that a federal judge granted an emergency order halting the removal of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

A hearing in the case is set for Sept. 30 in San Antonio, and the judge ordered that Garces Perez be present, KUT reported.

The officer who shot Garces Perez on Sunday was not wearing his body camera, three Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the shooting told The Atlantic.

That officer was hired last year and previously worked for another federal law enforcement agency, two of the officials said. A second officer working with him that day had a camera turned on, two of the officials said. Both officers were driving unmarked vehicles.

"Show us your body cam footage. Show us your dashcam footage. Otherwise, nobody believes you," Lincoln-Goldfinch said in a video she posted on X.

Garces Perez called into a news conference Monday afternoon and spoke to reporters through a translator, The Atlantic reported.

"I have not received the medical attention that I require," he said.

Guards at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall took a tablet from his hands after he spoke publicly and revoked his communication privileges, Lincoln-Goldfinch wrote on Instagram.

They also moved him out of the infirmary and into an isolated room with a flat bed that cannot be adjusted like a medical bed, she said. Garces Perez was discharged from an Austin hospital about four hours after the Sunday shooting, with the bullet still lodged in his body, and he slept on the floor his first night in detention, according to his attorney.

He lost the ability to move his arm Monday and was taken back to a hospital around 5 p.m., where doctors gave him intravenous morphine, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. The gunshot fractured his collarbone, and he is wearing a sling.

He was returned to Pearsall around midnight and now receives only Tylenol and ibuprofen for the pain, she said. The Statesman reported that her claims about his treatment in detention have not been independently verified.

"We are asking for his communication privileges to be immediately restored and for him to be provided an appropriate medical bed and adequate medical care," Lincoln-Goldfinch wrote, adding that she is pushing for his immediate release.

The Department of Homeland Security has said Garces Perez entered the country illegally and has a final order of removal, according to the Statesman.

Lincoln-Goldfinch said he entered legally in 2024 through a Biden-era program, holds a work permit, and received the removal order only because a notice of his immigration hearing was mailed to an old address.

"I see this all the time in my practice, and it's a mistake we can easily correct. It does not justify shooting people in the street," she wrote.

Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to questions from The Atlantic about the shooting or whether the officer will face discipline.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) called for Garces Perez's release Tuesday after ICE returned him to the detention center, the Statesman reported.

"It is nothing more than a prison," Castro wrote of the Pearsall facility.

Castro said he and Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) plan to visit Garces Perez at the detention center Wednesday.

Vice President JD Vance let out a slow, forced laugh after a reporter from a pro-Trump outlet asked him to explain why the White House abruptly announced Trump TV after banning mainstream media outlets CNN, Politico, and MS NOW.

Vance was taking questions at the White House on Tuesday after announcing a fraud crackdown on the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's signature health care law.

The question came from Mary Margaret Olohan, the White House correspondent for the conservative Daily Wire.

"And with that, I have my notes here that I'm supposed to take questions from — CNN and Politico," Vance said, opening the question period with a joke that seemed to fall flat. "Anybody from CNN, Politico here? No?"

Just days before. President Donald Trump announced he was "banning" reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over coverage he called fake news, according to NBC News. Journalists from the three outlets had their credentials taken at the gate when they tried to enter on Saturday.

The outlets sued the administration on Monday, saying the ban "could not be a more direct assault" on the Constitution, according to CNN.

On Monday, Vance disputed the president's own framing and insisted there had been no ban on media outlets. At the same time, he defended preventing the outlets from accessing the White House, telling reporters the decision was "totally appropriate" and that the outlets engaged in what he called propaganda.

One of the banned outlets, Politico, profiled the Daily Wire last year as one of eight MAGA outlets gaining ground in the briefing room. A reporter from that outlet asked Vance about Trump TV on Tuesday.

"Can you share a little more about what Trump TV is and why it comes at this point in time?" Olohan asked Vance at the "fraud" event.

Vance paused. Then came a slow, forced "ha ha ha" that did not sound like laughter.

"I'll let the president speak to Trump TV, and I'm sure there will be forthcoming announcements on that particular topic," Vance said.

The White House launched Trump TV at 7 p.m. Monday, opening the round-the-clock stream on its YouTube channel with a rerun of Trump's July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore, according to Time. Kaelan Dorr, the White House's head of digital strategy, said the channel would show "the Administration's greatest hits, unfiltered."

The networks that share pool coverage of the president had suspended it hours before the launch, after the White House pulled CNN from its assigned pool duty, MS NOW reported.

Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, the pool's acting chair, told members that "the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage."

At a ribbon-cutting for Trump's new White House helipad on Monday, the president could not be heard, NBC News reported.

"There is no microphone because the pool cameras aren't there," a Newsmax correspondent told viewers.

Vance had come to the podium to announce that his task force is canceling subsidies for about 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollments, a step expected to save $2.2 billion, the Washington Examiner reported.

Olohan had also asked whether the task force was investigating Planned Parenthood over a Daily Wire report on its billing for cross-sex hormones.

"I haven't seen the report that you're referencing," Vance said. "Mary Margaret, I don't know the answer to that question."

A Texas criminal defense attorney and broadcaster hit back at a wave of online critics after a judge told her the sleeveless dress she wore to court was inappropriate.

Mariah Medina, who was licensed to practice law in Texas in September 2025 after a career in San Antonio television news, posted a photograph of the gray sleeveless dress on X on Monday. The post had drawn more than 4.8 million views on X by Tuesday, according to the platform's public counter.

"It's a dress I've worn on air countless times and a dress that I have worn to other courts without issue," Medina wrote.

"She had me come around the bench so she could see my outfit… in front of defendants and other lawyers," she continued. "She laughed and asked if I really believed that my dress was appropriate for a jury trial… then asked me if I had a blazer in my car."

"How is it inappropriate?" one user asked.

"My shoulders… you can see some of my shoulders," Medina answered.

"Such a disappointing interaction and a first since licensure," she wrote.

The judge posts a dress code outside her courtroom and keeps a list of clothing she forbids there, Medina wrote, and the dress violated neither. Medina did not name the judge.

"[I]t was completely mean spirited and unprofessional to address it in the manner that she did," the attorney noted. "My case wasn't even going to trial today, and she, as the judge, knew that."

Medina answered critic after critic over the hours that followed, several of them posting under pseudonyms rather than their own names, according to the thread.

"Didn't they give you lessons on appropriate attire in law school?… Do you think it would be appropriate for a man to go to court in a tank top to defend his clients?" one user wrote.

"Men are not women, so yeah it would be inappropriate. Furthermore, I wasn't wearing a tank top you dolt," Medina replied.

"[Y]ou're the one embarrassing yourself because you don't dress appropriately in court," the account shot back.

"Somehow despite me posting under my government name with a real photo of myself I find myself feeling more embarrassed for you," Medina answered.

"F— off and don't dress like a hooker in the court room," the account wrote.

"No promises!" Medina replied.

"I agree with the judge. He should have held you in contempt and tossed you in jail for 10 days… We take that as a starting point when it comes to loud modern women," another user wrote.

"I'm sorry you pee sitting down because your p--p-- is too small to make it into the toilet standing up," Medina answered.

A Republican caller blasted President Donald Trump on live television as "one of the crookedest presidents we ever have" just moments before his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

The caller reached C-SPAN's Washington Journal from Miami on the program's Republican line Tuesday morning, and host Pedro Echevarria identified him only by his first name.

The show was taking viewer calls to fill airtime ahead of Trump's speech to the General Assembly.

Trump delivered that speech later Tuesday morning in New York, where he defended his decision to go to war with Iran, NBC News reported.

"I'm a Republican. The lady [who] just called said we have the best president we ever had," the caller said. "I think that lady, she's dreaming, because it's not the best president we have."

"He's one of the crookedest presidents we ever have," the caller continued. "All his family is taking the money. He's not helping the poor people."

"He cut down the school's food. That's a shame," he said. "This country, we're supposed to help the people, not to hurt the people. And I'm a Republican, a registered Republican."

Trump's 2025 tax and spending law made the largest cuts ever to the federal food stamp program, according to the Center for American Progress. Enrollment in that program helps decide which children automatically qualify for free school meals, and families with two children could pay about $1,900 more a year, the group found.

"Okay," Echevarria said on the broadcast.

"That's all I have to say," the caller replied.

Far-right influencer Laura Loomer joined MAGA diehards with a profane eruption after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) coaxed President Donald Trump into joining his news conference and praising him.

Loomer vented to POLITICO's Playbook newsletter, which reported Tuesday on the anger inside Trump's coalition. Monday's meeting was at Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence.

The meeting came six weeks before an election Republicans have cast as a referendum on socialism and communism, Playbook reported. Party members had hoped to turn Mamdani, a democratic socialist, into the villain of that campaign, the outlet reported.

Mamdani asked Trump "on the spot" to join him when the mayor's turn to brief reporters arrived, and the president agreed, Playbook reported, citing a person familiar with the meeting.

"I want him to be a great mayor, and he certainly got potential. Got great potential," Trump said on the Gracie Mansion lawn.

Mamdani then called on MS NOW, CNN and POLITICO, the three outlets Trump barred from the White House last week, according to Playbook.

Trump has asked supporters to treat the midterms as a verdict on him, telling the Republican National Committee's first midterm convention in Dallas on Sept. 9 to "pretend that I am on the ballot," NBC News reported.

"It's total b—. I'm pi--ed off," Loomer told Playbook after the meeting.

"He's telling voters to pretend that he's on the ballot while, at the same time, saying that this communist jihadist has potential," she said. "How does that motivate people to go out and vote in the midterms when Mamdani and everyone he has endorsed is anti-Trump and anti-American?"

"I am a die hard Trump supporter and today I am feeling demoralized because Mamdani is a full blown communist jihadist," Loomer wrote on X.

"The base is very angry today," she added in the same Monday night post.

Over 12 hours later, Loomer was still fuming.

"It's deeply upsetting and brushing that aside is a huge mistake, especially before the midterms," she wrote Tuesday morning.

"It's just another in a string of examples where Trump's message and Republicans' don't jibe," Arizona-based Republican strategist Barrett Marson told Playbook. "The in-your-face arguments from Republicans this election cycle is that Democrats want to bring socialism or communism to America."

On Thursday, Trump plans to host Chinese President Xi Jinping at a White House state dinner.

"Trump warmly embracing two of the most outspoken leaders of those ideologies makes it that much harder for the message to resonate with voters," Marson said.

"I thought it was a big mistake for the president, whom I almost always support," former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey said on Newsmax.

President Donald Trump's ribbon-cutting for the new White House helipad went out to the public with no usable audio, leaving journalists unable to hear a word he said.

Trump cut the ribbon Monday afternoon on the South Lawn beside Marine One, the White House announced on X. The administration's own feed provided the only live video. The television networks that normally film the president had suspended that coverage earlier in the day.

"The audio is completely garbled and we are unable to hear the president's remarks," New York Times media reporter Michael M. Grynbaum wrote on X.

The networks did not send camera crews, Grynbaum said. He was watching the ceremony on an official White House YouTube stream.

"Trump made his first remarks without the TV pool and it is impossible to hear him through the White House feed," wrote Politico's Sophia Cai. "Nothing but static for 9 minutes and Trump is wheels up."

NewsNation correspondent Hannah Brandt, who was on the South Lawn, said the noise from Marine One drowned out the president's remarks and that he took no questions from the press.

"Here is what happens when you don't have the White House TV Pool. You have video of Trump - but you can't hear what the President is saying," Washington correspondent Jamie Dupree wrote on X.

"Trump was speaking. But on this feed - without TV pool - viewers could not hear him speak," wrote Rob Crilly of the Washington Examiner.

The dispute began Sept. 18, when Trump announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

Reporters for all three outlets were turned away from the complex the next morning, and their press credentials were seized, CNN reported.

The three outlets sued Trump and several senior officials on Monday, accusing the White House of punishing them over past coverage in violation of the First Amendment. They also asked a court to immediately restore their reporters' credentials and access, the outlet reported.

Under a decades-old arrangement, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News take turns as the television pool, filming the president and sharing the video with every other news organization, according to Mediaite.

CNN had been scheduled to serve as the primary television pool on Monday, the outlet said.

The White House left any primary network off Monday's schedule, Mediaite reported, and CNN had also been set to travel with Trump to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

"Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President," Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, the acting chair of the pool group, wrote to its members, according to MS NOW.

"There will be no replacement pool put in place," he wrote.

The White House assigned Hearst as the secondary television crew in Washington and the pro-Trump outlet Real America's Voice as the secondary crew for Trump's trip to New York. Secondary crews do not take on the full duties of the primary pool.

"Seeing the Trump Admin, in face of a network boycott because of their actions against CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, use fake news outlets like Real America's Voice to fill the press pool is both hilarious and depressing," Democratic strategist Mally Smith, a political commentator on Newsmax, wrote on X.

Attorney General Todd Blanche "has only himself to blame" for having little time to fight a Jeffrey Epstein files order he ignored for months, a journalist's lawyers argued.

Lawyers for Katie Phang, a journalist suing Blanche to force the Justice Department to fully obey the Epstein Files Transparency Act, made the argument in a court filing Monday.

The dispute centers on an order from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan requiring Blanche to start reviewing Epstein files written in foreign languages by Thursday.

Blanche asked Sullivan on Friday to pause that deadline while he appeals the order, according to his motion.

"[O]nce a document is produced, it cannot be unproduced," the Justice Department argued.

Blanche filed the request "at 8:46 p.m. on Friday" and demanded a ruling by 5 p.m. Monday without first contacting Phang's legal team, as court rules require, her lawyers wrote. Two of her three attorneys were observing Yom Kippur, which fell on Sunday and Monday, they added.

"While occasional procedural missteps are inevitable in civil litigation, Defendant is the Attorney General of the United States," the attorneys wrote. "His disregard for local rules and professional norms was particularly inappropriate here."

Sullivan first ordered the review in June, after the department told Congress that reviewing foreign-language records was not practical, according to his Sept. 16 order. Blanche let the original July 2 deadline pass without starting it.

"With less than 72 hours' notice, Defendant Attorney General Blanche asks this Court to stay his deadline to comply with obligations that Defendant has already flouted for nearly three months," Phang's lawyers wrote.

The lawyers said Blanche waited 85 days after the June order to seek a pause, calling the request "egregiously late."

"To the extent that the Attorney General now faces an imminent burden to comply with the law, and lacks adequate time to appeal, he has only himself to blame," they argued.

The filing also says the appeal itself is improper because last week's order only reset a deadline Blanche has faced since June. It is his second appeal in the case, and Phang's lawyers say he is using it to raise arguments he failed to make earlier.

"The Attorney General is a sophisticated litigant," Phang's lawyers wrote. "He should not be permitted to appeal an unappealable enforcement order simply to shoehorn in arguments he should have made when he had the chance."

The lawyers also said Blanche has told the court that the Freedom of Information Act, the main public records law, is the only proper route to the Epstein files. People who request the files under that law are told the opposite, the filing says, and Blanche never responded when Sullivan demanded an explanation.

"[T]he Attorney General is saying different things to different people," the lawyers wrote.

"Defendant cites no authority for the proposition that administrative inconvenience excuses him from meeting his statutory obligations," Sullivan wrote last week, rejecting the department's reason for skipping the records.

In a separate ruling the same day, Sullivan found that Blanche had missed his June 26 deadline to formally respond to Phang's lawsuit, and he barred him from filing a late request to throw the case out.

Sullivan had already warned Blanche's lawyers at an Aug. 13 hearing, when he recounted a 2009 case in which he held Justice Department attorneys in contempt of court, USA Today reported.

"I'm not interested in doing that at all," Sullivan said at the hearing. "But I will do it to make sure justice is administered fairly. That's not a threat. It's a promise."

In last week's order, Sullivan wrote that a contempt finding would be premature for now. He gave Blanche until Monday to seek clarification if he found the order unclear, and Blanche filed his request for a pause on Friday.

The fight also reaches President Donald Trump, whom Blanche defended against criminal charges before joining the Justice Department.

Last week's order also requires Blanche to give Sullivan handwritten FBI notes from interviews with a woman who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her as a teenager, Law Commentary reported. Blanche's pause request does not cover those notes, and his motion says the department is preparing them for the judge. His appeal covers the entire order, according to his notice of appeal.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the woman's claims "completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence," CNN reported.

In May, while settling Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, Blanche signed an agreement shielding Trump, his family and their companies from pending federal tax claims. In July, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami found that Trump filed that lawsuit "for an improper purpose," seeking the appearance of "judicial legitimacy" for a deal with a Justice Department he effectively controls.

Blanche's reply to Phang's filing is due at 5 p.m. Monday under a schedule Sullivan set Saturday.

If Sullivan has not ruled by then, the Justice Department says it will ask a federal appeals court to pause the order before Thursday's deadline.

A lifelong conservative Republican drew accusations of privilege after telling 60 Minutes that a data center is the first issue in his adult life to directly affect him.

Dave Lowe lives beside a proposed 800-acre data center campus in Red Oak, Texas. He spoke to correspondent Norah O'Donnell for a 60 Minutes report that aired Sunday.

The network shared his remark in a post on X on Sunday evening, where it has drawn more than 4 million views.

"Are you thinking about voting differently?" O'Donnell asked him during the segment.

"This is the first time in my adult life where there's been an issue that's come up that I feel like is going to directly impact me," Lowe replied.

"This says so much more than he can possibly know," Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen wrote on X, sharing the network's post.

"holy s— can you imagine," wrote Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ program director at Media Matters for America.

"I mean, wow. The first time?!" wrote civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson.

"This is privilege, in a white cowboy hat shaped nut cracker," wrote actress Rachel True.

"I mean, yeah let's get rid of the data centers... but the, 'this is the first time...an issue...is going to directly impact me' -- what an unimaginable privilege," wrote progressive podcast host Benjamin Dixon.

"And so this time around, I've made the decision that I'm not going to vote red or blue; I'm going to vote for the candidate that is willing to speak up, and put up, and do something to help us with this issue," Lowe told the broadcast.

Lowe meets twice a month with several dozen Red Oak residents from across the political spectrum who oppose the projects, according to the report.

Compass Datacenters wants to build 10 two-story data centers on agricultural land the size of Central Park, 60 Minutes reported. The buildings would be one of seven campuses set to cover more than a quarter of the town.

More than 60% of Republicans, independents and Democrats say they do not want a data center where they live, according to Gallup polling cited in the segment.