The Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway. The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years. Nearly a third of U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail. Trump slammed the justices in a lengthy social media post, saying "these are not the people I interviewed."
A federal whistleblower says a last-ditch Trump administration effort to hunt for noncitizen voters ahead of November’s elections is requiring federal employees to misrepresent themselves on voter lookup tools in a way that likely violates state laws.
And the Federal Reserve is widely expected to lift its short-term interest rate Wednesday for the first time in three years to fight stubbornly high inflation, despite Trump's lobbying for a cut.
Here’s the Latest:
AI execs heading to White House within the next week, Speaker says
Johnson said he has been speaking to Trump, including late Monday, about gathering industry leaders to address public concerns.
“So all the big names you know, I think within the next week, we’ll be together,” he said.
The speaker blamed AI fears on the media and Democratic lawmakers who he said “are all spun up” about the technology.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Johnson said, comparing doomsday fears about AI to warnings about climate change.
US military destroyed two Iranian vessels trying to steal US drone
The U.S. military says it has opened fire and destroyed two Iranian boats whose crews were trying to steal a drone ship in the waters off Iran.
“Iranian small boats recently attempted to take possession of a U.S. unmanned surface vessel, but they were unsuccessful after CENTCOM forcefully responded,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Tuesday.
Iranian state media reported Monday that a pair of fishing boats came under attack in Hormozgan province on Iran’s southern coast and that several fishermen were reported missing, citing a provincial official.
Hawkins said the drone involved is a “Saildrone” — a small, roughly 25-foot (8-meter) craft — that can operate by itself. U.S. Central Command has been using them in the region for several years to surveil maritime traffic.
Hawkins said all of the command’s surface drones “remain fully accounted for.”
White House helipad appears complete, AP photos show
President Trump’s new White House helipad appears complete. Photos taken by The Associated Press on Tuesday show workers putting the final touches on the black-and-white landing pad, fashioned to look like a presidential seal.
In a post on Truth Social Monday, Trump said the new ’Heliport Landing Zone” on the South Lawn “is magnificently made of carved granite in shades of Black and White” and is “truly a work of art” as well as “essentially indestructible.”
The helipad is just the latest stamp that Trump, a former builder, is putting on the White House during his second term, from decorating the Oval Office with gold — and more gold — to knocking down the East Wing to construct a ballroom.
He claims that before he began the alterations, the White House “was a badly maintained ‘dump.’ Now, it is a Palace!”
Patel defends FBI’s loosening of hiring standards on bestiality, prostitution
The FBI quietly issued guidance this past spring lifting a categorical ban on hiring applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to bestiality.
Pressed about the moves at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards. He insisted that they were designed to protect victims who had been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically disqualified.
The answer did little to satisfy Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who grilled Patel about the rationale for a change that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.
“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say ‘what planet did you parachute in from?’” Kennedy asked.
GOP lawmakers say they inherited a mess
Republicans leaving a closed-door meeting with Vice President JD Vance say that the Republican messaging going into the midterms will emphasize that they inherited a mess when they won the presidency and Congress two years ago, and it will take time to fix it.
“Democrats basically spent four years wrecking our country. We’re not going to fix it in a single year, two years,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, as he left the meeting. “We need to keep on offense. Trust us, and we’re going to keep making the kind of progress we made over the last year and a half.”
“I think the vice president’s message essentially was we didn’t create this mess, and we’re working hard to clean it up, straighten it out and point us back in the right direction,” said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.
Speaker Mike Johnson continued the theme in a press conference, telling reporters “we had a country on the brink of ruin.”
Johnson calls it a ‘raucous’ House GOP meet with Vance
“The vice president got them all riled up this morning,” Johnson said. “I did my best to do the same.”
The speaker said it was standing room only at Republican Party headquarters with House GOP incumbents and candidates showing up and lining up for the open mic session.
Johnson said the day’s total fundraising tally, with the $13 million he had announced earlier for the campaigns, rose to $20 million.
NATO jets down drone in Lithuanian airspace
NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace overnight, military officials said Tuesday. They didn’t comment on the drone’s origin or purpose, but said the device was likely carrying explosives.
Separately, Denmark said Tuesday that one of its air force helicopters was fired on with flares as it surveilled a Russian frigate in the Baltic Sea.
NATO countries including Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Poland have accused Russia of involvement in recent acts such as drone incursions, sabotage, arson, surveillance of defense facilities and planning to use a drone carrying explosives to attack an airport. Russian President Vladimir Putin is showing “desperation and also his desire to sow fear and terror,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said after a Russian drone struck a railway line near the Ukraine-Poland border.
“Russia will find our resolve only growing stronger,” said Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission.
Speaker Johnson announces another $13 million to House GOP for midterms
Republican Mike Johnson announced the haul during a private meeting with Vance and the party’s top “vanguard” candidates at GOP headquarters, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door session.
This puts the Speaker at nearly $100 million transferred from his joint fundraising committee so far for this cycle, the person said.
As Republicans work to keep control of the House, Johnson told them there is more to come.
Treasury collected $12.8 billion in tariffs last month
The U.S. Treasury made money on tariffs last month for the first time since April as Trump rebuilt his protectionist wall following a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court.
Revenue from the import taxes came to $12.8 billion in August, the Treasury Department reported Monday.
In February, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s double-digit tariffs on almost every country on Earth, forcing the government to pay the money back. Refunds exceeded tariff income for three months, creating losses — $42 million in May, $25.6 billion in June and $8.5 billion in July.
But Trump has found new tariffs to impose, including levies of 10% to 12.5% slapped in July on 60 trading partners that account for 99% of U.S. imports. The United States says those economies aren’t doing enough to prevent trade in goods produced by forced labor. Those tariffs are also being challenged in court.
Another day, another record for US diesel prices
The average U.S. pump price for diesel fuel broke another record Tuesday, reaching nearly $6.27 a gallon, according to the AAA.
Trump has blamed the prices on Ukraine, calling on its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries. “Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world.”
The Kremlin said Tuesday that Trump’s call for a ceasefire on energy infrastructure is “a good idea,” but the attacks on Russian oil refineries aren’t the root cause of global supply shortages for gas or diesel.
“The core problem lies in the export of petroleum products to global markets,” said Peskov. He said that countries instead needed to guarantee safe navigation for oil tankers and lift global sanctions on Russian oil.
Vance rallies House GOP ahead of midterms
The vice president’s message to House Republicans on Tuesday echoed the party’s midterm convention in Dallas.
“We’re just trying to raise money and fire us up,” Tim Burchett, R -Tenn, said as he left the GOP campaign headquarters on Capitol Hill.
A few protesters — one holding a sign saying “End this stupid war” — gathered across from the Capitol.
What about voting by mail in future elections?
Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas expressed various levels of willingness to let the Trump administration carry out his order to restrict mail voting in current or future elections, but the majority noted that Trump’s defense of the plan was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”
David Becker, a former U.S. Justice Department lawyer who is now executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said implementing Trump’s executive order “would have done nothing for election integrity but would have imposed a vast and expensive new bureaucracy on the states” and disenfranchised voters.
He said the majority’s language about the merits of the case meant “it is unlikely these rules will ever apply to any election.”
“Thanks to the rule of law, voters will not need to worry about this,” he added.
Trump slams Supreme Court for rejecting his push to restrict mail ballots
“The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,” Trump wrote in a lengthy social media post Tuesday. “This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years.”
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh were all nominated by Trump in his first term but ruled against him in Monday’s decision.
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” Trump said, continuing that the court “is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal.”
Uncertainty over Trump’s order was acute in 8 states that rely on mail voting
Voters cast ballots almost entirely by mail in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington, which lack extensive networks of polling places.
“This provides voters and elections officials with the certainty they need ahead of a major, federal election, and it sends a clear message to this country: Presidents don’t run elections, the people do,” said Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said his reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision is “one of relief, but also excitement, because today the voters really won across America.”
More than half the voters in Nevada’s June primary cast ballots by mail, and the Democrat said “some of the damage has already been done” with false claims affecting people’s confidence in voting by mail.
“You can trust the process,” Aguilar urged voters. “Please participate.”
FBI Director Kash Patel returns to Capitol Hill
Patel is appearing at an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Republican-led panel is likely to try to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.
But Democrats will almost certainly seize on the tumult inside the bureau over the last year. The FBI has seen sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations into Trump, efforts by the bureau to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.
Supreme Court lifts a cloud over midterm elections
The U.S. Supreme Court has lifted much of the uncertainty over preparations for November’s elections by rejecting Trump’s push to have the U.S. Postal Service play a central role in deciding who would gets a mail ballot.
The decision late Monday is a win for the status quo — thousands of election offices around the country can send out mail ballots as intended without worrying about complying with 11th-hour Postal Service rules.
“Now, we can finally move forward and get back to what we do best: conducting our elections without a dark cloud hanging over us — fairly, openly, for the people, by the people,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat who oversees voting in a state where all voters receive a mail ballot, said in a statement.
“Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal,” said Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican serving as the state’s chief election officer.
Mail voting fraud happens about four times for every 10 million ballots cast, study found
Trump hasn’t immediately commented on the Supreme Court’s rejection of his efforts to restrict voting by mail.
Trump has consistently promoted his executive order as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots.
A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast.
US acknowledges for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told the Air and Space Cyber Conference in Maryland on Monday that the U.S. has fielded “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”
He didn’t say what the weapons are or how they work. In 2024 the U.S. said Russia was developing a new anti-satellite weapon that could be launched from space. At the time the White House said the danger wasn’t imminent, but it raised concerns about threats to U.S. infrastructure that depends on satellite communications.
Meink, who has overseen the Space Force, predicted the service would look “radically different” by 2032 — for example, with one-way attack drones replacing artillery as the “primary killer.”
“We are increasing readiness against existing threats,” he said.
Tech CEOs call for AI regulation. Trump and Congress are not rushing to act
The technology industry’s increasingly urgent warnings about the potential harm of artificial intelligence are slamming into political intransigence in Washington, offering a fresh test of the federal government’s willingness and ability to confront what may become a defining issue of the era.
Trump is leading the opposition to recent calls by tech leaders seeking greater government oversight.
The president dismissed efforts to limit the technology on Monday as a “conspiracy.” House Speaker Mike Johnson has largely deferred to the White House.
Democrats, meanwhile, are pressing for a more robust response, convening in private on Tuesday in the House to discuss AI. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is hosting his colleagues for a briefing with experts on Wednesday.
The contrasting responses illustrate a yawning disconnect emerging between a tech sector warning of AI’s existential threats to humanity and a federal government often struggling to accomplish basic functions under the weight of intense partisanship and election-year pressure.
DHS voter probe may break state laws and wrongly implicate US citizens, whistleblower alleges
A last-ditch Trump administration effort to hunt for noncitizen voters ahead of November’s elections is requiring federal employees to misrepresent themselves on voter lookup tools in a way that likely violates state laws, according to a federal whistleblower’s statement released Monday.
The Department of Homeland Security probe known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” also asks employees to create federal law enforcement records about voters based on unreliable data, the account warns. That could potentially wrongly implicate U.S. citizens in official documentation that could spur further investigation.
The anonymous, nearly 30-page disclosure was published Monday by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, the ranking member of a Senate committee overseeing federal elections.
Padilla and Schumer said Monday the initiative was an example of Trump attempting to interfere in elections and the short timelines would impede officials from conducting proper investigations. They noted that the data DHS has on voters can be unreliable and differ from state records, making any federal findings based on that data potentially problematic.
Federal Reserve is expected to raise its benchmark rate, defying Trump’s demands
The Federal Reserve is widely expected to lift its short-term interest rate Wednesday for the first time in three years to fight stubbornly high inflation, a move that would put the central bank at odds with President Donald Trump’s support for a cut.
An increase in the Fed’s rate, currently about 3.6%, isn’t guaranteed because Fed Chair Kevin Warsh doesn’t provide the signals about next moves that his predecessors did. Still, most analysts and economists expect a hike after a speech two weeks ago at the Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in which Warsh argued that the Fed had not yet achieved its goal of putting inflation in check.
A rate hike would throw another sharp shift into a volatile period for the economy and financial markets. As recently as March, the Fed had forecast it would cut its rate once this year. But with the Iran war flaring up again and causing sharp increases in oil and gas prices, inflation is likely to remain higher than the Fed’s 2% target for even longer.
Supreme Court rejects Trump mail ballot restrictions ahead of midterms
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway.
The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast.
It represented a stark defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has emphasized as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots.
The Supreme Court majority wrote that the administration’s push to implement the restrictions this year is likely to lose in court, though the brief emergency order didn’t detail its reasoning. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented.
The Trump administration had asked the justices, once again at the center of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress.
