I still laugh about a family at a beach giving the seagulls cheetos. They were throwing them up to one, then there were 10, then there were many, many, many seagulls chasing them down the beach.

The defense industry and other manufacturers are now just over five months away from a January 1, 2027, deadline under federal regulations to ‌stop purchasing rare earths, magnets, tungsten, molybdenum and tantalum from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea.

Washington has been trying to limit such imports for years but has routinely granted companies waivers because the U.S. supply can't meet the demand.

Trump railed against such waivers in a May 10 post on his Truth Social platform, saying: "ALL FEDERAL AGENCIES MUST BUY AMERICAN — NO EXCUSES!" Last Monday, he signed an executive order making it even harder for defense contractors to obtain waivers.

But the reality is that U.S. minerals companies are nowhere close to meeting domestic needs, according to interviews with 16 industry executives, investors, analysts and policymakers.

A recent Army memo speeds up the process of firing underperforming civilians while giving them less time to defend their work.

The policy, issued July 7, lays out a monthlong process for reporting, investigating and opting to remove an employee. The changes follow Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s September 2025 directive to fire unsuccessful employees “with speed and conviction,” aiming to rid the department of those it feels are hindering its progress. And it puts the Army’s 188,000 or so civilian workers on unsteady footing as the service plans to continue cutting those jobs in 2027.

The guidance provides paths to firing for two sets of Army civil servants: one for general schedule employees and others who comprise the vast majority of the workforce; and a truncated one for those who staff exchanges, bowling alleys and other facilities that generate revenue, known as “nonappropriated fund” employees.

The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas is trying to turn a key talking point of his Republican opponent against him — alleging Attorney General Ken Paxton is guilty of the same type of voter fraud he has spent years trying to eliminate.

“As our state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton has gone on a voter fraud witch hunt,” state Rep. James Talarico, who is challenging Paxton in the race to replace U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, said during a campaign event in Houston. “Turns out, he was committing voter fraud the whole time, voting illegally in six elections in a row from the wrong address.”

Talarico’s comments come after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed that Paxton moved out of the home he shared with his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, in 2024 but continued to vote using that address, including during the March Republican primary in which he beat Cornyn. Three election experts told the news organizations that Paxton may have broken state law.

Outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), defeated in May's GOP primary by a Trump-endorsed opponent, made clear Friday he plans to use his "newfound political freedom" to extract concessions from the White House – or blow up its plans in the process, Punchbowl News reported Monday.

At the top of Cornyn’s list is officially shuttering the Trump administration’s anti-weaponization fund, a taxpayer-funded $1.7 billion fund dedicated to awarding payouts to those who’ve claimed to have been unfairly targeted by the Biden Administration’s Justice Department. Cornyn suggested that President Donald Trump’s nomination of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche could be in jeopardy if the White House doesn’t fold on the fund.

“They’re not enthusiastic about it, but if they want to get [Blanche] out of the committee, I think they realize they need to talk to us,” Cornyn said, according to Punchbowl News.

While Trump touted the proposed changes as safeguards to keep non-U.S. citizens from voting, state election officials argued they were ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.

Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia challenged Trump’s order in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston. They argued that Trump’s order was unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the authority to set election rules.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, agreed and halted Trump’s order from being implemented for the Nov. 3 elections — but only in the states that have sued.

In new legal filings, lawyers for the Trump administration say that decisions to end nearly 300 renewable energy development grants last year were made based "solely" on whether recipients supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.

In a filing dated July 15, lawyers representing the U.S. Department of Energy wrote that the decision to deny grant money hinged on whether the recipient was in a state that either did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election, or was represented by Democratic senators in Congress.

"With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators," the filing read.

"DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State."

As Donald Trump’s former defense lawyer Todd Blanche appears poised for confirmation as attorney general, numerous Jeffrey Epstein survivors have sounded the alarm that a US justice department helmed by him would derail their pursuit of justice.

In a letter urging Republican senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn to reject his nomination, these survivors said that Blanche’s handling of the Epstein case as acting attorney general was characterized by misstep after misstep.

Blanche, who reportedly led the disclosure of documents as required by the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, allowed the disclosure of survivors’ names, photos and identifying information – but omitted the names of accused abusers and enablers, they said.

While more than 1,000 teenage girls and women were abused, not a single person other than Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell faced charges, they noted. And in a recent sit-down with survivors at Tillis’s urging, survivors “received an hour of deflection, interruption and gaslighting”, they said.

When President Trump announced an anti-crime task force for Memphis last fall, federal and local officials never mentioned immigration enforcement as a goal.

But the influx of federal agents into the city has led to widespread immigration arrests — a majority without criminal convictions, according to an Institute for Public Service Reporting data analysis.

NPR reviewed arrest data and spoke with lawyers, immigrants, activists and community members to piece together the task force's impact on Memphis over the past 10 months.

It found paralyzed immigrant neighborhoods, where scenes played out reminiscent of Chicago and Minneapolis at the height of targeted federal immigration enforcement actions. Aid networks ramped up their work to help immigrants too fearful to leave their homes. Hotlines rang out with calls from panicked immigrants. And routine traffic stops led to immigration arrests.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office gathered data from 11 states and used census data to extrapolate from there. According to the GAO report, an estimated 13.8 million American adults enrolled in Medicaid, and 10.6 million who live in a household that receives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits worked at least part time in 2024. Two-thirds of that group worked full-time jobs, clocking in 35 or more hours each week. Most of these employed recipients of federal benefits worked in some of the lowest-paying jobs in the country, but an estimated 35% of them were employed at companies with more than 1,000 workers.

As The Washington Post reported in its analysis of the GAO data, the top employers of these federal beneficiaries are some of the nation’s biggest and most well-known companies. “The number of Amazon workers relying on the federal programs for the poor nearly tripled between February 2020 and September 2025,” the Post noted, to around 12,346 workers who needed SNAP assistance and 11,338 who had to rely on Medicaid. “And for the first time, ride-hailing and app-based food delivery companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub and Instacart — collectively ranked among the top three employers with workers receiving aid.” Rounding out the group: Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, as well as Dollar General and McDonald’s.

1. Why Can't Anyone Verify McConnell's Condition?

"If he can't give us an update, he should resign," Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday. "It's been very clear to people across Kentucky that his 'update' was not sufficient...We need to know if you're capable of doing the job for the foreseeable future."

2. Can Andy Beshear Force the Issue?

But Kentucky law prevents Beshear from calling a special election and ousting McConnell from his Senate seat by declaring it vacant, even if he believes he is no longer fit to serve.

3. Is There an August 3 Deadline?

The new law requires the governor to provide 63 days' notice before a special election can occur, with prospective candidates having to file their paperwork at least 56 days ahead of the vote. As a result, Kentucky media outlets have reported that the process becomes difficult to implement if a Senate vacancy occurs within 56 days of the November election, as there may not be sufficient time to organize a separate special election.

A Canadian federal opposition party leader is calling on the Mark Carney government to block the latest data-sharing deal between US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Canadian media giant Thomson Reuters.

Avi Lewis, the federal leader of the New Democratic party (NDP), demanded on Tuesday that Ottawa address the contract and further restrict Canadian corporations from doing business with ICE, after Canada’s National Observer reported on the deal.

“My blood ran cold when I read about this development,” he added in a statement to the Guardian. “Complicity between Canadian corporations and ICE should absolutely be illegal.”

Under the US$125m deal, ICE will pay the technology and content conglomerate to access its Clear database – which includes property records, social media and geolocation information – in order to identify “voter fraud” and “immigration fraud”, according to reports.