Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma plan to execute inmates Thursday in what would be the first time in nearly 16 years that three people are put to death on the same day in the United States.

The executions come as a small number of states, including the three with scheduled lethal injections Thursday, drive execution numbers in the United States.

“You look at the country as a whole, you’ve just got this little pocket of five or six states that are using the death penalty, executing people, and a small number of states that are still imposing new death sentences,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Maher said it is highly unusual to have three executions on one day, although it is largely a scheduling coincidence.

Journalists and others were allowed to fly on presidential jet despite security threat while Trump was spirited away

Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to different plane than the one the public and press believed he was travelling on. Critics now question why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled.

When US intelligence allegedly found a credible threat that Iran plotted to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. While the president was reportedly snuck out the side door of the plane, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard to fly towards Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives.

“It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place,” said Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch.

Prosecutors want social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate to remain in federal custody, arguing Monday that the brothers are a flight risk and a danger to the community, as they fight extradition to the United Kingdom, where the brothers are accused of rape and sex trafficking.

Three days after defense attorneys filed a motion for release, prosecutors filed their response in Miami federal court, where a hearing on Thursday will determine if the brothers should stay in jail or be released during what could be a monthslong extradition process.

The brothers have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Donald Trump on Monday told reporters the ‌future of the proposed "weaponization" fund would be up to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Blanche, who previously served a personal attorney for the Republican ⁠president and deputy attorney general, was sworn in as Washington's top lawyer earlier on Monday.

He was confirmed on Saturday after the U.S. Justice Department rescinded an order that would have established a $1.776 billion fund to pay people ‌who ⁠said they had been the subject of government abuse.

US president’s statement is latest sign that negotations to end war and reopen strait of Hormuz have stalled

Donald Trump has said he will demand that Iran pay compensation for the deaths of thousands of US soldiers and Iran’s own civilians killed in recent decades in the latest sign his negotiations to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz have reached an impasse.

The US president is trying to end conflicts in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, and his additional demands of Iran are likely to provoke anger in Tehran at the same time as Israel has rejected Trump’s terms for a 15-point roadmap to end the war in Gaza.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he was issuing the demand for war reparations in response to Iranian negotiators making similar claims for damages for the five-month war that has killed thousands and devastated Iran’s military and economy.

MMR vaccine would be broken into separate shots under order, putting a financial and logistical strain on families

Donald Trump has signed an executive order with plans for sweeping changes to the childhood vaccination schedule that would require that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to be broken into three separate shots, once it becomes available in the US.

The order recommends that all shots be given at separate medical visits, a frequent point Trump has made despite the safety, ease and lower costs of giving vaccines together.

The move is an attempt to undermine and override the changes made earlier this year to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccination recommendations, which were halted by a federal judge. The CDC is the federal agency tasked with recommending vaccines, not the White House.

A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.

The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.

“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.

Francesca Hong is Democratic frontrunner in four-way primary race to lead the swing state, a test of anti-establishment sentiment

Wisconsin voters will decide on Tuesday whether to nominate a democratic socialist for the state’s highest office in the latest test of an anti-establishment wave among Democratic primary voters.

Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, emerged as the frontrunner in a four-way race to succeed Tony Evers, the Democratic governor who is not seeking another term.

Evers threw his support behind David Crowley, the Milwaukee country executive. Crowley previously left the race, before reentering it on 18 July.

Company also announced a paid service for early access to president’s posts on policies to the social media site

Donald Trump’s media company – which owns the Truth Social platform favored by the US president – posted a $238m loss in the second quarter.

Trump Media & Technology on Monday reported that losses in the three months through June came as the company branched into new ventures including crypto. The company’s new chief executive, Kevin McGurn, announced at a conference call about the earnings that after a yearlong effort to expand into online betting and crypto, the company would be refocusing on social media.

Elaborate ruse was used to transport president to military flight from Air Force One to return from NATO meet

Prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey last month when the White House said he was flying aboard ⁠Air Force One, in an extraordinary ruse that involved hiding the president in an airport catering cart, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The operation took place when Trump was in Ankara for a Nato summit with world leaders, according to the Post. The president reportedly boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras, and then was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, a US official told the Post.

An official also confirmed the operation to the New York Times.

A German far-right influencer whose online posts have been amplified by Elon Musk ​has applied for funding from the U.S. ‌State Department to launch a media network for political content, Germany's Handelsblatt news outlet reported on Monday.

The ​self-professed libertarian and supporter of the ​far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) told Handelsblatt that ⁠she had applied under a U.S. State Department ​program intended to back European organisations focused on ​issues including free speech, national sovereignty and the impact of migration.

Scientists have made clear that the elevated heat in the US was being amplified by the human-caused climate crisis

July was the hottest month ever recorded in the US, with repeated, scorching heatwaves across much of the country helping shatter all previous monthly temperature records stretching back over the full 132 years of reliable measurements.

Last month’s average temperature was 3.3F (1.8C) higher than the 20th century average for the contiguous United States, which excludes Alaska and Hawaii, according to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

This means the month was the hottest July, and hottest of all months, in records that go back to 1895. It surpasses previous high marks set in July 1936, in the teeth of Dust Bowl conditions, and July 2012.