Donald Trump on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to once again step into his messy legal brawl with magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, appealing an $83.3 million jury verdict for defamation on the grounds that, as president, he is immune from the litigation.

The appeal, which has not yet been docketed at the high court, relies heavily on the court’s 2024 decision granting the president wide immunity for actions taken in office.

More than 900 fires are burning as experts warn Canada lacks a body to coordinate a growing climate threat

As more than 900 wildfires burn across Canada, prompting evacuation orders and pushing Ontario into its worst wildfire season on record, officials are renewing calls for the country to develop a national wildfire strategy through the creation of a federal agency.

Canada is the only G7 country that does not have a national emergency agency that is mandated to respond to wildfires.

After a disastrous July for wildfires that razed First Nations communities in northeasern Ontario and sent poisonous smoke southward through the US, provincial premier Doug Ford called for a countrywide response to the wildfire threat.

A federal appellate panel on Tuesday refused to block Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict mail voting, a day after the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the proposal in a separate case.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a May ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols that said an injunction against the order was premature. Nichols ruled that the Democrats and voting rights groups who challenged the order couldn’t seek the injunction until the Trump administration issued formal regulations governing it. The administration started releasing those directives days later.

The circuit court panel, with two judges appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama and one by Trump, found that was proper and there were no noted dissents. But the unsigned decision noted that if the administration truly tried to force such changes in the few months remaining before November’s midterm election, it may well get halted by courts.

Granted, it is a few dozen bungled policies ago, but remember when we were blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean as part of the administration’s Operation Dude Bro antidrug strategy? Well, the results are in, and they are sadly predictable. From The Washington Post:

In a recent assessment reviewed by The Washington Post, DEA analysts found the strikes had failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire. In a closed-door briefing last month, Pentagon officials told lawmakers the strikes in international waters off South and Central America had not reduced its purity.

The fate of Todd Blanche’s nomination to be Donald Trump’s attorney general is up in the air, with a key GOP senator indicating Tuesday he has not yet received the assurances he needs to vote in support.

Sen. John Cornyn said around midday Tuesday that he hadn’t received an update from the Justice Department on his and Sen. Thom Tillis’ demand that the “anti-weaponization” fund be formally killed before they vote in favor of advancing Blanche’s nomination.

Saudi Arabia has spent five months trying not to get dragged into a regional conflict, keeping open channels of communication with Tehran even as Iranian drones targeted its oil industry.

Now it appears hemmed in, facing enemies in three directions: Iran as well as its proxies in Iraq and Yemen.

In the last week, the kingdom has faced missile attacks from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, drone attacks from pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and renewed threats from Tehran.

US states and federal government tracking cases as outbreak comes amid cuts to public health funding

An outbreak of cyclosporiasis highlights how US states and the federal government work together to track foodborne illnesses – and where they diverge.

Experts said the enormous number of cases, potentially more than 11,000 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) count, is symptomatic of “vulnerabilities” in food safety systems in the US.

State kills Dominick Occhicone, 80, and James Duckett, 68, as Ron DeSantis pushes executions before term ends

Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, putting to death an 80-year-old man who was the second oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern US history.

Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of the killing of a young girl.

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, has made the state’s death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term, saying too many families have waited too long to see justice.

The lethal injections just hours apart were the first nearly back-to-back executions since Arkansas put two men to death three hours apart in 2017.

In early 2025, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick was on his way home following a trip abroad. After landing in the US, customs agents demanded access to his Pixel phone, which was running an alternative version of Android called GrapheneOS. Rather than hand over his data, Tunick used a clever feature of the software to delete everything. Now, he’s facing federal charges.

The first hearing in this case happened last week, according to The Guardian, during which government attorneys and agents claimed that Tunick was subjected to a standard secondary interrogation at an international airport. During that encounter, agents were “looking for anything that’s prohibited.” However, Tunick’s legal team alleges he was targeted for his activism.

Tunick was involved with a group called Defend the Atlanta Forest, which opposed the construction of an enormous law enforcement training facility in the area often known as Cop City. What Tunick didn’t know, according to his lawyers, was that he’d been placed on a watch list for his actions and that Customs and Border Protection had discussed over email plans to detain him upon his arrival back in the US for “suspected terrorism activities.”

A former Olympian charged with deliberately damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is seeking access to all of the closed-door testimony that led to his indictment, pointing to “irregularities” in those grand jury proceedings.

In a court filing Monday, David Hearn’s attorneys requested an order for the government to turn over a complete transcript of all grand jury proceedings. They also want prosecutors to disclose the legal instructions they gave to grand jurors about the elements of Hearn’s alleged crime.

Hearn pleaded not guilty earlier this month to one felony count of property destruction and has a trial scheduled to start Sept. 28 in D.C. Superior Court. The charge, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years upon conviction, accuses Hearn of causing at least $1,000 in damage to the pool.

The ruling follows lawsuits by the Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Polymarket and Kalshi.

A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction pausing Minnesota’s first-of-its-kind prediction market ban Monday, days before it was slated to go into effect. The ruling comes after the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with Kalshi and Polymarket US, filed lawsuits responding to the law, which was scheduled to take effect Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez ruled that the plaintiffs “have met their burden to show they are likely to succeed, at least in part,” on their claims that federal law pre-empts the ban, and that they face a threat of irreparable harm if it took effect.

The order forbids enforcement of the law against entities registered as designated contract markets with the CFTC.

Social media influencers fighting against extradition to UK where they face rape, sexual assault and other allegations

Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate will remain in jail at least two more weeks until their next hearing as they fight extradition to the United Kingdom, where the brothers are accused of rape and sex trafficking, a federal judge said on Monday.

US magistrate Lauren Louis set a detention hearing for 13 August to determine whether the Tates should stay in jail or be released during what could be a months-long extradition process.

The brothers were not in court on Monday or required to be there and have remained in jail since making a brief court appearance two days after their 18 July arrest.

The Tates have become among the world’s most polarizing internet personalities with their promotion of wealth, male dominance and misogyny through their social media empire. The new allegations are the latest in a long-running international legal saga involving the Tates that has spanned the US, Britain and Romania. The brothers have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.