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.

The bodies were found Friday inside the Grand Haven residence, police said, and the children were 5 to 15 years old.

A man fatally shot his wife and their six children before he set the Michigan home they shared ablaze and turned the gun on himself, authorities said Monday.

Kristopher Karolkiewicz, 47, killed his wife, Amanda, 39, and their children, ages 5 to 15, Ottawa County Sheriff’s Capt. Jake Sparks said at a news conference.

They were found dead after first responders arrived at the home in Grand Haven, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, late Friday morning, Sparks said. Autopsies showed all had been shot, he said.

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.

Rights groups condemn secrecy surrounding killings and say hurry to execute raises chance of ‘torturous’ deaths

Florida is preparing on Tuesday to carry out the state’s first double execution within a single day since the start of the modern era of the US death penalty in 1976.

Barring last-minute legal intervention, James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at noon on Tuesday at Florida state prison near Starke. Six hours later, Dominick Occhicone, 80, faces the same fate.

Should both killings be completed, it would be the first time since 2017 that a death penalty state has conducted more than one execution on the same day. On 24 April 2017 Arkansas administered lethal doses to two prisoners, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, just three hours apart and amid chaotic scenes that suggested the procedures were botched.

In Florida itself, a review by the Associated Press showed that 1964 was the last time there were multiple judicial killing on a single day.

ICE report reviewed by the Guardian discloses a patient was ‘subject to force feeding, hydration or urinary catheterization’, which experts have described as torture

The Trump administration subjected at least one person undertaking a hunger strike in immigrant detention to forcible medical treatment – engaging in medical practice that healthcare associations and international human rights groups have described as torture.

A document from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) health service agency, reviewed by the Guardian, confirms for the first time that the administration has used forced treatment on a hunger striker since Donald Trump began his second term.

The document, published online in February by the ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC), discloses that an unnamed patient who began hunger strikes between October and December of last year and “was subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws”.

A tiny federal agency tasked with protecting the public from injuries caused by lawn mowers and coffeemakers is demanding that some of the nation’s biggest health systems turn over detailed, personally identifiable medical records of all patients who seek help at their emergency rooms.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls of dangerous products sold in the U.S., began discreetly pressuring hospital executives this year to share personally identifiable health data with a private contractor. But hospital lawyers and other industry experts have questioned the agency’s authority to collect, its ability to safeguard such a swath of sensitive information, and whether it has followed the legal process to overhaul its surveillance system.

After KFF Health News asked the CPSC about the new system, the agency announced the program on July 21. Left unmentioned, however, is the alarm it has raised among hospital executives, as well as the nature and extent of the agency’s data demands.