Donald Trump said Monday that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella” in moving to drop charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Speaking at an unrelated Oval Office event, Trump ducked questions about whether he’d fire Pirro, a former Fox News host and longtime ally he handpicked as top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital. But the president kept up his drumbeat of sharp criticism, saying he remained disappointed by her assessment that damage to the Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction, not vandalism.

Coalition of 25 states asks US Court of International Trade to halt tariffs and declare them them unlawful

A coalition of 25 US states sued the Trump administration on Monday over new tariffs pegged at 10% to 12.5% on goods from 60 trading partners, calling them a pretext for replacing import taxes struck down by the supreme court in February.

The states are asking the US Court of International Trade to halt the tariffs, declare them unlawful and order refunds of duties that have already been paid.

According to the states involved in the action, tariffs on 59 countries and the European Union imposed last month account for 99.4% of US imports. The Trump administration officials have charged that the countries have not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labor.

Democrats say agreement – which clears way for Blanche’s confirmation – makes promises president can easily reverse

A compromise between Todd Blanche and two Republican senators that potentially cleared the way for Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general is weak, Democrats and several experts said, as it makes promises Donald Trump can easily reverse.

Blanche, the acting attorney general, posted two documents on Sunday evening showing he was withdrawing an 18 May order allowing for the creation of a $1.8bn weaponization fund and clarifying that broad tax immunity the justice department granted to Trump only applied retroactively to the president, his sons, and businesses.

The agreement stemmed from a deal worked out with senators John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, two Republicans who had threatened to block Blanche’s nomination. Cornyn and Tillis said on Monday they would support Blanche when his vote comes up for the Senate judiciary committee Tuesday.

Donald Trump is considering removing Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, over a Justice Department conclusion that problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool stemmed from a flawed renovation rather than vandalism, two people familiar with his thinking told CNN.

The president is “furious” with Pirro, one of the sources said, telling CNN that he fumed about her all weekend. They added that based on his criticisms of her, they find it “highly likely she’s removed from her job.”

The other source, a senior administration official, said Trump was “blindsided” by Pirro’s court filing: “The president did not know beforehand that she was going to do that.”

‘Disturbing’ footage shared by California detainee surfaces amid wider complaints about conditions in ICE detention

Attorneys for a man detained in a California immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures.

The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, north-east of LA.

Margaret Hellerstein, one of Parias’s attorneys, shared the footage with the Guardian on Thursday and said it was filmed this week. The clip is brief and grainy, but shows him holding up a plastic bottle filled with water, which appeared to have small pests of some kind swimming inside.

State supreme court rules in case of two bishops who were silent about three children abused by Mormon parents

Clergy members in Arizona who learn of child abuse in the context of religious confession are not required to report it, the state’s supreme court has said in a ruling that protects what church leaders call the “seal of the confessional”.

The panel’s ruling ends a long-running case in which three children who were sexually abused by their parents sued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormon church, and two bishops who became aware of the crimes but remained silent.

The case has parallels in a short-lived 2025 law in Washington state that would have compelled clergy members there to report sexual abuse. That proposal was permanently withdrawn in October after legal action by the Catholic church.

In a statement, the LDS welcomed the unanimous ruling by the state supreme court on Thursday that exempts clergy members as “mandated reporters” if they learned of the abuse of minors in the confession booth or through other “confidential” methods.

Shock and fury as Trump administration holds back Medicaid funding to states over alleged caregiving fraud

The Trump administration announced last month that it would hold back $867m in Medicaid funding for California, joining an earlier halt of $1.34bn – totaling $2.2bn in withheld payments to the state. Officials are also holding on to a total of $550m in Medicaid funding for Minnesota from the past three quarters.

The amounts would cover services already paid by the states, for which the federal government normally partly reimburses them – creating a budgetary strain for the states, which have continued to cover Medicaid services despite the federal halt.

Coverage for gender-affirming care is no longer covered by federal plans, and workers must pay out of pocket

US federal employees and their families are joining a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration for blocking insurance coverage of gender-affirming healthcare.

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRCF) and the DC-based law firm Correia & Puth filed the lawsuit on Monday morning against the federal office of personnel management (OPM), arguing that the prohibition violates Title VII, which protects against sex discrimination.

The Trump administration had been “fixated” on ending gender-affirming care, said Cynthia Cheng-Wun Weaver, HRCF’s senior director of litigation.

Iran said on Monday there were no talks under way with the United States and no plans for any meetings, contradicting Donald Trump who had ‌cited talks he said would take place that afternoon as justification for calling off attacks.

Over the weekend Trump repeated a pattern that has emerged throughout the past five months: announcing plans for "massive attacks" on Iran, only to cancel them at the last minute.

Iran's Foreign ⁠Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rejected the claim, saying no negotiations with the United States were taking place and no meetings were scheduled. Iran had no plans to host foreign delegations or send negotiators abroad in the coming days, he said.

Donald Trump has played this hand before during the 5-month-old Iran war.

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that he’s on the cusp of ordering U.S. forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to U.S. terms to end the war. It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

Todd Blanche issues formal order terminating measure widely derided as a ‘slush fund’, in move that could clear path for his nomination as attorney general

Acting US attorney general Todd Blanche issued a formal order late on Sunday terminating Donald Trump’s $1.8bn “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate his political allies, a move that follows weeks of negotiations with two Republican senators who were blocking his nomination to become attorney general.

While Blanche has repeatedly said publicly that the fund was dead, the justice department had resisted formally confirming that in writing. That had drawn concern from lawmakers that it could be revived in some form, especially after Trump expressed continued support for the idea.

A spokesperson for Texas Senator John Cornyn, one of the senators holding up Blanche’s nomination, confirmed the agreement. The other GOP senator, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, did not have immediate comment.

Court records reviewed by the Guardian show medical procedures included force-feeding, intravenous forced hydration and involuntary blood draws

Homeland security officials under the Trump administration have quietly attempted to subject at least 10 hunger strikers in US immigrant detention to involuntary medical procedures, including force-feeding, a Guardian investigation has found.

In 2025 and 2026, officials had definitely performed the procedures on at least three detained immigrants and likely subjected two more to the forced treatment – widely considered torture by human rights groups. The other five people gave in and broke their hunger strike at the last minute as force-feeding procedures loomed.

The government has not publicly acknowledged the practice of involuntary medical procedures on striking detainees, as the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increases nationwide.