Donald Trump’s $14 million Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation couldn’t stop algae from blooming in the D.C. heat and turning the water a murky shade of green once again.

The unsightly hue plagued the pool just in time for an estimated 125,000 people to descend on Washington for Trump’s “Freedom 250” UFC fights on the White House lawn for his birthday on Sunday — despite work crews spreading chlorine pellets to try to deter algae growth.

The Washington Post reported that the bloom “expanded between Wednesday and Thursday amid wet and warm weather.”

Attorneys for Donald Trump are telling a federal judge to back off her tentative attempts to look into the mechanics of a settlement that purported to create a controversial $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" for the president's allies and supporters.

In January, Trump's original lawsuit against the IRS was filed in the Southern District of Florida. By the middle of May, however, the case was closed – on the plaintiff's own request – with the 45th and 47th president opting instead for a publicly subsidized fund that would reward pro-Trump stalwarts and others similarly situated.

Under the terms of the settlement, eligible claimants are people who were subjected to the "sustained use of the levers of government power by Democrat elected officials, political and career federal employees, contractors, and agents in order to target" them for "improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons."

Study of mothers in Seattle underscores ‘widespread, systemic problem’ of chemical contamination, experts say

Breast milk samples from mothers in Seattle contain alarming levels of dangerous hormone-disrupting chemicals, including BPA, BPS, melamine, cyanuric acid, and triclosan, new peer-reviewed research has found.

The chemicals present a serious risk to infants because they likely interfere with hormones that are critical to newborns’ proper development, and have been found to be harmful at very low levels of exposure. About 92% of 50 samples were contaminated with at least one of the anti-microbials or plasticizers for which researchers checked.

The same milk samples had previously been found to contain potentially dangerous levels of PFAS “forever chemicals” and flame retardants, which are also endocrine disruptors.

Nearly 55% of voters in Switzerland on Sunday rejected an initiative championed by the top right-wing party to cap the rich Alpine country’s population at 10 million, early results showed.

The populist Swiss People’s Party, which has the most seats in parliament, has stirred up and fostered anti-migration sentiment over the years, notably about an influx of workers from the neighboring European Union.

Some have dubbed the proposal a “Swiss Brexit” because it could jeopardize Switzerland’s deep ties to the European Union anchored by deals that foster economic growth, cultural ties and cross-border travel, among other things. Switzerland is not one of the EU’s 27 member states, but it is all but surrounded by four of them

Some fighters will receive bonuses in ‘stablecoins’ issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced on Friday that it will pay bonuses to fighters in a form of cryptocurrency issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial at the heavily publicized White House mixed martial arts event on Sunday.

The development connects the Trump family’s financial interests to the high-profile UFC competition being promoted on government property. The competition on the south White House lawn is scheduled for 14 June, Donald Trump’s birthday.

The UFC said some fighters will receive bonuses in World Liberty Financial crypto called “stablecoins”, whose value is pegged to the US dollar. World Liberty named the currency “USD1”.

Sen. Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized for an undisclosed medical issue, according to a spokesperson.

The 84-year-old was admitted to a hospital Sunday morning and “is receiving excellent care,” his office said.

It wasn’t immediately made public why he was taken to the hospital.

McConnell has suffered a series of health issues in recent years and was hospitalized for eight days in February for flu-like symptoms.

James Talarico has been found guilty of quoting Jesus. The sentence he uttered, according to right-wing media, was “demonic” and “blasphemous,” exposing him as a “fake Christian.” Talarico is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas on a platform The New Yorker recently described as basically the New Testament. One Newsmax host accused him of using fake Bible passages.

The passages in question are familiar ones, found in Matthew 22 and Matthew 25. Love God and love your neighbor. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the stranger. They are, in fact, in the Bible.

The right’s attacks on Talarico aren’t about him, or at least not entirely. They’re about a much older argument — one progressive Christianity has been losing in public for 50 years — about whose version of the faith gets to count as real. The answer to that question has consequences far beyond any Senate race. When Christianity becomes a tool of power rather than a challenge to it, it doesn’t just damage the church. It destabilizes democracy. We are watching that happen in real time.

Nearly 100 of the more than 1,500 January 6 rioters granted clemency by Donald Trump have allegedly gone on to commit separate crimes that include reckless homicide and child molestation, according to a new report by The Lawfare Institute.

The report found that 97 rioters pardoned by Trump were “arrested for and charged with — and in the vast majority of cases convicted of — other crimes,” a count “much higher than the public knew.”

“The alleged crimes by Jan. 6 defendants since Jan. 6, 2021, run the gamut from relatively low-grade offenses like property damage, possession of drug paraphernalia, and trespassing to serious felonies like grand larceny, stalking, planning to assassinate law enforcement officials and prominent politicians, and defrauding government agencies,” the report said. “One Jan. 6 pardonee was convicted in February 2026 of child molestation and sentenced to life in prison. Another was convicted in 2025 of reckless homicide.”

Election of new Hungarian government in April has paved way for EU member states to agree to open talks

Ukraine and Moldova will take a decisive step towards joining the EU on Monday, as they embark on the first phase of membership negotiations.

The start of substantive negotiations, launched by senior EU officials and ministers from both countries in Luxembourg on Monday, will be a highly symbolic moment for the two countries that were both part of the former Soviet Union. It comes after Russia has intensified its bombardment of Ukrainian towns and cities, while sustaining huge losses for little territorial gain.

Ukraine and Moldova were quickly accepted as EU candidate countries in 2022, having filed applications days after Russia’s full-scale invasion. But despite a symbolic decision to open talks in June 2024, substantive negotiations were blocked by Hungary’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Orbán.

Of all extreme weather conditions, heat is the deadliest. Human bodies have a natural cooling system — sweat — but that system can do only so much in high temperatures and humidity.

But how exactly does heat kill? Here's the science behind what happens to the body in extreme temperatures, including the three main ways heat can shut down vital systems, as well as tips to stay safe, cool down and fend off heatstroke.

In recent weeks, Iran has dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of near bomb-grade uranium, deliberately collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines, according to five sources familiar with US intelligence.

Getting to the roughly half-a-ton of highly-enriched uranium is now far more difficult, dangerous and time-consuming than it already was just a month ago, when President Donald Trump was publicly signaling that he might order the US military to seize it, the sources said.

The new fortifications by the Iranians add an additional layer of complexity to the Trump administration’s proposed deal with Tehran to remove and destroy its uranium, and the move raises questions about who will take on the dangerous task of digging it out.

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to restore sites changed under an executive order calling for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”

The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts also orders a pause on any additional changes, writing that the plaintiffs have shown that these efforts are meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen.”

“History cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story,” the judge wrote.