Middle East

The Hill -   Iran on Friday asserted its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, warning that safe passage can only be guaranteed for ships that coordinate with Tehran.  The statement comes after President Trump accused Iran of hitting a commercial vessel sailing close to the coast of Oman with a one-way attack drone. The British military said the vessel was transiting through a United Nations-approved route. 

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi posted on the social platform X that passage through the strait must be coordinated with Iran and that attempts to subvert Tehran could lead to “the suspension of the designated parallel route.”  “Safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, with ambiguous arrangements, parallel routes, or decision-making outside of Iran’s considerations as the coastal state, cannot be guaranteed,” he said.

DOJ joins Catholic nuns in case

Prime Chronicle -   Federal officials have stepped into a New York case that puts Catholic conscience rights on a collision course with gender ideology rules. The Justice Department has moved to join a lawsuit filed by Catholic nuns against New York’s long-term care rule.

The sisters say the state is forcing conduct that clashes with Catholic teaching on rooms, bathrooms, names, pronouns, and training.

New York says the law protects residents from discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The dispute now pits religious liberty and family values against state enforcement power in a nursing home setting. 

The Justice Department’s decision to join the case raises the stakes fast. Federal involvement usually signals that a dispute has moved beyond a local licensing fight and into a broader constitutional clash. In this case, the federal government is backing the sisters against a state rule that New York says protects residents from discrimination, while the nuns say it burdens religion and speech.  That makes the case more than a culture-war headline. It becomes a test of how far states can go when they regulate faith-based health care providers. 

Why we're late

Sam Smith - Undernews comes to you from a small town in Maine right next to a state park. Thanks to yesterday's weather we went without electricity for quite a few hours yesterday and without internet connection until just a few minutes ago. Turns out a tree in the park fell on the electric and internet wires and cut off our service. 

Flotsam & Jetsam - The gadfly thing

 Sam Smith, 2015 - I was recently described in an otherwise kind article in Washington’s City Paper as a "political gadfly." This was neither the first time nor will it be the last. It has happened to me so often that I was able to tell the writer where the word came from (a fly that bites and annoys cattle). In fact, it has happened to me so often that I once had a dinghy called the Gadfly.

Gadflies are only barely further along in the evolutionary chain of things than maggots and slugs. They are frequently found resting placidly on a pile of excrement. As readers well know, I never am at rest sitting on a pile of shit.

Being called a gadfly is a little like being bitten by one. It’s also, notes Jon Rowe, like Ralph Nader being called a "self-styled consumer advocate." Where, Rowe wonders, does one go to get a license to become an properly appointed consumer advocate? To the Washington Post Style Section?

People in Washington who call other people gadflies tend to be either players or people who wish they were. A player is someone trying to be Assistant Secretary of HUD, someone who represents a major polluter and claims to practice environmental law, someone who is paid large sums of money to shout down Eleanor Clift on national TV or who pays large sums of money to get politicians to wrestle with -- and ultimately defeat -- their own conscience. Players are annoyed by gadflies because they won’t play according to the players’ rules. On the other hand, gadflies don’t clutter up the bureaucracy making dull speeches, and they don’t create toxic waste sites or corrupt the political system. They tend to eat Mr. Tyson’s chicken rather than fly on his planes. And at the end of the day, they have less explaining to do to their children.

Players tend to be quite insecure which is why they need such an elaborate support system, including the Washingtonian magazine, the Gridiron Dinner, the Washington Post Style section and the Diane Rehm Show. Players consider themselves serious; gadflies not. Russell Baker, a serious man, addressed this matter best in a column in which he pointed out the difference between being serious and being solemn. Baker observed that children are almost always serious, but that they start to lose the trait in adolescence. Washington is the capital of solemnity and few of its elite are truly serious.

Gadflies, on the other hand, are usually serious. A gadfly tends to be someone with ideas, energy and a modicum of talent but who lacks a PR firm, ghostwriter and a proper flair for networking. A gadfly is someone who actually wants to get something done, but often can’t -- largely because of all the players in the way.

EF Schumacher once said, "We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure."

Gadflies would agree. They think for themselves. But in Washington thought is something players purchase, just like they purchase gas, condoms or political access. People who think are considered part of the service industry with commensurate compensation and social regard.

When gadflies feel like using a bovine analogy, they think of themselves as mavericks -- animals whose only sin has been to wander off from their colleagues. Mavericks also, as they say in Texas, drink upstream from the herd, which if you know anything about cattle is not a bad idea.

Take a run-of-the-mill gadfly such as myself and then some average players -- say the editorial board the Washington Post -- and compare their records over a couple of decades. The gadfly approach to freeways, urban policy, Vietnam, the environment and Bill Clinton will, I think, hold up pretty well. The problem gadflies face is not that they are irrelevant or wrong but that their timing is a bit off. The FBI used to categorize members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as "premature anti-fascists." Similarly, many gadflies are just moderates of an age that has not yet arrived.

Polls

Political Polls

New - Generic Ballot poll Democrats 53% (+7) Republicans 45% Marquette

Donald Trump

Hoodlum  -    John Thune is 6’4”. The White House released the results of Trump’s physical stating he is 6’3”. That’s a pretty big inch.

Guns

Independent -   Gun owners with concealed-carry permits may freely bring their firearms onto private properties that are also open to the public, such as gas stations, restaurants or stores, the Supreme Court said Thursday in a ruling that strikes down a Hawaii state law.

In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority said the Hawaii law - that required gun owners to obtain permission from an owner before bringing a gun onto their private property - imposed “a new and significant burden” on the right to bear arms.

While the ruling adds further Second Amendment protections for concealed-carry permit holders, it's unlikely to have a sweeping impact across the country because most states don't have a law like the one in Hawaii and allow concealed-carry permit holders to bring guns onto private property with no prior permission. The states impacted will include New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California.

Middle East

Republicans against Trump  -  In a major blow to Trump, the Senate voted 50–48 to approve a resolution ordering the removal of U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran unless Congress declares war or authorizes the use of military force.  Republican senators Collins, Cassidy, Murkowski, and Paul voted yes. Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote no.  Senators McConnell and McCormick did not vote

Voting rights

Newsbreak -   A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred President Donald Trump’s administration from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper in Boston effectively converts a preliminary injunction she issued a year ago, in which she temporarily blocked many of Trump’s efforts to overhaul elections, into a permanent ban...

"The Constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” she wrote.

Among other proposed changes, Trump’s order would have required people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote, prevented mail ballots from being counted if they arrive after Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then, and punished states that failed to comply by withholding certain federal money.

Major Supreme Court Decisions in 2026

NYC's lesson for the Democrats

The Hartmann Report -   On Tuesday night, the establishment wing of the Democratic Party got a message it would prefer to pretend it didn’t hear. In New York, Mamdani-backed progressives swept the congressional primaries, ousting two sitting Democratic congressmen and taking an open seat in a single evening.

Former city comptroller Brad Lander beat Rep. Dan Goldman by more than thirty points. A 32-year-old democratic socialist named Darializa Avila Chevalier knocked off five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and state Assembly member Claire Valdez won the seat Nydia Velázquez is vacating. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (a recipient of dark money and AIPAC money) campaigned hard against all three and watched all three win anyway.

As Bernie Sanders put it afterward, the message is pretty clear: Americans are sick to death of a rigged economy and of billionaires buying their elections.

The corporate press and just about every Republican in the country will tell you these candidates are “socialists,” and they’ll spit the word the way you’d say “arsonist.” A little history clears the fog.

When a young public defender in upper Manhattan or a state assemblywoman in Brooklyn calls herself a democratic socialist today, she isn’t talking about Havana or the old Soviet Politburo (the way Republicans and much of the press want you to think). The three who won in New York ran on Medicare for All, affordable housing, stronger union protections, and an end to U.S. military support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Supreme Court cancels claim that Roundup causes cancer

NY Times -  The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the manufacturer of the weedkiller Roundup, overturning a jury award for a Missouri man who claimed the widely used herbicide caused cancer in a decision that could have sweeping impacts on thousands of other Americans who similarly claim the product sickened them.

In the 7-to-2 decision, written by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the majority found that a federal law that regulates pesticides barred the Missouri man’s lawsuit.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Missouri case would “require a cancer warning on Roundup’s label,” which would directly conflict with the label required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this conflict, he wrote, federal law “expressly pre-empts” the Missouri man’s claim.

The dispute focused on a single case, a $1.25 million award for John Durnell, a gardener in St. Louis who had used Roundup for decades and claimed that years of exposure to the product led him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. Mr. Durnell claimed that the company had failed to warn consumers of the dangers of the product.

Weather

The Nation -   This week, a brutal heat wave is shattering heat records in Europe. It’s but it’s worth recalling however that last summer the same thing happened in Asia: China, Japan, and Korea suffered their hottest summers on record in 2025, the World Meteorological Organization noted in a new report. Now it’s France’s turn. And maybe Belgium, Spain, and Britain’s as well. As global warming driven mainly by burning fossil fuels continues to intensify, scientists say that record breaking heat will become increasingly frequent throughout the world.

Temperatures in France this week have been the hottest ever recorded, exceeding 44 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit) on June 23. French authorities placed more than half the country on “red alert” and warned that the extreme heat would continue for days to come, Agence France-Presse reported. The Guardian quoted the French health minister explaining that “many people are going to suffer, because bodies suffer from an accumulation of high temperatures.”

The intensity, scope, and projected duration of this extreme heat has drawn comparisons to the catastrophic heat wave that scorched Europe in 2003. That heat wave is a landmark event in the history of human-caused climate change for two reasons. First, it was the first extreme weather event that scientists authoritatively attributed to climate change; a team of British scientists published a study concluding that global warming was responsible for 45 percent of the excessive heat that punished Europe that summer. Second, the 2003 heat wave was global warming’s first mass casualty event: It killed a staggering 71,000 people in six weeks, considerably more than the number of US war deaths throughout all the years of the Vietnam War. (Initial reports estimated that 15,000 people died, a figure sometimes still repeated today, but subsequent epidemiological analysis concluded that the actual death toll was nearly five times higher.)

The Guardian -   This month, NOAA confirmed the formation of El Niño in the tropical Pacific and issued an official advisory. Forecasters expect it to strengthen through the winter of 2026–27, with a 63% chance it will reach the “very strong” threshold, placing it among the strongest events in the modern record dating back to 1950. In a world already experiencing record heat, such an event could bring more dangerous extremes: drought, wildfires, flooding, and in the Pacific, a more active hurricane season. And, as is always the case, these events disproportionately affect the most vulnerable.

In the face of this evolving threat, the Trump administration has sought to cripple our forecasting capabilities. This spring, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began “descoping” the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network that delivers real-time ocean data from more than 900 sensors. “Descoping” is bureaucratic language for dismantling the program. The agency announced plans to pull all sensors, buoys and other equipment from four of the program’s five sites. These arrays span from the Gulf of Alaska to the Irminger Sea between Greenland and Iceland, and down to the waters off North Carolina. Built over a decade at a cost of approximately $386m, the system is among the most advanced ocean-observing networks in the world.

Make no mistake. Pulling these arrays was not a budgetary exercise. Rather, the NSF’s actions are more properly viewed as an extension of the Trump administration’s broader assault on federal climate science. The objective is apparently to weaken the programs that measure climate change and then claim the problem is “uncertain”. But turning off the alarm does not put out the fire.

Food Stamps

More than 4.7 million people have lost access to food stamps since Congress passed President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill in July last year, a drop of about 11%. In Arizona, the state that has seen the steepest drop in recipients nationwide, a record number of people are now relying on food banks. —Reuters

Immigration

New Republic -   A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that President Trump can resume fast-tracking deportations, in a 2–1 ruling. While a lower court struck the program down in August, this ruling allows the Trump administration to deport potentially millions of people without offering them immigration hearings. 

Judge Justin R. Walker and Judge Neomi Rao, two Trump appointees, ruled in Trump’s favor, while Judge Robert L. Wilkins, an Obama appointee, dissented. The Trump appointees argued that it was within the executive’s jurisdiction to decide which migrants to fast-track to deportation and that the Department of Homeland Security was not required to inform migrants that they could avoid an accelerated deportation if they could offer proof of residency for at least two years.

The Hill -   The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that the government may legally turn back asylum seekers who are attempting to reach a port of entry before they hit U.S. soil, greenlighting a now-rescinded immigration policy that the Trump administration wants the right to potentially revive.

The policy, called “metering,” began under then-President Obama and ended several years ago.  It enables border officials to turn back migrants before they could physically cross the border from Mexico into the U.S., preventing them from making an asylum claim.  

Estimated water use

Data: Cleanview analysis of government, industry and academic sources, including 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study; Note: Power plants include fossil fuel and nuclear facilities. Data centers include on-site cooling and associated electricity generation; Chart: Amy Harder/Axios

Money

Forward Blue -  Social Security funds could run short by 2032. This comes after Trump slashed the Social Security Administration’s workforce and signed a bill that strips millions of dollars in funding from Social Security and Medicare. Over 68 million people receive Social Security benefits every month, and Medicare provides health insurance coverage to 67.6 million people, but because of Republicans' reckless leadership these benefits are now in jeopardy.

The Hill -   Annual inflation hit the highest level in more than three years last month as prices across the economy rose at an even quicker pace, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department.  Prices rose 4.1 percent over the past year and 0.7 percent in May alone, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. Without food and energy, prices were up 3.4 percent over the past year and 0.3 percent in May.

Court blocks Postal Service plan to help Trump foul election results

NY Times -   A federal court in Massachusetts struck down crucial components of an executive order from President Trump that sought to place significant restrictions on mail voting as “unlawful, null, and void.” The order had, in part, tried to use federal oversight of the U.S. Postal Service to regulate mail voting.

The ruling from Judge Indira Talwani amounted to a broad rejection of the Trump administration’s attempts to change federal election procedures through an executive order, repeatedly emphasizing that the Constitution grants authority over elections not to the executive branch but to individual states and Congress.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Judge Talwani wrote, adding emphasis by underlining the words “does not.”

More than 20 Democratic attorneys general representing states across the country brought the legal challenge in federal court in Massachusetts.

An earlier story:

The Hill -   Postmaster General David Steiner told lawmakers Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service will no longer deliver mail-in ballots in states that refuse to provide sensitive voter data to the federal government, in line with a proposed rule from the Trump administration. 

Steiner defended the measure at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, saying it was to ensure that “the right ballots are going to the right people” after Senate Democrats aired concerns about the proposal.

“If a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this … rule?” Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the committee’s top Democrat, asked Steiner.

“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied.

President Trump issued an executive order in March directing the agency to propose a rule requiring states to provide a list to the Postal Service of eligible voters at least 60 days before any federal elections, in line with the president’s efforts to crackdown on suspected mail-in voter fraud.

Democrats have argued that the proposed rule shows Trump is attempting to federalize elections and questioned whether the Postal Service has the authority to enforce the rule, as the responsibility of administrating elections falls on the states under the Constitution.

Steiner conceded that his agency does not have the authority to administer elections but instead characterized the rule as a procedural precaution to ensure ballots are being sent to eligible voters only.

“I would think that states would want the information to ensure that the ballots that they think they’re sending out are the ballots that are actually getting sent out,” Steiner said.

He also reiterated that the Postal Service would comply with any court orders governing voting by mail.

Trump’s executive order directs the Postal Service to issue a final rule by the end of July. The proposal is currently undergoing a 30-day public comment period that began earlier this month.

LA Fire

The Congressional Insider -   A half-million-square-foot warehouse full of food, chemicals, and solar hardware has been burning for days in East Los Angeles, and officials are asking people to trust a system many already believe is broken.  A stubborn Boyle Heights cold-storage warehouse fire has burned for nearly a week, sending smoke across much of Los Angeles and forcing repeated shelter-in-place orders and air-quality warnings.

Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom declared emergencies to unlock state resources, even as officials admit the exact cause of the blaze remains undetermined and walls inside the facility are unstable. Firefighters have battled flames fueled by roof-top solar panels, foam insulation, an ammonia leak, and possible lithium-ion batteries, while 85 million pounds of spoiling food now pose a major biohazard and cleanup challenge.

Residents are told air tests show no “toxic” chemicals beyond a normal structure fire, yet smoke advisories and closed parks highlight the gap between official reassurances and what families living under the plume actually experience.

Union membership lessens the ethnic wealth gap

American Progress -   Families of color experience the largest proportional gains in wealth when a union member is present, even though overall wealth remains lower than for white households. White union households have about 1.8 times the wealth of their nonunion counterparts, while the proportional differences are larger for other groups, particularly Hispanic and Black households who hold 4.6 and 3.2 times the wealth of their nonunion counterparts, respectively. Union households of other racial backgrounds hold 2.0 times the wealth of their nonunion counterparts, and similar to white families, union Asian households hold 1.8 times the wealth of their nonunion counterparts.

These larger gains are also reflected in narrower racial wealth gaps. Among nonunion households, Black families hold 20 percent of the wealth of white nonunion households, a share that nearly doubles to 36 percent among union households. For Hispanic households, this share climbs from 20 percent to 53 percent with union membership, and for families of other racial backgrounds it increases from 45 percent to 52 percent. Although gaps remain between white households and those of color, reflecting systematic racial biases in the economy, these wealth trends suggest that union membership is associated with a reduction in racial wealth disparities.

Death sentence without evidence

Deep State Tribunal -    United States Supreme Court justices denied the appeal of Texas inmate Charles Flores on June 15, 2026, without a written explanation.  Flores sits on death row for a 1999 murder that even supporters of the death penalty now question because the key eyewitness was hypnotized by police. Flores’ lawyers asked the Court to apply Texas’ own “junk science” protections and modern research on memory, but the justices refused to review those claims. For many conservatives, that looks like the system protecting itself instead of seeking truth.

The most troubling detail is simple: there is no physical evidence tying Flores to the crime scene. No fingerprints, no DNA, no gun, no fibers, and no footprints link him to the house where a woman was shot and killed. The State relied mainly on one neighbor, Jill Bargainer, who saw two men in a car outside before the killing. She became the key witness after police used hypnosis to “refresh” her memory. Modern science warns that this kind of hypnosis can warp memory instead of fixing it, especially when done by untrained officers.

Housing

The Hill -  President Trump cancelled the signing of a bipartisan housing bill on Wednesday, saying he would not sign the legislation until the Senate passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act. 

“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. 

The development underscores the tension between Trump and Senate Republicans on the SAVE America Act.  Trump has pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-N.D.) to abolish the filibuster in an effort to pass the legislation, something Thune has so far refused to do.

Congress last night passed the largest housing bill in decades. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act passed in the House 358 to 32. The Senate approved it on Monday with similar overwhelming bipartisan support. The measure now heads to Trump's desk for his signature. The bill seeks to address the U.S.'s lack of sufficient housing to meet demand. Realtor.com estimated that last year, the U.S. was short by more than 4 million housing units.

The Guardian  - Tenants at apartment complexes operated by Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, don’t just pay rent. They pay a mass of fees that many renters have never heard of before. These add-ons include “boiler management fees”, “variable refrigerant flow fees”, “solar rebill” fees, even “lifestyle fees”.

Tenants and lawsuits in multiple states call many of these fees inflated, illegal, predatory or overwhelming. “A fee for this, a fee for that was just crazy to me,” Nichole Collins, a former tenant at a Greystar-managed building in Colorado, said. “I had never experienced that before.”

Long lists of fees are common at buildings operated by Greystar, a private-equity backed conglomerate that owns or manages more than 1 million apartments across the US. According to tenants, housing attorneys, public officials and court claims, this tangle of extra charges fattens the company’s bottom line, increases renters’ risks of eviction and undermines fair competition in the apartment market by muddying the real price they pay for shelter.

NYC Primary

Free Press -   Whether you hate it or love it, New York still sets the trends that America follows. That’s why the results of Tuesday’s primaries are national news. In a trio of House races in America’s biggest city, left-wing candidates backed by Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders came out on top.

Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier all won primary challenges against incumbent representatives, promising to tax the rich and spread the spoils among the masses.

Guns

Deep State Tribunal -  A Florida appeals court just ruled that banning 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying concealed firearms is unconstitutional — and it could be the crack that breaks open the entire post-Parkland gun law.

Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeals struck down the state’s concealed carry ban for adults aged 18 to 20, ruling it violates the Second Amendment.  The court found no founding-era historical tradition that supports banning this age group from carrying firearms — a key test under the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling.  Florida’s own Attorney General sided against the state’s 2018 gun law, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike it down entirely. A growing split among federal courts over gun rights for 18-to-20-year-olds makes Supreme Court review increasingly likely.

Polls

The Contrarian - A recent PRRI survey of over 5,400 Americans confirms that they are deeply attached to democracy. An impressive 68 percent think that “we are in real danger of losing important democratic rights and freedoms we have had in this country,” and a stunning 59 percent, including 66 percent of independents, think Trump is “a potentially dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.”

Trump regime

The Guardian -   A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.

After a three-week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

Benjamin Song, who fired the gun at the police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Song was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, as well as firearm and explosives charges. He was also convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists. He faced anywhere from 20 years to life in prison.

Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto and Meagan Morris were sentenced to 50 years in prison. Maricela Rueda, another demonstrator, was sentenced to 70 years in prison. All six were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorist, and explosive charges. Rueda was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record.

Evetts, Hill, Morris and Rueda were acquitted on attempted murder and firearms charges.

The sentences handed down on Tuesday were unusually long, said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor who served as the US attorney for the eastern district of Michigan during the Obama administration.

“Most often, judges will sentence defendants for separate counts concurrently. Here, it appears that the judge stacked the sentences for each count consecutively. I would have expected lengthy sentences here, more in the ballpark at 15 to 25 years, but nothing like 50 to 100 years,” she wrote in an email.

Middle East

The Guardian - The Senate approved a war powers resolution preventing Donald Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran. In a significant but symbolic rebuke over a conflict that has proven unpopular with the US public, resolution passed by a 50-48 vote. Four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky – broke with their party to support its adoption, while John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat to vote against the resolution.

What does it mean in practice? The measure, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, would require the president to seek Congress’s authorization to use military force against Iran. The resolution does not require the president’s signature, and Trump and his Republican allies have questioned the constitutionality of the 1973 War Powers Act under which it was passed. But it still highlights growing discontent among some Republicans over the conflict.

Corporations

Time -  The combined compensation of 391 company leaders in the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO pay ranking amounted to $9.9 billion in 2025, as the newspaper announced that “the $100-million-plus CEO is back with a bang.”

The report, which monitors pay of the heads of S&P 500 companies, found that more U.S. CEOs crossed that pay threshold than in any year since 2021.

The Journal found that companies are anticipating a shift in how their leaders are compensated, mirroring Elon Musk’s “moonshot” pay packages that reward company performance with huge stock or option awards.

The combined pay of those 391 CEOs was dwarfed by Musk’s total compensation as Tesla's CEO, which was $158 billion.

Weather

Time - Europe is heading into its second deadly heatwave in two months after several countries experienced a “heat dome” last month with record-breaking temperatures that killed several people across the continent. Here’s what you need to know about the heatwave and what you can do to protect yourself in high temperatures. 

GOP

NY Times -   Tucker Carlson, the conservative media giant, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand former member of Congress, said they had formally broken with the Republican Party. The split expands the two conservative luminaries’ feud with President Trump into a broader repudiation of the party they once helped shape. Although both said they would not support Democrats, their break from the G.O.P. could exacerbate party turmoil that threatens to suppress enthusiasm, and participation, in the fall midterms.

“I have been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party,” Mr. Carlson said during a guest appearance on the “Can’t Be Censored” podcast that aired Thursday. “If I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”

Ms. Greene followed up with a social media post saying much the same. “Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party,” she said Monday on X. “There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country.”