Donald Trump’s Justice Department announced an antitrust investigation today into the TV pool networks that refused to cover for CNN. Last month Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News answered by suspending the pool coverage they share, and a [more]

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants Americans to watch a firing squad kill a man on a Pentagon livestream. The execution of the Fort Hood shooter is set for 1 p.m. Central on the Thursday after Thanksgiving, the hour he opened fire in 2009. No execution in America has ever been televised, [more]

The day after Donald Trump promised to stop paying for his TV ads with tax money, a fifth one aired, ending with "Paid for by the U.S. Government." Congress set that money aside for border security, but the White House moved $20 million of it into a fund for commemorative events. When both [more]

Federal immigration agents have jailed at least 506 American citizens since January 2025. The Department of Homeland Security says it is "NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake." ProPublica confirmed every one of them, at least 70 children among them. Thirty-six were held a day or longer [more]

A Nebraska crowd cheered today when Donald Trump said, "Let them take out Los Angeles." He was talking about what the war with Iran costs Americans. He added, "Let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay." More than five million people live in those two cities. [more]

Air Force crews flew every American bomber out of England on Sunday, some before the tankers meant to refuel them on the way home were in the air. Commanders ordered them back from RAF Fairford after new warnings of an Iran-backed plot against the base, a week after British police arrested [more]

Vladimir Putin pitched Donald Trump's son-in-law on a Russian oil deal at the Kremlin last month. The Treasury Department rejected a bid for Lukoil's refineries and gas stations last November, calling the would-be buyer "the Kremlin's puppet." This time the leading bidders include an Emirati [more]

Reporters started a private school in Arkansas with $45 and an American flag. They aren't teachers and don't intend to run a school. ProPublica and three local newsrooms wanted to see how easily states approve new private schools and send them tax money. They tried in three states and [more]

Renee Good's family sued Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem and Tom Homan today over her killing by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis. The day before she died, the administration sent 2,000 immigration agents into the Twin Cities. The suit calls her death the "predictable [more]

Attorney General Todd Blanche wants the judges who caught ICE breaking 96 court orders blocked from hearing any of its cases. Today Blanche accused all but one of Minnesota's federal judges of misconduct for talking to the New York Times about Operation Metro Surge. [more]

Donald Trump wants the man who brokers America's deportation deals in Africa to be his ambassador to Cameroon. Christian Ehrhardt runs the State Department's Office of Remigration. Cameroon signed on last December, agreeing to take up to 1,000 people who aren't from there, the same day the [more]

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp suspended his state's gas tax today for the third time this year. His emergency order blames "global markets" and never mentions the war with Iran, now seven months old. The only federal action it cites is the energy emergency Donald Trump declared on his first day [more]

Election Day is 37 days out. Before You Vote went live tonight at govbrief.today/vote, 50 pages, one for each state, a year of stories sorted by where you live with the links to check your registration at the top. Nobody narrates it, and nobody paid for it but me.

North Carolina's Columbus County set up a checkpoint Thursday night and asked Latino drivers where they were born. Electrician Javier Carbajal showed a deputy his license on the drive home from work and was ordered out of the car anyway. His passenger, also an electrician, couldn't produce [more]

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to let Homeland Security use a searchable citizenship database built from Social Security data to check voters before the midterms. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent that burdening even a few lawful voters outweighs the "nonexistent harm" of stopping [more]

Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas wants ICE to call the sheriff before it comes to town. Agents started pulling people over in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal before dawn Tuesday, and local police learned about it the same way everyone else did. A meatpacking plant delayed its [more]

Police in Springfield, Missouri, handcuffed a woman at Monday night's city council meeting and ticketed her for a disturbance, listing the evidence as "middle finger to mayor." She came to speak against the city's 41 Flock license plate cameras, but the council had just voted to shelve a [more]

Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly today and asked the world's leaders whether he should drive Iran "into hell." He framed it as a choice between a deal and the decision to "annihilate the Islamic Republic," and told the room the deal would probably come "right [more]

Because space here is limited, you never get to see me talking about this tool on the website. I've forgotten more stories than I would like to admit.

Donald Trump cut the ribbon on his new White House helipad Monday with a pair of golden scissors, but nobody could understand a word he said. He'd banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House three days earlier, and every other network in the TV press pool refused to take CNN's [more]

An ICE agent shot a DoorDash driver in Austin just before 1 p.m. today, and by 4:30 the hospital had released him into ICE custody. Wilber Garces Perez, 28, was shot in the torso in the middle of a delivery. Hospital staff walked his wife and his lawyer off the property when they came to [more]

Iran-backed Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh today, three days after Donald Trump said "hopefully we're toward the end" of the war. Saudi Arabia says it shot the missile down. By evening, American embassies in nine countries were warning citizens that airspace across the region [more]

Donald Trump announced three big wins on Friday and oversold every one of them. He banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House "effective immediately." By evening nobody had left, and his own press office didn't know the details. He said Denmark gave America "permanent control" of [more]

A federal judge told Donald Trump he cannot tear down the Kennedy Center without asking 30 days in advance. Trump said Wednesday the building would "end up being ripped down" without his name on it. Hours later a photographer caught him on Air Force One reading a poster that said [more]

Congress sent its first Epstein contempt case to Donald Trump's Attorney General on the day a judge warned he could be next. Billionaire investor Leon Black paid Jeffrey Epstein more than $170 million between 2012 and 2017. He walked out of a closed-door interview with Congress in June and [more]

Donald Trump's Pentagon stopped answering questions about his war, so the troops and the accountants answered for him. The Congressional Budget Office says the Iran war has cost $38 billion through August 1, and it noted the Defense Department refused to answer its questions. The report [more]

The Supreme Court won't let Donald Trump's post office decide who gets a mail ballot. A federal judge froze his Postal Service rule for this election, and Monday the Court refused to lift that freeze. The rule would have let the post office refuse any ballot from a voter the state had [more]

Donald Trump's hand-picked board says the Kennedy Center goes broke unless his name goes back on the memorial. He took over the institution 18 days into his term. A judge ruled in May that Congress alone can rename it. Crews pried his name off in June, and a tarp has hidden the sign ever [more]

The officials who planned to cut FEMA in half deleted their Signal messages about it. Judge Susan Illston ruled Friday that their plan broke the law. She found that Donald Trump's Homeland Security Department stripped FEMA of control over its own people and committed the agency to getting [more]

Todd Blanche got his job by promising senators in writing that his $1.8 billion payout fund was dead. Forty days later, on a Friday night, his Justice Department filed a two-line notice appealing the ruling that Donald Trump sued himself and the government never defended the case. [more]