A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to pause construction on its White House ballroom absent “express authorization from Congress” on Tuesday, throwing the $400 million project’s future into question.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that “no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have,” granting the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking further work on the project.

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote in his opinion.

The order will go into effect in 14 days, which gives the Trump administration time to appeal.

Iran attacked and set ablaze a fully loaded crude oil tanker off Dubai on early on Tuesday, after President Donald Trump warned the United States would obliterate Iran's energy plants and oil wells if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz.

The strike on the Kuwait-flagged Al-Salmi is ‌the latest attack on merchant vessels by missiles or explosive air and sea drones in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

The month-long conflict has ‌spread across the Middle East, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin

Crude oil prices briefly spiked again after the attack on the tanker, which can carry around 2 million barrels of oil worth more than $200 million ​at current prices.

Kuwait Petroleum Corp, the ship's owner, said the attack happened early on Tuesday, causing a fire and hull damage.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (CBS12) — For three years, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office produced its own crack cocaine, so it could sell it to people that deputies would then arrest for buying crack cocaine.

It was a practice the Florida state Supreme Court repeatedly described as “outrageous” in its 1993 ruling that such reverse-stings violated an individual’s right to due process. More than 30 years later, though, a routine audit of documents found hundreds of those arrests and convictions are still on the books and part of people’s criminal records.

On Friday, the State Attorney for Broward County Harold Pryor announced his office planned to do something about that, declaring, “it is never too late to do the right thing.”

“These records may be a dim memory or an unfortunate part of history to many, but they have had a long-lasting and severe impact on the lives of the people who were arrested – as well as their families and the wider community,” Pryor added.

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump nominated Kara Westercamp, a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office, for a life-tenured judgeship on the U.S. Court of International Trade. On Truth Social, Trump called Westercamp a “very experienced Trade Lawyer” who “knows the Wisdom and Courage to protect the American People,” and “will always put America First.”

Westercamp would indeed appear to bring some practical experience to the job: Prior to joining the White House Counsel’s office, she spent a decade at the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Department of Justice, where she regularly tried cases before the Court of International Trade, according to her LinkedIn profile. The fact that Trump now hopes to place Westercamp, currently serving as one of his in-house attorneys, on a body that is deeply involved in adjudicating the legal challenges to his tariffs agenda is, I am sure, a coincidence.

For my money, the bullet points on Westercamp’s résumé are less interesting than her Twitter/X account, which is now protected. To be fair, “protect my old tweets” is also what I would do if I were chasing a job that required me to swear an oath to faithfully and impartially enforce the law, and archived versions of my timeline suggested that I am the sort of aggressively online Trump loyalist who takes breathless #tcot selfies with Fox News talking heads, and enjoys Jim Halpert memes about how Critical Race Theory is racist.

The Missouri Supreme Court handed down three rulings Tuesday that could shape the 2026 election, saying lawmakers had the authority to pass a new congressional map last year, leaving intact the state’s photo-ID requirement for voters and striking down limits on voter-registration and absentee-ballot outreach.

The decisions gave Missouri Republicans a major win in the fight over congressional redistricting and preserved one of the state’s most contested voting laws, even as the court drew a constitutional line around how far Missouri can go in restricting civic groups trying to get people registered and to the polls.

On redistricting, in a 4-3 ruling, the court rejected arguments that the Missouri Constitution allows lawmakers to redraw congressional lines only once a decade, after a new census. Instead, the majority said the constitution requires the legislature to act after each census but does not expressly bar it from returning later to pass another map.

Missouri Republicans pushed through the new congressional plan last year after pressure from President Donald Trump and allies eager to make Missouri’s Kansas City-area district more winnable for the GOP.

But the political fight over the map is not over. The campaign behind a referendum seeking to overturn it, People Not Politicians, said Monday that updated data showed it has enough valid signatures in the required congressional districts to qualify for the November ballot.

Backers of a proposed referendum on Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional plan believe they have met the minimum number of signatures needed to make the November’s ballot.

Updated data, posted Monday morning by People Not Politicians, the political action committee that organized a referendum petition drive, shows that the petition has at least 129% of the required signatures in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th districts. The last district needed to qualify for the ballot was southwest Missouri’s 7th District and 102% of the signatures needed are valid, with more than 6,000 signatures left to be checked.

“This is what we have known to be true all along,” said Richard von Glahn, director of People Not Politicians. “We clearly have enough signatures.”

The updated data, obtained from Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ office via a Sunshine Law request, arrived Monday morning, von Glahn said, just days after a Cole County judge ordered revisions last week to the ballot summary for the referendum.

In the decision delivered Friday, Circuit Judge Brian Stumpe wrote that he agreed with Hoskins that two phrases should be removed from the summary, originally prepared by Hoskins, as prejudicial and unfair.

Stumpe also identified a third phrase that he deleted for the same reason.

The Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a more than $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war in Iran, according to a senior administration official, in an enormous new ask that is almost certain to run into resistance from lawmakers opposed to the conflict.

That number would far surpass the costs of the administration’s massive airstrike campaign to date and instead seek to urgently increase production of critical weaponry expended as U.S. and Israeli forces have struck thousands of targets over the past three weeks, according to three other people familiar with the matter, who confirmed that the Defense Department is seeking packages of that size.

Like some others for this article, the people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s sensitive planning.

It remains unclear how much the White House will ultimately ask congressional lawmakers to approve. Some White House officials do not think the Pentagon’s request has a realistic shot of being approved in Congress, the senior administration official said. The Pentagon has floated several different proposed funding requests over the past two weeks, according to the official and three other people familiar with the matter.

The funding request is likely to stage a major political battle in Congress, as public support for the effort remains tepid and Democrats have been sharply critical. Republicans have signaled support for the forthcoming supplemental request but haven’t committed to a legislative strategy, or found a clear path to surpass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.

Gabriel Malor
‪@gabrielmalor.bsky.social‬

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