Calls for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation are growing after two unvaccinated people died from measles in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There have been 393 confirmed measles cases in 28 counties in Pennsylvania this year, and 2,777 total cases nationally—a 35-year high.

These are the first measles deaths in the United States this year, and in Pennsylvania in more than three decades.

“RFK Jr.’s lies and conspiracy theories are making Marylanders sick,” Democratic Maryland Senator Angela Alsobrooks wrote Tuesday on X. “RFK Jr. must resign or be fired. Vaccines are safe and effective. Listen to your pediatrician.”

“Measles is officially out of control. How many more people need to die before there is a nationwide call for RFK Jr. to resign?” said Shaughnessy Naughton, president of the pro-science organizing group 3.14 Action. “His anti-science, anti-vaccine policies are killing people and infecting a generation of Americans with dangerous vaccine skepticism that will take years to recover from.”

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The director of the Office of Management and Budget is infuriating Republican lawmakers by "going rogue" on what appropriations were approved by the House and Senate.

MS NOW's Hayes Brown wrote on Monday that Director Russell Vought has made a unilateral decision to control whether funds are actually sent out for projects that Congress approved.

The constitutional core is Article I’s Appropriations Clause: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” So, the president can't legally spend Treasury money unless Congress has authorized it through law. Appropriations are technically laws approved by Congress. The president's Article II powers mandate that he “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

But the executive branch is refusing to disburse the funds approved by law. In fact, Brown explained that "Vought has used every lever he can reach to stanch the flow of federal dollars."

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Four officials in Avenal, Calif., who refused to step down after being recalled earlier this year are “not lawfully” in office, a judge ruled on Monday.

The officials — including the longtime mayor, who is part of the City Council, and three other council members — have remained in office since the April recall, arguing that it was unauthorized. The standoff has become one of the messiest recall battles in modern California history and a highly unusual case of election denialism.

Judge Jennifer Giuliani of Kings County Superior Court ruled Monday that the four City Council members “do not lawfully hold or exercise their respective offices” and that the positions have been “vacant” since the election results were certified on May 28.

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New Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.

On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip).

New Mexico’s “Health Care Authority is planning to continue covering these services using state funds”, Timothy Fowler, a state health care authority spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Earlier this year, New Mexico also announced that it would cover the cost of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits for residents who purchase health insurance on the state marketplace. In July, a news analysis showed that New Mexico was the only state in the country where Affordable Care Act enrollment increased after federal subsidies expired at the end of 2025.

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Nevada filed a federal lawsuit on Monday challenging the Trump administration’s new plan for the imperiled Colorado River, launching what could become the first of many court battles over the waterway that supplies 40 million people, dozens of tribes and 5.5m acres of farm land across the American west.

The federal plan, issued Friday, cut roughly 20% from the water supplied to lower basin states – Nevada, Arizona and California – over the next two years, with a potential for harsher cutbacks in the future, based on conditions.

Filed in the US district court of Nevada, the state of Nevada, the Colorado River commission of Nevada and the Southern Nevada Water Authority filed the suit against the Department of Interior and the US Bureau of Reclamation.

Southern Nevada stood to lose more than 70% of its share under the framework, according to Joe Lombardo, the Nevada governor, who said in a statement issued with an announcement of the lawsuit that the so-called upper basin states – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming – were “not required to contribute a drop”.

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A leading US free-expression group has hit out at federal prosecutors’ use of a novel written by former FBI director James Comey in their case accusing him of threatening to kill Donald Trump.

“Citing a novel to save an indictment that is constitutionally dubious is a desperate Hail Mary and should be rejected,” said a statement posted on Friday by Mara Gassmann, legal director of PEN America, using a term for a last-second heave in American football.

Prosecutors with the Trump administration-led justice department had argued in a filing days earlier that Comey sent coded messages to his followers suggesting they kill an enemy of his citing the fictional protagonist – a federal prosecutor – in his novel FDR Drive.

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The Center for American Progress (Cap) received a letter from Donald Trump’s lawyer threatening a $5bn lawsuit unless the liberal research organization retracts a report criticizing the effectiveness of the president’s National Guard rollout.

The report released 13 July argues that the National Guard deployment in Washington DC, Memphis and Los Angeles failed to have a measurable impact on crime in these cities despite an estimated cost of $1.7bn. The report looks at the falling rate of crime in cities without a National Guard intervention and concludes that they are not statistically different from the rate of decrease in those that had the intervention, noting that violent crime began falling well before Trump took office in 2025.

In response, Alejandro Brito, a personal lawyer of Trump, sent Cap a letter threatening suit if the center did not retract the research report, the New York Times reported Friday. Brito’s letter is a threat from Trump to sue the center in his personal capacity, and not on behalf of the federal government.

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“Based on analysis of crime data, our report demonstrated facts about the National Guard deployments that are inconvenient to the Trump administration,” wrote Neera Tanden, Cap’s president and CEO. “This threatened lawsuit’s attack on facts and evidence is baseless. A fundamental protection of the First Amendment is to allow for the publication of facts and analysis that are contrary to the arguments and claims of any administration. A lawsuit is a transparent attempt to silence us. We will neither cower nor bend in the face of it.”

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Federal officials on Friday sharply cut how much water Arizona, California and Nevada can draw from the Colorado River over the next two years in an attempt to stabilize a system on the verge of collapse because of climate change and overuse.

The existing rules governing use of the river and of the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lakes Powell and Mead, were set to expire this year, just as drought constricts the Colorado’s flow and both lakes shrink to record lows. Friday’s announcement by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reduced the allocation for the three states by about a quarter, in total, reducing Arizona’s share by the most, about a third.

The plan formalized voluntary cuts the states had already offered to accept and settles months of uncertainty over how the water supply will be managed in the coming years. But it does little to solve the underlying crisis: The river’s flow is diminishing and reservoirs are drying up, but communities and farms still use unsustainable amounts of water.

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Air Force Major Jason Watson—who was arrested on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building last month while calling for President Trump’s impeachment—has been arrested again.

Watson was detained on Tuesday, just one day after an exclusive CNN interview in which he said the president was “violating the Constitution, breaking the law, [and] engaged in rampant corruption.” Watson is currently in pretrial confinement in Maryland based on “allegations of continued misconduct” according to the Air Force. It did not identify the specific misconduct allegations, although his attorney believes that his recent CNN appearance is to blame.

“What is happening with President Trump is not normal. He has failed us,” Watson told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. “And not only is he a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me and it should be unacceptable to all of us.”

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From the outside, the city of Avenal appears to embody every bit of its motto – an “oasis in the sun”. Approaching the community, passing through the dusty yellow hillsides of the Central valley, Avenal emerges with a sudden burst of green on the horizon.

Its small-town feel and quiet tree-lined streets offer respite from the bustling Interstate 5 about five miles away. But trouble is brewing here that has brought this lonesome city national attention.

In April, voters in the city of 13,500 people recalled four of five city council members, in what recall organizers said was a first in California. And, in another first, the city council members have simply remained in office.

For months, they have refused to accept the results, alleging that the recalls were improperly conducted, and have carried on holding meetings, overseeing city business and suing in an effort to invalidate the election. ...

A trio of Senate Democrats is expressing concern over the Pentagon’s involvement in the operations of Stars and Stripes, defending the publication’s independence in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday.

Their inquiry follows an announcement this week that the military newspaper’s longtime publisher, Max Lederer, will be retiring after the Pentagon appointed an active-duty Navy captain to a top role at the paper without consulting him.

Lederer said his decision to step down stemmed from “fundamental” differences between his and the department’s visions for the paper. The publisher will depart his role at the end of next month.

The senators wrote in their Thursday letter that the appointment of William Urban, an active-duty Navy captain and public affairs officer, as Lederer’s deputy “raises serious questions” about the paper’s independence.

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) said Wednesday that it “deplores” sanctions imposed this week by the U.S. State Department on its president, Judge Tomoko Akane, and Abdoulaye Seye, a Senegalese senior trial lawyer for the Office of the Prosecutor.

The State Department announced the sanctions Tuesday, accusing Akane and Seye of having “directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute officials whose government has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”

The sanctions include the freezing of assets in the country, blocking financial transactions, and prohibiting entry to the U.S. They were imposed under an Executive Order issued by President Donald Trump in February 2025, which reads: “The United States unequivocally opposes and expects our allies to oppose any ICC actions against the United States, Israel, or any other ally of the United States that has not consented to ICC jurisdiction.”

Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a state party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that founded the ICC and went into effect in 2002, and therefore do not recognize the jurisdiction of the court.

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American revival movements have always contained two competing impulses: the belief that all people possess equal moral worth before God, and the belief that society must be disciplined into righteousness whether it wants to be or not. That tension runs throughout the history of American Christianity. It shaped the First and Second Great Awakenings, fueled both abolitionism and moral policing, and inspired democratic reform movements—all while simultaneously justifying social hierarchy and coercion. If you’re wondering how the MAGA movement can speak constantly in the language of Christianity while bearing intense hostility to many traditional Christian virtues themselves, we can look to this history, which is now repeating itself.

There has been a great deal of discussion on the right in recent years about whether the United States is experiencing some kind of new religious revival. Church attendance remains historically low by many measures, most notably in the mainline churches that have historically fostered religious moderation and created communities of believers from across the political spectrum. That said, religious identity is also increasingly central to American political conflict. Christianity, particularly conservative Christianity, often functions as a marker of political and cultural belonging on the American right. The result is a society that may be becoming less religious overall while simultaneously becoming more religiously polarized. To understand this moment, it helps to revisit the Great Awakenings in U.S. history, when Americans renegotiated the meaning of freedom, morality, and identity on a national scale.

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The Democratic senator Jon Ossoff called Donald Trump a “draft-dodging, crook president” while defending the senator Mark Kelly as a hero during a Tuesday campaign appearance in Georgia, escalating his public feud with the US president.

“I don’t think anything illustrates the times more aptly than that the draft-dodging, crook president, who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win, tried to imprison this man, who embodies American heroism,” Ossoff said while appearing alongside Kelly and his wife, the former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Kelly, a former navy captain, and five other Democratic lawmakers were attacked by Trump last year after they released a social media video saying troops are not required to carry out illegal commands.

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Ossoff, who is currently running for re-election to his Senate seat in Georgia and is widely speculated to be eyeing a 2028 presidential run, has received viral attention on social media for his sharp criticism of Trump.

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Monday urged the Trump administration to tell Israel to protect Palestinians being attacked by “lawbreaking settlers” in the West Bank.

“The ongoing siege of Palestinian homes in the West Bank by violent, lawbreaking settlers is unacceptable. Enough,” Jeffries wrote on the social platform X. “The Trump administration must compel the Israeli government to protect the lives, property and livelihood of innocent Palestinian civilians.”

Since the Israel-Hamas war began, Jeffries has faced sharp criticism from lawmakers and activists, who have called for more humanitarian aid to be sent to the Palestinians in Gaza and greater condemnation of attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the territory.

Last month, Jeffries was not among 100 other Democrats who voted against sending aid to Israel.

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Karoline Leavitt’s peremptory departure from her position as White House press secretary has naturally raised a few eyebrows. The timing is, to say the least, odd.

She states she wants to spend more time with her two little children, one just born in May, and that is just so wholesome that it feels rude and downright boorish not to honor such a motive unquestioningly.

Nevertheless.

There are two things we know with great certainty that have applicability to this situation:

1. There is no reason to accept anything the Trump administration tells us as the truth, whether it comes out of the mouth of the president himself or out of that of his most devoted press secretary. The default setting is lie.
2. As a general rule, no ambitious government official quits to spend more time with their family. It’s the stock reason given when someone’s forced out or is about to be engulfed in scandal. It’s a standing joke, fodder for the late-night comedy circuit.

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People detained at an overcrowded federal immigration camp in Mississippi were sickened by a mystery gas leak, then denied medical care when they complained of headaches and other symptoms, it has been alleged.

A lengthy power outage at Adams county detention center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility run by the private operator CoreCivic, also left it without air conditioning for two days this week, according to one detainee who contacted the Guardian through his family.

As a result, he said, people detained there were forced to spend hours outside in near 100F heat in blazing sunshine and with no shade, or left to swelter inside in cramped cells.

Tensions at the center, he said, were rising, and more arguments and physical altercations were taking place between people there, leaving him and others fearful of violence that he said inadequate staffing levels would not be able to handle.