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Southern California hits ICE with ‘dumbfounding’ roadblock as top lawmaker rips ‘reckless’ hypocrisy

August 21, 2026 2:34pm EDT / Fox News

California’s second-largest county has barred federal immigration agents from using county shooting ranges and firearms training facilities, drawing accusations of hypocrisy from the top Republican in the state Legislature, who represents part of the county.

The move comes as Democrats criticize ICE over the training its agents receive, while dozens of members of Congress have questioned training standards after deadly agent-involved shootings.

California Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, R-Poway, told Fox News Digital exclusively that the decision clashes with Democrats’ demands for better-trained ICE agents.

“Leftist Democrats cannot continue to advocate for federal agents to ‘get more training’ while at the same time purposefully removing opportunities like this to get that very training,” Jones told Fox News Digital.

“The hypocrisy is dumbfounding.”

FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS NEWSOM’S BID TO SHACKLE ICE IN TRUMP IMMIGRATION WIN

California Senate Minority Leader Brian W. Jones, R-San Diego(Reuters/Reuters Photos)

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 at its August meeting to end licensing agreements with DHS that allow agents to use the Miramar and San Diego Regional firearms training centers.

Jones said the move has consequences beyond preventing federal agents from using the facilities, arguing their presence also provides an economic benefit.

“Not only do they speak from both sides of the mouth with actions like this, but this continues the board’s trend of making reckless fiscal decisions that harm San Diegans, seemingly by the day,” Jones said.

“How much will this breach of contract and loss of business cost our community and its taxpayers?”

DEMOCRAT COMPARES ICE TO ‘DOMESTIC TERRORISTS’ AS 111 HOUSE DEMS DEMAND TEXAS DETENTION CENTER CLOSE

Anti-ICE protesters demonstrate in San Diego.(Carlos Moreno/Getty Images)

Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, D-San Ysidro, pushed back on critics during the meeting. She said they will never feel the fear some San Diegans experience when they hear knocks on their doors from the “people who are supposed to protect you.”

“I see what that fear does every day in the South Bay,” she said, adding that, as the supervisor representing the Mexican ports of entry in San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, she understands the importance of the border and the people who cross it daily.

“When fear forces a community into silence, the people they elected have a duty to speak and that’s what this item is about,” she said.

The board’s two Republicans, Jim Desmond and Joel Anderson, voted against the measure. Desmond is running this fall to succeed retiring Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

FLEEING SUSPECT IN NEW JERSEY STRIKES ICE AGENT, WHO OPENS FIRE

The San Diego vote comes as nearly three dozen House Democrats demand answers from DHS about the training and preparedness of immigration agents after the agent-involved shooting death of a Minnesota woman. Authorities said the woman tried to run over an agent with her car.

“Although Acting Director Lyons has said that he has not lowered the training threshold for ICE agents, there is substantial evidence that contradicts this claim. Specifically, it has been reported that the training for ICE agents was significantly reduced,” a letter to DHS, CBP and ICE from 28 lawmakers led by Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., said.

FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS NEW YORK LAW BANNING ICE AGENTS FROM WEARING MASKS

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Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., also questioned whether federal immigration agents receive sufficient training during a February hearing.

“What are they going to do with all of these [DHS agents] as they are learning on-the-job with weapons in their hands, wearing masks so they can’t be identified? … Visualize the America they’re designing for us in the future with those parameters,” Durbin told Cato Institute scholar David Bier.

ICE EYES $20M PURCHASE OF ELECTRIC SHOCK GLOVES AS HOCHUL WARNS OF LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

Calls for additional training have also come from inside the Trump administration.

“There’s always room for improvement. Things change all the time,” border czar Tom Homan told reporters in July.

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“You can never be overtrained. I wish there was more training.”

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Fox News Digital reached out to Salinas and Durbin for comment.

Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, worked in both the New York and Washington bureaus for Fox News since 2013.

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Trump US attorney pick can no longer investigate one of the president’s top foes, court rules

2026-08-21T18:02:48.365Z / CNN

A divided federal appeals court ruled that the Trump-picked US Attorney in Albany is serving unlawfully and can no longer be involved in the investigation of one of the president’s top foes.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, upheld a lower court’s ruling from January that said the appointment of John Sarcone, then-Acting US attorney for the Northern District of New York, is not valid and disqualified him from a probe into the state’s Attorney General Letitia James.

The decision marks the third time a federal appeals court has rejected as unlawful the Trump administration’s process for naming US attorneys without Senate approval.

“We disagree with the court’s decision, and intend to take this case to the Supreme Court,” the Justice Department wrote in a tweet Friday.

Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said the US attorney for Nevada, Sigal Chattah, is serving unlawfully. The Justice Department said it would appeal to the Supreme Court. In December the Third Circuit ruled that Alina Habba was not validly appointed US attorney for New Jersey.

Next month, the Fourth Circuit will hear arguments over whether a lower court’s finding that the appointment of former Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan as US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was unlawful.

The impact of those decisions has varied. In the cases where the US attorney acted alone, the underlying indictment or subpoenas were dismissed — such as the subpoena and separate indictment of New York Attorney General James and the perjury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

In other decisions where the US attorneys’ status was successfully challenged, the indictments were not dismissed because other legally serving assistant US attorneys were involved in the underlying cases.

Sarcone continues to serve as First Assistant US attorney and held a press conference on Thursday to announce a criminal complaint charging a woman in an ISIS-inspired terror plot to blow up the capitol building in Albany, New York. Chattah is still leading the Nevada office as First Assistant US attorney.

Pressure by judges in Virginia led to the resignation of Halligan, who had presented Comey’s first indictment to a grand jury. In New Jersey DOJ abandoned the three-person team named to replace Habba, who had already resigned, after a judge ordered sworn testimony about its structure. The chief judge in New Jersey ultimately named the next US attorney in consultation with DOJ.

The Justice Department has vigorously defended its appointments and the process they have used — naming their lawyers as first assistants or special attorneys and then delegating them authority to serve as acting US attorneys.

The majority opinion, which rejected DOJ’s argument, was issued by Judge Maria Araujo Kahn, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, and Judge Guido Calabresi, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton.

They found that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act says only the First Assistant in the position at the time the US attorney’s post becomes vacant can step into the role — not someone the administration places into the position to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

“Designating a First Assistant after the vacancy is not automatic succession at all; it is a deliberate and discretionary choice made without any of the criteria Congress enacted,” they wrote.

“The Government’s reading thus rewards evasion and penalizes compliance—a strange design for a statute Congress enacted to stop the Executive from skirting the Vacancies Act,” the majority wrote.

It noted that the government has conceded that Sarcone can no longer serve as Acting US attorney because his tenure has exceeded the 210-day limit.

“As of this decision, the President has not submitted a nominee to the Senate and, according to the Government, Sarcone continues to serve as the operative head of the U.S. Attorney’s office,” it said.

In Friday’s decision, a Trump-appointed judge on the Second Circuit, Michael Park, dissented from the majority and agreed with DOJ’s process.

“The better reading of the statute is that any first assistant to a vacant office becomes acting officer, subject only to the time limits in § 3346,” Park wrote. Under section 3346 of the Federal Vacancies Act an acting officer can serve for 210 days.

“And the majority’s arguments based on statutory structure are actually policy arguments that overlook Congress’s understanding that the executive branch must function during periods of transition and political stalemate,” he added.

US finalizes deep Colorado River water cuts to California, Nevada and Arizona

2026-08-21 6:07 PM UTC / Reuters

By Reuters

August 21, 2026 6:07 PM UTC Updated 1 hour ago

An aerial view shows the Colorado river, in Mesa Verde, California, U.S., September 19, 2022. REUTERS/Aude Guerrucci Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Aug 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Friday finalized a plan to slash water supplies to California, Nevada and Arizona to manage the drought-stricken Colorado River.

The three so-called lower basin ​states will take around a 21 percent reduction in water from the ‌river in 2027 and 2028, but potential cuts could nearly double in following years, according to the plan signed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

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Arizona and Nevada have said any plan to ​double the cuts after 2028 would devastate their economies. Arizona has threatened to sue the ​federal government if it imposed these potential cuts as part of the ⁠new 10-year plan.

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Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, the upper basin states, face ​no mandatory cuts under the plan. The Colorado River provides water to one in 10 Americans, irrigates ​land producing 15% of U.S. food output and generates power for 6 million people in seven states.

In three years of failed negotiations between the seven states, upper basin states refused to take cuts, ​arguing they face automatic cuts in water supply due to the severe drought impacting ​the U.S. West.

In line with a May 1 proposal made by the lower basin states, their water ‌allocation ⁠will be reduced by a combined 1.6 million acre feet per year in both 2027 and 2028.

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The reductions consist of 1.25 MAF per year in mandatory cuts and an agreement by the three states to conserve 700,000 MAF over the two years to ​reach combined water savings ​in the two-year period ⁠of 3.2 MAF.

However, annual mandatory cuts to the three states could almost double to 3.0 MAF per year if needed to ​maintain critical reservoir levels following the first two-year operating period.

Any lawsuits ​over those ⁠potential cuts could mean more years of uncertainty.

“But this is a bridge, not a permanent solution,” JB Hamby, Colorado River Commissioner for California, said in a statement. “California, Arizona, and Nevada have ⁠shown ​that states can compromise, make difficult decisions, and reduce ​water use when the river demands it. But three states cannot carry the responsibility of all seven.”

Reporting by ​Nichola Groom in Los Angeles and Andrew Hay in New Mexico; Editing by David Gregorio

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Trump officials touted a voter fraud bombshell. Their data hasn’t proved it

2026-08-21T18:06:46.616Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/21/politics/markwayne-mullin-voter-fraud-nevada

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stood before the cameras last month and announced what he cast as a bombshell.

“We’ve identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states,” Mullin told reporters.

The Department of Homeland Security said it reached that figure by comparing public voter rolls in Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California with federal immigration records. Mullin presented the results as hard evidence supporting President Donald Trump’s long-running, unsubstantiated claims of widespread noncitizen voting.

“One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts, is they don’t lie,” Mullin said.

But in Nevada, the numbers thus far do not show what DHS publicly claimed they do.

In July, the department said it had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls. However, in a meeting with state election officials last week, DHS acknowledged that it had fully reviewed only a fraction of those cases.

A recording of the August 13 meeting, plus more than a dozen emails reviewed by CNN, show that DHS officials have “confirmed” just 185 Nevada registrants as noncitizens through manual review. More than 14,000 cases remained unresolved, DHS said, including 6,200 the department labeled “higher confidence matches.”

But even those higher confidence matches were not definitive. In the meeting, DHS acknowledged that some, for example, could be naturalized citizens whose immigration records had not been updated.

The full list of 15,903 names was merely a “preliminary” finding, officials conceded.

During a key moment from the meeting, C. Murphy Hebert, the chief deputy in the Nevada secretary of state’s office, asked: “So what you’re saying is the 15,000 number has not been vetted?”

“I probably wouldn’t use the sentence, ‘It hasn’t been vetted,’” replied Kimberley Vogt, who leads a fraud division at DHS. “Because definitely we’ve done something with it to get down to 15,000. So I wouldn’t say that. But it hasn’t had a full manual review of each one.”

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“That would be the ceiling,” Vogt said. “So it should not magically go above that. It would stay where it would stay, and it would go down from there as we make our way through it.”

In response to a list of specific questions from CNN, a DHS spokesperson disputed that the Nevada correspondence undercut its findings, but did not address the other questions.

The private acknowledgments contrast sharply with the administration’s public rhetoric and raise further questions about the accuracy of the data the Trump administration has released in recent weeks purporting to show evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Earlier this week, the Census Bureau released an analysis claiming that 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 election. Trump quickly promoted it as further proof the election was stolen. But former senior Census Bureau officials raised significant issues with the report, criticizing its methodology, lack of transparency and potential political bias.

It is part of the administration’s escalating push to tighten voting rules, relitigate past elections and reinforce Trump’s longstanding claims about vulnerabilities in the electoral system. For months, Trump has been pressing congressional Republicans to pass the stalled SAVE America Act, which would require identification at the polls and proof of citizenship to register.

Democrats and voting-rights advocates warn the broader campaign is designed to tilt the scale for Republicans — and sow doubt in the midterm election results.

In Nevada, the vast majority of the 15,903 names remain unreviewed — in part because checking them individually “is a lot of work to go one by one,” Vogt, the DHS official, said in the August 13 meeting.

DHS declined to send Nevada the entire list of 15,903 cases, saying it wanted to avoid sending inaccurate records.

“We’re going to manually review to be sure that it is not someone’s dad or someone’s son – that it is that person,” Vogt said in the August 13 meeting. “Then we’re reducing the list down to what is a confirmed match.”

Election officials and voting-rights organizations have warned from the start that DHS’ data-matching could produce large numbers of false matches. Federal citizenship records can be outdated, and public voter files can lack enough personal information to reliably distinguish between people with similar names.

The full accuracy of DHS’ findings remains untested. The department has sent Nevada voter ID numbers for the 6,200 “higher confidence matches,” asking state officials to investigate and remove anyone found to be ineligible. But Nevada election officials told CNN that as of now, DHS has provided too little information to verify the matches — especially before the midterms.

“Weeks after the President held a national, primetime speech making sweeping claims regarding noncitizens and the security of our elections, DHS representatives informed our office that the numbers that were provided to the public are preliminary and that there is not high enough confidence to be able to share the full dataset with Nevada officials,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said in a statement. “The Secretary of State’s Office will not risk disenfranchising eligible voters and ripping away their Constitutional right to vote without the highest confidence of their ineligibility.”

At the center of the DHS effort is Heather Honey, a Trump-aligned election researcher whose 2020 audit work has been promoted by the president and his allies as evidence that the election was stolen. DHS hired her last year to lead its “election integrity” campaign and promoted her in June to senior counselor to the secretary.

In the meeting with Nevada officials, Honey repeatedly described DHS as a cooperative partner.

“We are an open book here,” she said. “We’re acting in very good faith, and we just want to help you.”

Honey encouraged Nevada to investigate the names and remove any ineligible voters before the midterms. If the state could expedite its review of the cases, she said, the department could send a list of matches that are “75% confidence.”

Her conciliatory tone stood out in an administration that has relied far more on threats and legal pressure. DHS has begun withholding homeland security grants from states that reject Trump-backed election measures. The Justice Department has sued 30 states for their unredacted voter rolls, though federal courts have repeatedly blocked those efforts. And the administration has threatened election officials with fines or jail if they fail to adequately secure the November midterms.

That pressure hung over the meeting. Nevada leaders asked whether election officials in their state were under investigation. Honey sought to reassure them, saying DHS lacked the authority to prosecute election officials and had made no criminal referrals against them.

“We will absolutely report back to the Secretary that you guys were great and that you’re going to take this list and do your best with it,” she said. “So I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

Supreme Court temporarily allows White House ballroom construction to continue

August 21, 2026 / 3:01 PM EDT / CBS News

By Jacob Rosen

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily allowed construction of the White House ballroom to continue, freezing for now a lower court decision that would have halted above-ground work on the project.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay that will remain in place until the Supreme Court takes further action. His order is temporary and gives the high court additional time to consider the Justice Department’s request to pause a district court’s injunction, which was set to take effect at midnight unless the Supreme Court acted.

The Trump administration asked the high court last week to intervene and allow construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom to continue.

Roberts’ stay came after a divided federal appeals court concluded earlier this month that Congress, not President Trump or the White House, has “full constitutional control over federal property and the funding of its maintenance and development,” and noted an “absence of any express or implied authorization” that grants Mr. Trump the ability to construct the $400 million ballroom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the injunction issued by the district court earlier this year that would’ve stopped construction on the White House ballroom. But the D.C. Circuit halted its ruling for 14 days, through Friday, to give the Justice Department time to seek relief from the Supreme Court.

In a filing with the court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer had asked the justices to pause the lower court ruling that blocked above-ground construction while the legal battle over the project plays out. The overhaul also includes an underground bunker, medical facilities and other features, and judges have allowed that work to continue.

“This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,” Sauer wrote.

Mr. Trump has reiterated that concern, arguing that construction must continue because it is “vital” to his safety and the safety of future presidents, and American national security, especially in light of recent foiled assassination plots against him. In a Truth Social post earlier this month, Mr. Trump called the National Trust for Historic Preservation “TREASONISTS” and alleged without evidence that they “revealed Top Military Secrets!”

But Mr. Trump has often conflated the ongoing construction of a new presidential security bunker that is being built underneath the proposed ballroom, and the construction of the ballroom itself. As the legal challenge has played out in lower courts, all below-ground construction on national security facilities has continued, and only above-ground work on the physical construction of the ballroom is at issue.

“The lower section does not work without the upper section and, likewise, the upper section does not work without the lower. It is all one highly integrated unit,” Mr. Trump wrote in the same Truth Social post criticizing the Trust. He later added in the same message that the lawsuit “is this kind of gross and flagrant abuse of our Courts that is exactly why Americans are losing faith in our System of Justice.”

The administration has warned the Supreme Court that work on the ballroom is too far along to stop. The White House official managing the project, Joshua Fisher, said in a declaration submitted to the justices that even if a court ordered the building to be taken down or altered, “there would be no way to do so.” And Sauer wrote in the filing with the high court that the “stop-work mandate” from the district court is “impossible.”

Lower court stays, which have allowed ongoing work on the ballroom, have pushed construction “beyond the point of return,” he said.

In response, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has accused the Trump administration of trying to “outrun judicial review.” While the case was before the D.C. Circuit, the White House “accelerated construction” with a 250-person crew working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, they wrote.

Mr. Trump has claimed to have raised most of the $400 million he says he needs to complete the project through donations from private donors and major corporations like Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Microsoft.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, the judge who is overseeing the legal challenge to the project, found that the Trump administration’s means of funding the project — in which donations were collected through a nonprofit organization, transferred first to the National Park Service and then to a fund used for typical White House maintenance and repairs — was unlawful.

Construction on the ballroom project began in October following demolition of the East Wing. The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed its lawsuit to halt ballroom construction in December, arguing the work is unlawful.

Leon issued his preliminary injunction that would block construction in March and clarified in April that work on the below-ground, national security facilities was not covered by his order.

The D.C. Circuit then ruled in favor of the Trust in a 2-1 decision, finding that the White House could not build the ballroom without authorization from Congress.

Schumer ducks question on campaigning with socialist candidate who refuses to back him as leader

August 21, 2026 1:57pm EDT / Fox News

The Senate minority leader praised El-Sayed’s ‘new energy’ but dodged questions about campaigning with the nominee

By Alex Miller, Fox News

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., dodged when asked if he would campaign with Abdul El-Sayed but noted that the nominee had ‘brought in new energy’ to the Democratic Party. (Credit: C-SPAN)

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The Senate’s top Democrat hasn’t said whether he’ll stump on the campaign trail for Abdul El-Sayed but argues that El-Sayed brings fresh juice to the Democratic Party in its quest to flip the Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is confident that Democrats can retake the Senate from Republican control, but the path to do so runs right through the Wolverine State, where El-Sayed bluntly said he wouldn’t back the top Democrat to lead the caucus if he’s elected.

But whether Schumer makes an appearance in Michigan between now and November remains up in the air.

When asked whether he would campaign with El-Sayed during a news conference highlighting the recent race rating shifts in Texas and Iowa, the top Senate Democrat bulldozed over the question.

SENATE MAP TIGHTENS AS TOP FORECASTER MOVES 3 RACES TOWARD DEMOCRATS

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., dodged when asked if he would campaign with Abdul El-Sayed but noted the nominee had “brought in new energy” to the Democratic Party.(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Finn Gomez/Getty Images)

“I have one mission: Win the Senate. We are on the path to doing it. Look, the bottom line is that we will win Michigan,” Schumer said. “El-Sayed has brought in new energy and new talent into the Democratic Party. But also in Michigan itself.”

When asked about progressive upstarts gaining footing and winning in primaries across the country, like in Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan, Schumer countered that the Democratic Party is a “big tent party.”

“Not everyone has the same exact view on every single issue,” Schumer said. “But if you look at the overall issues, the costs that people pay, the chaos in the Trump administration, you see it daily. And the corruption.”

BOMB-THROWER DEM MAKES SHOCKING PROMISE TO KICK SCHUMER TO CURB DURING SENATE DEBATE

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Still, El-Sayed isn’t on board the Schumer train. He’s said he would support Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to be Democratic leader and has bucked the Democratic establishment throughout his campaign.

The pair have talked since El-Sayed’s victory earlier this month about shifting the focus to going after President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported. When asked to describe Schumer in one word, El-Sayed said, “Pragmatic.”

CANADA REPORTEDLY SCRAPS JOINT BRIDGE CELEBRATION WITH US AFTER TRUMP RENEWS TARIFF THREAT

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, announces support from Democrats as he launches a Dems for Mike coalition Aug. 20, 2026, in Detroit.(Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

Senate Republicans are confident that, after the bloody primary fight among El-Sayed; Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich.; and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, they can flip the seat and expand their thin majority in the upper chamber.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee who narrowly lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., in 2024, despite Trump winning the state over former Vice President Kamala Harris, has been busy painting El-Sayed as a far-left radical on the campaign trail.

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Schumer argued that Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canada spurned the state and gave Democrats an advantage over Rogers, given that Michigan shares a border with the Canadian province of Ontario, where billions in trade have crossed boundaries for years.

“Anyone who is halfway decent as president knows that the Michigan economy and the Canadian economy are totally intertwined,” Schumer said. “He’s blowing it. We will win Michigan.”

Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.

Pentagon moves to fire publisher and editor of Stars and Stripes

August 21, 2026 / 3:34 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — The Pentagon on Friday moved to fire the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military news outlet partly funded by American taxpayers, as well as a reporter who covers the Middle East, according to people familiar with the matter.

The separation notices, delivered Friday, gave Publisher Max Lederer and Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin five days to appeal their dismissals. Reporter Lara Korte also said she received notice that she was being fired.

The cause cited was insubordination, Slavin and Korte said.

In a statement to CBS News, Slavin said he will respond through the required process.

“According to the notice, I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line. The Pentagon’s public affairs office has charged me with insubordination,” Slavin said. “I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies.”

Slavin spoke publicly about disagreements with Pentagon leaders in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that aired in July. In that piece, Slavin was asked if he had any red lines he would not cross. He replied, “‘Don’t run a perfectly accurate story, run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon.’ That would be a red line.”

In a statement, Korte called the firings “a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press.”

“I’m proud of the work my colleagues and I do at Stars and Stripes, especially the last six months covering the protracted conflict in Iran. Military families and service members have trusted us to share their experience with the world and I don’t take that lightly,” she said.

Korte was also featured in the July “Sunday Morning” story, in which she said: “I’m working for Stars and Stripes. Not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker. I’m here to cover the military community.”

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment when contacted on Friday afternoon by CBS News, which first reported the firings of Slavin and Lederer.

Lederer has served as the outlet’s publisher for 19 years and told colleagues this week that he would retire on Sept. 30, citing fundamental differences with the Trump administration.

CBS News reported on Wednesday that Pentagon officials had discussed dismissing Lederer before his scheduled retirement.

In a note to staff earlier this week that was obtained by CBS News, Lederer wrote: “It has become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

But he added he would “do everything I can to make sure the transition is smooth for each of you” before his retirement.

Stars and Stripes has been a source of critical information for members of the military and their families for decades, and has prided itself on editorial independence.

Recently, Stars and Stripes, along with the Military Times, reported on challenging conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, writing that family members of service members aboard the aircraft carrier were concerned about their loved ones’ mental health and risk of self-harm. Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump downplayed or denied those reports, but the ship left the Middle East this week to begin the journey home to the U.S. after a nine-month deployment.

Roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ $29 million annual budget comes from taxpayers, a person familiar with the newspaper’s operations said. Readership has declined since its peaks during the Vietnam War, the Cold War and World War II, according to two U.S. officials, but an average of 1.4 million people see Stars and Stripes each day. Print editions overseas also reach service members in remote locations where internet access is spotty and unreliable.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell has talked about “bringing Stars and Stripes into the 21st century” and efforts to “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

Sen. Darline Graham is putting Trump’s endorsement to the test in South Carolina

2026-08-21 1:22 PM EDT / CNN

Dana Bash
By Dana Bash, CNN

Sen. Darline Graham is putting Trump’s endorsement to the test in South Carolina

Inside Politics

Patrick Svitek joins Inside Politics to share his new reporting behind the scenes of the GOP Senate runoff in South Carolina. Sen. Darline Graham is doubling down on domestic issues, after a gaff during Tuesday’s debate had many questioning her foreign policy chops. Graham said Wednesday, “I’ve asked people, are y’all concerned about Taiwan? You know what they said? No, they’re concerned about the price of groceries.”

3:36 • Source: CNN

US Justice Department and TikTok settle for $400 million in children’s privacy suit, Axios reports

2026-08-21 19:40 GMT / Reuters

By Reuters

August 21, 2026 7:40 PM UTC Updated 1 min ago

A logo is displayed over a door at the U.S. headquarters of the social media company TikTok in Culver City, California, U.S. January 17, 2025. REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice and TikTok have reached a $400 million settlement to resolve allegations that the short video app violated children’s online privacy laws, Axios reported on Friday, citing an announcement first shared with the news outlet.

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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Ryan Patrick Jones

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Appeals court says federal prosecutor who subpoenaed Letitia James was unlawfully appointed

August 21, 2026 / 2:42 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington— A federal appeals court on Friday said the top federal prosecutor in the Northern District of New York was unlawfully serving in his role when he subpoenaed New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of two investigations into her last year.

A Justice Department spokesperson quickly said the Trump administration intends to appeal the ruling directly to the Supreme Court, setting up a showdown over the Trump administration’s repeated attempts across the country to make an end-run around federal law to keep their choice of prosecutors in office without Senate confirmation.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled against John Sarcone, who has been leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albany for more than a year.

The two judges in the majority said Sarcone’s appointment in 2025 did not conform with a federal law known as the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, meaning he was not lawfully serving as the acting U.S. attorney when he secured the subpoenas targeting James.

“Text, structure, and history all point the same way,” Judge Guido Calabresi wrote. “We hold that only the First Assistant in place when a vacancy arises may become the acting officer under [the Vacancies Act]. Sarcone was not.”

Judge Michael Park dissented.

Mr. Trump and his administration have attempted to use two different laws to install their preferred picks to lead U.S. attorney’s offices around the country without Senate confirmation. Both were invoked to keep Sarcone as the top federal prosecutor in Albany.

John Sarcone at a news conference on Monday, April 28, 2025, in Albany, New York. Will Waldron/Albany Times Union via Getty Images

The first allows the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S. attorney, who can serve for a maximum of 120 days. Once that clock runs out, the judges serving in the district may either extend the person’s tenure, or appoint a new person to serve until the Senate confirms a replacement.

The second approach, under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, allows the deputy to the vacant office to be elevated into the leadership position and serve for 210 days in an acting capacity. It also lays out two other categories of federal officials who can move into a position covered by the law.

Sarcone, a former campaign attorney for President Trump, was initially appointed to serve as the interim U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York, which includes Albany, last year. When his 120-day term ran out, judges in the district declined to retain him. Instead, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed him as a special attorney and named him first assistant U.S. attorney in the office. The Justice Department said Sarcone was tapped for the deputy role so he could then be elevated to acting U.S. attorney for 210 days.

But the appeals court said that the FVRA only allows a deputy who is already in place when a U.S. attorney position opens up to be elevated to the acting role. Because Sarcone was named first assistant months after the U.S. attorney position became vacant, he was not lawfully serving as the acting U.S. attorney when he secured the subpoenas targeting James, the majority ruled.

James was subpoenaed in August 2025 as part of probes into her office’s handling of investigations into the National Rifle Association and Mr. Trump. After the subpoenas were issued, she sued to quash them, arguing that Sarcone was unlawfully appointed.

The Justice Department argued that the “special attorney” title given to Sarcone gave him subpoena power and said he had been lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney.

In January, a U.S. district judge in the Northern District of New York found that Sarcone was “not lawfully serving as Acting U.S. Attorney” and ruled that “any of his past or future acts taken in that capacity are void or voidable as they would rest on authority Mr. Sarcone does not lawfully have.”

About a month later, a panel of judges in New York appointed a new top federal prosecutor after Sarcone was disqualified. But within hours, the Justice Department announced it had fired the judges’ new hire, allowing Sarcone to effectively lead the office as the appeal played out.

Calabresi, who authored the opinion for the appeals court’s majority on Friday, said that the government’s reading of the vacancies law “rewards evasion and penalizes compliance.”

Reading the law to “encompass First Assistants who are designated after the vacancy arises would turn the FVRA’s common-sense framework on its head,” he said. “Under that reading, the President could install virtually anyone as the acting officer simply by naming that person First Assistant, regardless of whether they possessed any of the qualifications Congress required for the Executive to depart from the default.”

The president has used his novel, multi-step mechanism to keep certain interim U.S. attorneys in place after the 120-day clock runs out in Nevada, New Jersey, California and Virginia. The efforts have been challenged in court.

In New Jersey, the White House and Justice Department attempted multiple times to keep another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Alina Habba, as top federal prosecutor there. In December, Habba announced she was stepping down from her post after a federal appeals court ruled that she was unlawfully appointed to her role. Bondi criticized the ruling, saying it made it “untenable” for Habba “to effectively run her office.”

The president’s attempt to install Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer and a White House aide, to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in eastern Virginia also led a judge to toss out indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The Justice Department is appealing that decision, in which a judge ruled Halligan was unlawfully appointed interim U.S. attorney.

Earlier this month, an appeals court panel in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sigal Chattah, Mr. Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in Nevada, was also serving unlawfully in her role after she remained in the job after the 120-day limit. The day before her term was set to expire, Chattah resigned and Bondi appointed her first assistant U.S. attorney and said she had the power to remain as acting U.S. attorney.

Mr. Trump’s selection for U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, was also found to have been serving unlawfully in his role for months, disqualifying him from supervising some criminal cases.

Chattah and Essayli, like Sarcone, have remained in their roles for now under the first assistant U.S. attorney title.