Trump

President Donald Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission charged with assisting state and local elections officials. The White House confirmed Friday that Trump is taking executive action to change the makeup of the Election Assistance Commission. That agency distributes federal grants to states, tests voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms. It is the latest move in Trump's effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted, and it comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

President Donald Trump says he's ordered the U.S. military to destroy Iran if he were to be assassinated. His aim is to deter Tehran with threats of overwhelming retaliation should it try to make good on threats to kill him. But there's no automatic system that allows a president's death to trigger an immediate military response. If Trump were killed, Vice President JD Vance would become president and decide whether to retaliate. He could do so, but it wouldn't be an automatic decision. The U.S. has contingency plans for government continuity but not for immediate strikes upon a president's death.

A federal judge says President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose” as she referred one of his attorneys for possible disciplinary action. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on Monday amounts to a stinging rebuke of the Republican president’s lawsuit, characterizing it as an exercise in self-dealing in which he sued an entity that is effectively under his control. The suit concluded in May with a settlement agreement that created a since-abandoned $1.776 billion fund meant to compensate allies of the president, as well as immunity from tax audits.