Early Edition: September 3, 2025

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A curated weekday guide to major news and developments in the last 24 hours. Here’s today’s news:

U.S. FOREIGN DEVELOPMENTS 

U.S. military forces yesterday conducted a “kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists” on Trump’s orders, killing 11 “terrorists” who were “transporting illegal narcotics,” Trump announced in a social media post. The move is a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s effort to stem the trafficking of narcotics from Latin America. The White House did not explain how the military determined that those aboard the vessel were Tren de Aragua members. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro did not directly comment on the strike to date. Aamer Madhani, Konstantin Toropin, and Regina Garcia Cano report for AP News.

Trump yesterday also accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of conspiring against the United States with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump also said that he was “very disappointed in President Putin.” Emily Atkinson reports for BBC News.

ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

The IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir directly challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a recent meeting over Netanyahu’s plans to expand the Gaza war, according to Israeli officials. The officials say that Zamir highlighted the potential risks to the 48 Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza and the Israeli troops on the ground, and raised objections to the humanitarian and strategic ramifications of the displacement of up to one million Palestinians that would result from the offensive. He also urged ministers to consider the latest ceasefire proposal put forward by Egyptian and Qatari mediators that has been accepted by Hamas. Tal Shalev and Dana Karni report for CNN.

The United Kingdom is working to get critically sick and injured children out of Gaza so they can receive specialist treatment in U.K. hospitals, and is “outraged” by Israel not allowing enough aid to enter the territory, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Monday. AP News reports.

Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh has written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging him to reconsider his decision to bar Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from attending the U.N. General Assembly and pushing back on Rubio’s rationale in banning Palestinian Authority officials from the United States. Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron described Rubio’s decision as “unacceptable” and called for “Palestinian representation to be ensured in accordance with the Host Country Agreement.” Barak Ravid reports for Axios; Reuters reports.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would press for stronger Western pressure on Moscow as he meets European and U.S. allies in Denmark and France today.  Anastasiia Malenko and Olena Harmash report for Reuters.

Putin today thanked North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for the courage of North Korean troops who have been fighting for Moscow in Ukraine as the two leaders met on the sidelines of one of China’s largest ever military parades in Beijing. Thomas Mackintosh and Jean Mackenzie report for BBC News.

NATO is working to counter Russia’s jamming of civilian flights, Secretary-General Mark Rutte said yesterday, two days after suspected Moscow interference led a jet carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to lose its ability to use GPS navigation mid-air. Sam McNeil reports for AP News.

HOUTHI DEVELOPMENTS 

In an update, the U.N. yesterday said that Iranian-backed Houthis detained at least 19 U.N. employees during Sunday raids on U.N. offices in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Calling for all of those detained to be immediately released, a U.N. spokesperson said that 18 of those held are Yemeni staffers and one is an international employee. Edith M. Lederer reports for AP News.

ISRAEL-HEZBOLLAH CEASEFIRE

Israeli drones yesterday dropped four grenades close to U.N. peacekeepers working to clear roadblocks in southern Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force (UNFIL) said today, describing the incident as “one of the most serious attacks on UNIFIL personnel and assets” since the beginning of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire. According to UNFIL, no one was hurt in the attack. AP News reports.

OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS 

Construction on a major new structure at a facility key to Israel’s long-suspected atomic weapons program is intensifying, according to satellite imagery reviewed by experts. Jon Gambrell reports for AP News.

Russia and China have signed a legally binding memorandum to build the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, Russia’s Gazprom said yesterday. The long-delayed project that would boost Russia’s gas deliveries to China. Key sticking points of the deal remain unfinalized, Russian state news agency TASS reports. Vladimir Soldatkin and Lidia Kelly report for Reuters.

The European Commission will today push ahead with a long-awaited trade agreement with several South American countries, formally presenting a proposed pact with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay to set in motion a ratification process. Edith Hancock reports for the Wall Street Journal.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ACTIONS

Two senior Defense Department homeland and cybersecurity officials have “moved on” from their positions, a U.S. defense official told the Hill yesterday. The official did not specify when Ashley Manning, the principal deputy assistant secretary for cyber policy, and Jonathan Owen, the acting deputy assistant secretary for homeland defense integration and defense support to civil authorities, have left their posts. The Pentagon’s tech innovation chief, Doug Beck, resigned last week. Filip Timotija reports.

Trump yesterday announced he plans to relocate the U.S. Space Command to Alabama from Colorado, in part due to his grudge against Colorado, a state he has never won. The Space Command coordinates space-related operations for all branches of the armed forces. Colorado Republicans and Democrats have for years argued that moving the Command would waste billions of dollars and distract it from its mission. Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) said that he is prepared to go to court to challenge the move. Erica L. Green, Jack Healy, and Emily Cochrane report for the New York Times.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Friday announced that it would now ban non-governmental groups from registering new voters at naturalization ceremonies. According to the USCIS’ new policy, “only state and local election officials will be permitted to offer voter registration services at the end of administrative naturalization ceremonies.” Ashley Lopez reports for NPR.

The U.S. Secret Service’s counter-sniper unit is chronically understaffed, a vulnerability that could limit its ability to properly protect senior U.S. politicians, the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report it issued last week. The report is the first of five reports forming the Office’s review of last year’s attempt on Trump’s life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Rebecca Beitsch reports for the Hill.

A group of more than 85 scientists last week submitted a joint rebuttal to the Energy Department’s July report about climate change. The rebuttal finds that “DOE report’s key assertions … are either misleading or fundamentally incorrect” and that its approach to “undermining scientific evidence mirrors tactics previously employed by the tobacco industry to create artificial doubt.” The DOE report is extensively relied on in EPA’s reconsideration of its 2009 Endangerment Finding. Julia Simon reports for NPR.

U.S. DOMESTIC DEVELOPMENTS 

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) yesterday said that a scheduled National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency oversight meeting has been cancelled after far-right activist Laura Loomer launched public attacks on him and the agency’s director, Vice Adm. Trey Whitworth. The planned Friday meeting was scheduled weeks ago and was unpublicized and classified, Warner added. In a social media post, Loomer took credit for the cancellation and demanded that Whitworth be fired for “insubordination.” Dan De Luce reports for NBC News.

The House Oversight Committee yesterday released more than 33,000 pages of records connected to the Justice Department’s investigation of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Many of the documents published by the Committee were already public, and it was not immediately clear whether the release included any material that had not already been made public. Michael Gold reports for the New York Times.

FEDERALIZATION OF DOMESTIC POLICING 

The federal government is “going in” to Chicago and will deploy the National Guard there, Trump reiterated yesterday, without specifying the planned date of any such deployment. Nicole Markus and Shia Kapos report for POLITICO.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (E) yesterday issued an executive order directing city law enforcement officials to indefinitely coordinate with federal law enforcement “to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” Emily Davies, Natalie Allison, and Meagan Flynn report for the Washington Post.

The National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., are expected to have their military orders extended through December in order to ensure continuity of benefits for service members and their families, according to a senior official. The planned extension does not necessarily signal that the D.C. deployment will last until then. Haley Britzky reports for CNN.

A D.C. grand jury has refused to indict a woman accused of threatening Trump on social media, according to a motion filed by the woman’s attorneys on Monday. The grand jury’s refusal is at least the sixth instance in which prosecutors failed to secure an indictment during Trump’s federal policing effort in Washington. Ryan J. Reilly reports for NBC News.

TECH NEWS

In a closely-watched antitrust trial, a federal judge yesterday rejected the Justice Department’s request to break up Google by forcing it to spin off its Chrome browser and Android products, instead ordering the tech giant to share some of its search data with competitors and prohibiting it from making deals that make its products the default tool on mobile devices. Google said it is reviewing the decision. Nate Robson reports for POLITICO.

The United States has recently told Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s authorization that it is revoking the chipmaker’s authorization to ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking site effective Dec. 31, 2025, the TSMC said. TSMC suppliers will now have to apply for individual approvals when planning to ship semiconductor equipment and other technologies covered by U.S. export controls to the Nanjing facility. Mackenzie Hawkins and Heesu Lee report for Bloomberg News.

OpenAI is scouting local partners to set up a new data center with at least 1-gigawatt capacity in India, according to sources. OpenAI’s timeline for the project, or its planned location, remain unclear. Mackenzie Hawkins and Sankalp Phartiyal report for Bloomberg News.

U.S. IMMIGRATION DEVELOPMENTS 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has agreed to temporarily send up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as immigration judges, according to a memo seen by AP News. Konstantin Toropin reports.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LITIGATION

A federal appeals court yesterday reinstated Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the Federal Trade Commission, with the majority of the court finding that Trump fired her without cause rather than on the statutory grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Slaughter said she plans to resume work at her FTC office starting today. Cecilia Kang reports for the New York Times.

Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles violated federal law, a federal judge ruled yesterday, finding that the deployment overseen by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement without explicit permission from Congress. Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report for POLITICO.

In a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court in Texas yesterday ruled that Trump has failed to show that alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang his administration sought to summarily deport using the Alien Enemies Act mounted an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” against the United States. For this reason, Trump did not have the authority to invoke the Act to carry out the deportations, the majority of the court ruled. Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report for POLITICO.

The potential harm caused by the Environmental Protection Agency’s rescission of unspent funding from the $20 billion “Green Bank” program to organizations that were meant to receive the funding is not irreparable, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday in a 2-1 decision. The majority of the court also found that the “grantees are not likely to succeed on the merits because their claims are essentially contractual, and therefore jurisdiction lies exclusively in the Court of Federal Claims.” The majority lifted a lower court order that prevented the EPA from taking back the money while the litigation plays out. Rachel Frazin reports for the Hill; Alex Guillén reports for POLITICO.

Unions representing the employees of the National Weather Service and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order that sought to end the staffers’ collective bargaining agreements with the government. Rachel Frazin reports for the Hill.

Trump yesterday said that he would appeal to the Supreme Court as soon as today a Friday ruling that found many of his tariffs to be illegal, and he would ask the justices to render their decision on an “expedited” timeline. Tony Romm and Ana Swanson report for the New York Times.

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