The West Front of U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will decide later this year whether state bans on the possession of AR-15 firearms and similar semi-automatic “assault style” guns violate the Second Amendment.
Ten states plus D.C. ban the weapons, which have been used in many of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, including Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, and Uvalde, Texas.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks on March 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(LANSING, Mich.) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday ordered the state’s National Guard to limit its mission in Washington exclusively to events tied to the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration, drawing a line against the military’s prolonged presence in the capital and threatening to pull Michigan troops if they’re assigned to any other mission.
In a letter to Maj. Gen. Paul Rogers, the commander of the Michigan National Guard, Whitmer wrote she “has not deployed—and will not deploy—the Michigan National Guard to support the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Mission,” referring to the Guard’s ongoing presence and patrols across the city.
“If the National Guard is unable or unwilling to ensure the Michigan National Guard is only supporting the America 250 mission,” she added, “then I will end Michigan’s support for the America 250 mission.”
The Michigan National Guard has deployed 161 troops to Washington in recent weeks, while Minnesota has sent another 107, according to service figures, making them the first Democrat-led states to contribute sizable contingents to the capital since President Donald Trump surged National Guard forces there in August.
Puerto Rico has also deployed 155 National Guard troops to the capital ahead of the July Fourth weekend, while the U.S. Virgin Islands has sent 83.
There is precedent for National Guard units from across the country being activated for major events in Washington, including presidential inaugurations and the response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It is likely National Guard units would again be drawn from multiple states to support security operations tied to America’s 250th birthday celebrations.
It remains unclear how the two missions — ongoing security operations focused largely on high-traffic areas around the Capitol and downtown, and event-driven support for anniversary celebrations — would be separated in practice.
For most of the so-called “Safe and Beautiful” mission, the force has been drawn almost entirely from Republican-led states, aside from the District of Columbia National Guard. Troops have largely been assigned to high-visibility patrols around Washington’s tourist corridors and several downtown Metro stations, while also assisting with litter collection and graffiti removal.
The deployment has focused on some of the city’s safest and most heavily trafficked areas and is expected to continue through the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
An analysis from the think tank Niskanen Center found that the Guard’s presence hasn’t reduced violent crime but has reduced property crime. It also noted troops are far more expensive than police officers, estimating it costs $607 per Guardsman per day, compared with roughly $384 per day for a D.C. police officer, underscoring the higher cost of relying on military personnel with limited legal authority and civil training.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis estimated the Guard’s deployment to the capital would cost roughly $660 million this year, though that projection assumed an average force of about 3,000 troops, including pay, food and lodging for troops in hotels.
The estimate does not fully capture the federal government’s longer-term personnel costs, including the accrual of veterans’ benefits tied to active-duty service, such as retirement and education benefits.
A Tesla crashed into the outdoor dining area of an Urbane Cafe in Simi Valley, California, on Monday afternoon, killing one person and injuring five others, authorities said. (KABC)
(SIMI VALLEY, Calif.) — A car crashed into the outdoor dining area of an Urbane Cafe in Simi Valley, California, on Monday afternoon, killing one person and injuring five others, authorities said.
The crash was reported at about 2:30 p.m. near Tierra Rejada and Madera roads in a busy shopping center, according to Simi Valley Police.
Aerial footage from ABC News Los Angeles station KABC showed a white Tesla lodged in the restaurant’s outdoor patio after the collision.
One person was pronounced dead at the scene, while five others suffered minor injuries, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
Authorities have not released the identity of the person who died, and additional information about the victims was not immediately available.
Investigators said they are still working to determine the cause of the crash. The Tesla driver was a 64-year-old woman with four juvenile passengers in the car, police told KABC.
The driver and one passenger were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, according to KABC.
“We’re still trying to determine if speed was involved. We do know that the Tesla was going northbound through the parking lot. It was attempting to make a right-hand turn to go eastbound toward Madera and, unfortunately, did not make the turn and went over the sidewalk when it struck the female victim,” Simi Valley police Sgt. Rick Morton told KABC.
Earlier this month, a Tesla Model 3 crashed into a home in Katy, Texas, killing a woman. Her family has since filed a lawsuit against Tesla and the driver, alleging the vehicle’s driver-assistance technology contributed to the crash.
Tesla has disputed those claims, saying the driver manually overrode the system by pressing the accelerator. Federal safety officials are investigating the crash.
Authorities have not said whether any driver-assistance technology was engaged at the time of Monday’s crash.
“We don’t believe it was an intentional act, but until we can determine what the cause was, whether it was mechanical failure or there was impairment by the driver, it’s still to be determined,” Morton said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. by executive order, reaffirming in a 6-3 ruling more than a century of legal precedent and national tradition that babies born on American soil are automatically American citizens.
The decision is a blow to Trump, who had lobbied the court to uphold his Day 1 order and attended oral arguments in the case, becoming the first sitting president to do so.
Trump had argued that children born to unlawful immigrants and temporary visitors, like tourists and foreign students, do not qualify for citizenship under terms of the 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War to address the status of former slaves and their descendants.
Immigrant advocates and civil liberties groups opposing the policy change warned that it would harm hundreds of thousands of children born every year to non-citizen parents and create a bureaucratic nightmare for older Americans, who would no longer be able to prove citizenship simply with a birth certificate.
An estimated 255,000 children born every year to non-citizen parents would have lost legal status under the order, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Some may have faced difficulty establishing citizenship in any country, effectively being born as “stateless.”
Every lower court to have considered Trump’s unprecedented order deemed it unlawful, issuing injunctions to put it on hold. The high court’s decision preserves the status quo.
The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, says all “persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. Congress later codified the same language in federal citizenship law in 1940.
The administration insisted children born to parents who are not American citizens or legal permanent residents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. because they still owe political “allegiance” to a foreign nation.
The Supreme Court previously rejected that argument in 1898.
“The [14th] Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color, domiciled within the United States,” wrote Justice Horace Gray in the landmark Wong Kim Ark v. U.S. decision, addressing the status of children born to noncitizens.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
The U.S Supreme Court is seen on June 25, 2026 in Washington, DC. . (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rolled back longstanding limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with individual candidates for federal office — a ruling that could unleash a wave of new spending before the midterms. The Supreme Court said the spending limits violate the First Amendment.
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The U.S. Supreme Court building stands in Washington, D.C., U.S. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state bans on transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s competitive sports, reversing a pair of lower court decisions that had blocked the bans as violations of Title IX and the 14th Amendment.
The 6-3 decision came from Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The ruling in a pair of cases from West Virginia and Idaho effectively upholds laws in those two states, plus 27 others that block trans girls from teams consistent with their gender identity.
The decision marks the first time the high court has weighed in on the heated national debate over transgender athletes.
The court’s ruling is a major setback for the estimated 122,000 transgender American teenagers who participate in high school sports, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA.
For trans teens and their families, the dispute has involved a matter of immutable identity and equal opportunity.
For many states and top U.S. athletic organizations, including the U.S. Olympic Committee and NCAA, the inclusion of trans athletes has been seen as creating an unfair and unsafe playing field.
The competitive advantage boys and men have physically over girls and women has been well established in physically demanding sports by medical research and serves as a primary basis for distinctions between the sexes in athletics.
Studies have shown testosterone produced during male puberty does lead to more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, greater body height and longer limbs on average for boys and men, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Many transgender teens who have received gender-affirming medical treatment from a young age argue that they lack any physiological advantage because they have not undergone male puberty.
Twenty-one states allow transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, including California and New York, which have laws explicitly protecting the right of trans girls to play.
Becky Pepper Jackson, the only known openly transgender athlete in West Virginia in any sport, sued her state in a bid to continue competing on her high school track team where she throws discus and shot put. Jackson recently won the state championship in girls shot put.
“I’ve been a girl forever, and playing on the guys’ team is going backwards,” she told ABC News in an interview last year.
When West Virginia’s law takes effect, she will no longer be allowed to participate in girls competitive sports leagues. Competing with boys, she said, would “go against who I am.”
Becky, who has openly identified as a girl since third grade, said she has never undergone male puberty, thanks to puberty-blocking medication.
Idaho college student Lindsay Hecox, a former track and cross-country runner who was barred from trying out for her school teams, sued over her state’s ban in 2020. Last year, she asked the Supreme Court to drop her case because she no longer wished to compete in sports and didn’t want to be in the spotlight. However, Idaho fought to keep the case alive.
Lower courts concluded separately that the state bans discriminate “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that has promoted equal opportunities for women and girls in athletics, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority reversed those decisions and reinstated the laws.
Last year, the same majority upheld a Tennessee law banning some gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, rejecting claims that the law discriminated “on the basis of sex” and saying that states should have leeway to regulate health care in an area of scientific uncertainty.
In 2020, however, the high court concluded in a landmark decision that a Michigan transgender woman fired by her employer for being transgender was discriminated against “on the basis of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his majority opinion at the time that her termination was “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”
Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe transgender girls should only be allowed to play on boys’ teams, consistent with their gender assigned at birth, according to a June 2025 Gallup survey.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the sidelines of the G7 summit on June 16, 2026 in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photo by Isabel Infantes – Pool/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ukraine struck a satellite communications center in the Moscow region in an aerial attack on Tuesday, Kyiv said, as Moscow claimed to have shot down hundreds of drones launched into its territory overnight.
Ukrainian President Volodymry Zelenskyy said Ukraine struck the site, the “Dubna” space communications center, for the second time.
“This is a specialized satellite communications facility used, among other things, for intelligence gathering and coordinating the activities of Russia’s occupying forces in Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said on social media on Tuesday.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a morning update on its official Russian-language Telegram channel that air defense systems had intercepted and destroyed at least 419 Ukrainian drones since late Monday evening.
Those drones were shot down in at least 16 regions, including Moscow, along with Russian-occupied areas in Crimea, the ministry said.
Sergey Sobyanin, the mayor of Moscow, said early on Tuesday that at least 61 Ukrainian drones had been shot down in the capital region overnight.
Zelenskyy in announcing the Ukrainian strike on the satellite communications center noted that the facility was more than 500 km, or about 310 miles, from the Ukrainian-Russian boarder.
“Recently, our Defense Forces of Ukraine already reached four such Russian centers, not only in the Moscow region but also in the Vladimir region,” he said on social media.
He added, “Step by step, we are implementing our plan of long-range sanctions and making it as difficult as possible for the aggressor state to carry out its invasion operations against Ukraine and the occupation of our territories.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) talks to reporters as he heads for a vote at the U.S. Capitol on June 01, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego is under federal investigation for suspected campaign finance violations, a person familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
According to multiple reports, Gallego, a Democrat, used campaign funds to fly his family to the Caribbean, Miami, Nantucket and Puerto Rico. He also allegedly used funds to pay for childcare.
Campaign funds may be used to pay for a candidate’s childcare expenses that are incurred as a direct result of campaign activities, according to the Federal Election Commission.
On Monday, the Senate Ethics Committee closed its inquiry into allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations after finding no evidence that Gallego violated Senate rules or applicable law, according to a letter released by his office.
In regards to the federal investigation, a Gallego spokesperson told Axios that “it’s the least surprising news of the week that this comes immediately after the Senate Ethics Committee cleared Senator Gallego of right-wing smears pushed by the administration.”
ABC News has reached out to Gallego’s office for comment on the investigation. The Department of Justice has not yet commented on the probe.
Doug Band, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, is seen with Ghislaine Maxwell in this undated photo. (U.S. Justice Department)
(WASHINGTON) — Doug Band, a former close adviser to President Bill Clinton, is due on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning for a closed-door interview with the congressional committee probing the government’s investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Band, who began his tenure with Clinton as an intern in the mid-1990s, is expected to be questioned by the House Oversight Committee about the former president’s interactions and travels with Epstein in the years after Clinton left the Oval Office in 2001.
Often described as one of the architects of Clinton’s post-presidential endeavors, including the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, Band can also expect to be pressed about his own communications with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which were made public earlier this year by the Justice Department as part of the release of files mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Emails between Band and Maxwell included talk of meetings with Epstein and numerous exchanges containing suggestive innuendo and cheeky nicknames for each other like “babycakes” and “booboo,” according to the DOJ records.
The bulk of the messages were exchanged between 2001-2004, before Epstein first faced criminal charges in Florida in 2006.
Band, 54, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. An attorney expected to accompany Band to the interview did not reply to a message seeking comment in advance of Band’s appearance in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this year, Band told The New York Times that his messages with Maxwell occurred when he was in his 20s and unmarried — and he denied any romantic involvement with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking and other offenses.
“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” Band said in a statement to the Times, in which he referred to Maxwell as “a monster.”
The committee is also expected to query Band about his explosive claim — reported by Vanity Fair in 2020 — that the former president had visited Epstein’s private estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands in early 2003. The article, which centered on Band’s contentious split with the Clintons, did not detail how Band knew about the purported island trip or if he had any evidence to bolster his claim.
Records created by Epstein’s pilots made public through civil litigation show Clinton — and an entourage that typically included Band — aboard Epstein’s plane on more than two dozen flight legs in 2002-03, but none of those flights went to the island, according to the pilot’s logs. Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell have all denied that the former president had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein’s island was known.
“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone,” Maxwell told then then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a recorded interview last summer.
“I’ve never been to that island,” Clinton said in his own interview with the Oversight Committee in February.
The former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to his association with Epstein. He has said he stopped interacting with Epstein before any criminal allegations surfaced and has denied knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.
Clinton told the committee that he and Band were once “close,” and that Band had been one of the people he tasked to “operationalize” plans to develop the Clinton Global Initiative in his early post-presidency years.
“He worked for me for years,” Clinton said. “[H]e arranged airplane flights and things like that and was doing work on the first Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. And I know that he knew both Epstein and Maxwell. I do not know to what extent he was in contact with them.”
In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she began spending time with Clinton after he left the White House in 2001, as he was forging his post-presidential path through the establishment of the Clinton Foundation and, later, the Clinton Global Initiative.
“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them,” she said, according to a transcript of the July 2025 interview.
“I started spending time with the former president and with Doug and his team,” Maxwell said. “I had no purpose, really, other than I had — obviously offered something. I don’t know, ideas.”
Band’s appearance before the Oversight Committee is voluntary and will not be recorded. The committee has typically released transcripts of interviews after they are reviewed for accuracy and redacted to remove any potential references to alleged victims.
In recent weeks the committee has heard from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and two of Epstein’s former assistants, Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff.
Later this summer, interviews are scheduled with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Epstein’s former private banker at JPMorgan Chase, Jes Staley.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., has indicated that a report on the investigation’s findings will be issued by the end of the year.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters in the Oval Office at the White House on June 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The United States and Iran are sharing conflicting messages about the prospects of a meeting between key negotiators in Qatar this week, injecting even more uncertainty into a peace process that is supposed to be focused on addressing Iran’s nuclear program but has so far been dominated by the Strait of Hormuz.
Talks between the countries were originally scheduled to take place in Switzerland this week and center on nuclear issues, but the venue and agenda for the planned high-level and technical meetings changed following a fresh round of tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran over the strategic waterway, a U.S. official and another source said.
While the Trump administration is pushing for direct talks, it is still unclear whether Iranian and American officials will meet face-to-face or communicate solely through Qatari mediators, they added.
President Trump announced on Monday that a meeting would take place in Qatar’s capital on Tuesday at Tehran’s request.
“IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING. IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!” Trump said in a social media post on Monday morning.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said the U.S. would be represented by Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, adding that both high-level and technical talks with Iran were expected to take place.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, painted a different picture of the upcoming meetings. He said that while an Iranian delegation would travel to Doha to discuss the implementation of the interim deal between the U.S. and Iran, their trip bore no connection to Kushner and Witkoff’s visit.
“There are no negotiation meetings with the U.S. side at any level scheduled in the coming days,” Baghaei asserted.
The Iranian regime’s apparent hesitancy to resume in-person talks is a significant step back from the high-level talks that took place in Switzerland earlier this month following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the countries. After that meeting, Vice President JD Vance reported that lengthy conversations with senior Iranian officials had resulted in a “good foundation for a successful final deal,” and said they made progress towards the creation of a “mechanism” to ensure the Strait of Hormuz would remain open.
The interim deal stipulates that Iran should “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.”
But Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, and on Thursday, it attacked a container ship transiting the waterway–setting off a four-day exchange of strikes with the U.S. that stymied ship traffic.
Trump administration officials are eager to restore conditions in the Strait of Hormuz to their pre-war norm, but sources told ABC News that recent intelligence reports predict Tehran will continue threatening to resume its chokehold on the waterway — a reality that gives Iran significant leverage over the global economy.
The memorandum of understanding also calls for Iran and the U.S. to hammer out a sweeping agreement within 60 days. Almost a quarter of that time has now expired.
While the interim deal says that period can be extended by mutual agreement, Trump has repeatedly declared he wouldn’t let Iran draw out the negotiations.
“We’re negotiating from a position of pure strength, pure strength. They know that,” Trump said on Thursday.
