New duties ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent took effect against 60 trading partners — including China, the EU, India, Canada, and Mexico — over alleged forced-labor violations. Trump invoked Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, a tool no sitting president has ever deployed, after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier tariff structure in February. Beijing called the move unjust, Brazil vowed to fight it at the WTO, and Japan officially said it "regrets" the duties.
The House voted 220 to 205 to fund the federal government through December 4, averting a pre-election shutdown that would have badly stung Republicans heading into November. The Senate is drafting its own bipartisan version, meaning the chambers still need to reconcile — but Speaker Mike Johnson cleared the first hurdle.
Maine Democrats officially nominated former state Senate President Troy Jackson to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in a race now rated a dead toss-up. The Senate Leadership Fund immediately pledged $42 million against Jackson — a fifth-generation logger who backs Medicare-for-All and abolishing ICE — who has already raised $1 million in two weeks on the trail.
Thirteen straight nights of US military strikes on Iran have claimed 18 American service members, and President Trump now says he is weighing "a massive attack bigger than anything before" — while simultaneously confirming that Tehran has reached out privately seeking a deal. The 60-day ceasefire window has officially collapsed, and diplomatic channels are stalled even as Iran rejects further negotiations.
CENTCOM has dramatically widened its target set, now hitting bridges, infrastructure, and key nodes deep inside Iran including areas near Tehran. The campaign launched three weeks ago against coastal defenses to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and has escalated week by week as Iran refuses ceasefire terms.
Yemen's Houthi rebels struck the Saudi Arabian city of Jizan and hit two Saudi-flagged oil tankers in the Red Sea, declaring a full naval blockade of the kingdom. With the Strait of Hormuz already constrained by the Iran conflict, crude prices surged as energy markets priced in two simultaneous choke points.
Israel's military targeted southern Lebanon on Saturday, hitting a water project in the town of Markaba just weeks after a US-brokered ceasefire required Hezbollah to withdraw from the border zone. The broader Lebanese disarmament framework signed in late June is showing serious cracks as the wider regional conflict intensifies.
The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed replacing its decades-old blanket ban on civilian supersonic flight over the continental US with a noise-based standard — meaning if your aircraft produces no sonic boom at ground level, you can go fast. The push is driven by NASA's X-59 experimental jet, which recently hit Mach 1.4 with only a quiet "sonic thump," and could eventually cut a Washington-to-London flight to roughly four hours.
A new Trump administration report titled "Science: A New Golden Age" charges that decades of funding foreign graduate students and lax technology-transfer enforcement have pushed American-born researchers to the back of the line in their own country. The report signals a coming push to reorient federal science funding toward domestic talent, with direct implications for university visa pipelines and research grants.
Spain's most-visited city has declared an effective hard cap on tourism, with officials stating they want "not a single person more." Barcelona has eliminated new short-term rental permits, capped cruise ship disembarkations, and is pressuring hotels to freeze capacity — a stunning reversal for a city that deliberately built its modern economy on mass tourism, and a harbinger for overcrowded destinations worldwide.
