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New 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion in Canadian imports took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday after last-ditch negotiations fell apart. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Canada "walked away from the best deal" and confirmed no further talks are scheduled. Prime Minister Mark Carney accused Washington of attacking Canada and promised dollar-for-dollar retaliation starting September 8.
Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay pausing a lower-court injunction that had halted work on the $400 million White House ballroom. The freeze holds "pending further order" while the justices weigh the National Trust for Historic Preservation's case, which argues Congress — not the executive — must approve structural changes to the building. Trump publicly thanked the Court within hours.
Long-dated Treasury yields have climbed to their highest levels since 2007, and analysts say it is real yields — not inflation expectations — driving the move. The national debt crossed $40 trillion this week with the fiscal 2026 deficit near $1.8 trillion through ten months. Stocks posted a weekly loss despite Friday gains, with rising yields the dominant theme.
The Pentagon dismissed the longtime publisher, editor and a reporter at the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, citing alleged insubordination tied to an unauthorized CBS News interview appearance. The paper has operated with editorial independence under Defense Department funding for decades. Press-freedom advocates and veterans groups are already pushing back.
At a rally Friday for Senator Darline Graham, Trump described the military campaign against Iran as "a little detour" and joked that Tehran could be bombed "a little bit more," even as the administration pivots to economic warfare. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will detail new sanctions Monday targeting foreign banks, shippers and refiners doing business with Iran. Tehran's Foreign Ministry called the strategy a return to colonialism, and Brent crude is holding near $94 a barrel.
Trump ordered Ulchi Freedom Shield cut six days short and partially reduced in scale, saying the exercises send a signal that is "totally inappropriate and hostile" to Pyongyang. Seoul says it was not notified in advance, and Trump has separately linked the move to South Korea declining to help on Iran. North Korea answered by firing ten ballistic missiles, and Kim Yo-jong dismissed the gesture as changing nothing.
A group of Venezuelan, Cuban and Colombian nationals arrived in Liberia under a third-country removal agreement with the United States. The West African nation has agreed to accept up to 1,200 foreign nationals from the US over the next year. It is the latest in a widening set of third-country arrangements the administration has struck across Africa and Central America.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is in final preparations for a launch on August 30, headed roughly one million miles from Earth for a five-year mission. Mission leaders say Roman can do in a single month what Hubble would need a century to accomplish. The targets: dark energy, the universe's expansion rate, and a wholesale expansion of exoplanet discovery.
New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory indicate our galaxy's outer reaches extend considerably farther than previously mapped. The finding comes from tracing hot gas in the galactic halo, a region that has been notoriously hard to measure. If it holds up, textbook figures for the Milky Way's size and mass will need revising.
Construction crews renovating an older building in Valdosta, Georgia pulled open a wall and found an estimated one thousand human teeth. Historians say early dentists sometimes disposed of extractions by dropping them into hollow walls, the same way old bathrooms swallowed used razor blades. A local museum is reportedly slated to receive part of the haul.
