Severe thunderstorms forced a mass evacuation of the National Mall midway through Saturday's America 250 celebration, but the crowds returned and so did President Trump — taking the stage at 11 PM to declare this moment "the dawn of the golden age of America." The fireworks spectacular that followed set a Guinness World Record: 851,000 shells fired over 40 minutes from eight barges along the Potomac River. Trump called the United States "the crowning achievement of human history" in an address marking the nation's semiquincentennial.
NPR's 82-year-old legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg published a story declaring Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring; the network pulled it within minutes, calling it "erroneously published." The crisis deepened when Totenberg and NPR's own public editor offered contradictory explanations for the blunder, prompting commentator Miranda Devine to call it "either a lie or unforgivable incompetence." NPR has promised a full review of its breaking-news procedures.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr declared this week that legacy media "has really done this to itself," announcing plans to target what he described as an anti-conservative monopoly baked into broadcast licensing. The agency is also set to vote this month on stripping outdated satellite and earth station regulations that Carr says are hampering America's commercial space economy. Supporters call it a long-overdue course correction; critics on the left are warning of government interference in the press.
A year after President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — locking in historic tax cuts and funding border security, the military, and NASA — Republicans are running on its economic record heading into November. The law blocked tax increases that would have hit millions of American families, according to the Washington Examiner. Democrats are hammering the CBO's projection that the bill adds roughly $3.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, and both sides are betting voters know which number matters more to them.
US-Iran nuclear negotiations are officially on hold as Tehran observes a week-long mourning period for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whose two-day funeral begins today. President Trump says Iran is "dying to settle," but nonproliferation experts are raising alarms about a fortified underground facility at Pickaxe Mountain in the Zagros range — denied to international inspectors since at least 2020. UN Ambassador Mike Waltz confronted Iran's envoy at the Security Council this week following Iranian drone attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait, declaring: "You will not silence this body."
Moldovan Prime Minister Munteanu announced Friday he was stepping down — a move that under the country's constitution automatically triggers the collapse of the entire government. The small Eastern European nation has been threading a needle between European integration ambitions and Russian pressure throughout the war in Ukraine. No successor has been named and no election timeline has been announced.
Turkish comedian Deniz Goktash was detained Thursday upon returning home after allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and "publicly insulting religious values" during his latest stand-up performance. The arrest drew immediate condemnation from free speech advocates and is the latest in a string of Turkish government crackdowns on artists, journalists, and comedians who cross the country's increasingly strict speech lines. He is being held pending a formal hearing.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has ordered demolition of two historic structures at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama: the 1964 Dynamic Test Stand used for Saturn V rocket testing and the 1957 T-Tower originally built by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The teardown is phase one of clearing 25 outdated buildings to fund next-generation facilities tied to Trump's goals — Americans back on the Moon by 2028, nuclear reactors in orbit by 2030, and crewed Mars missions in the years beyond. Funding comes through the One Big Beautiful Bill.
More than 100 miles offshore in the Gulf of America, the Paleogene geological formation holds tens of billions of barrels of oil under pressures up to 20,000 pounds per square inch — conditions that defeated every previous drilling attempt. American engineers have now cracked it with new high-pressure rigs and rapid-deployment subsea containment systems built to handle those extremes. The Gulf already supplies roughly 15 percent of US oil production; this breakthrough could significantly expand that share.
As if America's 250th birthday needed more drama: a fire broke out on the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night around 9:40 PM, right as the historic fireworks display was lighting up the sky above. The FDNY responded to what was described as a "rubbish fire" on the Manhattan-bound side of the bridge. No injuries were reported, the fire was quickly contained, and it has already earned its place as the most memorable footnote to the most spectacular birthday party in American history.
