Wednesday, September 30, 2026

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to pause a lower court ruling blocking the Trump administration from quickly deporting migrants with final removal orders to countries other than their own without a chance to raise torture or persecution fears. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissented. The Court will hear oral arguments in December, with a ruling expected by next summer. The administration has deported roughly 25,000 migrants to more than two dozen countries, with most sent to Mexico, according to the Associated Press.

Former special counsel Jack Smith testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, defending his prosecutions of President Trump and saying he would not "be silenced by continued threats of prosecution." Chairman Chuck Grassley said investigators obtained at least 4,782 checks tied to Trump campaign donations. Smith could not say whether subpoenas sought lawmakers' physical locations and could not recall key details about demands for conservative fundraising records. Sen. Eric Schmitt, trying to prove Smith had lied, mixed up basketball team mascots and later brushed off the exchange.

The Senate passed the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act 77-22 Monday night, led by Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell. The bill covers how schools pay players, athletes' legal rights, and transfer rules, and raises the cap on direct athlete pay from about $21 million to $48 million per school. President Trump praised the vote, calling it a "really big deal." The bill now goes to the House.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is expected to announce plans to cut senior leadership positions for generals and admirals by 20% during a State of the Force address at Quantico, Virginia, Pentagon officials said. Services would have until the start of 2027 to complete the reductions, with some positions downgraded rather than eliminated. The plan doubles a May 2025 directive that required at least 10% cuts.

President Trump and leaders of major AI companies signed a voluntary agreement Tuesday at the White House called "The White House Accord," pledging to self-police AI development through internal and external reviews. Trump described the agreement as "morally binding." The signing came amid growing calls for tighter oversight of AI technology.

Federal prosecutors charged Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez, 28, with assaulting a federal officer after ICE officers shot him during a September 20 traffic stop in Austin, Texas. An affidavit says he had a final removal order, ignored commands to exit his vehicle, then drove off, striking an officer's torso with his side-view mirror before being shot. He faces up to 20 years if convicted. Sources differ on body camera footage: some say the shooting officer had none while another agent turned his off; one report says footage of the shooting exists but hasn't been released.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop the execution of Christa Pike, 50, after Tennessee Governor Bill Lee denied her clemency request. Pike is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution for the 1995 torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. It would be Tennessee's first execution of a woman since at least 1820.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered military service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy, to stop appointing civilians to tenured faculty positions, according to a memo he signed Tuesday. Hegseth said tenure can cause “academic stagnation, faculty complacency” and curriculum drift from “warfighter education,” and directed military department secretaries to develop hiring plans prioritizing “institutional flexibility and contributions to the warfighting mission.”

US Central Command announced Wednesday that the US military has completed its withdrawal of forces and equipment from Erbil Air Base in Iraq, ending Operation Inherent Resolve, the mission launched against ISIS in 2014. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said Iraqi security forces now have the capacity to manage threats independently. The counter-ISIS task force is relocating its headquarters to Jordan, with operations continuing in Syria.

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Boeing won the contract to build the Navy's F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter, worth more than $20 billion. The aircraft will succeed the Super Hornet fleet. Boeing beat Northrop Grumman for the deal; Lockheed Martin had earlier been eliminated from the competition. Boeing is also building the Air Force's F-47. Details of the new jet's design have not been disclosed.

King Mohammed VI issued a royal decree tasking Fatima Zahra El Mansouri, a lawyer and politician from the centrist Authenticity and Modernity Party, with forming Morocco's next government, likely a coalition, after her party's election win. She is the first woman to lead Morocco's government and only the second woman to lead a government in the Arab world.

Estonia's government said with "full confidence" that Russian special services commissioned an August arson attack on Milrem Robotics, a Tallinn-based defense manufacturer that supplies unmanned vehicles to Ukraine. Estonia called the fire a "deliberate" attack. The claim follows accusations that Russia has conducted sabotage operations across several NATO countries supporting Ukraine.

Republican senators blocked a Democratic-led resolution that would have required the State Department to report on violence against Americans in the West Bank or halt aid. The vote follows an incident in which Israeli settlers set homes on fire and clashed with Israeli forces trying to enforce a Supreme Court order letting the Tubassi family return home, with authorities accused of not doing enough to confront the settlers. It was the family's second such attack in a month.

Iran's rial fell to a record 2.548 million per U.S. dollar on Tuesday, according to the tracker Pashizi, down from about 1.79 million per dollar in mid-July when a Memorandum of Understanding collapsed. The decline follows renewed U.S. sanctions, a naval blockade and an intensified bombing campaign amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, compounding an economic downturn that began before the war.

The United Nations Command and South Korea's military said Wednesday that North Korean land mines found in the Demilitarized Zone violated the Korean War armistice agreement, after investigators found an active mine south of the inter-Korean border. South Korea is demanding an apology from Pyongyang for blasts earlier this month that seriously injured three South Korean personnel.

María del Carmen Abascal, evicted from the Madrid flat where she had lived for seven decades, is returning home after the owner agreed to re-lease it to her following days of protests that drew tens of thousands of people. The Spanish government also announced a proposed ban on evictions as part of measures to address the country's housing crisis; the proposals must be approved by parliament within 30 days.