As part of President Donald Trump's 250th celebrations, the Department of Education held a game show about American citizenship. Aangad Singh's family is concerned it may have been rigged.

NOTUS reported that there appeared to be some creative counting of answers during a show that depended on points, but had no scoreboard.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Singh's mother, Ramandeep.

“They just made this whole thing for show,” his uncle said. “They know who they want to win.”

As the family left the event, other parents of kids on the game show stopped them, saying how "shocked" they were. One boy stopped her and said that a group of contestants kept their own scores.

"We thought he won," the boy said, according to the report.

Even the young blond teen who won couldn't look him in the eye. She was a homeschooled student from Wyoming.

“That was insane,” she confessed. “You clearly knew everything.”

“What did she say?” Singh's father asked.

“That I should have won,” the boy reiterated.

That's when his mother approached the Department of Education official to ask for the final scores. They refused to hand them over, claiming they were "proprietary."

“How did they count the numbers?” she said. “That’s something we need to understand.”

So, they waited until the show was broadcast and watched, doing their own scorekeeping. His father was ready, with a spreadsheet titled “1776_Broadcast_Audit" open on his laptop.

"Aangad’s parents didn’t want to accuse anyone of fixing the competition," the NOTUS report said. "But they felt compelled to ask questions because their son never would."

Not only was there no scoreboard during the competition, but the show also never put the scores on the screen.

In the third round, the question had multiple answers; each contestant received the full 20 points. When it came to Singh's turn the question was, “According to Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution, in which cases do the federal courts have jurisdiction?” He had to list all four answers for full credit.

He did it, yet the graphic on the screen counted two of the correct answers as wrong.

“Maritime jurisdiction.” Correct.

“Parties of state and citizens of another state," was marked incorrect.

“What?” Aangad said on the couch, his voice sharp.

He got two more correct, then another wrong: “Case with state and foreign nation.”

“What?” Singh's said.

He pulled out his phone to look up the Constitution. Sure enough, it said the phrases “between a State and Citizens of another State” and “between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”

The final was a lightning round. They asked the amendment that ended slavery, and Singh answered the 13th. They counted it wrong. The screen displayed the correct answer. Singh exclaimed that was what he said.

His only conclusion was that they thought he said fourteenth. While they were watching on television, however, the auto-generated captions also captured his answer as "thirteenth."

The family is split between those who think the judges were simply incompetent and those who believe something more nefarious was afoot. Singh's uncle wants an investigation.

“I personally think that they just had faulty sources,” Singh said.

The judges were all teachers who received the James Madison Memorial Fellowship to study the Constitution. The only thing Singh could think is that they graded things incorrectly. The report said "it seemed likely to him that they hadn’t memorized Article 3 as well as he had. Or maybe his answers didn’t match the phrasing on their rubrics."

“That shows ineptness,” Singh said.

They tried to decide if they should press things with the Department of Education. Singh's mother didn't think that they could afford such a fight.

NOTUS reporter Sam Fortier was invited by the Department of Education to follow Singh through the competition. "Now, their predicament felt like a window into something bigger: If the government or the courts couldn’t bring them justice, then maybe, they thought, the media could," he wrote.

"All I could do was write what happened. But the Fourth Estate was another institution at low ebbs in trust and influence, and [Singh's father] knew it. He doubted the government would bow to media pressure," said Fortier.

In the end, they reached out to a lawyer, asking for an objective eye to calculate the answers and the scores to see whether Singh was supposed to be in the top three.

The family moved on, the reporter said, "He didn’t see Miriam, the girl from Wyoming, tell her local newspaper that she was surprised by who made the top three. He didn’t see the Education Department use Miriam’s homeschooling as a cudgel in the culture war."

His father messaged the Department of Education, but never got a response.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he spoke with China’s top diplomat on Wednesday about a state visit scheduled for September by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to Washington, where President Trump intends to try to bolster what he sees as a personal friendship the two men are developing.

The fact that the two nations’ top diplomats spent much of a meeting in Manila talking about the visit is the strongest sign yet that the summit is on schedule, despite remarks last week from Mr. Trump blaming China for trying to interfere in American elections.

“It’s just to create the groundwork for another positive visit,” Mr. Rubio said of his talk with Wang Yi after it ended in the evening after more than an hour. “I think President Xi will have a very positive visit when he comes to Washington.”

He said that the two governments were putting in place a board of trade and a separate board of investment, and that more details would be announced during the September summit. The two leaders agreed to establish the groups when Mr. Trump visited Beijing in May, more than half a year after he had to retreat from a trade war he had started with China.

Mr. Rubio told reporters traveling with him that he and Mr. Wang did not talk about Mr. Trump’s recent accusations that China had tried to interfere in U.S. elections, mainly in 2020. The intelligence material that Mr. Trump brought up in a speech last Thursday was not new and had been reviewed by U.S. officials years ago. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is the main rival that has tried to interfere in American elections.

The Chinese foreign ministry has given pro forma statements pushing back on Mr. Trump’s accusations. But it has also indicated that Chinese officials understand that the American president made his speech for the purposes of domestic politics rather than out of actual foreign policy concerns.

“Obviously, there are areas of great differences,” Mr. Rubio said of U.S.-China relations. “Both sides will acknowledge that we’ll have to work through those, and I think these differences will exist for the foreseeable future.”

Mr. Rubio was in Manila for an annual conference of top diplomats from Southeast Asian nations. Mr. Wang and Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, are also in Manila this week.

Mr. Rubio accompanied Mr. Trump on his visit to Beijing in May, where Mr. Xi showered the American president with flattery — even saying he supported the “Make America Great Again” movement — and hosted a state banquet. A video showed Mr. Rubio marveling at the ceiling of a meeting room in the Great Hall of the People, next to Tiananmen Square. During his 14 years as a senator representing Florida, Mr. Rubio became one of the leading China hawks in Congress, but he has since tempered his tone to stay in alignment with Mr. Trump.

In the Manila meeting with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Wang protested “recent negative remarks and actions by the U.S. side,” but also hailed the leadership summit in Beijing, according to an official summary of the talks posted by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency. “Our responsibility now is to follow the course set by the two heads of state,” Mr. Wang said.

Mr. Rubio was asked by a reporter whether China and Russia were giving information to Iran to help the Iranian military fire projectiles at U.S. troops, as some U.S. officials have said was happening. Mr. Rubio did not give a direct answer.

“Nothing that’s happened, nothing that China has done, has in any way changed the trajectory of what you’re seeing in terms of the conflicts we’re having with Iran,” he said.

Mr. Rubio said China is unhappy with Iran’s attacks on commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for the transport of oil and gas to China and many other countries.

Mr. Rubio did criticize recent aggressive encroachments by Chinese coast guard ships into waters near Taiwan. In recent years, China has increased its naval and aerial military operations around Taiwan, a de facto independent island that Mr. Xi has said must eventually be brought under the control of the Chinese government.

Mr. Rubio said the activity of Chinese ships “comes up in every one of our meetings because we obviously disagree with those actions, and we actually think that they run contrary to the spirit of what we’re trying to work out with them with regards to strategic stability.”

Mr. Rubio said the United States would honor treaty commitments made to allies such as the Philippines, whose navy regularly has hostile encounters with Chinese vessels.

“It speaks to areas of disagreement when it comes to our policies with China,” he said. “Those need to be managed very carefully because, obviously, a conflict, be it economic or otherwise, between the U.S. and China would have a dramatic global impact.”

Mr. Rubio also said the United States would like to eventually have detailed discussions about nuclear issues with China, given the country’s rapidly growing arsenal.

Days after blaming China for “the largest compromise of election data in history,” President Donald Trump shrugged off Beijing’s actions and said the United States was doing the same thing.

Trump said vaguely on Tuesday that the US would discuss the matter with Chinese officials. But he previewed no punishment and claimed the alleged breach was in the rearview mirror.

“It took place a long time ago. I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then,” he said, despite his accusation last week during a primetime speech that China had illicitly acquired 220 million US voter files starting in 2020 and that the “data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare.”

Trump on Tuesday then said the alleged infringement was no different from US actions against China.

“They do things and we do things to them,” he said. “I’ll be honest, we do things to them too. It’s not a one-way street.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that he did not discuss the topic of election interference with his Chinese counterpart at an ASEAN conference in the Philippines.

“We talked a lot about the visit in September. That was really the gist of it, is just to create the groundwork for another positive visit. I think President Xi will have a very positive visit when he comes to Washington,” Rubio said.

“These are the two most powerful countries in the world, particularly economics, but also I mean we have to have a relationship, and obviously there are areas of great differences,” he said, adding later that there were areas of “potential cooperation.”

Rubio later specified that the president’s speech alleging China interfered in US elections last week was “a declassification of documents from our intelligence community. That’s what he put out.”

A day after Trump’s speech, a White House official said planning was continuing apace for President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States in September.

The White House did not respond when asked whether Trump was considering any repercussions for China, including sanctions.

The Trump administration won’t block the extradition of notorious “manosphere” influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate to the UK after they were arrested Saturday on rape and sex-trafficking charges, The Post has learned.

The Department of Justice has written in court papers that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has “sole discretion” to halt the brothers’ removal from the US, but White House and State Department officials said Wednesday that no such intervention is coming.

“The secretary has not spoken to the Tate Brothers or their lawyers. The State Department has no plans to act on this matter at this time,” a senior department official said, while a second source familiar with the matter also confirmed the planned extradition.

“There’s no role for us to play at this moment, or maybe ever, in that regard,” Rubio told reporters in the Philippines early Wednesday, “but I’m not going to opine on something that’s still working its way through the legal process.”

“The US has an extradition treaty with the UK and the administration intends to honor it in this case,” a senior administration official first told Axios.

The Tates’ defense attorney, Joseph McBride, has referred to the charges against his clients as “politically motivated” and a “stitch-up job.”

The Trump administration is weighing military action in the West African country of Mali to target an al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as JNIM, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

If approved, it would add an eighth nation to the list of countries where President Donald Trump has ordered strikes since the start of his second term — a chapter of his presidency that he initially said would be dedicated to ending global strife and redirecting U.S. resources to Americans.

There is disagreement, however, among senior U.S. officials over whether to proceed with attacking the militant group. A vocal advocate for using force is the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, said the current and former officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.

The militant group, whose full name is Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, has established a stronghold in Mali and increasingly launched attacks in coastal West African nations, establishing itself as the most well-armed militant group in the region and among the most powerful in the world.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

When the White House was asked for comment, an administration official would not disclose whether the president intended to move forward with military strikes but said the United States has been urging governments in North and West Africa “to purchase U.S. equipment and services to support their war efforts against the terrorists.”

The official said that terrorism in the Sahel, the vast semiarid region south of the Sahara, is a “multinational problem.”

“We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS,” the official added, referring also to the Islamic State, which rose to prominence in the Middle East before establishing affiliates throughout Africa.

The Alliance of Sahel States consists of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — all West African nations where military leaders have in recent years ousted democratically elected governments in coups, largely cut ties with the West and turned to Russia for security help.

But the administration official pinned the blame not on those governments but on their Russian partners, saying that Moscow “has proven to be an ineffective security partner for Mali.”

“We hope that other African nations take note of Russia’s terrible performance in combating terrorism,” the official said.

The Trump administration’s contemplation of military options in the country has not been previously reported.

Mali, a landlocked nation of nearly 25 million, has in recent years been plagued by violence by Islamist militant groups — and by Mali’s own junta government and the Russian mercenaries whom it hired to get the situation under control.

The militant groups, particularly JNIM, have grown increasingly powerful, turning Mali and its neighbors in the Sahel into the world’s center for terrorism.

Last year, militants with the al-Qaeda affiliate mounted a fuel blockade that paralyzed much of the country. This spring, they launched coordinated, nationwide attacks that included militants roaming the streets of Bamako, the capital; seizing a strategic city in the north from Mali’s military and the Russians; and killing the country’s defense minister in a suicide attack.

Meanwhile, IS Sahel — an Islamic State affiliate and a JNIM rival — has consolidated power near Mali’s border with Niger, where last year its militants kidnapped American missionary Kevin Rideout, who is believed to be held now in Mali.

To combat the violence, Mali’s junta government hired Russian mercenaries, first with the Wagner Group and now with Africa Corps, which is more closely linked with Russia’s defense ministry. The Russians have been accused of a string of atrocities, according to rights groups and The Washington Post’s previous reporting.

Héni Nsaibia, West Africa senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, said that Mali’s military and its Russian backers were responsible for killing hundreds more civilians than JNIM and IS Sahel combined. Last year, the Malian military and its Russian partners were responsible for 925 civilian deaths, according to ACLED, compared with 232 by Islamist militants.

“It is extremely problematic that a government like the U.S. or any Western partner would provide support to these regimes whose legitimacy remains contested, and which are incredibly fragile and repressive,” he said, referring to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Still, last year, as part of a push by the Trump administration to reengage with Mali, the United States ramped up intelligence sharing with Mali’s government, current and former American officials said at the time. The intelligence was used in strikes by Mali’s military, which had been largely shunned by the Biden administration for its refusal to set a timeline for a return to democratic elections and its work with the Russians.

But such cooperation has so far remained limited, nowhere near the scale of the U.S.-Nigeria security partnership that ramped up last year and has included U.S. airstrikes and a ground mission that killed one of the Islamic State’s top leaders in Africa.

Any direct U.S. military involvement in Mali runs the risk of hostilities with Russian forces in the region. It also could require deconfliction efforts between Washington and Moscow akin to ones that existed in Syria during that country’s civil war.

When asked if Secretary of State Marco Rubio supports military action in Mali, the State Department sidestepped the question, saying the U.S. “unequivocally condemns the terrorist activity in Mali.”

The department said the Trump administration is “committed to promoting regional ownership and cooperation against terrorist threats, and monitoring indicators and warnings of threats to our homeland.”

U.S. military action against JNIM would add Mali to the list of countries where Trump has ordered strikes: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela. The administration also has waged a controversial military campaign against alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that has resulted in scores of deaths.

Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, said that the U.S. could be most useful by getting involved instead in “conflict resolution,” forcing Mali’s junta government to talk with JNIM, which has focused not on global aims but on applying Islamic laws in local governance, and other political opponents whom the junta has largely silenced.

“Opting for the military solution one more time won’t get things resolved,” Nasr said. “The French tried that for 10 years. The Russians have been trying for five years. The situation has only gotten worse and worse.”

France launched its military intervention in the Sahel in 2013 at the request of Mali’s then-government. French forces quashed the insurgency in Mali and restored a measure of order. That initial mission was followed by a second, Operation Barkhane, that eliminated prominent militant leaders but ultimately failed to stop the spread of various armed groups.

Anger at France — fueled by its neocolonial missteps and by Russian disinformation — grew over the years, helping propel coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021 and in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. President Emmanuel Macron later withdrew French forces.

Nasr added that if U.S. strikes weaken JNIM, they conversely could help IS Sahel, whose growth has been limited by the rival al-Qaeda-affiliated group.

Peter Pham, a former Trump administration official, was less pessimistic about the use of military force but said a precondition should be reestablishing trust with the governments of Mali and Niger ahead of security cooperation efforts.

“While we may have very limited direct economic or other interests in these countries, we do not want jihadists like ISIS and al-Qaeda gaining a foothold there,” Pham said.

Gorka has long made aggressive counterterrorism policies a cornerstone of his ideology. But his impact on policy since the start of Trump’s second term has been modest, said a U.S. official — a source of relief for his critics, who object to his hard-line approach, and a disappointment to his supporters.

In the spring, Gorka engaged in conversations about becoming Trump’s next director of the National Counterterrorism Center following the resignation of Joe Kent, who left the administration embittered by the president’s decision to start the war in Iran. But those discussions have not materialized into a nomination for Gorka.

Current and former U.S. officials said that Gorka had been deeply involved with talks about how to bring home Rideout, the captured missionary. One key aim of the administration last year was to get “overflight” rights in Mali, a former official said, so that U.S. officials could fly airplanes and other surveillance technology over Malian skies to better track his movements.

That desire for overflight rights was behind the administration’s decision to lift sanctions on key junta members, including Defense Minister Sadio Camara, who was a key proponent of Russian intervention in Mali and was killed in the JNIM attack on April 25.

Gorka, current and former officials say, also was invested in an effort to kill Abu Ubaydah Yusuf al-Anabi, a leader in an Algeria-based al-Qaeda affiliate that has seen its influence wane in recent years. Although American officials were hopeful last summer that U.S. intelligence had been used in a Malian strike to take out al-Anabi, as The Post previously reported, his death was never confirmed.

Corinne Dufka, an independent expert on the Sahel, said that there is a risk that any U.S. strikes could lead JNIM to target the U.S. or Americans in the region — which it has not done so far — or to push the group closer to the main al-Qaeda organization, from which it has grown more autonomous in recent years.

“If the U.S. helps Malian authorities kill JNIM authorities, it could backfire,” she said. “And they could be squandering an opportunity to de-radicalize and demobilize one of the world’s most sophisticated jihadist organizations.”

It didn’t take long for Pete Hegseth, the combative US war secretary, to snap.

Appealing to Congress for more money on Tuesday, Hegseth was told that five months of American bombing in Iran appeared to have achieved very little.

“Your characterisation of this incredible effort as a failure is reckless,” he told Gary Peters, the Democratic senator for Michigan.

“I think it’s irresponsible and it smears the sacrifice of the troops … Shame on you.”

The U.S. military's Central Command repeated an assertion on Tuesday evening that has been made by the Trump administration many times over the last two weeks, insisting that "despite Iranian aggression, the Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel traffic."

CENTCOM acknowledged in the same statement that Iran had launched more than 30 attacks on commercial vessels since the war began, which it said had "endangered hundreds of innocent mariners and undermined freedom of navigation."

President Trump, who has himself declared the strait open many times recently, threatened on Wednesday to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every new attack targeting a ship in the vital waterway.

Despite the U.S. president and military continuing to urge vessels to use a southern route through the strait, in defiance of Iran's threats, few shippers seem willing to risk it.

The Joint Maritime Information Center in Bahrain, a military partnership that includes the U.S., said commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz fell to a three-week low on Tuesday amid ongoing Iranian attacks. CBS News tracked just three commercial ships — two cargo vessels and the Chinese-owned tanker Hsin Ocean — transiting the strait on Tuesday.

Between July 13 and 19, only two ships transited the strait using the U.S.-backed southern route that hugs the coast of Oman. Both transits were dark, meaning the vessels had turned off their AIS broadcast systems, according to a Lloyd's List analysis.

Last week, Dimitris Maniatis, CEO of the Greek maritime risk management company Marisks, said ship crews were unwilling to make the trip through the strait following the breakdown of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire that held for less than three weeks.

"There's nothing physically obstructing the navigation of any vessel willing to transit the strait, and there are vessels that trade locally and are entirely unaffected by everything that's going on, however, if we're talking about large ocean-going, internationally owned-and-operated merchant vessels, nothing is going through," Maniatis told CBS News on Wednesday.

U.S. support for ships that choose to risk Iranian attacks by taking the Oman route is limited to air support as they attempt the transit as part of a convoy, Maniatis said, "and this is definitely not enough, because we see that, despite the best efforts and intentions of the U.S. Navy, vessels continue to be hit while they're crossing the southern corridor."

"There is no guarantee of safe passage," he said.

Greek shipping giant Dynacom was one of the last international operators willing to send crews through the strait, but two of its ships were struck off the coast of Oman earlier this week, forcing both crews to evacuate.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported South Korea's Sinokor Group was offering mariners six months of extra pay to make a return voyage through the strait.

The Iranian threat, meanwhile, is spreading.

Iran's Houthi rebel allies in Yemen said this week they would prevent Saudi Arabia from using its Red Sea ports to get energy products to Asian markets. That route relies on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait as the southern gateway to the Red Sea.

Much like the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el-Mandeb is a narrow chokepoint for ships that can leave them vulnerable to attack, and the Houthis have a history — including in the last few years — of leveraging their proximity to the shipping lanes to threaten global commerce. Before the war, about 30% of global oil supplies would typically traverse the two straits every year.

At least five commercial vessels were seen turning around Tuesday as they approached the Bab el-Mandeb after the Houthis announced their intention to impose a blockade on Saudi Arabia .

Asked Tuesday about the Houthi threat, Mr. Trump said there was no blockade in the Red Sea, adding, "If something like that happens, we take care of that."

But Maniatis said the U.S., so far, has not been able to take care of it in the Strait of Hormuz.

"Owners and operators — and crews, predominately — are really not feeling the safety they would need in order to have their vessels transit, and now we're seeing the same thing in the Bab el-Mandeb, which is absolutely horrendous," Maniatis told CBS News.

"There's so many people that are absolutely destroyed," he said, referring to ship crews in the region. "We see a lot of crew members that have had long careers, but also junior members of the crew, where their psychology is absolutely destroyed. They don't even want to be on ships anymore."

At least 17 commercial mariners have been killed in 61 separate attacks in the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint war on Iran at the end of February, according to the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Asian leaders Wednesday that Iran’s demand to control and collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz would threaten the world’s economy and set a precedent that could be repeated elsewhere in the world.

Rubio spoke at the start of an annual meeting in the Philippine capital, Manila, with counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations who have expressed alarm over the resurgent fighting in the Middle East that has battered their region. Despite Washington’s preoccupation with Iran, Rubio said, “We’re with ASEAN 100%.”

“If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation-state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll and if you don’t pay them, blow up your ships, we have created a very dangerous precedent which will repeat itself in other parts of the world, including in this region,” he said.

Washington’s top diplomat also renewed allegations that Iran has reneged on commitments under a collapsed interim ceasefire deal. Rubio said Iran “has been reaching out to the United States, both directly and indirectly, to engage in talks about settling the differences.” He said that while “the U.S. would love to reach a diplomatic settlement,” the Trump administration is “not going to sit by and let ships be blown up or Americans be attacked.”

Top diplomats from the U.S., China, Russia and several other countries are in Manila this week to take part in at the ASEAN ministerial gathering. Newly minted British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was arriving Wednesday, his office said.

Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters that Moscow would like to see a quick settlement between the U.S. and Iran.

“There are those eager to incite each party to keep the conflict going, but we aren’t one of those,” he said.

“We would like to see it stop — it impacts the global economy and Russia is part of the global economy,” Lavrov said, adding that Moscow is “interested in stable global energy prices to pursue long-term economic policies.”

The White House and the Israeli prime minister's office are discussing a potential Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, but no meeting has been set yet, a White House official and an Israeli source familiar with the issue told Axios.

Trump is considering resuming major combat operations in Iran that would likely include a joint military campaign with Israel similar to the launch of operation Epic Fury on February 28. A meeting with Netanyahu could be significant for Trump's decision-making and for coordination between the countries.

Netanyahu has visited the Oval Office six times since Trump returned to office a year and a half ago — more than any other world leader. But Netanyahu is deeply unpopular in Washington these days, both among Democrats and within Trump's close circle and the MAGA base.

Netanyahu last week asked to meet with Trump but didn't get an appointment. He then said he decided to postpone his trip to Washington because the late Sen. Lindsey Graham's wake had been postponed.

Netanyahu is now planning to travel to Washington to attend Graham's funeral ceremonies on Capitol Hill and at the National Cathedral on Tuesday.

Trump is nearing a crossroads in the Iran war, with U.S. and Israeli officials envisioning only two viable endgames:

One is to accept a new ceasefire proposal presented by Qatari mediators aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The other is to launch a massive joint military campaign with Israel to force Tehran's capitulation.

Israeli officials say they are preparing for a possible expansion of the war into a full-scale, coordinated campaign within days. But they stressed Israel will join the war only if it is attacked by Iran or if the U.S. asks it to participate.

President Trump threatened Wednesday to destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant, including in Tehran, each time Iran attacks a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump sent the new threat as he considers both a ceasefire and a significant military escalation. His key condition for a ceasefire is for Iran to stop its attacks on ships and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Central Command said Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels over the past three months.

Several attacks came after the U.S. and Iran signed a June memorandum of understanding calling for a ceasefire.

"From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The U.S. has already bombed bridges in southern Iran over the last 11 days of fighting. Targeting power plants and strikes in Tehran would mark another escalation.

Attacking Tehran would likely lead to an even wider Iranian retaliation.

The new director of Israel's Mossad spy agency, Roman Gofman, visited Washington two weeks ago for talks about the war in Iran and the Iranian nuclear program, according to two sources with knowledge.

Gofman is one of the closest advisers to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was Gofman's first visit to Washington since he assumed office in June.

The Mossad chief's visit took place right before tensions around the Strait of Hormuz escalated and fighting resumed.

One purpose of Gofman's visit was to coordinate with the White House on negotiations with Iran on a nuclear deal, an Israeli source said.

The sources said Gofman met with CIA director John Ratcliffe as well as White House officials.

Inside Trump's inner circle, Ratcliffe was one of the more skeptical voices on the memorandum of understanding with Iran.

He warned before the MOU was signed that Iran would interpret the deal differently than the U.S., including provisions involving the strait.

The Trump administration has intervened in a federal lawsuit involving Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez, arguing that she is protected by head-of-state immunity and should not be required to pay a $314 million judgment awarded to three Americans who were imprisoned in the South American country.

In a filing submitted Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the Department of Justice urged the court to dismiss the claims against Rodríguez, saying that because the United States recognizes her as Venezuela's sitting head of state, she is immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts while in office.

"The Executive Branch has determined that President Rodríguez, as the sitting head of state of Venezuela, enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts based on her current status," the Justice Department wrote in its filing. "President Rodríguez is entitled to immunity from the jurisdiction of this Court over this suit while she holds that office."

The case stems from a lawsuit filed by three American citizens who were detained and imprisoned in Venezuela. A federal judge previously awarded them more than $314 million in damages, finding them entitled to compensation for their treatment while in Venezuelan custody.

The Justice Department emphasized that its filing does not address the merits of the plaintiffs' claims or the underlying judgment. Instead, it argues that longstanding principles of international law require U.S. courts to recognize immunity for a sitting foreign head of state when the executive branch has made that determination.

"The United States respectfully submits to the Court that President Delcy Rodríguez is immune in this action and that all claims against her should be dismissed without prejudice," the filing states.

The administration's position could significantly affect the plaintiffs' ability to collect the judgment from Rodríguez personally, although the broader litigation against other defendants may continue.

The filing represents a notable legal development because the executive branch's suggestion of immunity is traditionally given substantial weight by U.S. courts in cases involving foreign leaders. Under U.S. practice, courts generally defer to the executive branch on questions involving the recognition and immunity of foreign heads of state.

The case also highlights the Trump administration's current diplomatic posture toward Venezuela. Although Washington has continued to impose sanctions and criticize the country's leadership, the Justice Department's filing reflects the legal principle that recognized sitting heads of state are generally protected from civil lawsuits in U.S. courts while they remain in office.

A federal judge will ultimately decide whether to accept the administration's recommendation and dismiss the claims against Rodríguez based on head-of-state immunity. The ruling could have broader implications for how U.S. courts handle civil litigation involving foreign leaders recognized by the executive branch.

More than half of the children with deportation orders are representing themselves in immigration courts, according to data from the Department of Justice.

President Donald Trump’s massive immigration crackdown has made headlines for what many view as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s aggressive tactics and alleged inhumane conditions at detention centers.

But what is less talked about are the hundreds of thousands of children navigating the immigration court system as they face deportation.

Of the 751,861 children with pending removal cases, 57 percent, or 425,093 of them, do not have lawyers, Drop Site News reported Friday.

The independent investigative news site’s figures were sourced from an analysis of data from the DOJ’s Executive Office for Immigration Review conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice.

“The scale is alarming,” Neil Agarwal, the principal data scientist who led the analysis at the Vera Institute of Justice, told the outlet.

The Department of Homeland Security said it could not verify the accuracy of the data reported by Drop Site News.

“All illegal aliens receive full due process. ICE gives all illegal aliens arrested a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys. Illegal aliens in detention have access to phones they can use to contact their lawyers,” an agency spokesperson told The Independent.

“What’s truly alarming is the 450,000 unaccompanied children that came in through the border under the Biden administration.

“Sadly, during those four years, many of these children who came across the border unaccompanied were placed with unvetted sponsors who were actually smugglers and sex traffickers. Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, DHS has located 146,000 of these children,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit which supports the legal defense of immigrants at risk of detention or deportation, noted that the 751,861 children with pending removal cases include both accompanied and unaccompanied children.

“The 751,861 figure in the Vera analysis includes hundreds of thousands of children who are not classified as unaccompanied — children who arrived with family members, children who aged into the system, and others who fall outside the specific legal and funding framework that governs unaccompanied children.

“Unaccompanied children — children who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian — are a specific population with specific federal protections,” the spokesperson told The Independent after initial publication.

The spokesperson added that the federal government must ensure “to the greatest extent practicable” that unaccompanied children “have access to legal counsel” under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

“Congress, across party lines, has appropriated funds for that purpose for nearly two decades, channeled through the Office of Refugee Resettlement and administered through organizations including the Acacia Center for Justice,” the spokesperson said.

Nearly two-thirds of children’s removal cases that are still pending were opened in 2023 under Democratic President Joe Biden, according to the new analysis.

Of the children’s cases that were completed last year, 64 percent of them proceeded without lawyers, Drop Site News reported.

Among these completed cases, seven percent of children with a lawyer were allowed to stay in the U.S. with some form of legal relief, compared to less than one percent of children representing themselves, according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has identified more than 500 unaccompanied kids to be potentially removed from the U.S., according to one Democratic senator.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wednesday, that he received “credible information” that HHS is using a list of more than 500 unaccompanied children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement “as targets for expedited removal under an unprecedented legal framework.”

Notably, Wyden — the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight over the Office of Refugee Resettlement — said the “vast majority” of the children on the list have legal representation in their immigration proceedings.

“Given the imminent threat to these children's safety and legal rights, time is of the essence,” Wyden wrote. “I demand the immediate suspension of any screening initiative and planned removal action involving children in ORR care.”

An HHS spokesperson said in a statement shared by CNN in a report about Wyden’s letter, “Despite this irresponsible fearmongering, there are no plans to target these children.”

“The Trump Administration is working to identify the parents or legal guardians of unaccompanied alien children in our care because ensuring every child is placed with a properly vetted sponsor is our top priority,” the spokesperson said.

Generic drug manufacturers will have two years to move production to the US or face a 100% import duty from August 2028, President Donald Trump said in a social media post Tuesday.

That levy would then double a year later, to 200%, in August 2029.

“This is done in order to RESHORE Generic Pharmaceutical Production into America, with a penalty to those Companies that decide not to build Plant and Equipment within the stated period of time given to them,” Trump said in the post.

Trump has seized on the cost of drugs as a key driver of affordability concerns ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. He has long complained about differences between what consumers pay in the US compared to foreign markets, and has repeatedly sought to cut that gap. The administration also recently launched a direct-to-consumer discount drug sales platform it branded as TrumpRX.

The White House has repeatedly set delayed tariff implementation dates with a looming deadline of devastating consequence as a means of creating leverage for future deals with countries and companies alike.

The president has urged pharmaceutical companies to manufacture more of their medicines in the US, and in April 2025 his administration began a probe of the industry on national security grounds under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.

Trump said his administration’s tariff plans related to patented drugs would remain unchanged. That plan would seek tariffs of as much as 100% on certain imported medicines, though with several major exceptions.

Most of the world’s biggest drugmakers, including Merck & Co. and Eli Lilly & Co., sidestepped the punitive moves by striking agreements with the administration.

How many women hold executive-level positions at top U.S. companies? What is the racial and ethnic breakdown of those roles? What is the gender and racial breakdown of the lowest-paid roles at those companies?

The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know, moving to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.

The EEOC’s Republican majority voted 2-1 Tuesday to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. The proposal is a quiet but profound salvo in President Donald Trump’s shake up of civil rights enforcement, ending a practice that has endured through 10 Republican and Democratic administrations.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity and inclusion practices who has urged white men to come forward with discrimination complaints, argued that requiring companies to submit the annual demographic reports risks encouraging companies to justify discriminatory practices to diversify their workforce.

“It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination,” Lucas said during a hearing ahead of the vote.

Former Democratic EEOC commissioners and civil rights organizations have denounced the proposal, saying it will deprive the agency of a critical tool for uncovering discrimination patterns and tracking how women and racial minorities have fared since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which created the EEOC and prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, national origin and religion.

The EEOC, which receives more than 88,000 worker complaints each year, has historically used the data to guide its enforcement priorities and inform some of its investigations.

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat left on the EEOC since Trump moved to wrest control of the agency, voted against the proposal.