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Browse major news stories and see what officials have said.

Aug 23, 2026· Updated

Trump Signs an Executive Order Cutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule and Splitting the MMR Shot Into Three, and the Republican Chairman of the Senate Health Committee Calls It "a Stupid Thing to Do"

On August 10, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans," standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The order directs the federal government to cut the list of diseases against which all children are universally recommended to be vaccinated — reporting put the change at 17 or 18 shots down to 11 — and states that the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine "should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available," with childhood immunizations given at separate medical visits "to the maximum extent feasible." It also directs federal agencies to support litigation involving parental authority and religious exemptions to school-entry requirements. Trump repeatedly tied the changes to autism, a link that decades of research have not found. The sharpest congressional criticism came from a Republican: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, posted on X the day the order was signed that "this executive order is wrong" and that "the President does not have the expertise to make these changes." Cassidy escalated on a Sunday show six days later, arguing the split MMR would turn two shots into six, six copays and six missed work days, and calling the policy "just a stupid thing to do" and "potentially tragic." Congressional Democrats — including the caucus's physician members — attacked the order as politics overriding science, with House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) saying it "lets political appointees attempt to overrule decades of peer-reviewed science." Medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, said no new evidence justified the change and warned about timing: U.S. measles cases are at a 35-year high. States pushed back too. School vaccine requirements are set at the state level and are unaffected by the order; Pennsylvania said its guidelines would not change, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dismissed the order as "a thoughtless piece of paper," and the Governors Public Health Alliance said the order "circumvents that process and defies scientific consensus."

“Spreading out that vaccination schedule, I think, does make sense — [it gives] an infant human body the ability to actually absorb and deal with that rate of vaccination.”
Byron Donalds (R-FL) · Aug 23, 2026

Aug 23, 2026· Updated

Eleven Weeks Before the Midterms, Hakeem Jeffries Says He Does Not Support Medicare for All or "the DSA Agenda" — and Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders Push Back the Same Day

On the August 16, 2026 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked directly whether he supports Medicare for All. He said he does not — "It's not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support" — and separately declined to embrace the Democratic Socialists of America's program, saying "I don't support the DSA agenda as has been articulated by the DSA itself." Jeffries framed the party's 2026 message around affordability and a "broad caucus" containing progressives, New Democrats and Blue Dogs. Jeffries had co-sponsored the Medicare for All Act in 2019 and 2021 but did not co-sponsor the 2025 version introduced by Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), appearing on the same program, took the opposite position, calling Medicare for All "arguably the most important priority" and predicting most House Democrats would back it. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the policy's longtime author, weighed in publicly the same weekend, citing polling showing 64 percent support. The exchange put the party's internal fight over health care on national television with 11 weeks until the November midterms, as Democrats eye a House majority in January.

“We are facing the most dangerous, radical, and frankly, Kristen, weird Democrats I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Tim Scott (R-SC) · Aug 23, 2026

Trump Calls Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie "LOSERS ALL" in a Late-Night Post — and Greene Answers That He Is the "Trojan Horse" and She Wishes She Had "Never Supported Him"

At roughly 10:30 p.m. on Friday, August 21, 2026 — hours after Republicans from cattle country spent the day attacking his decision to waive tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef — President Trump posted a long Truth Social message attacking three of the most prominent figures in the breakaway "America First" faction that has been forming against him. "Tucker Carlson just met with Lightweight 'Former' Congressman, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie 'Traitor' Greene, LOSERS ALL!" the post began. Trump wrote that Carlson's "Views" had "fallen through the floor," called him "totally irrelevant" and "a very Low I.Q. individual," said Greene had gone "from Ultra Conservative to a Liberal 'Fool'" and described her as "a highly neurotic young woman," and called Massie "a failed politician, and a real JERK." He closed by mocking the idea of the three running together: "What a team this would be, THREE LOSERS, and a pocketful of change!" The post referred to a gathering at Carlson's home in Maine in early August. On August 1, Greene — who resigned her Georgia House seat in January and has since left the Republican Party — posted a photograph of herself at a table with Carlson, Massie and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March over the Iran war. Greene wrote at the time: "We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he's betrayed us all." Kent later said publicly that the group was trying to build a new anti-war movement and had tried to persuade Carlson to run for president in 2028. The White House answered that gathering by calling the participants "an embarrassing collection of mostly whiny turncoats." The responses to Trump's post came the next day and were sharper than the post itself. Greene wrote that Trump's "demeanor, name calling, absurd and reckless rhetoric is unbecoming of the office of the president" and that "at this point, he's no different than an internet troll," then went further than she previously had: "now as president he's been revealed to be the Trojan horse who enforces many of the policies he claimed to be against... I'm sorry I didn't see it earlier and wish I had never supported him." Massie tied the outburst directly to the week's news — the beef backlash, the national debt crossing $40 trillion, and the Iran war — and wrote that Trump "posted this because we are the three he should have listened to." The exchange matters because it is the sharpest public break yet between a sitting president and the media-and-movement wing that carried him, eleven weeks before a midterm election in which Trump's own party is already treating the Iran war and the cost of living as liabilities. Trump himself acknowledged the electoral risk in the post, writing that the faction "could probably take a couple of points away from whatever the Republican ticket happens to be."

“Trump’s getting roasted today for his disastrous beef policy, the debt hit $40 trillion because of his "big beautiful bill," he stepped-in-it in Iran, and he’s weeks away from failing his mid-terms in November. He posted this because we are the three he should have listened to.”
Thomas Massie (R-KY) · Aug 22, 2026

A Republican Senator Has Frozen Every One of Trump’s Postal Board Nominees Ten Weeks Before a Mail-Heavy Midterm — and Says He Will Not Lift the Hold Until Service Matches "the Days of the Pony Express"

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota has placed a blanket hold on every one of President Trump's nominees to the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, blocking floor confirmation of the entire slate. His grievance is service, not politics: first-class mail that is supposed to arrive in three days is taking closer to ten in South Dakota, veterans' prescriptions arrive late or not at all, and bills reach constituents on the day they are due. Rounds announced the holds on Aug. 12 alongside a bill to strip bonuses from USPS executives, and on Aug. 21 told the Postal Service he would release the hold only when service "returns to levels at least equal to the days of the Pony Express." By Aug. 28 USPS had told the South Dakota delegation it would upgrade its Sioux Falls facility, and Rounds's office said it was in talks with the White House. The hold lands on a slate that is already contested for a different reason. Trump has nominated only Republicans to a board that has been bipartisan by tradition, and in July the Homeland Security Committee's ranking Democrat, Gary Peters, asked Chairman Rand Paul to freeze the nominees until the administration puts forward Democratic names as well. Two nominees, Jeffrey Brodsky and William Gallo, were otherwise headed for a floor vote.

“It is my intent to only release this blanket hold when my concerns are fully resolved by USPS leadership and service returns to levels at least equal to the days of the Pony Express.”
Mike Rounds (R-SD) · Aug 21, 2026

The First Deportation Flight to Haiti After TPS Ends Lands in Cap-Haïtien With 161 People — Into a Country the U.S. Government Itself Bars Its Own Citizens From Flying Into

On Thursday, August 20, 2026, an ICE charter carrying 161 people left Alexandria, Louisiana and landed at Cap-Haïtien — the first deportation flight to Haiti since the Trump administration formally terminated Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals, a termination the Supreme Court affirmed in June. Those aboard included former TPS holders as well as people who had completed prison sentences. DHS has said it plans twice-weekly flights. The destination is itself the story: the U.S. government's own ban on commercial flights into Port-au-Prince, in force through early September because of gang violence, forced the flight to land 130 miles north in Cap-Haïtien. The United Nations has warned that Haiti — where armed groups control most of the capital and more than a million people are displaced — cannot absorb mass returns. Local officials in Cap-Haïtien said they were not ready. Democratic lawmakers who have spent two years trying to extend Haitian TPS by statute responded within hours. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who led the House effort to extend the designation, called the deportations "cruel and shameful." Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), co-chair of the Haiti Caucus, said the removals were "a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations." Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), whose Cincinnati-area district has one of the country's larger recently arrived Haitian populations, said the deportations were "inhumane." Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) called the flight "utterly shameful," and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said it was "cruel" to strip the protections now. No congressional Republican was found on the record about the flight in the first 48 hours.

“Our Haitian neighbors asked only for safety from the gang violence, rampant sexual exploitation, and vicious anarchy that has totally overtaken their nation. Donald Trump saw their suffering, and asked only how he could make it worse. His act to force thousands of men, women, and children back into the same hell they barely escaped with their lives is a humanitarian betrayal that will stain America for generations.”
Yvette Clarke (D-NY) · Aug 21, 2026

Trump’s Pardon Attorney Ed Martin Leaves the Justice Department to Fight "Legal Battles" for the Midterms — the Same Day House Judiciary Democrats Report That the Clemency Operation He Ran Erased $1.7 Billion Owed to Crime Victims

On Friday, August 21, 2026, President Trump announced on Truth Social that Ed Martin — his U.S. pardon attorney, former head of the Justice Department's "Weaponization Working Group," and former interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — is leaving the administration to work on election litigation for the November midterms and the 2028 presidential race. Attorney General Todd Blanche called Martin a "patriot who loves this nation"; Martin posted "Proud to serve. Fight Fight Fight." Martin had been one of the most contested figures in the second Trump Justice Department. He replaced career pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who was fired in 2025 and said the office had been politicized. He was named a special attorney on mortgage-fraud investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James — sending James a letter urging her to resign "as an act of good faith" and posing for photographs outside her Brooklyn home — and the case against James was later dismissed when a judge found the prosecutor who brought it had been illegally appointed. Martin was removed as head of the Weaponization Working Group earlier in 2026 while keeping the pardon attorney title. The same day, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, released a 25-page committee staff report titled "Pardons, Inc.: How Trump and His Clemency-for-Cash Racket Let White-Collar Criminals and International Drug Dealers Walk Free and Dodge Billions in Restitution Owed to Their Victims." The report finds that Trump's clemency grants have wiped out nearly $1.7 billion in restitution, fines and forfeitures owed to victims and taxpayers — up from the committee Democrats' $1.3 billion estimate a year earlier — and argues the White House replaced the DOJ's traditional review criteria with a pay-to-play process running on political contributions, Trump family business ties and MAGA-connected intermediaries. Cases cataloged in the report include Nikola founder Trevor Milton, pardoned after $1.8 million in donations to Trump-aligned committees and released from roughly $700 million in restitution; health care executive Paul Walczak, pardoned weeks after his mother attended a $1 million Mar-a-Lago fundraiser, escaping $4.5 million in stolen payroll taxes; Jason Galanis, who avoided some $84 million in restitution after testifying for Republicans during impeachment proceedings; and Ozy Media's Carlos Watson, whose $37 million in victim restitution was forgiven. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

“I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights.”
Donald Trump (R-FL) · Aug 21, 2026

A Progressive State Senator Beats Roughly $5 Million in AIPAC-Aligned Spending to Win Eric Swalwell’s Old Seat — and Aisha Wahab Becomes the First Afghan American Elected to Congress

The Associated Press called California's 14th District special election for state Sen. Aisha Wahab on Thursday, August 20, 2026, two days after polls closed, with Wahab leading fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez 53 percent to 47 percent with more than 95 percent of the vote counted. Wahab will serve the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell's term, which runs through January 2027; Swalwell resigned in April 2026 amid sexual misconduct allegations he denies. Wahab becomes the first Afghan American elected to the U.S. Congress. She had already been the first Afghan American to hold elected office in the United States, winning a Hayward City Council seat in 2018, and the first Muslim woman and first Afghan American in the California Legislature. The race drew unusually heavy outside money for a special election. The United Democracy Project, the super PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent roughly $2.5 million against Wahab in the final weeks alone, with reported totals across AIPAC-aligned entities running to about $5 million or more. Wahab, who has called Israel's conduct in Gaza a genocide and supports ending U.S. military aid to Israel, made the spending itself a campaign issue and described the advertising as "$5m of lies." Hernandez, the president of the BART Board of Directors and a former mayor of Dublin, conceded and said she hopes for a different outcome in November, when the two are set to face each other again for the full two-year term under a newly redistricted map. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) congratulated Wahab on what he called a "decisive victory." Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Pete Aguilar had earlier lobbied Wahab against running.

“Congratulations Aisha Wahab on your decisive victory. I look forward to working with you on Medicare for All, a living wage, and ending the war in Iran.”
Ro Khanna (D-CA) · Aug 21, 2026

Interior Finalizes the Deepest Colorado River Cuts on Record — 1.25 Million Acre-Feet a Year, With Arizona Absorbing 760,000 — as Lake Mead and Lake Powell Fall to Levels Not Seen Since 1963

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed the Record of Decision and the 2027–2028 Operating Guidelines for the Colorado River on August 21, 2026, ordering the Lower Basin states to cut 1.25 million acre-feet of water use a year — Arizona 760,000, California 440,000, Nevada 50,000 — and adopting a ten-year decision framework through 2036. Combined storage in Lake Powell and Lake Mead is now lower than at any time since Powell began filling in 1963, after a record-low 2025–26 snowpack. Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, who had warned three weeks earlier that the draft framework could place an "unfair burden" on their state, welcomed the final plan and said every basin state now needs to do its part. Gov. Katie Hobbs said the plan saved Arizona from cuts that "would have crippled our economy" while protecting Upper Basin reservoirs at Lake Mead's expense. Gov. Gavin Newsom called it "a necessary step." Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, the only Republican governor among the three Lower Basin states, was the harshest, saying the federal government is "positioning to short Nevada" — the state with just 1.8 percent of the river's allocation.

“These decisions provide a water management strategy for Basin stakeholders to respond to the prolonged drought by incorporating flexible tools and voluntary actions while leaving room for consensus agreements.”
Andrea Travnicek (R) · Aug 21, 2026

Israel’s National Security Minister Says Israel Should Kill "30 to 40" People in Gaza Every Night Because "There Are People There Who Are Not Worthy of Life" — and Two of the Senate’s Most Reliably Pro-Israel Democrats Tell Him to Resign

In an interview recorded for the debut episode of a podcast hosted by former Hamas hostage Rom Braslavski and aired the weekend of August 15–16, 2026, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel should be carrying out "targeted assassinations" in Gaza at a rate of "30 to 40 every night" — and made clear he did not mean only people posing an immediate threat. Ben-Gvir, who was criticizing the reduced tempo of Israeli operations under the armistice, said of Palestinians in Gaza that there are people there "who are not worthy of life." In the same conversation he called for Palestinians to be encouraged to leave Gaza permanently and said he viewed "all of Gaza as ours." The remarks circulated widely on Sunday, August 16, and drew condemnation from a narrow but notable slice of Washington: two Senate Democrats who have consistently voted to keep U.S. weapons flowing to Israel and have resisted party pressure to block arms sales. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) called the comments "horrific and completely indefensible" and became the first sitting U.S. senator to say outright that Ben-Gvir should leave the Israeli government, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly disavow him. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, followed on August 20, calling the remarks "abhorrent and a shameful part of the Netanyahu government." The episode is a marker of where the pro-Israel center of the Senate Democratic caucus has moved: the officials calling for a sitting Israeli cabinet minister's removal are not the caucus's left flank but two of its most dependable supporters of U.S. military aid to Israel. German lawmakers separately called for EU sanctions on Ben-Gvir over the same comments. The Trump administration did not issue a public statement on the remarks in the days that followed.

“Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has once again made violent, dehumanizing comments about innocent civilians in Gaza. It is abhorrent and a shameful part of the Netanyahu government. He should be long gone from any government role and publicly condemned by anyone who claims to care about civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, in the region.”
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) · Aug 20, 2026

San Diego County Votes 3-2 to Throw ICE and Border Patrol Off Its Firing Ranges — the Elected Sheriff Bans ICE but Keeps CBP, and the Acting ICE Director Calls It "Political Obstruction"

On August 18, 2026, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to terminate the agreements that let U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection train at the San Diego Regional Firearms Training Center on Alta Road in Otay Mesa — a county-owned facility a few miles from the Mexican border — and at a Navy facility the county leases. The proposal came from Supervisors Paloma Aguirre and Terra Lawson-Remer, who framed it as a refusal to let county property underwrite federal immigration raids. Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe provided the third vote; Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond voted no, arguing that badly behaved agents are an argument for more training, not less. Separately and on the same day, Sheriff Kelly Martinez — an independently elected officer who controls the range's day-to-day operations — announced she was barring ICE from sheriff's training sites and firearms qualifications, but would continue to allow CBP access, citing the harm to cross-border communities if the roughly 1,700 CBP officers who qualify there had to go elsewhere. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott called the board's vote "unprecedented." On August 20, Acting ICE Director David Venturella issued a statement saying the agency "will not allow political obstruction" to keep its officers from training.

“ICE will not allow political obstruction to prevent our officers and agents from receiving the training they need to safely and effectively enforce the laws of the United States and carry out President Trump's mandate to restore integrity to our immigration system.”
David Venturella (R) · Aug 20, 2026

Aug 20, 2026· Updated

A 4-Foot-11 Man Walking to Work in Arlington Is Tasered by ICE and Wakes Up With a Brain Bleed — Then the Ankle Monitor ICE Fitted Him With Blocks the MRI His Doctors Ordered

At about 6:30 a.m. on August 11, 2026, José Mejía Hernández, 45, was walking to work in Arlington, Virginia when two trucks pulled up and men got out and ran at him. He did not know who they were, according to his attorney, and he ran. He believes he was hit in the back with a stun device. He remembers nothing after that. He woke in a hospital with a brain hemorrhage, blackened eyes, facial lacerations and cuts requiring stitches — and two ICE officers at his bedside, who his lawyer Carlos Jurado says never left, meaning he was never given a private moment with his doctors. He was discharged within 72 hours, fitted with a GPS ankle monitor and handed immigration forms. When doctors ordered an MRI more than a week later to measure the bleeding and swelling in his brain, the metal ankle monitor made the scan impossible, and ICE refused to remove it. "Mr. Mejia Hernandez is 4'11," Jurado said. "He's 125 pounds. This man is not a Division 1 athlete." The Department of Homeland Security disputes the account. It said Mejía Hernández "attempted to flee from the scene requiring ICE to use necessary force to gain control of the situation," and called it "FALSE" that he was unconscious and woke in a hospital bed, saying officers rendered aid and asked the responsive individual if he was okay. The incident occurred a day after an ICE agent pointed a loaded gun at U.S. citizen Carolina Molina a few miles away in Falls Church — an encounter her dashcam contradicted DHS's account of — and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said he was "certainly very concerned that it's the same group of ICE agents running the corridor along Columbia Pike." Beyer called the injuries "extremely disturbing" and told constituents to "exercise extreme caution," saying ICE agents in Northern Virginia "are disappearing people, and they are all too frequently becoming out of control or violent." Arlington's elected prosecutor and county board chair both said publicly that they were investigating what they could. Arlington Commonwealth's Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti said "no one is above the law — not any individual, not law enforcement, and not federal officials." County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said ICE does not communicate with the county about its operations at all.

“We’re certainly very concerned that it’s the same group of ICE agents running the corridor along Columbia Pike.”
Don Beyer (D-VA) · Aug 20, 2026

Aug 20, 2026· Updated

Four Armed ICE Agents Show Up at a Sacramento Immigration Law Firm With a List From Washington and Ask to Tour the Offices "For Beds" — Then Threaten to Come Back at 3 A.M. and Breach the Windows

On the morning of Friday, August 14, 2026, at least four armed ICE officers arrived in a convoy of vehicles at the Morris Law Group, an immigration law firm in the North Natomas neighborhood of Sacramento. Staff say the agents told them they had a list from Washington, D.C. that named the building's address as the primary mailing address for a large number of people they planned to arrest, and asked to tour the office looking for beds. The firm serves as a mailing address for clients working through the asylum and citizenship process — a standard arrangement in immigration practice, and the reason its address appears repeatedly in federal records. Employees turned the agents away for lacking a judicial warrant. According to the firm, the agents stayed in the parking lot for roughly an hour, and one threatened to return at 3 a.m. and breach the windows to force entry. The Department of Homeland Security's account is that officers approached "an unmarked door" they believed was a target address and left once they realized it was a law firm — an account the firm disputes, noting its signage and the length of the standoff. California's two senators announced investigations. Adam Schiff called the attempted warrantless entry unconscionable; Alex Padilla said he does not put anything past the administration. Sacramento City Council member Lisa Kaplan, whose district includes the firm, called it a direct assault on the rule of law. On August 27, 2026, Schiff and Padilla formally demanded a federal investigation into the operation.

“The attempt by ICE to target an immigration law firm with an illegal search in District 1 is a flagrant abuse of power meant purely for harassment and intimidation and a direct assault on the rule of law.”
Lisa Kaplan (D-CA) · Aug 20, 2026

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