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Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments to American cities are a central part of Trump's immigration crackdown. Yet, according to data analyzed by NPR — and interviews with law enforcement and city officials — these actions stretched local police departments thin, disrupted businesses and left city budgets struggling to absorb the fallout.

In Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the immigration enforcement surge resulted in ballooning overtime costs for local police. In Portland, Ore., decreased police manpower contributed to longer call response times.

Amid what the Trump administration has dubbed Operation Metro Surge, businesses in cities like Bloomington and St. Paul, Minn., lost revenue, experienced unrest, and were similarly left with high bills.

The health of American democracy, as measured by those who study it most closely, has settled into a diminished state – stabilizing after a sharp decline last year, but still well below the levels recorded at any point before the start of Donald Trump’s second term, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.

The findings, by the nonpartisan democracy-tracking project Bright Line Watch, which surveys hundreds of US scholars at American colleges and universities, suggest that the erosion of norms detected after Trump’s return to the White House last year has hardened into a new baseline. The public also holds a dim view of American democracy, the most recent survey found, but are sharply divided along partisan lines over how well the system is functioning.

A large explosion at an oil refinery near the Texas coast on Monday shot plumes of smoke into the air and forced nearby residents to shelter in place, according to officials.

No one was injured in the explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Houston, Mayor Charlotte M. Moses said. She urged residents in parts of the west side of the city to stay put, saying fire fighters had arrived.

The explosion comes amid a spike in gas prices driven by uncertainty over the global oil supply because of the Iran war.

The U.S. Defense Department will remove media offices from the Pentagon after a federal judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit challenging limits on reporters’ access to the building, a department official announced Monday.

An area of the Pentagon known as “Correspondents’ Corridor” that reporters have used for decades to cover the U.S. military will close immediately, department spokesperson Sean Parnell said. Journalists will eventually be able to work from an “annex” outside the building, which he said “will be available when ready.” He offered no detail about how long that will take.

The Pentagon Press Association said the announcement “is a clear violation of the letter and spirit of last week’s ruling.”

The US claims foreign-made routers pose national security risks.

In December, the Federal Communications Commission banned all future drones made in foreign countries from being imported into the United States, unless or until their maker gets an exemption. Now, the FCC has done the exact same for consumer networking gear, citing “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States and to the safety and security of U.S. persons.”

If you already have a Wi-Fi or wired router, you can keep on using it — and companies that have already gotten FCC radio authorization for a specific foreign-made product can continue to import that product.

But since the vast majority — if not all — consumer routers are manufactured outside the United States, the vast majority of future consumer routers are now banned. By adding all foreign-made consumer routers to its Covered List, the FCC is saying it will no longer authorize their radios, which de facto bans new devices from import into the country.

The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel projects in the US.

The current administration has thrown up roadblocks at every turn for offshore wind projects; a type of energy that President Donald Trump has personally reviled for years. After trying and failing to block construction on more mature projects, this announcement is the first sign of a new strategy: The federal government is paying to stop wind farms before they begin.

A federal judge is allowing the release of deposition videos of two former DOGE staffers, ruling that the risk of "embarrassment and reputational harm" is not enough to overcome the public interest in the videos.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Monday lifted an earlier order requiring a group of nonprofits to remove the videos from the internet after lawyers with the Justice Department argued that the former DOGE staffers faced threats because of the depositions' release.

While Judge McMahon acknowledged that the former staffers faced threats, she said the DOJ could not prove a "particularized harm" to the former staffers that would overcome the public interest in their official conduct as government employees.

Federal immigration agents will “hate” being deployed to assist airport security operations amid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staffing shortages, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official told Newsweek.

“The HSI agents will hate it,” the official said, referring to Homeland Security Investigations personnel. “I’ve not heard any talk of this within ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations). They want us arresting and deporting aliens.”

The official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said they first heard about the reassignment when they were contacted by Newsweek over the weekend.

Conservative justices appeared ready to strike down so-called “grace periods” for election officials to count mail-in ballots after Election Day.

Signaling a threat to millions of voters who cast mail-in ballots across the country and overseas, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared ready Monday to bless a recent push by Republicans to restrict how and when late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted.

The Republican National Committee, and Mississippi’s Republican and Libertarian parties have asked justices to unwind a Mississippi law passed in 2020 that allowed absentee voters to mail in their ballots with a postmark as late as Election Day. Under the state law, election officials were ordered to count ballots received as late as five days after Election Day. (Over 30 states currently have grace period rules for mail-in ballots that are similar.)

Paul Clement, the attorney representing the Republican National Committee, told the justices that all ballots, including mail-in ballots, must be received “into official custody” and counted by Election Day or be invalidated.

Seemingly suddenly disinterested in preserving states’ rights, Justices Neal Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly appeared to share the RNC’s sentiments about the necessity of a singular Election Day —or one without grace periods for the counting of ballots. Justice Samuel Alito appeared to put a fine point on the majority’s grievances.

Gleaming trails of bomblets in night sky have become familiar to Israelis as Tehran exploits apparent vulnerability

The Guardian, which reviewed the impact of dozens of Iranian strikes alongside statements from Israeli officials, has identified at least 19 ballistic missiles carrying cluster warheads that penetrated Israeli airspace and struck urban areas since the beginning of the war with Iran on 28 February.

Those attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, reflecting a broader shift in Iran’s tactics that appears to have exposed a vulnerability in Israel’s air defences.

Since the start of the war, Iran’s cluster munitions – which disperse dozens of bomblets mid-air – have tested Israel’s highly advanced, multi-tier missile defence network, including Iron Dome, which is designed to counter threats across ranges, altitudes and speeds, exposing gaps that interception alone has struggled to close.

New online accounts on Polymarket platform betting a total of $70,000 suggest ‘some degree of inside info’

Several accounts on the online platform Polymarket laid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts.

Eight accounts, all newly created around 21 March, bet a total of nearly $70,000 (£52,000) on there being a ceasefire. They stand to make nearly $820,000 if such a deal is reached before 31 March.

An account that made the same bet was created shortly before the US struck Iran on 28 February. It also placed a winning bet on those strikes, which raised similar questions around insider trading, and so far has bet on nothing else.

The new accounts all appear to have been created late last week, around the time when the US president, Donald Trump, appeared to first double down on war with Iran, then suggest in an after-markets Truth Social post that he was considering “winding down” military operations.

Donald Trump has claimed there have been talks between the United States and Iran over the past day in which the two sides had “major points of agreement”, appearing to avert a potentially severe escalation of the conflict.

Tehran has denied the claim, in which Trump also speculated that a deal could soon be done to end the war. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson said no talks had been held with the US since the bombing campaign began 24 days ago.

Trump’s threat at the weekend to “hit and obliterate” Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure if Tehran did not allow shipping to move freely through the strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s threat to destroy infrastructure across the Middle East in retaliation, had raised fears of a deepening conflict and global economic crisis.