The Department of Homeland Security is asking the Supreme Court to keep building President Trump’s border wall in Texas’ Big Bend region.
A lower court issued an injunction halting construction on Oct. 2 after finding that the government had illegally waived environmental and historic preservation laws. Solicitor General John Sauer said more than 300 miles of wall are affected by that “baseless” ruling.
The case pits some of the country’s most iconic environmental protection laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, against Trump’s marquee campaign promise of sealing off the southern border.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to restart trilateral negotiations with the U.S. and Ukraine on how to end his war on Ukraine.
Russian foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after a meeting with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff that Putin had agreed “in principle” to resume talks after Nov. 10.
The talks will center on building a “security system” for Russia and Ukraine after the war concludes.
Immediately after the meeting, President Trump announced that Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher detained by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine in 2022, had been released by Russian authorities.
A polling firm has admitted to using made-up data to make it appear the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi is a toss-up.
The fake firm, Wedgewood Polling, appeared to promote Democrats over Republicans in the Nov. 3 election. Its polls appeared on the nation’s most prominent aggregation sites, and the fabricated numbers falsely inflated Democrats’ polling advantage.
Wedgewood admitted to faking the data only after its methods were uncovered by polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne. Wedgewood posted a statement admitting to the fake polls and claiming it was an experiment to expose how little scrutiny exists in the polling marketplace.
U.S. Army leaders say they know exactly what is expected of them if a full-blown war breaks out in Europe.
They describe it as preparing for “Ukraine’s worst day,” ensuring the U.S. and its NATO allies are ready to fend off the most aggressive missile and drone onslaughts the Russian military can deliver. At the same time, U.S. forces would need to identify and potentially hit hundreds of enemy targets.
Army Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter says his service would be at the forefront of that theoretical fight in the relatively confined theater of Europe. The Army has about 80,000 personnel stationed in Europe.
American doctoral dissertations in history, literature, philosophy, arts and culture are dropping as fewer people complete them.
The number of humanities dissertations dropped 49% from a historic peak of approximately 33,000 in 2015 to nearly 17,000 in 2025, according to the American Academy of Sciences and Letters. The dataset over-represents large research universities, with declines most pronounced at elite schools.
The study’s findings also show that the tone of words surrounding Western culture became more critical across some 65 years of dissertations.
And finally … Chinese exports of the chemicals used to make fentanyl are continuing despite an agreement last year to halt the flow.
China agreed during an October 2025 meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea to halt all shipments of fentanyl precursors. In exchange, the U.S. cut fentanyl-related tariffs on China from 20% to 10%.
The State Department said China’s role in supplying the chemicals now appears to be carried out through criminal networks that circumvent regulations.
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