Supreme Court Opens the Door to Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Restrictions Ahead of Midterms
The Supreme Court has removed a major legal obstacle blocking President Donald Trump’s effort to impose new federal requirements on mail-in ballots, potentially allowing parts of the administration’s election plan to move forward just months before the November midterms. In a 6–3 decision Monday, the Court stayed an injunction that had prevented federal agencies from implementing portions of Trump’s March executive order on federal elections. But the justices did not rule that the ballot restrictions themselves are legal. Instead, the majority concluded that the states challenging the order had gone to court too early, before federal agencies had taken final action to implement the policies. One of the most consequential provisions directs the U.S. Postal Service to pursue new rules for ballots sent through the mail. Those rules could require states to use approved election-mail markings and barcodes, submit ballot-envelope designs for Postal Service review and provide information identifying voters expected to receive ballots by mail. The administration says the measures are intended to strengthen election integrity, while states challenging the order argue that the federal government is intruding on their constitutional authority to administer elections. The Supreme Court’s action does not mean the new requirements immediately take effect nationwide. A separate nationwide injunction issued in another lawsuit continues to block implementation of the Postal Service provisions for the November election, and that dispute is still moving through the courts. The administration is seeking to have that restriction removed as well. The timing makes the legal battle particularly significant. States are already preparing ballots and voting systems for the November midterms, with some deadlines only weeks away. If the remaining injunction is lifted and federal agencies move ahead with the new requirements, election officials could face substantial changes to mail-ballot procedures close to Election Day. The Supreme Court also made clear that Monday’s decision does not prevent future legal challenges once agencies take final action, meaning the fight over how Americans vote by mail is far from settled.
Nevada Is Suing the Federal Government Over Massive Colorado River Water Cuts
Nevada has sued the federal government over a new plan for managing the shrinking Colorado River, warning that the rules could eventually strip the state of more than 70% of its river allocation and place an extraordinary burden on the Las Vegas region. The lawsuit was filed Monday by the State of Nevada, the Colorado River Commission of Nevada and the Southern Nevada Water Authority against the Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation. It challenges a newly finalized federal framework requiring Arizona, California and Nevada — the river’s three Lower Basin states — to make substantial reductions in water use beginning in 2027, while the four Upper Basin states face no mandatory cuts under the plan. The immediate reductions require the three Lower Basin states to collectively use about 1.25 million fewer acre-feet of Colorado River water annually over the next two years. But Nevada says the longer-term consequences could be far more severe. Under one shortage level outlined in the federal framework, Nevada’s annual reduction could reach 213,556 acre-feet — roughly 71% of the state’s normal 300,000-acre-foot Colorado River entitlement. That matters enormously to southern Nevada. The Las Vegas Valley relies heavily on water from the Colorado River, while the region contains roughly two-thirds of Nevada’s population and much of its economic activity. Gov. Joe Lombardo said the lawsuit is not about political positioning but the survival of a community central to the state’s economy. Nevada argues that federal officials failed to adequately consider alternatives or fully analyze the economic, environmental and public-health consequences of the new rules. The legal fight is the latest escalation in a much larger struggle over a river that supplies water to about one in every 10 Americans and supports roughly 15% of U.S. food production. Years of drought, declining reservoir levels and competing demands have left the seven Colorado River states unable to agree on how future shortages should be shared. Nevada is now asking a federal court to declare the government’s plan unlawful and block it until the Interior Department completes a legally sufficient review.
Reno Wildfire Destroys 32 Homes as Firefighters Gain Ground
The massive wildfire that forced evacuation orders and warnings for roughly 90,000 people around Reno, Nevada, has destroyed at least 32 homes, but firefighters are now making significant progress against the blaze. The Hawk Fire has burned more than 15,000 acres northwest of Reno and was 27% contained in the latest official assessment, a sharp improvement after the fire remained completely uncontained through much of Monday. Six additional homes have been damaged, and officials have warned that the property-loss figures could increase as assessment teams continue examining burned areas. Evacuation orders have also been scaled back in some neighborhoods. Roughly 23,000 people remained under mandatory evacuation orders in the latest reporting, while another 40,000 were being advised to remain ready to leave. Some residents in northwest Reno have already been permitted to return home, although authorities warn that conditions can change quickly. Seven people have been injured in the fire, including four civilians and three firefighters. More than 900 personnel are now battling the blaze, with crews arriving from across the United States as well as Australia and New Zealand. The fire has been determined to be human-caused, although investigators have not said whether it was accidental or intentional. The Hawk Fire erupted Saturday and spread rapidly through extremely dry vegetation toward populated areas around Reno. Improved winds have helped firefighters establish containment lines, but hot temperatures, low humidity and dry brush continue to create dangerous conditions as crews work toward bringing the fire fully under control. ——————– Related: Nevada Is Suing the Federal Government Over Massive Colorado River Water Cuts
The FTC Is Sending Out New Refunds — Here’s Who Could Be Getting Money
The Federal Trade Commission is sending out a new wave of consumer refunds this month, with money going to hundreds of thousands of people affected by cases involving Grubhub, AT&T, Amazon Flex and other companies and business operations. The largest of the new August programs involves Grubhub. The FTC is sending 640,038 payments totaling more than $23.8 million to eligible drivers and diners. The agency and Illinois Attorney General had accused Grubhub of practices including misleading drivers about potential earnings and preventing some diners from accessing accounts and redeeming gift cards. Recipients getting checks have 90 days to cash them, while PayPal payments must be accepted within 30 days. Former AT&T customers are also receiving another chance to collect money from a settlement involving the company’s throttling of unlimited wireless data plans. The FTC previously returned more than $5.6 million to customers, and this month it is sending Zelle payments to eligible people who did not cash an earlier check or accept a PayPal payment. Eligible Amazon Flex drivers are similarly receiving Zelle payments after previous rounds returned more than $60.6 million in withheld tips to drivers. These new Amazon payments are going to eligible drivers who did not cash an earlier check. Two additional August programs involve Helping America Group and Blueprint to Wealth. The FTC is sending 9,522 payments totaling more than $463,000 in the Helping America Group debt-relief case, while 2,005 payments totaling more than $333,000 are going to eligible consumers in the Blueprint to Wealth business-opportunity case. Both are additional rounds of refunds following earlier distributions. How FTC Refunds Work FTC refunds generally begin after the agency resolves a case involving a company or business accused of illegal practices and money is available to return to affected consumers. Depending on the case, eligible consumers may receive a check in the mail or instructions for accepting a digital payment, and some refunds are sent automatically using information already available to the FTC. Consumers should pay close attention to the deadline included with their payment. Checks typically must be cashed within the period specified in the notice, while digital payments may have a shorter acceptance window. In several of the FTC’s current August refund programs, recipients have 90 days to cash checks and 30 days to accept certain electronic payments. Watch Out for FTC Refund Scams Consumers should be particularly cautious if someone contacts them claiming they must pay a fee or transfer money to receive an FTC refund. The FTC says it never requires consumers to pay money to get a refund. Some payments are being sent automatically by check, PayPal or Zelle, depending on the case. Anyone who believes they may qualify can check the FTC’s official active-refund program list for details rather than responding to an unsolicited message claiming to offer government money.
Nvidia Built the AI Boom — Now It Wants a Bigger Piece of It
Nvidia became one of the world’s most valuable companies by supplying the chips powering the artificial intelligence boom. Now it is pushing well beyond those chips, expanding into AI models, data-center infrastructure and even the financing needed to build the enormous computing systems on which the industry depends. The company has been steadily building its Nemotron family of open AI models, including a new Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model designed for increasingly sophisticated AI agents. That puts Nvidia deeper into a part of the market occupied by companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google: the software and models that actually power AI applications, rather than simply the hardware underneath them. At the same time, Nvidia is helping reshape how the physical AI boom gets financed. Earlier this month, the company announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to create financing platforms intended to mobilize more than $500 billion in outside capital over time for AI infrastructure. The idea is to make it easier for AI companies, cloud providers and other businesses to finance the expensive computing systems Nvidia calls “AI factories.” That strategy could strengthen Nvidia’s position at multiple points in the AI economy. A company building an AI system might use Nvidia chips, Nvidia networking and software, Nvidia-supported models and infrastructure financed through capital platforms developed with Nvidia’s partners. The more pieces of that ecosystem Nvidia helps provide, the less its future depends solely on selling the next generation of GPUs. The shift also reveals just how large Nvidia believes the AI buildout could become. The company that supplied much of the computing power behind the first phase of the generative-AI boom is increasingly positioning itself around the infrastructure, software and capital needed for what comes next. Nvidia isn’t walking away from the chip business that made it an AI powerhouse — it’s building a much larger business around it.
90,000 People Face Evacuation as Fast-Moving Wildfire Threatens Reno, Nevada
Nearly 90,000 people in the Reno, Nevada, area have been ordered to evacuate or warned to prepare to leave as the fast-moving Hawk Fire threatens heavily populated communities in Washoe County. About 42,000 people have been told to leave immediately, while another 45,000 are in areas where residents have been warned to get ready to evacuate. Six people have been injured, including three emergency responders, and some homes have burned as strong winds and extremely dry conditions complicate efforts to control the fire. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo has declared a state of emergency in Washoe County, directing state agencies to support the local response through Nevada’s Emergency Operations Center. The National Guard has also been ordered to assist firefighting and law-enforcement operations. Officials have described conditions as rapidly changing and are urging residents in evacuation zones to leave when directed rather than wait for conditions to worsen. The Hawk Fire was first reported Saturday morning near Hawk Meadow Trail west of Reno and has spread toward developed areas surrounding the city. Local officials say the fire was human-caused, although the specific circumstances have not yet been disclosed. Large air tankers and helicopters have been deployed as crews battle the fire from the ground and air, while widespread road closures and evacuation zones affect communities around Reno. The emergency is also disrupting normal life across the region. Most Washoe County schools are closed Monday, shelters have been opened for displaced residents, and thousands of homes remain within evacuation areas. Central Reno is outside the immediate evacuation zone, but the scale of the warnings underscores what makes the Hawk Fire particularly dangerous: unlike many Western wildfires that burn primarily through sparsely populated land, this one is pressing against a major American population center.
Father of U.S. Navy Sailor Detained by Immigration Authorities While Son Serves at Sea
Luis Manuel Aviles Roa, the Nicaraguan father of a U.S. Navy sailor serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, has been taken into federal immigration custody while his son remains deployed at sea. Aviles Roa was detained by U.S. Border Patrol in Key West, Florida, and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. His son, Joshua Aviles, said his father had a driver’s license, Social Security card and authorization to work in the United States and that the family had been waiting for a decision on his green-card application. The Department of Homeland Security, however, says Aviles Roa entered the country illegally and will remain in ICE custody while removal proceedings move forward. DHS said having a family member serving in the U.S. military does not provide an exemption from immigration law. The detention comes while Joshua Aviles is serving aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that has spent much of its current deployment operating far from home. The Navy said this month that the carrier had been deployed for 266 days, including 200 days in a combat zone, and that its sailors and Marines had faced unusually demanding conditions before the ship’s planned return home. For military families, deployments already mean long stretches of separation and limited control over events at home. The Navy maintains family-support programs specifically to help sailors and their relatives navigate problems while ships are away. In this case, Aviles has publicly expressed distress over his father’s detention while he remains thousands of miles away aboard the carrier. The case puts two federal priorities into an unusual collision: enforcing U.S. immigration law while an immediate family member of the person being detained is actively serving the country overseas. DHS maintains that military service by a relative does not change an individual’s immigration obligations. For Aviles, however, the enforcement action is unfolding while he remains aboard a U.S. warship, unable to return home and deal with his father’s case in person.
NASA’s New Space Telescope Will See 100 Times More Sky Than Its Famous Hubble Telescope
NASA is preparing to launch a new space telescope capable of surveying enormous stretches of the universe far faster than Hubble, giving astronomers a powerful new tool for studying everything from distant galaxies to planets beyond our solar system. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Sunday, August 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA, SpaceX and the Roman mission team completed their Flight Readiness Review Friday, clearing one of the final major hurdles before liftoff. The mission is arriving remarkably early: NASA says Roman’s August launch date is eight months ahead of its original schedule. What makes Roman different is its view. Its primary camera can capture an area of the sky at least 100 times larger than Hubble can in a comparable observation while maintaining similar infrared sensitivity and resolution. That will allow Roman to survey the sky up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble, potentially observing billions of cosmic objects and measuring light from as many as a billion galaxies during its mission. Scientists plan to use that enormous view to investigate some of astronomy’s biggest mysteries, including dark energy — the still poorly understood phenomenon associated with the accelerating expansion of the universe. Roman will also conduct a massive search for worlds beyond our solar system. NASA scientists say its observations could reveal as many as 100,000 new exoplanets, while an experimental coronagraph aboard the telescope will test technology for directly imaging some large planets orbiting other stars. Roman isn’t being sent into orbit around Earth. After launch, it will travel roughly a million miles away to a region of space known as the Sun-Earth L2 point, where it can maintain a stable view of the cosmos. Once there, Roman will work alongside Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope rather than replace them. Hubble and Webb can examine relatively narrow regions of space in extraordinary detail; Roman’s advantage will be its ability to find and map interesting objects across vast areas of the universe — effectively giving astronomers a much bigger cosmic picture to explore.
America Is Preparing for 1,000 Space Launches a Year
The United States is preparing for a future in which rockets launch and spacecraft return to Earth at a pace that would have seemed extraordinary only a few years ago. A new federal space transportation policy calls for American launch and reentry ranges to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries every year by 2030 — and directs the government to begin building the infrastructure needed to make that possible. The National Space Transportation Policy, signed Thursday by President Donald Trump, treats access to space as both an economic and national-security priority. Federal agencies are being directed to expand launch capacity, identify locations for additional launch facilities, improve existing infrastructure and make government launch ranges more accessible to commercial operators. That expansion will require considerably more than additional launch pads. Within 180 days, the Transportation Department is directed to identify potential locations for new or improved launch infrastructure and develop a plan for integrating launches and spacecraft reentries into the country’s modernized air-traffic-control system. The government also plans to establish priority airspace for critical launch corridors, improve access to communications spectrum and develop more transparent scheduling at federal launch ranges. Private investment is expected to play a major role. The policy encourages leases, commercial investment and public-private partnerships to improve launch and reentry facilities on federal property, while directing agencies to accelerate permitting and environmental reviews. A separate federal strategy will focus on strengthening the U.S. space transportation industry, its supply chains and the workforce needed to support its expansion. The policy reaches well beyond launches from Earth. NASA is directed to develop a commercial transportation architecture for moving people and cargo to and from the lunar surface, explore commercial robotic transportation to Mars and examine commercial systems capable of eventually carrying humans to Mars and returning them to Earth. Taken together, the directives point toward something larger than an increase in rocket launches: the beginnings of a national transportation infrastructure built around routine access to space.
Navy Weighs Replacing Doris Miller’s Name With Trump’s on Future Aircraft Carrier
The U.S. Navy is discussing whether to remove the name of World War II hero Doris Miller from a future aircraft carrier and name the ship for President Donald Trump instead, according to multiple reports. No final decision has been announced, and the Pentagon has said it has nothing to announce about the carrier’s name at this time. The Gerald R. Ford-class carrier, designated CVN-81, was named the future USS Doris Miller in 2020 during Trump’s first administration. The designation was historic: Miller became the first Black American to have an aircraft carrier named in his honor and the first enlisted sailor honored with a carrier bearing his name. Official Navy materials continue to identify CVN-81 as the future USS Doris Miller. Miller earned his place in Navy history during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Serving aboard the USS West Virginia, he helped move wounded sailors, including the ship’s commanding officer, and then operated an anti-aircraft machine gun despite having no formal training on the weapon. Miller became the first Black sailor to receive the Navy Cross, one of the military’s highest awards for valor. He was killed in action in 1943 when the USS Liscome Bay was torpedoed and sank in the Pacific. NBC News and other outlets report that Navy officials have discussed naming CVN-81 for Trump while potentially honoring Miller with another vessel. Miller’s family was not informed in advance about the possibility that his name could be removed from the carrier, according to NBC News. The discussions come as construction on the nuclear-powered carrier continues, with the ship expected to join the fleet in the next decade. Changing the name would reverse a decision the Navy itself described in 2020 as recognition not only of Miller’s heroism but of generations of enlisted sailors. The Navy said at the time that naming the carrier for Miller honored the contributions of service members across ranks and backgrounds. Unless a new designation is formally announced, however, CVN-81 remains the future USS Doris Miller. The Readovia Lens This potential change goes well beyond a military naming dispute. Doris Miller’s place in American history, the significance of the Navy’s decision to honor him with an aircraft carrier, and the possibility of replacing his name with that of a sitting president turn the discussion into something larger: a decision about whose service America chooses to honor, and how enduring that honor is meant to be. There is also a broader question about who should make decisions of this magnitude. Naming military vessels has traditionally been the responsibility of the Department of the Navy, not something decided by popular vote. But an aircraft carrier is more than government property with a name painted on its hull. It is a highly visible symbol of the United States that can serve for decades, carrying its namesake — and the history attached to that name — around the world. That makes the prospect of removing an established name different from choosing one for a new ship. The Navy already made the decision to honor Miller in 2020. Reversing it would mean taking a national honor that has already been bestowed on one American and transferring that distinction to another. For decisions carrying that kind of historical weight, there is a reasonable argument that the American public should have a greater voice. A nationwide vote on individual ship names would raise obvious practical questions and would represent a major departure from the traditional process. But public participation does not necessarily have to mean a national referendum. Congress could have a formal role. A public-comment period could be required. An independent commission could review proposed changes. Some mechanism could ensure that removing an established national honor requires more than an internal administrative decision. Doris Miller’s story makes that conversation particularly important. If the Navy moves forward with changing the name, Americans may also want to consider a more fundamental question: who should have the authority to take an honor already bestowed on one American and give it to another?