A federal judge today halted the Trump administration’s decision to cancel moving the FBI headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland, and he permanently blocked the FBI from relocating the facility to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

It appeared the almost 15-year saga of where to move the FBI headquarters had ended in 2023, when the General Services Administration chose a site in Greenbelt. But two years later, the FBI and the GSA announced they had changed their plans and would move to the Reagan building.

In response, the state of Maryland and Prince George’s County, where Greenbelt is located, sued to block the move and the efforts to redirect funds already appropriated for the new location.

In his 47-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang said the FBI and GSA decisions were not in accordance with law and exceeded statutory authority.

The House Ethics Committee said today it’s reviewing allegations that Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., “may have engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the Code of Official Conduct,” including “engaging in inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”

“The Committee notes that the mere fact that it is investigating these allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred,” the panel’s chairman, Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking member, Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., said in a statement.

“No other public comment will be made on this matter except in accordance with Committee rules,” the statement said.

The married Gomez, who formed a Congressional Dads Caucus back in 2023, said in a statement that he had “made personal mistakes outside my marriage” and would cooperate with the probe.

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The Trump administration said today it is pausing construction of a contentious border construction project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits to do an “on-the-ground evaluation.”

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring the area’s pristine environment. They argue the region’s rugged and remote terrain is already a deterrent to migrants and smugglers. Border crossings in the area have historically been lower than in other regions and have dropped even further over the past two years.

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Greg Ballard, the former Republican two-term mayor of Indianapolis, is running for secretary of state in Indiana this year, hoping to create a new party that he says would increase competition in general elections and moderate growing extremism in the state.

Ballard, 71, gathered more than 37,000 signatures — an endeavor that cost his campaign more than $780,000 — to get his name on the ballot as an independent candidate.

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Trump touted his ties to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un a day after he ordered the U.S. military to scale back imminent military drills with South Korea.

Asked by a reporter why Kim hasn’t responded to his request to have a conversation, Trump said, “How do you know he hasn’t responded?”

“Has he?” the journalist asked.

Trump paused before saying, “Yeah, he has.” He did not elaborate, and he went on to lament that “South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years.”

The U.S. and South Korea are close allies, and Trump announced yesterday that he was ordering the U.S. military to “substantially reduce” joint exercises with the country. He framed his relationship with Kim Jong Un as positive and pointed to South Korea’s not getting involved in the war against Iran.

Trump reiterated his criticism of South Korea’s declining to get involved in the war, saying the U.S. has “soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran. That’s strange.”

Later he said, “All I want is fairness.”

Trump dismissed Sen. Jon Ossoff’s dig at Natalie Harp, when Ossoff, D-Ga., said Trump would rather “travel with Natalie,” golf and trade stocks than “do the job” of being president.

Trump referred to Ossoff as a “Pee-wee Herman lookalike,” adding that he would “much rather do other things” like “fixing the White House.” Trump referred to the construction of the White House ballroom, which is at the center of litigation.

Harp is a close aide to Trump, and she frequently travels with him. Earlier today, White House communications director Steven Cheung criticized Ossoff in very personal terms for his remarks.

Trump said today that he’ll handle Oman “very easily” if it gets in the way of a potential deal over the Strait of Hormuz.

“I don’t think they behaved very well, but we’d handle them very easily, just like we do other things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when he was asked about remarks he reportedly made to Fox News earlier in the day.

In a phone interview with Fox News’ chief foreign correspondent, Trey Yingst, Trump said, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s—- out of them,” according to Fox News.

Yingst relayed the quote from Trump on the air, which he said came in response to questions about talks between Oman and Iran over the status of the strait. No audio of the interview was provided. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the remarks.

First lady Melania Trump did not attend Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral. She skipped the reimagined White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. And when the families of four U.S. service members received their remains on July 22, the wife of the commander in chief was not there.

While she continues to work behind the scenes on her passion projects, Melania Trump has not appeared at a public engagement in nearly a month, opting to skip several high-profile events a first lady would traditionally attend.

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For more than a year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the GOP Senate nominee, has been probing what he says is the large number of noncitizens who illegally voted in his state. So far, three people have been prosecuted, according to an NBC News review of court documents, public records and statements.

And among 53 cases that were referred for investigation, at least five people were listed as American citizens in previous court records.

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In a fiery speech last night, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., sharply rebuked Trump and accused him of wanting to golf, trade stocks and “travel with Natalie” rather than “do the job” of a president. Ossoff’s remark was an apparent reference to Trump’s executive assistant, Natalie Harp.

“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.<!–> t=5s–>Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images file<!–>

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Harp frequently accompanies Trump on international travel, including his trip to Turkey, which he was clandestinely flown out of amid security threats instead of on Air Force One. It’s unclear whether Harp flew on the decoy plane or with Trump.

The United States’ military drills with South Korea have long served as an annual demonstration of America’s commitment to its key ally’s security. But the exercises were thrown into confusion today when Trump called for them to be scaled back hours before they began, adding to a sense of vulnerability in Asia as the U.S. is occupied by the war with Iran.

Trump cited South Korea’s refusal to join the conflict in the Middle East, as well as his “very good” relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He said the exercises sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile” signal to North Korea, a nuclear-armed state that has been escalating threats against its neighbor.

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Trump’s son-in-law and envoy Jared Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today after rare talks with the leader of Hamas in a new push to revive the peace plan for Gaza that Israel has rejected.

As the U.S. tries to advance the fragile ceasefire brokered in October, Kushner held talks with a delegation led by Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo yesterday, a Hamas official briefed on the matter told NBC News.

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The Supreme Court today declined for a second time to take up President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for alleged sexual abuse and defamation.

In an unusual move, the president had asked the court to reconsider its decision from June that rejected Trump’s initial appeal. The court almost never grants such requests.

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