The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. The Republican Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general in a razor-thin predawn vote Saturday. The Raw Story wrote that the Republican Party has fully given itself over to authoritarianism with the confirmation, noting the vote was held in the wee hours of Saturday morning. House Speaker Mike Johnson held what the outlet called a hush-hush barroom session before the vote.
President Trump refuses to yield after the Supreme Court blocked major policies on tariffs, birthright citizenship and the Federal Reserve, the Washington Post reports, with the administration hunting workarounds that experts say push the court's limits without signaling outright defiance. Meanwhile, BBC reports Trump was moved from the old Air Force One to a military plane as he left a NATO summit in Turkey last month — a secret plane swap CBS News confirms was executed via catering truck amid an Iran threat.
A federal appeals court cleared more than 3,000 lawsuits to proceed against Meta, TikTok, Google, Snap and other platforms over social-media addiction, Time reports.
A Syrian court sentenced ousted president Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother to death in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the 14-year conflict that killed roughly half a million people, according to MSNBC and ABC News. Assad's maternal cousin Atef Najib received the same sentence for directing the Daraa crackdown that sparked the uprising, MSNBC reports.