The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. The Justice Department watchdog will review a DEA tactic that permitted deadly fentanyl to hit streets while agents stood down to protect larger prosecutions, according to PBS News. The review will examine government policies and wiretap investigations in which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration may have learned of fentanyl deliveries before they happened but stood down to avoid jeopardizing larger prosecutions.
President Trump voted by mail in Florida's primary this week, his second time doing so while branding the practice "cheating" and fighting in the Supreme Court to gut mail-in voting access nationwide, Raw Story and The Hill report. Palm Beach County records show Trump requested an absentee ballot. Meanwhile a federal appeals court rejected the administration's strategy of leaving interim prosecutors in place to lead U.S. attorney offices without congressional approval, the second appellate decision to block the maneuver, The New York Times reports.
Consumer sentiment fell in August for the first time in months as the intensifying U.S.-Iran conflict stoked cost-of-living concerns, Semafor reports, while Republican Congressman Darrell Issa warned Trump shouldn't rush Iran strategy on a political timeline, Bloomberg notes. Trump threatened to strike Oman if it interferes with a potential Strait of Hormuz deal, NBC News reports, and ordered the military to cut back joint exercises with South Korea after it stayed out of the Iran war. Violent crime plummeted in 2025 with the murder rate falling 18% from 2024, according to the FBI's annual report, CBS News reports.
The death toll from Indonesia's earthquake reached at least 68 with search efforts ongoing, Time reports. The NRSC claims Democrats "want to tax the Social Security benefits that grandparents have paid into their entire lives," Newsweek notes, while a federal judge's decision in Texas has major implications for the National Firearms Act, NPR reports. The House Ethics Committee opened a sexual misconduct investigation into Rep. Jimmy Gomez over allegations of inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post report. Gomez said he made "personal mistakes outside my marriage" and will cooperate.