The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. ICE quietly enacted new rules this month that will keep officers involved in deadly-force incidents—such as firing a gun and using a choke hold—off the streets until the completion of an investigation, reversing a policy that allowed them to return to their regular job in as few as three days. In Pennsylvania, two unvaccinated people died from measles, marking the first deaths the state has seen in 35 years and the first in the country this year.
An election hacker has reportedly been hired in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. Meanwhile, [Meta faces a child-safety trial brought by four states alleging the company designed Facebook and Instagram to hook kids and lied to the public about the risks](https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/nx-s1-5944266/adam-mosseri-instagram-meta-child-safety-trial); Instagram head Adam Mosseri testified in defense of the business model. [Zeteo reports on a theory about the rise of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and the small group of tech elite trying to control society](https://zeteo.com/p/nerd-reich-author-gil-duran).
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas praised his Republican senator "friends" on a podcast, prompting a legal expert to warn he built a case for his own impeachment; former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner reacted to the comments. California Governor Gavin Newsom put his Sacramento-area mansion up for sale before his term ends in January: [a 12-bath, seven-bed Spanish-style home in Fair Oaks with a 5,000-bottle wine cellar, a pool, and a tennis court, listed for $7.5 million](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/25/gavin-newsom-california-mansion-for-sale).
Around 9,000 people were cleared to return to their Reno, Nevada, area homes Tuesday as firefighters made progress containing a major, human-caused wildfire that destroyed more than 40 homes. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's bond buyback strategy drew criticism from his mentor Stanley Druckenmiller, while former Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender referenced a $40 trillion debt threshold.