The District of Columbia is challenging President Donald Trump's use of the National Guard in Washington. The city is asking a federal court to intervene even as Trump plans to send troops to other cities in the name of driving down crime. The district said in a lawsuit that the deployment, which now involves more than 1,000 troops, is an illegal use of the military for domestic law enforcement. The White House says deploying the Guard to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement is within Trump's authority as president.

The FBI has searched the Maryland home and Washington office of ex-Trump national security adviser John Bolton as part of an investigation into the handling of classified information. That's according to a person familiar with the matter Friday. The person was not authorized to discuss the investigation by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The person says Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crimes. Messages left with a spokesperson for Bolton haven't been returned. Bolton served as President Donald Trump's third national security adviser and clashed with him over Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea. Trump says he doesn't want to know about the searches.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it will dramatically reduce its workforce and cut its budget by more than $700 million annually. The move Wednesday amounts to a major downsizing of the responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including on counterterrorism and counterintelligence. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says the office "has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence." The reorganization is part of a broader administration effort to rethink how it tracks foreign threats to American elections, a topic that has become politically loaded.

First lady Melania Trump is demanding that Hunter Biden retract comments linking her to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She threatens to sue if he does not. Biden made the comments in an interview this month, claiming Epstein introduced Melania to Donald Trump. Melania Trump's lawyer, Alejandro Brito, calls the statements false and defamatory. Brito says the comments have been widely shared on social media, causing harm to the first lady's reputation. Biden attributed the claim to author Michael Wolff, whom Trump has criticized. The Trumps have long said they were introduced by a modeling agent in 1998.