President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War. Some of Trump's Republican supporters in Congress have proposed legislation to make the name change official. Without a change in law, Trump plans to authorize the Pentagon to use secondary titles. The Department of War was the original name from 1789 until it was changed in 1947, two years after World War II ended. Trump has expressed a preference for the original name, saying it "just sounded better."

The American job market, a pillar of U.S. economic strength since the pandemic, is crumbling under the weight of President Donald Trump's erratic economic policies. Uncertain about where things are headed, companies are reluctant to hire, leaving agonized jobseekers unable to find work and worrying the consumers (70% of U.S. economic activity) whose spending has driven impressive growth for the world's biggest economy since the COVID-19 disruptions of 2020. The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — added just 22,000 jobs last month, down from a 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3% last month, the highest since 2021.

President Donald Trump says the country would be on "the brink of economic catastrophe" without the import taxes he's imposed on U.S. rivals and allies alike. His administration is using near-apocalyptic terms that are highly unusual in Supreme Court filings as it asks the justices to intervene and reverse an appeals court ruling that found most of Trump's tariffs are an illegal use of an emergency powers law. The tariffs remain in place, for now. Trump's team wants the justices to decide in a week's time whether to hear the case and hold arguments the first week of November.

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.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced tough bipartisan questioning about his COVID-19 policies in a Senate committee hearing. On Thursday, Democratic senators clashed with Kennedy over his changes to vaccine recommendations, while some Republican senators also expressed concerns. Kennedy praised President Donald Trump for the Operation Warp Speed initiative but criticized the safety of mRNA vaccines. He defended the firing of the CDC director, claiming she was dishonest. Kennedy's actions, including replacing a vaccine advisory panel with skeptics, have drawn criticism from medical groups. They warn his policies could increase vaccine-preventable diseases and have called for his resignation.

President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago and other big cities as a way to fight crime. Yet, behind the aggressive talk, data actually shows that most U.S. violent crime has been in a steady decline. Homicides through the first six months of 2025 were down significantly in Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It's a continuation of a trend since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aggravated assaults were also down, with the exception of New York, where they were virtually unchanged. The Associated Press relied on numbers from AH Datalytics, which tracks crimes across the country.

President Donald Trump has told House Speaker Mike Johnson he won't be spending $4.9 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch. The Republican president is using what's known as a pocket rescission — when a president submits a request to Congress to not spend approved funds toward the end of the fiscal year, so Congress cannot act on the request in a 45-day time frame and the money goes unspent as a result. It's the first time in nearly 50 years a president has used one. Trump's move has drawn backlash in the Senate. The fiscal year draws to a close at the end of September.

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is suing the Trump administration in an effort to overturn the president's attempt to fire her, launching an unprecedented legal battle that could significantly reshape the Fed's longstanding political independence. No president has sought to fire a Fed governor in the institution's 112-year history until President Donald Trump posted a letter on his Truth Social media platform late Monday saying that Cook was fired. Trump said the reason for her removal were allegations that she committed mortgage fraud in 2021, before she was appointed to the board.

The Trump administration has asked a military base outside of Chicago for support on immigration operations. The move offers a clue of what its expanded law enforcement crackdown might look like in the nation's third-largest city. A base spokesperson says the Department of Homeland Security asked Naval Station Great Lakes for "limited support in the form of facilities, infrastructure, and other logistical needs to support DHS operations." The spokesperson says no decisions have been made on the request, and that the base hasn't received an official request to support a National Guard deployment. Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have pushed back against a possible mobilization, saying crime has fallen in Chicago. They plan to sue.