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A judge will decide if prosecutors have enough evidence to warrant a murder trial for the alleged assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The summit will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Beştepe Presidential Compound.

Netflix has published an op-ed — which you can read below — in which it lays out why it is challenging proposed new spending obligations on the streamer in France and why it wants to introduce an investment cap on streamer obligations in the territory. First published in French national paper Le Monde, the op-ed […]

Kate Middleton is trotting out more photos of her incredible experience climbing three mountain peaks to fight cancer — and this time she’s featuring her royal family. On Sunday, the Princess of Wales posted a series of Instagram pics that showed…

For months, President Donald Trump has relentlessly pressed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. An increasing number of Republicans say it’s time for him to change course.

“He wants to go it alone, his way to the highway, and it don’t work,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who’s retiring at the end of the year, told MS NOW. “He’s trying to pound the square peg through the circle, and it doesn’t work.”

After two failed votes in the Senate, unheeded calls to nuke the filibuster and countless attacks from Trump, Republican holdouts haven’t budged. Instead of forcing Democrats into politically difficult votes ahead of the midterms, Republicans have spent months highlighting their own divisions — with little to show for it.

Another House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics of the debate, said Trump just can’t change the reality of the Senate.

“The Senate does not have the votes to pass it, and no matter how much everybody wants to push on it, it’s not gonna move through the Senate unless through reconciliation,” the member said. “And that’s just a reality.”

Yet another House GOP lawmaker was more succinct: “Republicans — those of us who can do math — would like the president and other members to recognize that there isn’t a path forward.”

As Trump continues his pressure campaign — he managed to mention the SAVE America Act during his July Fourth speech on the National Mall on Saturday night — several Republicans say it’s time for him to pivot. Instead of trying to force GOP skeptics in line, some lawmakers said Trump should consider a compromise with those holdouts, or even with Democrats.

“There’s things that we should be able to do,” the House GOP lawmaker said, “but we’re so focused on legislation that will never get a Democratic vote and won’t make it through the reconciliation that it’s stopping all progress.”

Politically, rather than continuing to pressure Republican skeptics, several lawmakers argued that Trump should shift his attention to Democrats.

“The focus, the attention, is on the wrong target here,” a senior GOP Senate aide told MS NOW.

The frustration comes after the Senate twice rejected the voting legislation — once in April and again in June. Both times, the measure fell well short of the 60 votes needed for passage, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in opposition. 

Still, Trump has refused to let it go.

The president and his top GOP allies have continued pressing lawmakers to pass the bill, which would require photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote, limit mail-in voting in most circumstances, ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports and prohibit minors from receiving gender-affirming care.

In recent weeks, Trump canceled a planned signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress on the voting legislation. He also urged Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster and even suggested they fire the Senate parliamentarian.

The strategy has yet to produce results — something even Republican supporters acknowledge.

“It’s quite simple: It’s a math problem,” retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters when asked about his objection to the SAVE America Act.

Tillis is one of the four Republicans who voted against the legislation twice, along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

“We simply don’t have the votes, and the SAVE America Act will not be implemented in time for this election,” he added. “Anybody that knows anything about election law understands that.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in May, was even more direct, calling out “keyboard warrior-geniuses and grifters” who insist the legislation can pass despite the arithmetic.

“Promising the moon and stars and yet destining Republicans for failure is a very effective way to demoralize our base and elect more Democrats in the midterms,” Cornyn wrote on X.

The disagreement has also begun spilling into the House, where the fight over the SAVE America Act is now disrupting unrelated Republican priorities.

Last week, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sent members home two days early for the July Fourth recess after a band of Republicans — led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla. — froze the floor, partly to force action on the SAVE America Act.

Despite Trump urging Republicans not to, Luna and her allies torpedoed a procedural rule because they were unhappy with how GOP leadership was handling the legislation, even though the House has already passed its version of the bill.

The protest prevented the House from processing the annual defense policy bill and passing a resolution to mark one year since Republicans passed their sprawling reconciliation, leaving Republicans irate.

Asked whether he wished Trump would move on from the SAVE America Act, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., answered carefully. 

“We just need to be practically minded,” he said.

“We have a lot of very important business to conduct, not the least of which, important to me, are moving these appropriation bills, and we need to be able to, you know, provide meaningful legislative business in this House, and right now we’re hijacked,” said Womack, a 15-year veteran of the House. “We’re at an impasse.”

He also worried about the political optics.

“I don’t think it’s a good look this close to a midterm election,” he said. “It’s not a good look anyway, because we are the governing majority, but it’s certainly, the timing is not real good.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans are looking to push pieces of the voting legislation through budget reconciliation, with Johnson announcing plans for a federal fund that states could use to implement parts of the bill.

“The only way to get that to the president’s desk, we’ve been shown many times, is to put it on a reconciliation bill, so that is in process,” Johnson told MS NOW last week.

Many Senate Republicans remain skeptical.

“It can’t,” Tillis said of the House GOP’s belief that the bill can pass through reconciliation. “If it could, we’d already be talking about it. Let’s just stop playing games. Let’s stop being dishonest.”

When a reporter suggested the House believed it could pressure the Senate by refusing to pass other legislation, Tillis laughed.

“That’s super cute,” he said.

With only a handful of legislative weeks remaining before the midterm elections, some Republicans want Trump and congressional leaders to focus on what can actually become law — either by scaling back the proposal or negotiating with Democrats.

Republicans point to polling that shows broad support for voter ID requirements. A Pew Research Center survey found that 83% of Americans support requiring photo ID to vote.

“The right thing to do, frankly, is you got voter ID, you can pass that, so take a win,” Bacon said. 

He continued that lawmakers could sit down and talk about citizenship verification. “That’s how it’s supposed to work,” Bacon said. “That’s how you get 60 votes in the Senate.”

But with Trump continuing to focus on GOP lawmakers rather than Democrats, and showing little interest in pursuing a compromise bill, few Republicans see the stalemate ending anytime soon.

In the meantime, GOP lawmakers are growing increasingly annoyed.

Asked if he was frustrated by the current situation, Womack didn’t hesitate. 

“Of course,” he said.

“If you’re not at least a little bit frustrated right now, then I question your sanity,” he added. “Nobody signed up for this.”

[9:35 AM]

CORRECTION (July 6, 2026, 9:39 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated a provision of the SAVE America Act. It would ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports, not in men’s sports.

The post Republicans say it’s time Trump changed course on the SAVE America Act appeared first on MS NOW.

Donald Trump is widely known as a man who relishes superlatives and closely follows financial markets. But his role presiding over a historic first for Wall Street and the White House comes with a wrinkle.

The president’s newly-released financial disclosures will loom large as the world’s two leading stock exchanges bring a much-celebrated tradition to the Oval Office: the ringing of the opening bell.

Representatives from both marketplaces — the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange — are set to join forces in Washington on Monday to mark the opening of tax-deferred investment accounts for kids in the U.S.

Never before have both exchanges rung their symbolic opening bells together to commence the trading day.

The companies are uniting at the White House to recognize the availability of “Trump Accounts,” signed into law by the president last year, which will track with stock-market growth similar to retirement savings accounts. But the milestone coincides with public scrutiny over Trump’s finances and his family’s business dealings reaching a fever pitch, as shocking revelations reverberate from Wall Street to Washington.

More than 21,000 stock trades were executed on Trump’s behalf last year, according to a 927-page financial disclosure report published last week. Trump now has more known stock trades under his belt while in office than any of his predecessors by far. 

The president told CNBC in an interview on Thursday that his son, Eric Trump, manages his investments. “I don’t talk to him about things such as this. I think I’d be allowed to. I’m not sure even what the status is,” he added.

Asked about the volume of Trump’s trading activity in 2025, Kenny Polcari, chief market strategist at the investment firm SlateStone Wealth, said it “might be normal” for a high-net-worth individual who likes to trade.

“Do I think that’s normal?” Polcari asked. “No, I don’t think that’s normal. But nor do I think that anybody in an elected position should have the ability to trade stocks anyway.”

The vast majority of Americans agree that lawmakers should be banned from stock trading and that the president should be subject to conflict of interest restrictions, according to a Brennan Center survey published in June. Most Americans, regardless of political party, also consider corruption in politics a “big problem,” the poll found.

During his State of the Union address in February, Trump called on Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act, which would place no restrictions on him or future presidents. Democrats prefer legislation that includes a presidential ban — effectively stalling efforts to pass the popular policy measure.

The president has frequently cited the stock market’s strong performance since he took office as a reflection of a thriving domestic economy, an achievement for which his party hopes to be rewarded in the upcoming midterm elections. The S&P 500, which tracks the performance of the biggest American companies, is up 25% since Trump took office in January 2025.

Analysts widely attribute it to growth in the tech sector, as investors bet on the rise of artificial intelligence. Polls, however, show that most Americans remain frustrated with the cost of living.

“People are feeling squeezed,” Stephen Moore, a Trump ally who served as senior economic adviser in his first term, acknowledged, although he believes most families are seeing higher wages. “There is a perception issue out there when people go to the grocery store, and when they go to the gas pump, or if they want to buy a new house, and they see these high prices, people do get angry, and I get that.”

The concept behind Trump Accounts, often referred to as baby bonds, has been championed by American economists from across the political spectrum to help young people build wealth early. Babies born in the U.S. between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, are eligible to receive $1,000 in their accounts.

The White House has been promoting the accounts for months, including hosting an event with Dell CEO Michael Dell, who donated nearly $6.3 billion to offer children 10 and under in low-income areas access to $250 automatically. Officials describe the program as a midterm selling point to young voters who are parents.

One downside, however, is that kids with a Trump account may become ineligible for other federal aid programs, such as student loans, in the future.

The first sitting president to ring a market opening bell was former President Ronald Reagan in 1985 at the New York Stock Exchange, where he sought to promote his free-market policies. In 2024, while president-elect, Trump rang the same bell at the invitation of the NYSE on the same day he was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”

“It’s very fitting that Donald Trump should ring the bell in the 250th year of our country,” Moore said. “Among the many amazing attributes of our country has been this astonishing wealth creation, becoming by far the wealthiest country on Earth.”

The post ‘Very fitting:’ Trump brings stock exchanges to White House after financial disclosures appeared first on MS NOW.

EXCLUSIVE: Super Nature, a new documentary about the natural world directed by Ed Sayers, is truly a vintage piece of filmmaking. Sayers and his collaborators – 40 filmmakers across the globe – shot the feature entirely on Super 8, “the original home movie format.” The “home” in this case is planet Earth and its multitudinous […]

EXCLUSIVE: There’s change afoot at Arcade, the creator management company that represents The Sidemen. Former Vice Media EMEA boss Matt Elek has been named CEO, with currently Chief Exec and co-founder Jordan Schwarzenberger stepping down away from the day-to-day running of the company. Schwarzenberger had formally taken on the role of CEO earlier this year, […]

We asked our audience to share their favorite go-to recipes for leftovers. Here are seven dishes — like stuffed peppers and a biryani casserole — that can help you use up all your fridge scraps.

(Image credit: kaisersosa67/Getty Images)

A new study of people 80 and older with exceptional gaits finds fast walkers have about a 50% lower risk of cognitive decline, showing the connection between physical health and brain health.

(Image credit: FG Trade)

Spouses of U.S. citizens have traditionally had a special place in immigration law. That’s no longer the case, according to the administration and immigration lawyers.

(Image credit: Joseph Prezioso)

Thousands of people lost coverage over as little as $8 in delinquent payments. They didn’t know their zero-dollar premiums had gone up and they owed money. Most now can’t get coverage until 2027.  

(Image credit: fstop123/iStockphoto)