WASHINGTON — Good morning. In today’s Wire: the Justice Department renews its push for Supreme Court intervention on the president’s mail-ballot executive order after a Massachusetts judge took her injunction nationwide; the Court of International Trade hands the administration a trade-court win on the de minimis exemption; wholesale inflation comes in flat; the White House press office prepares for a changing of the guard; and U.S. envoys appear headed toward a new round of Ukraine diplomacy. Here is what moved overnight and what to watch today.
Government
Leavitt to depart the podium at month’s end; succession race underway
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her post at the end of August, a departure President Trump announced Wednesday on Truth Social, according to The Washington Post. Leavitt, who recently returned from maternity leave, said she is stepping away to spend more time with her two young children, and Fox News reports she is expected to remain an outside adviser to the president.
No successor has been named. Reporting from The Hill indicates principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly is viewed inside the building as the natural heir, with communications director Steven Cheung and several outside names also floated. With just weeks until Leavitt’s exit, an announcement could come quickly; the briefing-room handoff will be worth watching for signals about how the White House intends to run its communications shop heading into the midterm stretch.
Wholesale inflation flat in July as energy prices slide
The Producer Price Index for final demand was unchanged in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday, with a 0.7 percent decline in goods prices — led by a 5.7 percent drop in gasoline — offsetting a 0.2 percent rise in services. On an unadjusted basis, the data show final-demand prices up 4.7 percent over the 12 months ended in July, a deceleration from June’s annual pace.
The cooler wholesale reading, arriving one day after a largely uneventful consumer inflation report, gives the Federal Reserve additional room to be patient on rates, as the Associated Press notes. Core pressures have not vanished — prices excluding food, energy and trade services rose 0.4 percent on the month, per the BLS release — but the headline trend strengthens the case that tariff pass-through into producer prices remains contained for now. Markets will read today’s retail sales report (see Worth Watching) against that backdrop.
D.C. Guard mission passes the one-year mark — with a $1.4 billion extension on the books
The National Guard deployment in the District of Columbia, launched under the president’s August 2025 crime emergency, has now been extended through January 2029, a commitment the Associated Press reports will cost an additional $1.4 billion from October 2026 onward. The Washington Post reports that more than 4,600 personnel from the District and two dozen states and territories were on the mission as of early August.
The record at the one-year mark is genuinely mixed, and both sides of the debate have data to cite. District crime statistics show steep drops in homicides, carjackings and vehicle thefts since the deployment began, figures highlighted by The Daily Signal, while research covered by NPR — including a Niskanen Center analysis — suggests the Guard presence itself had little measurable effect on violent crime, which was already trending downward, even as opportunistic property crime fell. Expect the extension’s price tag to draw scrutiny when Congress returns in September.
Records reportedly show at least $900 million in White House construction funding
The administration has directed at least $900 million toward construction projects on the White House grounds, according to a Washington Post report carried by Reuters that cites federal records. Rather than seeking a direct appropriation, the report indicates funds were gathered from other agencies and private donors and routed through an account ordinarily holding a few million dollars for routine maintenance, with the ballroom project — roughly $400 million — funded by the president and private contributors.
The Investigative Journal has not independently reviewed the underlying records, and the figures should be read as reported estimates rather than audited totals. Still, the funding structure described — inter-agency transfers plus private donations flowing through a maintenance account — raises ordinary oversight questions about transparency and accounting that appropriators in both parties may want answered in writing.
Courts
DOJ renews Supreme Court bid to revive mail-ballot order after injunction goes nationwide
The Justice Department this week pressed the Supreme Court to let the president’s March executive order on mail voting take effect ahead of the midterms, The Hill reports, renewing its emergency application one day after U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts expanded her injunction against the order nationwide. Talwani had previously blocked core provisions in June after siding with a coalition of state attorneys general; Associated Press reporting indicates the expanded order now reaches beyond the original 23 challenging states.
Filings indicate Solicitor General John Sauer has asked the justices to allow the U.S. Postal Service and other agencies to implement the order — including provisions on ballot-envelope barcoding and state-provided voter lists — while litigation continues, and to “act promptly” given election-administration timelines. The case is pending; no ruling has issued, and lower courts have so far found the challengers likely to succeed. Whatever one’s view of the underlying policy, the Court’s handling of this application will effectively set the rules of the road for mail voting in November, which is why both state election officials and campaign lawyers are watching the emergency docket hour by hour.
Trade court backs administration’s authority to close de minimis exemption
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Thursday upheld the president’s 2025 decision to rescind the “de minimis” tariff exemption for low-value imports from China, Mexico and Canada, Reuters reports — a notable win for the administration in a venue that has been skeptical of emergency-powers tariff actions. The court found the International Emergency Economic Powers Act supplied authority to close the sub-$800 exemption, which had been a major channel for direct-to-consumer shipments.
The ruling lands in a legal landscape reshaped by the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year against IEEPA-based tariffs, summarized by the Congressional Research Service. The de minimis decision suggests courts may treat targeted import-entry rules differently from broad tariff schedules — a distinction with real consequences for e-commerce supply chains and for the administration’s remaining trade tools. Appeals remain possible, and the decision should be read as one step in ongoing litigation rather than a final word.
Texas NFA injunction takes effect after DOJ declines to seek a stay
A federal injunction curbing enforcement of National Firearms Act registration requirements for suppressors and short-barreled rifles and shotguns is now in effect for covered parties, after the Justice Department declined to seek a pause within the one-week window set by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix. The August 5 decision, detailed by The Texan, reasons that once Congress zeroed out the NFA’s making and transfer taxes last year, the statute’s tax-power foundation for those registration requirements fell away.
The injunction is party-specific — it covers the 15 plaintiff states plus named businesses, advocacy groups and their members, not the country at large — and guidance from the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action cautions that state-law requirements and certain federal transfer and transport rules still apply, with ATF yet to update its own guidance. Gun owners outside the covered classes remain subject to existing federal rules, and the order could be modified or stayed as related litigation proceeds.
International
Witkoff and Kushner eye Moscow round as Ukraine talks near “final issue”
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner appear to be preparing for a new round of direct diplomacy on Ukraine, with Witkoff telling Ynet the negotiations are approaching a “final issue.” Bloomberg reported last week — citing Russian state media, which should be treated as unverified — that the pair could travel to Kyiv and Moscow within days; the White House has not publicly confirmed a schedule.
Multiple accounts indicate the central sticking point remains territorial: Moscow continues to press for Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbas as a precondition, terms Kyiv has rejected. After truce attempts earlier this year broke down, the question for this round is whether Washington’s mediators can convert battlefield stalemate into an enforceable framework — and whether any framework can survive the sequencing dispute over territory and security guarantees.
Israel presses targeted strikes in Gaza as disarmament roadmap talks continue
Israel’s military and the Shin Bet said Thursday they killed a Hamas commander in Gaza City whom they accused of planning attacks, the second targeted strike of the day after an earlier operation against a Hamas company commander in Khan Younis, according to The Times of Israel’s live coverage. The strikes followed a roughly week-long lull, and come amid continuing discussions over a U.S.-backed roadmap addressing Hamas’s disarmament — a framework Israeli leadership has publicly resisted in its current form, per the same reporting.
The Israeli claims about the targets’ roles could not be independently verified, and casualty and identity details in active strike zones frequently take days to confirm. The diplomatic track matters as much as the kinetic one here: whether the disarmament roadmap survives Israeli objections will shape both the tempo of operations in Gaza and Washington’s leverage over next steps.
Four countries floated for Hezbollah disarmament verification force in Lebanon
Israel and Lebanon have reportedly agreed on Britain, Italy, Switzerland and Indonesia as candidate contributors to a proposed international mechanism that could verify Hezbollah’s disarmament, per Times of Israel reporting. The development follows Defense Minister Israel Katz’s visit to southern Lebanon this week, where he vowed Israeli forces would remain in a self-described “security zone” as well as positions in Syria and Gaza pending implementation.
A verification mechanism with credible third-party contributors would be the first structural test of whether Hezbollah disarmament is an enforceable proposition rather than a diplomatic phrase. The named countries have not publicly confirmed participation, and the mechanism’s mandate, rules of engagement and timeline all remain unsettled — details that will determine whether this is a genuine enforcement architecture or another monitoring arrangement without teeth.
Reports: Additional U.S. carrier headed to Middle East as Lincoln shows strain
The United States is sending another aircraft carrier to the Middle East as the USS Abraham Lincoln’s extended deployment strains the ship and crew, according to reports carried by Haaretz. The Pentagon has not detailed the rotation publicly, and deployment specifics should be treated as unconfirmed until the Navy speaks.
The reported move underscores a durable fact of the current posture: carrier presence in the region has been near-continuous, and the fleet is paying for it in maintenance backlogs and deployment extensions. How long the Navy can sustain two-hub demand — Indo-Pacific and Middle East — without eroding readiness is a question the next defense budget cycle will have to answer directly.
Worth Watching
Retail sales, 8:30 a.m. EDT. The Census Bureau releases July advance retail sales this morning — the week’s most consequential read on the consumer after cool CPI and PPI prints. A soft number would sharpen rate-cut expectations heading into the Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium at month’s end; a hot one complicates the narrative.
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket. With the Justice Department urging the justices to “act promptly” on the mail-ballot order, an administrative stay or briefing schedule could issue at any time — including on a summer Friday. State election officials are planning around the uncertainty.
Moscow travel watch. If the reported Witkoff–Kushner window holds, confirmation of travel dates could come within days. Any announced stop in Kyiv alongside Moscow would signal the sequencing of the next phase.
The podium. Watch for a successor announcement for Leavitt’s role — and for whether the White House pairs it with a broader communications reshuffle before September.
Congress countdown. Lawmakers remain in August recess, but the September agenda — government funding, the Guard extension’s price tag, and oversight questions on White House construction accounts — is already forming. The quiet weeks are when those fights get scoped.
The Morning Wire is compiled from public records, official statements and credited press reporting. Items involving pending litigation describe allegations and interim rulings, not final adjudications. Entities named in this briefing are welcome to respond; updates and corrections will be appended.