The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.

The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.

But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.

The episode, as recounted by four people familiar with the matter, marked the most extraordinary twist in the investigation examining the leak of an allegedly top secret document that outlined options for the US military to reclaim the Panama canal to a reporter.

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Donald Trump’s campaign against the legal profession hit another setback Tuesday as a federal judge struck down yet another executive order that sought to place sanctions one of the country’s most prestigious law firms.

The order in favor of WilmerHale marks the third time this month that a federal judge in Washington has deemed Trump’s series of law firm executive orders to be unconstitutional and has permanently barred their enforcement.

“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” wrote US district judge Richard Leon.

To permit the order to stand, Leon wrote, “would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers”.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered U.S. embassies to stop scheduling new interviews for certain visas, including those used by international students, according to a cable obtained by Politico.

The outlet reported that the Trump administration is considering implementing new vetting guidelines for those applying for F, M and J visas that takes into consideration the applicant’s social media footprint. The cable does not explicitly say what the Trump administration would be looking for, Politico said.

The change comes amid the president’s war on elite educational institutions like Harvard, which he claims is not doing enough to stop on-campus antisemitism, a term he defines to include support for Palestinians in Gaza.

TVNL Comment:  It is an outrage and a disgrace to even suggest that supporting Palestine and opposing the genocide in Gaza are acts of antisemitism.  Americans can no longer be beholden to Israel.  And yet they are required to be.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a challenge to a land swap enabling mining at a sacred Indigenous site, garnering pushback from conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.

A 2014 law enabled a land transfer between mining company Resolution Copper and the federal government, allowing the miner to take control of a site called Oak Flat in Arizona, which is sacred to the Western Apache.

A group called Apache Stronghold, which says it represents Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies, appealed the case to the Supreme Court, asking it to reverse a 9th Circuit decision on religious freedom grounds.

The high court declined to take up the case Tuesday without explaining its decision. However, Gorsuch issued a dissent, joined by Thomas.

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