A judge on Tuesday modified Donald Trump’s gag order, freeing the former president to comment publicly about witnesses and jurors in the hush money criminal trial that led to his felony conviction.

Improved weather is helping firefighters battling a rural northern California wildfire threatening the community of Palermo, which is near where the state’s deadliest wildfire struck six years ago. The fire spread over about 1 square mile Monday evening but was static overnight and containment has reached 15%.

Jordan Duncan, a Marine veteran who was previously stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, appeared Monday in a federal court in Wilmington, N.C., and admitted to aiding and abetting the manufacture of firearms.

A group of 50 people and firms across across Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and the Marshall Islands that have been acting as a “sprawling shadow banking network” for Iran’s military have been hit with U.S. economic sanctions. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says the entities and individuals are involved in the sale of Iranian oil and petrochemicals, which have helped Iran’s military and government gain illicit access to the international financial system.

Floodwaters breached levees in Iowa on Tuesday, creating dangerous conditions that prompted evacuations as the deluged Midwest faced another round of severe storms forecast for later in the day.

The House is set to vote this week on an annual defense spending bill that President Joe Biden said he would veto for harming service member access to reproductive health care, threatening the health of safety of LGBTQ+ troops and undermining readiness.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled that the approval of the nation’s first state-funded Catholic charter school is unconstitutional. The court decided Tuesday that the contract between the state and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School must be rescinded.

Senior U.N. officials have warned Israel that they will suspend operations across Gaza unless Israel acts urgently to better protect humanitarian workers. The ultimatum is the latest in a series of U.N. steps demanding Israel do more to safeguard aid operations from strikes by its forces and to curb growing lawlessness hindering humanitarian workers.

Mohammed Abu Hashem ended a 22-year Air Force career after his aunt was killed in an Israeli strike. “I can’t be part of the system that enabled this,” he says.

Gun safety groups are praising President Joe Biden now that more than 500 people have been charged with federal crimes under the landmark gun safety legislation he signed two years ago Tuesday. A White House report obtained by The Associated Press on the implementation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act shows some of the people charged are linked to organized crime rings and cartels.

American consumers lost some confidence in June as expectations over the near-term future fell again. The Conference Board, a business research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell in June to 100.4 from 101.3 in May. The index’s decline was in line with what analysts were expecting.

The U.S. surgeon general is declaring gun violence a public health crisis, driven by a growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s top doctor, issued the advisory Tuesday as the U.S. grappled with another weekend marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington on Monday as the Biden administration struggles to forge a cease-fire in Gaza and prevent a war with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will allow him to walk free and resolve a long-running legal saga that spanned multiple continents and centered on the publication of a trove of classified documents.

A soldier at Joint Base Lewis-McChord is accused of shooting and killing his pregnant wife and another soldier, then leading police on a high-speed chase that ended with his capture by a SWAT squad.

The Navy’s new hovercraft will be ready to deploy and conduct missions in September as the service races to replace its aging landing craft fleet. Known as the ship-to-shore connector, the upgraded version of the service’s air-cushioned landing craft has struggled through four years of delays.

Brig. Gen. Jason E. Bartolomei will assume command of AFRL during a change of command ceremony hosted by Air Force Materiel Command Commander Gen. Duke Z. Richardson July 10.

The Biden administration announced new steps to increase access to affordable housing. The Democratic administration announced new federal initiatives as still-high prices on groceries and other necessities and high interest rates have dramatically pushed up the cost of living in the post-coronavirus pandemic years.

A federal court in San Francisco has refused to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought by more than 35,000 LGBTQ+ veterans against the Defense Department, claiming they were wrongfully discharged because of their sexual orientation and often disqualified for veterans benefits.