News & Current Events

A permanent injunction blocking ATF enforcement of specific National Firearms Act registration and transfer provisions against covered plaintiffs took effect August 13, 2026, after a seven-day stay expired with no emergency filing from the Department of Justice. The ruling, issued by Judge James Wesley Hendrix in the Northern District of Texas, found that Congress grounded the NFA in its taxing power but then zeroed out transfer and making taxes for most NFA firearms under a 2026 law, leaving the remaining regulatory framework without a surviving constitutional basis as applied to those weapons. Key questions remain open: DOJ retains the option to file an ordinary appeal, ATF has issued no updated processing guidance, and the injunction binds named parties rather than operating as a nationwide order.

In Phang v. Blanche, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan has ordered the DOJ to document its basis for redacting victim names in Epstein files and to explain why FBI handwritten interview notes cannot be manually redacted before release. The court noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act does not list 'substantially similar' or 'duplicative' as standalone grounds for withholding records. The case remains active, with DOJ's August 5 stay motion unresolved and the required redaction-log timeline still disputed by the parties.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed on August 7, 2026, that the administration lacks statutory authority to build a proposed 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom without express congressional approval, citing 40 U.S.C. § 8106 and rejecting the use of private funds or existing appropriations as a workaround. The court granted a 14-day stay to allow a Supreme Court appeal, but as of August 14, no public filing had been located. The only pending legislative vehicle, H.R. 8537, remains in the introduced stage and has not passed either chamber.

On July 17, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a district court's nationwide stay, putting a DHS policy back into effect that subjects noncitizens present for less than two years to expedited removal without a standard immigration court hearing. The appellate majority found the policy does not violate due process, applying a notice-adequacy framework and concluding existing procedures give affected individuals sufficient opportunity to respond, claim exemptions, or trigger a credible-fear review. Statutory protections remain in place, including supervisory and immigration-judge review of negative credible-fear determinations, while the underlying legal challenge continues without a confirmed next court date.

An AH-64E Apache attack helicopter based at Fort Hood crashed in a field near Salado, Texas, on August 12, killing both crew members and igniting a fire that reached 155 acres before being fully contained by August 13. Fort Hood's Criminal Investigation Division is leading the inquiry, and under Army regulation AR 385-10, CID holds primacy over the crash scene and evidence until its investigation concludes. As of August 14, no cause has been identified, no unit assignment has been officially confirmed, and the soldiers' names have not been publicly released pending next-of-kin notification.