September 3: Trump Funding Bill and Extended Middle East Deployments

In Washington President Trump signed a stopgap funding bill, temporarily preventing a government shutdown. The deal postpones the fight over long-term appropriations, leaving Congress headed toward another deadline-driven showdown later this year. At the White House, advisers are weighing a midterm strategy built around Trump himself after polling found weak Republican enthusiasm for races where he is not on the ballot. With narrow congressional majorities in play, the administration appears ready to make the midterms a referendum on the president. In the Middle East Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has extended U.S. military deployments across the Middle East into 2027, six months after the U.S. campaign against Iran began. The posture includes 19 warships, air-defense units, fighter squadrons, and paratroopers. The prolonged commitment is placing pressure on service members and families and building a maintenance backlog that could take years to clear. In Spain Tens of thousands of people protested across Spain over the government’s response to the migrant crisis in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on North Africa’s coast. The demonstrations underscore political pressure on Madrid over migration policy and conditions at the border. In Malta A Maltese tycoon has been acquitted in the final prosecution tied to the 2017 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Her killing exposed allegations of corruption at the highest levels of Maltese public life, and the acquittal closes the last case brought against an alleged participant in the murder. In Minneapolis A shooting in Minneapolis killed two people and wounded several others, including three police officers, police said. The suspected gunman also died. Authorities have not released further details about what led to the shooting. In Antarctica Researchers at Durham University have used European Space Agency radar satellites to monitor emperor penguin colonies through the Antarctic winter, when months of darkness limit ordinary satellite observation. The method tracked colonies from 2017 through 2024 and could help researchers assess how endangered penguins are responding to shrinking breeding-season sea ice.