The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a ban on distilling spirits in private homes more than 150 years ago.

Plaintiffs challenging the prohibition on home distilling claim the 1868 law is an antiquated relic of Reconstruction-era politics. They argue that Congress overstepped its taxation powers when it enacted the home distilling ban as part of a tax reform measure designed to curb fraud by commercial distillers.

Government attorneys counter that Congress properly restricted where spirits can be distilled to prevent producers from evading federal excise taxes. They warn that lifting the ban would violate Supreme Court precedent and erode congressional powers.

Federal law makes home distilling a crime punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Separate challenges to the law divided two federal circuit courts, which issued conflicting decisions in April, only 11 days apart.

A three-judge panel from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal ban in a case brought by John Ream, a brewpub owner from Newark, Ohio, who wants to distill whisky at home for his personal consumption.

A Fifth Circuit panel ruled in favor of different plaintiffs — members of the Texas-based Hobby Distillers Association — and concluded that statutory prohibitions on in-home distilling are outside the scope of Congress' taxing power under the Constitution.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the Fifth Circuit decision, which was the Justice Department's preference. Plaintiffs' attorney Robert Alt said they are "thrilled" that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

"Our country's founders would be rolling over in their graves to learn that a pastime in which even George Washington partook, which is as American as apple pie and certainly a lot older, has quite absurdly been turned into a federal crime," Alt said in a statement.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in both cases argue that Congress could ban a broad array of activities inside private homes — including cooking, gardening and remote work — under the government's interpretation of the 19th century law.

"The importance of this case and the questions it presents could hardly be overstated," the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote. "It presents fundamental questions of the extent of federal power and the powers reserved to the states and the people."

Justice Department attorneys said the government's regulation and taxation on the production of distilled spirits is as old as Congress itself. They noted that Congress outlawed home distilling to prevent those producers from evading taxes or government inspections.

"And because the location restrictions were enacted only after lengthy experience with tax evasion, upholding those restrictions would not open the door to hypothetical laws restricting other conduct lacking that history," they wrote. The government says Ream asked the Supreme Court to resolve an "additional question" of whether location restrictions on home distilling exceed the scope of Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. But the government urged the high court to avoid that question, saying it wasn't part of Ream's case or the government's current arguments in either case.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear arguments in a watchdog's lawsuit seeking public records about billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The high court is intervening for a second time in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's case, which seeks access to DOGE records from its operations in the early days of President Donald Trump's second term. The Trump administration asked the court to hear the case.

Last year, the high court reined in a district court's order for the government to produce DOGE-related records to CREW. The high court's conservative majority concluded in June 2025 that U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled too broadly in ordering documents to be turned over to the group.

CREW claims DOGE is a federal agency and therefore is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The Trump administration argues that DOGE is exempt from FOIA's requirements as a presidential advisory body.

Cooper ruled in CREW's favor and ordered expedited processing of the group's records request. An appeals court panel also sided with CREW.

The Trump administration claims the panel ignored the Supreme Court's direction to consider separation-of-powers concerns and intruded on the "autonomy and confidentiality" of presidential advisers.

"Subjecting advisory bodies to intrusive discovery triggers the very concerns that Congress sought to avoid by excluding presidential advisory bodies from FOIA's reach," Justice Department attorneys wrote.

The administration also says the appeals court impermissibly authorized the plaintiffs to take a sworn deposition of DOGE acting administrator Amy Gleason.

CREW says the appeals court fully complied with the Supreme Court's previous order. The group also asserts that the public has a right to know how DOGE helped the administration carry out a sweeping overhaul of government operations in 2025.

"Undisputed facts in the public record — including the President's statements — confirmed that (DOGE) was wielding enormous independent authority across the federal government," its attorneys wrote.

In a statement Tuesday, CREW attorney Nikhel Sus said the lower courts have uniformly ruled that it is entitled to records that could help the court determine whether DOGE wields the type of authority that would make it subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

"We will continue to pursue transparency for the American people, who deserve to know the details of the Trump Administration's efforts to unilaterally remake the federal government," Sus said in the statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, leaving intact a ruling that wiped out the $8.2 million defamation verdict he won over a political ad aired during his 2017 U.S. Senate campaign.

By declining to hear the case, the justices let stand a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that set aside a jury's finding that the ad had defamed Moore. The outcome is a win for Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic-aligned super PAC that paid for the ad and has maintained that it was accurate.

Monday's order follows an earlier setback for Moore. In June, the Court denied his emergency request to freeze the 11th Circuit ruling while his appeal was pending.

Background of the 2017 race

Moore, known for his opposition to same-sex marriage and his support for displaying the Ten Commandments in public places, lost the 2017 Senate election after his campaign was engulfed by allegations of misconduct. Leigh Corfman accused Moore of touching her inappropriately in 1979, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Moore denied the allegation. Other women said Moore had dated them or asked them out when they were in their late teens.

The disputed ad

Senate Majority PAC financed Highway 31, a group that ran a heavy advertising campaign against Moore during the race. Moore's defamation suit focused on one of its television spots. His lawyers argued that the ad combined statements and fragments of quotes from different news stories in a way that falsely suggested he had been accused of soliciting sex from young girls at a shopping mall. They described it as a "fabricated accusation, never made by any reporter," and said it aired 533 times in Alabama in the closing days of the election.

From jury win to reversal

A federal jury sided with Moore in 2022 and awarded him $8.2 million. The 11th Circuit later vacated that award, concluding that Moore had not proven the PAC acted with actual malice, the standard a public figure must meet to win a defamation claim.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "energy ceasefire," but offered no details on its terms.

Trump's brief social media post said only that the ceasefire took effect immediately and that both sides had agreed to it. "Do not break it!" he wrote. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv immediately commented on the announcement, and The White House did not immediately clarify the president's post or add detail.

His announcement came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview aired Sunday, said Ukraine was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted attacks on Ukraine's energy system, and asked Trump to press the Kremlin to agree.

"We are asking President Trump, (to) give them (a) signal, not (to) attack energy infrastructure of Ukraine," he told ABC's "This Week."

Trump spars with Zelenskyy

Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

Zelenskyy said in response to Trump's comments that Ukraine could hold elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day ceasefire. "Give us two months, 60 days off. Total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organize elections," he said, adding that Ukraine would be ready to accept whatever choice its people made.

"With all respect to President Trump, it's up to our society, up to our people to choose one or another leader," he said. Zelenskyy added that holding a vote during the war would be unlawful and that Ukraine would need security guarantees to allow people to vote safely.

Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, and the Ukrainian Constitution bars elections while it remains in force. Beyond the legal barrier, a nationwide vote would be vulnerable to Russian missile and drone attacks, and organizing one is widely seen as logistically impossible, with roughly a fifth of the country under occupation, millions of Ukrainians displaced abroad and soldiers on the front line. Zelenskyy's term formally expired in May 2024, but the constitution allows him to remain in office until a new president is sworn in.

The exchange came as Kyiv pressed its campaign against infrastructure deep inside Russia, with a drone attack on Sunday shutting down a data center run by Russian technology giant Yandex, the third strike on the company's facilities in four days. Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line.

The U.S. president, who on Friday struck a deal with Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

He has sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has driven up world energy prices. Ukrainian and European officials reacted to the diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia's war effort.

Ukrainian strike on Russian data center triggers outages

The Ukrainian drone attack on the Yandex data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, caused outages across the company's services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia unable to order taxis or access banking services, according to Russian independent news outlet Astra.

"As a result of the drone attack, the infrastructure of Yandex's data center in Vladimir was damaged. Operations at the data center have been completely halted. There were no injuries," said the Yandex Cloud Telegram channel, which provides operational updates on service availability.

In Moscow, residents described disruption to everyday tasks. Pavel Belyavskiy, a driver for Yandex Taxi, said it was unclear whether orders were coming through at all, and that on several rides he had to cancel after waiting a long time because he could not reach the passenger.

"I'd press the 'call' button to contact them, but nothing happens," he said, "There's nothing I can do, so I'm just forced to cancel."

Igor Mann said he went to check the status of an order on the Yandex Market shopping platform but the page was unavailable, and connecting through a VPN did not help. "Nothing worked," he said.

Another Moscow resident, Eduard Malyavko, said the outages had "direct impact" and weren't just about "convenience."

"It's also about work," he said, adding that they also affected "healthcare, and everything else."

On Thursday, a drone attack took a Yandex data center offline in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. A day later, Ukrainian drones hit the company's major data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, partly putting it out of action, Yandex said.

Yandex, often described as Russia's Google, runs the country's most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in Russia's artificial intelligence development.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, leaving intact a ruling that wiped out the $8.2 million defamation verdict he won over a political ad aired during his 2017 U.S. Senate campaign.

By declining to hear the case, the justices let stand a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that set aside a jury's finding that the ad had defamed Moore. The outcome is a win for Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic-aligned super PAC that paid for the ad and has maintained that it was accurate.

Monday's order follows an earlier setback for Moore. In June, the Court denied his emergency request to freeze the 11th Circuit ruling while his appeal was pending.

Background of the 2017 race

Moore, known for his opposition to same-sex marriage and his support for displaying the Ten Commandments in public places, lost the 2017 Senate election after his campaign was engulfed by allegations of misconduct. Leigh Corfman accused Moore of touching her inappropriately in 1979, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Moore denied the allegation. Other women said Moore had dated them or asked them out when they were in their late teens.

The disputed ad

Senate Majority PAC financed Highway 31, a group that ran a heavy advertising campaign against Moore during the race. Moore's defamation suit focused on one of its television spots. His lawyers argued that the ad combined statements and fragments of quotes from different news stories in a way that falsely suggested he had been accused of soliciting sex from young girls at a shopping mall. They described it as a "fabricated accusation, never made by any reporter," and said it aired 533 times in Alabama in the closing days of the election.

From jury win to reversal

A federal jury sided with Moore in 2022 and awarded him $8.2 million. The 11th Circuit later vacated that award, concluding that Moore had not proven the PAC acted with actual malice, the standard a public figure must meet to win a defamation claim.

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Brazil's incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face off in a runoff Oct. 25 for the top job of Latin America's powerhouse economy after neither won a majority in Sunday's vote.

The country's electoral court in Brasilia said neither the 80-year-old incumbent, seeking his fourth non-consecutive term, nor the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro would garner the majority vote needed for an outright win.

The court had Bolsonaro with just over 56 million votes to Lula's 53.7 million, with 99.8 percent of the vote reported. The next presidential term is set to begin Jan. 5.

The winner will be in charge of Latin America's biggest economy and a population of 214 million. A win for Bolsonaro would increase U.S. influence in Latin America. If Lula wins, Brazil will keep its distance from Washington and continue to deepen its relationship with China.

Flávio Bolsonaro addressed the press and a small group of supporters, including some wearing green and yellow Brazil jerseys and one woman wrapped in the Israeli flag, outside his Brasilia house.

"Brazil wants change, that's the reading of what happened today," Bolsonaro said. "It's the end of the Workers' Party era," he added, in a reference to Lula's party. Lula, seeking to be encouraging ahead of an uphill battle to beat Bolsonaro in the runoff, said the result was "unexpected" as he had thought he could win in the first round.

"Tomorrow we start a new campaign," Lula said. "I am very good in the knockout stage. We will see who has the best plan."

Both Lula and Bolsonaro will have three weeks to reach moderate voters who did not support them in the first round. Augusto Cury, a writer who finished in third place with 3.4 million votes, said he would not endorse either in the runoff. Ronaldo Caiado and Renan Santos, two candidates who garnered about 5.3 million votes combined Sunday, have previously said the same.

In the campaign ahead, Lula is expected to try to capitalize on the popularity of his social policies and his rival's many legal woes.

While the once widely popular Lula saw his approval ratings plummet during his third term, standing up to the U.S. gave him a boost. And he still enjoys a strong base of supporters who credit his social policies for improving millions of Brazilians' lives.

Bolsonaro will likely lean into his messaging on affordability and link the president to corruption scandals.

He has promised to crack down on Brazilian criminal groups and insisted that Brazil needs to strike better deals with the Trump administration, including in the rare minerals economy, second only to China. Bolsonaro also has campaigned on releasing his father and bringing him back to politics.

Both candidates face image problems: Roughly half of Brazil's population disapproves of the Bolsonaro family, and roughly half disapprove of Lula's Workers' Party, according to multiple polls.

Four years ago, Lula beat then incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by about 2.1 million votes.

While it was a successful night for Bolsonaro, nothing is won yet, said Mayra Goulart, a political scientist from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Lula should "look at the votes for Augusto Cury and Ronaldo Caiado and try to reduce abstention," she said.

Reacting to the result, Alvaro Senra, 65, a history professor and Lula supporter in Rio de Janeiro said he felt "calm but very sad." He watched the count with friends at a bar.

"I think this is the result of conservatives working under the radar, including by neo-Pentecostal churches. But I think Lula can still win," he said.

Earlier in the day, Maria Ribeiro, a 50-year-old cellphone vendor from Brasilia, said she voted for Bolsonaro's eldest son because she wants freedom to express her evangelical religion. She hopes he follows in his father's footsteps.

The attorney for a Northern California woman who was charged along with her husband in the killing of their son-in-law said Thursday that she plans to plead not guilty and focus her defense on the abuse allegedly perpetrated by the victim.

Shili Chen and her husband Shouyong Zhang, both 77, appeared in court briefly to ask the judge for more time before entering formal pleas. They were both charged Wednesday with murder after authorities say they both shot their son-in-law, Jonathan McKinsey, to death Saturday in a public park. The killing came days before he and the couple's daughter were set for a hearing in a bitter divorce and custody case.

Curtis Briggs, a court-appointed attorney assigned Thursday to Chen's defense, said the court documents he has reviewed raised concerns that McKinsey was rageful and could not control his temper.

"Court documents show Mr. McKinsey was extremely violent and dangerous to his family," he said.

Jennie Otis, a public defender representing Zhang, asked the judge on Thursday that he be medically evaluated, though she did not say for what. Otis declined to comment.

Both required Mandarin interpreters in the courtroom.

McKinsey, a 40-year-old gaming engineer for The New York Times, was killed in the parking lot of a sports complex in Dublin, a city east of San Francisco. A police sergeant was driving nearby and saw him on the ground as witnesses began calling 911 and pointing out the couple in their vehicle, who were still near the scene, Dublin Police Services said in a news release.

Police detained the couple as they were driving away in the parking lot and found a gun in Chen's possession. Prosecutors said Zhang admitted to shooting McKinsey during a later interview, and another firearm was found in the car that he admitted to using during the crime. Prosecutors also said surveillance video was recovered showing both Chen and Zhang shooting the victim.

Court records show McKinsey's killing came during a contentious divorce with his wife, Candice Jang, and a custody battle over the couple's three young children. In petitions for restraining orders filed last year, the couple accused each other of physical, emotional and psychological abuse going back more than a decade. McKinsey, who is transgender, alleged that both Jang and her parents were verbally and physically abusive regarding a gender transition he underwent years ago.

McKinsey was arrested last October and charged with misdemeanor child abuse for allegedly hitting their oldest son. Police said he acknowledged having slapped the child. Prosecutors also charged him with endangering their youngest child after deputies responded to the family's home to talk with him and found their 2-year-old had been left home alone, according to court documents.

McKinsey pleaded not guilty to the charges and alleged in court records that he had been set up by his wife, who had left the house without telling him the child was sleeping in a crib upstairs. He was released from jail on the condition that he complete 12 parenting classes. At the time of his killing, McKinsey was out on bail and had been trying to enter a mental health diversion program.