Last week, Trump named former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead the presidential advisory commission, DOGE. Their work must be completed no later than July 4, 2026, Trump said in his statement.

Ramaswamy told Fox Business on Sunday that “there is massive waste, fraud, and abuse right now.”

“Federal contractors are really exploiting the federal government,” he said.

When Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked him whether entire government agencies will be closed, he responded in the affirmative.

“We expect mass reductions. We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright,“ Ramaswamy said. ”We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts of all federal contractors and others who are overbilling the federal government. So, yes, we expect all of the above.”

As a presidential candidate, Ramaswamy had called for totally eliminating or restructuring of several agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elaborating on Fox, Ramaswamy said that “failures of the executive branch need to be addressed.”

“Unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action” are running the government, he said, which needs to be fixed by the executive branch.

“This is about restoring self-governance and accountability in America as well. Elected leaders, if they make the wrong decisions, voters have a great choice. You can vote them out and remove them,” Ramaswamy said.

“Most of the people making these decisions from health care to the Department of Defense are failing on effectiveness because they have no accountability. Historically, it’s been the view of many scholars to say that those people could not even be fired. Now, we take a different view with the environment the Supreme Court has given us in recent years, and we’re going to use that in a pretty extensive way to move quickly.”

DOGE will not be an official government agency, meaning that both Ramaswamy and Musk are not considered Cabinet members in the incoming Trump administration and therefore not subject to the Senate confirmation.

Both Ramaswamy and Musk, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the president-elect at a UFC event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Saturday night. Gabbard is Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, while Trump nominated Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On Thursday, DOGE’s account on social platform X, which is owned by Musk, posted a job listing announcement that is calling for individuals to work 80 or more hours per week ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

Musk and Ramaswamy both threw their support behind Trump this year.

Over the past month, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which trades as DJT, has surged by 220 percent, or about $35 per share. As of Wednesday, DJT is trading at around $51 per share.

The company is now valued at more than $10 billion after its shares more than quadrupled since late September.

Meanwhile, X Holdings is valued at around $9.4 billion, based on the most recent value the investment group Fidelity assigned to its stake in the company formerly known as Twitter.

Since it went public in March, Trump’s company stock has been especially volatile, often depending on news updates related to the former president. When a jury convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York on May 31, the company’s shares also saw a drop.

Meanwhile, in mid-September, the stock plunged to a low of about $12 per share, which put the company at a value of about $3 billion. But since then, it has posted steady gains on a daily basis.

After the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13, the company’s stock jumped by more than 60 percent.

The recent surge in the company’s stock could be attributed to the proximity of the Nov. 5 election between Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his Democratic challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump owns around 115 million shares of the company, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the stock surge, Trump’s net worth has also been on the upswing, according to Forbes magazine, and he’s now worth about $8 billion.

When Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the company was valued at around $44 billion. At that time, Fidelity Investments valued its stake at $19.7 million. In a recent regulatory filing, Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth fund said its stake in X Holdings was worth about $4.2 million.

Other companies that Trump Media is now bigger than include Caesars Entertainment, Match Group, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and Hasbro, the maker of the Monopoly game.

Musk has become one of Trump’s most prominent supporters in the former president’s bid to get reelected. Musk has committed more than $70 million to boost Trump and has recently held a number of town halls in support of the former president.

Trump launched Truth Social in 2022, months after his Twitter account was suspended by Twitter’s previous management before Musk took over and renamed the platform X. The former president often uses Truth Social to deliver updates on his campaign, provide endorsements to Republican candidates, and provide his commentary on his legal and civil court cases.

But in recent months, Trump has returned to X and is now heavily using the site to promote his campaign. Musk endorsed the former president in July and has been campaigning for him, namely in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

Based in Sarasota, Florida, Trump Media has been losing money and struggling to raise revenue, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It lost more than $16 million in the quarter ending June while generating only $837,000 in revenue, according to the filings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

As of Sunday afternoon, data provided by the University of Florida’s Election Lab shows 41.2 million voted by mail or early in person in the vast majority of states, with only a few states not reporting data.

Compared with four years ago, Republicans are returning more mail-in ballots and voting early in-person. Party affiliation does not mean that voters cast ballot for their party’s nominated candidate, meaning there is no way to definitively know what presidential candidate is ahead.

In states that report votes by party, registered Democrats have a 3.8 percent lead over registered Republicans, with 40 percent to 36.2 percent, respectively. Independent or minor party voters make up about 23.8 percent of the remainder, according to data provided by the lab.

Republicans have a 9-point advantage over Democrats during in-person early voting, while Democrats have a more than 11-point lead over Republicans for mail-in ballot returns, the data show.

As of Oct. 25, only 24.5 percent of mail-in ballots returned were from Republicans, while about 52.3 percent of Democrats did so, according to the Election Lab. Some 22.6 percent of returned mail ballots were from independents or those registered with minor parties.

Republicans in 2020 also had a smaller lead voting in-person early, the data show. At the time, some 40.2 percent of Republicans voted in-person early, while 37.5 percent were Democrats.

States that have reported no data so far include New York, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.

Swing-State Breakdown

In Nevada, Republicans have a 5.1 percent early voting lead—or 31,000 votes—over Democrats, the Election Lab’s data show. That state was called for President Joe Biden over Trump in 2020.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a 6.9-percent advantage over Democrats in Arizona, a state that only reports mail-in ballots. Biden was also certified the victor in Arizona by a slim, 10,000-vote margin four years ago.

Voting by mail is extremely popular in Arizona, with nearly 90 percent of voters having cast their ballots early, most by mail, in 2020. Election officials in Arizona can begin processing and tabulating mail ballots upon receipt, but results cannot be released until one hour after polls close.

Late last week, Republicans pulled ahead in North Carolina, a state won by former President Donald Trump in 2020. By Sunday, the lead increased marginally to about 1.1 percent, or about 30,000 votes, over Democrats, data show.

Earlier this month, Trump visited areas in North Carolina that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene, saying that some Americans in the region “felt helpless and abandoned and left behind by their government.”

“In North Carolina’s hour of desperation, the American people answered the call much more so than your federal government,” he said.

And in mid-October, Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, and told a crowd that she wants to “fight for the ideals of our country and to fight to realize the promise of America.”

Pennsylvania has only reported mail-in ballots as of Oct. 27, showing that Democrats have taken a more than 330,000-vote lead over Republicans. However, Democrats’ lead has narrowed in recent days, down about 19,000 votes since Oct. 24, data show.

Pennsylvania did not have a clear winner in 2020 for four days after Election Day, as officials sifted through a huge backlog of mail ballots. The state is among only a handful that do not permit election workers to process or tabulate mail ballots until 7 a.m. ET on Election Day, which means it will likely again take days before the outcome is known.

Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin do not report party affiliation via the Election Lab website.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said they have “no information suggesting cyber activity against U.S. election infrastructure” that has “compromised the integrity of voter registration information, prevented an eligible voter from casting a ballot, impacted the integrity of any ballots cast, or disrupted the ability to count votes or transmit unofficial election results in a timely manner.”

But the two agencies said that foreign adversaries still might promote “false or misleading narratives” to sway the election or to undermine American confidence in its election systems and processes.

Specifically, the two agencies warned of election-related content produced by artificial intelligence (AI) that has lowered the guardrails for malicious or foreign actors to create more advanced schemes to influence the election.

“We are seeing foreign actors use these tools to develop and distribute more compelling synthetic media messaging campaigns and inauthentic news articles, as well as synthetic pictures and deepfakes (video and audio) at greater speed and scale across numerous U.S.- and foreign-based platforms,” their joint bulletin said.

“These efforts to develop content are designed to undermine voter confidence and to entice unwitting consumers of the information to discuss, share, and amplify the spread of false or misleading narratives.”

In one example of AI-aided content produced by foreign actors ahead of the election, the agency said that Russian groups have “created and deliberately designed” web pages “to look like legitimate mainstream news websites” such as The Washington Post or Fox News.

“Russian malign influence actors also created fake social media profiles posing as U.S. citizens to direct users to these fake news websites and purchased social media advertisements to drive traffic to the specific fake articles on the fake news site,” the two agencies cautioned.

The PSA highlights specific examples of tactics we have seen used by Russia and Iran during the 2024 election cycle to target all Americans. These include things from mimicking national level media outlets like The Washington Post and Fox News and creating inauthentic news sites posing as legitimate media organizations to using paid influencers to hide their hand.

In late September, three Iranian government employees were charged and identified by the Department of Justice for a wide-ranging hacking conspiracy that targeted both current and former U.S. officials as well as political campaigns.

The bulletin was referring to an indictment that was returned last month that accused Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yasar Balaghi of trying to hack the campaign of a presidential candidate, without providing names. But in a news conference last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed that they were targeting the campaign of former President Donald Trump.

Iran-backed hackers who breached the Trump campaign in June and July sent emails with hacked campaign materials to people associated with President Joe Biden’s campaign as well as various media outlets, said the FBI, CISA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month.

But the agencies said that the the campaign of Biden, who suspended his presidential bid in late July, was not interested in the hacked materials. There is also no evidence the Biden campaign even responded to the emails, which were described by the intelligence and cybersecurity agencies as unsolicited.

“It is important for voters to critically evaluate information sources, particularly as disinformation campaigns evolve to use AI-generated content,” both CISA and the FBI said in a news release accompanying the bulletin. “Both agencies urge the American public to rely on trusted information from state and local election officials and to verify claims through multiple reliable sources before sharing them on social media or other platforms.”

Closures of Walgreens stores were announced in June, but the company had not disclosed the number of affected stores at that time. It had more than 8,000 stores in the United States as of Aug. 31 last year.

In a statement, the company said that as part of a “footprint optimization program,” there will be about 1,200 closures around the country until 2027. That includes about 500 store closures in the fiscal year 2025, which will “immediately” provide the company with some “free cash flow.”

“Our financial results in the fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2024 reflected our disciplined execution on cost management, working capital initiatives and capex reduction,” Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth said in the statement.

He said that in the next fiscal year, Walgreens will be “focusing on stabilizing the retail pharmacy by optimizing [the company’s] footprint, controlling operating costs, improving cash flow, and continuing to address reimbursement models to support dispensing margins and preserve patient access for the future.”

“This turnaround will take time, but we are confident it will yield significant financial and consumer benefits over the long term,” said Wentworth, who was named chief executive officer in 2023.

Walgreens, like its competitors, has been struggling for years with tight reimbursement for the prescriptions it sells as well as other challenges such as rising costs to operate its stores. Drugstore chains have also been dealing with more competition from online retail giant Amazon, as well as Walmart and Target.

Rival CVS Health Corp. is wrapping up a three-year plan to close 900 stores. Another major chain, Rite Aid Corp., emerged from a bankruptcy reorganization earlier this year after whittling its store count down to about 1,300 locations.

Walgreens has also been backing away from a plan to add primary care clinics next to some of its stores after launching an aggressive expansion under previous CEO Rosalind Brewer.

Walgreens said Tuesday that its net loss swelled to more than $3 billion in the final quarter of 2024. The company said softer U.S. retail and pharmacy performance hurt operating income. It also booked some hefty charges tied to opioid litigation settlements the company had recognized in previous quarters and an equity investment in China.

Walgreens shares rose by almost 4 percent on Tuesday morning before Wall Street’s opening bell.

A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in August revealed that Walgreens had considered selling off at least parts of its VillageMD subsidiary business. VillageMD describes itself as a doctor-staffed primary care clinic operator.

Earlier in October, CVS said it was cutting about 2,900 jobs across the United States as part of a cost-savings program, according to a statement. Those layoffs will mainly impact corporate jobs and will represent fewer than 1 percent of the company’s workforce.

The reductions, part of CVS’s previously announced plan, would primarily impact corporate roles and not frontline jobs in stores, pharmacies, and distribution centers, it said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

The FBI has said in a statement it is investigating the matter as an assassination attempt, while law enforcement officials said on Sunday that Secret Service agents opened fire after discovering the barrel of a rifle at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspect was later arrested by sheriff’s officials in Marion County, the county’s sheriff’s department said.

“The State of Florida will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination at Trump International Golf Club,” DeSantis said in a social media statement. “The people deserve the truth about the would-be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee.”

The Republican governor was referring to comments made by Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who said the suspected gunman got between 400 and 500 yards of Trump and had an AK-47 with a scope pointed through a fence. The suspect was located by the agent around the fourth or fifth hole of the golf course, and Trump was set to approach the area, the sheriff said.

The investigation into the Florida incident at the Trump golf course is now being handled by federal law enforcement officials, the Marion County sheriff told reporters earlier Sunday.

Federal agents with the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were helping investigate.

Trump’s campaign and the former president himself issued statements saying that he was safe and unharmed. No injuries were reported.

In July, Trump was shot in the ear during a Pennsylvania campaign rally that also left one attendee dead and two injured. Questions were raised about the Secret Service agency and possible breakdowns in how the rally was secured, leading to the resignation of the agency’s director.

The suspected shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed nearly immediately after he opened fire at the rally. Few details about Crooks, including a motive, have been released since.

On Sunday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas condemned violence against candidates and officials. His agency oversees the Secret Service and is currently overseeing an investigation into the Pennsylvania assassination attempt two months ago.

In a post on X, Mayorkas commended the Secret Service for “its quick action to preempt this apparent assassination attempt and protect the former President.”

“DHS and the Secret Service are closely working with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to learn all of the facts surrounding this incident. The safety and security of Presidential candidates and other protectees is the highest priority for the Secret Service, ” Mayorkas said.

Meanwhile, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, have said they were briefed on the incident.

Biden released a statement on Sunday night saying he was “relieved” that Trump was not harmed in the incident, while also commending the Secret Service.

“I have been briefed by my team regarding what federal law enforcement is investigating as a possible assassination attempt of former President Trump today. A suspect is in custody, and I commend the work of the Secret Service and their law enforcement partners for their vigilance and their efforts to keep the former President and those around him safe,” he said.

The former president updated his fundraising website later Sunday with a message about his campaign efforts.
“FEAR NOT! I am safe and well, and no one was hurt. Thank God! But, there are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us. I will not stop fighting for you. I will Never Surrender,” the website states.

DeSantis challenged Trump in the Republican primaries earlier this year before the Florida governor dropped out.

But there’s another angle, one I am not pleased to consider. All of this talk of coming terrorist attacks fit perfectly with the notion of a false flag being planned, especially considering the proximity to the election. Between the warnings, the border crisis, and the sources of the information all being propagators of ill tidings, I’m inclined to take the threats seriously. With that said, here’s Jack Phillips from The Epoch Times…

(The Epoch Times)—House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that the United States is currently at its “highest level” for the possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on American soil.

During an interview with CBS News, Mr. Turner was asked about reports of recent arrests with individuals with ties to the ISIS terrorist group in the United States.

“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat, that the administration’s policies have absolutely directly related to threats to Americans,” Mr. Turner said.

He added to CBS News that the threats are “no longer speculative” and “not longer hypothetical” in light of public comments made by the FBI director during multiple congressional committee meetings in the past six months or so.

“We have actual administration officials stepping forward and certainly our committee and our committee members have concurred on the intelligence that we’re seeing,“ Mr. Turner told the outlet. ”That as a result of the administration’s policies allowing people to cross the border unvetted, we have terrorists that are actively working with inside the United States that are a threat to Americans.”

His comments came in light of reports, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that claimed that at least eight Tajikistan nationals with alleged ties to ISIS were arrested in several major cities including New York and Los Angeles. The Epoch Times has not been able to independently verify those reports.

On June 14, meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State and Turkey announced they would impose sanctions on three individuals who have ties to ISIS and are involved with a network involved in facilitating travel into the United States.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about requesting a classified briefing for all senators about ISIS threats, he told Fox News on June 12 in an exclusive.

“I have never been more worried than I am right now about an attack on our homeland” after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, combined with what he described as lax border security,” Mr. Graham wrote on X. Two days prior, he wrote on social media he has “been sounding the alarm for over two years” that the United States currently is at risk of a 9/11-like terrorist attack.

Earlier this month, Mr. Wray told a Senate committee the United States currently faces threats posed by foreign terrorists that “rise to a whole ‘nother level” following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, which punctuated the start of the ongoing Israel–Hamas conflict.

“Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today,” the FBI director said at the time, while pushing for increased funding for the federal law enforcement bureau.

He also made reference to a terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow that left scores of people dead that ISIS-K, or Islamic State Khorasan, claimed responsibility for.

“We’ve seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies,” Mr. Wray said, adding that what is “increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall in March.”

Mr. Wray had also sounded the alarm on his concerns about possible human smuggling operations along the U.S.–Mexico border and that Mexico should also provide more support.

Speaking on “This Week” Sunday, the former justice disagreed with claims that the U.S. Supreme Court has become politicized.

“No judge should or will be moved by the temperature of the day,” he said, quoting law professor Paul Freund, “but every judge will be aware of the climate of the season.”

He also responded to a question on whether political division has impacted the Supreme Court: “Hard to say. It’s a different, it’s a very complex institution … I’ve not seen politics in the court. And I’ve been a judge for 40 years.” Sometimes, however, they have to consider the real-world consequences of their rulings, he added.

Instead, the justices are influenced by their interpretations of the U.S. Constitution and various laws, their relationships, and sometimes how they are viewed by the public, Justice Breyer said.

“It may be that you can find a compromise in the conference or a way of approaching things in the conference that will, in fact, solve a number of problems. And that could be one of the problems,” the retired justice said. “[Former Supreme Court Justice] Sandra O’Connor used to say this: The first unwritten rule is nobody speaks twice ’til everyone speaks once. Second unwritten rule: Tomorrow is another day. You and I were the greatest of allies on case one. Case two, we’re absolutely at loggerheads,” he added.

Justice Breyer retired in June 2022, setting up the nomination and confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Since his retirement, the Supreme Court has faced a number of protests, including when the court overturned Roe v. Wade that same year, as well as a ruling against affirmative action the following year.

The Supreme Court this year issued a 9-0 ruling that ruled against states that blocked former President Donald Trump from appearing on ballots during the 2024 election.

Last month, Justice Breyer also rejected claims that the Supreme Court is becoming biased. “The political people desperately want to say that the judges are deciding on political bases. I don’t think that’s true,” he said.

Disagreements among the justices are civil, he added, and are generally private. “It’s important because then everyone feels they’ve participated. Everyone feels that the others have a chance to listen to them,” the former justice said.

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the former president’s claim of presidential immunity in a variety of cases. The former president appointed three justices when he was in office.

The election-related case against President Trump has been on hold while his immunity appeals are pending, meaning that no pre-trial preparations have taken place since mid-December.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is expected to give prosecutors and defense attorneys at least three months to get ready for trial if the case returns to her court. Further pre-trial legal battles are certain even after the case resumes in her court.

The trial is expected to take months, which means it will likely coincide with the election unless it begins by August. Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has said the government’s case should take no longer than four to six weeks, but that doesn’t include any defense President Trump could put forward. Jury selection alone could take weeks.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide a legally untested question: whether former presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts performed in office. This question is novel because, until President Trump, no ex-president had ever been charged with a crime. The Supreme Court has previously held that presidents are immune from civil liability for official acts.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

It came after the NRA filed a lawsuit against the ATF, or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, arguing that the agency’s rule to reclassify the brace-equipped pistols as short-barreled rifles is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay sided with the gun rights group, arguing that the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already concluded that the ATF pistol-brace rule “fails the logical outgrowth test and violates” the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and is “unlawful” under the act.

“The court, therefore, sees no reason why it should not consider this argument and APA claim in ruling on Plaintiff’s Motion,” the judge added. “To not do so would be exalt form over substance, particularly since the Fifth Circuit has already determined that this claim has a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the merits.”

The judge agreed with the NRA’s arguments that its members would be substantially harmed by the ATF rule, which was finalized in January 2023.

“Compliance with the Final Rule is not discretionary, and the NRA’s members face severe penalties for their failure to comply with the Final Rule,” Judge Lindsay wrote in the ruling last week. “Accordingly, both of the final requirements for injunctive relief are satisfied because the threatened injury to the NRA’s members outweighs the threatened harm to the Defendants, and enforcement of the Final Rule under the circumstances will not disserve the public interest.”

Pistol braces were first marketed in 2012 as a way of attaching a pistol to the shooter’s forearm, stabilizing it and making it easier to use for disabled people. However, many users found that the braces could also be placed against the shoulder, like the stock on a rifle.

The disputed ATF rule classifies some guns equipped with pistol braces as short-barrel rifles, based on several factors including their size and weight and the manufacturers’ marketing materials. Short-barrel rifles are subject to special registration, longer waiting periods for purchase, and higher taxes because officials have claimed they are potentially more dangerous than handguns.

“While firearms equipped with ‘stabilizing braces’ or other rearward attachments may be submitted to ATF for a new classification determination, a majority of the existing firearms equipped with a ‘stabilizing brace’ are likely to be classified as ‘rifles’ because they are configured for shoulder fire based on the factors described in this rule,” the ATF rule says.

Because the brace-equipped firearms will have a barrel fewer than 16 inches in length, they are “likely to be classified as short-barreled rifles” that are subject to the enhanced federal regulation, it adds.

In a 2–1 ruling last year, the Fifth Circuit found that the ATF finalized the rule without giving the public a meaningful chance to comment on it. That made it invalid under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, the panel found.

The court at the time did not immediately block enforcement of the rule, instead sending the case back to a lower court judge who found that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.

“[T]he Court finds that the Government Defendants’ implementation and enforcement of the Final Rule substantially threatens to inflict irreparable constitutional harm upon the [Firearms Policy Coalition] members,” Judge Reed O’Connor wrote last year. “Absent injunctive relief, the Final Rule will impair and threaten to deprive them of their fundamental right to keep and bear commonly used arms as a means of achieving the inherently lawful ends of self-defense.”

Other than NRA members, the previous Fifth Circuit ruling allowed members of the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America to not face ATF enforcement regarding the braces.

In a news release last week, the NRA, which has millions of members nationwide, said that Judge Lindsay’s order represents a big win for its members. It noted that members of the group who need to use a pistol brace will be shielded from potential ATF enforcement.

“This is a major victory for the NRA, its members, and all who believe in Second Amendment freedom,” NRA President Charles Cotton said in the release. “From day one, we vowed to fight back against President Biden and his rogue regulators—and to defeat this unlawful measure.”

Under the rule, if a person is caught using a pistol brace that has not been registered, the weapon can be seized by federal officials and the owner could face a fine of $10,000 or prison time of up to 10 years, according to the ATF. The agency says gun owners must either remove the brace from the pistol, register it as a short-barreled rifle, remove the barrel and attach a longer one, forfeit the firearm at a local ATF office, or destroy it.

The ATF or the Department of Justice have not yet issued a response to the ruling.

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded shell company, approved a deal to merge with the President Donald Trump’s media business in a vote this past week.

The common stock of Trump Media & Technology Group, which is led by former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, will trade under the ticker symbol “DJT,” or the former president’s initials, according to a news release.

The new ticker symbol is the same one that was used by the former president’s resorts and casino firm, which used to trade on the New York Stock Exchange in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., or DWAC, rose by 23 percent on March 25 in the afternoon following the Nasdaq announcement. So far in 2024, shares of DWAC have increased by more than 130 percent, while revenue was $3.4 million for the first three quarters of last year, said a DWAC regulatory filing.

“As a public company, we will passionately pursue our vision to build a movement to reclaim the Internet from Big Tech censors,” said Mr. Nunes in the release. “We will continue to fulfill our commitment to Americans to serve as a safe harbor for free expression and to stand up to the ever-growing army of speech suppressors.”

President Trump is set to own most of the combined company—or nearly 79 million shares. Multiply that by Digital World’s closing stock price Friday of $36.94, and the total value of his stake could be nearly $3 billion.

“Today marks a pivotal moment not only for DWAC and TMTG as a combined entity, but for the broader media and technology landscape,” Eric Swider, director of TMTG, said in a news release, adding that it is an “extraordinary opportunity to shape the future of media and technology.”

On March 22, shareholders of Digital World voted to approve a merger with TMTG, where President Trump is the chairman, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Digital World is what’s called a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, also known as a “blank-check company.” SPACs raise cash and then hunt for companies to merge with. Such deals give the target companies a potentially quicker and easier way to get their stocks onto the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.

The arrangement lets them avoid some of the paperwork associated with traditional initial public offerings of stock, or IPOs. For investors, SPACs offer a way to get into hyped, potentially faster-growing companies such as TMTG, the DraftKings betting service, or SoFi banking.

It comes as the former president faces a massive, $455 million civil judgment after a New York judge ruled this month that he and his real-estate company defrauded banks and insurance companies for at least a decade.

President Trump has denied the allegations, saying the judge is engaging in a partisan witch hunt designed to harm his 2024 chances.

Bond Amount Cut

On March 25, a New York court cut the bond amount to $175 million that the former president needs to post in order to appeal the fraud verdict. The court also set a new deadline, giving him more than a week to pay.

The office of the New York attorney general, who brought the fraud case, responded to the ruling by saying that the former president is “still facing accountability for his staggering fraud.”

“The court has already found that he engaged in years of fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization,” the statement said. “The $464 million judgment—plus interest—against Donald Trump and the other defendants still stands.”

President Trump’s two eldest sons Donald Jr. and Eric, and two company executives from the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg and Jeff McConney, also face penalties in the judgment. And this past week, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office filed the judgments in Westchester County, New York, suggesting that she might take action to seize the former president’s assets in the county.

There has been speculation that the former president could use some of the Truth Social acquisition cash to help pay off his legal expenses, which includes attorney fees amid four criminal cases. The former president also has to pay a judgment in a defamation case that was brought against him by writer E. Jean Carroll.

But under the agreement, he cannot sell his shares in the company easily for at least six months. Major TMTG shareholders will be under what’s called a “lock-up” provision, a common restriction on Wall Street that keeps big, early investors from immediately dumping their shares. Such sales could tank the stock’s price.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.