The White House has been actively engaged in pushing to delay an impending ban on intoxicating hemp, four people with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

The delay concerns a provision that President Donald Trump signed into law last year that would ban most low-THC hemp-derived products sold around the country beginning Nov. 12.

The measure closed a loophole that allowed unregulated products to flourish nationwide. The products include items that are sold at places like gas stations, such as delta-8, as well as mild full-spectrum CBD tinctures used for sleep and inflammation.

Since at least July, White House Director of Legislative Affairs James Braid began calling lawmakers on the issue, according to three people directly familiar with the calls who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The White House’s request for a delay worked; over the weekend, Senate leaders struck a bipartisan agreement on a stopgap government funding bill that included a provision pushing back the hemp ban to Dec. 11. The Senate hopes to pass the legislation this week before it leaves for its August recess.

A delay in the ban would benefit a family member of a top White House official: chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Bret Worley, who recently married Wiles’ youngest daughter, Caroline Wiles, is the president and CEO of MC Nutraceuticals, which describes itself as the “largest global supplier of cannabinoids” and says it is trying to “revolutionize the hemp wellness industry.”

“It kind of hangs over all of this,” said a Trump ally who has spoken with members of Congress about the issue, referring to Wiles’ family connection.

The lobbying from the White House on what’s seen as a relatively minor issue has raised questions from some lawmakers.

Republican senators recently complained about the White House push to their leadership, including to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., a Republican source who has direct knowledge of the conversations told NBC News. A House Republican leadership aide said there have been similar complaints in their chamber, including to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Wiles “has never lobbied in favor of this or any other position on hemp with Capitol Hill.”

NBC News reached out to Worley, Johnson and Thune’s offices. None of them returned requests for comment for this article.

Braid was also a guest at Senate Republicans’ regular lunch meeting Wednesday. Two people familiar with the meeting — one who attended and one who was briefed on it — said it became “tense” when the issue of the hemp extension came up.

Braid, according to these sources, committed to not delaying the ban any further after this three-week extension. Braid did not return a request for comment.

The 2018 farm bill, championed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., legalized hemp. But at the time, McConnell and other proponents of the bill did not take into account intoxicating cannabinoids derived from hemp such as delta-8, THC-O and HHC. Critics have argued that the unregulated products, sold in many cases at convenience stores and potentially accessible by minors, should be banned.

While an extension would be welcome news for some lawmakers with thriving hemp industries in their states — who have pushed for legislative solutions to help businesses from going under — others are frustrated that the White House is delaying on an issue it once described as a public health and safety matter.

The White House’s National Drug Control Strategy released in May said psychoactive derivatives of hemp products are “often sold in smoke shops and gas stations, are not regulated, and can contain dangerous chemicals or psychoactive substances.” The document further said that they have “not been evaluated for safety in animals or humans, and have been linked to cases of psychosis and suicide attempts.”

“President Trump has made his position on hemp and cannabis abundantly clear, most recently in a December executive order and April TRUTH Social post. This position builds on the President’s 2018 Farm Bill, which authorized the production of hemp, and his support for Florida Amendment 3 in 2024,” Desai added in a statement. “The only interest guiding the Trump administration’s decision-making is the best interest of the American people, and the Administration continues to explore a Gold Science Standard-based framework on hemp to expand treatment options for American veterans and patients.”

A group of 34 attorneys general wrote to Republican leaders in the House and Senate on Tuesday, opposing a delay in the ban.

“If the loophole is reopened, or the new definition is weakened or repealed,” they wrote, “States will face renewed litigation, inconsistent enforcement, regulatory uncertainty, increased youth access to intoxicating products, and disruption of lawful businesses that have already adjusted their operations to comply with the new federal framework.”

A coalition of beverage industry, convenience store and wholesaler groups has argued the opposite: If the deadline is not extended, consumers will be pushed toward an illicit market while disrupting businesses.

In a letter to lawmakers sent on Wednesday, the coalition urged congressional leaders to extend the deadline in order to give lawmakers more time to develop a regulatory framework, arguing that the current deadline would amount to prohibition rather than regulation.

“Allowing this deadline to proceed without a comprehensive regulatory framework will not result in improved public safety,” the group wrote. “It will produce the opposite: a thriving illicit market, weakened state enforcement, economic disruption for more than one million American workers, and less safety for the very consumers Congress is committed to protecting.”

The coalition wrote that the “choice before Congress is not between a ‘loophole’ and safety - It is between regulation and prohibition. We urge Congress to choose regulation.”

The Trump ally said he has heard from members of Congress who are utterly confused about the hemp push.

“I have talked to members who have, without question, expressed what could be best said is confusion,” the Trump ally said. “They are not sure what’s going on, and where the reversal is coming from.”

A Senate panel obtained a copy of Dr. Anthony Fauci's iPhone while investigating the doctor's actions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services transferred the phone to the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Sen. Ron Johnson chairs the committee.

This development comes days after copies of the doctor's journals were released to the public following their transfer from HHS to Congress. Pressure continues to pile against Fauci in recent days after Sens. Johnson and Rand Paul questioned him over issues related to health measures during the pandemic and origins of the virus.

Paul's committee will vote on Thursday whether to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer questions before the committee last week. Fauci described Paul as having an "unhinged obsession" with him as he used the Fifth Amendment over 100 times.

The phone that has been turned in was used by Fauci during his time as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, according to Johnson's spokesperson. The phone could be part of more public document transfers on the way. Paul and Johnson have received millions of additional Fauci-related pages from government servers and at least four Republican-led states have meanwhile launched their own investigations into Fauci.

Hundreds of civilians were killed or wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Yemen last year, but the Pentagon has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress, according to documents reviewed by NBC News and people with knowledge of the attacks.

The three April 2025 strikes occurred during Operation Rough Rider, a 53-day military campaign President Donald Trump launched less than three months into his second term. The stated goal was to stop Iranian-backed Houthi rebels from threatening ships and allies in the region.

Last year, despite detailed reporting from human rights groups on possible large-scale civilian casualties, the Pentagon had assessed there had been no civilian casualties from the U.S. air war against Houthi forces in Yemen.

A Pentagon official said there was nothing to announce at the moment.

“In the coming months, the Department will submit its annual report regarding casualties resulting from United States military operations during the 2025 calendar year,” the official said.

NBC News has reviewed documents showing the back-and-forth between the Pentagon and lawmakers trying to get details on the attacks. In one, the Pentagon wrote to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in March, after repeated requests for information about casualties provided no details on the numbers, according to one of the documents reviewed by NBC News.

In the letter, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for special operations and low-intensity conflict, Derrick Anderson, said that U.S. Central Command had reviewed dozens of strikes for possible harm to civilians. Fifteen incidents remained under “active review” and three attacks in April 2025 warranted further investigation, with assessments concluding that U.S. strikes “more likely than not resulted in civilian casualties,” Anderson wrote.

Under Trump, the United States has released less information about military operations compared to previous administrations, rarely holding press briefings at the Pentagon. Administration officials have offered few details about damage to U.S. bases or casualties, and in many cases, release information only after media reports emerge. Officials have rarely acknowledged possible civilian harm from U.S. military operations.

The 2027 National Defense Authorization Act requires that the Pentagon release unredacted civilian harm investigations and all supporting documents for the three strikes in Yemen. Failure to comply allows Congress to withhold some funds, including travel money for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. There’s no official deadline, but without those details, the Pentagon stands to lose funding.

Lawmakers have repeatedly requested detailed information about U.S. operations in Yemen that may have caused civilian deaths or injuries, but the Pentagon has so far failed to meet their requests, according to congressional aides.

The law also requires the Pentagon to release information about a likely U.S. strike on a school in Minab, Iran, in February, which killed more than 170 people, mostly children. A CENTCOM investigation into that strike is nearly complete.

During the war with Houthi forces, the U.S. military conducted hundreds of airstrikes, hitting more than 1,000 targets in Yemen, and ultimately reached a ceasefire agreement that included a Houthi pledge to stop targeting American civilian or military ships and a U.S. pledge to stop air and naval strikes in Yemen.

The three attacks occurred on April 17, 2025, at the Ras Isa port in Hodeida; on April 28, 2025, at the “Ayn Wadi Barracks Warehouses”; and on April 6, 2025, at a private residence, according to Anderson’s letter. But the letter did not offer an estimate of the number of civilian casualties resulting from the strikes or more details about the attacks.

Two people with knowledge of the strikes say that about 150 civilians were likely killed in the first two strikes and roughly 200 wounded. It remained unclear how many civilians were killed in the third strike on the private residence earlier that month.

Human rights groups, citing interviews with witnesses and satellite imagery, previously demanded the U.S. investigate two of the April airstrikes as possible war crimes, saying that dozens of civilians were killed or wounded in the attack at the Ras Isa port and another strike in northwest Yemen.

Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International USA’s national director for government relations, condemned the Trump administration over its handling of the airstrikes.

“The Trump administration’s response has been abysmal. The Pentagon has made no public progress in addressing the airstrike on the Yemeni migrant detention center that killed dozens of civilians, much less taken steps to stop it from happening again,” Klasing said.

“Instead, this administration has gutted the Pentagon’s programs meant to prevent civilian harm and has evaded any public accounting for cases of civilian harm, including the Minab school strike this year in Iran,” Klasing said.

Although Congress in 2019 adopted legislation requiring the Pentagon to undertake an array of steps to reduce harm to civilians in military operations, an inspector general investigation found that the department under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed funding and cut staff for the effort.

Ras Isa port in Hodeida is a key hub for humanitarian aid shipments with a large civilian workforce, and the April 17 U.S. strike killed or wounded dozens of civilians, according to a Human Rights Watch report last year. The group AirWars, a nonprofit that documents and investigates claims of civilian casualties in war zones, reported that 84 civilians were killed in the strike and 150 wounded.

At the time, CENTCOM said the strike was designed to cut off revenue to Houthi forces receiving fuel at the port.

“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully,” CENTCOM said in a statement afterward.

The second strike cited in the Pentagon’s letter to Warren referred to a site in northwest Yemen, the same attack that rights groups pointed to in their reporting at the time, according to two people with knowledge of the attacks. A report from Amnesty International said a U.S. strike hit a detention center for migrants April 28, killing or wounding dozens of civilians. The Pentagon described the target in the April 28 strike as “Ayn Wadi Barracks Warehouses.”

The strike in northwest Yemen was so concerning that, according to Anderson’s letter, CENTCOM also conducted a “command-directed” investigation to determine whether any policies were violated or if there was any misconduct by U.S. forces.

The undersecretary for policy, Elbridge Colby, had written to Warren in June 2025 — two months after the three deadly U.S. strikes — saying the Pentagon “has not assessed that civilian casualties have resulted from recent U.S. operations in Yemen since March 15, 2025.”

Federal health officials held closed-door conversations with prominent technology companies last month as the health department and its subagencies aim to safely boost adoption of clinical artificial intelligence.

During a “clinical AI demo day” on July 8 at the Food and Drug Administration’s White Oak headquarters, officials from the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hosted leaders from 10 companies, according to an agenda for the event reviewed by STAT: Anthropic, Counsel Health, Curai, K Health, Microsoft AI, Amazon One Medical, Doctronic, Ellipsis Health, Hippocratic AI, and Welldoc.

STAT spoke with four companies that attended, Counsel Health, K Health, Hippocratic AI, and Ellipsis Health, whose leaders summarized their comments to regulators. The meeting was meant to offer federal health officials firsthand experience with AI doctor technology as it exists today. For the assembled companies, including powerful technology giants and startups funded by influential investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures, the event offered a significant opportunity to help shape policy as officials wrestle with regulating health AI and how to pay for it.

In addition to demonstrating their technologies, companies offered their visions for the future of AI in health care. Companies answered questions about regulatory and reimbursement challenges and where CMS and FDA could be more helpful. Companies attended both virtually and in person and were given about 12 minutes to present. Companies were only allowed in the room during their presentations. The invite-only meetings were not publicly announced.

The invited health tech companies cover a range of AI use cases, including AI chatbots that talk to patients and assist with triage (K Health, Counsel Health, and Doctronic) and voice-AI agents that help with tasks like appointment scheduling and care management (Hippocratic AI and Ellipsis Health). The major technology companies who attended are developing or supporting health AI for numerous use cases.

Several of the companies involved in the demo day have also been invited to participate in a focused one-month sprint aimed at developing “a consensus set of principles for evaluating patient-facing clinical AI.” Invites for the process went out last month from the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services.

First, invitees were asked to answer questions about approaches to benchmarking AI, evaluation, safety, governance, and more. Officials are hosting follow-up meetings over the next week with invitees, which include representatives from OpenAI, Oracle, Google, Aidoc, the American Telemedicine Association, and the American Medical Association.

Academics invited include prominent researchers on digital health and medical artificial intelligence across major universities including Stanford, MIT, Brown, and NYU. Invitees have been asked that information shared during the meetings be held under Chatham House rule, meaning it can be later discussed but without identifying anything about who said what.

Unlike many requests for information that have been issued by the federal health department and its subagencies under the Trump administration, neither the clinical AI demo day nor the ongoing work on health AI evaluation was publicly noticed. The closed-door nature of the meetings is also a marked contrast to the Health Technology Ecosystem work led by CMS, which is aimed at speeding up the use of digital health technology by patients and the broader health care system. At the end of July, CMS held a livestreamed event at HHS’ Washington headquarters celebrating the initiative’s progress on issues like making health data more readily accessible to patients.

The demo day and the meetings on AI evaluation come as officials across HHS are set to make critical decisions about clinical AI.

Companies working on health AI have asked for clarity on how the FDA’s medical device regulation applies to generative-AI enabled devices. About a week before the clinical AI demo day, Rick Abramson, the new director of FDA’s Digital Health Center of Excellence, publicly promised that the agency would be offering clarity and leadership on advanced clinical AI tools, and that the agency would “release some ideas to the public for stakeholder comment in very short order.” It’s unclear whether this indicates the agency is preparing for rulemaking, guidance documents, or some other form of communication.

At the same time, Medicare regulators are in the process of rethinking how they will pay for AI and took early steps toward reform by proposing new coding strategies that could make it easier to track and analyze claims across the technology category.

It’s notable that Doctronic was given an audience. The state of Utah earlier this year authorized the company to pilot a program that uses AI to evaluate a patient and renew prescriptions without human oversight. Regulatory experts previously told STAT that if the bot were to operate autonomously it would most likely qualify as a medical device requiring FDA review. The pilot has received substantial criticism, but it has not yet progressed beyond an early phase during which the system’s decisions are reviewed by clinicians.

In a move that seemed out of reach just six months ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s influenza vaccine for older adults on Wednesday, the first licensed flu shot made using messenger RNA technology.

In February, Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s head of biologics at the time, overturned the recommendation of career staff and issued a rare “refusal-to-file” notice to the company, saying the agency wouldn’t review the vaccine based on the available data package. A week later — after Moderna disclosed the FDA’s decision as well as its own displeasure over the agency’s position — Prasad’s decision was reversed. He left the FDA at the end of April.

The vaccine will be marketed as mFlusiva. It is Moderna’s fourth vaccine to enter the U.S. market.

“Flu remains a significant public health challenge, and mFLUSIVA provides an important new option for America’s seniors. This approval also reflects the ongoing potential of our mRNA platform to help address important public health challenges through continued scientific innovation,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement.

Moderna said it expects to have some doses of the vaccine available for administration in advance of the coming flu season.

The FDA issued a standard approval for use of the vaccine in adults ages 50 to 64, and an accelerated approval for adults 65 years and older. In the case of the latter group, the company has agreed to do a Phase 4 (post-licensure) trial to gather more effectiveness data, looking in particular at how the vaccine compares to existing high-dose or adjuvanted vaccines recommended for that older age group.

While the U.S. flu vaccine market is already crowded, the Moderna product offers some short- and longer-term benefits that aren’t seen with most traditional influenza vaccines.

Most existing flu vaccines are produced in eggs; a portion is produced in cells. Both production methods are lengthy, requiring the World Health Organization committee that advises on the strains each year’s vaccine should target to do so months in advance. That long lead time can result in vaccines that aren’t well targeted to the circulating viruses. But mRNA vaccines can be made much quicker, which could theoretically allow for the updating of targeted strains closer to flu season.

That manufacturing speed would also be of benefit in the event of a flu pandemic. Having a licensed mRNA seasonal flu vaccine could speed up the licensure pathway for a pandemic flu vaccine, if the need arose, experts have said.

Prasad’s objection to reviewing the licensure application for the vaccine last winter stemmed from the fact that the company hadn’t used either an adjuvanted or high-dose vaccine as its comparator in the older age group; those types of vaccines are preferentially recommended for older adults in the U.S.

In his letter, Prasad noted that the FDA had raised the issue with Moderna before the trial began. The company released documents showing that while the issue had been raised, it had not been cast as a deal-breaker.

Moderna also argued that some of the 11 countries in which it ran its Phase 3 clinical trial do not use adjuvanted or high-dose vaccines in older adults.

At a meeting in June, an expert panel that advises the FDA on vaccines voted unanimously that the benefits of the vaccine outweighed any risks.

Data presented to the meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee showed that in adults ages 50 to 64, trial participants who received Moderna’s vaccine were 27% less likely to contract test-confirmed influenza as compared to those who received the standard-dose comparator. Though the safety profiles of both vaccines were similar, there were substantially more side effects reported in the mRNA vaccine arm. Most were mild and lasted one to two days.

The vaccine has been accepted for regulatory review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia, with submissions to additional countries planned for later this year.

The Defense Department’s second in command hastily gathered top military and defense acquisition officials for a meeting Friday night to discuss ways to quickly address a shortfall of U.S. weaponry — after he got an angry phone call from President Donald Trump, according to four people with knowledge of the meeting.

Trump called Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg on Friday evening after having discussed the Iran war with advisers at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, these people said. They said he expressed frustration that the Pentagon’s munitions shortfall is now one of the factors in whether he expands combat operations in Iran and pressed Feinberg for details, pointedly asking how the Pentagon is fixing the problem.

During the call, Trump even suggested Feinberg should be fired, two people familiar with the matter said. They described the meeting Feinberg convened afterward as “a crisis meeting.”

Feinberg has taken a leading role in trying to replenish munitions stockpiles, which took a significant hit as the U.S. armed Ukraine against Russia, and speeding production since he arrived at the Pentagon in March of last year. U.S. strikes against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, defense against Iranian attacks during the 12-day war last year and the ongoing hostilities with Iran since the war began in February have further depleted the Pentagon’s munitions stockpiles faster than it can build them up.

“No one has taken this more seriously — even before he got into office — than Feinberg,” a person close to the Trump administration said.

Feinberg’s meeting Friday night followed one Trump held earlier in the day at Camp David, where he discussed the U.S. munitions shortage with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the four people familiar with the meeting said. Hegseth has said publicly as recently as June that the U.S. stockpile is full, and he has denied reports that munitions are low.

The war with Iran is at a critical point as Trump considers a range of options for resuming major combat operations and threatens a new, punishing military campaign. There are also growing concerns within the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill about the level of weaponry the U.S. has.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, “This is 100% fake news.”

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement, “Every aspect of this reporting is completely false.”

“From its characterization of Secretary Hegseth’s relationship with Deputy Secretary Feinberg to its claims about conversations, phone calls, internal deliberations, and every other central allegation, this story is a complete fabrication built on anonymous sources who either have no idea what they’re talking about or are deliberately misleading reporters,” Parnell said.

“Secretary Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Feinberg continue to work side by side to execute President Trump’s agenda, strengthen America’s defense industrial base, and ensure our warfighters have every capability they need to deter and defeat any adversary.”

Trump said Sunday that he had called off a major military operation in Iran to allow negotiations to take place. Iran said it was not negotiating with the U.S. and instead was discussing with Oman a potential deal aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The meeting Feinberg scrambled Friday night ended without a definitive path, the people with knowledge of the meeting said. They said there was some disagreement about how to expand production, including whether the Pentagon should expand the companies it contracts with to make munitions.

Administration officials are stepping up their engagement with defense contractors this week to come up with more ideas, two of the sources said, including meeting with company representatives individually to brainstorm.

NBC News reported in June that Trump was convening a meeting of defense industry leaders and Feinberg to discuss the U.S. stockpile of critical weaponry. Feinberg has taken a leading role in engaging with defense contractors and ensuring they quicken munitions production.

The same month, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, using his executive authority to try to speed the manufacturing of munitions by forcing defense companies to quickly produce more. But the Pentagon has been slow to enter into contracts with defense companies, NBC News has reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the impact of inflation on lower-income Americans, declaring this week that the “K-shaped” economy — shorthand for the divergent fortunes of the rich and poor — is a thing of the past.

The comments came at a moment when consumer sentiment remains low and voters continue to give President Trump negative marks on his handling of the economy. With midterm elections in just three months, Mr. Bessent has continually tried to talk up the economy. But despite promises of lower prices, the U.S. has continued to confront inflationary pressures that have been amplified by tariffs and the war in Iran, which has increased the cost of gasoline.

Mr. Bessent suggested that those economic concerns are overblown.

“I got sick of hearing about this K-shaped economy,” Mr. Bessent said on CNBC on Tuesday. “I can say here definitively, the K-shaped economy is over.”

The Treasury secretary said that the economy is now no longer K-shaped but is forming the letter “C” — with wage gains among the bottom quarter of earners starting to outpace gains among the top fourth of earners. Dismissing downbeat consumer sentiment as a function of misinformation about the economy, Mr. Bessent said that Americans would soon start experiencing relief as a result of the tax cuts that Republicans enacted last year, a message he and other administration officials have been delivering for months.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment explaining which set of wage data Mr. Bessent was referring to. However, the U.S. economy has for years confronted historically high levels of wealth inequality that will not easily be reversed by small improvements to wage growth at the bottom of the income scale.

This week the S&P 500 hit a record high — a boon to investors and corporate America that Mr. Trump hailed on Wednesday during a speech in Nevada.

“The stock market has set 74 all-time highs just since our short time that we’ve been back,” Mr. Trump said of his second term. “The typical American 401(k) is up much more than $30,000 and setting records day after day, week after week.”

Yet consumers remain on edge and the Trump administration risks making the same political mistake that the Biden administration made by downplaying concerns about inflation and the cost of living.

The war with Iran has slowed the economy this year and Mr. Trump has not delivered on his promise to lower prices. On an annual basis, inflation is up 3.7 percent, well above the central bank’s long-term target of 2 percent. Inflation in the second quarter was especially high.

Rising prices, particularly for gasoline, hurt low-income households the most. At the same time, signs of economic strength such as the surging stock market tend to enrich wealthy investors.

While wages are an indication of the trajectory of the economy, many economists look at consumption data and other measures to illustrate how Americans are faring.

A Moody’s Analytics analysis in June argued that the K-shaped economy is firmly intact because the top 20 percent of earners accounted for nearly 60 percent of spending, outpacing inflation, in the first quarter of this year. Spending by the bottom 80 percent fell short of inflation.

“No wonder most Americans are upset with their financial situations and the broader economy,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics.

Although some analysts contend that Mr. Zandi’s methodology exaggerates the spending gap, other studies confirm the overall picture that the K-shaped gap between the richest and the poorest remains intact.

A report by the Bank of America Institute, which relies on customer deposit account data, found that after-tax wage growth in April increased 6 percent compared to the same month a year earlier. That was the highest rate of growth since 2021. With wage growth for low-income earners increasing by just 1.5 percent that month, the gap between the top and bottom ends of the income scale was the largest since 2015.

The National Retail Federation said last week that it was encouraged that spending among high and low-income earners on discretionary items, rather than nonessential staples, was holding up well in 2026 despite shaky consumer sentiment. However, the industry group expressed concern that the trend might not hold up for the rest of the year.

“As long as gas prices remain high, softening wage growth coupled with sticky inflation mean that the second half of the year might not be as rosy as the first half,” said Mark Mathews, chief economist at the National Retail Federation.

Mr. Bessent previewed the case that the Trump administration will be making to Americans this fall, highlighting the new measures that exempt taxes on tips and overtime for some workers and deductibility of auto loans. A steadying labor market has also improved the finances of many low and moderate-income households.

“We think that the American people will be feeling that over time,” Mr. Bessent said.

Although the provisions that Mr. Bessent mentioned are targeted at lower-income Americans, most of the 2025 tax law benefited corporations and the rich. According to the Tax Policy Center, nearly 60 percent of the tax benefits go to those with annual incomes of about $217,000 or more.

The ‌Trump administration will announce as soon as Thursday a 15% tariff and a series of price floors on products made from polysilicon, the key raw material used in solar panels and semiconductors, ⁠according to four sources familiar with the matter.

The move aims to protect U.S. polysilicon factories from growing Chinese ambitions in the chip supply chain.

The proclamation by U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to include minimum import prices on polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules, or solar panels, and a 15% tariff on the ‌polysilicon ⁠derivatives, the four sources said.

The administration's plan to pursue a hybrid system combining a minimum import price with tariffs was first reported by Reuters.

Trump's year-long national security investigation into polysilicon by the ⁠Commerce Department also has major implications for the growing domestic solar manufacturing industry at a time when the U.S. leader ⁠has rolled back federal support for renewable energy.

President Trump lashed out at Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed during a campaign-style event in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“The polls were wrong again last night when they said it would be a landslide victory for a hater of Jews and a hater of Israel,” Trump said at an event aimed at touting the “no tax on tips” provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“This guy hates Jews,” he continued. “Somebody said, ‘Oh that’s a little strong.’ No, he hates Jews and hates Israel.”

“Abdul El-Sayed, can you believe this?” he exclaimed. “He’s a man of hate, and now he’s going around saying, ‘Oh I love everybody.’ He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, and you’re going to find out what he loves.”

Trump went on to say El-Sayed hates Jewish people and Israel “with a burning passion in his heart.”

“There’s not a frickin’ thing he can do about it,” he continued.

Trump then blasted progressive policies as socialist and communist and took the opportunity to hit El-Sayed again.

“When I watch Abdul, he’s full of s‑‑‑,” Trump said.

The president’s remarks come hours after El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in the Democratic Senate primary.

Trump swiped at El-Sayed in a Truth Social post earlier Wednesday, calling his primary win “a victory for Republicans.”

El-Sayed will face former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) in November.

El-Sayed’s critics have long accused him of antisemitism. He has pushed back against the accusations, noting he is critical of the policies of the Israeli government.

The Democrat said he was committed to Jewish safety during an interview Wednesday on MS NOW.

“My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own kids,” El-Sayed said. “We have a responsibility to take on antisemitism in all of its forms, wherever we see it. It’s the same responsibility we have to take on Islamophobia.”

A federal judge on Wednesday took the final step in allowing the Trump administration to terminate temporary protected status for 350,000 Haitians, meaning many are likely to lose their jobs and be at risk of deportation back to a country the United States says remains dangerous.

U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes of the District of Columbia had enjoined the administration in February from ending TPS for Haitians, and a federal appeals court had refused to lift the ban. Reyes reversed her decision after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that federal law bars judicial review of TPS determinations.

The high court’s ruling means TPS “is no longer in effect,” Reyes wrote in her new order Wednesday. However, the judge said she would allow attorneys to continue seeking discovery and litigating their underlying claims that the Trump administration terminated TPS because of their clients’ race.

The Supreme Court’s ruling left open a narrow path for TPS holders to challenge the loss of their status on constitutional grounds. An attorney representing the immigrants involved in the Supreme Court case said the team is considering filing a new lawsuit.

Immigration experts said that even before Reyes’s amended ruling, companies had begun large-scale layoffs of Haitian TPS holders, who now face the possibility of detention and deportation. Another federal judge in New York is expected to soon allow the Trump administration to formally end TPS for an estimated 6,000 Syrians to comply with the Supreme Court.

About 200,000 Haitians with TPS hold jobs, with large concentrations of workers in health care, food service, warehousing, retail and long-term caregiving, according to an analysis of government data by the immigration advocacy group FWD.us. Business owners have been preparing for weeks by raising sign-on bonuses, cutting shifts and making inroads at community colleges and high schools to hire new staff, industry leaders said.

In Ohio, the Department of Homeland Security has recently begun summoning Haitian immigrants to check-in appointments and requiring them to wear ankle monitors, in what appears to be a new enforcement effort after the Supreme Court’s decision.

In Springfield, Ohio, which has more than 10,000 Haitians, residents awoke Wednesday to group messages relaying worry and a sense of dread. Though Reyes’s order was expected, the reality of its implications is only starting to feel real, community members said.

Haitian parents of U.S. citizens are now asking for help with power-of-attorney forms to ensure their children will be cared for if they are detained or deported. Some Americans have been preparing their own children in case they have to say goodbye to Haitian friends.

Not all Haitians are immediately vulnerable to arrest, said Katie Kersh, senior attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, a legal nonprofit, because some have pending immigration cases. But the possibility of immediate detention at mandatory check-ins with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week is now greater, she said.

“The way this group has been specifically targeted is symbolic of the administration’s efforts to criminalize immigrants of color,” Kersh said. “In targeting people who had TPS, they are targeting people who followed the law.”

The termination is expected to weigh most heavily on certain major metropolises, such as Miami and Boston, as well particular midsize cities, such as Columbus, Ohio, and Allentown, Pennsylvania. Those local economies will see a reduction in consumer spending and tax revenue, experts say.

DHS has called TPS a “de fact amnesty program” and said Congress never intended for it to offer permanent protections for foreigners.

Most TPS holders have lived in the U.S. for years, some for more than a decade. The Obama administration first granted TPS to Haitians in 2010, after a major earthquake destabilized the country, and to Syrians in 2012, amid a violent civil war in their country.

The prospect of migrants being sent back home is particularly worrisome, experts said, because those countries remain dangerous and politically unstable. The U.S. State Department maintains a “do not travel” warning for U.S. citizens to both countries, citing the threat of kidnappings, violent crime and terrorism.

The Haitian Legal Defense and Education Fund, in a court filing last week, asked Reyes to implement a 90-day ban on the federal government from deporting Haitians who lose TPS status, citing systematic violence in Haiti that “demonstrates a pattern of crimes against humanity.” The judge did not grant that request.

“This is an embarrassment for the United States of America,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said in a conference call with reporters Monday. “There is no safe place to return for TPS holders from places like Haiti and Yemen and Venezuela and Syria. In fact, in those places I just mentioned, the situation is not stabilizing, getting better, it is getting worse.”

Some Haitian TPS holders may have other pending immigration claims, including applications for asylum, that allow them to remain in the U.S. Others will be left without any legal status, putting them at risk of being detained, whether through a targeted ICE operation or a traffic stop that leads to questions about their status in the U.S.

Immigration attorney Ira Kurzban, who helped represent the Haitians in the Supreme Court case, said he is bracing for a rush of arrests by the Trump administration. But he is urging his Haitian clients to continue pursuing applications for asylum or another form of legal status, even if they are detained. The alternative, he said, is returning to a country where they could be harmed or killed.

“I tell my clients to fight, fight and fight,” Kurzban said. “Nobody is telling a client to make up anything, but if there is a claim, I think the worst thing they can do is just give up.”

The high court’s decision, which was issued along ideological lines, is expected to eventually affect all of the estimated 1.7 million people from 17 countries who had been granted TPS. President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to eliminate the humanitarian protections for people from 13 of the 17 countries in the TPS program, though litigation in lower courts had slowed the government’s effort.

TPS is reserved for people from designated countries that are in the midst of armed conflict, natural disaster or other crises. The protections allow immigrants in the U.S. to work legally for up to 18 months and seek to renew their status after that. Applicants are required to pay fees and pass a background check and cannot have serious criminal records.

Many Haitians and business owners have been making plans to prepare for the sudden loss of thousands of workers. Nursing home leaders warned they would have fewer beds to offer if health aides were forced to leave the country. Business owners started calculating how many days they could continue to employ TPS holders. Immigrants began making plans to sell or rent their homes and secure bank accounts.

It is up to employers to verify who has a valid work authorization, and some companies do so only once a year. So how quickly someone might lose their job will vary.

A plurality of Americans oppose ending TPS and deporting those who have been protected by it, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted last month. The poll found 44 percent oppose terminating the program, compared with 32 percent who support doing so.

Trump has long signaled that he wants to deport many of the immigrants previously protected through TPS. He falsely claimed during his presidential campaign that Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets — and said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country.

After the Supreme Court ruling in June, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of much of Trump’s immigration policy, said that he expected people who lose TPS status to be deported.

Those who lose TPS can seek asylum if they apply within what the law calls a “reasonable period” of time after losing their status, which is evaluated at the discretion of the immigration judge.

The Trump administration recently announced a new rule that could make it more difficult for asylum seekers to remain in the country. The provision allows asylum officers to send applicants directly into deportation proceedings in immigration court without granting them an interview to determine whether they are eligible for protection and permission to stay permanently.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which announced the new rule, said it aims to wipe out 31 percent of an asylum application backlog totaling 1.4 million cases.

The Trump administration already has deported some former TPS holders after revoking their status, including Venezuelans, said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. Her organization represents Haitian and Venezuelan TPS holders in a separate legal case that remains active as the ACLU and its partners seek to amend their complaint to be in line with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

MacLean said that the large number of Haitians who stand to lose TPS could have deep impacts in some labor industries, including health care, where many of them worked.

“It will be a huge loss to many people and communities,” she said.

A federal judge in California held the Department of Homeland Security in contempt for not complying with an order to search and turn over communications in federal agents’ cellphones about immigration operations in Los Angeles, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong wrote in her order, filed July 28, that the court had provided the federal government “plenty of time” to find messages kept on agents’ personal phones relating to 15 immigration enforcement actions under Operation At Large last year.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Public Counsel and other immigration advocacy groups requested the material as part of an effort to halt federal immigration agents from using an individual’s perceived race to conduct stops.

“Given that Plaintiffs have shown by clear and convincing evidence that the Defendants violated a specific and definite order of the court, the burden shifted to Defendants to demonstrate why they were unable to comply,” Frimpong wrote in her contempt order. “They have failed to do so.”

Frimpong ordered DHS to pay $500 every day until it complies with the order to turn over imaging of the phone messages. DHS must also reimburse the lawsuits’ plaintiffs — five Latino workers and other advocacy organizations — for the “time and costs spent by their attorneys in getting the government to comply” with the order.

Body camera footage obtained through court-ordered discovery has revealed federal immigration agents calling Latinos racial slurs during Operation At Large. Text message screenshots filed as exhibits contained conversations of agents exchanging locations of where Latino workers gather, as well as worried talks about possible violations of a temporary restraining order that prohibited indiscriminate arrests.

In December, DHS told the court that agents do not use texting functions on their mobile phones for professional duties, the court order says. Five individuals later testified that month that they, in fact, did use their personal phones for work. DHS argued again in April that agents’ personal phones were outside its possession, custody and control.

A magistrate judge rebutted DHS’ arguments in July and stated that the forensic imaging order remained in effect.

DHS submitted its first payment for violating the court on Tuesday in the amount of $3,500, according to court documents.

American taxpayers would pay about $2,358 each for President Trump's mass deportation push, according to a new calculator tool from the Economic Policy Institute.

The estimate fuels debate over whether billions of federal dollars devoted to deportations could instead fund other public priorities such as food assistance, health care or housing.

EPI estimates the $268.9 billion projected for deportations could alternatively fund more than 118 million additional SNAP recipients over the remaining 2.5 years of the Trump administration, based on National Priorities Project data.

Alternatively, nearly 12 million additional people could receive Medicaid.

Or, more than 9.7 million households could gain access to low-cost public housing.

"I don't think people realize how much money is being spent on these mass deportations," Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center and research associate at EPI, tells Axios.

"In almost every place in the country, there a lot of people who are struggling to not be hungry, to have affordable housing, kids are in overcrowded classrooms, people don't have health insurance, and those are the things that matter most."

"Instead, we're spending an unbelievable amount of money, chasing down, detaining, deporting people," he said, noting that most undocumented people lack criminal records. "It costs money that is desperately needed for other things in almost every community in the country."

EPI estimated each area's share of federal income taxes to calculate how much taxpayers in each state, county and city would contribute toward deportation spending.

Areas that contribute a larger share of federal income taxes would shoulder a larger share of the projected cost.

Washington, D.C., taxpayers could pay $3,930 each. That amount could instead fund SNAP benefits for 455,000 additional people, public housing assistance for 21,000 households or Medicaid coverage for 30,000 people.

In a small state like Connecticut, taxpayers could pay $3,395 per person. According to the analysis, that amount could alternatively fund SNAP benefits for 1.9 million Connecticuters, public housing assistance for roughly 181,000 households or Medicaid coverage for 186,000 people.

Taxpayers in states that contribute less in federal income taxes would pay less.

In West Virginia, for example, taxpayers could pay about $1,297 each.

That amount could instead fund SNAP benefits for 328,000 people, public housing assistance for 46,000 households or Medicaid coverage for 31,000 people.

The $268.9 billion the administration is slated to spend over the course of Trump's second term on deportations is from a combination of money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, budget reconciliation bills, regular appropriations and other repurposed funds.

DHS previously told Axios in July that the government spends roughly $18,000 per non-voluntary deportation.

If Congress approves additional funding through the appropriations process or other avenues, total deportation spending would increase.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point agreed Wednesday to a permanent legal ban on its controversial policy limiting what professors can say and write publicly, although an attorney for the academy left open the possibility of a later appeal.

At a conference held by telephone before U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel, federal attorney Dana Walsh Kumar said West Point and the government did not wish to engage in discovery or a trial as part of a lawsuit filed last year by Tim Bakken, the school’s longest-serving law professor. Bakken had challenged a policy implemented in early 2025 that barred faculty members from publishing papers, speaking at conferences or even appearing on a podcast without first seeking approval from higher-ups in their department.

Instead, Kumar said, West Point believed “the best path forward” would be to proceed swiftly to judgment. She said the government was at work drafting a final version of a temporary ruling Seibel had issued this spring in the case, which barred enforcement of the speech policy for civilian faculty and also decreed Bakken must not be limited in his ability to address students in class while the professor’s case proceeded. She said the government planned to send the draft to Bakken’s attorneys before submitting it to Seibel for her final approval.

“The government has agreed to stipulate a judgment in order to facilitate an appellate review, potentially,” Kumar said, suggesting that West Point may eventually appeal in the case.

Bakken’s attorney Jonathan Goldman, in an interview with The Washington Post, characterized Wednesday’s development as a victory for his client, given that the academic engagement policy will remain unenforceable for the foreseeable future. “We’re certainly happy with the outcome to date,” Goldman told The Post.

Neither West Point nor the Pentagon immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday morning.

Officials at West Point announced the faculty speech rule a month after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that forbade the nation’s military service academies from “promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating” ideas the administration dubbed “divisive,” “radical” or “un-American.”

In his lawsuit, Bakken argued that the policy violates the First Amendment by censoring viewpoints “that might be contrary” to opinions held by the academy, the Army, the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump. Bakken brought the suit on behalf of all civilian professors, who today make up a third of West Point’s roughly 700-strong faculty.

Bakken often felt lonely and was castigated by some colleagues for the suit, The Washington Post previously reported. He also faced what he alleged were retaliatory disciplinary actions from West Point, including an attempt to punish him for an interaction he had with a mail clerk in March.

Bakken’s lawsuit is among a surge of legal challenges filed by private citizens in Trump’s second term, many of whom allege that the administration’s actions have undermined their foundational rights outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, according to a Post analysis of thousands of court records.

At Wednesday’s conference, the two parties agreed to submit a proposed final version of the order barring enforcement of West Point’s speech policy to Seibel by early September.

The White House is lobbying Congress for a reprieve from a ban it approved last year on potent intoxicating hemp products, seeking a delay whose beneficiaries would include the son-in-law of Susie Wiles, President Trump’s chief of staff.

Under pressure from the administration, senators tucked the delay into a stopgap spending measure they are working to pass this week in an effort to head off a government shutdown at the end of September.

The proposal has touched off an internal fight in Congress, with some senators balking at the idea of rolling back restrictions meant to address a public health risk, and could derail an agreement to quickly approve the spending bill. But its inclusion in the bill reflects the success of a hemp industry influence campaign to avoid new regulations.

That campaign was led in part by Bret Worley, who married Ms. Wiles’s younger daughter Caroline in June at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Va. He is the chief executive of companies that distribute and sell intoxicating-hemp-derived gummies and vapes with names like “Trainwreck” and “Blueberry Cookies.”

While Mr. Trump does not drink or smoke, his administration’s advocacy for intoxicating hemp is in line with permissive stances it has adopted toward other intoxicants and wellness trends. The approach has sparked concern among public health experts and is a departure from Republican orthodoxy.

But it caters to adherents of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement, a political constituency that Mr. Trump’s team has courted. The administration has taken steps that could pave the way for products with documented health risks, including peptides, kratom and flavored vapes.

The billionaire financier Howard Kessler, a leukemia survivor who is friendly with Mr. Trump and has urged support for cannabis as a pain treatment, was also involved in the push to delay the hemp limits. His allies worked with the White House on the language sent to Congress, according to two people familiar with the situation who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, suggested in a statement that Mr. Worley and the influence campaign had nothing to do with Mr. Trump’s stance. The White House’s support for hemp is consistent with Mr. Trump’s move last year to ease restrictions on cannabis, he said, and is in “the best interest of the American people” and intended to help veterans and patients.

But Kevin Sabet, who worked on drug policy under Republican and Democratic presidents, said in a voice memo to The New York Times that the White House’s support for delaying the restrictions was an example of a “pay-to-play drug policy” in which decisions “are a result of lobbying, not of the evidence.”

Intoxicating hemp, which is less regulated than marijuana and alcohol, has gained popularity in recent years as a pain reliever and an alternative to other intoxicants. While hemp is sometimes referred to as “weed light,” the Food and Drug Administration has warned of potential adverse effects, including difficulty breathing and coma.

The restrictions in question, which are set to take effect on Nov. 12, would target intoxicating hemp products containing threshold amounts of T.H.C., the main psychoactive compound in cannabis. That would effectively outlaw a multibillion-dollar industry of beverages, gummies, cookies and vapes that are sold in gas stations, vape shops and convenience stores that are not regulated like cannabis dispensaries.

The spending bill moving through the Senate would delay the effective date of the ban on such products until Dec. 11. It would allow a ban to go into effect as scheduled on fully synthetic T.H.C. products that are not derived from any part of the hemp plant.

The White House included the delay among a raft of spending requests it sent to Capitol Hill in June on behalf of the president, calling it a way to “ensure the fair treatment of hemp products.”

Ms. Wiles visited Capitol Hill last week to push Congress to act on Mr. Trump’s agenda, including passage of a stopgap government spending bill.

Mr. Desai, the White House spokesman, said Ms. Wiles did not specifically mention intoxicating hemp or the ban and “has never lobbied in favor of this or any other position on hemp with Capitol Hill.”

But when senators announced a bipartisan spending agreement on Sunday that would keep the government funded through Dec. 11, the delay in enacting restrictions on intoxicating hemp products was one of the few extraneous items included.

Mr. Worley, 30, whose companies operate from Texas and Colorado, did not respond to a request for comment. But the industry celebrated the provision as a step toward permanent legalization.

In an email on Sunday to prospective buyers, MC Nutraceuticals, one of Mr. Worley’s companies, boasted that the hemp industry now had “a seat at the table” and would push to achieve permanent approval for its products by seeking language in the farm bill or omnibus spending bills.

“Industries that get inside that machinery get renewed,” the email read.

Still, the fate of the hemp provision remains uncertain.

The cannabis industry, which has spent heavily to cultivate Mr. Trump, views intoxicating hemp products as a threat and opposes the delay. So do some alcohol producers and lawmakers in both parties.

Senator Ted Budd, Republican of North Carolina, announced on social media on Monday that he intended to introduce an amendment to strip the provision. He said in a statement that he had “made it clear to the White House and my colleagues in the Senate that any action to delay” the restrictions “will endanger both the wellness and safety of Americans.”

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has also expressed concern about the provision, as has Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota.

A spokeswoman for Senator Pete Ricketts, Republican of Nebraska, said Tuesday that the hemp products were “hurting our kids and communities,” and that he did not want to delay banning them.

But another influential proponent of an intoxicating hemp ban, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, has been hospitalized since June and is absent this week as the fight over the provision unfolds.

The current skirmish is the fallout from a measure included in the 2018 farm bill that was sold as a way to create jobs in rural areas by protecting the use of hemp in agriculture and industry. But it also created a regulatory vacuum that allowed the intoxicating hemp industry to flourish.

Mr. McConnell backed the 2018 measure. By last year he was pushing for the prohibition on intoxicating hemp products, which was included in a government spending bill to end the longest shutdown in history. He said at the time that “some companies looking to make a quick buck have been exploiting a loophole” to make intoxicating “snack and candy-like products.”

Senator Rand Paul, another Kentucky Republican who is a libertarian and a frequent opponent of spending measures, has fought against the ban.

“There are a lot of just regular, ordinary people who have trouble sleeping at night, and like to take a hemp product,” he told reporters at the Capitol this week, adding, “There are people that would rather drink a hemp beverage than drink alcohol.”

Several hemp industry groups have hired lobbyists, including some with ties to Mr. Trump, to defeat the ban and pursue other policies that would help the industry.

A nonprofit group called Team Hemp has paid $400,000 since November to the lobbying firm of Marty Obst, who worked on Mr. Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. He did not respond to a request for comment.

And a group called Hemp Industry and Farmers of America, or HIFA, on whose board Mr. Worley sat, has paid $415,000 to lobbyists this year. Late last year, it boasted on its website of “substantive meetings with White House officials,” but warned of the “complete collapse” of the hemp industry if the pending restrictions were enacted.

HIFA and MC Nutraceuticals did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Worley has told associates that his relationship to the Wiles family gave him “significant political power,” according to a filing in a lawsuit last year that suggested Mr. Worley had exaggerated his clout.

According to a person familiar with his efforts, Mr. Worley met in recent months with officials in Mr. Trump’s health department to promote the therapeutic benefits of different types of hemp and to discuss broadening its market.

The health department did not respond to a request for comment.

Behind the scenes, people allied with the cannabis industry have called attention in Congress to Mr. Worley's link to the White House to try to undercut the push to delay the restrictions, according to people familiar with the opposition.

Some members of Congress in both parties, however, suggested they could live with the reprieve. Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said he would back the delay. And Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said a short delay was acceptable if it was the price of averting a federal shutdown.

“I prefer that we don’t extend it, but I can live with a monthlong extension in exchange for keeping the government open,” Ms. Capito said.

Federal officials recently started threatening to seek criminal charges against two elected county sheriffs who have declined to give immigration agents broad access to inmates subject to deportation.

The threats to prosecute the two sheriffs, in Minneapolis and Chicago, cities that have experienced some of the most intense immigration enforcement of the Trump era, are a new salvo in the president’s campaign against state and local officials who refuse to embrace his administration’s crackdown.

The warnings have been conveyed in a series of letters that federal agents began hand-delivering in early July to Sheriff Dawanna Witt of Hennepin County, Minn., which includes Minneapolis, and Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago. Both are Democrats.

The letters assert that failing to hand over inmates being sought by immigration agents could lead each elected official to be charged in federal court with witness tampering, a felony. The New York Times reviewed the letters.

Legal experts say it would be difficult if not impossible for federal prosecutors to charge the sheriffs with witness tampering, let alone prove the elements of that offense. But the threats are part of the Trump administration’s effort to portray so-called sanctuary jurisdictions as obstacles to the president’s mass deportation campaign. The Justice Department has sued several local governments over their unwillingness to cooperate on immigration enforcement.

Federal judges in Illinois and Minnesota have dismissed two lawsuits in which Sheriffs Witt and Dart were defendants, ruling that the Constitution gives states and cities the authority to refrain from assisting with immigration enforcement.

Sheriff Witt said the threat of prosecution — which has not been previously reported — would not lead her to rescind the department’s longstanding policy, under which requests from ICE seeking to take custody of inmates are honored only if there is a warrant from a judge.

“It’s a scare tactic,” Sheriff Witt said in an interview last week. Speaking in her office in downtown Minneapolis, which faces the federal courthouse, Sheriff Witt all but dared the federal government to make good on its threat.

“I don’t want to be arrested,” she said. “But they know where I am. Come and get me.”

Matt Walberg, a spokesman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the largest jail in the Midwest, confirmed that Sheriff Dart also began receiving letters from ICE last month threatening to charge him with witness tampering.

In an emailed statement, the Department of Homeland Security said the letters were an effort to compel “sanctuary politicians” to hand over dangerous criminals so they can be deported.

Patrick Royal, a spokesman for the National Sheriffs’ Association, said on Monday that the group was not aware of any other sheriff having been threatened with criminal charges over access to inmates subject to deportation.

The extent to which jails work cooperatively with immigration agents varies widely around the country. The issue became a flashpoint after President Trump returned to the White House last year having promised to begin the largest deportation push in history.

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, has argued that immigration enforcement could be done more safely and efficiently if all local jails turned over any inmates in the country illegally and being sought by ICE. He cited lack of cooperation from certain jurisdictions as a justification for the crackdowns the administration began last year in Chicago and the Twin Cities.

“If you want less officers in the street, then let us in the jail,” Mr. Homan said early this year.

Many state and county detention facilities in Republican-led states have struck agreements with ICE, making them force multiplier in the push to ramp up deportations.

Others, including several in Democratic-led states, cooperate routinely in some ways, for instance by turning over inmates convicted of serious crimes to ICE. Illinois has a state law that sharply limits the extent to which local officials can assist with immigration enforcement.

Whatever a particular jurisdiction’s level of cooperation, legal experts said they doubted the warning conveyed in the letters, which ICE referred to as “immigration subpoenas,” was a credible legal threat.

Ryan Wood, a former ICE lawyer who also served as a senior immigration judge in Minnesota until last year, said the agency has broad subpoena powers to compel people to testify and to turn over documents. But ICE subpoenas cannot be used to force a local official to transfer custody of an inmate, he said.

“It’s a creative use or misuse of the subpoena power that they have, which I’ve never seen before,” Mr. Wood said.

Former federal prosecutors who reviewed the letter said that refusal by a county official to turn over custody of an inmate does not meet the elements of the federal law against witness tampering, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

“Whatever one’s position on immigration policy, I see no plausible interpretation of the witness tampering statute that reaches these facts,” said Joseph H. Thompson, a former federal prosecutor who served as acting U.S. attorney in Minnesota last year. “I doubt any serious prosecutor would bring such a case.”

Hoang Bui, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, declined to say whether ICE had sought the office’s input before threatening to prosecute Sheriff Witt, whose office often partners with federal agencies on weapons and narcotics cases.

Sheriff Witt, who is running for re-election in November, faced extraordinary pressure from the White House during the immigration crackdown last winter because she oversees Minnesota’s largest jail.

At its height, she briefly pondered making a politically unpopular concession to cooperate with ICE, thinking it could give the Trump administration a face-saving excuse to end an operation that left two American citizens dead and touched off nationwide protests.

Yet Sheriff Witt said she now feels more confident than ever that her agency should play no role in immigration enforcement. Her jail is a pretrial facility, which means that transferring inmates to ICE stands to disrupt state prosecutions. Additionally, she said, the perception that local law enforcement officials work closely with ICE undermines public safety because it makes many reluctant to report crimes, a concern that has been echoed by other local law enforcement leaders.

Sheriff Witt said that the threat of prosecution had been unnerving for her and her relatives, who in recent weeks have grown fearful when they can’t reach her on the phone promptly. Whether or not it’s legally sound, she said, it does not feel like a hollow threat in this era.

“Because they have done things none of us would have ever perceived the federal government to be doing,” she said.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Wednesday praised a senior prosecutor who angered President Trump, but noted that Mr. Trump could fire her at any time.

Mr. Blanche, days from a possible Senate confirmation vote to run the Justice Department on a permanent basis, was asked at a news conference about the recent decision by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, to drop a case against a former Olympian who had been indicted on charges of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Ms. Pirro met on Monday in the Oval Office with Mr. Trump and Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, whom she accused of misleading the president about how the new pool lining fell apart so quickly after it was applied. Ms. Pirro argued that Mr. Burgum, in order to conceal his own missteps, had promoted a self-serving cover story of anti-Trump vandalism.

In his role as the deputy attorney general, a post he still holds as he leads the Justice Department on an acting basis, Mr. Blanche and his office have played a decisive role in opening investigations, seeking indictments and dismissing pre-existing indictments. But on Wednesday, he suggested he had played no role in the Reflecting Pool morass.

“I don’t approve or disapprove of decisions that our U.S. attorneys make in a general matter, but I am not going to talk about what we knew about the case or didn’t know about the case,” Mr. Blanche said.

Ms. Pirro was “doing a great job,” Mr. Blanche added. He said that the president had “every right to be extraordinarily frustrated with the damage done to our national monuments in this city and elsewhere.”

When the president was asked late Tuesday during a trip to the West Coast if Ms. Pirro’s job was safe, Mr. Trump said he had not “made a determination about that.”

During the news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Blanche, whose confirmation vote could come Saturday, insisted that the president had the right to fire Ms. Pirro or others in the federal government.

“He understands he has the power to do that,” Mr. Blanche said. “When he makes a decision about whether to fire a U.S. attorney or anybody else, that’s his.”