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Congress escalates its clash with Anthony Fauci, the White House launches another test of birthright citizenship, and the FCC clears the way for a new era of media consolidation.

Plus, Ukraine pushes deeper into Russia, AI crosses another scientific frontier, and the people overseeing November's elections take center stage.

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A Senate committee voted along party lines Thursday to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after he pleaded the Fifth at last week's hearing on pandemic-era decisions. Republicans on the panel argue he isn't entitled to that protection — because he already holds a presidential pardon covering the period.

The referral now heads to the full Senate, where a floor vote could tee up a court fight over whether a pardon strips away the self-incrimination risk the Fifth is designed to shield. It's a constitutional puzzle without clean precedent. And it puts Fauci's legal team on a collision course with Republicans still hunting for Covid-19 origin answers.

President Trump signed a pair of executive orders Thursday aimed at denying US citizenship to children born to so-called "birth tourists" — foreign nationals who travel to the US specifically to give birth. It comes a month after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier White House attempt to chip away at the 14th Amendment's birthright guarantee.

Administration officials say this version is narrower, targeting a specific category of travelers rather than the broader constitutional principle. Legal challenges are expected within days. The same justices who blocked the last attempt will likely see this one on their emergency docket before autumn.

The FCC voted 2-1 along party lines Thursday to repeal the national cap on local TV station ownership, a decades-old check against consolidation. The lone Democratic commissioner dissented, warning the repeal clears the way for a handful of conglomerates to dominate local news across the country.

It's a major win for Sinclair, Nexstar and the other broadcast giants that had lobbied for years to lift the limit. Expect a wave of station acquisitions to follow. Critics argue local newsrooms — already thinned by a decade of cuts — will absorb the impact.

Ukraine struck the Slavneft-Yanos refinery in Yaroslavl, one of Russia's largest, in a long-range drone attack that reached hundreds of miles past the border. Kyiv's campaign against Russian energy infrastructure is squeezing Moscow's export revenue and forcing fuel rationing in several regions.

Federal prosecutors arrested Ángel Aguirre, Guerrero's governor when 43 Ayotzinapa students vanished in 2014, for concealing evidence of their whereabouts. Aguirre resigned a month after the disappearances, and no bigger name has been charged since former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam.

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have quarantined a passenger boat after five people on board died from suspected Ebola, with remaining passengers now being screened. The health minister called the response precautionary while labs confirm — but river travel is a well-known accelerant for outbreaks in the region.

The Justice Department formally accused Duke Law School of racial discrimination in admissions, alleging its diversity policies amount to racial preferences banned under the Supreme Court's 2023 affirmative action ruling. It signals an aggressive federal enforcement posture that could reshape how elite universities screen applicants.

The administration announced plans to strip regulatory requirements from Head Start, the antipoverty preschool program launched under President Johnson. Officials say the changes cut red tape and save money. Early-childhood advocates say gutting standards will hollow out a program serving nearly a million low-income kids.

Federal data shows the administration is deporting record numbers of Vietnamese, Laotian and Hmong nationals, many of whom arrived as child war refugees decades ago and later picked up criminal records. Some deportees haven't lived in their birth countries since the 1970s.

Budget carrier easyJet has agreed to a £5.7 billion takeover by US private equity firm Apollo after a rival bidder walked. The deal takes one of Europe's most recognizable low-cost airlines private and puts a major transatlantic asset under American ownership.

Shares of adtech firm AppLovin tanked 19% Thursday after second-quarter revenue missed Wall Street expectations. The drop erased tens of billions in market cap from a stock that had been one of last year's biggest AI-adjacent winners.

ConocoPhillips said CEO Ryan Lance will retire after 14 years, with CFO Andy O'Brien taking over September 1. The oil producer posted its best quarterly profit since 2022, and the handoff arrives with crude prices firm and shale margins fatter than they've been in years.

Researchers trained an AI model on massive DNA libraries and asked it to design viral genomes from scratch — producing 16 viable new viruses that don't exist anywhere in nature. It's a genuine scientific leap and a biosecurity headache in equal measure, since the same tools that engineer benign phages could theoretically engineer worse.

AMD acquired chip startup Taalas, whose technology hardwires AI models directly into silicon rather than running them as software on general-purpose chips. Taalas's current hardware runs a stripped-down version of Meta's Llama 3.1, with larger models in the pipeline.

Astronauts Jessica Meir and Anil Menon conducted a spacewalk outside the International Space Station Thursday, prepping the orbiting lab for new rollout solar arrays. The upgrades are meant to keep the aging station powered through the back end of the decade.

The Indianapolis Colts signed running back Jonathan Taylor to a two-year, $44 million extension, landing him just behind Falcons back Bijan Robinson in the position's pay hierarchy. It continues an unexpected revival in RB compensation after years of the market flatlining.

Real Madrid completed the $155 million transfer of Ivorian winger Yan Diomande from RB Leipzig, making him the most expensive signing in club history. The deal follows Diomande's breakout World Cup run and cements Madrid's summer as the most aggressive rebuild in Europe.

San Francisco Giants broadcaster and former MLB pitcher Mike Krukow announced his retirement after nearly four decades in the booth, effective end of the current season. Krukow called games through a Parkinson's-like muscle disorder for years, becoming one of the most beloved voices in Bay Area sports.

Director Gareth Edwards has walked away from the sequel to "Jurassic World Rebirth" citing creative differences with Universal — months after his reboot grossed $870 million globally. The studio now has to find a new director on tight notice for one of its biggest 2027 tentpoles.

Adam Sandler confirmed "Grown Ups 3" has started production at Netflix, reuniting Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade and Rob Schneider under director Kyle Newacheck. The franchise is one of Netflix's most-watched properties despite critics who would rather it wasn't.

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said she won't intervene in Paramount's £85 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery after securing guarantees around Channel 5's public service role. It removes one of the last regulatory obstacles to a deal that reshapes global entertainment.

What it is: A growing number of officials who publicly rejected the 2020 election results are now holding key administrative roles in the counties that will decide control of Congress in November. Not marquee statewide jobs — the granular positions. County clerks, election board members, canvassers. The people who certify votes, oversee polling logistics, and handle many of the procedural decisions that shape how elections are ultimately finalized.

The detail: They span dozens of counties across battleground states, including several districts with the most competitive House and Senate races in the country. Many were elected or appointed after 2022, in local contests that drew little national attention. Their duties include validating voter rolls, resolving ballot disputes, and signing off on final vote tallies. While election administration generally follows established procedures with bipartisan oversight, these offices retain meaningful discretion over certification timelines, hearings, and responses to contested ballots.

Why it matters: Local election administration is one of the last unglamorous chokepoints in American democracy, and it runs on the assumption that the people in charge will accept outcomes they don't personally favor. When officials in decisive counties have publicly questioned the legitimacy of prior results, the risk isn't necessarily fraud. It's delay, refusal to certify, or protracted disputes that push resolution into courts and legislatures. Even isolated disruptions in a handful of competitive counties could prolong uncertainty in closely contested races and intensify political tensions nationwide.

What to watch: How canvassing boards behave in the days after November 3, particularly in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Any refusal-to-certify episodes will test state laws written after 2020 to force compliance — and set up the first real stress test of the reformed Electoral Count Act at the federal level. Court challenges, emergency appeals, and certification deadlines will provide the earliest signs of whether those post-2020 reforms are enough to keep the process moving.

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—The Five Minute Daily Team