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Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned Monday after 18 months on the job, capping months of public tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Driscoll's exit is being read as a signal that Hegseth wants to consolidate control across the service branches ahead of budget negotiations.

The White House confirmed the departure Monday evening after weeks of speculation, and no successor has been named. Officials said the underlying dispute involved Driscoll's push to accelerate Army modernization on a timetable Hegseth's team viewed as fiscally reckless.

A Las Vegas jury on Monday returned a first-degree murder verdict in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, closing one of the longest-running unsolved cases in American hip-hop. Prosecutors charged the defendant years after he publicly confessed to helping plan the Las Vegas drive-by shooting.

A sentencing hearing has been set for later this fall, with Nevada law making life in prison the presumptive term for first-degree murder. Monday's verdict closes a chapter that shaped an entire generation of American hip-hop and the true-crime industry that grew up around Shakur's death.

Thirty-year mortgage rates surged to a June 2025 high after weekend Middle East strikes pushed crude prices sharply higher. Refiners passed the shock into pump prices within 24 hours, and long-term Treasury yields moved almost the entire way with them.

Trump is expected to meet oil refiners this week as the White House scrambles to hold down retail gas prices ahead of the midterms. Administration officials are quietly weighing releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve if Brent stays above $90 for another five days.

Roughly six million people have been deported back to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran, with another million pushed across the borders in 2026 alone as of August. Many were born in exile and have never set foot in the country now expected to absorb them under Taliban rule.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Russian counterparts at the G20 that sanctions relief is off the table until the Ukraine war ends, even as Washington signaled openness to renewed diplomatic contact. European delegations pointedly snubbed Moscow at the same gathering, exposing a widening transatlantic gap over how to handle the Kremlin.

Nairobi's main international airport is moving traffic again after two fully paralyzed days. Aviation workers ended the strike on Tuesday, with union head Moss Ndiema saying the walkout that began Sunday stopped immediately.

An Oklahoma man was charged with murder Monday after two workers were killed in a Tulsa marijuana extraction-facility explosion over the weekend. Investigators said the extraction process at the site had operated outside state safety guidelines for weeks before the blast.

Florida is set to carry out its 14th execution of 2026 later this week, making it by far the busiest death chamber in the country this year. Harold Gene Lucas is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection for a 1976 murder.

Gen. Dan Caine told lawmakers the military has no plans to deploy troops to polling places during the November midterms, addressing weeks of speculation about White House use of the armed forces on Election Day. It's the highest-ranking military statement yet on the subject.

Shein's shares slid on their Hong Kong trading debut Tuesday, capping a rough listing for the Chinese-founded fast-fashion giant now squeezed by new US and EU trade rules and shrinking market share. The tepid reception suggests investors have moved on from the ultra-cheap import model that once defined the company.

Donald Trump Jr.'s firm 1789 Capital led a $1 billion funding round for prediction market Polymarket, lifting its valuation to $21 billion from $15 billion. Trump's firm is putting in roughly $300 million, cementing the family's push into the crypto-adjacent betting economy.

KKR-backed Wella Co., which owns nail-polish brand OPI and a stable of hair-care lines, filed for a US initial public offering on Monday. The listing joins a swelling parade of consumer companies testing renewed investor appetite for public markets this fall.

Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi unveiled a wireless, seed-sized injectable device that delivers nerve stimulation without surgery or implanted wires. If it holds up in trials, it could replace the bulky spinal-cord stimulators used by millions of chronic-pain patients today.

A new study found adults who drink sugar-sweetened beverages every day face a 145% higher risk of gastric cancer than non-drinkers, while artificially sweetened drinks showed no such link. Roughly 65% of US adults drink at least one sugary beverage a day, which makes the finding hard to shrug off.

Two astronauts aboard the ISS will conduct the sixth all-female spacewalk in history on Tuesday, working on external station upgrades. NASA is broadcasting the excursion live starting mid-morning Eastern time.

The Cubs hit nine home runs in a rout of the Brewers on Monday to close out a franchise-record August at the plate. Chicago now sits atop the NL Central with the best team OPS in the majors since the calendar flipped.

Three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka's Grand Slam career ended Monday night in a loss to Matteo Berrettini at the US Open. Wawrinka received a standing ovation from a full Louis Armstrong Stadium as he walked off after a match that ran past midnight.

UCLA dismissed athletic director Martin Jarmond on Tuesday, citing a "significant financial deficit" just days before new head football coach Bob Chesney's debut. The department has bled money since UCLA joined the Big Ten, and it now heads into a marquee season without its chief executive.

Diamondbacks star Ketel Marte rejoined the team after failing to show up at Fenway Park on Aug. 17, calling the absence "a moment of frustration." He was placed on the restricted list and then the IL with a knee issue, and Arizona says the matter is closed.

Kelly Clarkson taped her final episode of "The Kelly Clarkson Show" on Monday, closing out seven seasons with an hour of Kellyoke, her kids, and tears. The show's end reshuffles the daytime lineup at a moment when syndicated talk is under heavy pressure from streaming.

At Monday's sequel premiere, Sandra Bullock remembered the 1998 opening she was sure would be a triumph: "And then it got quiet." Bullock and Nicole Kidman used the night to honor original director Griffin Dunne, who they said never got to smell the flowers.

Hulu canceled dating series "Love Overboard," executive produced by Alex Cooper and hosted by Gabby Windey, after a single season aboard a luxury yacht. It's a rare miss for Cooper, whose Call Her Daddy empire has otherwise expanded into nearly every corner of media.

What it is: The "time tax" is the countless hours American families spend proving they deserve public benefits — unemployment, SNAP, Medicaid, veterans' care, disability insurance — through forms, appeals, phone calls, and repeated in-person visits designed as much to deter enrollment as to verify need. Journalist Annie Lowrey's new reporting on the phenomenon argues the burden falls hardest on the households with the least ability to absorb it.

The detail: A single unemployment claim can require six agencies, four verifications, and a certification schedule that assumes access to a computer, a working phone, and unstructured daytime hours; families applying for Medicaid can find themselves recertifying eligibility three or four times a year even when their income has not changed. Federal and state administrators built the current system in the 1990s to root out fraud, and the compounding paperwork has since expanded far beyond any measurable fraud rate — while an estimated 20 million eligible Americans forgo benefits every year rather than face the process.

Why it matters: The programs on paper look generous, but the delivery mechanism silently reduces uptake in ways that meaningfully shift outcomes: fewer children insured, fewer workers retrained, fewer seniors housed. Cost-of-living relief that Congress explicitly appropriated never reaches the households it targeted, and the political story becomes a debate about program design rather than the delivery system that actually gates who gets help.

What to watch: Whether federal agencies adopt the "one-touch" application standards recently piloted in a handful of states, and whether Congress restores funding for phone-based case management that was quietly cut in the last continuing resolution. The bigger question is whether the emerging bipartisan interest in administrative efficiency reaches program eligibility rules — the least glamorous corner of Washington and the corner where the time tax actually lives.

That’s the morning in five minutes, from war and weather to markets, science, sports and culture. Share Five Minute Daily with someone who wants the day’s essential news without the noise, and subscribe to keep the briefing coming.

—The Five Minute Daily Team