Worst kind of record. If public officials in Washington were capable of feeling shame, this would be a good reason. The federal government topped $40 trillion in total debt for the first time in history, setting a record for red ink.

It’s folly to point fingers at one party or one administration for reaching this ignominious milestone. It takes a village to push the country toward default. The debt has doubled in less than 10 years under Presidents Trump, Biden and Trump with both parties in Congress as willing accomplices.

Watchdog groups called the figure a flashing warning sign, and urged a wake-up call for Washington.

“The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Higher debt means paying higher interest costs. It can also mean higher interest rates for Americans, and it crowds out private investment, which is usually seen as more efficient and productive than government spending.

The publicly held debt is now nearly 100% of the nation’s annual total economic output. Only once before has the country been at this level of debt, and that was in the wake of World War II.

Once the war ended, much of the debt quickly vanished. By the mid-1950s, it was below 70%, and it would dip to the low 30s in the 1970s.

Mr. Trump tapped a White House aide, Dr. Heidi Overton, to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

She serves as the president’s deputy director of domestic policy.

“We need her leadership at the FDA now to ensure that the U.S. remains the WORLD LEADER for Scientific Discovery and CURES,” Mr. Trump said on social media.

She has worked closely with the Health and Human Services Department on several high-profile initiatives, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to redesign the food pyramid and overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule, and Mr. Trump’s pricing deals with pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Overton led health policy at the conservative think tank America First Policy Institute and earned a medical degree from the University of New Mexico.

All but abandoning negotiations with Iran, Mr. Trump said his administration is not speaking to Tehran and is turning to economic and military pressure to assert U.S. control over the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran signaled a new phase of defiance and aggression in the region, raising tensions across the Gulf region.

The Justice Department moved to restore gun rights for some people who lost them due to felony convictions.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said those who apply will need to have completed their sentences years before they can seek to get their gun rights back. Lower crimes will have a five-year waiting period, while more serious ones will be subject to at least a 10-year wait.

Restoration won’t be automatic. The Justice Department said applications will be judged on a case-by-case basis, with a focus on someone’s original run-in with the law and their subsequent behavior. More serious crimes, such as violent felonies and sex offenses, will still have a presumption against restoration.

Mr. Blanche said there needs to be a way to prevent a blanket denial of rights to millions of people.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” he said.

The U.S. Forest Service wants to rescind a Clinton-era rule that established prohibitions on road construction and timber harvesting in tens of millions of acres of roadless public lands in 36 states. The agency said the move will help states combat wildfires.

In the proposal, the agency dubbed the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule a “one-size-fits-all restriction that has frustrated land managers and served as a barrier to wildfire risk reduction work across large swaths of America’s national forests.”

The rule was implemented to protect undeveloped national forest lands from new road building and commercial logging. It aimed to preserve wild ecosystems, safeguard clean drinking water and cut down on costly road maintenance and legal battles.

Tariffs of 50% on Canadian imports are being delayed after the two countries reached a last-minute deal hours before the sanctions were to go into effect, Mr. Trump said.

The announcement buys time for more negotiations and avoids, for now, another strain in already tense relations between the historic allies.

Data center backlash. Once economic‑development darlings, data centers have become political hot potatoes as public opinion shifted and many former advocates scramble to align with voters.

Candidates know that voters are fed up with getting sky-high utility bills while energy-hungry data centers get generous tax breaks. The dynamic is reshaping races in Florida, Ohio and Texas as candidates try to show they are protecting ratepayers.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott surprised many when he announced a pause on new data centers so the state — now home to the fastest‑growing market in the country — can audit their energy and water use.

Mr. Trump weighed in, saying it was a mistake because “data centers could be bigger than oil.” The move created an unusual rift between the two Republicans and handed Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa an opening in her challenge to Mr. Abbott in the governor’s race.

Ms. Hinojosa has been reminding voters that Mr. Abbott signed a 2015 law giving data centers long-term sales‑tax breaks, and she’s pressing him to call a special legislative session to unwind it.

Senate Republicans are sounding the alarm, too, saying one of their seats is at stake due to artificial intelligence data centers, and it could cause lawmakers to be warier of supporting such contentious projects in the future.

In the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s memo to top AI companies, the campaign arm cautioned that the political ramifications could extend beyond GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s seat in Ohio.

“If voters’ perceptions of data centers are not fixed quickly, the campaign against them will expand far beyond Ohio,” the letter reads.

Mr. Husted is locked in a quarrelsome race against former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign calling the incumbent “the face of data centers in Ohio.”

“More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” the memo reads. “If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one.”

Amnesty victory for Trump. The president’s decade-long project to end deportation amnesties for a large swath of countries has finally come to fruition, after numerous court battles.

Judge Brian Murphy, a Biden appointee who had been the last holdout, issued an order ending his blockade and allowing the Department of Homeland Security to cancel Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians.

They now join a dozen other nations, including Afghanistan, Haiti, Nepal and Nicaragua, that have seen their TPS programs lapse, a month and a half after the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead.

The result is that roughly 1 million migrants who had deportation amnesty are no longer protected.

DHS celebrated with a warning: “Those with terminated TPS should leave NOW. If they don’t, we will DEPORT them.”

The Biden administration set records for granting TPS, adding 1 million people to the enrollments.

Dr. David Morens, former longtime chief of staff to Dr. Anthony Fauci, pleaded guilty to trying to hide critical documents about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and his attempts to restore funding to a firm that was siphoning U.S. cash to a Chinese virus lab.

That company, EcoHealth Alliance, was paying for what U.S. investigators say was risky bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, using money from the National Institutes of Health’s infectious diseases division, where Dr. Fauci and Morens worked.

Morens admitted in court to conspiring with EcoHealth researcher Peter Daszak to hide their communications about efforts to restore funding for EcoHealth after Mr. Trump cut it off early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

He faces a maximum of five years in prison for one count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.

The Alien Terrorist Removal Court has scheduled a first-of-its-kind public hearing for next week to determine whether Afghan citizen Nazira Haji Zada should be detained while her deportation case is decided.

Ms. Zada, who the government says was part of a 2024 Islamic State-backed plot to attack election sites, is the first person ever to be charged in the 30-year history of the court.

The government is using the court because it wants to deport her, but doesn’t want to have to make public some of the classified information it says it has against her.

Two men have pleaded guilty to planning the attack, which prosecutors say was connected to ISIS.

The Washington Times Editorial Board slams Medicare for All as a terrible, nonviable idea that is just as lousy now as it was 80 years ago.

Deputy Commentary Editor Anath Hartmann targets the statistic that 80% of members of the Democratic Socialists of America have college degrees, pointing out that a college degree does not necessarily mean a person is educated.

Swing voters unhappy with Mr. Trump’s economy could knock Republicans from the U.S. Senate majority, writes Peter Morici.