A federal judge halted Donald Trump’s plan to renovate a municipal golf court in Washington, DC, on Saturday night, issuing a temporary order that requires the administration keep the course open after Trump said it would be closed on Sunday for the overhaul.

US District Judge Ana C. Reyes said the administration’s push to revamp East Potomac Golf Links into the championship course Trump desires – one of several construction projects the president has sought as part of his effort to remake Washington to his tastes and leave a legacy – likely violated environmental law and ran afoul of procedural guardrails for executive branch actions.

She said the Justice Department’s arguments in the litigation, where it claimed that the November 15 closure was happening for safety reasons, were “pretextual.”

The root cause of the longest halt in flight departures to U.S. airports since 9/11 remains unclear after a Saturday press conference by U.S. transportation officials.

Routers and networking equipment appeared to be involved in the technological disruption that grounded flights across the country, but a definitive cause has not been established as of Saturday afternoon.

The inability to pinpoint the reason for the infrastructure malfunctions led the Federal Aviation Administration to take actions that resulted in the grounding order, Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, told reporters.

NASA welcomed Saturday’s news. The space agency is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon later this decade and help build a permanent lunar base. Musk’s ambitions are even grander: He wants to launch a fleet of Starships to build a city on Mars.

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket — a 407-foot (124-meter) behemoth — blasted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX’s Starship base near the U.S.-Mexican border. Separating neatly from its booster before things went awry, the upper-stage spacecraft soared into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites.

Starship continued circling the world 165 miles (265 kilometers) up, with live views of itself and Earth streaming down via Starlink. The spacecraft completed 14 laps around Earth, outshining the previous mission’s one to two laps.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said there is no need for an investigation into the ground stop issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday, instead highlighting the need for “investment.”

“We don’t really need any investigation … we need further investment,” Johnson said during an interview with Fox News’s Saturday in America. “I mean, some of this equipment dates back to the eighties so it’s gotta be updated and that’s our responsibility. We’re gonna work to get it done.”

The FAA issued the nationwide ground stop around 4 p.m. EST on Friday. The rare protocol was in place for over four hours. The agency’s last widespread stoppage, which lasted approximately 90 minutes, was in January 2023.

More than 4,500 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were delayed as of Saturday afternoon with over 5,000 canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Total reported delays on Saturday crossed 15,000.

“I’ve spoken with 60 air traffic controllers tonight about what Sean Duffy said at the White House today,” said one journalist. “None of them are buying what he said.”

Air traffic controllers are rejecting US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s explanation for Friday’s nationwide flight ground stop, raising questions about the Trump administration’s account of a communications failure that disrupted air travel across the United States, affecting an estimated 1.5 million travelers.

Washington Examiner homeland security reporter Anna Giaritelli told CNN’s Laura Coates during a Friday night interview that she’d spoken with 60 air traffic controllers about the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop, which was just the third to ever occur.

“None of them are buying what he said,” Giaritelli said. “The controllers were saying, ‘We don’t buy that this is actually what’s happening, the reason that Sean Duffy is saying this has happened.’”

Alaska voters have rejected the latest attempt to repeal the state’s system of open primaries and ranked choice voting in general elections.

The ballot measure, decided as part of the Nov. 3 election, marked the second time in two years that voters have rejected attempts to overturn the system and revert to partisan primaries and to general elections in which just one candidate can be selected. The measure also would have repealed some campaign disclosure rules.

Voters in 2020 narrowly adopted the new system, which was used for the first time in 2022. Supporters of open primaries and ranked voting say it gives voters more choices and forces candidates to build a broader coalition of support. They also say it’s had a moderating effect on the state Legislature, which has been governed under bipartisan coalitions in recent years.

Opponents, including Donald Trump, say it’s confusing. He has railed against the system for years. Elon Musk was among the donors trying to the repeal effort.

A chip oversupply may have pushed Nvidia to manufacture its own demand

The AI boom has been widely blamed for GPU prices spinning out of control over the past year. Following Jensen Huang's resignation from Nvidia, new information suggests that this was the goal of the former CEO's business strategy, which has long drawn accusations of circular financing.

A recent Wall Street Journal profile of Nvidia interim CEO Colette Kress has shed more light on how Nvidia controversially financed its own customers to drive the AI boom. According to the report, the company pushed for more deals in mid-to-late 2026 to keep its GPU prices high amid an oversupply of TSMC wafers.

Since at least last year, Nvidia has been accused of prolonging the AI boom by supporting the companies that buy its chips. Founder and former CEO Jensen Huang, along with then-CFO Kress, even went so far as to defend the company against comparisons to Enron, which used similar tactics to illegally obscure its debt before its 2001 collapse.

NBC News’ Decision Desk has characterized the Alaska Senate race as likely Democratic. GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan currently trails Peltola, with both under the 50% mark.

Former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is likely to win Alaska’s Senate race, according to an NBC News Decision Desk analysis, as vote-counting continues in the state.

Peltola has expanded her narrow lead over Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan with each new batch of votes reported this week. A “likely” characterization indicates that the NBC News Decision Desk has at least 95% confidence that Peltola will win the race.

If Peltola wins, Democrats will have a 56-44 majority in the Senate next year.

Key Points

• Robot startup Foundation has failed to pay employees since missing its Oct. 30 payroll, angering some workers after its CEO borrowed $4.6 million from the firm last year to buy a luxury home, according to people familiar with the matter.
• CEO and co-founder Sankaet Pathak is Foundation's sole board member, raising governance concerns among prospective investors.
• Foundation's widely reported $24 million in Pentagon contracts actually stems from its 2024 acquisition of Boardwalk Robotics, which held some existing government research contracts, the people said.
• Pathak's previous company, Synapse, collapsed in 2024, leaving thousands of customers without access to deposits. Pathak reportedly took loans from Synapse as it neared bankruptcy.

Fetterman also warned his party not to turn the next two years ‘into a circus of constant hearings’ about getting ‘payback’ on the Trump administration

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman signaled that he would consider quitting the Democratic Party if the caucus elected Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen as majority leader, citing disagreements over U.S. policy toward Israel.

Fetterman was asked Saturday on Fox News whether there was a “red line” that would prompt him to walk away from his party if it moved further to the left.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Fetterman said in a clip highlighted on X by journalist Aaron Rupar. “It would be troubling if my caucus elects someone like Van Hollen that has really made his name being very anti-hostile to Israel, you know. If you are going to be angry or hostile towards any countries in the region, why not make that, you know, Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas as well too?”

Throttling of Elon Musk’s military-grade satellite system affecting whole frontline, says Ukraine’s president

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused SpaceX of not telling the truth over restrictions to Ukraine’s Starshield satellite system, saying the decision to impose speed limits appears to be “political” rather than “technical”.

Speaking on Friday, Ukraine’s president said the restrictions affecting Ukrainian drones had been in place for five days. They could no longer fly at speeds of more than 161km/h (100mph), he said, with connections at higher speeds lost.

As a result, incoming jet-powered Russian Shahed drones could no longer be intercepted. Ukraine’s own mid-range strikes against military targets in Russian-occupied territory were also severely affected, he said.

In region where migrants have settled to work at abattoirs and feedyards, harsh raids pushed people to vote Democrat