Category: Uncategorized

Whitney Purvis — introduced to viewers as a teen mom in the debut season of MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” — is currently being held at Georgia’s Floyd County Jail on multiple charges, including involuntary manslaughter. Her arrest comes one month after the death of her son Weston Owen Gosa Jr., whom she was pregnant with during the series.

According to arrest records from Floyd County, obtained by TODAY.com, the 33-year-old was taken into custody on July 7, 2025. She faces charges of involuntary manslaughter as well as the manufacture and distribution of controlled substances. An additional charge alleges that she used a communication device to aid a drug-related crime. Purvis is currently being held without bond in the jail’s medical unit.

Purvis was part of the inaugural cast of the groundbreaking MTV series, which debuted in 2009, and set out to offer a candid portrayal of becoming a teen mom. She was 16 when she appeared in the fifth episode of the show’s first season. Her episode, titled “Whitney,” dove into the financial toll and social repercussions of becoming pregnant at the age of 16 by her then-boyfriend. The episode followed her journey through pregnancy into the birth of her son and her efforts to juggle her parental responsibilities.

On June 2, 2025, Purvis announced the death of Gosa Jr. at the age of 16 in a post on Facebook in which she described his death as her “worst nightmare come true.”

“How do you go on in life after losing a child?” she wrote in the post. “I’m in disbelief, this cannot be happening. I don’t want it to be real. I would do anything just to hold him. Words just can’t describe the pain I am feeling.”

Further details regarding Purvis’ case are forthcoming.

As heavy rain triggered flash flood warnings along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country early Friday, the small unincorporated town of Comfort had something its neighbors upriver in Kerr County didn’t: wailing sirens urging residents to flee before the water could swallow them.

Comfort had recently updated its disaster alert system, installing a new siren in the volunteer fire department’s headquarters and moving the old one to a low-lying area of town along Cypress Creek, a tributary of the Guadalupe that is prone to flooding. Friday was the first time the new two-siren system had been used outside of tests, providing a last-minute alarm for anyone who hadn’t responded to previous warnings on their cellphones or evacuation announcements from firefighters driving around town.

“People knew that if they heard the siren, they gotta get out,” said Danny Morales, assistant chief of the Comfort Volunteer Fire Department.

Morales said that no one died in Comfort, a town of about 2,300 people in Kendall County. But in Kerr County about 20 miles away, dozens of people, including young girls staying at Camp Mystic, a riverside Christian summer camp, were washed away when the Guadalupe surged over its banks and swamped the surrounding countryside. As of Monday evening, officials said, 104 people had been confirmed dead, 84 of them in Kerr County, including dozens of children. Kerr County has no siren system despite years of debate, in part because some local officials felt it was too expensive to install.

The part of Texas Hill Country known as “flash flood alley” has seen rising waters many times before, but the swift and punishing destruction over the Fourth of July has focused attention on whether local officials are doing enough to protect their residents as climate change causes more frequent and severe weather disasters and the federal government is slashing spending on emergency preparedness.

The swollen river has receded, leaving behind heartbreaking signs of the devastation: little girls’ suitcases and clothes strewn along the wrecked cabin grounds and plush toys caked with detritus, twisted metal and gnarled vehicles. Three days after the flooding, searchers were still picking through downed trees and hunting through thick black mud for those still missing. Parents’ hopes were dimming as the days dragged on with no signs of life.

It is impossible to know whether a siren system in Kerr County would have saved lives; they are meant to alert people who are outdoors, not in bed indoors, as many of Kerr County’s victims were when the river rose overnight — at one point by 26 feet in just 45 minutes.

The weather service issued a flood watch for the area Thursday afternoon and an urgent flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. Friday, a move that triggers the wireless emergency alerts on cellphones.

By the time flooding inundated low-lying parts of Kendall County, where Comfort is located, it was later Friday morning. The first weather service flash flood alert for Kendall came at 7:24 a.m. When the sirens went off, many residents were already awake and aware of the dangerous flooding. A Facebook video recorded by Jeff Flinn, the managing editor of The Boerne Star, shows the emergency sirens in Comfort sounding at 10:52 a.m.; he said the alert lasted for about 30 seconds.

Kerr County was relying on the emergency alerts that blare on cellphones. Those alerts may not get through, particularly in rural areas with bad service or in the night when phones are off or when there are no phones around; the girls at the summer camp weren’t allowed to bring them. And some may choose to ignore them, because they’re bombarded by phone alerts.

Some Texas officials have blamed the National Weather Service, arguing it didn’t do a good enough job forecasting rainfall and issuing timely flood warnings. But some independent meteorologists and a former weather service official told NBC News that the agency performed as well as it could given the unpredictability of rain and flash flooding and the timing of the disaster.

Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, said he began looking into a warning system for his area after flooding in Hays County, which was overwhelmed by the Blanco River, killed 13 people over Memorial Day weekend in 2015.

Kerr County officials debated various options, including one for an alert system that included sensors and sirens, and the cost was about $1 million, Moser said.

“There were a number of people that did not like the sirens going off because they go off accidentally,” Moser said. “They didn’t want that disturbance in the Hill Country.”

At a March 2016 commissioners’ meeting, Rusty Hierholzer, then the Kerr County sheriff, was adamant that the deadly flooding in the Hays County community of Wimberley was a warning for the need to install sirens in addition to a phone app notification system known as Code Red already in use.

In Wimberley, some people didn’t get alerts on their phones, “so yes, you need both,” Hierholzer said, according to a transcript of the meeting. “You need the sirens, and you need Code Red to try and make sure we’ll notify everybody as we can when it’s coming up.”

During a follow-up discussion about the proposal that August, then-Commissioner H.A. “Buster” Baldwin questioned the flood warning system they were considering, saying, “I think this whole thing is a little extravagant for Kerr County, with sirens and such,” according to a transcript.

They estimated the system would cost $1 million, and they didn’t have the money to add it to the budget.

Moser said they also didn’t get disaster relief funding they’d asked for from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “As a matter of fact, there were no grants available we thought we could get in a timely fashion,” Moser said.

Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron said Monday that he’s leaving the band after nearly 30 years.

The 62-year-old Cameron announced his departure in a social media post.

“After 27 fantastic years, I have taken my final steps down the drum riser for the mighty Pearl Jam,” Cameron said. “Much love and respect to Jeff, Ed, Mike and Stone for inviting me into the band in 1998 and for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, filled with friendships, artistry, challenges and laughter.”

Cameron didn’t give a reason for his departure.

“Matt Cameron has been a singular and true powerhouse of a musician and drummer. He has propelled the last 27 years of Pearl Jam live shows and studio recordings. It was a deeply important chapter for our group and we wish him well always,” Pearl Jam members said in a statement posted to the band’s social media accounts.

They made no mention of a replacement.

Cameron, who played drums for Soundgarden for more than a decade before joining Pearl Jam, was not a founding member of the band and didn’t play drums for the early albums that made them rock superstars.

But he provided some much-needed stability at the drum kit after the band had gone through four others since its inception. He first joined in 1998 as a temporary replacement for Jack Irons, playing on a long tour before making his studio debut with the group on 2000’s “Binaural.”

He just finished a yearlong tour with the band in support of its 12th studio album, “Dark Matter.”

Cameron was born and raised in San Diego before moving to Seattle shortly before its music scene became a global phenomenon. He played in proto-grunge band Skin Yard before joining Soundgarden. He did double duty with Pearl Jam and a reunited Soundgarden from 2010 to 2017.

WASHINGTON — The war over President Donald Trump’s megabill is just beginning, with both parties saying it will define the midterm elections next year, when control of Congress is up for grabs.

Republicans start on the back foot, with recent surveys showing the bill is unpopular, even with pro-Trump cohorts. Still, GOP leaders say they have a plan to turn things around and make the legislation Trump signed into law last week part of an offensive push to protect their House and Senate majorities.

Meanwhile, Democrats are gearing up for a political onslaught aimed at unseating Republicans who voted for it. The House Democrats’ campaign arm has already launched a digital ad buy on Meta across 35 GOP-held competitive districts slamming lawmakers for voting to harm rural hospitals. Part of Democrats’ strategy is to highlight that many Republicans who threatened to vote down the bill because of steep Medicaid cuts ended up voting for it anyway.

“The so-called moderate House Republicans have shamelessly lied for months — hiding behind meaningless letters and performative tweets — claiming they’d protect Medicaid, food assistance and energy jobs,” said Justin Chermol, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “But their vote is the only thing that matters, and they’ll pay the price next year.”

Republicans say they have a strategy to avoid a repeat of the midterms in 2018, when Democrats attacked them for Trump’s original tax cuts, which they argued disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and for seeking to cut health care for the working class by unsuccessfully trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Democrats went on to take back the House majority.

This time around, Republicans say they will campaign on individual pieces of the bill that poll well and ignore the provisions that are less popular. GOP leaders and strategists are encouraging their candidates to lean into the “wins” of Trump’s agenda: tax cuts on overtime and tips, child care subsidies and work requirements for able-bodied adults.

“Last time, we ceded ground to Democrats,” a senior aide to Republican leadership told NBC News. “We won’t do that again.”

Republicans also argue that some working-class people will begin to feel savings from two particular provisions of the bill, tax cuts on tips and overtime pay, when they take effect next summer, just ahead of the midterm elections.

But most of the tax provisions are extensions of the current rates, meaning most voters will see little change in their tax bills — another challenge for Republicans in selling the bill.

Pressed about how candidates will defend cuts to Medicaid, a high-ranking GOP strategist who is close to Trump said they won’t focus on it, instead touting “the money in the pockets of working-class Americans and their increased safety” from other provisions in the bill.

Republicans see bill as the ‘defining issue of 2026’

Republican leaders are expected to hit the road, including in swing districts, in the coming months to sell the bill. In the meantime, they plan to flood local airwaves promoting the legislation, according to a senior GOP source familiar with the plans. And the National Republican Congressional Committee plans its own spate of attack ads accusing Democrats of supporting a tax hike for having voted against the bill, which extends tax cuts Trump enacted in 2017, the source added.

In a new memo obtained by NBC News, the NRCC encourages Republicans to accuse Democrats of voting to “block tax cuts” and “leave the border wide open,” referring to roughly $150 billion in the bill for immigration enforcement.

“House Republicans will be relentless in making this vote the defining issue of 2026, and we will use every tool to show voters that Republicans stood with them while House Democrats sold them out,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee recently circulated internal polling instructing candidates to message aggressively on tax cuts. The only mention of Medicaid in the three-page document touts the popularity of work requirements and frames the nearly $1 trillion in cuts as “reforms” to keep benefits from undocumented immigrants.

The calculation among many Republicans in battleground states and districts who voted for the bill is that the Democratic warnings about massive cuts to Medicaid will fall flat with voters — not only because the cuts were tailored to target “waste, fraud and abuse,” but also because the changes aren’t set to kick in until after the 2026 midterms.

Still, it’s a risky gamble, and many vulnerable Republicans are privately bracing for potential political blowback in their districts. The bill is projected to lead to 11.8 million fewer people having insurance by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Perhaps the biggest driving force behind their “yes” votes was not wanting to defy Trump. He had threatened to back primary challengers to two Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who opposed the bill. (Tillis ended up deciding not to seek re-election.)

“Seventy-seven million Americans voted to give Donald Trump a platform to make positive changes for the United States; 1.7 million Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., who is expected to face a competitive re-election race next year. “This is a mandate by the American people, and we’re fulfilling this mandate.”

When he was pressed about whether Republicans are just falling in line because of Trump, Van Orden pushed back: “The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment. We’re not a bunch of little b—— around here, OK? I’m a member of Congress that represents almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”

The Democratic group House Majority Forward is working on ads to attack vulnerable Republicans for the vote — including Van Orden, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Tom Barrett of Michigan, who all narrowly won their 2024 races.

Democrats plan to target wobbly Republicans

In the run-up to the vote, politically vulnerable Reps. David Valadao, R-Calif., and Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., led sternly worded letters signed by more than a dozen of their colleagues slamming steep cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

But when it came time to vote, nearly all of them folded under pressure from Trump and ended up supporting provisions that they loudly criticized — and that could have major impacts on their constituents. Most of those lawmakers are targets of the DCCC’s new ad campaign.

Two weeks ago, Valadao led a group of 16 Republicans in writing a letter vowing to oppose the Senate bill’s aggressive Medicaid cuts.

“Protecting Medicaid is essential for the vulnerable constituents we were elected to represent,” they wrote. “Therefore, we cannot support a final bill that threatens access to coverage or jeopardizes the stability of our hospitals and providers.”

All 16 of them voted for the bill Thursday.

Valadao, who represents a swing district with a large share of Medicaid recipients, warned five days before the final vote that Republicans must undo the Medicaid changes in the Senate bill — “otherwise, I will vote no.”

His office didn’t respond to messages seeking comment on his vote.

In a statement, Kiggans said that “no legislation of this size is perfect—but there’s no question that this bill includes major priorities I’ve been fighting for on behalf of Coastal Virginia.”

Valadao was among the group of lawmakers who visited the White House before the vote last week. During the meeting, Trump and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, walked them through how the bill’s changes to Medicaid will be implemented.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who had been one of the loudest Republicans calling to protect Medicaid, walked away from the meeting arguing they have time to change the law back if they later determine it will be too harmful, since the biggest changes don’t take effect for several years.

Asked by NBC News whether it was risky to bank on the prospect of Congress’ reversing key components of the bill, Van Drew said: “No, I think that it’s possible. The point being that it is being done slowly.”

Another moderate GOP lawmaker who had been on the fence, granted anonymity to discuss internal party deliberations, said what ultimately made them feel comfortable voting for it is that many of the Medicaid changes, like the provider tax, won’t take effect until after the midterm elections.

Under the bill, the new work requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will kick in latest by the start of 2027, while new restrictions on state provider taxes — which trigger federal payments that are a major source of revenue for rural hospitals — will start in 2028.

Last month, an overlapping group of 13 House Republicans, led by Kiggans, wrote a letter calling for saving clean energy funding and tax credits, saying they were “deeply concerned by several provisions” in the emerging package. They warned that “project cancellations will continue to snowball” without protecting the incentives that caused the investments.

Twelve of the 13 Republicans voted for the bill — every signer except Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.

Along with Valadao and Kiggans, Republicans who signed both letters include Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Mike Lawler and Andrew Garbarino of New York, Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Young Kim of California and Don Bacon of Nebraska. (Bacon announced last week that he will retire.)

Meanwhile, some Republicans have already started to lean into parts of the bill.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who openly acknowledged the bill’s Medicaid changes will “take away health care from working people,” is holding an event Tuesday morning to celebrate the inclusion of his bipartisan effort to expand federal compensation for nuclear waste victims.

No. 1 Janik Sinner advanced to the Wimbledon quarterfinals Monday after his opponent, Grigor Dimitrov, retired injured while leading their fourth-round match two sets to love.

Dimitrov, the 19th-seed in the men’s singles bracket, won the first two sets against Sinner 6-3, 7-5. Dimitrov and Sinner were then tied 2-2 in the third before Dimitrov exited the match after experiencing pain in the right side of his body.

“I don’t take this as a win at all, this is just an unfortunate moment for us to witness,” Sinner said after the match during an on-court interview. “[Dimitrov] has struggled in Grand Slams with injuries a lot so seeing him again with this injury is very tough. We all saw by his reaction how much he cares about the sport and he is one of the hardest working players on tour.”

Injuries have been an issue for Dimitrov, particularly in Grand Slam tournaments. He has had to retire from his last four Grand Slam appearances before Monday, including in the fourth round of Wimbledon last year against Daniil Medvedev.

Dimitrov, 34, has not advanced past the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam since the U.S. Open in 2019. His best finish at Wimbledon came in 2014, when he made it to the semifnals and lost to Novak Djokovic.

Dimitrov was playing well against Sinner on Monday, hitting more aces and winners, and winning 79 points compared to Sinner’s 65.

“Thank you for coming, but this is not the end we wanted to see and it’s very sad,” Sinner said. “We all wish [Dimitrov] only the best. Let’s give an applause for him and his team.”

Sinner, 23, is currently the top ranked men’s player in the world.

After winning last year’s U.S. Open, Sinner won the Australian Open in January. He also appeared in the French Open final in June, losing in five sets to Carlos Alcaraz after winning the first two sets of the match.

Sinner has never won Wimbledon. His best finish was in 2023, when he made it to the semifinals.

Sinner will now play American Ben Shelton in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Nicole Daedone, who’s in jail awaiting her sentencing for crimes related to her “orgasmic meditation” business, condemned what she believes is a double standard reflected in the outcome of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ case.

“Diddy basically gets off while Rachel and I get convicted for what could be twenty years,” Daedone said in a statement given exclusively to NBC News, referring to former company executive and co-defendant Rachel Cherwitz. “That should tell you everything you need to know about how we (society) view women’s sexuality.”

Last month, a federal jury in Brooklyn found Daedone and Cherwitz guilty of forced labor conspiracy. Federal prosecutors in New York alleged in their indictment that they targeted victims of trauma to become members of their company and manipulated them into performing sex acts and going into debt, among other things. The government said the two women “coerced their victims to sexually service OneTaste’s current and prospective investors, clients and employees.” Daedone and Cherwitz denied the claims.

They are currently in jail awaiting their sentencing, which is scheduled for September. They face up to 20 years in prison.

“The case operated at an emotional level, not a legal or rational one. It made perfect sense to me: a self-possessed sexual woman is presumed guilty; in the current culture she can never be proven innocent,” Daedone said.

Prosecutors declined to comment on Daedone’s statement.

Daedone founded women’s wellness company OneTaste in 2004 and grew it into a $12 million business with thousands of followers, winning celebrity fans such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloe Kardashian. But an explosive 2018 Bloomberg article and a subsequent 2022 Netflix documentary “Orgasm Inc.” featured former employees who said they were subjected to a toxic environment. Daedone and Cherwitz, who had been head of sales for the company, were indicted in 2023.

Daedone said her conviction is unjust in comparison to hip hop mogul Combs’ acquittal last week on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. Combs was convicted by a Manhattan federal jury of two lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution. His attorneys called the verdict “a victory” after prosecutors for seven weeks painted him as the leader of a criminal enterprise who sex trafficked two of his former girlfriends.

The prostitution crimes carry maximum sentences of up to 10 years each, but experts don’t expect him to receive that much.

Maurene Comey, who led the team of prosecutors in Combs’ trial, repeatedly played the security footage of Combs brutally beating Cassie Ventura at a Los Angeles hotel in 2016. Prosecutors told jurors that Combs used violence, drugs and blackmail to force Ventura and another girlfriend known as “Jane,” to have sex with male escorts in drug fueled encounters he dubbed “freak offs.”

NBC News has reached out to Combs’ team for comment.

Following storms and floods that turned deadly over the holiday weekend, flood warnings remained in effect across central Texas on Monday.

Flood watches are in effect until 7 p.m. CT and cover areas that include Austin, San Antonio, Kerrville, Killeen, Brady, Fredericksburg and Uvalde.

Some of these areas had already experienced slow-moving storms Monday morning, but more were expected throughout the day. These storms are likely to drop another 2-4 inches of rain onto an already saturated region. Some localized areas could see 6 inches or more. Conditions are expected to improve Tuesday as stagnant, high-moisture weather systems finally move toward the east.

Some regions in the mid-Atlantic are also facing risks of flooding. On Sunday, Tropical Storm Chantal flooded parts of North Carolina, where more than 10 inches of rain fell near the Chapel Hill area. The Haw River, near Bynum, North Carolina, crested to nearly 22 feet, the highest crest on record there, as a result of those heavy rains.

Chantal has since been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. It’s expected to move north into the mid-Atlantic, where tropical downpours could also result in flash flooding in urban areas in eastern Virginia up through northern New Jersey.

Experts also warned that coastal regions could experience other weather-related threats, like strong surf and rip currents.

Warm temperatures are hitting other parts of the U.S. Some 30 million people in the Northeast — including in Philadelphia; Boston; Hartford, Connecticut; Albany and Rochester, New York; and Burlington, Vermont — were under heat alerts.

Temperatures in the high 80s and 90s were expected in some places, with maximum heat index reaching 100 in Philadelphia.

But the nation’s focus remains mostly on Texas. As of midafternoon Monday, at least 90 people had been confirmed dead from the weekend storms. Flash flood warnings over the long weekend were issued when most people were sleeping and unlikely to respond. Thousands of people were left scrambling.

Storms can stall over land, dropping heavy rains that can result in major flooding, as happened over the weekend in Texas’ Hill Country. Overnight on Thursday and Friday, heavy showers fell across Central Texas, exceeding 20 inches in some places. On Saturday, stalled storms prompted a flash flood emergency overnight. Some areas experienced swells of up to 2 feet of water.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hovered over Houston for days, drenching the city and surrounding metro areas with nearly 50 inches of rain amounting to trillions of gallons of water. The storm caused billions of dollars in damage.

Growing up near the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, could sometimes feel like living near a volcano.

I was born two blocks from the gorgeous river that flows from the Hill Country to the Gulf of Mexico, just one year before the devastating and deadly 1987 flash flood, often described around town as the “big one.”

As a boy, whenever flash floods inevitably struck our area, which could be every few years, my dad would take me down to the overflowing Guadalupe. From a safe distance, we would watch the power of the water and understand the strength and danger behind it. Living near this jewel of the Hill Country was a blessing, but it came with the knowledge that, like a volcano, when it erupted, things could get incredibly bad, incredibly fast.

For Kerrville locals, the power of the Guadalupe was never in doubt. And yet, what happened in the early hours on Friday, when catastrophic flooding struck with a surge topping 20 feet, soon became a perfect storm turned into a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy.

I first heard about the flood on Friday morning, when I woke up in L.A. to a half-dozen text messages from all over the country asking if my family was safe. I later learned that at around 5 a.m., my mother had evacuated her home on the river, where she had retired, while my stepfather helped multiple families and RVs move out of the way before the powerful floods washed them away.

The entire day was a gut-wrenching waiting game because we had friends who were personally affected by the floods, and nobody knew how they were doing. Communication was limited, and it felt like a heartbreaking nightmare playing out over 24 hours.

Having since moved to the West Coast, I rarely report on Texas. However, I knew I had to get to my hometown because there is no place I would rather be than chronicling every step of this tragedy and telling the stories along the way.

As we enter Day 4 of this unimaginable situation, where the death toll has risen to at least 90 across six damaged counties, I am struck by this incredible mix of grief and grit. And while I know that this community will band together to move forward from this, this level of collective pain is something I have never experienced before.

The nature of this job throws you into disasters all over the world, and in each instance, there is a layer of separation. But when it hits your home, it’s like seeing tragedy for the first time.

I’m fortunate to say that my family is safe, but we have friends who this has personally affected, and those in my community are sorting through the unfathomable. As we cover this story, my purpose here is to connect with the people who are trying to make sense of what happened, to share the stories of resilient residents coming together, and to ask questions so this will not happen again.

As a kid growing up in Kerrville, you learn different ways to help your community, such as being in the Boy Scouts or lending a hand when needed. For my grandfather, it was helping rescue kids in 1987 during the last flooding tragedy.

Now, for me as an adult, it’s coming back to Kerrville to stay in my mother’s home to cover this flood that’s become unlike anything we have ever seen before, and hopefully, nothing we ever see again.

The trade war chaos that engulfed the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term looked set to return Monday as he threatened two major U.S. trading partners with higher duties ahead of a key negotiating deadline.

Shortly after noon Monday, Trump published two letters addressed to Japan and South Korea threatening them with 25% duties, with higher ones for items deemed to have been transshipped through their countries. Transshipping refers to offloading goods from one mode of transportation and reloading onto another. A 25% duty was essentially the level Trump announced for those two countries during his shock “Liberation Day” speech April 2.

Markets had already opened the week lower after mixed messaging over the past 72 hours from White House officials about the importance of a July 9 deadline Trump set in April after relenting on imposing the eye-watering country-by-country tariff levels he’d announced one week prior.

After the two letters went live on Truth Social, markets briefly took another leg lower, with the broad S&P 500 stock index falling as much as 1%.

It represents a return to the back and forth, on-again, off-again state of affairs that prevailed leading up to, and shortly after, Trump’s April 2 speech announcing extreme import duties on dozens of nations. The moment led to one of the worst market sell-offs on record. During some particularly chaotic moments, Trump changed tariff levels in the span of a few hours.

The president eventually relented on immediately imposing those duties in announcing the pause, and since then, stocks have slowly rallied back to all-time highs.

Heading into this week, the ground already looked set for the July 9 deadline to lose its significance. Asked Friday whether the U.S. would be flexible with any countries about the July 9 deadline, Trump said, “Not really.”

He continued: “They’ll start to pay on Aug. 1. The money will start to come into the United States on Aug. 1, OK, in pretty much all cases.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attempted to clarify those comments Monday, telling CNBC: “President Trump has said … countries would not go back to the reciprocal rate until August 1.”

While he expects to have “several” announcements in the next 48 hours, Bessent said, the president is more focused on the “quality” of deals, not the “quantity” — though he did not provide details on the nature of the proposed announcements.

So, what comes next?

Perhaps the clearest description of the state of play came from White House spokesman Kush Desai, who told the Wall Street Journal that any decisions around trade would come directly from Trump himself.

In other words, all deals and deadlines will remain in flux as long as the president says so.

To date, the president has announced limited new arrangements with the U.K. and China, as well as a brief statement on a pact with Vietnam. In a social media post on Sunday, Trump wrote that “the UNITED STATES TARIFF Letters, and/or Deals, with various Countries from around the World, will be delivered starting” at noon Washington time Monday.

Trump was already threatening new tariff duties late Sunday, writing in a Truth Social post that an additional 10% tariff, on top of the existing across-the-board 10% baseline, would be imposed on any country aligning themselves with policies set by the BRICs bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, China and India. The post came as leaders of the bloc met in Rio de Janeiro.

It was not immediately clear what Trump’s rationale is for that assertion.

Some on Wall Street were more optimistic that the return of uncertainty may not weigh as heavily on stocks this time around.

“Our base case remains that the uncertainty around tariffs won’t be enough on its own to bring the US economy to a crashing halt,” analysts with Capital Economics research group and consultancy wrote in a note to clients Monday. “If so, it’s unlikely to be enough to dampen investors’ enthusiasm for US equities.”

Yet the analysts also acknowledged that renewed chaos could prove a setback for officials at the Federal Reserve, who continue to insist on keeping interest rates high, despite repeated demands from Trump for a rate cut. Rates have remained elevated in anticipation of worsening inflation as a result of the import taxes. It’s something that will continue to make it expensive for the federal government, not to mention consumers and businesses, to borrow money, the analysts said.

“It’s been clear in recent weeks that many [Federal Reserve officials] are not confident about cutting rates until the inflationary effects of tariffs are clearer, and we doubt they’ll cut this year,” they wrote.

A person was killed after exchanging gunfire with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Texas, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

“This morning, an individual opened fire at the entrance of the United States Border Patrol sector annex in McAllen, Texas. Both Border Patrol agents and local police helped neutralize the shooter,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

A border patrol employee and two officers were injured in the shooting, according to McLaughlin, who added that one of them was shot in the knee. All of them were taken to a hospital.

“This is an ongoing investigation led by the FBI,” McLaughlin said.

A motive is not clear at this time.