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The United States government will activate an extra 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, the military confirmed in a statement Tuesday night, as a legal battle continues over the deployment.

Protests against federal immigration policies that exploded in Los Angeles and across the country in recent weeks have since died down, and a nighttime curfew has been lifted as businesses return to normality.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Northern Command said the reinforcements were needed to “support the protection of federal functions, personnel, and property in the greater Los Angeles area.”

The 2,000 troops are deployed at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, using Title 10, which allows the president to call in the National Guard when the country is at risk of invasion or rebellion.

That means at least 4,100 National Guard troops and 700 Marines have been deployed to the streets of L.A. after 2,100 were sent there on June 9. Tuesday’s statement confirms a statement from last Monday on the troop increase.

The soldiers cannot participate in civilian policing, leading city leaders to attack the deployments as political theater.

“The soldiers are completing training on de-escalation, crowd control, and use of the standing rules for the use of force in advance of joining the federal protection mission,” the military statement said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the move and said the troops would be “twiddling their thumbs.”

“This isn’t a new deployment — it’s the same group of soldiers who have been diverted from critical wildfire work and work at the border, now twiddling their thumbs for Donald Trump’s political theater,” Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson from Newsom’s office, said.

Newsom said last week that the deployment of an extra 2,000 personnel would be “reckless, pointless and disrespectful to our troops.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has called the deployment a “chaotic escalation.”

The confirmation of the extra personnel came hours after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether the federal government can deploy troops to American cities, or should turn over their command to Californian officials.

The court heard an appeal and ruled last week that President Donald Trump can retain command of the troops, pausing a ruling from District Court Judge Charles Breyer that said the deployment was unlawful.

Tuesday’s hearing considered whether the most recent order can stand as the case proceeds through the courts. The three-judge panel seemed unlikely to be interested in lifting the pause that was imposed by the Appeals Court.

That court is expected to make a decision in the coming days, ahead of a Friday hearing before Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco federal court.

The Appeals Court’s decision — and any potential Supreme Court involvement — could have huge ramifications for the political executive’s powers and activities in Washington and whether troops can be sent to other cities.

The Thunder will have their first chance to win an NBA championship since they moved to Oklahoma City on Thursday night as they take a 3-2 lead into Game 6 of the NBA Finals against the Indiana Pacers.

After the Pacers took a shocking 2-1 lead, the Thunder have rallied back to win the last two games in the series. Oklahoma City forward Jalen Williams was the star in Game 5, scoring 40 points in a win.

Meanwhile, Indiana not only faces elimination Thursday, but it will also have to save it season with a limited version of guard Tyrese Haliburton, who is dealing with a right calf injury.

What can you expect in Game 6? NBC News is here to break down the action.

Why the Thunder have won the last two games

Andrew Greif: Oklahoma City has found a way to take a proverbial punch and remain standing, while Indiana has stunningly, and suddenly, no longer been able to close out games late.

Just when the series appeared to begin tilting toward Indiana deep into Game 4, with a 3-1 Pacers lead a real possibility, Lu Dort’s hellacious defense helped force Indiana into tough shots and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s scoring rescued Oklahoma City. And in Game 5, just as Indiana appeared to be wearing down the Thunder by trimming an 18-point lead to two, Oklahoma City responded by coercing the Pacers into a three-minute sequence featuring four brutal turnovers that doomed their ‘ comeback chance.

Oklahoma City this season won games by historic scoring margins, which meant it had relatively little “clutch” experience, especially compared with Indiana. Yet in the last two games, the Thunder have looked more comfortable late in close games.

Rohan Nadkarni: Defense. The Thunder had the NBA’s best defense during the regular season, and in the most important moments of this series, OKC’s ability to slow down the Pacers has made the biggest difference.

In Game 4, after Indiana scored 20 points in the first five minutes, it scored only seven points in the final five minutes of a 17-point fourth quarter, allowing the Thunder to overcome a seven-point deficit.

In Game 5, Oklahoma City forced Indiana into 23 turnovers, adding 12 blocks for good measure.

Indiana is a fast-paced team that thrives in chaos. At the same time, the Pacers need to play with hyper-attention to detail for 48 minutes against a Thunder team that will relentlessly pounce on any hint of laziness.

What adjustments do the Pacers need to make in Game 6?

Greif: This deep into any series, let alone four rounds into the postseason, there is no magic adjustment that an opponent like Oklahoma City hasn’t gamed out, scouted or prepared for. The adjustment is for Indiana to play a more focused game Thursday, one in which it doesn’t turn the ball over 23 times and miss multiple layup opportunities. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said it best when he pointed out his team’s 23 turnovers became 32 points for Oklahoma City. Indiana is 12-13 this season when it has more turnovers than its opponent.

“That’s the game,” Carlisle said.

Nadkarni: There’s nothing I can say here that Carlisle hasn’t thought about extensively. If there’s an adjustment that hasn’t been made, it’s because Carlisle has thoroughly weighed the pros and cons and likely made the right decision.

And yet … I wonder if Indiana tries to tighten its rotation a bit. Pascal Siakam, for example, is averaging only 33 minutes per game. Can he play closer to 40? The lineup with Obi Toppin at center with the rest of the starters (in place of Myles Turner) has played only 16 minutes per game together despite being a plus-5 in that time. Does Carlisle lean on that group more with Turner struggling? Game 6 isn’t the time to get cute; it’s the time to get your best players on the floor together for as long as possible.

If Haliburton is limited, how do the Pacers compensate?

Greif: Given Haliburton’s responsibilities and the way Indiana plays on both sides of the ball, if Haliburton is limited or can’t play because of his calf injury, it puts more of a burden on Indiana’s offense than its defense. It’ll need more from its role players, of course, and the good news for Indiana is that they played well in Game 5 and should play even better at home in Game 6. On Monday, Indiana’s bench outscored Oklahoma City’s by 16 points — even with Bennedict Mathurin making just two of his 11 shots — center Myles Turner began to make shots, and Aaron Nesmith made four of his five 3-pointers. Considering how much energy guard Andrew Nembhard expends guarding Oklahoma City’s best offensive players, it’s probably too much to ask him for a 20-point game, something he’s done only twice this postseason. But Indiana must get him to hold on to the ball — his four turnovers were critical in the Game 5 loss — and for Siakam to look like the co-star who could take over a game while scoring 30 or more points three times in the Eastern Conference finals against New York.

Nadkarni: You can’t really compensate for the loss of a player like Haliburton, but the two guys who need to hunt their shots more often in Game 6 are Siakam and Mathurin. Both have the ability to do something even Haliburton has struggled with against the Thunder: play one-on-one and create their own shots. It will be a team effort to make up for Haliburton’s limitations. That means taking (and hopefully making) more 3s. Locking in defensively. At some point, though, Indiana will need someone to make a tough bucket against a stingy defense. And Siakam and Mathurin will be the Pacers’ two most talented scorers in those situations.

Prediction for Game 6?

Greif: I started this series picking Oklahoma City to win in six games, and I’m sticking with it. The Thunder will beat Indiana, 120-115, to claim their first championship since they relocated to Oklahoma City.

Nadkarni: I picked the Thunder in five, so this is wishful thinking, but I think the Pacers will send this to a Game 7. Indiana hasn’t looked overmatched in this series. Even Game 5 was a two-point game in the fourth quarter at one point. I think the Pacers hold home court in a thriller, 112–108.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Alabama man accused of killing 18 people in 2023 and 2024, including two mass shootings, will go to trial in April next year, a judge ruled Tuesday.

But his attorneys have raised concerns about whether it will be possible to select impartial jurors from a city still reeling from record levels of violence last year.

Damien McDaniel, 22, faces murder charges related to 18 deaths in Birmingham, Alabama — including eight people killed at two separate mass shootings in July and September. Jefferson County District Judge Shanta Owens also ruled that prosecutors could pursue the death penalty against McDaniel under Alabama law.

Birmingham had one of the deadliest years on record in 2024 with 151 homicides, according to records compiled by AL.com. Birmingham police officers have accused McDaniel and one of other man of committing over 30% of those murders, casting the 22-year old as a central force in the widespread violence that touched hundreds of lives across the city.

“We often say on these crime scenes that we have a few select criminals that add to this crime and give Birmingham a bad name,” Birmingham public information officer Truman Fitzgerald said in November.

McDaniel, who is being held in state prison, maintains his innocence, according to his attorneys. They say that they haven’t seen any evidence yet.

John Robbins, one of the lawyers representing McDaniel, said after the hearing that “the obvious concern is that we can’t get a jury that doesn’t know a whole lot about this case.”

“At some point we will have to discuss whether we can have a fair trial in this county,” Robbins said. He added that his legal team was polling potential jurors across the county.

Owens said she understood Robbins’ concerns about finding jurors without a significant connection to McDaniel’s alleged victims, but she cautioned that it might be impossible to weed out anyone familiar with the accusations against McDaniel, given the impact the shootings had on the city.

“I just don’t want to get to the point where we’re emptying the city of Birmingham” looking for jurors who have no knowledge of the case or connection to victims, Owens said.

Owens clarified that it would be OK to have jurors who knew some victims tangentially, as long as they could be impartial and didn’t know victims “in depth” or “at length.”

A large crowd filled almost all available space in the courtroom on Tuesday. Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with the names and faces of McDaniel’s alleged victims. Some shed tears after the hearing.

Before the start of the hearing McDaniel’s mother and a family member of one of the victims got into an argument, and they were forced to exit the courtroom by court deputies. McDaniel appeared in court wearing a red and pink striped jumpsuit, chained at his wrists and ankles.

Robbins said after the hearing that McDaniel’s mother has received death threats.

“Law enforcement knows about it. They don’t do anything,” Robbins said, adding that he was grateful that law enforcement intervened in the courtroom.

In April, McDaniel will first be tried for the charges related to a mass shooting outside of a nightclub where four people were fatally shot.

LEMBATA, Indonesia — Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupted with giant ash and smoke plumes again Wednesday after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancellations, including to and from the resort island of Bali.

Several eruptions sent ash up to 16,400 feet into the sky Tuesday evening to Wednesday afternoon. An eruption Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds about 32,800 feet into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 93 miles away.

The eruption alert was raised Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 5 miles from the crater.

Officers also evacuated from the Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki monitoring post 4.3 miles from the crater to avoid falling gravel released in the eruption. No casualties have been reported.

Ash and debris fell in a number of places outside the danger zone, including the villages of Boru, Hewa and Watobuku. Some residents from Nurabelen village in Ile Bura subdistrict fled to evacuation sites in Konga to avoid the impact of the eruption, the National Disaster Management Agency said in a statement.

“Some residents have also evacuated to Nileknoheng village, which is 7.4 miles from the crater,” said Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s spokesperson.

Dozens of flights Wednesday were canceled, including those connecting Bali to cities in Australia, Malaysia, India and China, according to the website of Bali’s I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport. Volcanic ash can pose a risk to plane engines.

Flights also were canceled to and from the international airport in Labuan Bajo, another tourist destination in Flores Island, East Nusa Tenggara province. The airport is still operating.

The cancellations and delays affected thousands of travelers. Australian carrier Jetstar, which flies daily between the tourist hotspot and several Australian cities, said the ash cloud was forecast to clear by late Wednesday and its services would be rescheduled.

Air New Zealand canceled one return trip to Auckland and said it would rebook customers on the next available service. Flights to New Delhi, Singapore and Pudong, China, were also canceled due to the volcano, according to information on the website for Denpasar airport in Bali.

The 5,197-foot Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki is a twin volcano with Mount Lewotobi Perempuan in the district of Flores Timur.

The volcano has had several eruptions, and its danger level and no-go zone have changed several times before being raised again to the highest level Tuesday.

An eruption of Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki in November killed nine people and injured dozens. It also erupted in March.

Indonesia is an archipelago of 270 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Seven Southern California men were charged in connection with what federal prosecutors described Tuesday as the largest jewelry heist in U.S. history.

The defendants, all of whom are from the Los Angeles area, are accused of stealing roughly $100 million in gold, diamonds, rubies, emeralds and luxury watches from an armored car in July 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for California’s Central District.

They were indicted last Wednesday on two counts of conspiracy to commit theft from interstate and foreign shipment and theft from interstate and foreign shipment, the prosecutor’s office said in a news release.

The defendants were identified as:

• Carlos Victor Mestanza Cercado, 31
• Jazael Padilla Resto, 36
• Pablo Raul Lugo Larroig, 41
• Victor Hugo Valencia Solorzano, 60
• Jorge Enrique Alban, 33,
• Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores, 42
• Eduardo Macias Ibarra, 36

Five of the men were also charged with two counts of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery and interference with commerce by robbery, the prosecutor’s office said.

Two of the men were expected to appear in federal court Tuesday. Padilla is incarcerated in Arizona, where, the prosecutor’s office said, he is in prison on a burglary charge.

It isn’t clear whether they have lawyers to speak on their behalf.

A copy of the indictment alleges that Padilla scouted an international jewelry show in San Mateo, just south of San Francisco, on July 8, 2022. Two days later, he and several others followed a Brinks semitruck with 73 bags containing millions of dollars in jewelry from San Mateo to rest stops in Buttonwillow, in the state’s Central Valley, and Lebec, north of Los Angeles, the indictment alleges.

On July 11, the seven men stole two-dozen bags from the truck, the indictment claims.

The indictment doesn’t say how they are believed to have gained access to the truck. Brinks didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment; neither did a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office.

After the alleged theft, the group traveled to East Hollywood with the stolen goods, authorities said. Most of the defendants deactivated the phones they’d been using to communicate about the heist in the days that followed, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the victims tallied the value of the stolen goods at $100 million. The news release says some of that jewelry was recovered when authorities executed search warrants Monday. The value of those items isn’t clear. Nor is it clear what happened to the rest of the jewelry.

Several of the defendants were also accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of Samsung electronics from interstate cargo shipments and nearly $60,000 in Apple AirTags. Those thefts are alleged to have occurred in 2022, before the jewelry heist, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The Trump Organization’s newly announced smartphone will most likely be made in China, experts say, despite claims that the device will be manufactured in the U.S.

Owned President Donald Trump, the company on Monday announced the T1, a gold-colored device that it said would retail for $499. The smartphone will run Google’s Android operating system.

The Trump Organization says the phone will be “built in the United States” — but experts note the phone was most likely designed and would be manufactured by a Chinese firm.

“There is no way the phone was designed from scratch and there is no way it is going to be assembled in the U.S. or completely manufactured in the U.S.,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president at International Data Corp., told CNBC on Tuesday. “That is completely impossible.”

Jeronimo suggested that the phone would most likely be produced by a Chinese original device manufacturer, or ODM — a type of company that designs and manufactures products based on the specifications of another firm.

“Despite being advertised as an American-made phone, it is likely that this device will be initially produced by a Chinese ODM,” Blake Przesmicki, an analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in a note Monday.

Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research, added that “the U.S. does not have local manufacturing capabilities readily available.”

Smartphone manufacturing came into focus after Trump threatened tariffs on devices imported into the U.S. While those have yet to materialize, the American president has poured scrutiny on Apple’s supply chain, urging the iPhone maker to manufacture its flagship handset in the U.S. The call is part of a broader desire from Trump to see more manufacturing of electronics be undertaken in the U.S.

Several experts have noted that manufacturing iPhones in the U.S. would be nearly impossible and would certainly raise the price of the product substantially. On top of that, getting large-scale manufacturing off the ground in the U.S. would take several years.

Phone will need foreign components

Even if some manufacturing of the device were done in the U.S., smartphone supply chains are global, and handset components come from several countries.

The Trump Organization’s T1 is no different. While no information has been revealed on particular components, the specifications could give a hint of what to expect.

The device will have a 6.8-inch AMOLED display, a kind of screen that is made primarily by South Korean firm Samsung. LG, another South Korean firm, also produces the screen, as does Chinese firm BOE.

For comparison, Apple’s top-end iPhone 16 Pro Max has a 6.9-inch display and starts at $1,199.

At T1’s $499 price point, the smartphone will most likely use a processor from Taiwanese firm MediaTek, which would be manufactured in Taiwan. If the device were to contain a Qualcomm chip instead, that would also most likely have to be made in Taiwan.

The phone’s advertised 50-megapixel camera will meanwhile require image sensing chips — a market that is dominated by Japanese firm Sony for smartphones. There are smaller players in China and elsewhere.

The device’s memory is one area that could use American technology, potentially from Micron, which manufactures its components in the U.S. But other players, like Samsung, could be potential suppliers.

“Even when there is local manufacturing available, the company will have to rely on components that are being imported from outside the U.S.,” Counterpoint Research’s Fieldhack said.

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the experts’ analysis.

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