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Linebacker Fred Warner’s new three-year deal with the 49ers is now official.

The 49ers formally announced the agreement on Thursday afternoon. Warner is a four-time first-team All-Pro and he’s made the team the last three seasons while starting all 115 games he’s played since the 49ers drafted him in the third round in 2018, which makes it easy to understand why General Manager John Lynch was effusive in his praise for what Warner brings to the club.

“Fred’s leadership is exemplary and his approach to his craft is contagious,” Lynch said in a statement. “Fred sets the tone for our entire team with the consistency, speed and physicality with which he plays. Off the field, his passion, energy, and professionalism are second to none and truly embody what it means to be a Niner. We are extremely proud to get this extension done and lock Fred in for the future.”

Warner has two years left on his deal, so he’s now under contract to the 49ers through the 2029 season. Reports pegged the value of his new deal at $63 million with $56 million in guaranteed money.

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

It’s a “big, beautiful” edition of the newsletter today, as we break down the political ramifications, historical context and next steps for President Donald Trump and the GOP after the House passed the party’s sweeping domestic policy package.

Programming note: We are taking a few days off for the holiday weekend and will be back on Tuesday, May 27. Have a restful Memorial Day!

Sign up to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday here.

— Adam Wollner

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Trump has history on his side with his ‘big, beautiful bill’

By Jonathan Allen

After the House passed a bill for President Donald Trump’s agenda early Thursday morning by a single vote, the measure faces more hurdles in the Senate.

But don’t bet against it becoming law.

There’s a long history of presidents getting Congress to deliver their top legislative priority, even when other items fall by the wayside. That’s especially true when the president’s party controls both chambers, as Trump’s GOP currently does. Because of congressional rules, so-called budget reconciliation bills — like the one Trump is trying to get to his desk — only need a simple majority to pass in the Senate.

For that reason, Trump was smart to roll a series of his major proposals into a single bill covering much of his agenda on taxes, immigration and more.

Even for Republicans who aren’t in love with every provision, it is politically perilous to stand in the way of a president of their own party. When push comes to shove, few will be willing to alienate their base voters to kill the newly elected president’s plans. And if Trump loses the battle, he will make sure GOP voters know which lawmakers betrayed him.

There may ultimately be a political downside for some Republicans who stick with Trump with the broader electorate, but there’s no upside in turning him into an enemy in either a primary or a general election. No Republican can win a swing state or district if the GOP base doesn’t turn out for them. Trump may be more openly vindictive than most recent presidents, but similar dynamics are always at play.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton and a Democratic-led Congress prioritized his economic recovery package — not the more memorable “Hillarycare” health insurance proposal. He passed the budget plan, while Hillarycare fell apart.

In June 2001, President George W. Bush, with a Republican Congress behind him, enacted a major tax cut on bipartisan votes in the House and Senate.

President Barack Obama’s stimulus law flew through Congress — with Democrats in control of both chambers — in February 2009. And after months of fierce debate, he managed to sign the Affordable Care Act into law in March 2010.

Arguably, the big exception came in Trump’s first term, when the Senate — on a decisive vote by then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — killed a push to repeal Obamacare. But Trump did get a signature tax law from the Republican-led Congress.

In 2021, the Democratic-led Congress quickly sent a pandemic recovery bill to President Joe Biden’s desk at the outset of his term. The rest of his “Build Back Better” plan ran into snags and had to be reformulated and slimmed down to make it across the finish line.

Some Republicans may distance themselves from Trump’s agenda as the midterm elections approach, but that day has not yet come. And the smart money is on him eventually signing his “big, beautiful bill” into law.

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How the Trump agenda bill will shape the next election

By Ben Kamisar and Alexandra Marquez

Republicans’ megabill is now set to play a major role in shaping the fight over who controls the House after the next election.

Democrats need a net gain of just three seats next year to take back control of the chamber, after the GOP won the smallest House majority in almost 100 years in the last election. And they’ve already started peppering the airwaves with attacks accusing the GOP of slashing Medicaid and prioritizing the wealthiest Americans.

But Republicans are betting that the measure holds the key to proving to voters why they should grant them two more years of unified control of Washington, as opposed to the midterm backlash that typically hits a president’s party. The GOP sees a bill that could energize Trump supporters by enacting his agenda and delivering key swing-state lawmakers some tangible victories to tout on the campaign trail.

“The American people gave us a mandate in November. They sent a message with their vote. They gave this side of the aisle the power, and we’re going to use it to make their lives better,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., sounded a different note: “When the votes are ultimately cast on that first Tuesday in November next year, this day may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States House of Representatives.”

Read more on the midterm politics of the bill →

The defectors: Only two House Republicans, safe-seat Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, joined every Democrat in voting against the bill, saying it will further balloon the U.S. deficit.

While Davidson’s opposition came as a last-minute surprise, Massie had long made clear where he stood on the legislation.

As Ben Kamisar and Scott Bland write, Massie is one of the rare Republicans who has found himself at odds with Trump on multiple occasions but has lived to tell the tale. The question is whether the tension evaporates as it has before or if Trump actually takes the step of backing a primary challenger against him in 2026.

Prior to Thursday’s vote, Trump blasted Massie as a “grandstander” who “should be voted out of office” — criticism Massie has pointed to in fundraising appeals for his own campaign.

“That’s a step up,” Massie said of Trump’s threats. “In 2020, he wanted me thrown out of the GOP, so losing a seat wouldn’t be as bad as being thrown out, would it?”

“I think that’s hyperbole on his part. I’m not worried about it,” Massie continued.

Read more on Massie →

➡️ Explainer: Here’s what’s in the sprawling Trump agenda bill House Republicans just passed, by Sahil Kapur and Scott Wong

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✉️ Mailbag: The GOP’s megabill moves to the Senate

Thanks to everyone who emailed us! Here is this week’s reader question:

“On the spending bill, will it go through the Senate? How many will oppose it?”

One thing is clear at this point, hours removed from the House’s passage of a massive bill for Trump’s agenda: The Senate won’t pass it as it’s currently written.

For weeks, GOP senators have outlined a variety of concerns with the measure their House colleagues put together. That list includes: the impact to the U.S. deficit, the level of Medicaid cuts, the rollback of clean energy tax credits and the higher cap for the state and local tax deduction.

It will be Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s job now to work through all these issues in the coming weeks. He can only afford to lose three Republican votes on the Senate floor — and he’s already lost Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who staunchly opposes a provision in the bill that raises the debt ceiling. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has even said he still wants to split up the sweeping legislation into two parts.

But as Jonathan Allen writes above, when push comes to shove, skeptical Senate Republicans may find it difficult to stand in the way of the president and his agenda.

Another complicating factor is that any changes the Senate makes to the package will have to go back through the House before GOP lawmakers can send the bill to Trump’s desk, which they are hoping to do by July 4.

— Adam Wollner

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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Ben Kamisar.

If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

And if you’re a fan, please share with everyone and anyone. They can sign up here.

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The federal government’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is not operating, despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims that it’s being funded.

The program’s 26 staffers were placed on administrative leave in April, with terminations set for June 2, as part of a broader restructuring of federal agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services.

To date, none of the staffers have been reinstated, with layoffs set to take effect in less than two weeks, said Erik Svendsen, director of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice, a department within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that includes the childhood lead program. 

Kennedy had faced criticism in recent weeks from Democratic senators over the gutting of the program, which assisted state and local health departments with blood lead testing and surveillance.

At a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, Kennedy told Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., that the program was still being funded. The week before, he told Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., that he had no plans to eliminate it.

But Svendsen said his entire division was dissolved by HHS and can’t be easily replaced.

“There are no other experts that do what we do,” he said. “You can’t just push a button and get new people because our areas of public health are so specialized.”

Staffers in the childhood lead program have not received direction about how to transition their work, according to two CDC scientists familiar with the matter.

Even low levels of lead exposure could put children at risk of developmental delays, learning difficulties and behavioral issues. The CDC program offered technical expertise to help under-resourced health departments prevent those outcomes. In 2023, it helped solve a nationwide lead poisoning outbreak linked to cinnamon applesauce. And it was in frequent contact with the Milwaukee Health Department this year after the city discovered dangerous lead levels in some public schools.

Kennedy told Reed on Tuesday that “we have a team in Milwaukee” offering laboratory and analytics support to the health department.

But the Milwaukee Health Department said that Kennedy’s statement was inaccurate, and that the city had not received any federal epidemiological or analytical support related to the lead crisis.

“Unfortunately, in this case, that is another example where the secretary doesn’t have his facts straight,” said Mike Totoraitis, the city’s health commissioner. 

Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the Milwaukee Health Department, said that the federal government’s only recent involvement in the lead crisis was “a short, two-week visit from a single CDC staff member this month, who assisted with the validation of a new instrument in our laboratory.”

“This support was requested independently of the [Milwaukee Public Schools] crisis and was part of a separate, pre-existing need to expand our lab’s long-term capacity for lead testing,” Reinwald said in a statement.

HHS has said it will continue efforts to eliminate childhood lead poisoning through a newly created department called the Administration for a Healthy America. But Democratic lawmakers and environmental health groups question how the work can continue without reinstating staffers.

“Despite what you told me last week, that you have no intention of eliminating this program, you fired the entire office responsible for carrying it out,” Baldwin told Kennedy at Tuesday’s hearing. “Your decision to fire staff and eliminate offices is endangering children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee.”

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy did not offer new details about his agency’s restructuring plan at the hearing, citing a court order that compelled the Trump administration to pause efforts to downsize the federal government.

Milwaukee’s lead crisis became clear to health officials in February, when the city’s health department identified dangerous levels of the toxin in school classrooms, hallways and common areas, due to lead dust and deteriorating lead-based paint. 

Before the childhood lead program was gutted, the CDC had been meeting with the Milwaukee Health Department on a weekly basis to come up with a plan to screen tens of thousands of students for lead poisoning, Totoraitis said.

The city’s health department asked the CDC on March 26 to send staffers to help, Totoraitis said, but the agency fired its childhood lead team on April 1 and denied Milwaukee’s request two days later.

“This is the first time in at least 75 years that the CDC has ever denied an Epi-Aid request, so it’s a pretty historic moment,” he said, referring to a request for the CDC to investigate an urgent public health problem.

To date, the Milwaukee Health Department has identified more than 100 schools built before 1978, when the federal government banned consumer uses of lead-based paints. Around 40 of those have been inspected, Totoraitis said. Six schools have closed since the start of the year due to lead contamination, and only two have reopened. 

Around 350 students in Milwaukee have been screened for lead poisoning out of 44,000 identified as having a potential risk, Totoraitis said. The city has confirmed one case linked to lead exposure in school, and two more linked to exposures at both school and home. The health department said it is investigating an additional four cases, which may involve multiple sources of exposure.

Totoraitis said the department is accustomed to looking for lead in homes and rental units, but the CDC was supposed to help them scale that operation to inspect larger buildings. CDC staffers were also supposed to help set up lead screening clinics and investigate where kids had been exposed, he said.

While the health department is handling those efforts on its own now, Totoraitis said it may not have the capacity to screen everyone in a timely manner. He estimated that the department could manage around 1,000 to 1,200 cases of childhood lead poisoning a year. That includes testing kids’ blood lead levels, treating lead poisoning with chelation therapy (which removes heavy metals from the bloodstream) and eliminating exposures in the home by replacing windows and doors. 

Totoraitis said he’s hoping to hire two of the terminated CDC employees for at least a couple of weeks to help address lingering questions about how to manage the crisis.

Better yet, he said, “I keep hoping to get an email from them saying, ‘Hey, we got our jobs back.’”

A flight with eight migrants that left Texas this week, reportedly headed for South Sudan, will now remain in the East African country of Djibouti for two weeks to comply with a court order, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.

During a press briefing, Leavitt placed blame on the U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, following a hearing Wednesday after eight people from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan had been deported to a third country. Lawyers had said the flight was headed for South Sudan, but the Department of Homeland Security says it won’t confirm.

Murphy had said in the hearing the Trump administration was in violation of a previous injunction that prevented people from being sent to countries other than their own without opportunities to voice their fears of torture or persecution or without proper notice ahead of time.

Murphy ordered that the individuals be provided legal counsel and an opportunity to raise their fears. He also ordered the deportees to be given at least 15 days to reopen immigration proceedings and challenge their deportation in the event the government still aims to send them to a third country.

Leavitt said Murphy’s order was an attempt to “bring these monsters back to our country.”

“Now Judge Murphy is forcing federal officials to remain in Djibouti for over two weeks threatening our US diplomatic relationships with countries around the world and putting the agents’ lives in danger by having to be with these illegal murderers, criminals and rapists,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt, who stated the names and criminal records of the eight people who are on the flight, called Murphy’s order a “massive judicial overreach.”

“He cannot control the foreign policy or the national security of the United States of America, and to suggest otherwise is being completely absurd,” she said.

Murphy had relayed the sequence of events leading to the deportations after a sealed proceeding on Wednesday, saying the migrants were notified of their destination “sometime in the evening” Monday, outside business hours. He added that they left the ICE facility en route to a nearby airport the next morning at 9:35 CT.

Without sufficient time to consult an attorney or family members, the judge said, it was impossible for the migrants to challenge their deportations to a third country.

“The department’s actions,” Murphy said, “are unquestionably violative of this court’s order.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters are predicting an active Atlantic hurricane season with more storm activity than typical.

“We’re really looking at an above normal season,” said Ken Graham, a meteorologist and the director of the National Weather Service. “We’re calling for 13 to 19 named storms.”

Storms get names when their wind speeds reach 39 mph or higher. Six to 10 of the forecasted storms are expected to become hurricanes, with wind speeds exceeding 74 mph. NOAA expects three to five major hurricanes — Category 3 and above.

The forecasts do not predict if or where the hurricanes will make landfall or how many of these storms will strike U.S. coastlines. Still, now is the time to prepare, forecasters said.

“It’s a good time to go out there and get your supplies and your kit and put it together,” Graham said. “We’ve got to be ready. No lines for supplies today. No lines for gas, no lines for plywood, no lines for water.”

Graham said the above-average forecast is driven in part by warmer ocean temperatures, a trend associated with climate change.

“The warmer ocean temperatures is really consistent with us being in a more active season,” Graham said at a news conference.

Forecasters were also predicting higher activity from the West African Monsoon, a pattern that develops storms off the shore of continental Africa and sends them spinning across the Atlantic and toward the U.S.

The hurricane forecast comes at a time when many National Weather Service offices are short on staff, after the Trump administration fired some workers and opened up voluntary retirement programs to cut staffing.

In the first months of 2025, nearly 600 staffers have left the National Weather Service, opening staffing holes. Still, the agency’s leadership said the National Hurricane Center, a division of the National Weather Service, had the resources it needed.

“We are fully staffed at the hurricane center, and we definitely are ready to go. And we are really making this up a top priority for this administration,” said Laura Grimm, the acting administrator of NOAA.

The nation’s 122 local forecasting offices have been hard hit and are riddled with vacancies. Many of those offices will be tasked with forecasting local effects after a hurricane landfall, such as flood inundation and rainfall.

“I’m going to make sure that our offices, when there’s a hurricane threat, that’s going to have the resources that they need to make sure every warning goes out,” Graham said, adding that he was working on solutions to “make sure that we continue to have the staffing that we need long term.”

Hurricane season begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30. It typically starts to peak in late summer and early fall.

NOAA’s forecast falls roughly in line with the public forecasts provided by outside research groups at universities, government agencies and private businesses.

On average, outside research groups predicted eight Atlantic hurricanes in 2025, according to a website operated by Colorado State University and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, which tracks and aggregates predictions each year.

Last year, NOAA predicted its highest-ever hurricane season. The season delivered 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes. Five hurricanes struck the U.S. coastline. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, then tracked northward with intense rainfall, causing destructive inland flooding in North Carolina, among other states. Helene killed more than 150 people.

Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm in Siesta Key Florida and produced 46 tornadoes.

Both storms underwent rapid intensification, a phenomenon in which hurricane winds ramp up suddenly as the storm nears shore.

Global warming makes that process more likely. High sea surface temperatures, like those observed over the past several years, can fuel that rapid intensification. A 2023 study found that tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean were about 29% more likely to undergo rapid intensification from 2001 to 2020, compared to 1971 to 1990.

WASHINGTON — The massive domestic policy bill that House Republicans passed Thursday by a one-vote margin would reshape the federal budget to the tune of trillions of dollars, impacting millions of Americans.

The legislation for President Donald Trump’s agenda was backed by nearly every Republican in the House and unanimously opposed by Democrats, who were cut out of the negotiations. It now heads to the GOP-led Senate, where it is likely to change before it reaches Trump’s desk.

Here are the major provisions in the sprawling package.

Extending Trump’s tax cuts, with some tweaks

The centerpiece of the bill is an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which would otherwise expire at the end of this year. That means the current lower rates, expanded standard deduction, business tax breaks and various other provisions would continue. The move impacts Americans in all income tax brackets, but the largest benefits are projected to go to the highest earners.

The legislation also makes an important change to the state and local tax deduction — known as SALT — by boosting the current $10,000 cap to $40,000. The deduction only applies to taxpayers earning less than $500,000 per year.

The bill preserves the carried interest tax loophole, despite the White House saying Trump wants to end it.

No tax on tips or overtime

The bill also seeks to fulfill two of Trump’s campaign promises: exempting tips and overtime pay from federal income taxes.

Ending taxes on earnings that workers make from tips would cost $40 billion. The policy applies to workers making cash tips in occupations that “traditionally and customarily received tips” as of the end of 2024, as certified by the administration. But experts have questioned the breadth of the impact, given that many tipped workers don’t earn enough to pay federal income taxes to begin with.

It also halts taxes on overtime pay at a cost of $124 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The package also includes a tax break for auto-loan interest payments. And it calls for temporarily increasing the child tax credit to $2,500 and boosting tax deductions for seniors.

All of these tax breaks would run through the end of 2028.

Medicaid cuts and new requirements

The legislation contains one of the largest Medicaid funding cuts in modern history, projected to be nearly $700 billion by the CBO.

That includes stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults under 65, which will begin on the last day of 2026, creating new rules and paperwork for those on Medicaid. It also adds more frequent eligibility checks, address verifications and provisions to verify legal status of beneficiaries.

The bill also cuts Medicaid funding to states if they allow people in the U.S. illegally to access Medicaid.

It increases funding to the 10 states — nearly all of them dominated by Republicans — that have declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, as an incentive for them to continue to decline the additional program.

Overall, the legislation is expected to rescind health coverage for 8.6 million people, according to CBO, although the number could change given that the revised bill triggers some changes earlier.

Cuts to SNAP

The package hits another federal safety-net program: food stamps. To achieve savings, the legislation cuts $290 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the food aid program for low-income Americans.

It includes stricter work requirements for SNAP participants. Currently, able-bodied adults under 55, without children, can get limited SNAP benefits unless they show they are complying with work requirements. But a provision in the bill expands those work requirements to able-bodied adults under age 65.

Rolling back clean energy funds and tax credits

The bill terminates several hundred billion dollars in clean cuts. It ends energy tax breaks for consumers, including on clean vehicles and energy-efficient items for homes. It ends or phases out production or investment tax credits for clean fuels, clean electricity and hydrogen production.

A cash infusion for immigration enforcement

The bill contains about $150 billion in new funds to beef up border security and carry out Trump’s mass deportation plans. That includes money to finish building the barrier system at the U.S.-Mexico border and a funding boost for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

There are also new fees and higher costs for prospective immigrants to apply for legal status.

A huge boost in military spending

The legislation includes a one-time boost of $150 billion in new military spending on matters like shipbuilding, air and missile defense, nuclear forces and cybersecurity, among others.

‘Trump accounts’

The measure creates new tax-preferred savings accounts for children that the federal government seeds with a $1,000 deposit. Parents could then contribute an additional $5,000 annually until the child is 18. The money can be used for educational purposes, for a down payment for a home or to start a small business.

The original version of House Republicans’ legislation called them “MAGA” accounts, but after an eleventh-hour amendment, they were renamed ‘Trump” accounts.

A debt limit hike

The bill is projected by the CBO to add $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years, with the tax breaks and new expenditures far outweighing the savings.

It also raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion ahead of a summer deadline announced by the Treasury Department for Congress to act or risk a catastrophic default. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has urged Congress to act by mid-July in order to prevent an economic meltdown if the U.S. government is unable to meet its obligations.

The organizer of the event where two Israeli Embassy staffers were fatally shot Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., said she unknowingly “looked evil in the eyes” when she and others tried to comfort a man they initially thought was a distressed witness who was later arrested in connection with the shooting.

JoJo Drake Kalin told Sky News, NBC News’ international partner, that moments after shots rang out at the Capital Jewish Museum, a man looking distraught was allowed inside the building because the security guard thought “he was a victim, an innocent bystander to this attack. And being the well-meaning group that we are, we all thought that was the case. And I actually gave him water.”

Kalin did not know she was face-to-face with Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, who was arrested by police in connection with the shooting of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

Moments later, Kalin realized she was “looking evil in the eye, that he was a murderer.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said authorities believe that Rodriguez, who was arrested Wednesday night, acted alone. He has not been charged with a crime as of Thursday morning.

The event featured Jewish and non-Jewish leaders from 30 embassies under the theme “Turning Pain Into Purpose.”

“We were gathered to talk about bridge-building,” Kalin said. “So it’s painfully, painfully ironic that at a time we were thinking about bridge-building, someone came in with such hate and destruction.”

“We wanted to counter the ‘us vs. them’ narrative and come together in shared humanity.”

The suspect shouted “Free, free Palestine” after being taken into police custody, where he “implied” that he shot Milgrim and Lischinsky, Washington Police Chief Pamela Smith said.

The victims were leaving the event at the museum around 9 p.m., said Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. He said Lischinsky had purchased an engagement ring and was intending to propose on the couple’s upcoming trip to Jerusalem.

Kim Kardashian announced she has completed her law program on Wednesday after 6 years of legal studies.

Khloe Kardashian shared photos of her sister’s private ceremony on her Instagram stories. The ceremony featured speeches from Kim’s mentors, CNN political commentator Van Jones, and the graduate herself.

“All of you guys have been on this journey with me,” Kim Kardashian said in her speech. “It did start with Van and I.”

The reality television star said she was “dumbfounded” by the state of the legal system when she first began this journey years ago.

Kim Kardashian began her legal studies in 2019, telling Vogue magazine her passion for prison reform inspired her decision to pursue legal education. Although the entertainment mogul never obtained an undergraduate degree, California’s “reading law” process allows future lawyers to participate in apprentice-style learning under a licensed attorney instead of attending a formal law school.

In March, E! News reported that the 44-year-old took the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), a requirement for admission to the California bar.

“Six years ago, Kim Kardashian walked into this program with nothing but a fierce desire to fight for justice,” attorney Jessica Jackson, one of Kim Kardashian’s mentors throughout her studies, said at the Wednesday ceremony. “No law school lectures, no ivory tower shortcuts, just determination and a mountain of case log books to read.”

Jackson said the SKIMS founder studied for 18 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, for 6 years, totaling more than 5,000 hours of legal study.

“That’s time she carved out raising 4 children, running businesses, filming television shows, and showing up in courtrooms to advocate for others,” Jackson said.

Jones also spoke at the intimate commencement, acknowledging that Kim Kardashian embarked on her studies during a difficult time, “when it wasn’t trendy, when it wasn’t cool.”

Kim Kardashian celebrated the accomplishment alongside several of her children, sisters Khloe Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian Barker, and various friends at the luncheon, complete with placemats of her flashcards.

She also shared a photo on her Instagram stories of Robert Kardashian, her late father and famed lawyer known for representing O.J. Simpson.

“This is years and years in the making, I’m so proud of her,” Khloe Kardashian said of her older sister in a video posted to Instagram stories. “This was really inspiring and motivating.”

WASHINGTON — Oklahoma will not be able to launch the nation’s first ever religious public charter school after the Supreme Court on Thursday deadlocked 4-4 in a major case on the separation of church and state.

The decision by the evenly divided court means that a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that said the proposal to launch St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School violates both the federal Constitution and state law remains in place.

As there was no majority, the court did not issue a written decision, and the case sets no nationwide precedent on the contentious legal question of whether religious schools must be able to participate in taxpayer-funded state charter school programs.

A key factor in the outcome was that conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who would have been the deciding vote, did not participate in the case. She did not explain why, but it is likely because of her ties with Notre Dame Law School. The law school’s religious liberty clinic represents the charter school.

The court will likely be asked to weigh in on the issue in future cases.

St Isidore would have operated online statewide with a remit to promote the Catholic faith.

The case highlights tensions within the Constitution’s First Amendment; one provision, the Establishment Clause, prohibits state endorsement of religion or preference for one religion over another, while another, the Free Exercise Clause, bars religious discrimination.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court had cited the state’s interest in steering clear of Establishment Clause violations as a reason not to allow the proposal submitted by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa to move forward.

A state board approved the proposal for St. Isidore in June 2023 despite concerns about its religious nature, prompting Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file suit.

The case saw Drummond on the opposite side to fellow Republicans in the state who backed the idea, but he prevailed at the Oklahoma Supreme Court the following year.

The Supreme Court, when Barrett is participating, has a 6-3 conservative majority that often backs religious rights. In recent years it has repeatedly strengthened the Free Exercise Clause in cases brought by conservative religious liberty activists, sometimes at the expense of the Establishment Clause. Some conservatives have long complained that the common understanding that the Establishment Clause requires strict separation of church and state is incorrect.

Lawyers representing the school and the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board sought to portray the dispute as similar to a series of recent rulings in which the court has said that under the Free Exercise Clause states cannot bar religious groups from government programs that are open to everyone else.

The push for religious public charter schools dovetails with the school choice movement, which supports parents using taxpayer funds to send their children to private school. Public school advocates see both efforts as broad assaults on traditional public schools.

A person was shot Thursday morning by security guards outside the CIA headquarters in Virginia, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Shots were fired early in the morning, prompting what the CIA said was a “security incident.”

The shooting was nonfatal.

The main gate is currently closed and employees were advised to seek alternative routes, a CIA spokesperson said.

Fairfax County police said patrol officers responded to the 900 block of Dolley Madison Boulevard in McLean around 4 a.m. to assist CIA police with traffic control following the incident.

Fairfax officers are still assisting with traffic support, police said in a statement on Thursday.