Today's five.

ICE quietly told its officers to stop most vehicle stops nationwide — and then wouldn't confirm it publicly, which is its own kind of answer. The directive follows two fatal shootings in eight days: one in Houston, one in Biddeford, Maine, where an officer killed a Colombian national. The pause stays until ICE completes additional training; stops involving "serious criminal targets" continue, though the agency hasn't defined serious. The LA Times led with the administration angle; The Hill noted the agency refused to confirm the order it was already following. A Texas congressman called a temporary training pause insufficient. He may have a point.

Two justices walked into Congress and explained that doing their jobs now requires round-the-clock protection wherever they go, which is a sentence nobody expected to write in 2026. Kagan and Barrett — ideological opposites who rarely agree on anything — showed up together to request more security funding after the Supreme Court Police reported a 38% spike in threats this year, following a 25% jump last year. Barrett put it plainly: she didn't expect a lifetime appointment to require explaining that to her family. Congress, for once, seems ready to act. The last time justices testified before lawmakers was 2019.

The U.S. tried to run a naval convoy through the Strait of Hormuz without using Iran's approved route — and learned, again, that Iran considers the strait its most valuable leverage point. The operation coincided with Khamenei's funeral, which either looked like clever timing or badly miscalculated the mood. It was the latter. The Times calls this a "new phase." ZeroHedge calls it "Iran War 3.0." The Hill has a poll showing 79% of Americans expect this to drag on for a while. Four words nobody involved in the planning apparently said out loud: Iran has done this before.

E. Jean Carroll's Substack subject line on Tuesday was "The Eagle Has Landed," which is one way to announce receiving $5.62 million from a sitting president. A jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation back in 2023 — the payout took this long because Trump spent the intervening time asking the Supreme Court to overturn the judgment. They declined. The final transfer includes interest, which is the financial system's way of charging a late fee. Carroll first went public with her account in 2019. The math on that timeline is about six years, for anyone keeping track.

Ron DeSantis held a press conference announcing CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Antifa as domestic terrorist organizations before anyone had written the regulations that would make it legal to do so. That's the sequence of events. The law took effect, the announcement happened, two weeks passed, and as of Monday's federal court filing, there's no timetable for the designation to actually go into effect. The state's chief of domestic security made the recommendation. The paperwork did not follow. Announcing things and implementing them are, it turns out, two distinct steps.