Today's five.

A federal judge told the Kennedy Center board it didn't have enough information to vote for renovations, so the board got more information and voted again. Same result. The 20-3 vote closes the main building for up to two years and adds Trump's name to the facade — specifically "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump," which is technically a sentence. NBC caught the bonus detail: there's also a "Trump Plaza" in the mix now. The smaller Reach building stays open, a concession to a court order requiring the center to remain functional as a JFK memorial.

Returning from maternity leave only to announce you're leaving is a plot twist even the briefing room didn't see coming. Karoline Leavitt, the youngest person ever to hold the press secretary role, is stepping down at the end of August — Trump announced it on Truth Social, calling it a decision he "totally understands and respects," which is the presidential equivalent of a gracious LinkedIn comment. She'll move to an outside adviser role. No successor has been named. ABC led with the departure; BBC immediately pivoted to the replacement guessing game. Washington's real sport is always the vacancy.

A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration's civil rights lawsuit against Harvard, and the reason is almost bureaucratically elegant: the government mostly cited incidents from 2023-2024, and the judge said that's not an "ongoing violation." A handful of March 2025 incidents made the cut factually but not legally — too isolated, too episodic. The Hill and NBC both led with the procedural ruling; GBH led with Massachusetts education officials celebrating it. Harvard didn't comment. The White House didn't comment. The lawsuit was filed in March 2026, which means it took about six weeks to get thrown out.

Colombia just had its worst earthquake in 47 years, and 260 people are dead — which is a disaster by any measure, but apparently also a referendum on how governments actually behave when things fall apart. The new administration of President Abelardo de la Espriella moved fast, visibly, with excavators in the rubble by Wednesday. Venezuela, which dealt with its own major quake less than two months ago, took a different approach — different enough that the Inquirer built a whole story around the contrast. Two catastrophes, same region, same window of time. The comparison was always going to happen.

A Florida judge threw out the ballot summary for a property tax amendment because the title — "Save our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes" — was apparently too much editorializing for a legal document. Attorney General James Uthmeier rewrote it, and now a circuit court in Leon County gets to decide if the new version clears the bar. The amendment itself hasn't changed. Just the wrapping. Florida has a long tradition of ballot language fights, because the difference between how you describe something and what it actually does tends to be the whole ballgame.