Today's five.

Joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea started Monday, then immediately got smaller. Trump ordered the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" the 10-day exercises, citing his "very good relationship" with Kim Jong Un and the signal the drills send North Korea. The exercises are also expensive, and apparently South Korea declined to help denuclearize Iran, which seems to be a separate grievance that ended up in the same announcement. The Hill led with retired military voices calling it an unforced error. ABC led with the Kim relationship framing. What the scaled-back exercises actually look like remains unclear — which is its own kind of signal.

Hayden Panettiere was found unresponsive in her Greenville, South Carolina apartment on Sunday. She was 36. An acquaintance called 911; emergency workers couldn't revive her. Police found no signs of foul play, but cause of death won't be determined for up to three months. She leaves behind a daughter, Kaya, who is 11. NPR and Time led with career tributes; BBC led with the cost of that career — a life in front of cameras since she was eleven months old. She once said fame took her childhood, her friendships, and her privacy. She was four years old when she said goodbye to normal.

The FBI didn't find the Fang Fang affair by investigating Swalwell — they found it while trying to recruit her as a double agent, which is a sentence that writes itself. Declassified documents released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force confirm Swalwell had physical relations with Christine Fang on at least two occasions. The files also note that Swalwell once joked — joked — that she probably worked for Chinese intelligence. Coverage has been almost exclusively from outlets with an appetite for this particular story; nobody else has weighed in yet. The joke, it turns out, was the most accurate thing anyone said.

Three states walked into a Tuesday and nobody made a big deal about it. Florida, Wyoming, and Alaska are all holding primary elections today — governor, Senate, House — the unglamorous machinery of democracy doing its thing in August. Florida Phoenix noted that more than 14% of registered voters had already cast ballots before today, with Hillsborough leading the big counties at nearly 16%. NBC6 is running extended coverage tonight. GPB is tracking live results across all three states. The races that matter are the ones that could flip — Florida Phoenix flagged several House districts worth watching. Polls close at 7pm local time.

Naming a reunion tour "Burning Up Tour All Over Again" is either extremely self-aware or completely accidental, and either way it works. The Jonas Brothers are heading back out in 2026 for a nationwide run, including a stop at Indianapolis's Gainbridge Fieldhouse on October 15 — less than a year after they played the same venue. NJ.com got straight to the presale logistics. Fox59 went with the local angle. The tour name is technically a callback to the original 2008 Burning Up Tour, which means this is a nostalgia tour named after a nostalgia tour.