Shifting Power, Shaking Ground

• ⚖️🏛️ The Supreme Court handed Trump a sweeping victory by striking down a 90-year-old precedent that had shielded independent federal agency heads from being fired without cause, giving the president near-total control over vast swaths of the regulatory state. The Federal Reserve carved out as a notable exception, with the court blocking Trump’s attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook for now, citing deep concerns that unchecked presidential power over interest rate policy could destabilize the entire economy.

• 🇻🇪🆘 Survivors of Venezuela’s devastating back-to-back earthquakes are still being pulled from the rubble five days on, with more than 1,700 confirmed dead and over 50,000 people reported missing. Residents in the hardest-hit coastal areas have largely been left to dig through collapsed buildings by hand, with heavy rescue equipment and government support arriving too slowly and too late for many families.

• ⚽🇧🇷 Brazil survived a dramatic scare at the World Cup, with Gabriel Martinelli’s last-gasp injury-time winner sealing a 2-1 victory over Japan to advance to the round of 16 on the anniversary of their very first World Cup title back in 1958.

• 🌡️🏠 A brutal European heatwave that killed at least 1,300 people has reignited a fierce debate over air conditioning, with the EU Commission declining to take any official stance and leaving member states to navigate the politically charged question on their own.

The day’s biggest story is unmistakably the Supreme Court’s dramatic reshaping of executive authority, a ruling that legal experts say could reorder how the American government functions for generations. Against that backdrop, a natural disaster in Venezuela and a continent scorched by record heat paint a world under pressure from multiple directions at once.