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The release of a redacted affidavit that the Justice Department used to obtain a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home shed new light on the federal investigation into the handling of documents from his White House. The previously sealed court filing – which was disclosed Friday in redacted form after a court fight launched by media companies, including CNN and other entities – went into previously unknown detail about the classified information found in boxes retrieved from Trump’s Florida resort in January. It also firmed up aspects of the timeline about how the investigation unfolded. Here are takeaways from the newly released document. 📸: Jon Elswick/AP

The FBI told a judge that there was “probable cause to believe” that classified national security materials were improperly taken to “unauthorized” locations at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and that a search would also likely find “evidence of obstruction,” according to a redacted version of the search warrant affidavit released Friday. “There is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified (National Defense Information) or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at (Mar-a-Lago),” the FBI affidavit says. “There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at (Mar-a-Lago.)” Federal investigators used the affidavit to convince a judge to authorize the search that was carried out earlier this month. The Justice Department also released a redacted legal brief explaining why it proposed the redactions to the affidavit, including possible threats to witnesses. Reiterating language prosecutors previously used to describe why the affidavit should be kept secret, the DOJ’s legal brief said its details would provide a “road map” to the investigation and that revealing “this information could thus adversely impact the government’s pursuit of relevant evidence.” This caption has been updated with additional details.

President Joe Biden offered one of his sharpest rebukes Thursday of Republicans who have stuck to the credo of his predecessor, a forceful kickoff to midterm politicking for the President. "What we're seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy," Biden told a group of Democratic donors at a private home in Maryland ahead of the rally. "It's not just Trump," he went on, "it's the entire philosophy that underpins the — I'm going to say something: It's like semi-fascism." Labeling Trump's views a type of proto-fascism marked an escalation in Biden's reprimands of his predecessor, and laid the groundwork for a midterm political message designed to paint his opponents as too extreme for most voters. His remarks come as Democrats appear to be closing an enthusiasm gap with voters, gaining some momentum in a series of recent contests. Biden hopes the recent string of accomplishments can propel Democrats to office.

Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old community organizer, will win the Democratic nomination in Florida's 10th District, CNN projects, and could become the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress. Frost bested a crowded field of candidates looking to replace Democratic Rep. Val Demings, who is vacating the Orlando-based seat for a Senate run against GOP Sen. Marco Rubio. But Frost is not the only Gen Z candidate running for Congress this cycle. In New Hampshire, former Trump aide Karoline Leavitt and state Rep. Tim Baxter, who are seeking the GOP nomination in the state's 1st District, are both Gen Zers. Earlier this summer, two Gen Z candidates lost their primaries: Democrat Ray Reed in Missouri's 2nd District and Republican Matt Foldi in Maryland's 6th. 📸: Stephen M. Dowell/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced new steps to address student loan debt, which includes forgiving up to $20,000 for some borrowers and extending the payment freeze one final time until the end of the year. "An entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for an attempt at least at a college degree, Biden said. "The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate you may not have access to the middle-class life that the college degree once provided.” The President’s sweeping plan on student loans follows extended, down-to-the-wire negotiations at the White House among stakeholders and lawmakers ahead of when payments were set to resume at the end of this month. The decision is already disappointing many, with those on the left arguing that the President should have provided even more loan forgiveness and those on the right asserting that Biden is punishing Americans who avoided going into debt. But it fulfills one of Biden’s campaign promises, issuing major reforms to America’s student loan system and providing relief to millions of current and future borrowers. Borrowers who hold loans with the Department of Education and make less than $125,000 a year are eligible for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness if they obtained Pell Grants. Individuals who make less than $125,000 a year but did not receive Pell Grants are eligible for $10,000 in loan forgiveness. The Department of Education will announce details on how borrowers can claim this relief in the coming weeks, with the application expected to be available no later than when the pause on repayments terminates at the end of December. Millions of borrowers will be able to receive relief automatically based on existing income data.

President Joe Biden announces his plan for forgiving student debt for some borrowers, including forgiving $10,000 for borrowers who make less than $125,000 per year and extending the payment freeze one final time. In a tweet Wednesday morning, Biden said the amount of forgiveness will be higher for low-income borrowers who went to college on Pell Grants. Those who went to college on Pell Grants will receive $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. Biden added that those with undergraduate federal loans can also cap their payment at 5% of their monthly income. The President will formally announce the plan Wednesday afternoon.

Charlie Crist will win the Democratic nomination for Florida governor, CNN projects. He will face incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, in November. And in the Florida Senate race, CNN projects Val Demings will win the Democratic nomination and will face incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican, in November.

Donald Trump’s political action committee donated $650,000 to the Smithsonian Institution last month to help underwrite portraits of the former President and former first lady Melania Trump at the National Portrait Gallery, according to Linda St. Thomas, chief spokesperson for the Smithsonian. The donation from Trump’s Save America leadership PAC marks the first time that funds have come from a political action committee since the institution began raising private funds for presidential portraits – a practice that started with the portraits associated with former President George H. W. Bush, St. Thomas said. Trump’s PAC disclosed the $650,000 “charitable contribution” made on July 14 in its monthly filing Saturday with the Federal Election Commission. A Trump spokesman did not respond to an inquiry about the donation earlier Monday. St. Thomas said another private donation of $100,000 also is helping to pay costs associated with the portraits. The funds, totaling $750,000, will go to artists’ fees, shipping, framing, installation and events. Two artists have been commissioned to complete the portraits, and the work is underway, she said. The artists’ names will be disclosed closer to the unveiling of the paintings. That date has not yet been decided, she added.

Summertime renovations timed around a president’s vacation are a regular occurrence in the White House. This year, long-sought upgrades to the basement Situation Room, repaving the driveway, cleaning the windows, replacing stone pavers and sprucing up the South Lawn are among the projects. President Joe Biden isn’t planning any major updates to the Oval Office, as his two recent predecessors did during their first August getaways. He has made some changes since taking office, however, including setting up a small television set directly behind the Resolute Desk. All presidents find living and working in the 222-year-old White House comes with challenges. Biden has been open about finding life in the White House restrictive and has spent more than a quarter of his presidency in Delaware, where he maintains two homes. The building is maintained to a museum-level standard, but upkeep is required nearly constantly, and systems sometimes break down. Doing that work while the President is out of town is usually preferable for the teams of painters, carpenters, electricians and landscapers who descend on the building in August to make the repairs. Biden is spending this week between his homes in Delaware, and spent last week on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, where reporters caught sight of him riding his bike down the sand. 📸: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has asked a federal judge to appoint a “special master” to ensure the Justice Department returns any of his private documents seized during the search of Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago. Trump is asking for a special master – a third-party attorney – to oversee the review of evidence gathered from the beach club in the criminal probe, and for the judge to pause federal investigators’ work related to the evidence until the review is done, according to a new court filing. The new lawsuit marks the first legal filing by Trump’s team after FBI agents carried out their search on August 8 and underscores how his legal team has struggled to coalesce around a singular strategy. In the suit, Trump argues his constitutional rights were violated and that there may have been privileged materials seized. Though the legal maneuver could slow down the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation, Trump’s request to the federal court in South Florida could face an uphill legal battle after his team missed multiple opportunities to challenge the search. 📸: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Dr. Anthony Fauci is departing his roles as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as chief medical officer to President Joe Biden at the end of this year, marking the end of nearly four decades as the nation’s top infectious disease expert. “I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career,” Fauci said. Fauci, 81, has served at NIAID for 38 years starting in former President Ronald Reagan’s administration, a role in which he helped lead the US response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as well as West Nile virus, the anthrax attacks, pandemic influenza, various bird influenza threats, Ebola and Zika. He became one of the most public faces of the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Biden praised Fauci’s work in a statement, noting his “unwavering” commitment to the work, as well as his “unparalleled spirit, energy, and scientific integrity.” 📸: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

El Shafee Elsheikh, a British ISIS fighter and member of the execution cell dubbed “the ISIS Beatles” because of their British accents, was sentenced to life in prison Friday for his role in the hostage-taking and deaths of four Americans and several others. Elsheikh was handed down eight concurrent life sentences in a Virginia courtroom on the eighth anniversary of the brutal beheading of one of his victims: American journalist James Foley. Elsheikh and another member of the cell, Alexanda Kotey, were charged in October 2020 on eight counts for their involvement in the hostage-taking and murders of Foley, fellow American journalist Steven Sotloff, American aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller, as well as British and Japanese nationals. Elsheikh was convicted in April. Speaking to the press following the sentencing, Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother, said she was grateful for the sentence but called it “a hollow victory.” “Our country has lost four of its very best citizens. We families lost our loved ones forever,” she said. 📸: Hussein Malla/AP

A super PAC tied to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came to the rescue of J.D. Vance, the struggling Senate Republican candidate in Ohio, a state Democrat Joe Biden lost by 8 points in 2020. The National Republican Senatorial Committee resorted to cutting and shifting ad spending to preserve resources, as many of their candidates trail their Senate Democratic opponents in fundraising. And election forecasters altered their view of a crucial contest in Pennsylvania in favor of Democrats. With fewer than 100 days from the November midterm elections, Senate Democrats found a few signs of promise in a bleak political environment this week, even as their House counterparts privately acknowledged they are likely to lose the chamber. Republicans need to flip just one net seat to recapture the Senate, and five seats to take the House. McConnell on Thursday predicted the 2022 elections will deliver an “extremely close” Senate, with “either our side up slightly or their side up slightly.” “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” he said.

In the days since the FBI seized classified and top secret documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the former President and his allies have claimed that Trump had a “standing order” to declassify documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence. But 18 former top Trump administration officials tell CNN they never heard any such order issued during their time working for Trump, and that they believe the claim to be patently false. Several officials laughed at the notion. One senior administration official called it “bullsh*t.” Two of Trump’s former chiefs of staff went on the record to knock down the claim. “Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given,” said John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 17 months from 2017 to 2019. “And I can’t imagine anyone that worked at the White House after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop it.” Mick Mulvaney, who succeeded Kelly as acting White House chief of staff, also dismissed the idea and told CNN he was “not aware of a general standing order” during his tenure.

Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, pleaded guilty Thursday to his role in a 15-year-long tax fraud scheme, and as part of the deal he has agreed to testify against former President Donald Trump's real estate company at trial. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felonies and admitted he failed to pay taxes on $1.7 million in income, including luxury perks, such as rent and utilities for a Manhattan apartment, leases for a pair of Mercedes-Benz cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren. He admitted to concealing those benefits from his accountant to under-report his income and knowingly omitting the income from his personal tax returns. As part of the deal, he will pay nearly $2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties and waive any right to appeal. 📸: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg/Getty Images