By Alayna Treene, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump promised his endorsement was forthcoming in the GOP Texas Senate runoff and said he wanted whoever he didn’t pick to drop out. But now — preoccupied with the Iran war and a doomed voting bill — he’s missed a critical deadline.

The decision hasn’t been on the president’s mind for days, White House officials told CNN Tuesday afternoon, noting that he was preoccupied by the war with Iran. Now, the deadline for either candidate to withdraw their name from the ballot has passed.

That means that the names of both incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will be listed on the ballot in the May 26 runoff, something many Senate Republican leaders — and even Trump himself — acknowledged they did not want.

White House officials say Trump may still choose to endorse in the race. Either candidate could still unofficially withdraw from the runoff, despite the deadline, but his name would still appear on the ballot.

Republicans see Texas as key to maintaining their Senate majority and had hoped they wouldn’t have to spend significantly more resources on a runoff after the already expensive primary. Senate GOP leaders had been intensely pressuring Trump to back Cornyn, who they saw as much more likely to win in a general election.

Trump vowed to endorse in the bitter runoff earlier this month, writing on social media that he would be asking whichever candidate he did not support to “immediately drop out of the race.”

The ultimatum thrilled Senate GOP leaders, because the president had been gravitating toward endorsing Cornyn. But Trump and some top advisers grew frustrated after his intentions leaked to the press, CNN previously reported.

The decision was further complicated by Trump’s desire to directly tie his prized endorsement to his fixation with his “SAVE America Act” — which, among other things, would impose stricter voter ID requirements.

In early March, Paxton announced that if the Senate passed the president’s voting restrictions bill — even if it took changing the chamber’s filibuster rules — he would consider dropping out of the runoff race. White House officials viewed the ploy as a “genius move,” as one Trump official described it, and it kept Paxton in the mix.

Adding to potential confusion over the endorsement and the deadline, Texas’ final withdrawal date is not a set day. Under state law, candidates have until three days after the results are finalized, or “canvassed,” to withdraw from the runoff. If the Texas GOP had canvassed their results on the last possible date, the withdrawal deadline would’ve been Wednesday, but since they canvassed a day earlier, the deadline slid to Tuesday at 5 p.m. CST.

Ethan Cohen contributed to this report.

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SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. - The National Weather Service says daily record highs were broken on St. Patrick's Day (Tuesday, March 17th) in Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Paso Robles and Camarillo.

90 degree temperatures continue Wednesday near the coast.

Extreme Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories continue in our region through Friday evening.

There will be slight cooling over the weekend with temperatures to dip into the high 70s but we are holding warm and dry through next week.

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By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge said Tuesday that the Trump administration must let more than 1,000 sidelined Voice of America employees return to work by next week.

The ruling came almost exactly one year after President Donald Trump set out to dismantle VOA and the rest of the US Agency for Global Media.

VOA, a widely respected US-funded international broadcaster, has been mostly silent since then. Its website is frozen in time, with no updates since March 15, 2025.

But now, according to the court order, VOA’s news reporting and programming must be restored.

In a pair of rulings on Tuesday, Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote that Trump’s pick to manage VOA, Kari Lake, and other defendants “are unlawfully withholding mandatory agency action.”

He said the 1,042 VOA employees who have been on paid administrative leave for the past year must be reinstated by March 23.

Lamberth also threw out all the actions Lake took to follow through on Trump’s order to strip the US Agency for Global Media, USAGM, down to the “minimum presence and function required by law.”

Tuesday’s ruling came ten days after Lamberth ruled that Lake unlawfully ran USAGM for several months last year and voided the mass layoffs that were attempted at that time.

Lake criticized Lamberth and said she would appeal that ruling. She had no immediate reaction to Tuesday’s rulings.

Steve Herman, a VOA veteran who now runs a center for journalism at the University of Mississippi, said the rulings were “a comprehensive legal defeat for Elon Musk’s DOGE lackeys, the self-proclaimed USAGM ‘deputy CEO’ Kari Lake and others in the Trump administration who sought to eviscerate the Voice of America.”

If the Trump administration complies with the ruling, Herman said, “there is almost certainly a battle imminent on whether the editorial firewall will be respected, which prohibits partisan skewing of VOA’s journalism.”

Tuesday’s rulings stemmed from lawsuits brought by VOA’s sidelined director and three USAGM employees.

The three employees, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper, said in a joint statement that they are “are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year.”

“We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” the employees said. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”

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By Devan Cole, Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration’s arguments in defense of the massive White House ballroom project on Tuesday found virtually no purchase before a federal judge, who appears ready to rule that the president skirted the law by undertaking construction without congressional approval.

During a testy hearing before senior US District Judge Richard Leon, the George W. Bush appointee repeatedly threw cold water on a litany of arguments pushed by the Justice Department that President Donald Trump had authority under a series of federal laws to pursue the project absent express authorization from lawmakers.

Leon has made clear his doubt that Trump has the authority to move forward with the project under a federal law that gives a president the authority to “to undertake ‘alteration’ and ‘improvement’ of the White House, ‘as the President may determine.’”

He took issue on Tuesday with the idea that a sprawling $400 million ballroom renovation and the demolition of the East Wing marked a simple “alteration.”

Calling the project “an alteration,” Leon said, “takes some brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary.”

He also took aim at an argument that the White House falls under the National Park Service’s authority and that the Park Service has approved the project.

“This isn’t any national park,” Leon said. “This is an iconic symbol of this nation.”

The legal wrangling Tuesday at the federal courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, represented the latest dramatic episode in the case, unfolding several weeks after Leon rejected earlier arguments pushed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in a highly technical ruling that allowed them to come back to him with different legal claims.

How he rules now could prove extremely consequential: The group is asking the judge for an order that would block any more construction at the site of where the East Wing once stood pending congressional approval. Leon said he would plan to issue his decision by the end of March, while also noting that an appeal by the losing side was likely. The Trump administration has suggested that above-ground work on the ballroom could begin as soon as April.

“It would have been a heck of a lot easier by any standard to have just gone to Congress to get the authority to do it,” Leon said at one point as he scolded the government for pushing “shifting theories and shifting dynamics” in the case, which was brought last year by the nation’s top historic preservation group.

“They’re looking for an escape hatch, it seems,” the judge said, referring to the government’s argument that the group lacked the legal right – known as “standing” – to challenge Trump’s project at all. Leon appeared to be pointing to a bid by some litigants to get a case tossed out on procedural grounds when their underlying arguments are likely to fall flat.

Leon seemed even more troubled by the Justice Department’s assertion that the project was now being completely managed by the National Park Service, which would subject it to federal rulemaking laws and therefore make its conduct reviewable by federal courts.

In his ruling last month, the judge said he couldn’t grant the Trust’s request to block the project because, at the time, the administration claimed the project was being handled by a little-known office within the White House. That office, he decided, is not subject to that same r

RundomGuy // Shutterstock

Dog owners love praising their pups’ intelligence, but canine smarts are more complicated than most people realize. Brain size doesn’t predict cognitive ability — a November 2024 study in Biology Letters found that dogs with bigger brains aren’t more intelligent, and smaller breeds may actually have the edge.

Researchers have long noted that dog intelligence isn’t one thing. Some dogs excel at impulse control, others at memory, and others at trainability. Broadly, dogs are considered roughly as intelligent as a 2- to 2.5-year-old human — but there’s real variation within that range, and yes, certain breeds are significantly brighter than others.

The go-to reference is Stanley Coren’s 2006 book The Intelligence of Dogs, widely accepted among canine enthusiasts as an accurate measure of trainability and working intelligence across breeds recognized by the American and Canadian Kennel Clubs. Coren’s rankings — built with help from obedience trial judges and a survey of dog owners — assessed how quickly breeds learn new commands and how reliably they obey on the first try.

Stacker is here to share Coren’s rankings, including information on how quickly these pups pick up new commands and how often they obey their first command. Many of these breeds evolved as working dogs to complete specific tasks, so all that extra brain power has its purpose. 

Read on to see if you’ll be bragging to the neighbors about your dog’s intellectual prowess the next time you take your fur baby out for a walk

You may also like: 20 facts about French bulldogs

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Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever (tie for #24)

– Class: Excellent working dogs
– Understanding of new commands: 5–15 repetitions
– Obey first command: 85% of the time or better

Used as decoys to lure unsuspecting birds into the path of hunters, the Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever would also fetch them (as their name implies). They continue to be considered superior hunting dogs, and that same helpful nature makes them a breed that is happiest doing whatever their owner desires.

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Cocker spaniel (tie fo