Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, announced plans to start work on the site of the 250-foot-tall triumphal arch. Final approval of the project is still pending.

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A federal panel again paved the way for one of President Trump’s construction projects, even as it heard opposition to another proposal to fence in a park north of the White House.

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A White House spokesman said the alley renovations included fixing broken lights. The project comes as the president has sought a broad overhaul of the White House and its surroundings.

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In his breakneck construction of a grand ballroom and in many other initiatives, critics say, the president has tried to outrun judicial review.

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The Supreme Court gave a green light to the new White House ballroom, but several of the president’s other Washington projects remain stalled.

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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been in the majority in divided cases more times than any other chief since 1953. But not this time.

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Lower-court rulings would have blocked construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom after finding that the Trump administration should have first sought approval from Congress.

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Ukraine's former defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov has offered to help the United States build a fleet of attack drones if Washington sends Ukraine the Patriot interceptor missiles it needs to get through winter, he told the Financial Times. The idea is Fedorov's own proposal, not a deal, and he holds no government post that would let him negotiate one for Kyiv. He is in Washington mainly to raise American money for a fund that would both invest in Ukrainian defense-tech companies and build new ones of its own.

Over the past year, Ukraine's partners have shifted from handing over weapons off their shelves to funding and co-producing Ukrainian-designed drones and missiles, inside and outside the country.

What the fund would do

Fedorov used his working trip to Washington to line up venture funds, entrepreneurs and tech companies as backers, Suspilne reported. The fund would not simply invest in existing Ukrainian defense-tech firms, he wrote; it would also create new companies around the technologies the front line needs most. He set out three targets: battlefield robots to replace soldiers in the most dangerous positions, jet-powered interceptor drones to bring down Russia's faster new attack drones, and cheap missiles that use artificial intelligence. He did not say what his own role would be, or whether he would profit. He said the next step is to assemble a team and launch the first projects.

The interceptors behind the offer

Fedorov framed the drone help as a straight swap.

"I'm ready to make that trade," he told the FT.

Ukraine is running low on interceptor missiles for its Patriot batteries, one of the few air-defense systems able to reliably stop Russia's ballistic missiles. Fedorov declined to say whether he would meet anyone from the Trump administration.

Ukraine's ex-minister turns open critic

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Fedorov on 15 July, after six months in the job. Fedorov said a feud with Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who he says blocked his reforms, drove the split, Zelenskyy removed Syrskyi on 21 July as protests spread. in an interview with Reuters published on 25 August.

"it looks as though we're gradually, slowly losing," he said in an interview with Reuters.

The move amounted to one of the few major changes in West Wing personnel in Mr. Trump’s second term.

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Two recent studies say judges are not doing enough to protect the public interest in openness.

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Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, Calif., was taken into custody for “being in possession of the guillotine,” the police said.

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It was the final, major event planned for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The president took a lap.

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It was the final, major event planned for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations. The president took a lap.

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Race preparations have snarled traffic, rerouted flights and forced the National Gallery of Art to conduct vibration tests.

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The 90,000-square-foot ballroom project has grown in size and scope, with the president’s lawyers saying it is intertwined with the renovation of an underground military bunker.

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While Customs and Border Protection said it intercepted more than half a ton of the controlled substance, experts say far more of the East African plant makes it into the country.