By Jade Walker

Darren Beattie, who was fired as a speechwriter during President Donald Trump’s first term after CNN revealed that he spoke at a conference attended by White nationalists, will now serve as the acting president of the US Institute of Peace, a senior State Department official said. 

Here's what else you need to know to get up to speed and on with your day.

New York State Police troopers outside a Manhattan office building where a gunman killed four people. Angelina Katsanis/AP

Mass shootings

There are still five months left in the year, yet according to the Gun Violence Archive, the US has already endured more than 250 mass shootings. On Monday morning, a gunman opened fire in the valet area of a resort and casino in Reno, Nevada, leaving three people dead and several others wounded. The suspect then fled through the parking lot, where he fired on an innocent bystander, a resort security guard and the police. He was taken into custody and brought to a hospital, where he remains in critical condition. Later in the day, a second mass shooting occurred in midtown Manhattan. During rush hour, a gunman shot five people, killing four of them, inside a Park Avenue skyscraper that houses numerous corporate offices, including the NFL. The shooter was later found in a stairwell on the 33rd floor, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.

Extreme weather

A dangerous line of storms roared across the northern Plains and upper Midwest overnight, unleashing large hail and wind gusts over 90 mph. Several tornadoes were also reported in parts of rural South Dakota and Iowa, the National Weather Service said. The thunderstorm complex weakened before it could meet the distance criteria to be classified as a derecho, but the end result was the same: damage to homes and businesses, hundreds of trees down and more than 250,000 customers without power. The severe storm threat has lessened to a Level 2 of 5 risk today as the system shifts south and east into the central Plains and Great Lakes. The Weather Prediction Center has also identified a Level 2 of 4 risk of flooding rain across the region.

SNAP lawsuit

Twenty states are suing the Trump administration, alleging that the Department of Agriculture is improperly attempting to gather sensitive personal information about the low-income families who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy groceries. “This unprecedented demand that states turn over SNAP data violates all kinds of state and federal privacy laws and further breaks the trust between the federal government and the people it serves,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. When announcing the effort in May, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the government needs access to information about the people who use food stamps because SNAP “has been on autopilot, with no USDA insight into real-time data.”

Planned Parenthood

In a new preliminary injunction issued Monday, a federal judge has blocked the nationwide enforcement of a provision in President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law that would defund Planned Parenthood’s healthcare services. The measure, which he signed on July 4, bars Medicaid users from coverage with a health care provider that also provides abortion services. Last week, US District Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the administration couldn’t enforce the funding ban against some Planned Parenthood organizations, but now she has widened the block. “Patients are likely to suffer adverse health consequences where care is disrupted or unavailable. In particular, restricting Members’ ability to provide healthcare services threatens an increase in unintended pregnancies and attendant complications because of reduced access to effective contraceptives, and an increase in undiagnosed and untreated STIs,” Talwani wrote in her ruling.

Ghislaine Maxwell

Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for carrying out a yearslong scheme with her confidante Jeffrey Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls, is urging the Supreme Court to take up her pending appeal and overturn her sex-trafficking conviction in a new brief to the court. Her attorneys claim she was covered by an agreement Epstein made with federal authorities that shielded her from prosecution. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Maxwell, finding that the agreement made with prosecutors in Florida did not bind the authorities in New York. This latest request comes amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files. Although Maxwell recently met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for questioning, those talks were not mentioned in the Supreme Court filing. House Oversight Chair James Comer has also subpoenaed Maxwell for a deposition.

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5 Things AM is edited by CNN's Andrew Torgan.

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