By MARK SHERMAN and LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t immediately allow the Trump administration to fire the director of the U.S. Copyright Office, instead delaying a decision until after they rule in two other high-profile firing cases.

The justices’ Wednesday order leaves in effect for now lower court rulings that held that the official, Shira Perlmutter, could not be unilaterally fired.

The case is the latest that relates to Trump’s authority to install his own people at the head of federal agencies. The Supreme Court has largely allowed Trump to fire officials, even as court challenges proceed.

Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have allowed Perlmutter to be fired as her lawsuit proceeds. The court majority, though, decided to wait to make a decision until after they rule in two other lawsuits over Trump firings.

Arguments are set for December in the first case, over the removal of Rebecca Slaughter as a member of the Federal Trade Commission.

And in January the court will hear the case of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, who remains in her job despite Trump’s attempt to fire her.

Rulings are expected weeks or months after the court hears arguments.

Perlmutter’s case concerns an office that is within the Library of Congress. She is the register of copyrights and also advises Congress on copyright issues.

Despite the ties to Congress, the register “wields executive power” in regulating copyrights, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court.

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Perlmutter claims Trump fired her in May because he disapproved of advice she gave to Congress in a report related to artificial intelligence. Perlmutter had received an email from the White House notifying her that “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately,” her office said.

A divided appellate panel ruled that Perlmutter could keep her job while the case moves forward.

Perlmutter’s attorneys have argued that she is a renowned copyright expert. She has served as register of copyrights since then-Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed her to the job in October 2020.

Trump appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to replace Hayden at the Library of Congress. The White House fired Hayden amid criticism from conservatives that she was advancing a “woke” agenda.

The last Mississippi River barge of the year departed St. Paul on Tuesday, ending the 2025 Upper Mississippi shipping season.

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Paul district, the M.V. Sierra Dawn and its 12 barges departed Tuesday afternoon toward Lock and Dam 2 near Hastings.

The 2025 navigation season started on March 19 when the M.V. Neil N. Diehl arrived in St. Paul with nine barges.

“It’s a bittersweet milestone when the last tow departs,” said Mitch Serjogins, St. Paul District acting locks and dams chief, in a statement. “It’s the end of the season, but the work is not done. Maintenance becomes our priority over the winter to ensure we continue providing a reliable navigation channel for the movement of commodities up and down the Mississippi River.”

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St. Paul District staff are working on maintenance projects at Lock and Dam 7 near La Crescent, Minn. and Lock and Dam 9 near Lynxville, Wis. The St. Paul District locks and dams from St. Paul to Lynxville will be closed from Dec. 8 to March 15, 2026 due to the scheduled maintenance.

The St. Paul District maintains a 9-foot navigation channel and 13 locks and dams from Minneapolis to Guttenberg, Iowa.

By LAURIE KELLMAN, SAM McNEIL and AAMER MADHANI

LONDON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war closely mirrors the tactics he used to end two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas: bold terms that favor one side, deadlines for the combatants and vague outlines for what comes next. The details — enforcing the terms, guaranteeing security, who pays for rebuilding — matter less.

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“You know what the deadline is to me? When it’s over.” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One Tuesday.

The formula has worked so far in the tense Middle East, though its long-term viability remains in question. Trump got his moment to claim credit for “peace” in the region from the podium of the Israeli parliament. Even there, he made clear that next on his priority list was resolving the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

“Maybe we set out like a 20-point peace proposal, just like we did in Gaza,” U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told Yuri Ushakov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser in a phone call the day after Trump’s speech, on Oct. 14. A recording of that call leaked to Bloomberg News.

They did just that, issuing a 28-point plan heavily tilted toward Russia’s interests that set off alarms in Europe, which had not been consulted. Trump insisted Ukraine had until Nov. 27 — Thanksgiving in the U.S. — to accept it.

But by Tuesday, Trump had eased off the hard deadline. It seemed clear, even to Trump, that the Israel-Gaza model doesn’t fully apply in Russia and Ukraine as long as Putin refuses to be flattered, pushed or otherwise moved to take the first step of a ceasefire, as Israel and Hamas consented for different reasons on Oct. 9. Making the point, Putin launched waves of bombings on Ukraine Tuesday and Wednesday even as American negotiators renewed Trump’s push to end the war.

“I thought (a Russia-Ukraine deal) would have been an easier one, but I think we’re making progress,” Trump said during the annual White House turkey pardon to mark the Thanksgiving holiday. Hours later, he told reporters that the 28-point plan actually “was not a plan, just a concept.”

FILE – Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building which was heavily damaged by a Russian strike on Ternopil, Ukraine, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Vlad Kravchuk, file)

The president’s goal may not be a formal, long-lasting peace treaty, one expert said.

“Trump’s approach emphasizes the proclamation of a ceasefire, not its observance,” Mariia Zolkina, a political analyst at the Kyiv-based Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, wrote on Liga.net, a Ukrainian news outlet, adding: “Donald Trump is not interested in whether the ceasefire will be sustainable.”

Trump’s approach toward ‘peace’ bears similarities to the tactics and style he used in the Israel-Gaza talks

Fresh off the Gaza deal and coveting the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump named his next priority before he’d even left the Israeli Knesset.

“If you don’t mind, Steve, let’s focus on Russia first, All right?” Trump said, turning to Witkoff.

Where the Gaza ceasefire agreement had 20 points, the Russia-Ukraine proposal would start with 28 items and include more detail on who would pay for reconstruction. They envision “peace” boards headed by the president to lead and administer the aftermath. Both lack detail on incentives for complying and enforcement. And both depend on a ceasefire.

Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre think tank, said the proposals for Gaza and Ukraine show a kind of “naivete by believing that by intervening at that level, by imposing your will on something like this, that you will reach some form of long-term conclusion.”

He said both proposals reflect Trump’s political and personal self-interest.

FILE – People wearing hats that read “Trump The Peace President” inside the Knesset as President Donald Trump prepares to deliver remarks, Oct. 13, 2025, in Jerusalem. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

“In the end, the focus is solely on what Trump thinks he will get out of this in terms of reputation and money,” Zuleeg said.

Each Trump administration plan to end the wars heavily favor one side.

The Trump plan for Gaza leans to Israeli terms. It makes disarming Hamas a central condition for any progress in rebuilding the devastated territory. It also lays out no strict timetable for a full Israeli troop withdrawal, making it conditional on deployment of an international security force.

FILE – President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the West Wing of the White House, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)

For Russia and Ukraine, Witkoff looked to open peace plan talks with terms skewing toward Russia. He quietly hosted Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of Putin’s, for talks in south Florida to help launch the plan that opened talks in Geneva, according to a senior administration official and a U.S. official familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House insists that the plan was U.S.-authored with input from both the Ukrainians and Russians.

But that’s where the similarities end. The differences are buy-in — and Putin

The draft that was formally presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decidedly favored the Russians, with no European input. In contrast, the Gaza ceasefire talks got buy-in from Egypt, Qatari, Jordanian, Saudi and other regional powers.

The 28-point Russia-Ukraine plan called for Ukraine to give up land in the industrial Donbas region that the Russians currently don’t control and dramatically shrink the size of its military. It also effectively gave Russia oversight of both NATO and EU expansion. The draft has narrowed by a few points since it was first presented, and Trump is sending his envoys on a bit of shuttle diplomacy to “sell it,” as he said. He said Witkoff will visit Moscow next week — perhaps joined by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was also involved in the Gaza plan. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll will meet with the Ukranians.

European leaders worried that Trump is leaving them out of high-level discussions and vulnerable to Russian aggression.

FILE – Firefighters put out the fire after a drone hit a multi-storey residential building during Russia’s night drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, file)

“He appears perfectly ready to sacrifice Ukraine’s security and Europe’s in the process,” Hannah Neumann, a German member of the European Parliament, said of Trump on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resisted Trump’s pressure to agree to a ceasefire, for a time. But Putin refuses to concede anything on Ukraine.

He’s appeared to be considering the matter, notably when Trump rolled out a red carpet for the Russian leader at a summer summit in Alaska — an old front line of the Cold War. Trump left without an agreement from Putin to end the bloodshed. The Russian leader walked off with long-sought recognition on the world stage.

To the horror of Ukraine and the vexation of Trump, Putin has stood firm.

FILE – A man hugs his children as they react to the death of their mother killed by a Russian airstrike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nov. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)

As the envoys flew home from Geneva last week without any agreement, the White House scrambled to explain. One U.S. official argued that the 28-page plan, which calls on Ukraine to cede the Donbas region and bar Ukraine from joining NATO, represents considerable concessions from Putin because he would be agreeing to give up on his claim, once and for all, that all of Ukraine should be part of Russia.

Putin, the official noted, has long grumbled that the West doesn’t respect Russia’s position in the global world order. The official added that the Trump White House in its approach is not affirming Putin’s position but trying to reflect the Russian perspective is given its due in the emerging peace plan.

It’s not for the administration to judge Putin’s positions, the official said, but it does have “to understand them if we want to get to a deal.”

McNeil reported from Brussels and Madhani from Washington. Associated Press writer Lee Keath in Cairo contributed.

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have detected what they believe to be lightning on Mars by eavesdropping on the whirling wind recorded by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

The crackling of electrical discharges was captured by a microphone on the rover, a French-led team reported Wednesday.

The researchers documented 55 instances of what they call “mini lightning” over two Martian years, primarily during dust storms and dust devils. Almost all occurred on the windiest Martian sols, or days, during dust storms and dust devils.

Just inches (centimeters) in size, the electrical arcs occurred within 6 feet (2 meters) of the microphone perched atop the rover’s tall mast, part of a system for examining Martian rocks via camera and lasers. Sparks from the electrical discharges — akin to static electricity here on Earth — are clearly audible amid the noisy wind gusts and dust particles smacking the microphone.

Scientists have been looking for electrical activity and lightning at Mars for half a century, said the study’s lead author Baptiste Chide, of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse.

“It opens a completely new field of investigation for Mars science,” Chide said, citing the possible chemical effects from electrical discharges. “It’s like finding a missing piece of the puzzle.”

The evidence is strong and persuasive, but it’s based on a single instrument that was meant to record the rover zapping rocks with lasers, not lightning blasts, said Cardiff University’s Daniel Mitchard, who was not involved in the study. What’s more, he noted in an article accompanying the study in the journal Nature, the electrical discharges were heard — not seen.

“It really is a chance discovery to hear something else going on nearby, and everything points to this being Martian lightning,” Mitchard said in an email. But until new instruments are sent to verify the findings, “I think there will still be a debate from some scientists as to whether this really was lightning.”

Lightning has already been confirmed on Jupiter and Saturn, and Mars has long been suspected of having it too.

To find it, Chide and his team analyzed 28 hours of Perseverance recordings, documenting episodes of “mini lightning” based on acoustic and electric signals.

Electrical discharges generated by the fast-moving dust devils lasted just a few seconds, while those spawned by dust storms lingered as long as 30 minutes.

“It’s like a thunderstorm on Earth, but barely visible with a naked eye and with plenty of faint zaps,” Chide said in an email. He noted that the thin, carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere absorbs much of the sound, making some of the zaps barely perceptible.

Mars’ atmosphere is more prone than Earth’s to electrical discharging and sparking through contact among grains of dust and sand, according to Chide.

“The current evidence suggests it is extremely unlikely that the first person to walk on Mars could, as they plant a flag on the surface, be struck down by a bolt of lightning,” Mitchard wrote in Nature. But the “small and frequent static-like discharges could prove problematic for sensitive equipment.”

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These aren’t the first Mars sounds transmitted by Perseverance. Earthlings have listened in to the rover’s wheels crunching over the Martian surface and the whirring blades of its no-longer-flying helicopter sidekick, Ingenuity.

Perseverance has been scouring a dry river delta at Mars since 2021, collecting samples of rock for possible signs of ancient microscopic life. NASA plans to return these core samples to Earth for laboratory analysis, but the delivery is on indefinite hold as the space agency pursues cheaper options.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.