President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration on Saturday to help California through one of its worst wildfire seasons. Three clusters of wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area, two of them ranking as the second- and third-largest in state history, continue to burn as more high winds and lightning are expected. Since thousands of lightning strikes began on Aug. 15, firefighters have responded to at least 585 wildfires, which have burned 1.2 million acres or 1,875 square miles.

Democratic lawmakers want to give the U.S. Postal Service a $25 billion bonus to help it manage mail-in voting in the upcoming U.S. general election. But Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, President Donald Trump, and many Republicans in Congress say the agency could manage without the extra cash. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called lawmakers back from their August recess to debate and vote on the bill, which passed Saturday by a vote of 257-150. Twenty-six Republicans voted for it.

University administrators nationwide have ordered extensive on-campus pandemic precautions, but they could not curb off-campus parties where the coronavirus spreads freely. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said on Monday it would move all classes online just one week into the semester after COVID-19 clusters popped up in dorms, a fraternity house, and other student housing. As of Monday, 130 students and five employees were ill, and administrators were making arrangements for students who wanted to leave on-campus housing to do so.

President Donald Trump described his younger brother Robert as kind and agreeable: “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend.” Robert Trump died on Saturday at age 71. The president visited his brother at a hospital in New York on Friday after White House officials said he became seriously ill.

A rare weather phenomenon called a derecho swept across Nebraska, Iowa, and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois on Monday, causing extensive damage with 100 mph winds. The storm knocked over trees, flipped vehicles, caused widespread property damage, and left hundreds of thousands without power as it moved into Indiana and Michigan. The powerful gusts knocked down the steeple of a church on the Wheaton College campus in Illinois. Workers were rescuing people from damaged cars and houses on Monday, but officials initially reported no fatalities.

President Donald Trump on Saturday took executive action to extend extra unemployment benefits, defer payroll taxes, pause student loan payments, and protect renters from eviction. He signed four executive orders enacting key provisions of a Republican economic stimulus plan the day after the White House and congressional Democrats failed to reach a deal. “This is not a perfect answer,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Friday.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will spend the rest of his life in jail, but how he dies will depend on the jury in a new penalty phase trial, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found bias among the jurors who sentenced Tsarnaev for carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing with his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev.