In a courtroom in Miami, on a quiet Saturday, the legal wall around the free press held firm. A federal judge threw out President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, a case rooted in a story about the president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The judge, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles, said the president was “grasping at straws.” It was a blunt, almost dismissive phrase, and it landed with real weight. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, which sounds like legal jargon but carries a brutal simplicity: it cannot be refiled, it…

The morning sun rose warm over False River, casting long golden ribbons across the water as the small town of New Roads stirred into life for the second day of its beloved Harvest Festival. The hush of early hours gave way to the cheerful clatter of tables being set up along Main Street, the smell of fresh coffee and frying dough beginning to drift between the oak trees, and the sound of familiar voices calling out greetings to neighbors who had known one another their whole lives. By Saturday, the festival was fully alive, in that unhurried, homegrown way that…