Today’s Top Stories from NBC News

TUESDAY, JULY 14, 2026

In today’s newsletter: Lindsey Graham’s sister is tapped to serve the rest of the late senator’s term. A man’s fatal shooting by an ICE officer in Maine sparks an outcry. And how Wall Street-backed Lucky Strike took over an American bowling town.

Here’s what to know today.

▼ The Lead

Lindsey Graham’s sister picked to finish his Senate term

(Rainier Ehrhardt / AP file)

Darline Graham Nordone, the sister of Sen. Lindsey Graham, is set to become South Carolina’s first female senator after the state’s Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to serve the rest of the late Republican’s term. She will be sworn in this afternoon, two sources familiar with the matter said, and will finish her brother’s six-year term, which ends in January.

The appointment came hours after President Donald Trump recommended that McMaster appoint her, saying it would be “a fabulous tribute to Lindsey.” Graham died Saturday at the age of 71 of what was preliminarily diagnosed as a rupture of his aorta due to a hardening of his arteries, his office said.

Graham Nordone is a commissioner for the South Carolina Commission of the Blind, a state agency that provides services to “individuals who are blind or low vision,” according to its website. Graham legally adopted his sister when he was 20 and she was 13 after their father died of a heart attack. Their mother had died only 15 months earlier.

While the primary race to replace Graham is beginning to take shape, it’s unclear whether Graham Nordone would want to run for her brother’s seat.

More about Graham Nordone’s relationship with her brother.

More politics news:

Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah by about 90% each, undoing protections established by former presidents on public lands that are sacred among many Native Americans.

A new photo of Sen. Mitch McConnell was meant to put to rest rumors about his health. Instead, it’s fueling more conspiracy theories.

A federal judge said Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS was brought to “manipulate the judicial process” and imposed sanctions on some of the people involved.

▼ Staff Pick

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Wall Street goes bowling for profits

My reporting focuses on the economic pressures in Americans’ lives and the policies shaping them. I’ve spent a lot of time on big ticket items, like housing, food and childcare costs. But in my conversations with people about their economic concerns, it was also the smaller things adding to their economic discontent, like not being able to afford to take their kids bowling on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

When I started looking into the question of why it has gotten so expensive to go bowling, I found a familiar story: large corporations buying up small businesses and increasing prices. This was the case in bowling. A private equity-backed company, Lucky Strike Entertainment, has been buying up bowling alleys across American towns, now owning more than one in 10 of them, as well as the Professional Bowlers Association. Bowlers told me that after their local bowling alley was bought by Lucky Strike, prices went up and they either stopped bowling as much or had to drive further to go to another independently owned bowling alley.

Lucky Strike says they offer specials and discounts during certain hours to try to keep bowling affordable, and other bowling alley owners told me that they have been struggling to keep prices affordable as they face higher costs. For bowlers though, they worry about what the future holds for a once iconic middle-class pastime.

— Shannon Pettypiece, senior policy reporter

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The man who was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine, during a traffic stop yesterday morning was not the target of an arrest warrant, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Sen. Angus King, according to the senator’s office. Two organizations, Presente! and the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition, said the man was a 26-year-old Colombian who was authorized to work in the U.S. and had been issued a Social Security number.

According to an ICE spokesperson, a traffic stop was attempted around 7 a.m. The driver, who ICE claimed was “an illegal alien,” attempted to flee the scene, the spokesperson said. However, one neighbor, who said he had a direct view of the shooting, said he heard the man say “I tried to stop.”

Here’s what else we know.

What to expect from June’s inflation report

Inflation is likely to stick around, even as the rate of price increases slowed in June. While economists expect to see a decline in the overall headline inflation number — down 0.2% on a month-over-month basis or to 3.8% from last year, according to a Dow Jones Survey — many say the issue is nowhere near over.

Oil prices are rising again after their initial fall as the U.S. and Iran renewed strikes against each other, threatening to undo a memorandum of understanding. AI is also contributing to price increases, with Apple raising its prices and citing the expansion of data centers.

More on the factors contributing to persistent inflation.

▼ Read All About It

Sam Neill, the acclaimed New Zealand actor, was suffering from pneumonia before his death on Monday, according to a co-star.

Lettuce or salad greens could be the source of an outbreak of the diarrhea-causing infection cyclosporiasis, Michigan health officials said.

For subscribers: Twelve state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros.-Discovery.

For subscribers: Investigators have revealed little about the death of Nolan Wells during a July 4 celebration, leaving social media speculation to fill the void.

For subscribers: Witnesses who saw a bison attack a grandfather at Yellowstone National Park described the terrifying scene: “Like watching a bulldozer move out 45 miles an hour.”