President Trump is famous for requiring the loyalty of his subordinates. But it's the loyalty of Republican senators — not to him but to one of their own — that is the heart of a simmering showdown between the White House and Congress.

A growing number of GOP lawmakers appear to have had enough with what one has called the president's "public floggings" in recent days of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a onetime senator from Alabama for served on Capitol Hill for two decades before joining the Trump administration.

The head of the Boy Scouts of America apologized Thursday to the organization's members, telling them the group did not intend to showcase the "political rhetoric" in President Trump's speech to the National Jamboree earlier this week.

In a vast, dimly lit barn near Frankfort, Delaware, surrounded by tens of thousands of young chickens, about a dozen people in ghostly white coveralls are considering future options for the poultry industry.

The Trump administration's promise to turbocharge economic growth has yet to be fulfilled, even though forecasters are predicting that the economy has rebounded from a weak 1.4 percent annual growth rate in the first three months to a rate closer to 2.8 percent. That is the number many economists are expecting to see when the government issues its report on second-quarter growth on Friday.

The European slug is average in every way: slimy, brownish, shorter than a credit card.

But Arion subfuscus has a minor superpower: When it's scared, it can glue itself to wet surfaces very well, and do so while remaining bendy.

Speaking at a news conference in Finland on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin derided the sanctions bill now in the U.S. Congress as "illegal under international law" — but he said Russia's response will depend on what ultimately gets passed.

"We haven't seen the final version yet, so we haven't got any kind of definitive view on it," Putin said, "but we can see that over a lengthy period they are trying to provoke us more and more."

The deaths of 10 migrants in a sweltering 18-wheeler in San Antonio has raised a lot of questions. One of them: Why transport people in the back of a tractor-trailer, especially after they have already crossed the border?

One reason, experts say, is that entering the United States from Mexico illegally involves "two crossings." You must first cross the U.S./Mexico border, then one of the many Border Patrol checkpoints that exist farther into the United States.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET

The nation's highest-ranking military officer said Thursday that the Defense Department was making "no modifications" to current policy regarding transgender service members until President Trump gives more direction.