Voting

MS Now -  Nearly 50 million Americans age 18 to 29 can vote in the 2026 midterms. And 51% of them have no college experience, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE.

That’s partly because of which young people turn out. In the 2022 midterms, 50% of young people with a bachelor’s degree voted, compared with 20% of those whose highest level of education was a high school diploma, according to Census data compiled by CIRCLE.

Some argue that candidates could turn out more non-college-educated young people if they campaigned at places like job training centers, recreation centers and music festivals in addition to college campuses. 

Independent -  The Supreme Court has temporarily unblocked a controversial federal voter database ahead of November's midterms, granting President Donald Trump a temporary legal victory in his push against noncitizen voting.

The court’s three liberal justices issued a public dissent against the decision.

The emergency order permits state officials, for the time being, to access the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, to check the eligibility of individuals on their voter rolls. Participation in the SAVE initiative remains voluntary for states.

Its immediate effect on the coming midterms is likely limited because federal law prohibits states from conducting systematic purges of voter rolls within 90 days of an election, according to David Becker, an election law expert who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

The Nation  - - [Susan] Collins's undeniable gift for pork-barrel spending could now come back to haunt her, thanks to a new pay-for-play scandal broken on Tuesday by ProPublica. The ProPublica story focuses on Collins's links to Martin Kao, the former CEO of a defense contractor called Navatek. Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison for bank fraud and Covid relief fraud.

Prior to his conviction, Kao had provided damning testimony to the FBI about a political quid pro quo scheme he was working. Legally, defense contractors are not allowed to donate to campaigns, so Kao used shell corporations to donate to super PACs supporting politicians who promoted Navatek projects to the Pentagon. Collins and her office were in the crosshairs of the FBI investigation into Kao's activities, but the senator was saved from possible criminal charges by Donald Trump's reelection, which led the president to fire FBI agents working on the investigation (some of whom had also investigated Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election).

Newsworthy News -California just made seizing ballots and voting machines a felony, sharpening a state-versus-federal showdown over who controls elections. Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 election bills creating new felonies tied to ballots and voting tech.

Key measures punish seizing ballots before certification and directing others to interfere with mail ballots. Supporters say the laws guard against interference by federal or political actors; critics warn of limits on police near polls.

A separate California deepfake law drew a federal court injunction on First Amendment grounds, signaling legal risks.

Sex and religion

The Atlantic -   In the popular imagination, religious faith and a thriving sex life don’t tend to go together. Movies, books, and TV shows depict religious couples as sexually inhibited or dysfunctional. For example, in Caro Claire Burke’s best-selling novel, Yesteryear—soon to be a movie starring Anne Hathaway—a Scripture-quoting tradwife puts up a good front for Instagram but is privately miserable with her husband, who not only is passive but also struggles to perform in the bedroom.

But the data tell a different story. According to our new report, published today by the Institute for Family Studies, no group of Americans seems to be having more sex—and more satisfying sex—than married men and women who regularly attend a place of worship. (This group is made up mostly of Christians, but also includes Jews and Muslims.) In fact, we find that the only Americans who have avoided the country’s “sex recession”—in which fewer and fewer men and women are having regular sex—are husbands and wives who attend religious services at least twice a month. In the 1990s, 64 percent of married people aged 20–54, both churchgoing and secular, had sex at least once a week, according to the General Social Survey. Now only 48 percent of secular couples (who never or rarely attend church) have sex weekly compared with 62 percent of their religious peers. In America today, the faithful are having more sex.

Health

Nautilus  - Uncertainty is something we hide from in medicine. As doctors, we exist to make things certain for our patients. We call it a diagnosis. We hone our skills and carry a toolbox of tests to provide it. And then we prescribe drugs to treat it.

When we meet uncertainty we cannot overcome, we get ill at ease. We grapple with uncertainty like a psychic beast in our minds and often hide it from our patients and colleagues. We know our patients are often torn with uncertainty about symptoms and what to do about them, but we're not very good at talking to them about uncertainty. Medical school teaches us to put on a confident face. It doesn't cover how to treat the symptoms of doubt. 

Health - More than 13,000 bottles of a common blood pressure medication are being recalled nationwide, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On Sept. 17, the FDA gave the recall the second-highest risk level, Class II, for a low chance of serious health consequences but a risk of temporary or reversible effects. The bottles of chlorthalidone, a prescription diuretic, were initially recalled on Sept. 3 due to “failed dissolution specifications,” which can impact the effectiveness of the pills.

Nor'easter coming to east coast

Washington Post - A nor’easter was gaining strength around 200 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, early Friday. The intensifying storm is forecast to slowly move north in the days ahead and may approach or push ashore in New Jersey on Sunday — while lashing the stretch from the Carolinas to Maine with rain and strong winds as 15-to-25-foot waves tower offshore. That will contribute to potentially serious coastal flooding and beach erosion.

Five major networks rejoin White House TV pool

The Hill - The five major television networks were back in the White House television pool on Friday following their standoff with the White House over CNN's access.  CBS broadcast the live feed for television outlets at the White House showing President Trump welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping back to the White House for the third day of his U.S. state visit, as well as the video feed of the two having tea with first lady Melania Trump and Xi's wife, Peng Liyuan.

CNN, which was banned by Trump from covering the White House a week ago, also carried the feed.  "CNN's access to the White House has been restored, and the TV pool appears to be functioning as normal," CNN anchor Pamela Brown said on air Friday morning.

"As of now, all systems are go," a person familiar with the pool told The Associated Press.

The development comes after CNN, along with MS NOW and Politico, regained their access to the White House on Thursday. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox announced earlier this week they were boycotting the television pool over CNN's exclusion from White House coverage. 

On Thursday, a judge ruled in favor of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, but journalists from the three outlets were initially denied entry into the White House. 

ICE

Drop Site Daily - U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a permanent injunction against ICE over conditions at the 26 Federal Plaza detention facility in New York City, writing in a 127-page opinion that officials “intentionally concealed or recklessly disregarded the truth” about compliance with his earlier orders and that ICE “objectively deprived detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care” by holding people far longer than the facility’s intended 12-hour limit.

Kaplan found detainees were also “severely restricted” from meaningfully accessing counsel, with phone calls limited to a few minutes and often overheard by ICE staff, calling the agency’s disregard of prior capacity limits “persistent, egregious, and, at a minimum, reckless, if not willful.”

The injunction requires ICE to provide at least 50 square feet of floor space per person, temperatures between 68 and 74 degrees, three daily meals, hygiene supplies, bedding for overnight detainees, an on-site medical professional at all times, and confidential attorney phone access.

Why foreign leaders don't want to trust American officials again

Robert Reich, Alternet -  I spent much of this week talking with foreign officials who are in the U.S. for United Nations meetings. I was curious to know how they’re strategizing about the United States in the future — assuming Democrats do well in the midterm elections and Trump becomes a lame-duck president.

(None of my nine sources were heads of state; my stature doesn’t reach that high. But they were high enough to give me some useful insights.)

Here’s what I learned:

1. Most are thinking past Trump. They believe his influence is already waning, and his bellicose rantings show that he knows it. He’s still dangerous, they say, but not nearly as dangerous as he was, and he’s no longer capable of plunging the world into war. Every one of them told me he’s deeply unpopular in their countries.

2. They’re thinking in a timeframe of five to 10 years. They see Trump as a temporary phenomenon and assume the United States will “return to its senses.”

3. But — and here’s the part that concerned me — they’re unsure they can ever again rely on the United States for world leadership. Several pointed out that the fact Americans elected Trump for a second time reveals, in the words of one of them, “there’s something troublesome about your nation that transcends Trump.”

4. Even post-Trump, they see the United States as unstable and unpredictable. They don’t believe the country will fall into civil war, but they worry that policymaking will cycle between extremes because, in the words of another, “your extreme inequality will make it difficult to achieve any longer-term consensus.”

5. As a result, they’re looking ahead to a world where another nation, or group of nations, will take leadership on global issues that need to be addressed, such as climate change, AI, migration, widening inequalities, Putin’s aggression, and disease prevention.

6. Which nation or group? Another official put it to me this way: “We don’t trust China, the U.N. doesn’t work because of its security council, but the EU isn’t strong enough yet. Several of us are hoping that over the next decade the EU will be joined by Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and that this new EU — really, a World Union — will devise a structure that enables it to work collaboratively and forcefully for the good of the world.”

Donald Trump

Time - Ottawa's City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to remove President Donald Trump’s name from a residential street in the Canadian capital amid an increasingly hostile trade war.The motion to rename “Trump Avenue” in the city’s Central Park neighborhood was brought forward by River Ward councillor Riley Brockington on Sept. 9 and swiftly received support from other local officials. “I don't like the idea of anything that's named for Donald Trump, who's demonstrated hostility towards Canada,” Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said at a news conference after the vote.

Meanwhle. . . .

10 things airlines won't tell you about a missing bag

Trump and China

The Hill - Republican senators are expressing concern and dismay over President Trump’s lavish welcome of Chinese President Xi Jinping to a two-day summit in Washington after it was revealed earlier this month that Iran used Chinese satellite imagery to target U.S. troops in Jordan.

Republican senators were told of deepening military cooperation between Iran and China at a closed-door national security briefing Thursday, heightening their concerns about Trump’s red-carpet welcome of Xi at Joint Base Andrews.

GOP lawmakers called on Trump to confront Xi over reports that China has provided military assistance to Iran and demanded that China produce real concessions on trade, especially U.S. agricultural exports, concessions that have been elusive in Trump’s negotiations with China.

Electric vehicles

Axios - Soaring fuel prices are helping to boost electric vehicle sales in many countries, but the effect in the U.S. has been muted, fresh data shows. There's early evidence that the Middle East crisis is juicing demand for low-emissions energy tech, and EVs are an important piece of the puzzle.

Fully electric cars are estimated to hold steady at nearly 6% of U.S. new vehicle sales in the third quarter, per Cox Automotive, with modest and uneven growth in absolute volume terms (see above).

• That's the same percentage as the prior three quarters, after sales fell off a cliff when federal subsidies vanished.
• The share was higher and climbing, and peaked at 10.6% in Q3 of last year as buyers rushed to tap the expiring tax credits.

Yes, but: Higher gasoline prices, along with rising availability, are a factor behind used EV sales hitting a fresh record this quarter, Cox analysts find.

• EVs were 2.8% of the used car market in Q2 and Q3.

The intrigue: The report also sees market strength for hybrids, which suggests that pump prices' impact is spread across different kinds of powertrains.

Mortgage rates

Mortgage rates rose in 37 of the 50 states between Q1 2026 and Q2 2026, the personal-finance company WalletHub today released its new report on the States Where Mortgage Interest Rates Are Increasing the Most, based on proprietary user data.  For the full report, please visit

Word

“Arresting journalists. Fatally shooting protestors. Turning the military on citizens. Attempting to rig elections. Toying with the idea of declaring martial law. If this were happening in another country, what would you call it?” ‑ Robert Reich

Stores charging more than price listed

The Guardian – Marco Cruz pulled off a four-lane road into the parking lot of a Circle K convenience store in McAllen, Texas, 12 miles north of the US-Mexico border. It was 1.20am on a mild November night in 2025, and Cruz was looking for a bedtime snack after a day of visiting family and friends. He grabbed a pack of beef and jalapeño cheese sticks from the shelf, where they were priced at $3.99. At the counter, though, they rang up at $4.19.

Cruz asked the cashier to charge him the lower shelf price. The employee refused, he said, and threatened to call the police when Cruz grew more insistent. “All I’m asking you is honor the price,” Cruz told the attendant before leaving the store and, later, filing a complaint with the Texas attorney general.

Problems like these – register prices that exceed shelf prices, or advertised sales that don’t materialize – were becoming a regular annoyance for the 29-year-old. In just six months, Cruz said, he had run into similar issues at convenience stores at least five times. Earlier that day, he tried to buy two bottles of water at the same Circle K after seeing an in-store promotion offering a free energy drink with any such purchase. At the register, he said, the manager told him the offer was no longer valid.

Cruz is not alone, a Guardian investigation has found.

The country’s two biggest convenience-store chains – 7-Eleven and Circle K – routinely charge customers more than the shelf prices for snacks, beverages, toiletries, tobacco and medications. Between 2023 and 2025, Circle K locations failed 35% of their government price-accuracy inspections in Florida, 62% in North Carolina and 82% in Columbus, Ohio. Over the same period, its larger rival, 7-Eleven, flunked 47% of inspections in both Colorado and Utah and 79% in Ontario county in upstate New York.

In some cases, inspections turn up multiple overcharges in a single sample. This February at a 7-Eleven in Cruz’s home town, Casa Grande, Arizona, a state inspection found that 12 out of the 25 items rang up higher at checkout than what was listed on the shelf – a 48% error rate.

Donald Trump

MS NOW - President Donald Trump is treating Chinese President Xi Jinping to a three-day White House extravaganza featuring blaring trumpets, stealth bomber and fighter jet flyovers, and the U.S. Marine Band playing both the American and Chinese national anthems.

Also planned to honor the Chinese leader: an opulent state dinner, a private tea meeting and hundreds of U.S. military personnel from all branches marching and carrying flags from both countries

 “This is basically two geopolitical strongmen circling each other on the playground, trying to determine what their next move is,” Kurt Campbell, now the chairman and co-founder of The Asia Group, said.

Dealing with extreme heat

Axios - As extreme heat makes afternoons more dangerous, schools, sports teams and outdoor employers are shifting when — and sometimes whether — people can safely be outside.  Adapting to hotter conditions could reshape the American workday while putting a premium on the cooling and energy infrastructure people rely on when outdoor conditions become unsafe.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends that employers facing dangerous heat consider moving work to early morning or late afternoon, shortening shifts, rotating workers and reducing strenuous work during the hottest parts of the day.

• California's new Extreme Heat Action Plan links protecting heat-vulnerable groups, including workers, with expanding access to indoor cooling and strengthening energy systems to reduce grid strain and outages.
• Oregon's statewide heat-illness prevention rule kicks in when the heat index reaches 80°F, requiring water, shade and acclimatization, with additional measures such as preventive cooldown rest breaks at 90°F, Oregon OSHA told Axios.

Oregon OSHA conducted 3,104 inspections addressing heat and issued 408 citations totaling $652,640 in initial penalties from 2022 to 2025, according to data shared with Axios.

….The bottom line: Shifting the clock can buy people relief from extreme heat — but as the number of dangerously hot hours grows, there may be fewer safe hours to shift into.  Full story

Reporters' White House issue status

NBC News - CNN, MS NOW and Politico journalists were allowed back at the White House Thursday after they had been barred entry despite an overnight court order requiring the administration to temporarily restore their access.

CNN’s Betsy Klein and MS NOW’s Laura Barrón-López, who are White House reporters for their organizations, began reporting live on the air after they were allowed in. Both media outlets pointed to the on-air reporting when asked for comment. Politico wrote shortly afterward that one of its reporters was granted access, too.

On Thursday morning, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the Trump administration to respond in writing after journalists from the three media outlets were turned away from the White House even after the judge’s order. Kelly early in the morning had granted a temporary restraining order reinstating the outlets’ access for 14 days while their legal challenge proceeds. It was not clear why the journalists had been barred from entry in the morning.

EARLIER STORY

The Hill - CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters were unable to access the White House on Thursday, despite a federal judge ordering the Trump administration to immediately restore their press credentials.

CNN reporter Betsy Klein and a photojournalist were also denied access to the White House grounds early Wednesday, while one CNN producer was able to enter the property using their pass, the outlet reported.

“There was no reason provided for the refusal and CNN will continue to try to gain access as regular business hours start,” CNN’s story on the matter noted.

MS NOW also noted on its website that its reporter was blocked from the White House after the court ruling came in overnight.

A Politico reporter, meanwhile, “was denied access” to the White House on Thursday, and his press credentials were “confiscated,” according to the organization.

The journalists were blocked from the grounds before 9 a.m. EDT. Given the timing, there is a possibility the ruling was not yet processed....

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled early Thursday that the White House must grant reporters from the blocked outlets access to the White House complex, days after the media organizations sued after President Trump banned their journalists from his residence.

Polls

Study Finds - More than half (54%) of 2,000 U.S. adults said their mental load is at maximum capacity during a typical week, rising to 67% among current caregivers of aging family members. Most current and former caregivers (62%) said the role arrived as a sudden need, and 31% felt financially unprepared. 

The Hill  -  A new survey found that a majority of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track and that more Americans would vote for a Democratic candidate over a Republican candidate in the 2026 midterm elections. The survey, commissioned by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Action and American Policy Ventures and conducted by Cygnal and Impact Research, was conducted among 1,500 likely general election voters between Sept. 1-2. It found that 60.5 percent of respondents believed that the country is mostly or definitely on the wrong track.

Best cities for those with disabilities

WalletHub compared more than 180 U.S. cities across 33 key indicators of disability-friendliness. The data set ranges from wheelchair-accessible facilities per capita to the rate of workers with disabilities to the quality of the public hospital system.
 

Best Cities for People With Disabilities	Worst Cities for People With Disabilities
1. St. Louis, MO	173. Cheyenne, WY
2. Minneapolis, MN	174. Winston-Salem, NC
3. Columbus, OH	175. Shreveport, LA
4. Huntington Beach, CA	176. Laredo, TX
5. St. Paul, MN	177. Jackson, MS
6. Grand Rapids, MI	178. Pearl City, HI
7. Scottsdale, AZ	179. Gulfport, MS
8. Pittsburgh, PA	180. Montgomery, AL
9. Kansas City, MO	181. South Burlington, VT
10. Columbia, MD	182. Juneau, AK

 
Best vs. Worst

• Fort Smith, Arkansas and Gulfport, Mississippi, has the highest share of people with disabilities living in the area, which is 3.5 times higher than in Irvine, California, the city with the lowest.
   
• Pearl City, Hawaii, has the lowest share of people with disabilities living in poverty, which is 4.3 times lower than in Cleveland, Ohio, the city with the highest.
   
• Columbus, Ohio and Laredo, Texas, have the lowest median annual cost of in-home services, which is 3.9 times lower than in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the city with the highest.
   
• Fremont, California, has the highest median annual earnings for people with disabilities, which is 8.4 times higher than in Burlington, Vermont, the city with the lowest.

Trump face coins blocked

Deep Stare Tribunal -  Senate Democrats and a few Republicans blocked a Trump-backed crypto bill at the last minute, keeping Americans under a messy patchwork of agency rules instead of clear law.

The Clarity Act failed a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate after heavy lobbying and revisions.  Democrats cited ethics concerns tied to President Trump’s crypto interests despite newsafeguards. ….

The vote ended 49–50 after months of talks, hearings, and lobbying by industry and consumer voices. This was a procedural vote, not final passage, but it stopped debate cold. The loss leaves Americans stuck with unclear, shifting rules from agencies instead of a stable law. Markets and entrepreneurs now face more uncertainty about how to build here.

Why Trump's first ballroom architect resigned

Washington Post - In the weeks leading up to his resignation last year, the first architect on the White House ballroom clashed with President Donald Trump over design features that the architect believed violated building safety codes, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions and corroborating documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

James McCrery II withdrew from the project last October after warning repeatedly that Trump was insisting on a preliminary design that did not provide adequate emergency exit routes or fire-containment measures, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

Trump brushed off McCrery’s concerns, they said, and the president countered that no building codes apply to White House construction.

“I am the code,” Trump said.

That episode, as described by the people familiar with the matter, offers new insight into Trump’s priorities for the ballroom at a time when he is flexing executive power to fast-track construction projects across the nation’s capital. The interviews and documents obtained by The Post — including early ballroom designs and images Trump appeared to have marked up with his trademark black-ink Sharpie — also show how deeply involved the president has been in the details of the project….

Trump’s White House construction projects are being routed through the Executive Residence, a tiny office that is not a federal agency and is therefore exempt from rules governing agencies.

Artificial intelligence

Forward Future - Local opposition blocks or delays 45 US data center projects worth $68 billion, adding pressure on developers to address power, water and land demands. Data Center Watch identifies 843 opposition groups across 49 states, while 30 statehouses have introduced or adopted related measures. The disputes come as AI infrastructure spending accelerates

Climate

Time - The heat waves Europe has seen in recent years were made measurably more intense because of the greenhouse gases emitted since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, according to a new study published Tuesday in Geophysical Research Letters.  …

The findings come on the heels of this summer's back-to-back heat waves on the continent, which broke heat records and contributed to at least 35,000 excess deaths. 

The findings come on the heels of this summer's back-to-back heat waves on the continent, which broke heat records and contributed to at least 35,000 excess deaths. 

Polls

Independent - A CNN/SRSS poll released Tuesday found that just about one in four Americans approve of the administration’s handling of the war in Iran, compared to nearly three quarters who disapprove. Trump’s rating on foreign affairs overall is only a few points higher, at 29 percent.

Showing up for a job interview with iced coffee

Newsweek - A seemingly innocuous drink has ignited a fierce debate across TikTok, LinkedIn and other social media platforms: Should candidates bring an iced coffee to a job interview? The discussion began after recruiter Caitlin Wehniainen, who said she had 16 years of experience recruiting for Fortune 500 companies, posted a TikTok video criticizing the practice.

"Gen Z candidates are showing up to their interviews with iced coffee in hand," Wehniainen said in the video posted last week, adding that it signals to recruiters that the interview is just a "stop on your list of errands to do for the day."

Her comments appear to have struck a nerve, prompting thousands of responses from recruiters, career coaches and job seekers, many of whom are sharply divided over whether carrying a cold brew into an interview is unprofessional or completely harmless.

The debate has become about far more than coffee. At its core, the argument reflects a broader generational clash over workplace norms, professionalism and what employers should value during hiring.

Some recruiters argue that an iced coffee can send unintended signals about a candidate's seriousness, while many Gen Z workers see these concerns as outdated and disconnected from their actual job performance.

 

Health

Independent -  Taco Bell is still struggling to pull customers back after it was connected to the Cyclospora outbreak over the summer that caused more than 20,000 people to fall ill across the country. The chain was among those that used iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms, which was identified as the source of the outbreak by the federal government.

Taco Bell pulled many of its ingredients, including the iceberg lettuce, early on during the outbreak, but its identification as a potential vector for the illness resulted in a major decline in traffic from which it has yet to fully recover, according to Restaurant Business Online.

The Hill – Vance-led task force set to remove 750K Obamacare enrollees, citing fraudThe Hill. The effort is led by Vance’s White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which has been focusing much of its efforts on healthcare.  

“This is not about cutting off anybody from their benefits. It’s about cutting off fraudsters from stealing from these programs,” Vance said Tuesday.  Oz and Vance said they were not concerned about real people getting kicked off their plans as a result of the new crackdown because most of them filed no claims, had no Social Security number or never responded to outreach efforts.  

High-mileage electric cars more reliable than petrol ones, study finds

The Guardian - Motorists buying a secondhand car with a lot of miles on the clock are likely to find an electric vehicle (EV) ultimately more reliable than a petrol vehicle, according to a study.  An analysis of 47.4m MOT tests found that after cars were driven 90,000 to 120,000 miles, EVs were about 25% less likely to fail than petrol models of the same age (based on a failure rate of 16.5% versus 22.1%).  Beyond 120,000 miles, 16% of EVs failed, compared with 23.5% of petrol cars. The study found relatively little difference between the two fuel types at lower mileages.

Donald Trump

Fact-Checking Trump’s Speech at the United Nations

The Hill - President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that artificial intelligence will be renamed “super intelligence” in all U.S. documents. 

Donald stamped his face on U.S. passports issued in D.C this year — but now, they’re coming to every passport agency in the nation. - Transcend

Newsworthy News -  President Trump told rally-goers that today’s higher gas prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay,” even as national averages top $4 a gallon...

ICE

Daily Beast - Thousands of ICE detainees’ whereabouts have been scrubbed from an online federal database after the agency instituted an unannounced change to its deportation process.  ICE quietly removed detainees who were subject to final deportation orders from its online detainee locator system last week, three current and former ICE officials told the Associated Press

The move has made it increasingly difficult for these detainees, who had received final orders of removal from an immigration court, to be traced or contacted by attorneys or family members.….ICE, which didn’t publicize the change, did not confirm or deny it in a statement to the AP.

Trump vs. TV news

1440 - ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox yesterday suspended TV coverage of presidential events in response to President Donald Trump barring CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House over reporting he characterized as fake news.

The move came shortly after CNN, MS NOW, and Politico filed a lawsuit against Trump, arguing his decision violates the First Amendment. The three banned outlets are members of the White House press pool, alongside ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and others. The pool was established in 1937 and has covered every president's daily activities since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Outlets rotate traveling with the president, sharing footage, photos, and quotes with one another. The White House Correspondents' Association has historically selected the pool, but the Trump administration began exerting greater control last year, restricting wire services such as the Associated Press and adding startup media outlets.