Alternet
- Brian Stetler, writing for CNN, explains, "There were two big events on
television last Wednesday night: President Donald Trump's speech at the
Republican Party's midterm convention, and the NFL's 2025-26 season kickoff
game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. The NFL game
drew more than 25 million viewers. Trump's speech reached about 3 million
viewers."
September 15, 2026
Donald Trump
September 14, 2026
Voting
Americans for Financial
Reform - Postmaster General David
Steiner is trying to turn the U.S. Postal Service into a tool for Trump’s voter
suppression scheme.
Under his direction, USPS has
finalized a rule based on Trump’s executive order that would block election
ballots from being delivered to anyone not on a “verified citizenship” list
created in part by the Department of Homeland Security.
Election officials in Texas and
Missouri have already found that DHS’s databases are inaccurate and flawed,
repeatedly misidentifying people — setting up a system that could block
millions of mail-in ballots across the country.
Second judge freezes Trump mail ballot plan
The
Hill - A second federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from
implementing President Trump’s executive order targeting mail-in voting, adding
a new obstacle to the president’s plan as he awaits word from the Supreme
Court.
The high court was already
considering an emergency request to lift another judge’s block — a decision
could come any time — when U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled in separate
challenges filed by Democrats and private organizations.
Nichols similarly found that
Trump’s mail ballot plan wasn’t authorized by Congress.
“The key portions of the Rule
exceed any conception of the outer bounds of these authorities,” the judge
wrote in his 24-page opinion. Nichols is
a Trump appointee who serves on the federal trial bench in Washington, D.C.
Best and worst states for teachers
WalletHub
- Teaching is one of the most rewarding careers, with educators playing a
vital role in shaping future generations. Yet despite their impact, many
teachers are overworked and underpaid. Education remains one of the
lowest-paying occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree, and teacher salaries
have not kept pace with inflation. Adjusted for inflation, on average, teachers
are making 5% less than they did 10 years ago.
Compensation and working
conditions vary widely across the country, with some states offering far
stronger support for educators than others. States that invest in their
teachers are also more likely to retain experienced educators and reduce
turnover. To identify the best places to teach, WalletHub compared the 50
states and the District of Columbia across 24 key measures of
teacher-friendliness, including income growth potential, pupil-teacher ratios,
and public-school spending per student.
Key Facts
The best states for teachers in
2026 are Washington, New York, Virginia, Illinois and Utah.
The worst states for teachers in
2026 are New Mexico, Maine, Montana, Hawaii and New Hampshire.
Important factors determining the
best states for teachers include compensation, tenure protections, state
spending per student, school-system quality and turnover rates.
Donald Trump
New Republic
- Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish destination wedding was
bankrolled by a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle,
ProPublica reported Monday. Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch, dropped hundreds
of thousands of dollars on Don Jr.’s big day, according to records reviewed by
ProPublica, as well as three people familiar with the event who spoke with the
outlet.
Kremlev rented out a private
island where the reception was held, and guests were housed for $100,000 per
night. He paid an estimated $70,000 for a massive fireworks display, and his
team even helped to plan the festivities.
Kremlev is president of the International Boxing Association, which is
financed by Gazprom, a Russian state-owned energy company.
Congress faces artificial intelligence fears
The
Hill - The House has just one week left on its calendar before
November's midterm elections. Axios reported that members are urging Speaker Mike
Johnson (R-La.) to cancel the recess until Congress can pass AI
safeguards. House Minority Leader Hakeem
Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday he supports immediate congressional action.
“We certainly need to begin to
act urgently to address the challenges that exist,” Jeffries told
host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.”
…Johnson urged people not to panic and said lawmakers do not
want to smother innovation. “If Congress just races in and does some sort of
emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and
that is a threat to every single American. So, we’ve got to have balance. We’ve
got to have steady hands at the wheel,” Johnson told CNN's Jake
Tapper on Sunday.
Trump sounded a similar note
while speaking to reporters at his golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland, on
Sunday, saying that guardrails can be installed, but he doesn't want to lose to
China in the process.
“Well, I say this, we’re
leading China on AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and
frankly I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins,” he
said.
The debate comes after AI
researchers and leaders took to social media to sound the alarm on the pace of
AI growth.
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic
researcher who also worked for OpenAI, warned on Tuesday that AI could soon
destroy humanity.
"Do not underestimate the
power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack
anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and
resources," he wrote on social platform X.
"The people building AI
earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the
decade," he added.
… Former President
Obama sent a message to Jeffries at a private fundraiser on Thursday:
“Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a
framework for a very public conversation,” he said, The New York Times reports.
The potential if Democrats take over just one congressional house
Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian
- Article I grants Congress the power of the purse, arguably its most effective weapon to
combat executive overreach. Even if Democrats take both houses, it is nearly
impossible, for example, to assemble supermajorities to impeach and remove
rogue Cabinet officials. Even with one house secured, however, it can refuse to
fund Donald Trump’s priorities. And if Democrats win even a bare majority in
the Senate, it can use reconciliation strategically to eliminate programs or
temporarily defund departments. And we’ve got a handy list of Trump’s abusive,
lawless agencies and departments that Democrats should strategically target.
First and foremost, Democrats
should refuse to fund the illegal, reckless Iran War and must eliminate funds
for continued deployment of personnel and material that depletes our readiness
and leaves us vulnerable elsewhere. They can condition
additional funding for the Pentagon on compliance with congressional investigations, and can defund overtly politicized gatherings of the type Secretary of
Defense Pete Hegseth has conducted.
Congress can also use the power
of the purse to disable corrupt, lawless departments. Democrats, for example,
will need to conduct exacting oversight over the Department of Homeland
Security, which has been, according to reports, rife with fraud. Continuing to fund the department before a
full accounting is made and until all those responsible are held accountable
would be political malpractice.
When it comes to abusive, lawless
immigration raids, Democrats must refuse to allocate a single dime for ICE,
Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other entities responsible for killing or allowing dozens of people to die (on the streets and in custody), mistreating detainees, ignoring fundamental civil liberties protections, refusing to abide by requirements for body cameras, conducting raids at religious institutions, courts, and schools, continuing to use excessive force and racially
profile individuals, and blocking cooperation with state and local criminal
investigations.
If Democrats win control of even
one house, said body can refuse to fund ICE, CBP, and any other aspects of DHS
absent full cooperation with oversight and adoption of strict guidelines on use
of force, treatment of detainees, compliance with warrants, etc. Congress can
simply refuse to fund “raids,” that is, far-flung operations that do not prioritize dangerous criminals. Congress can deny
resources for operations if there is no immediate threat to public safety or in
any case in which ICE agents lack a judicial warrant based on probable cause.
Democrats will need to rally public opinion, already hostile to ICE and CBP, when Trump hollers that
they are protecting “dangerous criminals.” (The response: Democrats will fund
focused, law-abiding enforcement actions that are actually against dangerous
criminals).
Stupid Trump stuff
A lust for
supersizing … the plan for Trump’s triumphal arch. Photograph: US
Commission on Fine Arts/Reuters
Oliver
Wainwright, The Guardian - When
you have a developer as US president, you might expect some zhooshing up of the
capital. A few buildings renovated, maybe some parks replanted. But when you
have a megalomaniac builder in charge, things can get out of hand. A decade
ago, when Donald Trump was first elected, I asked what it might mean for the US
to be led by a real estate tycoon whose career had left a trail of broken
promises, angry buyers and endless lawsuits, with rules flouted, heritage
trampled and the world pockmarked by a fleet of aspirational towers clad with a
flimsy veneer of luxury. The answer is worse than I could have imagined.
With the air of a nightmarish
Hollywood sequel, Trump 2 has seen the president’s true architectural ambitions
unleashed: As America’s self-styled decorator-in-chief, Trump has not only
overseen the gilded mutilation of the White House, but embarked on the
Mar-a-Lagofication of Washington DC itself, applying his gold paintbrush to
statuary, daubing ponds with flaking pool liner, and brewing plans for a
colossal triumphal arch – all procured in a blizzard of no-bid contracts…..
Middle East
The
Guardian - Israel is working towards the systematic “elimination” of
the conditions that sustain Palestinian collective life in the occupied West
Bank, according to a major report published
by the human rights group B’Tselem.
The Israeli organization’s
hard-hitting report, shared with the Guardian in advance of publication, says
Israel is “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian
life in the West Bank”, including “the ability to get to work, take children to
school or university, receive medical treatment or municipal services, meet
family and friends, cultivate land or go on vacation … routine activities that
make up human life”.
…1107: Number of Palestinians
killed by Israel in the West Bank since October 2023
Ukraine
Time - President Donald Trump has called
on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt strikes on Russia's diesel
fuel infrastructure and refineries, claiming the attacks are contributing to a fuel shortage. Zelensky did not immediately respond to
Trump’s comments, but he has previously said that these refineries fund and
fuel Russia’s war with Ukraine. He said that his country’s attacks are meant to
disrupt Moscow’s financing capacity. "Every dollar paid for Russian oil is
money for the war,” Zelensky said in April.
Tales from the attic: Marion Barry
[One of the most interesting
folks I’ve met was a guy named Marion Barry, whom I first ran into back in 1966.
It’s an interesting story, not the least because it is part of the different bi-ethnic tale one experienced in
DC but was rarely reported outside of the city. The nation’s capital long had a majority black population- once as
high as 71% - but had lost it by the 2020 census. ]
Sam Smith, 2006 -
Marion Barry and I split back in the 1980s. I can't remember the exact issue,
but it was one time too many that Marion had promised one thing and then done
another.
I first met Marion in 1966. We were both in our 20s and he was looking for a
white guy who would handle the press. As leader of the local SNCC he had just
organized the largest local protest movement in the DC’s history - a bus
boycott - and I had participated and written about it. The typical twenty
something doesn't help get over 100,000 people to stop doing something for a
day so I gladly took on the assignment.
We hit it off and remained allies even after the day in the 1960s when Stokley
Carmichael walked into SNCC headquarters and said that we whites were no longer
welcomed in the civil rights movement. Barry would later describe me as one of
the first whites who would have anything to do with him. I backed him when he
ran for school board and in his first two mayoral bids. And in those days, I
have to say, he got pretty good press.
But even by the time of the second run for mayor I was feeling queasy. A couple
of friends and I held a fundraiser for Marion but our wives would have nothing
to do with it. I introduced him by listing the reasons why people might be
ambivalent about Barry and then added, "On the other hand. . ."
Marion pointedly wiped his brow.
I was already becoming aware of Marion's addiction to that most dangerous, if
legal, drug called power. Later, I would be listening to a talk show discussing
a book about cocaine in the executive suite and suddenly realize how similar
the two addictions were and how I could no longer tell which was affecting
Barry more.
I saw less and less of him. We had lunch one day but I told him some things he
didn't want to hear and he later told a reporter, "Sam's a cynical
cat." In 1986 I told the Philadelphia Inquirer, "He's basically done
to ethnicity what Ronald Reagan has done to patriotism. He's turned it into a
personal preserve." About the same time Marion told a reporter doing a
feature on me that "Sam and I go back a long way, and over the years he's
become more radical, and I've become more conservative."
But I still saw that it was a complex story. At one point, Charles Peters,
editor of the Washington Monthly, asked me to do a piece on him. I told him
that I would be glad to but that I wasn't going to trash Barry. And I suggested
a headline, "Failing the Faith." A few days later, Peters cancelled
the lunch at which we were to discuss the article and never got back to me. The
next thing I knew, the Washington Monthly ran an article by Juan Williams
trashing Marion Barry and using a variety of the headline I had suggested.
When Barry ran for mayoral reelection the last time, I took the position that I
was all in favor of redemption; I just didn't see why you had to do it in the
mayor's office. I broke up one talk show host by suggesting that Barry follow
the example of a recently disgraced Irish bishop and go help the Indians of
Guatemala.
On another talk show, Barry said that the press was always blaming him for all
the city's problems. I said that wasn't fair; I only blamed him for 26.7% of
the city's problems. "I'll buy that," Marion replied. . . Later a
white Washingtonian actually asked me, "How did you derive that
number?"
Yet I also knew that Barry - like other urban ethnic politicians - had far more
to blame than himself. Whatever his faults, he knew he had been granted
dispensation because like a feudal lord - he provided significant favors in
return. Barry had lived in Memphis and I often suspected he had learned his
politics from Boss Crump. For he understood the quid pro quo of traditional
urban corruption that had helped the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles break
down the worst corruption of all - that of an elite unwilling to share its
power with others. [Later I would call him the last of the great white mayors
because his approach had more similarity with that of a Daley, Curly or La
Guardia than that of more recent city officials]
It was far from a perfect deal but in the interim before "reformers"
seized office again on behalf of their developer and other business buddies,
more people would get closer to power than they ever had or would again.
And now the reformers are back. The young gentrifiers who think the greatest
two moments in the city's history is when Barry went to jail and when they
arrived in town. And their politicians, who don't feel it necessary to even
tithe to the people.
Some years back, Marion, at a public dinner, ran into my wife and asked,
"Where's that sonofabitch?" But when he saw me we hugged because
despite all our differences we both know we are still kin in a too tough world.
I'd just lucked out better.
September 13, 2026
Anti-Muslimism growing
The
Guardian - [Institute for Social
Policy and Understanding’s] 2025 Islamophobia Index, a 100-point scale built
using common anti-Muslim stereotypes, rose from 25 in 2022 to 33 among the
general public in 2025, with the sharpest increases among white and Hispanic
Americans.
The Pew Research Center found in
a survey this spring that 51% of US adults now say Islam is more likely than
other religions to encourage violence, up from just 25% six months after the
2001 attacks.
The partisan gap on that question
has widened sharply. Back in 2022 32% of likely Republican voters and 23% of
Democrats in 2002 said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage
violence, according to the Pew survey. Today, 76% of Republicans say the same,
and 29% of Democrats.
Elections
NPR- Election officials are
preparing for possible disruptions during the midterms. One official
who did not have permission to speak publicly told NPR that statewide training
sessions have included scenarios in which law enforcement seeks to seize
ballots or election materials before results are certified. Such a seizure
could complicate ballot tracking and chain of custody, though legal experts say
the scenario is unlikely because
a judge would have to approve it
Artificial Intelligence
Axios
- Over nine startling hours
yesterday, the four biggest AI labs — which rarely agree on anything — set
aside years of feuds and competition to endorse a slower development pace for
their models.
Their new stance: Prioritize
safety over growth, even at a cost.
…. Data centers are unpopular.
People are panicked about doom scenarios. And 51 days before midterms,
legislators suddenly realize there are points to be won by cracking down.
Against that backdrop, the
industry's most powerful CEOs hit the brakes yesterday.
At 10 a.m. ET, Anthropic CEO
Dario Amodei dropped a 3,800-word essay saying model development needs to be
paced, otherwise doom scenarios are possible — like a rogue-agent takeover of
the entire internet, which he said could be as soon as six months from now.
An hour later, SpaceX CEO Elon
Musk shocked the AI chattering class by quoting Amodei's essay on X and saying
"Dario is right." Musk — who heads SpaceXAI, formerly xAI — had
pointedly not joined previous industry-wide calls for any kind of slowdown.
At 12:30 p.m., OpenAI CEO Sam
Altman tweeted: "I agree with Dario that we need to pace the
frontier." In a Friday interview that was released on Saturday, Altman
told Fortune his company won't go public this year, dashing hopes for a
blockbuster IPO. He said OpenAI has too much safety work to do and would be
better off doing that as a private company.
At 7 p.m., Demis Hassabis — the
Nobel laureate who co-founded and chairs Google DeepMind, and is Alphabet's
chief scientist — tweeted: "Dario's essay points towards the right path
forward. The details need working through, but the direction is correct for
meeting this critical moment."
Publicly putting safety ahead of
technological or financial growth may be the industry's only route to avoid a
crackdown that's not on its terms.
Legislators are begging House
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to stay in session and do something about the
"threat" of AI.
The more extreme alternative is
something like Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) push to force a pause and make the
most advanced AI illegal.
Most people realize there's too
much money at stake to just stop. But the tradeoff may be between historic
riches and slightly less historic riches.
….The bottom line: Yesterday may
go down as the day AI changed — when industry moguls vowed to limit themselves.
September 12, 2026
Donald Trump
Independent - President Donald Trump said the
Secret Service agents assigned to protect him make it impossible for him to
cheat at golf. The Republican president
made the remark Saturday during an address at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin,
before attending the Irish Open, a professional golf tournament.
“I was with the head of the
biggest company in the world and we’re playing golf and we have, you know, like
all these things going around and we had hundreds of Secret Service all over
the course,” Trump told business leaders gathered at the ambassador’s
residence.
“In fact, they said, ‘Does Trump
cheat?’ I can’t cheat,” he said. “You have 250 Secret Service agents running
down.”
“It’s not that I wouldn’t cheat,”
the 80-year-old president said, drawing laughter from the crowd.
The Hill - President Trump on Saturday expressed optimism about the reunification of Ireland during a meeting with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Dublin. The president, who is visiting his Irish golf course this weekend for a major golf tournament, said he would “love” to see the joining of the Republic of Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. “I’d love to see it unified,” Trump said. “I think that’d be a great feather in everybody’s cap if that happened. It’s going to happen eventually.”
….Previous U.S. presidents have
typically avoided directly commenting on this contentious issue. Ireland’s
split followed decades of violent conflict, called “the Troubles,” in Northern
Ireland over whether to unite with the rest of Ireland or to remain part of the
U.K.
The Good Friday Agreement, which
the U.S. helped broker to end this conflict, gives the secretary of Northern
Ireland the ability to call a border poll if it seems likely that a majority of
people in the region would support Irish unification.
On Wednesday, U.K. Prime Minister
Andy Burnham told British parliament members that he was “not aware that there
is majority support for another referendum.”
Maine Senate Democratic
Campaign Committee - While
hardworking Mainers struggle to afford gas and healthcare, Donald Trump is
charging $61 for twenty-five $1 coins featuring his face. Not only is
Trump using the U.S. Mint to print his face on currency for the second time,
but he is charging a 144% markup.
Trump declares war on journalists
Intercept
- Under Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Department of Defense has
evicted dozens of journalists, from the New York Times to NPR — and tried to
force reporters to surrender their press badges unless they pledged to report
only on government-authorized information.
Now, The Intercept has learned
that U.S. Central Command — which oversees military operations in the Middle
East — keeps a secret blacklist of journalists. When our reporter asked
too many uncomfortable questions about the Trump administration’s illegal war
on Iran, a CENTCOM spokesperson threatened to put him on their “list of people
to disregard.”
As Seth Stern from the Freedom of
the Press Foundation told The Intercept, “Threatening journalists with
placement on a blacklist in retaliation for reporting the government doesn’t
like is as unconstitutional as it gets.”
Grandparents
Pew
Research Two-thirds of Americans ages 65 and older were
grandparents as of 2024, according to Census Bureau estimates
Pew Research - Grandparents
have six grandchildren on average, according to the University of
Michigan’s most recent Health and
Retirement Study (HRS), which mainly surveys people ages 50 and older.
About a quarter of grandparents (24%) had one or two grandchildren during the
2022-2023 study period, while 43% had three to six. Another 19% had seven to 10
grandchildren, and 14% had more than 10.
Voting
Pew Research - Roughly 250
million adult U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in the 2026 midterm elections.
White Americans make up the majority of eligible voters (61%), but
their share has fallen markedly since 2006. Meanwhile, the shares of Hispanic
(16%) and Asian (5%) eligible voters have almost doubled.
Word
The White House,
Congress and the country's leading AI companies have allowed AI to
grow faster, stronger, more powerful and wildly lucrative (and dangerous), with
no serious effort to control it or spread the benefits beyond the super-wealthy
- Axios CEO Jim VandeHei
9/11
NBC News - Lisa
Parker was headed for jury duty in lower Manhattan when the first hijacked
plane hit the World Trade Center’s north tower on Sept. 11, 2001. An NBC News
producer for “Dateline” at the time, she rushed to the scene and spent hours
every day for the next several weeks at ground zero, documenting the recovery
efforts.
More than two decades later in
2023, a guest at a dinner party asked her a blunt question: “Did you get cancer
yet?” Just four months later, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an
aggressive blood cancer, joining a growing number of people diagnosed with
cancer decades after they’d spent time at or near ground zero.
According to the federal World
Trade Center Health Program, 57,044 people have been diagnosed with cancer
linked to 9/11, and the rates appear to be escalating. Read
the full story here.
NBC News - Newly
declassified documents show the CIA repeatedly warned Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike at the U.S. as far
back as three years before the attacks
September 11, 2026
Our politics depends more on personality rather than policy
Sam Smith - A major change in politics has been the
move towards making one’s choices based on personality rather than policy. As
the National
Library of Medicine puts it:
Western democracies’ voting
practices have altered recently, most notably with candidates now taking center
stage at the expense of the institutions. These events are the result of a
phenomenon called the personalization of politics. The present review aims to
synthesize evidence regarding the impact of voters’ evaluation of candidates’
traits on political outcomes and the effects of voters’ traits on voting…. Data
obtained suggests that political outcomes are heavily influenced by voters’
personality traits and how they perceive the personality traits of the
candidates.
In other words, we are debating the character of individual candidates rather than where they stand on major issues, thus we are more interested in discussing Donald Trump than in dealing with his lousy attack on Iran or the cost of oil and gas.
It’s a major reason our current politics are
such a failure.
Stupid Trump stuff
Dr Jasmine Clark for Congress - Donald Trump just
fired all 22 members of the National Science Board. This is the governing body
overseeing the National Science Foundation, one of the most important
scientific institutions in the United States — and he fired all of them.
At once.
New Republic - While giving remarks at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Texas Thursday, President Trump complained to a room full of medal recipients that he can’t have one.
“The thing I really want is I
want for myself a Congressional Medal of Honor, and I’ve studied it and I will
give it to myself. I have no problem, but I’m not allowed to. Can you believe
it? The one thing I’m not allowed to do,” Trump said to laughter from the
audience, which included 15 of the 65 living recipients of the honor. “I would
give myself, so it would make it instead of 15, we’d have 16.”
New Republic - President Trump led his fans in a bizarre pledge at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas Thursday night. “Please raise your right hand. I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care.”
Alternet -
President Donald Trump followed up his flop-filled Wednesday speech at
the 2026 Republican midterms convention with an equally blunder-brimming sequel
on Thursday….The humiliating highlights included:
He falsely insisted the
convention was "packed" just like it was "packed last
night." The various images of empty seats on both occasions begged to
differ. Later he claimed the "highest rafter" was packed and urged
people to not go to the bathroom so the media could not capture as many images
of empty seats. ….
Repeating a claim that was met
with a notably tepid response on Wednesday, Trump insisted that he had ended
the era in which America is a "laughingstock." Yet even as he claimed
that America is more respected than ever, America is currently losing both its
literal war against Iran and its trade war against Canada. ….
Near the end he closed by forcing
the crowd to pledge an allegiance not to America, not to God, but to "the
greatest president" who loves them "so much he can't even
breathe" to get out and vote for him, as well as get their personal networks
to do likewise. He even said that if they don't go and vote, presumably for
him, they will "go to hell."
Newsworthy - President Trump said the United States “wouldn’t exist” if he had lost, turning a campaign slogan into governing policy stakes backed by a push for new election laws. Trump repeated that America would be “finished” without his win, tying it to border and election fears. He urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act to tighten voter rules and restore trust. Critics call the language habitual hyperbole and dispute his evidence on election risks.
Climate change
The
Guardian - The grueling heatwave
that hit the UK in June caused pupils to miss more than 15m hours of lesson
time as soaring temperatures forced hundreds of schools to close, according to
a study.
The research found that at least
760,000 schoolchildren in England and Wales missed lessons owing to closures
during the heatwave – one of five in the UK this summer – as temperatures
inside some classrooms topped 40C (104F), leaving pupils and staff suffering
from heat stress, nausea and headaches.
“Staff and pupils were fainting
and at least one of my colleagues was taken to A&E,” said Jenny Cooper, a
teacher and National Education Union safety representative for London at the
time of the heatwave. “Schools need to be places where we can learn and teach
safely. A place for children whose homes are not safe … these heatwaves and the
lack of investment in schools are jeopardising this.”
The heatwave lasted for eight
days and triggered a red health alert across many parts of the UK, with
hospitals forced to cancel operations, workplaces shortening hours, and people
warned not to travel. There were nearly 2,900 excess deaths caused by the May
and June heatwaves.
Farmers struggling with high fuel prices
Independent
- American farmers harvesting two of
the country's most vital crops, corn and soybeans, are confronting
unprecedented diesel costs to operate their tractors, combines, and heavy
machinery.
The surge in fuel prices creates
further strain during a challenging year marked by rising expenditures for
seeds, machinery, and fertilizer.
Global fuel supply disruptions
linked to the ongoing six-month war with Iran drove U.S. diesel to a record
average of $5.85 per gallon on Sept. 4.
Figures from AAA show rates
continued upward, climbing to a national average of $6.05 a gallon on Friday.
"Those prices hurt,"
said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Farmer Jason Kurtz, who voted for
Trump, has seen his diesel expense double compared to last year
"And it’s not just the
harvesting. It’s the hauling of everything, moving the grain or the silage from
the field to the farm and then from the farm to wherever they're selling
it."
Voting
A US appeals court has rejected Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting before November’s high-stakes midterm elections, dealing a fresh blow to the president’s attempted crackdown.
The change in Catholic politics
Nathan
PinkoskI, Washington Post - Catholic leaders speak with one voice on
the issue of immigration. In July, Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope,
marked his home country’s 250th anniversary by calling on the United States to
welcome migrants with “compassion and generosity.” That same month, Cardinal
Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington, described the Trump administration’s
immigration policy as “morally repugnant.” In January, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of
Newark called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “lawless
organization.”
But when it comes to Catholics in
the pews, the picture looks very different. Over time, Catholics have become
more conservative and more Republican — with 55 percent voting for Trump in
2024. This rightward shift is visible in attitudes on immigration. Twenty-seven
percent of Catholics oppose significantly expanding the border wall with
Mexico, while 50 percent support the move (23 percent neither favor nor oppose
it).
Lay Catholic support for a border
wall is sharply at odds with the official views of the hierarchy. Under the
mantra of “building bridges and not walls,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops (USCCB) opposed border wall construction in 2017, in 2019 and again in
2023.
In November 2025, the bishops
issued a rare special message, the first of its kind since 2013, to denounce
mass deportations and “dehumanizing rhetoric.” In 2026, they filed an amicus
brief in the birthright citizenship case, Trump v. Barbara, warning that ending
birthright citizenship would be “immoral and contrary to the Catholic Church’s
fundamental beliefs.” According to the logic of that brief, the three Catholic
justices who dissented in the case do not merely have a different understanding
of the law; they are at odds with church teaching.
Frustrated by the stances the
Catholic bishops have taken, conservative Catholics have blamed the USCCB’s
material incentives. Since the 1980s, faith-based associations, including the
USCCB, have received federal grants to settle refugees in the United States. As
migrant flows have increased in recent years, so have the grants that have gone
to the USCCB.
But the Catholic hierarchy’s
pro-migrant sentiments aren’t the product of these material incentives (the
USCCB loses money on migration). Instead, they’re embedded in the way churchmen
think and write about the public role of the Catholic Church. Bishops remain
captivated by a postwar vision of migration that political leaders across the
ideological spectrum are moving away from.
Canada
Time
- When Lynn Henderson walks into her
local grocery store in British Columbia, she has one label at the top of her
mind: “Made in Canada.” The 47-year-old is among a wave of Canadian consumers
trying to boycott U.S. products in a show of solidarity amid the ongoing trade
war. “Even when I'm shopping with my toddler, he now asks specifically, ‘Oh,
are these apples Canadian?’ And he will ask that before putting it in the
cart,” Henderson tells TIME.
The resurgence of the “Buy
Canadian” movement comes amid a deepening U.S.-Canada trade dispute that shows
no signs of waning. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods took effect
Tuesday, with Prime Minister Mark Carney matching the economic pressure imposed
by the U.S. after trade negotiations collapsed last month. The U.S. has since
announced a ban on Canadian dairy, motorcycles, and most alcoholic beverages.
It’s all unfolding against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump
repeatedly talking of his ambitions to annex Canada and make it the 51st state.
9/11
The
Guardian - On September 10, 2001
George W Bush travelled to Florida to push education reform legislation. AOL
was seeking a big stake in AT&T’s cable unit. Promising tennis player
Lleyton Hewitt, 20, had just swept Pete Sampras aside to win the US Open.
America seemed unassailable. It
had won the cold war and enjoyed a relatively peaceful 1990s as “the
indispensable nation”, in secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s framing. From
fiscal years 1998 to 2001, the federal government recorded four consecutive
budget surpluses.
But what had been dubbed “the
American century” came to an apocalyptic end on the next morning. Nearly 3,000
people were killed as 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized control of four airliners,
slamming two of the planes into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon
in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania….
Unthinkably, both of the
110-storey towers collapsed, unleashing giant clouds of ash and dust on the
streets of lower Manhattan as fragments of paper fluttered down like confetti.
David Blight, a historian who advised the museum, which opened in 2014, said:
“It’s the most visual event in history – so photographed, so much footage, so
many documentaries. It is so shocking, so horrifying that you can’t watch it
without a certain weeping. One of the things that should never stop about 9/11
is the essential grief of it. There is a sheer sense of unspeakable loss.”
At first the loss brought out
America’s better angels. Firefighters and first responders displayed inspiring
courage. Ordinary citizens queued to donate blood. The nation came together as
rarely before and received global sympathy, with Russia pledging support, Iran
holding candlelight vigils and Nato invoking Article 5 for the first and only
time in its history. Bush visited Ground Zero in New York and, wielding a
megaphone, declared that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear
all of us soon.”
They did. The US invaded
Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida and topple its Taliban protectors, a war that
would drag on for a record 20 years only for the Taliban to return. Bush then
attacked Iraq on the false premise that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of
mass destruction, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
….A quarter of a century later,
100 million Americans are too young to remember 9/11 and only from this vantage
point, perhaps, can the consequences be seen clearly.
….“9/11 is when things began to
go wrong for the United States,” suggested Bill Galston, a former policy
adviser to Bill Clinton. “The United States was at the apogee of its post-cold
war power on September 10 and then, through a series of missteps and misjudgments
on both the foreign and domestic front, we have thrown away a great deal of not
only our power but our credibility.
“In my judgment, 9/11 set off a
quarter-century of misgovernment in the United States and we’ll pay the price
for that for a very long time.” More
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