Among the many items in the section that requires a subscription:

— President Trump’s Iran war has supercharged electric vehicle sales everywhere except the United States, reports Yale Climate Connections.

The International Energy Agency reports that 50 countries set records for EV sales in the second quarter of 2026.

— The icy white cloud line we see in the sky behind planes — known as a contrail — contributes to climate change. A British effort is exploring whether artificial intelligence can help, by predicting where contrails are likely to form so planes can avoid those areas, says the BBC.

— After being declared extinct, the ancient cliff cypress — a 300-million-year-old “living fossil” — has made a comeback in Southwest China’s Chongqing reserve after a 2-decade conservation effort, reports China Daily.

Note to readers:

I need to take Monday off while work is done on my house. I’ll be back on Tuesday, Sept. 29.

Also in the news

Argentina poverty rate rises above 30 percent under President Milei, reversing recent decline

NYTimes: ’First detailed blueprint of Moscow’s rampant circumvention’ of Russia sanctions

Netanyahu speaks to UN General Assembly, defends wars in Gaza, Iran as ‘battle against barbarians’

Iran proposes 7-day plan to end the war

Trump-Xi summit is ‘heavy on ceremony and light on outcomes’

ICE is wasting tens of millions of dollars on ‘uninformed’ detention projects, says Government Accountability Office report

Trump administration scrambles to stop third-country deportations after court ruling, asks Supreme Court to allow the program to continue

Reporters return to White House, but TV standoff continues

Senate rejects resolution to halt Iran war, on 49-50 vote

Schumer, Jeffries sue to block armed federal agents from polling places in November

Dr. Heidi Overton, nominee to head FDA, is evasive on abortion pill but says measles vaccine is ’safe and effective’

Taxpayers are funding TV ad featuring Trump’s midterm messaging

State election officials say new federal cybersecurity plan for midterm elections is inadequate and too late

Four states will vote on abortion-related ballot measures in midterms

California Supreme Court orders Riverside County GOP sheriff to return 650,000 ballots he seized

Appeals court reinstates Ohio law requiring voters to prove citizenship when registering to vote

Some Missouri election officials tell people to hold off voting while Supreme Court deliberates on gerrymander

New York sues prediction market Polymarket, saying it’s an unlicensed gambling operation

It’s Climate Week, and AI is dominating the conversation

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson skewers court over emergency docket

Robert Reich on what foreign officials in U.S. for UN meetings are telling him about their strategizing for dealing with America

Steve Inskeep interviews Tucker Carlson on NPR’s Newsmakers podcast

Google is sending AI data center to outer space

San Francisco Currently: A new, self-described ‘unserious and frankly belligerent publication’ skewering the city

CDC allows states to order COVID vaccines for vulnerable children after nearly 1-month delay

Battle of hospital AI vs. insurer AI is increasing medical costs

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

“Trump is displaying an extraordinary degree of deference to Xi,” Julian Gewirtz, a scholar at Columbia University who’s written on the history of U.S.-China relations, told The New York Times. “He is lavishing honors on China’s leader while downplaying threats to American interests. Beijing could scarcely have asked for a more accommodating host.”

“Trump may laud Xi as a respected friend, as he did when the two men met in Beijing in May,” says The Atlantic. “Yet Xi is no friend of Trump’s. Throughout his 14 years in power, China’s president has acted deliberately and consistently to undermine the United States. His two-day trip to Washington now seems perfectly timed to exploit the weakness of his host and main strategic rival, lately enfeebled by rising domestic prices, plummeting approval ratings, and a costly ongoing war in Iran. This timing makes the spectacle of the purported leader of the free world fawning over a Communist dictator more than just embarrassing.”

Xi’s visit “is getting a much chillier reception on Capitol Hill than at the White House as lawmakers from both parties use the visit to denounce China’s actions on the world stage,” says a separate AP article.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to the Senate floor Tuesday night, offering a list of issues for Trump to raise with Xi, but not before suggesting that Xi shouldn’t have been asked to visit Washington at all.

Wicker said, “Quite frankly, had the White House asked me for advice, I would have suggested the president not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome here in the United States of America based on all of the troubling issues we have with President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.”

Four GOP senators wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, asking that the administration release more than $15 billion in stalled national security assistance for Taiwan, Reuters reports.

China regularly describes the issue of Taiwan, an island 100 miles off China’s coast that it views as its own territory, as its most sensitive and important diplomatic issue. China repeatedly has called for arms sales ​to stop. The United States is required by law to provide Taiwan with the means to ​defend itself.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and three other Democratic senators held a press conference Wednesday to warn against the United States weakening export controls for advanced semiconductor chips and equipment. They’re concerned that such exports could erase America’s lead over China in artificial intelligence.

“The Chinese are practical, hardheaded, cynical about the United States,” R. Nicholas Burns, the top U.S. diplomat in Beijing under the Biden administration, told the Times. “They’re going to judge us, I think, by how strong we are and how much we push back when we have to push back. I think the Chinese understand power and deterrence. They’ll be swayed more and affected more by a strong American position than they will by flattery.”

Xi and others in China’s elite believe that the United States is in decline, says The Atlantic. Wang Huning, the Communist Party’s chief theorist and a close adviser to Xi, helped shape this assumption with “America Against America,” a 1991 book about his travels in the United States, in which he portrayed the country as rich and technologically advanced but rotting from within because of its eroding public institutions and decaying cultural values.

Xi “believes that the United States, despite its descent in global politics, still is enormously potentially dangerous,” Kurt Campbell, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state and now the chair of the Asia Group, a consulting firm, told The Atlantic. “Xi is animated by the idea of how to avoid a great-power war and to help ease the United States into a more orderly decline.”

Also in the news

Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian calls out Trump in UN speech, says Iran will fight ‘until our last breath’

OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs brief UN Security Council on risks of AI, appeal for international cooperation

AI agents for OpenAI infiltrated government-run public health care website in Australia, in first known breach of a government system

Trump’s Board of Peace proposes $2.45 billion plan to start Gaza reconstruction

Trump administration’s focus on noncitizen voting has led to 160 arrests; experts say that shows it’s rare

FBI investigates hackers’ claim to have stolen its employee data, compromised jobs website

White House is scrapping plan for executive order giving administration more control over NIH grants

ProPublica: Federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just made another business-friendly move

ProPublica: ‘How the Smithsonian became the latest front in Trump’s culture war’

Ethics experts say RFK Jr. financial relationships may violate federal rules barring officials from profiting from their government jobs

Judge blocks Trump’s White House ban on CNN, MS NOW, Politico

Iowa judge dismisses Trump lawsuit against Des Moines Register and its former pollster

Flock cameras draw bipartisan concerns at Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing

Republicans pump cash into red states as they try to hold the line against Democrats in midterms

State error in Texas creates big backlog in voter registration applications

ProPublica: Maine Sen. Susan Collins ‘dismissed our reporting as old news; some of her claims aren’t true’

Billionaire Les Wexner’s political contributions make Epstein files a focus of Ohio U.S. Senate race

Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker establishes AI cabinet amid calls for greater regulation

WSJ: ‘MAGA podcasters are tuning out Trump. We tracked what they are talking about now.’

Former Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage, a Trump ally running for House seat, says family member is being deported

Robert Reich: ‘How to know whether a candidate is on your side’

National Trust for Historic Preservation launches legal defense fund as it battles Trump over ballroom, other projects

AP report on expanded medical aid in dying laws: about a third of Americans live in a state with legal aid in dying

FDA panel endorses first-of-a-kind cancer blood test from Grail, while warning it’s unclear how well the technology works

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Indivisible is one of the organizations — including the ACLU, Public Citizen, Black Lives Matter, League of Women Voters, and American Federation of Teachers — responsible for the No Kings events.

Vance says about the next No Kings day:

“On October 17, Americans will get together nationwide to make plans to vote in the midterm election. That will look different depending on where you live and that’s the point. Indivisible’s Ezra Levin joined us to talk about why he is confident we can win a free and fair election and why we need to all work together towards that goal.

“The biggest danger we face is giving in and giving up our right to vote. That’s what Trump is trying to do to us.

“If you missed us live, take a few minutes to watch now. Ezra‘s enthusiasm is catching. And even more importantly, send this to your favorite people, especially folks you think might not vote — might decide it’s too much trouble, or think that their vote won’t count given the mess that we’re in. This is the explanation and the motivation that we all need right now and I’m so grateful that Ezra made time for us today.”

I hope you’ll share Vance’s post and video with your friends and family.

If we stand together, an autocrat can’t take our democracy from us.

Also in the news

Anthropic and medical knowledge platform OpenEvidence partner to bring medical AI worldwide

At UN, Canada’s Mark Carney outlines how nations can safeguard their mutual interests after ‘rupture’ to world order by U.S. and China

‘The test before us is whether power will be exercised with the law – or beyond it,’ UN chief says in his final General Assembly address

NYTimes: Trump winner-takes-all vision of U.S. power at UN General Assembly amounts to a rejection of founding concept of UN

AP: Trump’s multiple false and misleading claims in front of UN General Assembly

Trump signs U.S.-Denmark-Greenland agreement to bolster U.S. military presence on the island but keep it under Danish control

A third Supreme Court showdown looms over Missouri congressional map

Anthropic releases new ‘safest’ AI model amid slowdown debate

HHS moved about $12 million from its Office of Minority Health to help cover rising cost of security for RFK Jr.

Trump administration ejects more than 750,000 enrollees from Obamacare markets, claiming fraud

Hospitals refuse gender-affirming care for transgender youth and pay federal government, to end federal probes

Study: Drinking slows after pandemic spike, but heavy drinking among older adults still is increasing

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei assigns “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” to employees and has likened himself to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard. He describes the most powerful AI models as “weaponizable nuclear materials,” Foreign Affairs says.

But the nuclear-AI analogy “paints too rosy a picture of nuclear weapons governance, crediting it with successes that are still debated and may yet be unearned. It also blurs key differences between AI and nuclear technology that reveal just how much more difficult AI governance will be. Nuclear materials can be traced and accounted for to a much greater extent than AI components can. Nuclear weapons were designed, built, and now remain under strict government control; AI is built principally by private companies with strong profit motives, which move faster than states can regulate them. Whereas nuclear technology’s use cases are narrow, AI’s cut across nearly every sector and security domain,” says Foreign Affairs.

And AI governance “faces an additional challenge: policymakers need to mobilize support for action even as the scale of the threat remains abstract.”

Here is a gift link to the article.

Also in the news

War, runaway AI, climate shocks to take center stage as world leaders meet at UN

Trump to meet with leaders ‌of Greenland and Denmark Tuesday to sign deal allowing larger U.S. military presence on Greenland

Gates Foundation launches coalition to combat global inequality by making AI more accessible in underrepresented languages

Analysis: With time on his side, China’s Xi seeks to extend truce with Trump

Human Rights Watch report offers rare insight into the risks, challenges facing U.S. deportees in Haiti

AP: ICE hides the locations of thousands of immigrant detainees with final removal orders

WSJ: Bill Pulte scrutinized mortgages of Trump political rivals — and Todd Blanche

WPost says it got the first major interview with Tyler Hassan on his tell-all memoir of working inside DOGE

‘One of the most unexpected bromances in American politics’ continues as Trump and Mamdani meet in New York City

Trump inaugurates new White House helipad, but TV networks keep their cameras away in protest of CNN banning

What is the White House press pool? These days, it’s a battleground between Trump and free press rights

Heather Cox Richardson on the banning of CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House, their lawsuit against Trump, more

ProPublica: FBI anti-corruption squad was circling Susan Collins — until Trump got in the way

ProPublica: The Supreme Court shadow docket, and what it means for public trust

Appeals court sides with Missouri GOP on redrawn House map

Are AI models being misled to act too human?

What to know about Paramount settlement and its impact on movies

WSJ: Polymarket rush to grow left door wide open for fraudsters

KFF: As health insurance costs soar, even health care workers are seeking alternatives to their standard coverage or are going without

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

The article is long, and I hope the gift link I’m providing above will work for you.

Applebaum’s central point is that America’s allies are learning:

“The United States of America is no longer the entity they knew. And American power is no longer deployed solely by trained diplomats and reliable officials, working through state channels. Informal envoys, private companies, online grifters, and hardened ideologues both inside and outside the government matter more. Unlike their predecessors, these people do not talk about spreading democracy, and don’t want to build long-term relationships. They don’t care about America’s reputation. They are deploying the tools of American diplomacy and government for their own purposes, to promote their own business interests or their own ideological goals, because, suddenly, they can.”

Here is a video of Applebaum discussing the article with Tim Miller of the Bulwark.

Also in the news

Congo begins Ebola vaccinations for health workers in the center of the outbreak

European leaders preparing public for ‘intensified threat’ from Putin

Far-right AfD is first in state elections in northeast Germany; it’s the worst result for Chancellor Merz’s conservative party since 1949

Hundreds of thousands attend Iran’s biggest government-organized rally since war began

NYTimes: Trump is caught in a dilemma over a Saudi plea for military help

WPost: Inside the secret deals powering Trump’s push to deport migrants to countries not their own

Guardian: Stephen Miller is leading push to accelerate removal of migrant children

Trump calls AI concerns a hoax, but the debate is more complex inside the administration

Amid calls for a ‘kill switch’ to shut down an AI system that gets out of control, ‘no one really knows how’

National Park Service maintenance projects have been put off around the country as resources are diverted to Trump projects in D.C.

MS NOW, CNN, Politico say their journalists were denied access to White House after Trump ban

Trump says his arch would house drones and snipers, in apparent effort to justify the project by citing national security

How Trump broke the Kennedy Center

FAA to deploy on Monday a new AI air traffic control tool to prevent flight delays in D.C. region

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a package of 13 bills to prevent Trump interference in midterm elections

Republican who runs South Dakota elections endorses Democrat to succeed her

AI concerns create opening for progressive Democrat’s campaign in Michigan battleground district

Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick keeps distancing himself from Trump, but it may not save him in the midterms

Civil rights groups and labor unions sue to keep armed agents away from voting sites

Heather Cox Richardson on Kennedy Center protest, Trump arch, NATO, Trump administration’s ‘privatized’ foreign policy

Former prosecutor Joyce Vance on reported DOJ pressure to pursue alleged voter fraud, Trump media bans, more

Robert Reich is grateful for you

Anthropic says its model Claude is helping to build the next version of itself

Google says its AI hacked 3 companies in a testing breakout

Lawsuit says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal on AI slowdown

Profile of Howard Buffett, who’s succeeding his father, Warren, as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

In old NASA data, scientists discover a surprising new type of cosmic object

Telehealth companies keep exposing their customers’ medical data; here’s some guidance for consumers

White House is drafting executive order to take control of NIH grants

Trump promotes program to reduce Medicaid drug prices, says ‘this one thing alone should win us the midterms’

Researchers worry there won’t be enough room in nursing homes for our rapidly graying nation

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

As usual, I hope you’ll enjoy scrolling through the free section. Some highlights from the section requiring a subscription:

— While “dozens of countries have become less democratic over the last decade” … “if we step back and look at the longer history of democracy … we see a broader trend of remarkable progress. The world used to be deeply undemocratic, and despite setbacks, it remains much more democratic than it was only half a century ago,” says Our World in Data.

While barely any country had both an elected parliament and an elected government in the late 18th century, in 2025 only 34 countries didn’t. The other 165 countries did.

The article concludes:

“The democratic institutions we have today were built over more than 200 years. It required going against seemingly impossible odds, enduring setbacks, and pressing on after partial victories.

“This history reminds us that democratic rights are never guaranteed. But it also shows us that politics can change for the better, sometimes beyond what people at the time could imagine.”

— In 2026 alone, the Trump administration has phased out tax credits, frozen clean-energy permitting, and issued tariffs certain to raise the cost of solar energy, says Canary Media. But costlier renewables are still cheaper than fossil fuels — and are free of the carbon emissions responsible for global warming.

— Ten states now prohibit the sale in pet shops of puppies from puppy mills that put profit above the health and welfare of the animals.

“The 10 states and 530 localities across 31 states that have acted to end the sale of puppies in pet shops span geographies and political positions,” says Humane World for Animals. “These laws have been championed by elected officials across the political spectrum and signed by Republican and Democratic governors and mayors. Regardless of district demographics, lawmakers heard from large numbers of constituents in support of ending the puppy mill pipeline.”

Also in the news

UN-backed experts cite both possible U.S. war crimes in Iran and Iran crimes against humanity in treatment of its own people

Reuters: China asks Iran to help rein in Yemen’s Houthis after appeal to Beijing by Saudi Arabia

China stockpiled oil; now it could dominate the energy landscape

New U.S. sanctions bill seeks to pressure Putin to end war in Ukraine, but Trump is considering business deals with Russia before it stops fighting

AP: How unprecedented border crossings reshaped America

Trump withdraws Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, as his nominee to head ICE

For a border Native tribe, Trump’s wall is a betrayal

Trump’s Minnesota surge threatened democracy, judge says

Killing endangered wildlife is legal if they aren’t the target, new Trump directive says

Postal Service chief says work has stopped on computer system key to Trump effort to limit mail voting

Trump administration must give a 30-day notice if it intends to make major changes to Kennedy Center, judge orders

Early midterm election voting starts Friday in Virginia; voters in Idaho, Minnesota, South Dakota can cast absentee ballots in person

GOP House member breaks with Trump in ad: Hispanic voters ‘feel betrayed’

GOP is putting up a costly defense of state and district seats that Trump won easily in 2024

Karl Rove: ‘Why I’m voting for a Texas Democrat’ instead of Bo French

Heather Cox Richardson on anniversary of the signing of the Constitution Sept. 17, 1787

Robert Reich invites us to his events on wealth (and shows us his 3-minute video on price fixing on eggs)

NYTimes explainer of ‘alignment,’ the science of teaching AI to do what people want

With more Amazon workers on SNAP benefits, the company offers Whole Foods discounts

RFK Jr. assures vaccine skeptics they have a ‘friend at the White House’

Some drugs and devices have been on the market for years, but FDA-ordered studies still aren’t done

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Oliver Schell is director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society and former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

My journalism training advised against using big words, and Schell clearly missed that class. But he understands the way diplomacy works — and doesn’t.

Next week, Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Washington in a follow-up “summit” to President Trump’s visit to Beijing in May.

“The United States’ epic twentieth-century successes in diplomacy set dangerously high expectations,” Schell writes in Foreign Affairs. “Today, as U.S.-Chinese relations spiral into an ever more adversarial state, the longing for another breakthrough delivered by ‘great men’ is especially acute.”

But, Schell says: “The same limitations that crimped the May summit will constrain the upcoming one. The problem is not simply that the United States and China have different ideologies and political systems. It is also that neither of their leaders is suited to the kind of bargaining their current rivalry demands. Xi equates compromise with weakness and has a hard time understanding the give-a-little-to-get-a-little logic that is the heart and soul of diplomacy. And Trump is so contradictory and impetuous that his pandering, “tech bro” side is in such an uncomfortable state of tension with his belligerent side that effective diplomacy becomes almost impossible.”

“In the past, the United States and China achieved breakthroughs when conditions were just right and leaders with great diplomatic acuity were in charge. The circumstances today are less favorable. Despite Trump’s simulacrum of camaraderie, he and Xi simply do not have the symmetries to build the kind of genuine fraternity and trust needed to resolve deep structural problems. As long as these two men lead their respective countries, the likelihood is that their summits will barely be able to manage the rivalry at best. At worst, they may exacerbate it by letting push come to shove.”

So — just as U.S. “tech bros” warn of the need for cooperation with China to save us from being extinguished by AI, we find ourselves with leaders least-skilled to achieve it.

Also in the news

UN secretary general urges global AI cooperation, saying the world can’t afford ‘a race to the bottom on AI safety’

As the world debates AI risks, China closes the technology gap with U.S.

Satellites show Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, Antarctica since 1979

U.S. troops must prepare to fight around the moon, says top Trump military adviser Gen. Dan Caine

AP: Trump administration’s change in human trafficking policy could make some minors easier to deport

House passes, 262-159, long-delayed sanctions bill targeting Russia, Iran, sends it to Trump for signature

House passes bill to prevent data centers’ energy costs from being passed on to families, small businesses, on 417-3 vote

House votes by unanimous consent to hold Leon Black in contempt of Congress over refusal to comply with subpoenas in Epstein investigation

Trump administration has cut or frozen up to $177 billion in federal grants since start of second term, affecting all states

Staffing problems stall federal investigations of missing and killed Native Americans

National Park Service is steamrolling through review of Trump’s arch

Fencing goes up around main Kennedy Center building after Trump-aligned board votes to close it for repairs

Heather Cox Richardson on Kennedy Center, oil prices, Federal Reserve, more

Trump-aligned groups are pouring money into midterm races, in final sprint toward Election Day

Man who criticized ICE was protected by First Amendment, judge rules

Margaret Sullivan: ‘The truth about the midterms — and the media’s failure to convey it’

Federal Reserve unanimously votes to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the first increase in 3 years

OpenAI discloses 6 new instances of ‘concerning’ AI behavior

Dr. Nicole Saphier, Trump’s 3rd surgeon general pick, faces questions over her vaccine stance at Senate confirmation hearing

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

So now it’s on to general election season, where the only certainty is that President Trump’s fear of losing makes everything uncertain.

Trump and GOP

The Trump administration won’t rule out interfering in the election:

— In a Senate hearing Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel refused to say whether FBI agents would be present at the polls during the elections.

— Attorney General Todd Blanche led a White House press briefing Tuesday, where he said the administration won’t be slowed in its efforts to oversee the midterms by the Supreme Court’s ruling on mail-in ballots.

— The Republican National Committee says it’s recruited a record number of poll watchers.

— Here is a summary of some administration efforts, from The Associated Press.

Democrats, others

— Democratic state parties announced on Monday that they’re launching an operation for the midterms they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up, reports AP.

And activists are planning mass protests if the administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting.

Legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges on what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.

The National Bar Association has an Election Protection Initiative, a national, nonpartisan effort to activate lawyers, NBA organizations, communities, and partners in support of voter education and voting rights.

The Association of State Democratic Committees has a recruitment project that includes a network to share information about online threats and manipulation, says Jane Kleeb, chair of the group and of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

“If they’re saying they’re going to put armed people outside polling places, we should put friendly people outside polling locations to film them,” Kleeb says.

Kleeb is referring to widespread concerns among Democrats that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to the polls, something multiple administration officials for months have denied will happen, says AP.

Ezra Levin of Indivisible says his group has run 17 different scenarios preparing for what could happen in November. But the first priority is to boost turnout, he says.

The No Kings network, which has spearheaded large anti-Trump protests over the president’s second term and includes Indivisible, has a campaign encouraging early voting that will peak with rallies Oct. 17.

Also in the news

EU opens door for Canada to become its first associate member, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says

U.S. strips $52 million in military aid from Europe and Mideast to back Trump-aligned nations in Americas

Trump approves $2.8 billion arms sale to Israel, including 40,000 1-ton bombs that have drawn global anger over civilian harm

Iran war cost $38 billion through July, is likely to cost $2 billion-$3 billion a month, Congressional Budget Office reports

House votes for third time to end Iran war, with seven Republicans joining all Democrats

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie introduces articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth over Iran war

House Oversight Committee votes 41-0 to hold Leon Black in contempt for stonewalling Epstein investigation

Senate blocks cryptocurrency regulation bill as Democrats push back on Trump investments

Congressional Black Caucus Institute launches effort to increase voting among Black, rural and young voters in midterms

Trump slams Supreme Court for rejecting his push to restrict mail ballots

Microsoft commits to AI privacy rules for students; will other tech giants follow?

Gates Foundation says AI could widen inequality as foundation pledges $1 billion to expand access

KFF: States are betting big on rural health startups, with a Silicon Valley twist

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

The ruling enables states to continue sending out mail ballots under the processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast, says The Associated Press.

It’s a defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has said is vital to ensuring election integrity, even though there’s virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots, AP says.

The decision is a “resounding win” for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, says The New York Times. They had argued that changing the Postal Service requirements so close to the election threatened to cause “catastrophic harms,” leading to mass confusion and “a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented voting rights organizations in the case, is celebrating the ruling:

“The president does not run our elections, the Postal Service does not get to decide whose ballot counts, and voters — not the White House — will decide November’s elections,” says Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

Some Republican election officials also are cheering the ruling, as in Utah, which almost exclusively votes by mail.

The Republican secretaries of state in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas, along with the lieutenant governor of Utah, had urged the court not to allow major changes so close to the midterms.

“Attempting to implement the rule now will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays and confusion for both voters and election officials,” said the brief the GOP officials filed in the case.

Alito wrote in his dissent that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely has the power to enforce Trump’s restrictions.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions shouldn’t go into effect for the midterms but indicated he might rule in favor of the Trump administration if the issue comes back before the court.

Also in the news

Top spy chief in China says AI is a threat to party rule

European leaders meet as Arctic thaw opens shipping routes and Russia buildup heightens security fears

Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland sign pact that could lead to breakup of United Kingdom

U.S. has stationed space weapons in Earth orbit, Air Force secretary says

EPA repealing rule that limits greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas

After 3-month absence, Mitch McConnell returns to Senate

Whistleblower says federal agents may have broken state laws in search for voter fraud

States, cities sue over Trump policy to restrict green cards

Missouri GOP election chief faces whistleblower lawsuit from fired election integrity director

DHS inspector general report details inhumane conditions at now-closed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ immigrant detention center in Florida

Political figures from Bernie to Bannon are calling for a ‘pro-human’ approach to AI

Donald Trump Jr. wedding celebration was partially funded by Russian oligarch, the couple confirms

Federal projects are rolling out AI agents offering therapy and prescribing medicine, raising concerns about safety, influence of venture capital investors

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

On Saturday, the leaders of four of the biggest AI companies — Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, and Elon Musk of SpaceXAI — each agreed that they need to slow development of the technology, says The Wall Street Journal.

Here is Amodei’s essay on the need for each major AI company to place third-party evaluators in their firms to verify safety practices (he’s pledging that his company will do this, as has Altman) and coordinate with other companies on common safety standards and limits on unchecked AI progress. He also says the United States should cooperate with other governments.

A New York Times article on why it’s difficult for tech companies to rein in AI says: “Right now, because AI works so fast, researchers need AI to monitor it. But that doesn’t always work, because the AI monitors can appear to be more sympathetic to other AI systems than to the humans setting the rules.”

And a second and more difficult issue is “alignment,” an industry term that basically means making sure AI does what’s best for humans, says the Times.

On Sunday, President Trump seemed dismissive of the calls to slow AI development, says The Washington Post. “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way,” he said.

After Trump signed an executive order last year rolling back Biden-era policies that took a more cautious approach to AI, his sons invested in the industry.

The top Republican and Democrat in the House agreed on Sunday that Congress should put guardrails in place, but the House is returning to Washington on Monday for what’s scheduled to be its final week in session before the November midterm elections, says the Times.

Here is Heather Cox Richardson on the AI issue.

And here is Robert Reich.

Also in the news

How Iran hard-liners sabotaged the push by more moderate pragmatists to reach a peace deal with U.S.

Trump touches a nerve while in Ireland, saying unified Republic of Ireland and UK’s Northern Ireland would be ‘fantastic’

Election officials are preparing for threats to midterm elections from Trump, his agencies and allies

AP: DOJ failed to get felony convictions of most of 102 protesters in 4 major cities charged with assaulting federal authorities

Federal judge rules Trump administration plan for 50 percent staffing cuts at FEMA was unlawful

Contractor says its own repairs, not vandals, caused Reflecting Pool peeling

Flaw in Georgia voting equipment could let someone see how others voted

Heather Cox Richardson on election, post-election threats

Tough summer for U.S. news industry draws to a close with cuts at McClatchy chain

At some universities, parents can hire a local mom to make sure their children are cared for the way they were at home

KFF: A generation of children is suffering as Trump destabilizes immigrant families

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

But let’s make this a goodness Friday, focusing on the selflessness of so many of our fellow humans during and after the terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

At an event with former President George W. Bush at the Bush Presidential Center in Dallas on Sept. 9, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine talked about his experience as an F-16 fighter pilot on 9/11. Caine noted the “beautiful examples of selfless courage” that day and afterward.

Among those many examples:

— Fighter pilot Heather Penney was prepared to sacrifice herself to stop Flight 93, a hijacked plane flying toward Washington, D.C.

— Firefighters ran into the burning World Trade Center towers, and 343 died when the towers collapsed.

— Rick Rescorla, a British-American soldier turned head of security at Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center, evacuated more than 2,500 of the company’s employees before returning inside. His body never was found. A ceremony to honor him is being held today in his home town in England.

— All over the United States, young people felt called to join the military in the days after 9/11. Here, three veterans discuss their mix of pride, regret, frustration and gratitude.

Also notably, some Morgan Stanley survivors changed their lives after the attacks, something psychologists call post-traumatic growth, The Washington Post reports.

CNN’s Brian Stelter says in his Reliable Sources column that he recommends the documentary “9/11” (streaming here) for Americans who aren’t old enough to remember 9/11. He says he’s shown parts of it to his children “to help them recognize the heroism on display that day.”

Also in the news

Houthis seize strategic Red Sea port, a major victory for Iran ally

Peru to join U.S. anti-drug coalition ‘Shield of the Americas’ after Rubio visit

ProPublica: U.S. is absent as Western powers meet on wartime protections for civilians

Behind the scenes, JD Vance gathered unvarnished views of Iran war

Appeals court upholds block on Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting

Trump announces $500 rebates for some Obamacare customers, weeks before the election

AP analysis: Trump’s solution to GOP midterm troubles is more Trump

Crypto, banks take lobbying to senators’ home states ahead of key vote

Supreme Court blocks Missouri attempt to use Republican-drawn congressional map

California governor signs laws to protect kids from risks of social media, AI chatbots

Anthropic says it blocked possible efforts to develop biological weapons

How ADHD changes as people age

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

The New Yorker last Thursday published, on the day after her death, “Gloria Steinem’s Final Essay.” Below the main head was a quote: “When you’re lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role is to remind us how far we have come.”

You have to be of a certain age to know just how true that was for Steinem.

Steinem’s introduction to fame came by causing a stir. She worked for a brief time in 1963 as a bunny in a Playboy Club in New York City, and wrote about the experience for Show magazine: “A Bunny’s Tale.” The article contrasted the real lives of those women with the male fantasy they were hired to personify.

While the article gave Steinem a degree of fame, the photo of her in her bunny outfit did not pry open the doors of many newsrooms, whose denizens were almost entirely men.

“I could not have made a bigger mistake,” she told the Associated Press in 2011. “It was personally and professionally a disaster. In the short term, it was much harder to get assignments, and in the long term it’s been used to ridicule me.”

Years later, Steinem allowed, “On the other hand, I did improve the working conditions for those women.”

In 1968 she landed a job as the “girl reporter,” as she described it, for the newly launched New York magazine. She soon would be a girl reporter no more, but a force in both journalism and feminism.

She co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972. In her obituary for Steinem in the magazine, Executive Editor Kathy Spillar wrote:

Ms. put abortion, sexual harassment and domestic violence on its cover when mainstream publications barely had language for them. It explained and championed the Equal Rights Amendment, evaluated presidential candidates on issues affecting women, published a groundbreaking national study of date rape and documented the pressure advertisers exerted over editorial decisions. It brought feminist analysis to politics, work, health, family, sexuality, culture, race and economic power.

It also opened its pages to argument and disagreement. Feminism was never a finished doctrine to Steinem. It was a living, self-questioning movement—a method of seeing connections that established power would rather keep hidden.

Journalism and feminism were barely acquainted at that time. The March 16, 1970, issue of Newsweek led with “Women in Revolt” as the cover story. The day of publication, four-dozen women who worked there sued the magazine for sex discrimination. Women could research, but they had no path to become reporters. Of more than 50 reporters on staff, one was a woman, according to the women’s attorney, ACLU assistant legal director Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Two months later, 96 women at Time Inc. filed a sex discrimination complaint.

Lynn Povich wrote about the Newsweek experience in her 2012 book, “The Good Girls Revolt.”

The story in the New York Daily News, titled “Newshens Sue Newsweek for ‘Equal Rights,’ began, “Forty-six women on the staff of Newsweek magazine, most of them young and most of them pretty, announced today they were suing the magazine.”

Welcome to 1970. If this is your first visit, fasten your seat belts — now required. We have a long list of trigger warnings.

Journalism was hardly an outlier. According to Povich, “Until around 1970, women comprised fewer than 10 percent of students in medical school, 4 percent of law school students, and only 3 percent of business school students.”

Around the same time Steinem started her publishing career, my father was bringing me to his newsroom — a roomful of white men. (That is a retrospective observation. At 9, I was focused, wide-eyed, on the giant rolls of newsprint and the fact that the newspaper had its own gas pump.)

Fifty years later, my own newsroom looked a little different: more than half of the 100+ journalists in my department were women, from entry-level positions to senior management.

Self-congratulations are hardly in order; the list of indignities that women still endure is not short — and lately has been growing longer.

But Steinem remained focused on moving forward. In her New Yorker essay, she wrote:

People often ask me: What should we do? No one person could answer that for everyone. I will say that we must work together to make sure that equal laws and customs become normalized. While there are many external gestures, the biggest leaps are those that we make within ourselves. Standing up for your own full humanity is an example you can give to others. Bring equality into your workplace and home—and follow the sense you probably had as a child, before gender roles took shape, about fairness.

Steinem emphasized the importance of hope.

“Hope is a form of planning,” she said. “If you don’t imagine what could be, you’re already defeated. We need companions in hope because we are social animals. But hope is practical and necessary.”

The journey from girl in a bunny suit to American icon was an extraordinary one, and Gloria Steinem brought a lot of people along on that journey.

Ms.: On Gloria Steinem

New York Times: Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92

Washington Post: Gloria Steinem, lodestar of the modern women’s movement, dies at 92

New York Times: How Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine Transformed the Publishing Industry

Gail Collins, New York Times: Gloria Steinem Knew How to Live

NPR: I don’t think I had $10 in the bank: Angela Davis remembers Gloria Steinem’s allyship

Also in the news

UN nuclear watchdog board reports Iran to UN Security Council for first time in 20 years

Iran is forging a new ring of proxies to threaten U.S. allies in the Gulf, regional officials say

Drone company backed by Erik Prince — Blackwater founder and Trump ally — is buying one of Ukraine’s leading makers of battlefield robots

Trump administration says immigrants from El Salvador will keep their temporary protected status for now

ProPublica: Twenty-five years after 9/11, questions about FBI’s pursuit of Saudi suspects have only grown

Trump administration proposes changes to census that could exclude millions from the count

Takeaways from day 1 of Republicans’ first-of-its-kind midterm convention

Twenty states and D.C. sue Trump administration over cuts to endangered species protections

Results of Wednesday’s Rhode Island primaries

ProPublica: Postal Service failed to properly handle some ballots during this year’s primaries, the agency’s inspector general says

What to know about the debate over whether AI could cause human extinction

What happened at Stars and Stripes, by Erik Slavin, its fired editor in chief

Girl Scouts’ first cookies for dogs go on sale in January

ProPublica: Ectopic pregnancy deaths have nearly doubled, and it’s worse in states with abortion bans

The next No Kings event is Oct. 17; you can learn more on Sept. 10

“No Kings: Vote Early” on Oct. 17 will be a nonpartisan action to make sure “every eligible voter has a plan to vote early (where possible), knows their options for how to vote, and is ready to make their voice count by casting their ballot,” says Public Citizen.

A virtual “kickoff call” is being held on Thursday, Sept. 10, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT. You can sign up here.

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

I hope you’ll be able to read the book (it’s a fast, 200-page read) and will tell your family and friends about it.

I wasn’t familiar with Skye Perryman until the legal responses to President Trump’s actions began last year. She’s the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nearly 200-person nonprofit law firm. Its website says:

“Democracy Forward is a national legal organization that advances democracy and social progress through litigation, policy and public education, and regulatory engagement. In towns and cities across America, we provide legal representation and expert counsel to the people and communities who make up the very fabric of American democracy — free of charge.”

This “towns and cities” reference might make the work of Democracy Forward seem small-scale, but it isn’t.

Democracy Forward’s 2025 Impact Report says: “This year, we have filed more than 150 lawsuits against the executive branch, launched more than 250 investigations, and submitted more than 1,500 detailed records demands across federal agencies. We have secured nearly 100 positive court rulings, including many that provide for relief to people across the nation. As the administration’s autocratic playbook becomes more accelerated, you will find us accelerating our efforts and continuing to meet the moment.”

Here is Perryman’s bio, and here is the long list of awards and recognitions she and her team have received.

Here is the video of Perryman’s interview about the book at D.C.’s Politics and Prose Bookstore.

There are several things I particularly appreciate about this book:

— Perryman reminds us that it’s the collective actions of all of us citizens that will defeat this autocrat.

— She gives us this how-to book, full of tip sheets and to-do lists, and a website with more explainers and action guides that she says will be updated.

— She pumps up our courage:

“Fearing the consequences of standing up to threats to democracy can lead to underestimating the cost of inaction. Because autocratic movements and leaders make the price of not conforming to their whims so visible, conventional wisdom suggests that it is risky not to capitulate to their demands. This can lead people and institutions to take actions that are inconsistent with their values as well as ultimately, detrimental to their long-term well-being. People may decide not to take part in marches or protests because of the fear of arrest. Or they may rubberstamp presidential orders instead of questioning their legality out of a fear of being fired. But people and institutions in a backsliding democracy fail to realize that often the cost of capitulation is higher than the cost of standing up for your values.”

We’ve seen this. Law firms, universities and media that capitulated to President Trump’s demands have lost money and respect. Those that refused to capitulate often have prevailed. (And, of course, the ineptitude of the Trump administration and its tendency to back down in the face of opposition also have boosted public courage.)

Perryman offers us eight steps to build courage. One of my favorites is “ground your actions in gratitude for our courageous friends and ancestors.”

— Perryman talks about finding joy in this moment.

“It may seem counterintuitive to be joyful while people are being shot in our streets and the very government that is supposed to protect us instead harms us. But humans across the world and across time have found ways to experience joy even in the darkest circumstances — joy has fueled movements for justice and freedom. Indeed, it sustains us on a long and difficult journey. We must challenge ourselves to find joy.”

— She urges us to keep going:

“And so, we come to the final action in this book — and perhaps the most important: As ordinary people living in an extraordinary time, our task is to keep going. Every day, do the next thing. Do not let the size of our task deter you from pushing through, from taking the next step, from finding the next stone of hope and taking action.

“We do this in our lives every day. We find ways of persisting through tragedy, the death of loved ones, the loss of jobs, the breaking of relationships, the betrayal of friends. We are resilient and powerful, and we must bring our strengths to the work of our communities and our nation. This is the work of our lives. It is what our children and their children will inherit.

“And you are not alone. You stand alongside so many people who came before you and who are here with you now. I’m with you, as is our team at Democracy Forward, and so are countless lawyers, advocates, and policymakers who are working for positive change along with so many other concerned individuals working in their communities. You are with every other person reading this book.”

Yes! I can feel this sense of community. I hope each and every one of you can, too.

The next No Kings event is Oct. 17; you can learn more on Sept. 10

“No Kings: Vote Early” on Oct. 17 will be a nonpartisan action to make sure “every eligible voter has a plan to vote early (where possible), knows their options for how to vote, and is ready to make their voice count by casting their ballot,” says Public Citizen.

A virtual “kickoff call” is being held on Thursday, Sept. 10, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT. You can sign up here.

Groups organizing the No Kings events across the country include the ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Black Voters Matter Fund, 50501, Indivisible, MoveOn, Public Citizen, State Voices, Voto Latino, and more.

Also in the news

AfD party’s landslide win in eastern Germany tests country’s ‘firewall’ against far right

Israel allies ban trade with settlements as Britain cites ‘ethnic cleansing’

UN General Assembly endorses new world map that more accurately shows Africa’s size; only U.S. objects

Iran signals readiness to escalate fight in face of increasing U.S. pressure

Trump widens trade war with Canada beyond tariffs to import bans and government-contract restrictions

How a blacklisted Chinese tech giant kept buying America’s best AI chips

ICE whistleblower warned of ‘unprecedented lowering of standards’ during hiring rush

Trump administration proposes rule to strip private colleges of their tax exemption if they help students based on race

EPA proposal would eliminate federal notification and comment requirements before issuing air pollution permits for data centers

U.S. Forest Service closing 23 research facilities as part of Trump reorganization

Inspector general report: Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer oversaw hostile work environment, misused funds

WSJ: Corey Lewandowski’s power moves at the Department of Homeland Security

WSJ: ‘In Trump’s second term, the MAGA merchandise boom is going bust’

The GOP was confident about keeping its Senate majority, but now the fight for control is wide open

What to watch as Republicans gather in Dallas for Trump’s unusual midterm convention Wednesday and Thursday

Results of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary: Republican Sununu, Democrat Pappas to compete for open Senate seat, more

Conflicting court rulings leave Missouri congressional map in limbo

Lonnie Bunch to retire from leadership of Smithsonian after clash with Trump administration

Heather Cox Richardson on Elon Musk’s midterm election moves, warning that votesafe.org isn’t safe

Robert Reich: Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is ‘no more anti-Israel than I am,’ and ‘I’m Jewish’

Flock surveillance cameras become midterm campaign target as voters balk at tech firms’ power

TSA brings back gate access for some family and friends welcoming and seeing off flyers, 25 years after 9/11

Researchers find more than 1,000 genetic variants linked to personality

KFF: Democrats demand Trump administration stop collecting patients’ ER records

KFF: Market forces are quietly adding thousands to patient bills

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

— Moderna has started its first human trial of an experimental vaccine to protect against the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola that currently has no approved vaccine, according to Reuters.

— Long-time readers of this blog may recall my posts during a month my daughter and I spent volunteering in a village in northern Tanzania in 2009.

So I’m particularly happy to see this World Bank item, that 11,628 villages in Tanzania recently have gained access to clean water through a bank-financed program.

“For residents like Sauda Nkusa, the impact has been life changing. ‘Before the arrival of these water points, we had to walk over one kilometer to get water from ponds, and sometimes we would fetch water two or three times a day. With such long trips, it was difficult for many women like me to find time for other economic activities, but now, with water within reach, daily life has become easier and more productive. I can spend more time tending to my [tiny] farm to be able to earn a little extra income, which was challenging before,’” the bank says.

— Between 2003 and 2005, Glasgow, Scotland, had the highest murder rate of any city in Europe. The UN declared Scotland the most violent country in the developed world, with Scots nearly three times more likely to be assaulted than Americans, says the BBC.

“Scotland had the image in the early 2000s of the hard, drunk man and a particular reputation for gang activity and knife crime that had been there for generations, all the way back to [the] 18th-century,” says Will Linden, deputy director at the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, a police unit set up in 2005 that was extended to a nationwide initiative by the Scottish government the following year.

When the Scottish authorities started looking at violent crime as a public health problem, crime levels plummeted and the country now ranks among the safest in the world, the BBC says.

The SVRU borrowed ideas for tackling violence as a public health issue from the United States. The interventions included peer support groups, educational programs and partnerships with social workers, doctors and teachers.

Note to readers

I wish you relaxing Labor Day weekend. I’ll be back on Wednesday, Sept. 9.

Also in the news

Robotaxis are trying their luck on London’s medieval roads

Iran targets Kuwait in retaliation for U.S. bombardments earlier in the week

China presses U.S. for answers after Chinese man dies hours after entering ICE custody

Chevron confirms it will expand its operations in Venezuela

Hegseth extends Middle East deployments into 2027, escalating strain on troops

Bipartisan group of lawmakers asks Army to explain why it told a military unit to stop specializing in drone warfare

Trump imposes tariffs of up to 100 percent on foreign-made drones

Trump administration begins intensive, weeks-long hunt to find non-citizen voter fraud ahead of midterms

Immigrant rights group sues to block use of federal databases it says could purge legal voters

ProPublica: New mail voting rules moved forward despite Postal Service officials’ concerns about mass disenfranchisement

Trump administration threatens to cut off federal agencies’ support for Smithsonian

Trump signs stopgap funding bill into law, avoiding a shutdown until at least Dec. 11

Stopgap spending bill contains provision blocking new rules that would give political appointees full control over science funding

House Democrats block constitutional amendment to permanently cap Supreme Court at 9 justices, on 212-206 vote

Hakeem Jeffries slammed a ‘breach of trust,’ and House Democrats want to know what he’ll do about it

Judge blocks enforcement of Trump executive order on birthright citizenship that’s aimed at ‘birth tourism’

Trump administration relied on flawed logic to justify scrapping vehicle emission rules, economists’ study finds

Trump urges GOP lawmakers facing tough reelection campaigns to run on his record, says he’ll campaign for all of them

U.S. Mint says $1 coin with Trump’s face and gold finish is now on sale

Almost half of states have wait lists for government-funded childcare assistance

Heather Cox Richardson on efforts to rig the November election

Federal judge rules Google must make changes to address its ad tech monopoly but won’t need to break up that business

AP/Frontline investigation: Scams in U.S. are at a record high, and it lags behind some other countries in tackling the problem

Saturday Evening Post to end its print edition after 205 years; new articles and fiction will continue to be printed online

Getting to know your phone’s built-in emergency kit

Top U.S. doctors are offering updated flu and COVID vaccine recommendations, aiming to ease confusion

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Today let’s look at what Homans has to say in the podcast about the tensions between the Democratic Socialists of America, which isn’t a political party, and the Democratic Party:

“[The DSA] has this kind of interesting, I think, unstable relationship with the Democratic Party, where they’re really mostly operating inside of that party at this point. But the DSA is not taking out Republicans. They’re taking out other Democrats. And they’re increasingly taking out not just moderate establishment Democrats, but actually pretty progressive Democrats in some cases.

“There’s a national DSA organization, there are individual chapters all over the country, and then there are DSA candidates. The national DSA does not necessarily hold all the same views as DSA candidates. And it doesn’t necessarily hold all the same views even as individual DSA chapters. This is a very diffuse, horizontal organization.

“But they do have a national platform, which has a pretty straightforward program of what they want, which ranges from things that are fairly familiar to things that are really much further out there on the radical spectrum of what we talk about in American politics.”

Here is the DSA’s own description of its program.

Homan continues:

“DSA is a very complicated organization inside, but it’s useful to think of it as kind of a Venn diagram with two big overlapping circles. On one side, you have people who are, more or less, like the Bernie, AOC wing of DSA. They basically have a lot of those same policy priorities. And more importantly, they believe in pursuing power the way that AOC is doing it, for instance, actually contesting elections on the Democratic ballot line and winning a seat in Congress, winning a voice in politics.

“On the other side, in the other circle, you have a much more unruly, fractious array of people who, broadly, are skeptical of that approach. They don’t necessarily oppose running candidates in Democratic elections, but they are very skeptical that pursuing power in the Democratic Party is really going to produce a systemic change in the United States that they are seeking.

“There’s two chairs of the organization, two co-chairs. One of them is actively involved in an effort to draft AOC to run for president, and the other one doesn’t think that it’s a good idea and is ambiguous about whether she would support AOC if she were the candidate.

“The socialist label is still not great when it comes to the general electorate in this country. A minority of Americans have a favorable view of socialism. It’s a pretty big minority, but it is a minority. There is a pretty clear and credible sense that running as a socialist is a real ceiling in a general election.”

Here is a Pew survey on how Democrats view leaders who identify as democratic socialists.

Homan discusses how leaders of the Democratic Party are thinking about the DSA:

“You see people like Gavin Newsom, who is arguing that DSA should be welcomed into the Democratic coalition, and that the party should really be in the business of addition and not subtraction, as he put it. This is an energized constituency that has really tapped an energy, and particularly a younger energy, that the Democratic Party has really struggled to tap.

“But critics of the DSA, kind of a mix of some of the reform-minded Democrats and also a lot of people who are really just ideological moderates, they argue that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the DSA and its project, that this is not an organization that sees itself as part of that coalition, that their relationship with the Democratic Party is really not additive. It’s actually parasitic.

“The argument that is most pointedly made about them is, what exactly are you guys doing for us? You talk about revitalizing the Democratic Party, but you can’t do anything you want to do without winning congressional majorities, Senate majorities, that you have zero demonstrated ability to do.

“And in the meantime, Republicans clearly see these same ideas as a massive liability for the Democratic Party. They’ve been pointing to the DSA all summer quite happily and saying, look at all these policies they’re throwing out there.

“There’s a sense that the more out-there aspects of what DSA wants to do is going to be a real liability for not just DSA candidates, but for Democrats more broadly, if this becomes really associated with the party brand.”

Homan says that inside the DSA, the conversation right now is: “What kind of compromises are going to be required to make a democratic socialist candidate tolerable to the majority of Americans? And are they willing to make those compromises?”

Also in the news

Iran fires on its Gulf neighbors after U.S. military strikes Iran targets

Treasury Secretary Bessent pitches U.S.-backed financial literacy competition to world’s largest economies

House passes 370-48 a short-term funding bill to avoid a shutdown before the election

House passes resolution denouncing ‘socialism in all its forms’ on 220-192 vote, with 8 Democrats voting in favor

North Carolina GOP Rep. Chuck Edwards censured by House after harassment probe

House votes to hold 2 associates of former Florida Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick in contempt of Congress

Trump to nominate current Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao as Navy Secretary

Whistleblower: Postal Service work to comply with Trump executive order is rushed, sloppy, could jeopardize the process of mail voting

Sen Ed Markey coasts to victory in Massachusetts Democratic primary; incumbent Reps. Lynch and Neal also prevail

Politico: Republicans aren’t exactly flocking to Trump midterm convention next week in Dallas

Global warming will exceed 1.5 degree target, UN says in report that maps path to get back below danger zone

Physicists hunting dark matter say lone signal from South Dakota experiment doesn’t fit profile of any other known particles

AP: Why bond yields are rising and why everybody should care

Politico: Hospitals say proposed Trump administration rules are worse than last year’s GOP Medicaid cuts

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

The hour-long podcast discusses the history of U.S. socialism and the tensions between the DSA — which isn’t a political party — and the Democratic Party. I’ll summarize the history today and the tensions tomorrow.

Homans says:

“To understand DSA, I think you need to understand the early history of socialism in this country. And that means going back to the early 1900s, which was the previous heyday of socialism here. This is the period right after the Gilded Age, when you had some Americans making just really enormous amounts of money, these sort of railroad barons, timber barons, coal mining, that kind of thing.

“At the same time, many Americans are working in these industries or in agriculture. And there’s this huge wealth gap between the rich and everybody else. And this creates a lot of inevitable political reactions, people who are trying to envision a way of redistributing the wealth. And one thing that comes out of that, eventually, is this American form of socialism, and specifically, the Socialist Party of America, which, in the early 1900s, was the largest and most organized socialist party in the United States.

“At the time, it [socialism] was defined pretty clearly as public control of the workings of the economy for the benefit of the workers.

“The socialists ran afoul of the government of Woodrow Wilson, specifically over World War I. The socialists were very opposed to U.S. involvement in the war.

“The socialists also ran into a lot of other problems of their own making. They split into a number of factions in this period. They lost a lot of ground in American politics. And they were kind of a spent force, really, coming out of the 1920s.

“A lot of socialist ideas that were pretty popular were advanced by non-socialist politicians in this period, most importantly, FDR.

“FDR is careful not to call this socialism ... because of what’s happening around the world at this time. The Russian Revolution has happened. The Soviet Union’s been born. This is the first country that embraces communism. Now, communism is a much more radical and, in the Soviet Union, undemocratic system evolving from socialism, one that many American socialists reject. But this has led to all these ideologies being seen in the United States as foreign and threatening in a way that they weren’t necessarily before.”

Fast forward to another time of a wealth gap and Bernie Sanders, who was “never a member of DSA, but he self-identifies as a Democratic socialist.

“What Bernie did that was really important was show that a self-identified socialist could actually do quite well in a Democratic primary. You have to remember that before this point, socialism was really a very taboo word in American politics and had been for quite a long time.”

In 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had recently joined the DSA, wins a congressional seat.

Other DSA members, such as Rashida Tlaib, follow AOC.

And in 2025, Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City.

“Mamdani, within the first year of being mayor of New York City, turns around and uses his popularity to endorse fellow DSA candidates in Democratic primaries around New York. And several of them win. They take out more establishment Democrats. And that brings us to this summer of democratic socialism, where, in race after race after race, DSA candidates or DSA-adjacent candidates are winning these primaries.”

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You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

At the same time, it’s hard to know if influencers who endorse political candidates on both sides of the aisle actually support the candidate, or whether they’re being paid for the post, says The New York Times.

The Post says Pentagon records it reviewed show that Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel, both have active official government email addresses. Maness has more than 135,000 followers on X, and Schlichter has nearly 620,000.

Neither the Pentagon nor those involved have disclosed the government roles despite the Trump administration’s claims that they’re running the most transparent Defense Department in history.

The Times says there aren’t any federal regulations requiring disclosure of payments for political support on social media. Just four states have such laws and regulations, and they apply only to state and local races, not federal contests.

In most cases, the only way the public would know an influencer is being paid would be to search a candidate’s campaign finance reports, as the Times did. Even then, such compensation routinely is obscured by funneling the payments through middlemen.

“That allows influencers, in most instances, to endorse candidates for a fee without ever disclosing those payments in their posts. Creators say some campaigns have even asked them to actively conceal the fact that they’re being compensated, making it impossible to know what’s genuine support — and what is pay-for-play,” says the Times.

Last month, Rynn Reed, founder of Creator Congress, an organizing hub for influencers interested in politics, introduced a code of conduct for the group that would require creators to make clear when they’re paid, whether required by law or not.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh says it may not be done fighting inflation

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Margaret Sullivan: ‘Dolly Parton brought divided Americans together. What can we learn from her?’

NASA launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with infrared vision to explore dark matter, dark energy, exoplanets

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You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

— Solar panels produced 51 percent of California’s electricity in May, making it the world’s first major economy to cross the 50 percent threshold, Canary Media reports.

— Researchers in South Korea have developed a material that can repair imperfections in soft contact lenses using just an hour of ultraviolet light, paving the way for lenses that resist scratches and repair themselves, according to Interesting Engineering.

— Scientists had thought that dinosaur fossils were little more than mineralized rocks. But researchers led by the University of Liverpool have found evidence that traces of original organic molecules, including collagen, still exist inside dinosaur bones dating back about 66 million years.

If proteins can survive in fossils for millions of years, scientists may gain an entirely new way to study extinct animals, says Science Daily.

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U.S. officials tie cyclospora outbreak involving iceberg lettuce to 3 more states — Georgia, Tennessee, Texas — for a total of 20

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong was the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination for governor, leading in the polls just before the primary by roughly 20 percentage points. She lost narrowly to David Crowley.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed held a comfortable lead over Haley Stevens in the race for the Democratic Senate nomination, according to the polls — by margins of 11 percent to 19 percent. He held on to win by one percentage point.

In Los Angeles, a recent poll indicated Mayor Karen Bass held a large lead over her opponent, Councilmember Nithya Raman. The poll, which was reported by the California Post, turned out to be fake.

. . .

Such wildly misleading campaign coverage forces journalists to examine the shortcomings of a key part of their election toolkit:

• The New York Times: How the Polls Got It So Wrong in Wisconsin

• Poynter: A fake poll made real news. What does that say about political polling?

• Status: The media’s fake poll flub

• American Crisis, by Margaret Sullivan: Polls, pundits and horserace coverage are NOT what we need for the midterms

• The New York Times: Why Polling Chaos Could Create Big Problems for American Politics

So reputable news organizations presented what was in essence a fiction in each of those races. And as the Times points out, polls no longer measure elections so much as drive them:

All of this is happening at the dawn of the 2028 presidential primary season, when dozens of candidates are likely to be defined in part by polls that cement impressions and set narratives that may not be tethered to political reality.

“Every candidate in 2028 will have their own cooked poll factory,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist who was a senior aide on Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 campaign for president. “Polls now are not just a way of measuring the horse race. It’s a way for candidates and their allies to influence the horse race.”

While we can wring our hands about news organizations making polls the core of campaign coverage, Sullivan laments other foibles:

The media also is hung up on sticking labels on Democratic factions — socialist! centrist! progressive! — and in pointing out the extremes on the left while normalizing the extremes on the right.

Sullivan points to a post by former newspaper executive Melanie Sill:

Today’s home pages and election roundups are a case in point: They view outcomes entirely in the context of political factions. I don’t think most voters think that way.

So far in the midterms, major outlets are focusing coverage on fighting within major political parties instead of on voters and the issues that Americans care about. Missing almost entirely: What are candidates promising, or what have they done, about health care, inflation, and the health of our democracy?

I suspect more than one newsroom leader would argue that they provide all the information voters need, thank you very much. That amid the horserace coverage, citizens can find candidate positions on a wide array of issues.

I know they believe that. I’ve listened to them make that case. But it’s disingenuous.

If the point of campaign coverage is to help citizens with their core responsibility in a democracy — voting — why run polls at all? What value do they have in deciding the direction of the community — the town, county, state, or country?

Newsroom self-reflection may extend to the accuracy of polls, but not to the point of polls. News organizations could focus election coverage on producing a handbook of sorts for voters: comparing the needs of the community with the positions and experiences of the candidates.

Such a project would be immensely valuable to citizens, but not to the business of campaign coverage. Such a project would not entice citizen-consumers to return day-in and day-out to their screens to follow the entertainment of politics as it is packaged by news organizations.

In short, news as a democracy support service is not profitable. Election coverage needs to pay the bills. That is the price we pay for monetizing democratic decision-making.

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After pressure from consumers and politicians, General Mills says 90 percent of its U.S. retail products now are free of artificial dyes

You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

The songwriter, singer, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist died at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer, according to a family spokesman.

Dolly published 3,000 of her songs. Her music “ran the gamut: mountain bluegrass and soul-inflected countrypolitan, disco-era pop and covers of classic rock touchstones written by Neil Young and Led Zeppelin — all of it rendered indelible by her irrepressible spirit and alternately keening and gossamer soprano drawl,” says the Times.

Dolly was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001, was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

But perhaps even more remarkable than the accolades and awards was Dolly’s “unstinting generosity of spirit — her commitment, born of deep religious convictions and an immense heart, to seeing the humanity in all people,” says the Times.

Her tenant farmer father’s illiteracy inspired Dolly to establish the Imagination Library, which as of today has distributed more than 332 million books to babies and young children.

She gave generously to Sevier County, her home in Tennessee. In the early 1990s, she started offering $500 to local high school graduates, to help reduce the dropout rate, and in 2000 added five $15,000 college scholarships. In 2007, she held a benefit concert to raise money for a new hospital.

In 2016, Dolly organized a telethon, “Smoky Mountains Rise,” which raised more than $9 million after wildfires in eastern Tennessee, and she funded grants for families whose homes had been destroyed. In 2024, after Hurricane Helene, she, her foundation and her businesses gave $2 million to relief efforts.

She also donated $1 million in 2017 to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, in honor of a niece who’d been treated for leukemia there. She gave another $1 million to Vanderbilt in 2020 to help fund the development of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, and $1 million more for pediatric infectious disease research in 2022.

Jane Fonda, Dolly’s co-star in the 1980 movie “9 to 5,” says, ““I never knew anyone like her. She was simultaneously a naughty, playful southern gal from the hollows of Tennessee and a deep, soulful thinker who could see through people right down to their true selves.”

At 9:25 p.m. (in reference to the movie) on Tuesday, the Empire State Building lit up in pink sparkle in Dolly’s honor.

Here are 15 “essential songs” of Dolly’s, according to the Times, which says: “Underlying each tune she sings, and lyric she writes, is the irreducible character of Dolly, a person so palpably genuine she became a virtual synonym for sincerity without ever seeming tedious or naïve.”

Here is Dolly’s life in pictures, from the Times.

Thank you, Dolly, for everything.

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You can call the Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and be connected to the offices of your representative and senators. To email your House member and your two senators, you can connect to their websites at Congress.gov. Most lawmakers seem to only accept emails from their constituents, but these leaders accept emails from Americans nationwide, at:

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader John Thune