Good evening. There’s a lot to get through today, starting with the biggest press freedom fight of Trump’s second term: the White House has physically barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters from its grounds, confiscating their badges on live television after a weekend Truth Social tirade. Legal experts call it unconstitutional, courts have already ruled against similar moves twice, and even Trump’s own staff say they found out about it the same way the rest of us did. What happened this weekend isn’t normal. Confiscating press badges from reporters, live, on camera, isn’t “media criticism,” it’s the government deciding which outlets get to do their jobs based on whether their coverage flatters the president, and once that precedent exists, every outlet, including this one, is on notice.
Meanwhile the Iran war keeps widening. The Houthis just struck deep inside Saudi Arabia for the first time, Trump says he’s got a “big decision” coming on whether to “annihilate” Iran’s regime, and a new UN report alleges U.S. war crimes tied to a school bombing that killed dozens of children. And Trump spent his Saturday announcing he’s building an “AI Force” and dismissing AI safety concerns as a hoax, even as Senate Democrats demand an investigation into an AI hallucination that nearly triggered a strike on a Chinese ship.
Reporters getting physically barred and a president openly floating adding The New York Times and The Washington Post next isn’t a sign of strength. It’s a sign independent reporting is landing hard enough that they’d rather shut the door than answer the questions, which is why this coverage can’t stop, and why it needs readers willing to fund it directly. If you’re able to, become a paid subscriber today. Independent journalism doesn’t run on White House access, it runs on people who show up when it matters, and this is one of those moments.
Here’s the news:
White House Expands Press Ban in Major First Amendment Assault:
White House staffers say they were blindsided by the media ban while Susie Wiles was out of town. White House staffers, including senior officials, say they learned of Trump’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico reporters at the same time as the public, with the decision reportedly made while Chief of Staff Susie Wiles was out of town. Politico reports that more than a dozen current and former Trump officials called the move “puzzling” and a “head-scratcher,” and Trump gave no specific article that triggered it. Sources say he’s floated a media ban before but acted on it in Wiles’s absence, and he’s also considered relocating the press corps out of the West Wing into the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Despite pushback even from parts of his own base, sources say Trump intends the ban to be “real and permanent,” and he’s suggested The New York Times and Washington Post could be added next. Trump admitted that America is being just as repressive as China:
Reporters from all three banned outlets were turned away from the White House on Saturday. MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner said her badge flashed red and was confiscated after an officer said it had been disabled “above him,” CNN’s Betsy Klein had her credential taken after about a minute in the security kiosk, and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett was denied entry with her pass confiscated by the Secret Service. CNN and MS NOW went on air live from across the street rather than from their usual White House position. Trump had announced the ban a day earlier on Truth Social, accusing the outlets of “FAKE NEWS” and falsely claiming Politico received an “illegal” $8 million government subsidy, a claim Politico called “false and thoroughly debunked.”
Legal experts and press advocates widely condemned the ban as unconstitutional. White House Correspondents’ Association President Jacqui Heinrich said press protections “do not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage” and called on the administration to restore access immediately. Jameel Jaffer of Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute called the ban “pretty clearly unconstitutional” and predicted a legal challenge would succeed, tying it to the earlier AP ban and Pentagon access restrictions. Former President Obama called the idea of banning an outlet like Fox News under a Democratic administration “unimaginable,” and courts have already twice found the administration violated the Constitution by suspending reporters’ press passes.
Iran War Updates:
The U.S. military says it has escorted a billion barrels of oil out of the Persian Gulf as Trump weighs a “big decision” on striking Iran. Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a video Saturday that the military has escorted 1 billion barrels of crude and more than 2,000 commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz over the past couple of months, calling the recent traffic volume the highest in six months. The push comes after a rough stretch for energy markets, with diesel topping $6 a gallon and Brent crude spiking from $93 to $109 a barrel before easing back to $103. President Trump told Axios Thursday he has a “big decision coming up” on whether to “annihilate” Iran’s regime ahead of a planned meeting with Persian Gulf leaders next week. Meanwhile Iran’s Mohsen Rezaei said Tehran is awaiting Trump’s response to conditions for ending the war, including lifting the naval blockade and releasing seized assets, demands the administration has previously dismissed as unrealistic. Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene are placing the blame on Donald Trump:
The Houthis expanded their attacks deep into Saudi Arabia, striking Riyadh and Yanbu and disrupting the capital’s main airport. The Iran-backed group said it targeted “sensitive sites” in Riyadh and Aramco oil facilities in Yanbu, some 700 miles from the Yemen border, after Saudi strikes on Houthi-held Sanaa; the attack triggered Riyadh’s first air raid alert since the conflict intensified and left King Khalid International Airport facing major delays and cancellations. Fighting between Houthi and Saudi-backed Yemeni forces has also killed 48 people in the past day, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Saudi Arabia “should be kept outside” the Iran-U.S. conflict. The escalation is straining regional defense pacts: Pakistan’s military says it will defend Saudi Arabia “to any extent” under the new Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Turkey, and the U.N. Security Council warned the escalation “risks further expanding the conflict” and threatening global trade. Shipping through the nearby Bab el-Mandeb Strait has already dropped sharply, with roughly 3,000 Yemeni refugees fleeing to Djibouti in the past week alone.
Iran and the U.S. traded accusations over alleged war crimes as international diplomacy around the war continues. A U.N.-commissioned human rights report found “reasonable grounds” that the U.S. committed war crimes in Iran, including a school bombing in Minab that killed dozens of children; the White House dismissed the report as “unserious nonsense,” while Iranian spokesman Ismaeil Baqaei accused Washington of “projection.” Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi separately called for a “fundamental change of course” in global affairs, describing the U.S. and Israeli strikes as part of “a broader pattern of unpunished aggression.” The State Department has approved visas for Iran’s president and foreign minister to attend next week’s U.N. General Assembly despite the ongoing war, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin is pressing Trump to confront Xi Jinping over reports Iran used Chinese satellite data in a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Jordan. Iran also executed a man Saturday accused of passing missile-site intelligence to Israel, as Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution to extend monitoring of Iran sanctions. More Republicans are breaking from Trump:
AI:
Trump announced he’s forming an “AI Force” and will soon name an AI czar, while dismissing safety concerns as a hoax. In Truth Social posts Saturday, Trump said he’s “forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force,” and will announce an AI “Czar” soon, joking that “only High I.Q. individuals need apply.” He also seemed to partly acknowledge risks, saying the government would go after “BAD” actors using the existing criminal and civil justice system, but broadly framed AI safety worries as part of a “SICK conspiracy” comparable to what he called past Democratic hoaxes like “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “Global Warming.” Trump also posted a poll asking followers to help rebrand “Artificial Intelligence” with a new name, offering options like “Superior Intelligence” and “Supreme Intelligence.” He gave no details on what the AI Force or AI czar would actually do, and CNN says the White House has not yet responded to questions about the roles.
The announcement lands amid mounting pressure from both parties and industry figures to slow AI development and add safeguards. Barack Obama used a Friday appearance at Colgate University to say it’s “good that some of the leading companies have said we need to slow this down,” arguing government ultimately has to regulate the technology, and he’s urged 2028 Democratic hopefuls to put AI at the center of their platforms. The debate intensified after an Anthropic researcher resigned publicly, warning that leading AI companies “earnestly believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade” and are “gambling with our lives,” prompting Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to release a plan to “pace the frontier” that Sam Altman and Elon Musk reportedly endorsed. Trump, by contrast, has sided with figures like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who called the AI backlash a “hoax” onstage with Trump at the All-In Summit and vowed “we’re not going to let” a slowdown happen. Trump reiterated Saturday that he wants to keep the U.S. ahead of China and won’t “hinder or stifle” the industry’s growth.
AI policy is set to be a major focus of next week’s diplomatic events in Washington and New York. The Trump administration will hold a high-level AI event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, and the following day tech executives including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Google’s Sundar Pichai are expected at a White House state dinner tied to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit. A White House official told CNN that AI safety will be “on the agenda” when Trump meets Xi, and officials have also discussed a possible separate meeting between Trump and major AI executives around the summit. David Sacks, who previously served as Trump’s AI and crypto czar until stepping down in March, now chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, leaving open who might take the newly announced AI czar role.
Other news:
Top Senate Democrats are demanding an investigation after AI-generated intelligence nearly triggered a military strike on a Chinese ship. In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, Sens. Mark Warner, Jack Reed and Chris Coons cited CNN’s reporting that a special operations analyst used AI to generate a report falsely identifying nuclear weapons components on a Chinese cargo vessel. The military began preparing to intercept the ship before officials realized, just before the operation, that the AI-generated report was “entirely false,” and a source told CNN this kind of hallucination has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community. The senators also tied the episode to a deadly February strike on a school in Minab, Iran, that killed nearly 200 people, after commanders reportedly bypassed warnings that AI-linked intelligence databases were severely out of date. They’re calling for inspectors general to get an “immediate investigation” with “unrestricted access” to both incidents and any others not yet made public, as the Pentagon separately clashes with Anthropic over its refusal to loosen safety guardrails on Claude for military use.
Germany’s Carsten Breuer won a secret NATO vote to become the next chair of the alliance’s military committee. Breuer, who has led Germany’s armed forces since 2023, secured the backing of at least 17 of NATO’s 32 chiefs of defense in Saturday’s closed-door ballot in Copenhagen, beating Canada’s Jennie Carignan for the post. Outgoing chair, Italy’s Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, congratulated Breuer on X, praising his “operational judgement” and “deep familiarity with this Alliance.” Breuer takes over next July for a three-year term, and the rest of the vote tally was kept secret to avoid stoking division. He was widely seen as the favorite given Germany’s status as Europe’s top defense spender and its implicit backing from Washington, while Carignan’s bid was seen as hampered by strained U.S.-Canada relations; the result reflects Berlin’s growing role in NATO’s command structure, including new leadership over forces protecting Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Patrick Clancy and his wife will give their first public comments on his ex-wife’s Massachusetts murder trial in a 60 Minutes interview airing Sunday. Clancy tells correspondent Ross Douthat, “I live with it every day, but I think I did the best I could,” while also discussing his grief and how he still talks to his late children. The interview comes as prosecutors decide later this month whether to retry Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of killing the couple’s three young children in January 2023, after a summer trial ended in mistrial when a lone juror rejected her postpartum psychosis defense. Clancy, paralyzed from the waist down since he found his injured wife and children, has faced intense online speculation and conspiracy theories, prompting his attorney to threaten legal action over what he called a “relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign.” His new wife, Rachel Danis, also defends him in the interview, saying she doesn’t understand “how the story’s been so twisted” given that he is “the most selfless father and supportive partner.”
A 77-year-old shopper died after allegedly being attacked by a teenage Walmart worker’s parents following a dispute over a shopping cart. Bert Atienza and his wife Josephine were grocery shopping in a Norfolk, Virginia Walmart when a 17-year-old employee nearly struck Josephine with a cart, leading to an exchange of words and the teen allegedly throwing a can at the couple. The teen then called her parents, Travis White and Erika Mitchell, who surveillance video shows finding Atienza in the store and allegedly shoving, punching and kicking him until he fell and hit a shelving unit. Atienza was taken to a hospital and died the next day of blunt force trauma, with his death ruled a homicide. White, 44, and Mitchell, 42, are being held without bond, and their daughter has also been charged with assault and battery, aggravated malicious wounding, and conspiracy to commit a felony.
California health officials are warning that an infected, unvaccinated traveler exposed people to measles across six counties via Amtrak trains and buses. The passenger entered the state on a train that reached Los Angeles on September 10, then continued through Bakersfield, Stockton, Oroville, Sacramento and Emeryville before leaving California for Denver, exposing anyone on the same trains, buses or in the stations along the route. Officials are working with federal and local health departments to notify those potentially exposed, with assistant state public health officer Rita Nguyen stressing the importance of MMR vaccination. The warning comes amid the country’s worst measles resurgence in decades, with Pennsylvania reporting 731 cases and four deaths this year and now seeking emergency CDC help, a request complicated by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s earlier instruction that the CDC not publicly recognize those deaths. A similar incident this month saw a measles-infected Amtrak rider expose more than 250 people between Missouri and Chicago.
South Dakota’s Republican secretary of state, Monae Johnson, is breaking with her party to endorse the Democratic candidate for her old job. Johnson lost her GOP renomination in June to Heather Baxter, a Trump-aligned candidate who backs “robust post-election audits” and expanded hand counting, and Johnson wrote in a Saturday column that she’s now backing Democrat Terrence Davis because “the integrity, stability, and professionalism of this office is at stake.” She said the state deserves a secretary of state who builds “confidence through performance rather than provocation” and urged voters to look past party labels. Baxter responded that her primary win, 59 percent to 41 percent, reflected the will of Republican voters and argued party affiliation signals real governing philosophy for an office that runs elections. Davis thanked Johnson for the endorsement, while South Dakota’s Republican House speaker, Jon Hansen, blasted the move on X as a “huge mistake” and urged voters not to “hand our elections over to the Democrats.”
See you soon.
— Aaron
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