On Monday, the president of the United States stood on the South Lawn to open a new helipad, and almost nobody could hear him. The television networks had refused to send a pool crew, so there was no shared microphone. Even Newsmax, trying to carry the event, had to tell its viewers the president was inaudible. It looked like a glitch. It was really a preview of what happens when a government starts deciding which journalists are present.

Overnight, a federal judge pushed back. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump himself put on the bench, ordered the White House to immediately restore the press passes of CNN, MS NOW and Politico for 14 days, according to the Associated Press. Trump banned the three outlets last week over what he called fake news. Only later did his Justice Department cite national security, and Kelly found nothing in the record before the lawsuit to support it. Trump had already warned that other outlets would follow.

Hours earlier, another Trump case collapsed. An Iowa judge threw out his lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose final poll before the 2024 election showed Kamala Harris ahead in a state Trump went on to win by 13 points, according to TheWrap. Trump called the poll fraud. Judge Scott Beattie called it political speech and warned that letting the suit continue could discourage others from reporting on public affairs, according to NBC News. The case was dismissed with prejudice, according to CNN, yet Trump plans to appeal, and his suits against the BBC, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal remain alive.

Losing in court is not the same as losing, though. In July 2025, Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview while it needed federal approval for a merger. Stephen Colbert called it a bribe on air. Three days later CBS canceled his show, calling the move purely financial, and Trump said he loved it. That September, ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly threatened the network.

The pressure has only grown. In January, the FCC told broadcasters that late night and daytime talk shows may no longer be exempt from equal time rules, according to Deadline. This month Kimmel moved his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico from ABC to YouTube, where it passed 8 million views. Carr calls it a hoax, and the White House denies any threat. Meanwhile, the FCC ordered all eight stations ABC owns, including KTRK in Houston, to file license renewals years early, according to PBS. ABC is suing and calls it retaliation. The FCC says the review concerns Disney’s diversity practices.

Why should press passes and talk show bookings matter to us? Each of these moves shapes what reaches our screens before we vote. When a network pushes a Senate candidate’s interview online, the people most likely to miss it are those of us who still rely on broadcast television. And when the White House launches its own round-the-clock YouTube stream, Trump TV, right after banning reporters, we are being offered a replacement for independent reporting, not an addition to it.

The president’s supporters argue that White House access is a privilege and that the media has treated him unfairly for years. But the First Amendment was written for exactly the moment when a powerful official dislikes the coverage, and so far the courts keep saying so.

A judge can restore a press pass. No judge can restore the interview that never aired, the poll that goes unpublished or the joke a network decided was too risky to tell. Go beyond the headlines…

Trump is on voters’ minds in the midterms — and they’re not happy, poll shows

Iran’s president says his people have been ‘victims of terrorism’ by US at UN General Assembly

Election officials fight wavering voter trust by making mundane processes visible and recruiting citizens to help

OECD: U.S. economy to grow faster than its allies

New study reveals how voters use nonpolitical signals to judge candidates

Scientists build world’s most accurate atomic clock

Thing 2.0? This Creepy-Cute Robot Walks on Its Fingers

LinkedIn adds new tools to fight fake profiles and bogus work histories

Mexico’s Population Growth Slows to Two-Decade Low

Poverty rate tests Argentina’s Milei ahead of election

The post September 24, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

See the live results →

The post Who Do You Trust for Your News? Cast Your Vote appeared first on Latina Lista.

The federal agents who usually chase smugglers, traffickers and people who sexually exploit children have a new assignment this fall — combing through voter rolls.

According to Axios, Homeland Security Investigations has shifted agent time away from its normal priorities to hunt for noncitizens who registered or voted. Immigration fraud staff at Citizenship and Immigration Services spent three weeks doing nothing but reviewing voter files, a person familiar with the work told the outlet. A Justice Department official called the effort a tier one priority for the White House and promised prosecutions will rise every week until Election Day.

So what has all that muscle produced? According to Homeland Security Investigations official Matthew Millhollin, about 1,600 open cases and 160 arrests. According to the Justice Department, 70 people have been charged with unlawful voting or registration offenses since January 2025.

The Associated Press counts more than 211 million active registered voters nationwide. That works out to roughly one arrest for every 1.3 million voters, and the Justice Department says many of those arrests end in related charges, like lying about citizenship, rather than charges for voting. In July, the Department of Homeland Security claimed more than 250,000 potential noncitizens were registered in just four states, according to Votebeat. In a recorded August call, federal officials later described their original Nevada figure as a ceiling.

None of this means the problem is zero. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill revealed in July that a motor vehicle software error registered about 6,600 noncitizens, and fewer than 400 of them cast ballots, according to the Associated Press. Illegal voting is a crime, and Justice Department officials argue that even one bad actor can undercut an election’s security. They have a point.

The accountability, though, runs in one direction. When Axios asked whether the officials or vendors behind registration errors would face consequences the way individual voters do, the Justice Department declined to say. The software that made the mistake gets replaced. The person who trusted the government form risks a felony and deportation.

The bigger danger lands on citizens, and Texas offers a preview. According to Votebeat, the state flagged 2,724 registered voters as possible noncitizens using a federal database. Texas later confirmed that at least 578 of them, more than one in five, were citizens all along. Most of those were flagged simply because their passport information had not yet reached the federal system. The state referred 117 cases for investigation, and seven people have been charged in Tarrant County, in a state with more than 18 million registered voters.

That kind of error rate becomes far more dangerous in a national dragnet running at full speed six weeks before an election. Naturalized citizens make up about one in 10 eligible voters, according to the Pew Research Center, nearly 24 million people. Many live in mixed status families or share names with relatives who are not citizens, the kind of overlap a match built on names, birthdays and addresses can easily confuse.

A lawful voter who hears that federal agents are hunting through voter rolls for arrests may decide staying home is safer. That is not deterrence against fraud. It is deterrence against voting. Mike Davis, who leads a legal group closely aligned with the president, told Axios the indictments are a major deterrent for this election. The question is who, exactly, is being deterred.

We should want clean voter rolls. We should also want investigators chasing traffickers and predators, and a government that fixes its own broken systems before blaming the people it failed. A federal whistleblower has already warned, according to the Associated Press, that this effort leans on unreliable data that could wrongly implicate citizens. That warning deserves our attention before November, not after. Go beyond the headlines…

Poll: Neither Americans nor Canadians wanted Trump’s trade war

A nation renamed stands up at the UN: ‘Say our name. Naoero.’

Other presidents have let white‑collar criminals dodge financial penalties – but not like Trump

Exclusive: New proposal would give up to $50,000 to first-time home buyers

Invisible Work: Who Gets Saddled With It and How to Dodge It

One Critical Factor Predicts Longevity Better Than Diet or Exercise, Study Reveals

Fragment of world’s oldest known peace treaty found in Turkey

Voters are turning to AI on politics. Is it up to the task?

Colombia eases gun restrictions despite fears of more violence

Inside Cuba’s Mass Exodus: How Losing a Quarter of the Population Has Changed the Island

The post September 23, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

Our names, birth dates, home addresses and the last digits of our Social Security numbers are the dullest facts about us. For more than a year, the Justice Department has been trying to pull exactly those facts out of state voter files. Judges keep telling it no.

The latest no came from Vermont last Thursday. U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Lanthier dismissed the department’s lawsuit and found the demand lacked any factual basis or lawful purpose. Bloomberg Government counted it as the department’s 24th consecutive loss in federal trial court. A federal appeals court ruled the same way against the department in Michigan in June, according to Votebeat.

So why keep pushing? A department official explained it in a Rhode Island courtroom in March. According to the Brennan Center, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s voting section said the plan was to run the collected voter data through the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database, a system originally built to check immigration status for government benefits.

That database is now in front of the Supreme Court. According to SCOTUSblog, the administration rebuilt SAVE to include records of people born in this country, to draw on Social Security numbers and to let states search voters in bulk. In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the rebuilt system. She wrote that states were removing citizens from their rolls based on inaccurate information. A federal appeals court in Washington refused to lift her order on Sept. 4. Four days later, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to step in. He argued that SAVE disqualifies no one and only tells states whether the government can confirm citizenship. The groups that sued filed their answer on Sept. 15. As of this writing, the court has not ruled.

None of this stays in a courtroom. A database error does not care about our politics or where our grandparents were born. Texas has handed over or agreed to hand over its full voter list, according to the Brennan Center. State officials flagged 2,724 registered Texans as potential noncitizens, then began checking whether those voters had already proven citizenship to the Department of Public Safety, according to Votebeat. In Denton County, ProPublica reported that SAVE flagged 84 voters. Twelve of them proved they were citizens, and most of the rest were removed after they did not answer a mailed notice. The county’s elections chief told ProPublica he believed most of those removed were eligible. In Missouri, 70 county clerks from both parties warned lawmakers that the system was flagging people they knew to be citizens, according to Popular Information.

A notice lost in the mail, a move across town, a name spelled one way on a birth certificate and another way on a license. That is often all it takes.

Privacy is the other cost. The Brennan Center warns that one federal collection of this personal data would be a prime target for hackers. At least 16 states, including Texas and Florida, have provided or pledged full lists that include driver’s license and Social Security numbers, according to the Brennan Center.

The administration says clean rolls protect honest voters, and accurate lists do matter. But CBS News reported that claims of widespread noncitizen voting have largely been debunked and that such cases are very rare. States already had tools to check eligibility one voter at a time. What is new is Washington assembling something close to a national list of us, which has never existed before.

Election Day is Nov. 3. The Supreme Court could decide any day whether that system goes live before we vote. The simplest protection takes five minutes: we can confirm that our registration is still active today and confirm it again in October. Go beyond the headlines…

Americans Value Press Freedom but Differ on Its Limits

Messy, troubled, unpredictable: Diplomats describe a world in turmoil as UN opens annual meeting

White House launches Trump TV following press bans

Women to inherit $124 trillion in ‘great wealth transfer.’ Many aren’t ready

The science of self-worth (and how to boost yours)

Does Tutankhamen’s tomb hold his stepmother Queen Nefertiti’s remains? New study offers clues

North Korea’s underground nuclear explosions caused a serious problem, new research suggests it’s getting worse

X will now tell users when governments have forced it to limit their posts

Mexico bans cell phones in elementary and secondary schools

Costa Rica Population Could Begin Shrinking Earlier Than Expected

The post September 22, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

A head of lettuce pulled up to a gas pump… That sentence could be the start of a very bad joke, or more accurately, be a window into what is happening with our gas supplies. The fact of the matter is heads of lettuce are one of the most diesel-dependent things in our kitchens. Diesel tractors plant and harvest it. A diesel truck hauls it, often in a refrigerated trailer, across several states before it reaches the produce aisle. That’s why a number AAA posted this weekend matters to every one of us, including those of us who ride the bus, walk to work, or haven’t owned a car in years.

On Sunday, the national average for diesel reached $6.51 a gallon, the highest ever recorded, according to AAA. A year ago it was $3.70. That’s a jump of about 76 percent (!), and nearly a dollar of it arrived in the past month alone, according to the same AAA data.

Most of us never buy a drop of diesel directly. We buy it hidden inside almost everything else. Trucks moved 73 percent of the nation’s freight in 2024, according to the American Trucking Associations. Diesel also runs farm machinery, freight trains, delivery vans and garbage trucks. GasBuddy analysis estimated the economy is absorbing an extra $300 million in diesel costs every 24 hours. Over time, much of that bites our own household budgets.

The grocery industry is already telling us what comes next. Kroger CEO Greg Foran said on an earnings call this month that he expects “the pressure is actually going to mount.” Smithfield Foods said the impact is starting to show up in the second half of the year. Meat and produce feel it first because they’re restocked constantly. Some businesses have already added fees to online orders and mailed packages, according to Transport Topics.

Then there’s winter. Heating oil is a close cousin of diesel, and the two prices tend to move together. Nearly 5 million households heat with oil, 82 percent of them in the Northeast, according to Energy Information Administration data. Those families are projected to pay 31.3 percent more to stay warm this winter, about $2,300 on average, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. The group also reports that roughly one in six households is already behind on utility bills.

None of this is a mystery. The Congressional Budget Office found the Iran war responsible for more than one-third of this year’s rise in inflation and expects it to add about half a percentage point more in early 2027, mostly through energy disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. The weekend brought no relief. Iran-backed Houthi forces launched attacks aimed at Saudi oil sites in Riyadh and Yanbu on Saturday, while President Trump told Fox News he’s in “deciding mode” on whether to escalate. He has argued the higher prices are worth what the war has accomplished and predicted they’ll eventually fall.

He could be right. Futures traders are betting heating oil will cost less in December than in October. But the same paper notes traders misjudged this before, when prices dropped during a June pause in fighting and then climbed again once it ended.

What we can count on is this: diesel is the price of moving our lives around, whether or not we ever touch a diesel nozzle. Those of us on fixed incomes, those of us who rent, and those of us already choosing between groceries and the power bill will feel it hardest. As leaders gather at the United Nations this week, the decisions they make will reach our kitchens and thermostats long before they reach the history books. Go beyond the headlines…

Poll: Here’s what really matters for ‘electability’

What to know as world leaders converge at the United Nations this week

Senate GOP sees battleground map widen amid voter anger over economy

Iran war causes global pain at the pump

Why do people protest? Six decades of research points to social connections over personal grievances

EPA to include abortion drugs in chemical tests of drinking water

Stanford scientists discover the human brain may actually be two separate organs

Pinterest teases a new ‘Restyle’ feature that lets you redesign your room with AI

Argentina’s Left stages ‘March of Anger’ over Milei’s austerity measures

Drone footage shows severe drought hitting river in Brazil – video

The post September 21, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

Treviño was right to be concerned. According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), check fraud rose from over 350,000 in 2021 to more than 680,000 in 2022. The rise is staggering, thanks in part, to “check washing.” Authorities say that’s when chemicals are used to erase a check’s payee and amount so thieves can rewrite it to themselves. As a result, the FBI and Postal service are now urging people to avoid mailing checks if possible and choose electronic payments instead. 

Treviño knew there was a risk in mailing checks, if not for the mail tampering, but for the eye rolls and snickers from young recipients who look at receiving checks as ‘prehistoric.’ 

“I just kept thinking there was a better way to send money, and I knew AI could help,” she recalled. “After a few days of working with different LLMs, I came up with PurseLink.” 

PurseLink, a non-subscription service, enables senders to not only gift money electronically but personalize the experience. 

A small transaction fee, depending on the gift amount, enables funds to be delivered via a card insert that can be printed and tucked inside a physical card or sent through email. Recipients simply scan their unique link to choose from a list of preferred cash transfer apps chosen by the sender. Once the recipient chooses how they want their gift sent, a notification is sent to the sender who transfers the money directly. This peer-to-peer approach ensures PurseLink never actually touches the funds. For those seeking even greater security, an optional claim code can be applied. The best part is recipients collect their gift without ever having to download a new app. 

“Since building it, I’ve used it several times and, if I say so myself, really love it. It lifts that small nagging worry of wondering if your check actually made it to the person,” said Treviño. “It used to be I wouldn’t hear if someone got my card or not, forcing me to make that awkward call of asking if the card arrived. Now, PurseLink opens that communication, if they want the gift,” laughed Treviño. “Usually, they do.”

The post A grandmother takes AI into her own hands appeared first on Latina Lista.

In San Juan, Puerto Rico this summer, people spent hours in line waiting for water trucks. Puerto Rico’s governor declared an emergency in late July after key reservoirs dropped too low to serve communities. By August, more than 500,000 people in seven of the island’s largest municipalities were going 48 hours or longer without running water, according to Yale Climate Connections. San Juan had its driest July on record, according to the federal drought office at NOAA. 

Out West, the story is similar. Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, hit its lowest level on record on Aug. 6, according to Bureau of Reclamation data. The Colorado River that fills it supplies up to 40 million people across Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, according to the bureau. Under the Plains, the aquifer beneath Kansas and Texas farm country has dropped more than 200 feet in some spots, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. 

So we have less water. That makes this an odd moment to get more relaxed about what is in it. Yet three times since May, Washington has chosen that direction.

Start with forever chemicals, known as PFAS. These are man-made chemicals, used in products like nonstick pans, that do not break down in nature or in our bodies. They are linked to some cancers, liver damage, higher cholesterol and weaker immune systems, as Food Safety Magazine summarized this week. At least 45 percent of our tap water contains one or more of them, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study that tested kitchen taps in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. 

In May, the EPA proposed erasing the legal limits on four of the six PFAS now regulated in drinking water and letting water systems ask for until 2031 to meet the other two, according to the agency’s own announcement. Then came a memo, made public this week, in which the EPA’s water office withdrew the advice that helped states require factories to test for these chemicals and limit them before wastewater reaches a river. The memo says the advice “caused confusion” and that the office will consider whether new advice is needed. 

The third move came Sept. 4. The EPA and the Army floated an option that would keep federal protection only for streams and wetlands that hold water every day of the year. In dry country, plenty of streams run only part of the year, and lawyers writing for the legal blog Gravel2Gavel expect the sharpest effects in arid regions. Those are the places already running low. Wetlands matter because they work like sponges and filters, soaking up rain and trapping pollution before it travels downstream.

The EPA’s side deserves a fair hearing. Administrator Lee Zeldin says the goal is a lasting definition that follows a 2023 Supreme Court ruling and ends years of uncertainty. The agency notes that states, tribes and local governments can still protect whatever Washington lets go. And the two toughest PFAS limits stay at four parts per trillion. 

The trouble is who gets handed the job? States rationing a shrinking river. A territory where infrastructure problems have made shortages worse, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory, and where residents have no vote for president and no voting member of Congress. Drought can cut water quality as well as supply, according to NOAA’s drought portal. When there is less water to go around, every gallon needs to be cleaner, not dirtier. 

Public comment on the wetlands proposal closes Oct. 9. Reclamation’s September outlook, reported by Newsweek, shows Lake Mead sinking to about 1,007 feet by next July. We are about to learn whether we can loosen the rules on water at the very moment we have the least of it. Go beyond the headlines…

Gen Z believes in the billionaire tax

Russians begin 3 days of voting in a parliamentary election set to cement the Kremlin’s power

UN report: U.S. may have committed war crimes in Iran

Family income rose and poverty fell in 2025 — but safety net cuts could erase gains

People who take offense at everything may be protecting wounded dignity

Scientists Created Mice With Half-Human Brains. The Hybrid Animals Could Revolutionize Our Understanding of Neurological Disorders

A $100 detector can see invisible particles raining down from space

A grandmother takes AI into her own hands

Rare Aztec manuscript returns to Mexico on loan after nearly two centuries in France

Central America Drought Kills Cattle and Threatens Food Supply

The post September 18, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

Twelve people voted, without a single dissent, to make borrowing cost more for the rest of us. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point, to a range of 3.75 to 4 percent, which recorded the vote as 12 to 0. It was the first increase since the summer of 2023, according to the Associated Press.

The reason fits in one word: prices. Consumer prices rose 3.4 percent in August from a year earlier, according to Labor Department figures reported by the AP. The Fed aims for 2 percent, and the AP notes inflation has run above that mark for more than five years. The Fed’s statement says simply that inflation remains elevated.

That leaves us in an odd spot. Groceries, gas and rent already cost more, and now the main tool for fighting those prices makes our debts cost more too. We get squeezed from both sides while we wait for the medicine to work.

Credit cards move first, because most card rates follow the Fed. Matt Schulz of LendingTree told CNBC that cardholders should expect their rate to climb a quarter point within a couple of months. For one household, he said, that is a dollar or two a month. Added together, it comes to roughly $2 billion in extra interest over the next 12 months, according to a WalletHub analysis.

Cars were already a stretch. The average new car cost $50,089 last month, according to Kelley Blue Book. The average loan rate was 7 percent for a new car and 10.6 percent for a used one, according to Edmunds. The average monthly payment reached $765 in the second quarter, according to Experian.

Mortgages are a slower story, since fixed home loans follow the bond market more than the Fed. Still, they were climbing before anyone voted. The typical fixed mortgage running 30 years averaged 6.76 percent in the week ending Sept. 10, up from 6.35 percent a year earlier, according to Freddie Mac. Nearly half of existing mortgages carry rates of 4 percent or lower, according to the National Association of Realtors as reported by the AP. Those of us holding such loans are protected and also stuck, because moving means swapping a cheap loan for a costly one. Those of us still renting and saving for a first home have no such protection. When we finally buy, we borrow at today’s rates.

Not everyone loses. Savers should earn a bit more. Wealthier and generally older households will handle higher rates better, since they borrow less and save more. That puts the weight on younger families, renters and anyone carrying a balance.

The Fed has an answer. Chair Kevin Warsh told reporters the Fed cannot control any single price, naming oil and groceries, but it can keep those increases from spreading through the whole economy. In plain terms, officials believe we can absorb this.

They also expect to ask more of us. The median Fed official sees the benchmark rate near 4.1 percent by the end of this year, which implies one more increase, according to the Fed’s economic projections. Those same projections put inflation at 3.7 percent this year, 2.3 percent next year, and back to 2 percent only in 2029. The ripple does not stop at our borders either, since countries and companies abroad that borrow in dollars tend to pay more when our rates rise.

We vote in less than seven weeks. Every candidate will say the word affordability. The better question for them is who should carry the cost of getting there, and for how long. Go beyond the headlines…

More Americans See Business Benefits From Diverse Workforces

‘Stronger together’: Carney welcomes EU invite for Canada to become first-ever associate member

Service members must meet weight, grooming standards for Hegseth event: Report

When students attend these colleges, taxpayers often pay. Here’s why

How to Tolerate Financial Uncertainty While Investing

NASA spacecraft discovers a huge new crater on the moon

Humpback whale seen grieving dead calf in rare footage: “Heartbreaking to watch”

Fashion app Daydream uses Apple Intelligence to help you shop the outfits in your camera roll

Thousands of sea turtles reach Mexico in yearly migration threatened by climate crisis – video

US removes Venezuela from drug list, Trump says

The post September 17, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

At a function in a hotel ballroom in National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday afternoon, a single sentence changed how the rest of us should think about space. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, delivering a keynote at the Air and Space Cyber Conference, admitted the United States now has space control weapons in orbit, ready to defend our forces against hostile action. The Air Force’s own news release describes it as the first time the government has admitted the Space Force has put weapons up there.

That is the entire disclosure. Meink did not say what the weapons are, how many exist, or when they launched, and when reporters pressed for specifics, CNN reported, he declined to give any. A follow-up statement from the Air Force said space control relies on both kinetic and nonkinetic means and can serve offensive as well as defensive purposes. Translated, that covers everything from a jammer that scrambles a satellite’s signal to something that physically slams into one.

So why should any of us care about hardware we can’t see, doing things nobody will describe? Because our own lives run through that same patch of sky. The GPS chip in our phones, the timing signal that stamps our bank transactions, the weather models that tell us whether the hurricane turns, the map that gets the delivery driver to the door: all of it rides on satellites. A study commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and conducted by RTI International found GPS alone generated roughly $1.4 trillion in economic benefits for U.S. industries between 1984 and 2017, and estimated that losing the signal would cost the economy about $1 billion a day. When the Pentagon declares orbit a place where weapons operate, it is declaring our daily infrastructure a potential battlefield.

Beijing understood the ramifications. China’s foreign ministry warned against turning outer space into a battlefield and starting an arms race there, according to the CBS and AFP account of the briefing. The Kremlin’s Dmitry Peskov called for space to stay free of any weapons. Those statements deserve a raised eyebrow, since Washington said back in 2024 that Russia was developing a new anti-satellite weapon, and a Hong Kong-based former Chinese army instructor told AFP the American capability was an open secret. The difference now is that we stopped pretending. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation said the announcement was deeply destabilizing, likely meant to deter rivals from touching our satellites and to establish the Space Force as a fighting branch rather than a support service.

Here is where the rules run out. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit and nothing else, space law expert Laetitia Cesari noted, leaving a regulatory vacuum that Russia and China have spent two decades trying to fill with a treaty the United States has resisted. Cesari expects the issue on the agenda at the United Nations disarmament meeting in November, and she thinks Monday’s speech will strengthen the hand of the very rivals we are trying to deter.

Then there is the bill. Meink’s speech also touted the Space Based Interceptor program, a pillar of the Golden Dome missile shield, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated in May could cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, most of it for a constellation of 7,800 interceptor satellites. The Pentagon’s own figure is $185 billion, according to Air and Space Forces Magazine. Either way, it is our money, committed in a year when diesel sits above $6 a gallon and inflation refuses to cool.

We did not vote on militarizing orbit. We were told, after the fact, in a ballroom. The least we can do is pay attention to what happens next, because the satellites keeping our world running were just formally added to somebody’s target list. Go beyond the headlines…

Poll: Americans say there’s a serious risk of AI destroying humanity

Saudi Arabia calls attempted attack on Mecca a ‘red line’ as Iran-backed Houthis deny they did it

Air Force Secretary confirms US deployed weapons in space

Americans’ income hits record, but lower earners lose ground

How to uncover your blind spots

Study finds violence affects millions across US with links to health, economic hardship

This Subtle Change to Your Fingernails Can Be a Sign of Hidden Disease

Former TikTok execs built an app that uses AI to teach you how to pose for a photo

Mexico authorizes entry of 139 US troops for training operations

Residents help battle forest fires threatening homes in Ecuadorian capital

The post September 16, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.

Somewhere in North Carolina, a ballot that went into the mail on Sept. 4 is sitting on a kitchen table, and as of Monday night the rules for what happens to it are the same rules that applied when it left the county office. That sounds like a small thing. It took two federal judges, three trips to the Supreme Court and a brief signed by dozens of election officials, many of them Republicans, to keep it that way.

The court’s order refusing to let the Trump administration’s new Postal Service rule govern the midterms runs three sentences. The government is unlikely to win on the merits, the majority said, and the balance of harms does not favor emergency relief. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority but wrote separately to say the rule may well be legal. His objection was the calendar, not the policy.

What the rule would have done deserves plain description. According to the text as laid out in Alito’s dissent, every federal ballot envelope would need an election mail logo, a barcode unique to each voter and compatibility with automated sorting equipment, and states would have to upload each voter’s information to a new Postal Service portal before a ballot could go out. A mailing that failed any part of that would be sent back to the election office.

This is not a niche concern. Nearly a third of us voted by mail in each of the last two federal elections, according to Election Assistance Commission survey data. That includes service members overseas, whose ballots federal law requires states to send by Sept. 19, according to a brief filed by 38 current and former election officials from 10 states. It includes college students, retirees who winter elsewhere, and anyone whose job keeps them on the road.

Those officials, among them the secretaries of state of Georgia, Kentucky and Kansas and the lieutenant governor of Utah, took no position on whether the rule is legal. They simply explained why it could not be done now. The rule funds none of what it requires, they wrote, and more than a third of local election offices have no full time employee dedicated to elections. The Postal Service has 40 mail-piece design analysts nationwide serving roughly 8,000 election jurisdictions. Maricopa County, Arizona, expects to mail 2.6 million ballot packets on the first day of early voting, and at the Postal Service’s own estimate of under a minute per piece, verifying that single mailing would take roughly 4.9 years, according to the brief. The rule took effect Aug. 21, leaving 48 working days before Election Day, while its own text contemplates 90 days of advance notice.

The administration’s case is not frivolous. The Postal Service has broad statutory authority over the mail, Alito wrote, and 12 states told the lower court that compliance was practicable. He also argued that the plaintiff states and the courts caused much of the delay by suing before the rule existed. Trump has framed the effort as a defense against voting by noncitizens, though NPR reports that studies and audits show such voting is extremely uncommon and that government lawyers offered no evidence of mail voting fraud in this case.

So we should be clear about what Monday settled and what it did not. Our ballots this fall will move under familiar rules. But Kavanaugh’s concurrence is an open invitation for the rule to return before 2028, and the election officials themselves noted it could be implemented in an odd numbered year. Mail voting has a partisan tilt, with 37 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans using it in 2024, according to the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. The officials’ brief offered the line worth remembering: a ballot that never arrives disadvantages no party in particular. It just denies one of us who followed the law. Go beyond the headlines…

Americans’ satisfaction with schools is at a low point, new Gallup poll shows

Nationalist leaders say U.K. union “coming to an end”

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees were held in small metal cages, federal report says

Get ready for yet another cost when buying a home: Junk fees

Beliefs About Willpower Affect Whether You Try Hard Tasks

Rivers may be carrying more microplastics into the world’s oceans than previously thought

Scientists discover strange link between low vitamin D and pain

Amazon Prime Video takes on TikTok with short-form news clips

Hidden crypto farm in Mexican mountains puts spotlight on cartel funding

El Salvador court hands down 1st life sentence for femicide

The post September 15, 2026 appeared first on Latina Lista.