Saturday, September 26, 2026 · Morning Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. The White House on Friday evening moved to rescind over $800 million in congressionally appropriated funds across a range of government programs. NBC put the figure at $810 million in bipartisan, congressionally approved funding — a move lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called unlawful. This is the executive refusing to spend money Congress already voted, spending power seized from the branch that holds it.

The same machinery is grinding down migrants and foreign researchers. ICE has detained Aminata Seck, a Senegalese Division II athlete at Kentucky State; universities eagerly recruit international athletes, but that support can vanish the moment immigration status becomes precarious. A campus police report has meanwhile shed new light on the suicide of University of Michigan researcher Danhao Wang, whose death came amid the administration's prosecution of five Chinese researchers there.

Speech and culture are targets too. A First Amendment expert calls the White House press ban a break-the-glass moment for press freedom — and even after a court order on Thursday restored access, the administration blocked CNN from Air Force One. Across the country, arts organizations were told their federal grants had been canceled, the money redirected toward the administration's own agenda.

The map of power is being redrawn on every front. The Senate map now makes flipping four GOP seats feasible — even as the Supreme Court revived a voter-citizenship database letting the administration screen state voter rolls less than two months before the midterms. Grocery chains, meanwhile, bet price cuts will win back households squeezed by rising costs, and in South Africa the murder of 37-year-old runner Liz Ramhlola has reignited the push to stop femicide.