Wednesday, September 30, 2026 · Morning Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. For the third time in less than two years, the Trump administration returns to court on Wednesday to defend its power to wage a punishing global trade war. The tariffs land on working people as higher prices while the administration insists its authority to impose them is beyond challenge — a fight over who pays for capital's trade agenda, dressed up as a question of executive power.

The day before, Elon Musk stood beside Trump and said AI may herald an "age of abundance" where everyone's rich and has stellar healthcare, though jobs will change. He made the pitch at a White House lunch where Trump [hosted the heads of Nvidia, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon and condemned any government oversight or regulation of the technology sector](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/09/30/ufvk-s30.html). The abundance is promised to us; the deregulation is delivered to them. The document Trump signed with the industry was drafted so carefully it refers to the "Unites States" rather than the "United States".

Capital's grip on public life showed plainer elsewhere. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin pledged $3 billion to Carnegie Mellon, including $2 billion to build a new Miami campus — a hedge-fund fortune remaking a university on its own terms. And a landmark PFAS settlement confronts decades of forever-chemical pollution but not the corporate system that keeps moving the toxic waste elsewhere.

In Congress, Senate Republicans are pushing a data center bill to help Sen. Jon Husted ahead of November, which Democrats appear poised to block as a ploy, while Josh Hawley unveils legislation to set guardrails on Flock cameras and other AI-powered surveillance technology. Abroad, foreign workers in Japan on a government skilled-worker program hit a record high as the state leans on migrant labor to plug its shortages — even as the Trump administration strikes deals with 35 countries to send up to 25,000 migrants across the world. Capital wants migrant labor where it profits and ships it out where it doesn't.