Wednesday, September 30, 2026 · Evening Edition

Today

By StaffNews Desk

Good morning. The Iran war is driving up inflation and fuel prices, and the party it is sinking is scrambling to shield itself at the ballot box rather than the working people paying at the pump. Top Republicans have told Trump to “stop the bleeding” a month before the election, and the White House is huddling over a diesel export ban. Trump says he is “very seriously” weighing it even as the oil industry warns it would raise prices and he concedes it could have a “negative impact” on gasoline.

In Gaza, a writer recounts escaping the dangers but not the pain endured in what The Progressive calls a genocide. At home, institutions shield the powerful: New York's attorney general will review Cornell's response to a former student's sexual-assault lawsuit, the governor pushed for an outside review and said the case raised “serious questions about Cornell campus culture,” and students are interrogating the Greek-life culture that protects such abuse.

The Republican slate is rotting in public. Senate candidate Michael Whatley's denial that he organized a North Carolina event collapsed under leaked audio and campaign documents. A former RNC chair conceded Iran could cost the party the midterms. Physicians are pressing the Senate to reject Trump's FDA nominee Heidi Overton. At the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth confirmed cutting 20% of the military's generals while ranting that troops should have “no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals.”

Capital, meanwhile, is served. Zuckerberg was the chief architect of the AI accords that emerged from Trump's lunch with tech executives, and Trump is dangling South Korean investment in an Alaska gas pipeline to prop up GOP Senate candidates in tight races. Democrats banking on a blue wave should look to New Hampshire, where their own leaders are sounding the alarm.