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The national average for a gallon of regular hit $4.15 over the holiday weekend — the highest Labor Day price ever recorded — as the U.S.-Iran fight strangles traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Only two ships crossed Saturday and six Sunday, with the ten-day moving average down to ten vessels, the thinnest since May. CENTCOM says it has redirected 94 commercial ships while enforcing the blockade on Iranian ports.
President Trump said Monday he is suing the Soros-funded Center for American Progress over its analysis claiming National Guard deployments had no measurable impact on violent crime. The White House counters that the D.C. operation has produced more than 16,000 arrests, including 35 homicide suspects, over 100 known gang members and nearly 2,000 illegal guns seized. Up to 1,700 Guardsmen are currently supporting ICE across 19 states.
The Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court for an immediate administrative stay after Judge Indira Talwani blocked mandatory provisions of the Postal Service's new mail-ballot rule, published August 26. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has ordered responses by 4 p.m. Wednesday — and Alabama plus five other states begin mailing ballots September 9 and 13. Talwani ruled states simply cannot pivot this late in the cycle without risking disenfranchisement.
Administration officials are circulating a proposal that would pay families roughly $9,000 per child annually to support a parent staying home. It lands squarely in the middle of midterm season, with prediction markets giving Democrats an 85 percent shot at retaking the House while Republicans hold a 53 percent edge in the Senate. War Secretary Pete Hegseth has emerged as one of the administration's busiest campaign-trail messengers.
Iranian official Mohsen Rezaei announced Tehran will publish maps for a new corridor through the strait jointly managed with Oman, complete with a restricted zone penalizing ships that enter U.S. blockade areas. "We will only commit to the Strait of Hormuz being open when they stop the sabotage," Rezaei said. UAE official Anwar Gargash fired back that "no single state should control the Strait."
The UK government has begun evacuating British nationals from Sudan aboard military flights from an airfield outside Khartoum, moving under a 72-hour ceasefire that appears to be holding. The United States has declined to mount a comparable operation, assessing conditions on the ground as too dangerous for an American evacuation flight. The window is narrow and nobody expects the truce to last.
The IDF announced Monday it hit several Hezbollah infrastructure sites in southern Lebanon, including a weapons storage facility. The death toll from the strikes has risen to seven, including two women killed in Arab Salim and three more in a separate drone strike on Nabatieh al-Tahta. Separately, the IDF says it killed a Hamas commander in Gaza City who had been rebuilding the group's attack capabilities.
NASA confirmed it is coordinating with other federal agencies investigating the deaths and disappearances of eleven scientists tied to U.S. nuclear and space programs between 2023 and 2026. The list includes retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, astrophysicist Carl Grillmair and MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro. FBI Director Kash Patel says a report is coming "in short order," and Oversight Chairman James Comer warns "something sinister could be happening."
SpaceX and Tesla have settled on Grimes, Texas, outside Houston, for "Terafab" — a semiconductor plant planned at more than 100 million square feet, over five times the size of the current record-holder in Chengdu, China. The initial phase alone runs about $16.8 billion and would employ more than 3,000 people, with filings suggesting total investment could climb from $55 billion to $119 billion. It's a bet that domestic chip fabrication can be scaled at a size nobody has attempted.
Police in New Hampshire are warning residents after an unidentified animal — possibly a gray fox, possibly a fisher — attacked three people, with one encounter captured on camera. Officers say the creature's behavior is abnormal enough that rabies is a serious concern. Residents have been advised to keep pets indoors and give any bold wildlife a very wide berth.
