President Trump told Fox News on Sunday he believes the war with Iran will be won "very soon," vowed Tehran will never get a nuclear weapon, and declined to rule out additional military strikes. He also said he expects more talks with Iran this week, a day after rejecting Tehran's latest proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added that Iran will have "nothing left to trade" within roughly two weeks as its remaining oil reaches China.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reiterated that national security concerns justify the administration's ban on certain White House reporters, after CNN was pulled from Air Force One for Trump's Tennessee trip. CNN, MS NOW and Politico have sued, calling the removals "a blatant First Amendment violation" targeting them over the content of their coverage. It's shaping up as the biggest press-access fight of the second term.
With about six weeks to Election Day, the economy and cost of living are the top voter issues, and gas is averaging near $4.50 a gallon with diesel above $6.50. Democrats hold roughly a five-point edge on the generic congressional ballot in a new NBC poll, while Republicans keep their advantages on immigration and crime. The Fed, meanwhile, hiked rates a quarter point on September 16 to a 3.75 to 4 percent range, its first increase in three years, with its preferred inflation gauge running at 3.7 percent.
More than a hundred demonstrators reoccupied the site of a September 20 ICE officer-involved shooting in Austin, organized by the Austin Party for Socialism and Liberation. Speakers alleged 28-year-old Venezuelan national Wilber Rafael Garces-Perez was shot in the back while working as a DoorDash driver; ICE says he is in the country illegally, and surveillance video shows a vehicle pursuit with lights and sirens preceding the shooting.
British police arrested five men in the early hours near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on suspected explosives offenses, later re-arresting them on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act, and evacuated about 85 households. Counterterrorism detectives are investigating possible Iranian involvement, after the IRGC declared Fairford a "legitimate target" for hosting B-1B Lancers used in Operation Epic Fury.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Iran is prepared for fighting with the United States to resume even if it escalates into a "doomsday war," while insisting Tehran remains open to diplomacy with Trump. US officials say Central Command's blockade has the Strait of Hormuz under "total control," letting non-Iranian shipping pass while Iranian vessels stay bottled up.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly traveled to the United Arab Emirates over the weekend to meet the Emirati president, according to Israeli reports. The visit reportedly centered on asking the UAE to deny accounts that it warned Netanyahu of a looming Hamas threat before the October 7, 2023 attack, a claim now dominating Israel's election season.
SpaceX is attempting Starship's first orbital flight from Starbase, Texas, a roughly ten-hour mission circling Earth about six times and deploying 26 of the newest Starlink satellites. Every prior Starship test flew a ballistic, suborbital arc ending in an ocean splashdown, so clearing orbit would be the milestone that turns the vehicle from a test article into an actual launch system.
Google will load a refrigerator-sized satellite onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 on October 1, the first hardware step in "Project Suncatcher," its plan for solar-powered computing in space. The prototype carries four tensor processing units, roughly the horsepower of a single ground server, but the point is proving that orbital solar and vacuum cooling can work at all.
A homeowner chasing down a puzzling sound in his own backyard ended up unearthing a massive hoard of roughly thousand-year-old artifacts, one of the larger accidental finds reported this year. Archaeologists were called in to excavate what began as an ordinary afternoon of yard investigation.
