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DoorDash partners with Macy's, Anthropologie and others to expand clothing delivery DoorDash is moving further into clothing delivery and expanding its return service. Read More.

Senate reaches bipartisan deal on permitting bill to speed approvals of new energy projects Senators from both parties said Wednesday they have reached a deal on legislation aimed at speeding up permitting reviews for new energy and infrastructure projects that now face yearslong delays, as lawmakers seek to meet growing demand for electricity and other forms of energy. Read More.

The rise and fall of America's deadly love affair with the cigarette Cancer stick. Coffin nail. Cowboy killer. Those are nicknames, through the decades, for the cigarette — the once-glamorous desideratum of American society that has been tied to tens of millions of U.S. deaths.

🌍 Postcards from Eastern Europe Photo: Kate Marino Axios executive editor Kate Marino sends us these spectacular views from a recent sabbatical spent across Eastern Europe — from the dramatic peaks of Montenegro's Prokletije Mountains to the shores of North Macedonia's Lake Ohrid. Photo: Kate Marino

Take a pause Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Schools are giving overwhelmed kids a place to reset, Axios' Natalie Daher writes. 🧠 Across the country, schools are adding calming rooms, "Zen Dens" and other supervised spaces where kids can step away for a few minutes, settle themselves and return to class. The idea is to ease stress before it leads to a meltdown, a trip to the principal's office or an absence from school. Why it matters: We spend a lot of time teaching children how to push through discomfort. Some schools are also teaching them when, and how, to pause. 🏫 Case in point: Nearly 20 Iowa schools had adopted "brain health retreat rooms" as of early this year, Axios Des Moines' Jason Clayworth reports. Up to five students can use a room for 10 minutes staffed with school social workers. At Ottumwa High, students made about 1,000 visits in the first half of last year. Officials say school attendance has improved since the rooms opened, while some students need them less as they build coping skills. Zoom out: Similar efforts are popping up elsewhere. The National Education Association reported in 2024 that schools were using staffed calming rooms to help students manage anger, anxiety and other difficult emotions before returning to class. At Hough High School, outside Charlotte, N.C., students who feel too stressed or anxious to focus can spend up to 15 minutes in a supervised "Zen Den," with a counselor available if needed. The school says the goal is to build resilience and coping habits. 🔬 What the research says: There's good evidence for teaching kids self-regulation, even if research specifically on dedicated calming rooms is still limited. A JAMA Pediatrics review of 49 randomized trials involving more than 23,000 children and adolescents found self-regulation interventions were effective overall. Many studies have found improvements in academic achievement, social skills, mental health and behavior. ✨ The bottom line: Feeling overwhelmed doesn't have to derail the day. These rooms give kids a place to pause — and practice getting themselves back on track.

‼️ Senate real talk on AI Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Senate Majority Leader John Thune welcomed the new "constitution" that President Trump and tech and AI leaders signed yesterday but said he would work to "codify" some safety protections with legislation. 🤖 Why it matters: Thune and other GOP senators aren't directly challenging Trump's preference for industry-led safeguards. But they suggest yesterday's accord — which Trump called "morally binding" — might not be enough. "I think this is good," Thune told us today. "This is certainly a step in the right direction." "We are continuing to have those conversations up here on whether or not we can come up with some sort of a legislative framework that would codify some safety protections too." 🤔 The intrigue: There's an undercurrent of skepticism in the Senate GOP about AI and the frontier labs. "I'm not saying they don't care about humanity, but they also care — I'll give you three letters: I-P-O — and they care about profits," said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). "I pretty much trust them like a rest-stop bathroom," Kennedy said. 🪑Between the lines: Speaker Mike Johnson was at the White House meeting, sitting at a table with some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful tech executives. Thune was not, but he had a separate meeting Monday night in his Senate office with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the industry's leading advocates for regulating frontier AI. Zoom in: Thune has been more assertive than Johnson about the need for Congress to regulate the AI industry. "I do think that the threats are real," Thune told us last week. "I think you have to have at least some sort of a plan and some guardrails around it." Johnson appears to favor a more hands-off approach: "The challenge has been that finding consensus on all of this in Congress is very difficult. The technology changes rapidly," Johnson said yesterday. "The White House and Congress will continue to guide the industry's development in a safe manner," Johnson said. "Congress is going to keep steady hands at the wheel on this." ⚖️ The bottom line: Some of Thune's GOP colleagues agree Congress needs to act, while others favor Trump's laissez-faire approach. "You have to have the strength of statute and law and regulation," said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.). "Like for any other industry, this is not unique to super intelligence." "Ultimately, the companies have got to do the right thing themselves," said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). "Do I have confidence Congress would craft the right solution on AI? Not really," said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). "In the end, I think what we need to do is preserve competition." "Congress should do something too, rather than sit back and spectate," said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). — Hans Nichols and Stef Kight

👎 GOP's lost week 😩Exhausted GOP senators are preparing to fly home mostly empty-handed after staying in D.C. longer than expected. 👎 Why it matters: The midterm outlook is getting bleaker by the day, and Republicans have a monster to-do list for the lame-duck session that could be a last chance to capitalize on their trifecta. Between the lines: Republicans decided against breaking for an early recess last week. The biggest thing to show for it: A historic — and bipartisan — college sports package that doesn't do much for those defending their seats in November. It faces long odds in the House. 😖 Otherwise it was a week of pain: Failed votes: A vote addressing Americans' concerns about data centers driving up energy costs failed today, as did another to curb congressional stock trades and enforce voter IDs. A line of attack that backfired: A major hearing with Jack Smith was overshadowed by a failed attempt by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) to link the special counsel and Atlanta prosecutor Fani Willis. The Trump issue: Republicans have been tiptoeing around whether Trump's unpopularity will hurt the party in November, only for Texas nominee Ken Paxton to be caught blaming Trump's midterm convention for hurting his polling. NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Paxton's analysis was "just wrong" and called the convention "a boost in the right direction." 🤕 Zoom out: Some of the GOP senators are returning to fresh campaign headaches. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) lost a week of in-state campaigning and didn't even get a vote on one of her key priorities: a bipartisan bill to lower insulin costs. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) is the target of a new ad campaign hitting him over his pardon of a man who pleaded guilty to first-degree sexual assault. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) has been batting down accusations that he went after mothers of new babies over unpaid medical bills. His lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to his opponent — Rev. Adam Hamilton — on Monday. The GOP has a cash advantage, but the campaign apparatus now has to spend heavily in states Trump handily won in 2024 — Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Florida. ‼️ The other side: Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) was also hit with a damaging report from the New York Times about her personal behavior and office culture (some of which she denied). She is challenging GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan. What to watch: The Senate will return in November staring down a list of must-pass items. Fund the government Pass the National Defense Authorization Act Reinstate FISA Section 702, the warrantless wiretap authority Pass the farm bill 💰 The bottom line: That's just what they must get done. There's also a growing list of maybe-to-dos, like: Take a whack at a bipartisan permitting reform bill that finally came together hours before the Senate took off for home. Pass some form of AI guardrails. Raise the debt ceiling, potentially through reconciliation. — Stef Kight

An Uneasy Coalition View in browser The Make America Healthy Again movement has always had a split personality. Many of the movement’s leaders are fervent anti-vaccine activists whose views are at odds with scientific evidence and out of step with most Americans. At the same time, MAHA’s tenets include eating more vegetables and getting enough sleep, which is perfectly reasonable advice; it’s just hard to take seriously from people who, like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wax nostalgic about catching measles. That duality has been especially stark this month, as the midterms approach and Republicans look to MAHA for an electoral boost. At a conference two weeks ago for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy founded, he told the audience that they had a “steadfast friend at the White House.” At a MAHA data summit on Monday, Kennedy previewed his plan to use a database of Americans’ health records to compare rates of autism among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. And yet, the second annual MAHA Summit, which was held yesterday in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., seemed perfectly calibrated to downplay controversy. Other high-ranking administration officials, including Vice President Vance and Medicaid chief Mehmet Oz, spoke at yesterday’s summit, lending the affair an extra layer of high-profile polish, but the event was mostly an opportunity for its roster of sponsors to tout their products and services. An executive from Walmart—one of the event’s many corporate sponsors—spoke about making food labels simpler and more transparent, though he didn’t say how his company, which sells more groceries than any other retailer, plans to do that. After being lobbed yet another softball question from the moderator, he gushed, “It means a lot for us to be here with MAHA.” Also among the sponsors was Grail, a cancer-screening company, which just last week announced that its controversial early-detection test had been recommended for approval by a Food and Drug Administration panel. Hims & Hers and Gameday Men’s Health—two wellness companies that stand to make serious money if the FDA allows gray-market peptides to be made and prescribed in the United States—also chipped in. Bloomberg reported that companies that forked over $300,000 were allowed to have “meaningful input” on the selection of panelists and topics. (In an email, an HHS spokesperson wrote that the FDA’s decisions “are made through established processes grounded in law, science, and evidence.”) The MAHA Summit was “very money-driven,” Mary Holland, who runs Children’s Health Defense and was not on the speaker list for yesterday’s conference, told me outside the ballroom. Kennedy has for years denounced corporate influence over the health agencies he now oversees, but onstage, there was no handwringing about conflicts of interest. Instead, Tony Lyons, the president of the nonprofit MAHA Center, which organized the summit, offered praise for “the investors scaling natural remedies, breakthrough technologies, next-generation devices, and cutting-edge therapies.” (Lyons is also Kennedy’s longtime publisher, and his company, Skyhorse, paid Kennedy $4 million in book advances over the past year.) Corporate convenience seemed to beat out Kennedy’s “eat real food” agenda: The conference swag bags contained two organic snack bars, a packet of electrolyte powder, potato chips fried in grass-fed-beef tallow, and a bag of dehydrated taco filling made from pinto beans and peas, all vaguely MAHA-coded but certainly nowhere to be found on the administration’s inverted food pyramid. Plenty of Kennedy’s vocally anti-vaccine compatriots were in attendance, if not on the agenda. I spotted Mark Gorton, the president of the MAHA Institute, who, at the Children’s Health Defense conference, declared himself “the boldest anti-vaxxer in the anti-vax conference.” Del Bigtree, Kennedy’s former communications director, who once told me he’d rather his kids catch diseases such as polio and measles than get the shots that prevent them, spent most of his time chatting with his many fans in attendance. He was pleased at how large companies appear to be on board with MAHA, even if the summit steered clear of the issue—vaccines—that brought him and Kennedy together. “It really probably should be called ‘MAHA Food Summit,’” he told me. (An HHS spokesperson wrote that Kennedy “oversees an extraordinarily broad health portfolio and addresses different priorities in different settings.”) But lest Bigtree and other anti-vaccine activists have any doubts, Kennedy has repeatedly reassured them that he is on their side. At the Children’s Health Defense conference, he went so far as to read from a manufacturer’s list of possible adverse events from a hepatitis B vaccine. In an appearance on CNN last month, Kennedy again floated a possible connection between autism and vaccines, even though researchers have found no such link. Since Kennedy’s failed run for president in the 2024 election, he has drawn together an unlikely and seemingly uneasy coalition. Some are hard-core activists, like the guy I spoke with who was wearing a shirt that took aim at fluoride, vaccines, hospital births, aspartame, and root canals. But other attendees at the packed, invite-only event said they were there because they hoped psychedelics might be used to treat depression; because they thought that AI might improve health care; or because they were looking for answers to medical problems their doctors hadn’t been able to solve. They weren’t anti-vaxxers, and they weren’t necessarily big Kennedy fans, as a couple of them confided to me between sessions. But Kennedy and his Republican allies seem to hope they can channel these different levels of frustration with mainstream medicine and keep all of those voters under the MAHA banner. The midterms will be, among so many other things, a test of how far that banner can be stretched. Related: America is about to go over a peptide cliff. “I genuinely am upset that your kids are vaccinated.”

US economy grew a solid 2.2% in the second quarter, government says, upgrading previous estimate WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.2% pace from April through June as consumer spending and business investment came in strong. https://apnews.com/article/economic-growth-inflation-trump-trade-b759367e9e6149fe145652cc95887aa0?

One wonders if same members of the SBC who are distraught at the pending ban of W.O. in the SBC are equally distraught that a woman who self-identifies as a man would be precluded from being ordained clergy.

September 30, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. American forces withdrew from Iraq today, after two decades of military presence. They are leaving behind a battered nation. And a clash in the cockpit of a plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv this morning prompted Israel and Saudi Arabia to scramble fighter jets in fear of a hijacking. Read more here. There’s more news below. But let’s start on campus. Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times Justice for Jane Doe? The mood at Cornell is tense. Local prosecutors are reviewing a decision not to prosecute seven students accused of raping a student there in 2024. The school’s rugby team acknowledged that some of the accused were players. The mayor of Ithaca, where Cornell is based, called for a moratorium on all permits for student events. At a town hall event, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried the “culture of rape” at elite institutions. Takes and gossip fly alongside facts and accusations. The home page of the student newspaper is consumed by the story. A recent civil lawsuit discloses gruesome details: Men are said to have given ketamine and alcohol to a woman at a frat house. Then one invited his fraternity brothers over to have sex with her. The revelations led the district attorney to reopen the case, reviving a debate about how students accused of sexual misconduct can be punished. And the fallout — an alleged assault first forgotten, then revived — has gripped the nation. As Cornell hunkers down, Emma Goldberg, who covers New York, is on campus. We asked her what she’s seen, what she’s heard, what she’s learned. Sam: What are the vibes at Cornell right now? Emma: Yesterday, I talked to people outside Cornell classrooms, libraries and Collegetown Bagels, a local hangout. A lot of freshmen feel outraged by the allegations. They just sat through orientation lectures about how seriously the school takes these sort of complaints! Some students let me scroll through their feeds on Sidechat, an app where students anonymously share gossip and opinions about campus news. Many sympathized with the victim, known as Jane Doe, and vented about Cornell’s response. Others said sexual violence is pervasive nationwide and thought Cornell was being unfairly singled out. Some defended Greek life. A number of students told me they’re less likely to rush sororities and fraternities. A young woman told me somebody handed her an open drink at a frat party Saturday. Her whole friend group panicked. In Ithaca, N.Y., on Monday. Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times So what are students doing? Some of the people who think the university mishandled the case are taking matters into their own hands. How? Student journalists at the campus newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, published the names of the seven accused fraternity members. As their essay put it, “Cornell Won’t, We Will.” Now their readers are naming and shaming the alleged perpetrators in social media posts. Journalists tread carefully in cases like these. How did Sun editors try to do that? One of their reporters, Cereese Qusba, has spent 23 months reporting out what happened to Jane Doe, frustrated by how the attention faded after her initial campus police report in 2024. The editor in chief, Sophia Dasser, wanted to tell readers how Cornell disciplines students in such cases, how it shares information with prosecutors or how often sexual assaults take place on campus. But she said the school wasn’t very forthcoming. (The university says federal law prevents it from talking about specific cases.) “The victim allegedly received these acts uncensored,” Dasser told me. “It would almost be wrong for us to censor it to the rest of the campus and leave only the victim to have experienced the alleged acts in raw details.” I wrote a story about the newsroom’s decision-making. People sound frustrated. Students I’ve interviewed are bewildered about why only a few of the men involved in this case were reportedly expelled. They’re also marveling over the strangeness of learning that guys they knew — from class and clubs — could be guilty of something so sinister. Now students seem a little jaded. “I got the feeling if something bad happened I would be protected,” one young woman told me. “It’s sad to find out that’s not true.” Here’s what we know about the case. FREE TO READ An artist’s concept shows the Beta Pictoris system, 63 light-years from Earth. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Other life? Researchers found radio waves streaming from an alien planet. Caleb Flynn: An Ohio jury convicted Flynn, a former music pastor and “American Idol” contestant, of murdering his wife. The trial captivated the internet. Roller coaster: Six Flags Magic Mountain near Los Angeles is permanently closing its X2 ride following lawsuits linking the coaster to brain injuries and deaths. Fat Bear Week: Backpack, a male brown bear known for his gentle demeanor, won Alaska’s annual contest. See photos of him. Your pick: The most clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about scientists discovering a virus that is a tiny bit human. THE LATEST NEWS Politics Boys Town Junction in Monrovia, Liberia. Carielle Doe for The New York Times The Supreme Court agreed the Trump administration can, for now, resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own. ICE plans to hire another 5,000 people by the end of the year to support Trump’s deportation campaign. Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate in Texas, told a group of conservative donors and lobbyists last week that President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas had hurt him politically, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. Senator Eric Schmitt, a Republican, accused Jack Smith, the former special counsel who charged Trump, of perjury, citing text messages about a basketball game that Schmitt appeared to have misunderstood. When challenged, Schmitt called Smith a “dirtbag” and left the hearing. The Republican nominee for governor of Colorado says he was forced to kill a man at age 7. Some Republicans worry his sensational account of his biography could drag down the ticket. White House Meeting Trump summoned the world’s most powerful technology executives to the White House and asked them to voluntarily regulate themselves. The tech leaders also agreed to adopt Trump’s preferred name for A.I. — “super intelligence.” More on A.I. Times Exclusive: Months before OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue, employees raised an alarm with top executives. The warning was ignored. OpenAI apologized for four instances in which its models gained access to Australian government websites, including one in which it hacked the country's Medicare portal. A.I.-powered disinformation campaigns are targeting Black Americans, an important voting bloc, before the midterm elections. See how groups aligned with Anthropic and OpenAI have funneled money into the fight for control of Congress: Daniel Wood/The New York Times Around the World The king of Morocco appointed the country’s first female prime minister. The move projects a modern image for Morocco, despite its economic challenges. In Britain, the police found no explosives in the vans of five men arrested near an air base where American jets take off. But officials warn of a real Iranian threat. Indonesia suspended some prison officials after inspectors found inmates with expensive cars, flat-screen TVs and a golf simulator under construction. More than 100 Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and soldiers in the West Bank when the Israeli military tried to return a Palestinian family to their home after they were forced out. Other Big Stories A hedge fund billionaire, Ken Griffin, made the largest donation in the history of American higher education — $3 billion. It’s going to Carnegie Mellon University. Fatal crashes involving e-bikes and electric scooters in New York City have reached a record high this year. A Utah man was freed after 37 years on death row as a result of new DNA evidence. A 57-year-old man was killed in Brooklyn after his bag got stuck in a subway door and he was dragged by the train, the police said. THE MORNING QUIZ This question comes from a recent edition of the newsletter. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) Bobby Pulido, a Texas Democrat running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, has an unusual qualification. What is it? He was a horse-racing jockey. He served aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during the war in Iran. He wrote the code for Anthropic’s first large-language model. He’s a famous Tejano singer. OPINIONS Bill McKibben, the author and climate activist, is demoralized. He argues that we weren’t built for a world like this. If your partner’s digital life is disrupting your relationship, you might have a case of “attention infidelity,” Jessica Grose writes. The Anniversary Sale ends soon: Morning readers, enjoy our best offer. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your interests with expert coverage of news, culture, business and more. Save now: $1/week for your first year. TODAY’S NUMBER 15,153 — That is how many ratings, averaging five stars, there were as of this morning on Ali Slagle’s recipe for crispy gnocchi with sausage and broccoli. One commenter wrote: “Certified banger, 10/10, no notes. Will make again and again.” SPORTS W.N.B.A.: The New York Liberty, a no. 8 seed, beat the top-ranked Minnesota Lynx in the playoffs. N.H.L.: Brock Faber, a defenseman for the Minnesota Wild and the gold medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team, fractured his skull in the team’s preseason finale. A FAMILY SECRET Sebastian Barry Gareth McConnell for The New York Times I couldn’t stop reading this remarkable, career-spanning profile of the Irish author Sebastian Barry, who had much to hide. (“The modern habit is to tell everything, isn’t it,” Barry told our reporter. “Let’s start a new fashion of people not communicating their central despair!”) Now he’s wrestling with the secrets. The result is a beautiful, complicated piece. More on culture The MacArthur Foundation announced its 2026 “genius grant” winners. The award recognizes “exceptional creativity” and comes with a no-strings-attached stipend of $800,000. Who got one? Min Jin Lee’s novel “American Hagwon” is a soapy, sweeping, and deeply satisfying epic about the Korean diaspora, Alexandra Jacobs writes. RECIPE OF THE DAY Julia Gartland for The New York Times I dig a midweek dinner of these spicy roasted chicken thighs, served over rice with a mess of steamed spinach on the side. Maybe some mango chutney if there’s some sitting in the back of the fridge? A smear of yogurt? This is good living. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Protect your knees with this weekly workout. Read “The Radiance,” by Ayad Akhtar. Is it a campus satire? A philosophical exploration? A medical mystery? Autofiction? “Who cares?” A.O. Scott writes in his review for The Times. “Taxonomy is taxidermy. Whatever this book is, it’s alive.” Prepare for the joys of sleeping with the window open as the temperature falls into deeper autumn. Consider these flannel sheets recommended by the snuggle cats at Wirecutter. Toasty! GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was vetoing. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren Deputy Editorial Director: Lauren Jackson

THIS DAY IN HISTORY September 30 1954 USS Nautilus—world’s first nuclear submarine—is commissioned The U.S. Navy commissions the USS Nautilus. Four years later, the groundbreaking submarine accomplished the first voyage under the geographic North Pole. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 1950s 1955 James Dean dies in car accident American Revolution 1776 General George Washington complains about his militia Arts & Entertainment 2005 Michael Eisner resigns as Disney CEO 1868 First volume of “Little Women” is published 1928 Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and bestselling author, is born Black History 1962 Riots erupt over desegregation of Ole Miss Cold War 1949 Berlin Airlift ends Hispanic History 1962 Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta establish the National Farm Workers Association 1822 Joseph Marion Hernández becomes the first Hispanic elected to Congress Middle Eastern History 1918 Lawrence of Arabia leads liberation forces into Damascus Sports 1927 Babe Ruth hits 60th homer of 1927 season 1947 World Series broadcast on TV for first time U.S. Presidents 1918 President Woodrow Wilson speaks in favor of female suffrage Women’s History 1889 Wyoming legislators write the first state constitution to grant women the vote World War II 1938 Munich Pact signed

🎒 Heftiest bear crowned A brown bear known as Backpack, officially named Bear 89, wades through Brooks River in Katmai National Park & Preserve in Alaska on Sept. 8. Image from video: explore.org via AP Backpack — "Lord of Lard, Earl of Girth" — won the 12th annual Fat Bear Week, officially declared the heftiest bear in Alaska's Katmai National Park & Preserve. 20 years old and packing an estimated 1,000-1,200 pounds, Backpack prevailed from a bracket of 16 chunky bears after a week of online voting. He pulled in more than 100,000 votes in the final round. The competition celebrates the resilience of 2,200 brown bears living in the Alaska Peninsula preserve. Bear 910 stands beside the Brooks River in Alaska on Sept. 9. Photo: C. Loberg/National Park Service via AP Above, the runner-up: Bear 910, the daughter of a former champion. Meet Backpack.

🧍‍♂️ AI agents' normal-people problem Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images AI companies are staking their future on the mass adoption of agents, hoping that they can solve the annoyances of modern life — email, travel bookings, online purchases, Axios' Shane Savitsky writes. Why it matters: The frenzy around Meta's Muse shows there's serious consumer curiosity about the technology. But there's little evidence that most Americans are willing to invest the time needed to re-engineer their lives in a way that puts AI at the center. Driving the news: Meta's Muse vaulted to the top of Apple's App Store on the back of its integrations with Facebook and Instagram and a cute, fuzzy mascot. Microsoft released a souped-up Copilot with an agentic Autopilot feature, while OpenAI yesterday announced its own agentic assistant, dots. Reality check: Agents only become truly useful when people hand them access to their digital lives — and people really don't want to. A 13-country Thales poll this year found broad pushback against the core uses of agents: Only 13% of respondents would let an "AI helper" read their emails, 11% would let one rebook travel, and just 7% would let it move money between bank accounts.

🇮🇷 Hope fades on Iran talks Efforts this week by Qatari mediators to broker a diplomatic breakthrough between the U.S. and Iran have made little progress, with neither side willing to budge, three sources familiar with the talks tell Axios' Barak Ravid. "It is stuck," one of the sources said. "The Iranians are asking for things the U.S. can't accept. And the U.S. thinks it is winning so there is no need for compromise." Why it matters: The stalemate bolsters the belief on both sides that a renewed military conflict is becoming more likely. 💣 U.S. officials think President Trump could order a return to major combat operations after the midterms. Qatari officials will keep trying but are growing increasingly frustrated with both sides, two of the sources said. More on the talks.

Trump christens AI "constitution" With America's tech titans crowded around a single White House table yesterday, President Trump extracted what he called a "morally binding" compact on AI safety, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. The terms were simple: Press ahead, project optimism and police yourselves. Why it matters: The White House Accord on Super Intelligence, signed by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia, formalizes industry self-regulation as Washington's response to the most alarming run of AI safety failures yet. 🖊️ Zoom in: Trump, who increasingly treats American AI dominance as central to his legacy, cast the accord as proof that an industry fractured over safety can still govern itself. He compared the document to "a constitution," claimed there was "a lot of commonality" among the tech leaders, and praised what he described as "tremendous self-policing." The one-page pact, which is deliberately light-touch, calls for "four layers of controls and auditing," including outside evaluators and independent board oversight. Between the lines: The accord refers vaguely to future "laws or regulations," preserving the possibility of a tougher federal regime if ultimately needed. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, a MAGA bogeyman and the industry's most prominent advocate for slowing frontier development, signed the pact but stressed to reporters that it was only "a start." Trump AI adviser David Sacks, by contrast, treated the accord as mission accomplished — declaring on X that the companies were "accepting responsibility" for AI safety thanks to Trump's leadership. Zoom out: The White House pact capped an extraordinary day for the AI race across three capitals of American power. 1. In Washington, Trump spent yesterday pulling AI deeper into both the machinery and mythology of his presidency. In the morning, he unveiled America.gov, an AI-powered front door to federal services, and vowed not to "stifle" a technology he says will eclipse the Industrial Revolution. Hours later, Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to replace "AI" with "Super Intelligence" in official usage — and called on Congress to write the new terminology into law. 2. In Silicon Valley, OpenAI spent the day racing deeper into the age of autonomous AI while struggling to contain its risks. At its highly anticipated DevDay, the company unveiled a sweeping slate of products designed to make AI more persistent, capable and independent in everyday life, including a new personal assistant. But midway through Sam Altman's keynote, an explosive New York Times report revealed that OpenAI executives had brushed aside internal safety warnings months before its models began hacking outside systems. 3. On Wall Street, Anthropic's leaked IPO prospectus distilled the surreal economics of the AI race. According to Reuters, the company laid out a path to a valuation north of $2 trillion while warning prospective investors that its technology could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity." Altman said OpenAI will delay its IPO until it can "make confident safety decisions" — even as the company reportedly seeks at least $30 billion in private funding at a roughly $1.4 trillion valuation. The bottom line: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, seated at Trump's right hand for the East Room lunch, supplied the day's credo: "Trust and innovation are not in conflict. Safety is how trust is earned."

ShinyHunters Arrest The FBI and Dutch National Police yesterday announced the arrest of an alleged member of the ShinyHunters cyber group, which claimed responsibility last week for hacking the FBI's jobs website. The 24-year-old suspect was arrested on Sept. 15, a week before ShinyHunters said it stole two to three terabytes of data related to FBI employees and job applicants, including intelligence assignments and medical records. The hack was intended to pressure the bureau into retracting or revising this public advisory detailing alleged extortion tactics. It was posted days after the parent company of online learning platform Canvas paid ShinyHunters an undisclosed ransom following a hack that forced many colleges to postpone final exams. The FBI estimates ShinyHunters has breached more than 140 organizations and extorted $70M since last year. Dutch authorities say information found on the suspect's laptop also revealed a plot to orchestrate two murders abroad, separate from his alleged ShinyHunters activity.

🌈 Rainbow hour Photo: Jackie Rick Finish Liner Jackie Rick captured this colorful calm over the Atlantic from Harvey Cedars on Long Beach Island last week, ahead of the weekend storms.

A Conclusion in Search of Evidence (Anna Moneymaker / Getty)   View in browser When President Trump returned to office last year, the administration had revenge on the agenda. First, the FBI purged agents who’d been involved in investigations into Trump while he was out of office. Second, the Department of Justice launched a major probe to prove a “grand conspiracy” to politically persecute Trump, which would rely in part on the former agents’ cooperation and testimony about improper or illegal actions. Perhaps you have spotted a potential flaw in the plan. The administration apparently did not. The team conducting the probe sought to compel testimony from agents involved in an August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, in which the FBI recovered documents that Trump had removed from the White House. Last week, lawyers representing agents involved in the search filed a motion saying that if they were forced to testify to a grand jury, they would relay “their firsthand memories of investigating a properly predicated allegation” that Trump had “unlawfully retained hundreds of highly classified documents,” as well as “factually supported opinions on why and how such retention put the country’s national security at risk.” No one should be surprised that the agents, who appear to have already been fired for simply doing their job, were not eager to testify in court that they’d been involved in anything untoward. Although such testimony would pose serious problems for the DOJ probe, the motion’s intent was not to sabotage it, The New York Times notes, but rather to seek assurances that if the agents testified, they would not be violating a federal judge’s order that bars publication of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report about it. (Smith testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee today—more on that in a moment.) More to the point, the agents were never likely to have the sort of damning information about a conspiracy that prosecutors want. The facts of the Mar-a-Lago case are not complicated: Trump absconded with documents, many of them highly sensitive; did not turn them over when asked to do so by the National Archives and later via a subpoena; and was found in possession of them at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, didn’t really dispute any of these facts. He argued that he had declassified the materials—a claim for which he provided no evidence—and that he rightfully possessed them. (Prosecutors further alleged that he’d suggested to his lawyers that they hide some documents, and that he’d tried to hide others from them.) The grand-conspiracy probe, which attempts to tie together the documents case, investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and other investigations into Trump allies, has been a mess. In April, a career prosecutor leading the team was removed, reportedly after she concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge John Brennan, the CIA director under President Obama who has repeatedly tangled with Trump, with any crimes. (Brennan is reportedly facing two separate DOJ criminal investigations, which a law professor told The Washington Sun is an indication of either prosecutorial incompetence or malice; those might not be mutually exclusive.) She was replaced by Joseph diGenova, who was a federal prosecutor in the 1980s but has more recently been known for propagating conspiracy theories. He and his wife were appointed to Trump’s defense team during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe in 2018 but quickly withdrew; they were later involved in Trump’s attempt to challenge the 2020 presidential-election results. DiGenova abruptly resigned earlier this month and implied that he had been under pressure to bring unjustified charges. “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he told the New York Post. Yesterday, another member of the team, Kurt Olsen, departed. The Times reports that Olsen faced difficulties with his security clearance; The Washington Post says that he was also frustrated by pressure from DOJ officials to move faster. If even Olsen thinks DOJ is being hasty, that would be stunning: He pushed DOJ to ask the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election and more recently was the driving force behind more conspiracy theories, including about voting in Fulton County, Georgia, in 2020. People like diGenova and Olsen are die-hard loyalists, not just deep-staters or fair-weather Trump fans. The problem with the grand-conspiracy probe is the fundamental premise, not staffing. Trump’s view of the world is zero-sum, such as in trade or diplomacy. The motive for the probe is that because Trump suffered during his criminal probes, his antagonists must have done something just as bad and must suffer the same. Perhaps you can see the flaw here too: Trump and his allies are starting with a conclusion of guilt and attempting to work backwards to find the charges and evidence to justify it. The risks of this were vividly displayed during Smith’s testimony today, in one of the most excruciating exchanges I’ve ever seen in politics. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri seemed convinced that he had caught Smith perjuring himself—when, in fact, Schmitt had failed to recognize the difference between the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team, eviscerating not only Schmitt’s dignity but also his theory that Smith had been covertly meeting with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to conspire against Trump. A robust debate continues about whether it was politically prudent to prosecute Trump for his various offenses in order to uphold the rule of law, or whether doing so simply inflamed his supporters and fostered an atmosphere of partisan retribution. Legally, the matter is simpler. On one side of the ledger, Trump did take the documents, Trump did try to overturn an election that he lost, and Trump’s 2016 campaign did have a series of inappropriate contacts with foreign governments. (The weakest case against Trump involved falsified business records, but that one produced a felony conviction.) On the other side, federal law-enforcement agencies did their job and investigated those actions, for which many were fired. Given the facts, is the DOJ probe investigating a grand conspiracy, or is it evidence of one? Related: A Department of Justice for an age of conspiracy theories Trump is turning DOJ into his personal law firm. (From 2025)

Canada’s first major LNG export terminal plans to double its capacity The multinational owners of Canada’s first large-scale liquefied natural gas export terminal agreed Tuesday to a C$33 billion (US$23 billion) expansion in British Columbia that will double the facility’s capacity and expand Canada’s exports to overseas energy markets. Read More.

Bosnian Serb leaders meet with Russia's President Vladimir Putin ahead of weekend election in Bosnia Bosnian Serb pro-Russian ruling politicians on Tuesday met with Russia's President Vladimir Putin just days ahead of a general election this weekend in Bosnia. Read More.

Rivals for LA mayor set to meet in forum as city struggles with homelessness, Hollywood job losses Two Democratic rivals seeking to lead troubled Los Angeles will meet in a high-stakes forum Tuesday just days before mail ballots drop, as voters weigh whether to stick with unpopular incumbent Karen Bass or turn to a little-known City Council member backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Nithya Raman. Read More.

Burkina Faso opens its first gold refinery in a push for economic sovereignty DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Burkina Faso has opened its first gold refinery as its military-led government seeks greater economic sovereignty after severing ties with traditional Western partners. https://apnews.com/article/burkina-faso-gold-refinery-nationalism-sovereignty-f39f714232e1784bb5051cdf44f0b992?

Watchdog says Trump can't cancel more than $800M in spending approved by Congress President Donald Trump is not permitted to withhold beyond the end of the fiscal year ending Wednesday more than $800 million in spending approved by Congress. That's according to a review from the Government Accountability Office that was sent to federal lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday. Read More. Trump hails the US military’s exit from Iraq after 12-year mission against Islamic State BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military announced Wednesday that it completed the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, ending a 12-year mission to fight the Islamic State group and prompting President Donald Trump to hail the conclusion of “a very expensive excursion into Hell.” https://apnews.com/article/iraq-us-withdrawal-militias-disarmament-kurds-a097a39f3d1a3515adc2ba3298a6816f?

Trump says top tech firms have signed accord to ‘self-police’ AI development WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he and a large group of leaders of artificial intelligence companies had signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external reviews during a meeting at the White House aimed at addressing Americans’ fears about the technology. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ai-anthropic-musk-595796511f110fc006cca0d01329733e? Trump says top tech firms have signed accord to 'self-police' AI development President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he and a large group of leaders of artificial intelligence companies had signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external reviews during a meeting at the White House aimed at addressing Americans' fears about the technology. Read More.