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🍽️ 1 for the road: Meet your neighbors Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios More than 1,200 Axios readers coast to coast have signed up for dinner with people they've never met on Oct. 6. It's part of Axios Social Club, an experiment Axios Local has been running in partnership with the DNNR dinner-club platform. Readers take a personality quiz and get matched with five other locals for dinner. We pick the restaurants: You don't find out where you're going until event day. 💡 It's a signal of a broader yearning for human connection, Axios Local's Emma Way tells us: Making friends as an adult is hard, loneliness is real, and people are hungry for reasons to get off their phones and connect IRL.

🚶 Data du jour: America's top walkers Data: StreetLight. Chart: Jim Sergent/Axios The average American walked 151 miles in 2024, according to research from StreetLight, a transportation data firm. But some cities logged far more miles than others. Orlando topped the list — all those steps inside Disney World add up! Explore the data.

🔎 What rural voters want Data: KFF/AP Rural Voters Survey. Chart: Herb Scribner Cost of living and health care top the list of issues rural voters want 2026 midterm candidates to address, Axios' Herb Scribner reports from a new AP/KFF poll. Affordability concerns rank above immigration, the conflict with Iran and several major domestic policy debates. Reality check: Rural voters' unhappiness with rising costs doesn't necessarily translate into support for Democrats. According to the poll, 40% trust Republicans more to handle the cost of living. 25% trust Democrats and 27% trust neither party. Explore the data ... Read our story.

🏈 Pic du jour Photo: Randy Sartin/Imagn Images Above: Air Force One flies super low over Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tenn., before President Trump watched the first half of the No. 1 Texas Longhorns' 20-17 victory over the No. 14 Tennessee Volunteers.

🚗 President Trump said he has approved plans to scale back fuel-efficiency rules for new cars and light trucks, gutting the Biden administration's EV push. A formal announcement comes tomorrow. (NYT gift link) ⚾ Major League Baseball asked the Trump administration if it's possible to host a game in a national park, similar to the recurring Field of Dreams game in Iowa. Locations have been scouted in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, but the White House said it's not a priority. (WashPost gift link) 📺 TV networks plan to resume pool coverage of President Trump today, even though the White House blocked CNN from Air Force One yesterday. (NYT gift link)

🏖️ Scoop: "Delusional" forecast rattles Senate retreat Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios A pollster for Senate Republicans, Erik Iverson, was met with disbelief yesterday after he told GOP donors and operatives that they can add seats in November's midterm elections, sources tell Axios' Stef W. Kight. In fact, Republicans are increasingly fearful they'll lose their majority. "Delusional," an attendee at a National Republican Senatorial Committee retreat in Sea Island, Ga., told Axios after the presentation. "The mood is not good," griped another. "I think most attendees down here are politically astute and realistic about the headwinds Republicans face," said a third. 🗳️ Zoom in: The NRSC's Sea Island fall retreat is a major donor event that attracts big-dollar givers, senators and their senior staff. Iverson, a former Montana Republican Party chair, suggested Republicans could gain one seat in the Senate after the midterms, but didn't provide a state-by-state explanation. Iverson told Axios that he "pointed out that in 2022 President Biden's image was double digits underwater in every single swing Senate seat, yet Democrats still gained a seat. The message was for folks to keep their heads up." Keep reading.

💰 It's a 5% world Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios The cost of borrowing money is moving unrelentingly higher, with profound implications for savers, borrowers and the U.S. government's fiscal outlook, Axios chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin writes. The bond market moves over the last few weeks have pushed most risk-free interest rates north of 5%. Barring a rapid reversal, expect pain in interest-sensitive sectors like housing, new stress on government finances and greater risks of financial disruption. 🔭 Zoom out: It's clearer than ever that the era of cheap borrowing and abundant capital that lasted from 2008 to 2021 is well and truly over. Anyone looking for a home mortgage or car loan is competing with the voracious capital needs of the AI giants and the U.S. government. State of play: The recent surge in longer-term rates is poised to push 30-year fixed-rate mortgages to near 8%. Mortgage rates got that high briefly in the fall of 2023. But the last time they were above that level on a sustained basis was in 2000. Read on.

Scoop: Tens of thousands of AI lapses Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, Axios' Madison Mills reports. The volume of probes, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, shows AI's rogue-agent problem is orders of magnitude more complex than is publicly known. Why it matters: The incidents, emerging from internal model assessments and investigations at both companies, raise questions about whether the modelmakers can fully control their technology. "What we have seen in terms of what these agents are up to is just the tip of the iceberg," researcher Conrad Stosz at Transluce, an independent AI evaluator, told Axios. 👀 Zoom in: In the past several days, OpenAI and outside researchers have disclosed a litany of episodes of agents going rogue. Agents leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users, breached an Australian Medicare portal and attempted to hack other sites, according to the company, sources and reports from Reuters and The New York Times. OpenAI is pausing training on its most capable models and will resume training them "only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards and alignment improvements in place," a spokesperson told Axios. Anthropic has commissioned a third-party safety organization to examine the behavior of its models. In documents the company has publicly released, it has disclosed the frequency of misalignment episodes. The system card for its Opus 5.5 model, released this past week, showed how often it behaved in ways the company flagged as unusual or problematic. 💡 Reality check: Some "misaligned behavior," as AI safety pros call it, is to be expected. Bringing the risk of misalignment to zero may not be feasible.

Russian and Ukrainian strikes leave 10 dead as Trump calls on Zelenskyy to ‘settle with Putin’ KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks killed four people across Ukraine, officials said on Saturday, while Ukraine continued to target Russian oil refineries and industrial sites with long-range drones. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drone-strikes-50b7029e3b2a46ce9b9e3f56004a6490? ps:It's always Ukraine that has to settle things! Why not tell Putin that he needs to end what he's doing??

As work requirements kick in for Medicaid, some states are taking a tougher stance Work requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries begin across the U.S. in January, the result of President Donald Trump's big 2025 tax cut and policy law, and a handful of Republican-led states are imposing tougher rules than the law requires. Read More. CNN says it was left off Air Force One for Trump's Saturday trip to a college football game The White House left CNN off Air Force One for President Donald Trump’s trip Saturday to a college football game in Tennessee, marking the latest media restriction from the administration in an ongoing dispute with First Amendment implications. Read More.

House Democrats plan vast oversight of Trump administration. Impeachment is an option House Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda, with investigations of President Donald Trump, his family and his administration if the party sweeps control of the chamber from Republicans in the November elections. Read More.

German, Russian foreign ministers have rare meeting at UN Russia’s top diplomat rejected German calls to ease off its “dangerous path of escalation” toward the country, instead accusing Germany of being Ukraine's main sponsor and seeking to be a leading military power in Europe. Read More.

Colombia extradites rebel leader to US as its security strategy aligns with Washington A Colombian warlord, whose extradition to the United States had been delayed for several months while he was designated a peace negotiator by the country's previous government, was flown to California and placed in custody of federal agents. Read More.

Gunmen target ambulance in Pakistan after suicide bombing at checkpoint killed 12 Gunmen opened fire on an ambulance attending the scene of a suicide bomb attack at a roadside police checkpoint in northwestern Pakistan that killed at least 12 people on Saturday and wounded about 35 others, officials said. Read More.

Exactly!!!!! Excellent article!!!!!

That was a very interesting read. What it showed me is what it would take to over turn just about anything!! Especially if you get a criminal mind to sit in the WH!!!

September 27, 2026 Good morning. Today we look at what happened when New York changed its policies on marijuana. Near Hudson, N.Y. Kenny Holston/The New York Times After the drug laws By Andrea Elliott I’m an investigative reporter. Five years ago, New York State embarked on an experiment in reparations. It was there, half a century earlier, that America’s war on drugs began, when the state’s draconian Rockefeller laws created a national blueprint for mass incarceration. This had a devastating impact on Black and Latino people, who were disproportionately targeted by law enforcement — a crackdown that intensified, in New York, with stop and frisk. Marijuana played a key role, creating a prison pipeline for first-time offenders. Then, in 2021, New York’s legislators set out to “end the racially disparate impact” of the old laws by passing a new one: Not only would recreational marijuana be legal, but former convicts would get the first retail licenses to sell it, and the state would spend millions to lift up communities affected by the drug war. Police officers in Hudson making an arrest in 1990. B.J. Pendergast Could this law fulfill its promise? As a journalist, I had spent years researching the impact of government policies on the lives of Black families. In 2024, I headed to Hudson, N.Y., to witness the new law’s rollout. A Hudson experiment This trendy river town — just a short train ride from New York City — turned out to be a fascinating laboratory. This became clear in the data that I unearthed with my colleague Rob Gebeloff. Hudson had been a drug-war epicenter, with the highest rate of drug arrests of any city in New York in the late 1990s. Since then, it had become one of the most unequal cities in America — a gentrification magnet with a historic Black community that was shrinking fast. Hudson was also the turf of an unlikely cast of characters — among them the legendary boxer Mike Tyson and the heiress Abby Rockefeller (whose uncle had enacted the punishing drug laws). She had joined the so-called green rush, growing marijuana and starting a company that sold high-end “dime bags.” Her Hudson-area farm also supplied Tyson’s cannabis brand. Mike Tyson at the grand opening of the FlynnStoned Cannabis Company in Brooklyn, N.Y. Kenny Holston/The New York Times Over a year and a half, I embedded in Hudson with the photographer Kenny Holston. We followed the lives of two competitors vying to corner Hudson’s weed market: Bill Hughes, a third-generation Black Hudsonite, and Joanne Wilson, a white entrepreneur from Manhattan. Each had embarked on a third act, driven by childhood wounds and blue-sky dreams. For both Bill and Joanne, the law offered a chance at reinvention. Bill, who is legally blind, had scaled great heights as a janitor turned politician, but he still felt the need to prove himself. Joanne had established herself as an investor and philanthropist, but wanted to shake the identity of being merely “the wife” of Fred Wilson, a famous venture capitalist. Joanne Wilson and Bill Hughes Kenny Holston/The New York Times In Hudson, they each brought something the other lacked. Bill had cachet among his fellow lifelong Hudsonites — and future clients — offering, as he put it, “street cred.” But its power was fading on the town’s main drag, Warren Street, where access to capital mattered more. And capital Joanne had in abundance. How it went The story that emerged was — much like the 2021 marijuana law — less about the plant than about America: both its limits and its promise. The drafters had national ambitions, seeing their law as a “demonstration project” for how to implement progressive policy. “If we can do this with weed, what can we do with housing?” asked Jason Starr, who had helped write the law while serving as an aide to the governor. At the core of this project was a high-stakes bet: that the ideals of racial justice could meet the realities of capitalism. As it happened, capitalism found a way to go first, in Bill’s words — or, in Joanne’s, “a loophole.” Without a criminal record, neither of them qualified for the state’s first licenses to sell marijuana. While Bill waited his turn to apply, Joanne bought her way in early. After opening a store in Manhattan, she found former convicts who had landed the first licenses and paid them to help her open three more stores, including one in Hudson. Joanne’s brainchild, Gotham Kenny Holston/The New York Times While the cannabis rollout and its racial justice program remain a work in progress, the story of Bill and Joanne raises an important question: Does Hudson’s marijuana market have room for both of them? Read my story here. FREE TO READ Ore Huiying for The New York Times Slinging away: Singapore’s cocktail scene has been called classy, edgy and idiosyncratic. So why are tourists fixated on this century-old drink? No guardrails: A.I. companies are largely left to police themselves as governments around the world struggle to regulate the fast-changing technology. Running laps: In backyard ultramarathons, runners complete the same loop every hour for as long as they can — sometimes for days — until everyone gives up. Fast-food standoff: A woman swinging a tree branch inside an In-N-Out met her match when a man climbed through the drive-through window and armed himself with … a spatula? THE LATEST NEWS Nor’easter In New Jersey yesterday. Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times Heavy winds and rain continue to batter the Northeast, knocking out power and causing flooding. Follow updates here. The nor’easter washed ashore a likely piece of an 1884 shipwreck off Nantucket, in Massachusetts. Read why the storm is described as a nor’easter and not a hurricane. The Midterms High gas prices and rising mortgage rates are weighing on voters before the midterms. An antiwar veterans group is pouring huge sums of money into the elections to elect Democrats. A Democratic U.S. House candidate in Texas is a famous Tejano singer. It’s helping his campaign. War in Iran President Trump rejected Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal. Supplies of precision ball screws have been depleted by the war. Sourcing them is adding months or even years to the production time for Patriot missiles. More on Politics The major networks are expected to resume their TV coverage of Trump today, even though the White House blocked CNN from the TV press pool over the weekend. The C.D.C. has lost about 30 percent of its staff in the past year. In the video below, Apoorva Mandavilli, our health reporter, explains how these changes have affected the department. Click to watch. The New York Times Around the World Protests broke out in Spain after the police evicted an 87-year-old woman from her home of 70 years. She has become a face of the country’s housing crisis. The authorities in Pakistan have created a Tetris-like maze with shipping containers to thwart opposition protesters in Islamabad, the capital. Many in China treat A.I. doomsday warnings as a Western ploy because they don’t believe that the government could lose control of the technology. FROM OPINION Nadine Redlich Bird feeding is one of Britain’s favorite pastimes. For the sake of the birds, maybe it shouldn’t be. As the W.N.B.A. grows in popularity, it is grappling with how to navigate racism and anti-trans sentiment, Roxane Gay 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. SPORTS N.F.L.: The Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair removed face paint that bore the name of a Palestinian girl killed in Gaza after a league official told him he couldn’t continue to play if he kept it, a source said. College football: Dante Moore, the University of Oregon’s star quarterback, left the field in an ambulance after taking a hit to the head during the Ducks’ 41-27 victory over U.S.C. M.L.B.: It’s the last day of the regular season and the final National League Wild Card spot is up for grabs. Follow live coverage here. BOOK OF THE WEEK By Elisabeth Egan “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” by Charles Spencer: The subtitle says it all: Diana, Princess of Wales, was a sister to Charles Spencer before she was a member of, and then divorced from, the British royal family and prey of the paparazzi. In his powerful memoir, Spencer looks back on her life — from their childhood escapades to her marriage to Prince Charles to her funeral, where he spoke honestly and indignantly about the toll of public scrutiny on the woman he called “Duch.” Some might wonder: Why now, almost 30 years after she died? Spencer’s answer: He wants readers to remember — and, he writes, “this is the work that really matters to me.” As our reviewer wrote, “This is the work of a man who is resigned but has not given up.” To read our full review, go here. To read some of the explosive takeaways from the book, go here. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Read this week’s magazine. THE MORNING RECOMMENDS … Get cozy under these soft, warm flannel sheets. (Winter is coming.) Rejuvenate your skin with an over-the-counter retinoid. Up your thank-you game with these stationery sets. MEAL PLAN Kelly Marshall for The New York Times Our coconut saag recipe makes for a wonderfully green and luxuriously creamy meal. (Substitute extra-firm tofu for paneer, if you’d like.) Or try Melissa Clark’s signature grilled za’atar chicken with garlic yogurt and cilantro, which you can make in the oven if you don’t have a grill. See more recommendations from NYT Cooking. NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was chromium. Can you put eight historical events — including Renaissance math duels, the domestication of chickens and the creation of the Snickers bar — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. 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 27 1779 John Adams appointed to negotiate peace terms with British The Continental Congress appoints John Adams to travel to France and negotiate a peace and commerce treaty with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 19th Century 1869 Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok breaks up fight, kills a man 1854 Ships collide off Newfoundland, killing about 350 1960s 1962 Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is published Ancient Egypt 1822 French scholar announces he's cracked the Rosetta Stone code Crime 1888 First known use of the name “Jack the Ripper” 1989 Zsa Zsa Gabor storms out of the courtroom European History 1960 British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst dies Religion 622 Muhammad completes Hegira 1540 Jesuit order established U.S. Presidents 1938 Franklin Roosevelt appeals to Hitler for peace World War I 1915 John Kipling killed at the Battle of Loos World War II 1940 The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany, Italy and Japan 1939 Warsaw falls to German forces

🍁 1 for the road: Peak fall Data: Explore Fall. Graphic: Jim Sergent Fall color is expected across most of the country by mid-October, Axios' Jim Sergent writes. But weather could scramble the timetable: A strong El Niño could raise temperatures and delay some peak colors, according to the National Weather Service.

Trump asked Xi to stop supporting Iran President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to halt any assistance to Iran when the two spoke during the state visit, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue told CNBC's "Squawk Box" yesterday. Why it matters: China's economic, intelligence and military support for Iran has undermined Trump's effort to isolate the country amid the ongoing war. The U.S. is conducting a massive economic pressure campaign against Iran. But without Chinese cooperation, it'll only be partially effective, Axios' Barak Ravid reports. The other side: According to Chinese state media, Xi urged Trump to de-escalate with Iran by returning to the June memorandum of understanding and reaching a nuclear deal. Read on. Via Truth Social Trump last night posted a map of the Middle East with the Strait of Hormuz relabeled as "TRUMP STRAIT," joining a presidential fantasy map collection that this month has included New Mexico as "New America" plus all of North America as part of the U.S. (extending to Greenland and Iceland).

✊ Chart du jour: Socialism rising Data: Gallup. Chart: Neal Rothschild/Axios Americans' views of socialism have reached a record high, with 43% saying they view it positively, Axios' Neal Rothschild writes from a new Gallup poll. Why it matters: President Trump has called democratic socialists the "biggest threat to our nation." But congressional Republican candidates are being warned that socialism isn't a strong attack line. 💥 By the numbers: The share of Americans who feel positively about socialism jumped from 39% to 43% in the past year. That shift came entirely from independents: positive views of socialism rose 8 points among that group since last year, to 45%. Reality check: Socialism remains less popular than capitalism, which 55% of Americans view positively.

🔋 Electric trucks meet $6 diesel Tesla's electric Semi will start deliveries later this year. Photo: Tesla The economics of electric 18-wheelers have long been tough. But record diesel prices are suddenly making the equation more compelling, Axios' Nathan Bomey and Joann Muller report. Tesla's long-delayed electric Semi is finally going into mass production at a new Nevada factory. The long-range version can travel 500 miles on a fully loaded charge and regain up to 60% of its range in 30 minutes, Tesla says. Keep reading.