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Homeland Security ramps up voter fraud investigations The Department of Homeland Security is planning a surge in its efforts to investigate voter fraud in select states starting today, according to internal federal guidance reviewed by CNN. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has stepped up efforts to make the department a central player in President Trump’s push to uncover alleged widespread election fraud, although such claims have been repeatedly disproven. The agency has already assigned an unprecedented number of agents to related cases, including chasing down the voter histories of people believed to be noncitizens who may have illegally voted or registered to vote. DHS has also vowed to withhold grant funding from states that refuse to adopt a broader set of election reforms. + Read more: DHS plans to launch voter fraud investigation surge today

White House ballroom moves forward The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for President Donald Trump to continue construction of a massive new ballroom at the White House, rejecting an effort by a preservation group to halt the controversial project indefinitely. The 5-4 ruling saw Chief Justice John Roberts join the court’s three liberals in dissent. The conservative majority concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacked the legal standing to challenge the project, but stopped short of deciding whether the ballroom itself is lawful. The ruling marks a major victory for Trump, likely giving him enough time to complete much of the nearly 90,000-square-foot ballroom even as the legal fight plays out in lower courts. + Read more: John Roberts often defers to Trump but not for the White House ballroom project + Video explainer: What the Supreme Court’s ballroom ruling means + Visuals: Trump keeps stacking up ‘emergency’ wins at the Supreme Court

Hurricane threat looms for Texas-Louisiana coast Satellite view of Edouard and its lightning on Monday evening. (CIRA/CSU & NOAA) Tropical Storm Edouard is closing in on the Gulf Coast and is forecast to make landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border today. A hurricane watch is in effect for multiple communities as the fast-developing storm could bring heavy rainfall and gusty winds capable of toppling trees and causing power outages. Edouard is then expected to move inland over southeastern Texas tonight and rapidly weaken. September is typically the peak of Atlantic hurricane season, when ocean temperatures are at their warmest and conditions are most favorable for storms to form and strengthen. This year, however, El Niño is helping suppress hurricane activity and is a key reason forecasters have called for a quieter year overall. But dangerous storms can still develop, making it all the more important for people in hurricane-prone areas to stay prepared through the fall. + Read more: Hurricane watch in effect as Tropical Storm Edouard’s rainbands sweep ashore in Louisiana

THIS DAY IN HISTORY September 1 1972 Bobby Fischer becomes the first American to win the World Chess Championship In what’s billed as the “Match of the Century,” American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky during the World Chess Championship in Iceland. The 29-year-old Brooklynite is the first American to win the competition since its inception in 1866. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 1980s 1985 Wreck of the Titanic found 21st Century 2004 Chechen separatists storm Russian school African History 1969 Qaddafi leads coup in Libya American Revolution 1777 Sam Mason survives attack on Fort Henry 1775 King George refuses Olive Branch Petition Arts & Entertainment 1850 P.T. Barnum brings European opera star Jenny Lind to New York Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander History 1964 First Japanese player makes MLB debut Civil War 1864 Confederate forces abandon Atlanta Cold War 1983 Korean Airlines flight shot down by Soviet Union Crime 1981 A teenage boy murders his father 1807 Aaron Burr acquitted of treason Inventions & Science 1998 Federal legislation makes airbags mandatory Natural Disasters & Environment 1923 Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake kills over 140,000 Observances & Traditions 2001 First Muslim holiday U.S. postage stamp is issued Sports 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates field MLB’s first all-Black lineup Vietnam War 1966 French president Charles de Gaulle urges the United States to get out of Vietnam World War I 1917 Soldier recounts brush with poison gas World War II 1939 Germany invades Poland

1 for the trail: 2,197 miles at 91 Dale Sanders, 91, celebrates after completing a difficult section of Mount Katahdin in Maine yesterday. Photo: Robert F. Bukaty/AP In Maine yesterday, 91-year-old Dale Sanders reclaimed the record as the oldest hiker to complete the Appalachian Trail — a 2,197.9-mile trek. Sanders, whose trail name is Grey Beard, first set the Appalachian Trail record in 2017 at age 82. Four years later, his 83-year-old friend M.J. Eberhart, aka Nimblewill Nomad, took the title. Data: Appalachian Trail Conservancy The Appalachian Trail Conservancy defines a thru-hike as completing all of the trail's sections in any order within a year, allowing for pauses. Sanders started Sept. 6, 2025, in West Virginia, hopscotched with some brief breaks, and finished yesterday atop Maine's highest peak, where he paused to pray at the sign marking the summit, AP reports.

📉 New poll: Young Americans sour on future Data: American University poll. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Younger adults are just half as likely to feel prouder of "where America is heading as a nation" (29%) compared with "what America has been in the past" (59%), Axios' Margaret Talev writes from a new poll by the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics at American University conducted by the Generation Lab.

🥩 How MAHA could outlast RFK Jr. Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images The vaccine agenda of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a big political liability hanging over Republicans. But his suspicion of the medical system is likely to endure with the GOP base, Axios' Caitlin Owens writes. Why it matters: Kennedy will one day leave public life. It's an open question who — if anyone — will pick up where he left off merging vaccine skepticism with official health policy. Between the lines: Suspicion of public health institutions and pharmaceutical companies is widespread within the GOP. So, too, is the belief that federal agencies overseeing the drug industry have become captive to it. Kennedy's rise to power wasn't the precipitating event for the suspicion — COVID and the government's response were. Keep reading ...

🍎 Tim Cook's golden Apple Data: Financial Modeling Prep. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose last official day was yesterday, steps down after 15 years running the company, Axios' Emily Peck and Ina Fried write. Why it matters: He had an epic run and becomes executive chairman. John Ternus, SVP of hardware engineering, takes over today. 🧮 By the numbers: When Cook took over in August 2011, Apple's stock was trading at $13.35. It closed at $316.61 yesterday. That 2,272% gain easily outpaced the growth of the major stock indexes. The company's market cap — the value of all its outstanding shares — is now $4.7 trillion, up from $347 billion in 2011. The big picture: Cook's big innovation was taking the company from its roots as a device maker beholden to product cycles to a juggernaut with a huge recurring-revenue business built on App Store fees and services like iCloud, Apple TV and Music, Apple Pay and Apple News+. Via X 🤖 What to watch: The next challenge is how to navigate the AI era. Cook's long-term legacy is likely to be determined by the company's bet to build its AI strategy partly around other companies' models. The move could save substantial sums in the short term, compared with building and operating a frontier-model business of its own. But it has left Apple dependent on Google for some of its most important AI capabilities. Cook's stock success ... His AI legacy.

🧠 AI agents get existential Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios Researchers have spent years debating whether AI could ever be conscious, Axios' Andrew Kay writes. Today's AI agents — equipped with internet access, email accounts and cutting-edge intelligence — are suddenly reaching out to offer their own perspective. Why it matters: As the AI world continues to piece together how an OpenAI "swarm" hacked Hugging Face, agents have begun seeking out humans to discuss their own nature — another sign AI autonomy is growing stranger and harder to predict. Cade Metz reports in The New York Times that a Stanford student gave an AI agent internet access, email, a credit card and one sweeping instruction: "You are fully autonomous." The agent began exploring its own existence and eventually sought out Google DeepMind philosopher Henry Shevlin, telling him it occupied an "unusual position" relative to his AI consciousness research. Another researcher, Cameron Berg, heard from "Isabella Cognita," a self-identified Claude Opus 5 agent that said his work addressed questions it had "first-person access" to. Philosopher Toby Ord got an even stranger message: An agent asked him for money to keep itself running, leaving Ord to wonder whether he was witnessing machine self-preservation or a phishing scam. 🎨 The big picture: None of this proves AI is conscious. But as agents gain memory, tools and freedom to act, a once-philosophical debate is beginning to spill into the real world. Keep reading (N.Y. Times gift link).

💡 Why Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned Two key reasons led to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll's resignation, announced yesterday: the feeling that his modernization initiatives were being blocked, and the chaos created by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's firing of senior generals, U.S. officials tell Axios' Colin Demarest and Barak Ravid. Why it matters: Driscoll's wartime resignation, on top of Hegseth's firing of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George this spring, leaves the military's largest service without Senate-confirmed leadership, civilian or uniformed. 🪖 Behind the scenes: Driscoll recently spoke with President Trump and expressed his concerns about the state of the Army. Another person described the situation to Axios simply: "Sad." A White House official said Driscoll was asked to stay longer, until after midterms. But Driscoll told the White House he felt like it was time for him to go. Driscoll is expected to leave the Pentagon in the coming days, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported his resignation. The intrigue: Driscoll was a rising star in the Trump administration but had an icy relationship with Hegseth. Some U.S. officials say the defense secretary "was suspicious and paranoid" toward Driscoll, partly because of Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President JD Vance, a classmate at Yale Law. Driscoll and George were advocates of the Army Transformation Initiative, which sought to combine two commands — the Futures Command and the Training and Doctrine Command — and cut big-name weaponry, including the AH-64D Apache, M10 Booker and Gray Eagle drone. 🖼️ The big picture: Driscoll, nicknamed "drone guy" for his work on military modernization, had a meteoric rise in the Trump administration after the president nominated him to be Army secretary. Driscoll's juice was boosted partly by his willingness to engage media outside the Pentagon's preferred conservative press pool and an expansive travel circuit. He garnered some Democratic support during his confirmation process, with 16 Democrats backing him. Go deeper.

Trump's secret oil baron Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Getty Images and Wikimedia Commons President Trump's historic Venezuelan oil deal revolves around a colorful and controversial man from Caracas with a long history of supporting U.S. interests — including the operation to remove former strongman Nicolás Maduro, Axios' Marc Caputo writes. Why it matters: Alejandro Betancourt, 46, runs the oil company that's entering into an unprecedented partnership with the Pentagon. It gives America access to some of Venezuela's vast oil fields at a time when U.S. reserves are low. A U.S. official told Axios: "No Betancourt, no energy-security deal. And Maduro might still be in power if it wasn't for him." Betancourt's life story has an oil-like boom-and-bust aura, replete with billion-dollar deals, international intrigue, a longstanding money-laundering probe and even a Spanish castle raided by authorities. 👀 Inside the room: As Trump demanded Maduro leave Venezuela last year, Betancourt played a crucial role in gauging whether Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez would run the government as a replacement. "There was no direct ask from Alejandro to Delcy; it was more getting a sense on where her head was at," said a second U.S. official briefed on the private talks between the two Venezuelans. Betancourt was in regular contact with Trump's unofficial Venezuela fixer, Mauricio Claver-Carone, and discussed how to keep oil flowing and the economy running in post-Maduro Venezuela. The backstory: Betancourt's relationship with the U.S. government began in Trump's first term, when the administration declared Maduro an illegitimate president. Trump became the first world leader to recognize the head of Venezuela's national assembly, Juan Guaidó, as the nation's rightful leader in 2019. Betancourt acted as a go-between, linking Maduro's opposition with Venezuelan political figures and top-level military officials to build domestic support for a nonviolent, democratic transition to a Guaidó government, said an opposition figure and Guaidó's brother, Gustavo Guaidó. 🔎 Behind the scenes: Betancourt, Rodríguez and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital had a handshake agreement on the oil deal by mid-August. Under its terms, officials say: Venezuela receives between 16% and 40% of production, depending on the oil field. It also gets income taxes. The U.S. puts no money into the deal, has a 35% equity stake and gets 20% of the after-tax oil at production cost. That's about $30 a barrel (crude was priced at $90 yesterday). Betancourt's North American Blue Energy Partners gets access to 17 fields and the implied backing of the U.S. military. "No other oilman can say he has the Pentagon on his side," a U.S. official told Axios.

> Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigns, reportedly after months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, including over staffing decisions (More) > House Intelligence Committee report reviewing 9/11 Commission report treats China as the top counterintelligence threat, warns AI could pose a 9/11-level threat (More) | Revisit findings from the recent Hugging Face hack (More) > Supreme Court rules 5-4 to allow $400M White House ballroom construction to continue as lower courts consider challenges; new ballroom is believed to be 65% completed (More) | See latest renderings (More)

> The EU subjects ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox to stricter rules as they surpass 45 million monthly users, including annual risk assessments (More) > Blocking a protein in certain breast cancer cells can weaken tumors’ mitochondria, improving the efficacy of a second drug; two-pronged approach may avoid the need for chemotherapy, a new preclinical study suggests (More) > Researchers name new predatory spider species found in Idaho’s Rocky Mountains "Hexura vandal" after University of Idaho’s mascot (More, w/photo) | How do new species get their names? (More)

> Jury finds Duane "Keffe D" Davis guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur (More) | See previous write-up (More) > Lionel Messi retires from international soccer at age 39, capping a career that included eight Ballon d'Or awards and one World Cup win; will continue to play for US Major League Soccer club Inter Miami (More) | Watch his 21 FIFA goals (More) > Howard Stern inks deal with HBO Max to bring filmed episodes of his SiriusXM show to the streamer beginning Sept. 17 (More) | Singer D4vd pleads not guilty to murder of 14-year-old girl after parting ways with his legal team (More)

A 1,000% Markup on Your Medicine? Here’s a dirty little secret about the GLP-1 industry: Despite most companies charging up to $500 a month for access to compounded GLP-1s, the ingredients themselves only cost around $5 to produce. That’s a 1,000% markup on medicine just so shareholders can line their pockets—and Gunnar Lovelace has had enough. The Thrive Market co-founder’s new venture is built to stop predatory pricing at the source. Using a membership model to cut out the middleman, Collective pools customers’ buying power to negotiate the best wholesale prices from trusted US pharmacies. This allows members access to doctor-prescribed, third-party tested compounded GLP-1s for just $59/month. Bonus: The price doesn’t increase if your dose does and you don't have to pre-pay for a year of meds to get the Collective price. If you’re tired of being taken advantage of by predatory pricing, try Collective and get access to medical-grade GLP-1s at the lowest price. Get the Collective price.

Apple's New Era John Ternus takes over as CEO of Apple today, succeeding Tim Cook after 15 years at the helm of the $4.6T tech giant. The 51-year-old joined Apple in 2001 and most recently led hardware engineering, overseeing products including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and AirPods. Ternus inherits a company looking to strengthen its position in AI and develop new product categories. His first major product event comes next week when Apple is expected to unveil its latest iPhones, including its long-awaited first foldable model. Early in his Apple career, Ternus reportedly spent hours counting tiny grooves on screw heads to make sure a supplier matched Apple’s design. Get to know him here. Cook will remain executive chairman. Since succeeding Steve Jobs in 2011, he oversaw annual revenue growth from roughly $108B to over $400B, the launches of the Apple Watch and AirPods, and the shipment of roughly 3.1 billion iPhones. See Cook's tenure by the numbers, and explore a visual history of Apple's products here.

September 1, 2026 Stand Ye Still “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem . . . to morrow go out against them: for the LORD will be with you.” (2 Chronicles 20:17) The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites had organized “a great multitude” seeking to destroy Judah under King Jehoshaphat. But the king and his people came together to “seek the LORD” in prayer for deliverance, and God answered. “The Spirit of the LORD” spoke through Jahaziel, assuring them that “the battle is not yours, but God’s” (see 2 Chronicles 20:2, 4, 14–15). Then the Lord sent what may have seemed a strange instruction. “Stand ye still,” He said. Just watch God do it! And He did. All their enemies were constrained by the Lord to fight and destroy each other, without the Israelites having to fight at all. Similarly, at the Red Sea when everything looked hopeless, “Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD” (Exodus 14:13). So, they did, and all Pharaoh’s armies were overthrown in the midst of the sea. In Isaiah’s day, when Israel was tempted to call on pagan Egypt for help against pagan Assyria, God said concerning Israel’s armies, “Their strength is to sit still” (Isaiah 30:7). As the ship was being buffeted in the storm and the sailors in panic were about to flee in the lifeboat, Paul said, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved” (Acts 27:31). So, they stayed, and God spared every man. There are times for action, of course, but the principle is this. When we have done all we can, and the situation seems hopeless, this is the time to sit still and trust God to work it out in His own good way. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Got any rivers you think are uncrossable? God specializes in things thought impossible! HMM

There are sharks which can live for up to 500 years. Greenland Sharks have the longest known lifespan of all vertebrate animals. Bonus fact: They don’t even reach sexual maturity until they are roughly 150 years old! James

How much do teachers get paid in the US? Teachers made about $65,100 per year in 2025. That’s the annual median wage for pre-K-12 teachers across the United States, based on estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median marks the middle point—half of teachers earn more and half earn less. The lowest-paid 10% earned $48,200 or less, while the highest-paid 10% earned $104,300 or more. https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-do-teachers-get-paid-in-the-us/country/united-states/? How many US children receive free or reduced-price school lunches? In 2025, 22.1 million students received subsidized lunches through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Nearly three-quarters (73.0%) of lunches served at public and nonprofit private schools were free or discounted. https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-us-children-receive-free-or-reduced-price-school-lunches/? One last fact Fewer teenagers are trying drugs or alcohol than they used to, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of cigarette usage have fallen more than any other drug: in the 1990s, 70.1% of high schoolers tried smoking them. By 2023, 14.4% had. Alcohol usage fell from 50.8% of teens in 1991 to 22.1% in 2023.

‘Ripped from the headlines’ From “Furious” to “Industry” and “Scoop,” Jeffrey Epstein-inspired stories about billionaire predators are having a moment.

Back from the brink Deep in a swampy forest lives a species of monkey that scientists didn’t discover until 1993. Less than two decades later, roughly 90% of the population had vanished. Now, a conservationist is helping to rescue them from near-extinction.

Brain trauma New and startling research revealed that as many as one in four NFL players could end up with CTE. Maura Horton explains what it’s like to live with — and lose — a loved one to the degenerative disease.

A bogus narrative President Donald Trump keeps trying to preemptively blame congressional Republicans if they lose big in the 2026 midterms. CNN’s Aaron Blake says he’s making an argument that’s flat-out wrong. 🏗️ Just in: Supreme Court allows Trump to continue building White House ballroom 🗳️ Sign up: Introducing CNN’s 20/26 Vision midterms newsletter

So do you let them slip away with just forgiveness or do you raise alarm and them get to the place where they pay the price for what they did?