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Trump wants to rewrite the census to stop counting millions of people and to erase data on race. Missouri’s Secretary of State is facing contempt charges for defying the state Supreme Court on congressional maps. United Airlines has been shipping thousands of loads of military cargo to Israel in the belly of passenger planes. And the GOP’s nominee for a key Texas House seat has a long history of making sexually degrading comments about women.
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The administration that can’t stop talking about your gender wants the census to stop asking about it.
The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed changes to the 2030 census that would exclude everyone who is not a permanent resident and not a citizen. The measure would also stop asking about race and ethnicity, and prohibit any future questions about sexual orientation.
If they hold up in court, the changes could reshape congressional maps across the country. Republican states are already gerrymandering now that the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, and taking non-citizens out of the count would shift political power from diverse, urban areas to whiter, rural districts.
Trump tried this in his first term, when his administration tried to add a citizenship question to the census and was blocked by the Supreme Court. In 2020, he also signed an executive order to exclude all undocumented immigrants from the count, but a federal court struck it down.
The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment requires that the census count the “whole number of persons in each state.” Questions about race have appeared on the census since 1790, meaning they’ve been there longer than the Republican Party has existed.
Ever seen a referee get ejected from a game?
Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is facing contempt charges from the state Supreme Court after telling local election officials to use a congressional map that the court had ordered him not to use.
The map was drawn in 2025 at the direction of Trump to carve up Kansas City and oust Democratic Representative Emanuel Cleaver. It would have handed Republicans a 7-1 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.
A group called People Not Politicians gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force a statewide referendum on the new districts. Last week, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state has to use the old 2022 map until voters get their say this November.
Moments after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected an emergency appeal of that ruling, a federal district judge in a separate case issued a temporary restraining order telling Hoskins to use the 2025 map. Hoskins was quick to seize on the conflicting orders and told local election officials to stick with the gerrymandered version.
Backers of the referendum then asked the Missouri Supreme Court to hold him in contempt. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday, assuming Hoskins doesn’t show up with a federal judge’s note saying it’s Monday.
When you check a bag on United, it might be riding next to tank parts bound for Tel Aviv.
United Airlines flew some 3,000 shipments of military hardware to Israeli weapons makers on civilian passenger flights over a seven-month period in 2025 and 2026, according to a report released this week by a coalition of advocacy groups and confirmed by The Intercept.
The shipments included parts for F-35 fighter jets, armored vehicle components, helmet-mounted display systems, and radio equipment. Most were destined for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer.
The airline has resumed this practice this week as it restores direct flights to Israel from Newark, which were suspended during the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. Five military cargo shipments left on a passenger flight just last night, all bound for Elbit Systems.
Most of the cargo moved on two United passenger routes from Newark to Tel Aviv, but 235 of the documented shipments came into Newark on domestic flights from cities across the country, including Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Passengers on those flights weren’t told military hardware was in the cargo hold.
Israel destroyed hospitals on the theory that hiding military equipment inside civilian infrastructure makes it a legitimate target. By that standard, Flight 90 out of Newark qualifies.
Texas Republicans lost a congressman to a sexual misconduct scandal and replaced him with a YouTuber who does it on camera.
Brandon Herrera, the Republican nominee for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, has a long record of making vulgar and sexually degrading comments about women, according to a CNN investigation.
Herrera runs a YouTube channel called “The AK Guy” with 4 million subscribers. In his videos, the 30-year-old compared feminists to whales, repeatedly mocked women’s bodies and intelligence, and used explicit sexual slurs to describe gun-safety advocate Shannon Watts and her children.
Herrera is running to replace Republican Representative Tony Gonzales, who resigned in April while under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct with staffers. Democrats think they can flip the seat, as Republicans essentially replaced one sexual misconduct problem with another.
Republican leadership has rallied behind him despite the controversy, with Speaker Johnson campaigning alongside him in San Antonio over the summer. Trump also endorsed Herrera on Truth Social, writing that he is supported by “many Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in Texas.”
Watts, the gun-safety advocate Herrera targeted, said that the prospect of a man like him having power over women’s rights should terrify every woman in the country.
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Twenty-One States Sue Trump For Weakening Endangered Species Protections. Twenty Democratic attorneys general and Washington, D.C., filed two lawsuits Wednesday challenging the Trump administration’s rollback of the Endangered Species Act. One lawsuit challenges a new rule that narrowed the law’s definition of “harm” to allow oil drilling, mining and development in habitats of endangered animals provided those activities do not directly and intentionally kill the animals. The other lawsuit targets two rules, one that eliminates broad protections for newly threatened species and another that requires the government to hear objections from developers and fossil fuel companies before designating critical habitats.
** Former Kennedy Center Chairman Buys “Blue” Sculpture Removed by Trump Allies.** The Kennedy Center’s former chairman David Rubenstein, who was ousted by Trump in 2025, purchased the late artist Joel Shapiro’s 24-foot abstract sculpture “Blue” for more than $2 million after it was quietly removed from the center’s grounds last week without explanation. Rubenstein, chairman of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art, will ultimately display the sculpture in the museum’s Sculpture Garden. Trump-appointed members of the Kennedy Center’s board voted to close the center for a $250 million renovation that will take two years. A federal judge temporarily blocked the closure and ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the building.
Tate Brothers Denied Bail as They Fight Extradition to the U.K. on Sex Crime Charges. Social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who face dozens of charges in Britain including rape, assault and sex trafficking, were denied bail Wednesday by a federal judge in Miami. Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis found that the brothers were flight risks given their wealth and history of international travel, writing that they have “an exceptional capacity to flee the jurisdiction.” The brothers, dual U.S.-U.K. citizens, were arrested in Miami in July, and face separate criminal charges in Romania, where prosecutors recently indicted Andrew Tate on suspicion of trafficking minors, money laundering and sex with a minor.
** Massachusetts Requires Data Centers to Bring Their Own Clean Power.** Governor Maura Healey signed an executive order requiring any new data center larger than 25 megawatts to meet 100 percent of its electricity demand with clean energy generation or pay into a ratepayer protection fund. Massachusetts is the third state in as many months to impose restrictions on data center development, following New York’s halt on new construction in July and Texas’s requirement for public utility audits in August. The order also directs communities to avoid signing nondisclosure agreements with developers, a practice that has allowed tech companies to build massive facilities without public scrutiny.