Introduction In November 2025, Moody’s Ratings warned that 2026 would be the year one in six private colleges could no longer cover day-to-day costs with the cash their operations bring in. Nine months into that year, most of the evidence points the same way, though not everywhere. The agency projected that 16% of private institutions...
Introduction The federal government opened a new front door on Sept. 29, 2026. America.gov is an AI-assisted portal meant to replace the hunt across agency websites with a single place to ask a question and, eventually, finish the task. Two of the most common reasons Americans deal with Washington are getting a passport and updating...
Bailey Pennington borrowed $12,000 to go to cosmetology school. Pennington now pays about $150 a month on that loan and told The Christian Science Monitor that standing out in the field “doesn’t always work for everyone.” Under a federal rule that takes full effect next July, students in programs like that one could soon lose...
On the night of Sept. 27, more than 600 people walked out of Tapachula, the Mexican city closest to the Guatemalan border, and headed north on the Chiapas coastal highway, according to EFE. They call themselves “Fe y Esperanza,” or Faith and Hope. Most of them had left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, a week earlier....
Intro The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, cleared the way for states to again use the Department of Homeland Security’s revamped SAVE database to check the citizenship of registered voters. The 6-3 emergency order paused a lower-court ruling that had found the expanded system violated federal privacy law. The ruling lands two...
Intro In one week this month, Europe’s leaders sounded a coordinated alarm. France, the Netherlands, Finland, Lithuania and Switzerland each warned their citizens of rising threats from Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron told party leaders, “No one is safe.” The warnings raise three fair questions. Are European governments fear-mongering? Are they laying groundwork to enter...
Introduction Nikole Hannah-Jones meant her daughter’s education to be an argument against leaving neighborhood schools. After a decade, it has become one of the strongest arguments for letting families leave them. In her Sept. 20 New York Times Magazine essay, she concludes that keeping her daughter in high-poverty Brooklyn public schools failed the girl, and...
Intro Two Queens men have been charged after police say they were recorded climbing out of a manhole on Park Avenue in the early hours of Wednesday, Sept. 23 a few steps from a hotel used by visiting dignitaries during the United Nations General Assembly. Kevin Rodriguez, 26, of Flushing, and Samuel Reveron, 25, of...
Introduction The Department of Homeland Security said on Sept. 25, 2026, that it is “reducing your rent,” crediting immigration enforcement for falling rents in states that cooperate most with ICE. In a post on X, the agency said Texas accounted for about a quarter of ICE arrests in July and posted the country’s sharpest rent...
For years, federal and state governments made jobs, military service, hospital work and school enrollment depend on vaccination. Those standards were never applied at the same strength to people entering between ports of entry, or to the jurisdictions that shelter them. Measles is now at a 35-year high, largely for reasons unrelated to the border....