Record Rivers, a Near-Miss Hurricane, and California’s Robotaxi Map

World & Security

Indiana’s White River just beat a 1913 flood mark, which is the sort of civic first nobody campaigns on. After storms that began August 11, the river crested above 24 feet in Anderson and Noblesville, and Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett called it the worst flooding the capital had seen in more than 30 years. By Sunday the death toll had reached at least seven: a 4-year-old killed when a tree crashed through his bedroom, a 19-year-old headed to Purdue who jumped into the Mississinewa, a 58-year-old woman swept from a flooded road with her dog, and a 31-year-old cyclist who went around a barricade into a washed-out hole in Henry County. Indianapolis firefighters reported 95 people and 45 pets pulled from the water; more than a dozen counties declared local disasters; nearly 130,000 customers were still dark after a peak near 300,000. President Donald Trump approved an emergency declaration Saturday. Furniture maker Frank Gounder spent his 37th birthday picking through two feet of water in his workshop and offered the day’s most practical advice: once the river is in the house, you let go, or you stay miserable.

Hawaii spent the weekend proving that a rare hurricane is still a hurricane. Lala reached Category 1 on Saturday, brushed the southern Big Island from roughly 30 miles out, then weakened to a tropical storm. The eye stayed offshore — landfalls are so uncommon that officials still talk about 1992’s Iniki — but the rain did not. The Big Island took more than 30 inches in places; Gov. Josh Green said at least 100 homes were damaged or lost, more than 200,000 customers lost power, and more than 190 flights were postponed. Civil defense started a search after reports that occupied homes may have been swept off foundations. A Saturday fatality was later described as not clearly tied to the storm. The same weekend, five people ages 17 to 23 were shot outside Virginia State University dorms; police found 19-year-old Camron Harris, who is not a student, hiding in a closet more than 14 hours later, and they are still looking for others who fired. In Lexington, Kentucky, a concert shooting at Charles Young Park killed one and injured four, including children ages 4 and 14, about a mile from a dinner where Gov. Andy Beshear was speaking.

Markets & Economy

Maryland’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax just lost in tax court, an expensive way to learn that Congress still thinks it owns interstate commerce. The 2021 levy — 2.5 percent to 10 percent on firms with more than $100 million in global revenue, sold as about $250 million a year for K-12 schools — was found to violate the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act plus the First Amendment and the commerce and due process clauses. Apple, Google and Peacock TV are due refunds. Legislative leaders respectfully disagree and expect the fight to continue. Other states that were copying the homework now have a red pen in the margin.

California, never shy about a tax argument, is sending voters a one-time 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires, retroactive to January 1, 2026, and backed by SEIU. Investor Mark Cuban, who is not a California resident, said that if it passes he will ask any multi-billion-dollar startup he backs to leave first, adding that “only idiot startup founders stay.” The same reporting cited IRS figures showing Los Angeles County already lost a net 17,496 tax filers and nearly $1.9 billion in income. Texas, for its part, is still sitting on 197,844 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust as an interim Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The original $10 million allocation was worth about $6.62 million at June 30 net asset value; the state sold nothing during Bitcoin’s second-quarter slide. Treasuries have discovered an asset that does not read press releases.

The factory floor was no gentler. Tyson Foods is closing its Eagle Mountain, Utah, meat plant — opened only about five years ago — and laying off more than 700 workers amid a historic national cattle shortage. Illinois got the opposite headline: Stellantis is lifting its Belvidere investment above $800 million and launching the STLA One platform there. New Mexico is trying a third path, putting $11.5 million and the state’s first Circular Economy Plan behind reuse and recovery, from mining critical minerals out of e-waste to composting food scraps. It is the rare economic-development pitch that starts at the landfill and works backward.

Technology & Industry

Waymo just received what looks like a statewide hall pass. The California Public Utilities Commission approved paid, driver-out robotaxi rides across 18 counties — nearly the entire Bay Area plus Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, San Diego and Sacramento — on freeways, rural roads and rail crossings, at night, and in rain and fog. Snow is the main carve-out, which in most of California is less a restriction than a weather forecast. San Diego service is expected later this summer; Sacramento is still running safety drivers. Tesla, by contrast, holds a charter-party carrier permit that still requires a human at the wheel. Waymo is aiming for a million paid U.S. rides a week by year-end, up from about 500,000. The company also recalled nearly 4,000 robotaxis in June after vehicles entered closed freeway construction zones — a detail worth remembering at the on-ramp.

Texas invited the AI boom and is now auditing the guest list. Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to pause data-center grid-connection applications after ERCOT reported 474 gigawatts of requested new demand, 90 percent from data centers. Qualifying facilities can skip the 6.25 percent sales tax on servers, cooling and electricity, a break forecast to cost $3.2 billion over two years. Existing centers already use an estimated 25 billion gallons of water a year, and the State Water Plan does not include their projected demand. In Utah, Kevin O’Leary’s Stratos campus — once pitched at 40,000 acres and up to nine gigawatts — was cut in half after three Republican backers lost primaries, including Senate President Stuart Adams. A Utah State physicist warned the finished site could dump roughly 16 gigawatts of heat into the desert. O’Leary conceded his team “really screwed this up.” Gallup found 71 percent of Americans oppose an AI data center nearby.

Having handed Waymo the keys, California is also asking teenagers for the instruction manual. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office convened a 20-member Teen Tech Council in Sacramento to advise on classroom AI, deepfakes and digital wellness, with more recruitment this fall and training in spring 2027. New York launched a similar council in 2025. The same state is advancing a proposal to ban social media accounts under 16 and a ballot measure on children’s AI chatbots. Whether 20 teenagers can out-argue a robotaxi permit and a billionaire tax in one news cycle is, at least, an empirical question.

Politics & Policy

The Democratic National Committee spent Saturday in Austin rearranging the 2028 calendar as if it were living-room furniture. South Carolina now opens on January 22, followed by Nevada, then New Hampshire — stripped of its first-in-the-nation status because, party members said, early states should better reflect the Democratic coalition. New Mexico is lined up fourth, on February 15, if the governor and lawmakers send a signed letter agreeing to move the date. New Hampshire has been first for so long that losing the slot feels less like a schedule change than a demotion of a state sport.

Closer to November, the map is already noisy. Florida’s gubernatorial primaries set a matchup between Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, with 48.7 percent, and Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican congressman, with 61.6 percent in his primary. In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs campaigned for the first time with former Mesa Mayor John Giles, a Republican-turned-independent, on a joint ticket — the first time Arizonans will elect governor and lieutenant governor together. Giles said the party left him; the Andy Biggs campaign called him an aspiring Democrat. Wisconsin’s first head-to-head poll, 500 likely voters on August 12–13, has Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at 48 percent and Rep. Tom Tiffany at 44 percent, with Crowley ahead 42 to 30 among independents. Crowley is still unknown to 31 percent of voters, which in August is either a gift or a trap.

California Rep. Kevin Kiley, watching Democrats redraw his Northern California district after voters allowed a mid-decade map that created five new Democratic-leaning seats, left the GOP to run as an independent against former state Sen. Richard Pan. He tried and failed to force a House vote banning mid-decade redistricting. Democrats say the independent label is a costume; Kiley says he could have simply moved. Placer County is now split among three districts. Maps, unlike rivers, do not even pretend to be natural.

Human Stories / Social Trends

If the rest of the country spent the weekend counting flood crests, New Mexico spent it smelling chile. Parking-lot roasters at Albertson’s and La Tienda are back, even after beet curly top virus knocked out 40 percent of Scott Adams’s transplant crop and a cold spring opened what growers call a harvest gap. USDA figures put 2025 green chile at 44,575 tons — 98.3 million pounds — worth $42.8 million, up from a heat-damaged 2023. Rep. Gabe Vasquez has introduced a CHILE Act that would put $5 billion toward specialty-crop disaster relief. A bushel at La Tienda runs $28.99. Produce manager Joseph Quintero explained the entire August economy in one line: people buy because they can smell it. “It’s a tradition.”

In Waukesha, Wisconsin, a pop-culture shop’s forgotten box turned out to be 97 pristine 1993 Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cartridges, a variant made after Nintendo discontinued the bundle in 1991. Collector Jason Ganos flew them to California in a carry-on, “sweating bullets” at TSA, and five graded a perfect 10 — a first for NES carts at Professional Sports Authenticator. Three of those tens go to auction Friday through September 9. Ultra-rare games can fetch six- or seven-figure prices; Ganos would not guess. The cartridges can still be played, which is a bit like using a museum piece as a coffee mug.

Oregon Wheelchair Hiking, started in 2020 by four friends and now more than 600 people on Facebook, spent Monday at Mary S. Young park, where Heidi Austin reversed her front-heavy chair down a slope rather than risk another spill. Leader Franklin Ouchida, a wheelchair user for 15 years, vets trails himself and carries a tug rope. Vanessa Rice, 29, living with late-onset Tay-Sachs, said she “didn’t know I could” hike before the group. Farther north, a runner on Anchorage’s Wolverine Bowl trail used bear spray on a brown bear and was hospitalized — the second such attack in the area in weeks. Dense summer foliage, Fish and Game noted, is excellent at hiding large surprises. Between a parking-lot chile roast, a closet of Mario carts, a reverse wheelchair descent, and a can of bear spray, the country still produces weekends that are not entirely about the grid.