State-News
Hawaii takes the storm, New Hampshire takes the Senate, and 9/11 still isn’t over
World & Security
Hurricane Lowell spent Tuesday making Hawaii the weather story rather than the vacation brochure. Damaging winds and heavy rain pelted Kauai and Niihau under a hurricane warning, while Oahu—home to nearly a million people—sat under a tropical storm warning, according to the Associated Press. Gov. Josh Green closed schools and government offices on those three islands. The storm’s center passed west of the islands and was moving away, but tropical-storm-force winds still stretched about 200 miles; Lihue Airport logged sustained winds just above 50 mph, and some gusts reached 80 mph. Flooding and mudslides were the day’s biggest risk, with rainfall totals of up to 24 inches possible on Kauai. Road crews were already clearing sand and rocks from a western Oahu highway after floodwaters topped it, a reminder that last month’s Tropical Storm Lala washed away about 100 homes. Farther east, remnants of Hurricane Marie, no longer a tropical storm, still threw dangerous surf at Southern California; in Malibu, a beachfront home’s driveway collapsed into a sinkhole.
In Miami, investigators were still picking through what NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy called “utter devastation” after an Amazon cargo jet overran a runway Sunday, barreled roughly 1,300 feet past the end, slammed into a van used by plane-cleaning crews, then smashed an SUV on a city street. All five people killed were in that van, owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp.: Rolando Aleman Leon, 55; Yoel Rodriguez Naranjo, 53; Julio C. Pineda, 75; Carlos Acosta Fajardo, 53; and Javierkys Reyes Quevedo, 47. Five others were injured; the pilot and co-pilot were released. Miami is not among the 120 U.S. airports with crushable runway-end material the FAA says has saved around 500 lives, though experts said a 1,000-foot safety buffer appears to keep it compliant with federal rules. Homendy’s warning about unimplemented recommendations was not subtle: “we’re going to be here again.” Two of four runways remained closed; more than 225 flights were canceled Sunday and Monday.
A quarter-century after 9/11, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani released tens of thousands of pages showing the city did not disclose all it knew about air toxicity around Ground Zero. More than 9,400 people have died from illnesses linked to that exposure, according to a federal medical monitoring program—against 2,977 killed in the attacks themselves. 9/11 Health Watch’s Benjamin Chevat said four mayoral administrations kept documents from the public even as officials messaged that the air was “safe and acceptable.” Mamdani was blunter: “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied.” Ohio offered two other public-safety stories: U.S. Marshals said Operation Meridian had found 79 missing children ages 6 to 17 in the state’s largest such effort, while Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton was unharmed after an armed man lunged at her at the Canfield Fair. Police arrested Patrick Havas, 38, and found two handguns and brass knuckles he never brandished. Even Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign agreed that candidates should meet voters without worrying about violence—a low bar, and one American politics keeps tripping over.
Markets & Economy
The Energy Department closed a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to restart Iowa’s Duane Arnold nuclear plant, with Google as the 25-year buyer of its entire 615-megawatt output. The plant shut in 2020 after a derecho, though retirement had already been planned on cost grounds. Construction is expected to generate close to 1,500 jobs and more than 450 permanent positions, with a Strategic Economic Research study estimating more than $9 billion in economic benefits over 25 years. NextEra is targeting a 2029 restart, pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses—so the loan is a down payment on electrons that do not yet exist. South of there, Korean press put Seoul’s contribution to a 6.3-gigawatt gas plant in Encinal, Texas, at about $22.3 billion, billed as the first American project under a $350 billion 2025 investment pact. South Korea’s Industry Ministry said those reports were not accurate and that talks with Washington were unfinished. In other words: enough zeros to power a data-center boom, not quite enough signatures to pour concrete.
The University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute estimated Cook County retail and restaurant businesses have lost roughly $1.26 billion in commercial activity and about $107 million in tax revenue since ICE’s Operation Midway Blitz intensified. Researchers using anonymized cellphone foot-traffic and Census spending records found residents of neighborhoods with higher numbers of Latin America-born residents made roughly 25 million fewer shopping and dining trips to non-Latino communities; the lost spending was not redirected elsewhere. Grocery managers in Brighton Park and Little Village described aisles and tables emptying when ICE sightings hit social media. Homeland Security did not answer reporters’ questions and instead emailed a stock statement disputing any link between “illegal immigration and a good economy.”
Florida’s citrus map keeps shrinking. USDA’s preliminary Commercial Citrus Inventory put the 2026-27 season at 165,359 acres across 23 counties, down nearly 21 percent in a year, 65 percent from 480,121 acres in 2016, and 73 percent from 621,373 acres in 2006. Polk County lost the most acreage but still leads. Hurricanes, freezes, greening disease, changing drinking habits and development have done what marketing slogans cannot undo; large landowner Alico is winding down citrus to chase land sales. The Legislature still put $160 million into citrus research this fiscal year. Senate President Ben Albritton, a grower, insisted “Florida citrus is not going down on my watch.” The groves, unfortunately, did not get a vote. Mississippi, meanwhile, could face about $75 million a year in SNAP benefit costs under new federal error-rate sharing as food-pantry visits rose 36 percent; the state’s 9.51 percent payment error rate would put it in a 10 percent cost-share tier starting in fiscal 2028.
Technology & Industry
Think tank Ceres estimated that power generation for data centers in just seven states—Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona—withdraws 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year, or 10.4 million acre-feet. Bloomberg Law compared that unfavorably with California’s 8 million acre-feet of urban use. The comparison is imperfect: Ceres counts withdrawals, including hydropower water returned to rivers, and Arizona State researchers using older Lawrence Berkeley data put nationwide indirect consumption far lower. Ceres still projects that power generation could account for 72 percent of U.S. data-center water consumption by 2030, and it noted local opposition disrupted $130 billion of projects in the first quarter of 2026. Nobody promised the cloud would be thirsty; the rivers just noticed first.
Samsung’s Taylor, Texas, foundry has already booked its scheduled production volume before trial operations expected as early as the end of this month, with 2-nanometer orders including Tesla’s AI5 chip and work for Broadcom and Arm. The $37 billion fab’s initial capacity is 50,000 wafers a month; yield is said to have reached the 80 percent range capable of mass production. Plant 2 is slated to break ground at year’s end for 2030 output. In California, Archer Aviation’s Midnight eVTOL completed a piloted 40-plus-mile round trip between Salinas and Hollister in about 12 minutes each way at 125 mph. Investors barely shrugged: the stock ticked up 0.35 percent in pre-market. Flying over traffic is a party trick until FAA certification, commercial dates and actual revenue show up.
Michigan is preparing a six-month, 1,000-driver pay-per-mile pilot for February 2027 as fuel-efficient and electric vehicles erode the gas tax that now sits at 52.4 cents a gallon. Four states already run such programs; Vermont joins in January 2027. How out-of-state drivers get billed remains the riddle that makes transportation nerds stare at the ceiling. Privacy is the other meter running: Flock Safety has contracted with at least 125 Michigan local agencies, and gubernatorial and Senate candidates are suddenly fluent in license-plate retention schedules. Meanwhile, the extortion group ShinyHunters claimed it pulled more than 200,000 Florida driver records from the DAVID lookup system and posted a purported Jeffrey Epstein DMV file as proof. Florida’s highway agency had not confirmed the intrusion as of Tuesday; the record count is the attackers’ own. Treat it as a claim with a famous name attached, not a completed forensic report.
Politics & Policy
New Hampshire’s primary delivered the matchup both parties had been advertising. With more than 60 percent of votes counted, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas led biochemist Karishma Manzur 65 percent to 33 percent; former Sen. John E. Sununu led former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown 68 percent to about 27 percent, formalizing a fall contest for Jeanne Shaheen’s open seat. Inside Elections moved the race from Tilt Democratic to Toss-up. Pappas would be the first openly gay man in the Senate if he wins; Sununu has President Trump’s endorsement and a family tree that is basically a New Hampshire civics textbook. The 1st District Democratic primary to replace Pappas—Stefany Shaheen versus Maura Sullivan—was still too close to call late Tuesday. Republicans have not won a New Hampshire Senate race since 2010, a fact Democrats keep repeating as if it were a force field.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court rebuffed Missouri Republicans’ emergency bid to use a 2025 congressional map that would have left Democrats with one House seat to seven. The Missouri Supreme Court had unanimously held that a referendum petition suspended the new districts until voters decide, ordering the 2022 and 2024 map for the Nov. 3 general election. Twenty GOP-led states had argued that changing maps after the August primary would sow confusion before a Sept. 19 military-ballot deadline. The older map remains set. In Texas, the State Board of Education finalized a high-school social studies rewrite requiring students to learn that “radical Islam” motivated 9/11 and describing early Islam through “brutal military campaigns,” slavery and “harem slaves,” over objections from Muslim Texans, some appointed experts, and a 15-year-old who said she should not have to defend her religion in history class. The changes phase in for 2030-31, which at least gives textbook writers time to argue about the footnotes.
Idaho’s Supreme Court approved, 4-1, revised yes/no language for Proposition One, an abortion initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot. A yes vote would create a right to abortion before fetal viability and after viability in medical emergencies; a no vote would leave in place a ban with exceptions to prevent the death of the pregnant woman and, in the first trimester, for rape or incest reported to law enforcement. Illinois is days from becoming the first Midwestern state to allow medical aid in dying on Sept. 12, unless a federal judge grants a disability-rights injunction. And California’s SEIU Local 1000, representing more than 100,000 state workers, will vote Sept. 9 through Oct. 7 on authorizing an unfair-practice strike after the contract expired June 30. A strike vote is not a walkout—CalHR was eager to note as much—but it is a reminder that even a presidential-hopeful governor still has to bargain over health care and remote work.
Human Stories / Social Trends
Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade drew hundreds of thousands on Monday, with Haitian marching groups turning music and costume into a defiant show after the loss of Temporary Protected Status. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts cannot review the administration’s decision to end TPS for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, clearing the way for roughly 350,000 Haitians to lose the protection; work permits expired July 27. Organizer Natalie Lafontant described a “somber cloud” over detention and returns, then the Caribbean answer: music, dance, art. About 163,000 Haitians live in the New York metro area, the second-largest Haitian population in the United States after Miami. City Councilwoman Rita Joseph and Mayor Mamdani marched; nurses floated a TPS message down Eastern Parkway.
In Maine, Rachel Worster Hunter died on Jan. 8, 2025, after 10 ambulance services refused a 911 call from Macwahoc Plantation. The dispatcher told her husband, Michael, he had “toned every ambulance between Houlton and Old Town and I cannot find anyone.” About 14 percent of Mainers live in “ambulance deserts”; the state does not require towns to provide coverage. A commission warned the Legislature years earlier that EMS was “at the edge of a cliff” and asked for $350 million over five years; lawmakers sent a one-time $31 million boost. Macwahoc later signed a $9,400 contract with Lincoln. Michael has a hummingbird tattoo for Rachel and no trust left in EMS. It is the kind of story that should make every rural legislator cancel lunch, and somehow never does.
Minnesota’s free school meals program has served nearly 450 million meals since 2023, about 150 million in year three, saving families about $1,000 per student. Breakfast participation jumped 40 percent in year one. It is the unglamorous cousin of every culture-war curriculum fight: feed the kids, then argue about the textbooks. In Philadelphia, retired Sgt. Greg Masi and other officers who worked Ground Zero want written assurances of line-of-duty death benefits if 9/11-linked illnesses kill them. The city says families can petition the pension board after death. Masi, living with blood cancer and asthma the World Trade Center Health Program tied to his service, put it simply: 25 years later, “9/11 is still not over.” Between New York’s document dump and Philadelphia’s pension paperwork, the anniversary is less a ceremony than an unfinished claim.
This retrospective news edition uses archived reporting scoped by publication date, or arrival when publication was absent. Collection may have occurred later.