Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

A Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into the University of California-San Francisco’s (UCSF’s) medical school has determined that the institution discriminates on a racial basis during its admission process.

The investigation looked at whether admission policies of the UCSF School of Medicine complied with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and the university was deemed to have “illegally discriminated on the basis of race in its medical school admissions processes for the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025 and in its operation of diversity pipeline programs,” the DOJ said in a Sept. 22 letter sent to the university chancellor.

“UCSF Med openly admits that its goal is to increase enrollment from specific racial groups it designates as underrepresented minorities in medicine (URM), which excludes all white students and most Asian students,” the DOJ said.

Title VI prohibits programs and activities receiving federal funding assistance from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. The investigation specifically looked at whether UCSF Med complied with Title VI as interpreted by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard case. In the SFFA case, the Supreme Court struck down the use of racially discriminatory admissions policies at U.S. colleges in June 2023, thereby ending so-called affirmative action in higher education institutions.

The letter cited a student-selection admissions policy of the UCSF Med to ensure that the student population “reflect the population of California.” According to the DOJ, this was despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in the SFFA case that “outright racial balancing” was “patently unconstitutional.”

Meanwhile, the university said that it would engage with the DOJ and looked forward to resolving the matter.

“UC San Francisco disagrees with the Department of Justice’s finding regarding the School of Medicine’s admissions process,” the university said.

Every application to medical school is evaluated “through a rigorous, individualized review process that prioritizes academic excellence,” according to the university.

Favoring Certain Applicants

According to the DOJ, the UCSF Med’s Admissions Committee invites Hispanic and black applicants for interviews at “far higher rates” than Asian and white applicants, despite the black and Hispanic individuals having lower mean MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs.

Post interviews, the committee decides on which applicants to admit. Between 2023 and 2025, these decisions “heavily favored” Hispanic and black individuals over their white and Asian counterparts, according to the letter.

During this period, the school accepted 1.5 to 1.7 percent of white applicants and 1.98 to 2.55 percent of Asian applicants, which are lower rates than the 4.83 to 6.69 percent for Hispanic applicants and 6.96 to 11.43 percent for black applicants, the DOJ said.

UCSF Med also featured diversity programs that involved scholarships, stipends, assistance with college admissions, and research opportunities, which preferred certain student populations, the DOJ said in the letter.

One such program, the university’s Programs in Medical Education (PRIME) initiative, seeks to increase medical student enrollment. In a February 2025 report on the PRIME program, the university said that “increasing the racial and ethnic diversity” of the health workforce was one of the ways to improve health outcomes and attain “health equity.”

In a Sept. 22 statement, the DOJ said that UCSF Med was 12.6 times more likely to admit black students and 4.6 times more likely to admit Hispanic students, even when their socioeconomic traits, MCAT scores, and GPAs were the same as white students.

“Unfortunately, at UCSF Medical School, MCAT scores and undergrad GPAs have taken a backseat to race,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in the statement.

“Aspiring doctors should be admitted based on their qualifications. The Supreme Court has spoken clearly – federally funded medical schools may not admit students based on misguided and illegal notions of diversity.”

The Epoch Times reached out to UCSF for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Summary

• US-Iran talks uncertain: as Iran has stuck by its conditions while engaging Kushner-Witkoff in NY at UN.

• Iran threatens escalation beyond Persian Gulf: Tehran warned the conflict could spread to the Indian Ocean if attacked again.

• Yemen front intensifies: Saudi Arabia said it intercepted six Houthi ballistic missiles.

• Oil markets react: Renewed tensions pushed Brent crude to $106/barrel, undermining hopes for a quick deal.

*  *  *

Tehran Willing to Strike Deal Before Midterm Elections

President Trump has on multiple occasions indicated his belief that Iran will hold off making a deal to end the war until after the US midterm elections in November. In somewhat surprising statements which contradict this, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has just told American media that Tehran is willing to strike an agreement before the midterms. Per the Thursday afternoon NBC report:

“We don’t want it to get to the midterm elections,” Pezeshkian said Thursday in a brief meeting with NBC News and other news organizations on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“We wish Americans to return to the MOU before the midterms,” Pezeshkian added, referring to a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran that laid out plans for a temporary ceasefire. The agreement, signed in June, eventually collapsed.

Meanwhile, even if an Iran deal is stuck soon – and this is a big if at this point, there remains the Yemen conflict: Yemen’s Houthis say they attacked Saudi Aramco facilities in Yanbu; attacked what they called a “sensitive target” in Saudi capital Riyadh, it’s being reported.

Denial of Deal Optimism Headlines

Iranian journalist and analyst Mohammad Ghaderi, who often accurately presents Tehran’s point of view or reaction to fast-paced events, has slammed the earlier Reuters report as ‘false’.

That prior report said that the “US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources.” But the reaction from Tehran is below:

The Reuters report is false and its goal is to control the price of oil. no negotiations are underway. #Iran‘s position remains unchanged: the U.S. must fulfill the stipulated conditions in a single step so that the Strait of #Hormuz can be opened under Iranian control. Period.

— Mohammad Ghaderi | محمد قادری (@ghaderi62) September 24, 2026

Additionally this is via Israel’s i24: “A senior Israeli official says “The chance of an agreement between the US and Iran is ‘small’ – but not impossible’.”

Reuters Headline Signals [Dubious] Return to ‘Deal in Motion’

Crude tumbles on a new Reuters report signaling a return to [dubious?] ‘deal in motion’ headlines: US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources

This seems just a reiteration of Iranian demands, but crude still reacted (per Rtrs):

• A senior Iranian official said the most plausible way to end the impasse would be a phased arrangement, with Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz in return for the US lifting its economic blockade and Tehran potentially gaining access to frozen assets.
• Neither side wants to surrender leverage driving diplomacy
• Iran signals flexibility on fees, not on Strait of Hormuz
• Gulf states reject Iranian control of the strait

Iran Threatens to Spread War to Indian Ocean

It was just this month which saw the Iran conflict spill over into a renewed fight between the Saudi coalition and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Now Iran is threatening to expand the fight further, even into the Indian Ocean.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, warned Thursday of another significant expanse of the war if the Islamic Republic suffers attack again.

“Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond,” said Safavi in a video published by Iran’s Fars news agency.

This marks the first time that an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader explicitly mentioned hitting targets in the Indian Ocean as a heightened military threat.

The strategic British military base at Diego Garcia, which is also heavily used by the United States, lies deep in the Indian Ocean – some 2400 miles away.

The Iranians are believed to have actually fired ICBMs on the base at the height of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury.

Diego Garcia was first targeted on March 21st, with The Wall Street Journal at the time reporting that one missile had a mid-flight malfunction, while the other was engaged by an SM-3 interceptor missile fired from a US Navy vessel, though it’s unclear whether this latter projectile ever hit its target.

Brent surged to around $106 after a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran may expand the war to the Indian Ocean if the US or Israel attacks again, further undercutting hopes of a deal. —Bloomberg

Iranian negotiators are vowing they will not back off Tehran’s firm conditions for ending the war, after this week sitting down with the US team in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Saudi Arabia Says Intercepted 6 Houthi Missiles

Meanwhile another attack on the Saudi kingdom by the Houthis:

Saudi led coalition in Yemen says it intercepted six ballistic missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthis

“They broke the agreement and committed another vicious act. We have therefore toughened our conditions,” spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohbi told AFP in an interview this week. He also said that if the US doesn’t change its trajectory, it “will only make things difficult for themselves”.

“We are not their playthings, and they cannot unilaterally violate an agreement they signed whenever they please,” he emphasized.

Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.

On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were… pic.twitter.com/RqT1lwzsLP

— Ihtesham Ali (@ihteshamali) September 23, 2026

“We believe we have won this war, and we are currently consolidating that victory into a total deterrent force,“ he added.

* * *

Wall Street is largely on board with the nuclear bull case. But investor patience is thinning with an industry that is enjoying both political support and demand from deep-pocketed customers, yet still struggles to this day to get any projects actually started.

We noted a similar sentiment with Barclay’s nuclear outlook, as investors increasingly want evidence of real delivery.

New research from Jefferies and Bank of America echo similar verbiage (Professional subscribers can read the full notes here at our marketdesk.ai portal).

Jefferies’ Laurence Alexander projects global nuclear capacity reaching 1,903 GW by 2100, (almost 5x from 2025 baseline). Their forecast also has solar capacity expanding roughly 22x, geothermal 18x, and wind 12x.

Jefferies frames the rising electricity consumption as leaving room for generation expansion growth across all four low-carbon sources, instead of one just taking over.

Most of the concerns come down to project financing. Massive upfront costs and years without revenue make nuclear particularly sensitive to financing costs. Government support is a way of bridging the gap, but standardized construction and repeat orders will be what really drives down execution risk. 

BofA’s conference recap highlights China’s approach to repeatable fleet deployment, contrasted against Western developers’ reluctance to break ground.

Representatives from nuclear companies in China stated their solution to rapid nuclear deployment was standardization, specialization, and centralization. Emphasizing that this must be done across all key areas, including engineering, construction, and talent, the less-than-democratic nation proves why China’s success isn’t exactly repeatable in the US.

At the recent World Nuclear Association Symposium, the fuel market found itself at the center of attention as one of the notable constraints of the ongoing nuclear renaissance.

Enrichment was the hot topic of the fuel chain. European enrichment giant Urenco noted their order book had grown from just under €9 billion in 2021 to over €21 billion recently.

We’ve commented repeatedly on not only the lack of enrichment capacity within the US, but the specific lack of unobligated enrichment capacity. Significant investment is still required across the nuclear value chain, but finding a way to create a fuel supply for America’s national defense needs (unobligated) is even further behind.

BofA took notes on Amazon discussing contributing capital and expertise to X-energy, Equinix supporting developers, and Exxon exploring nuclear industrial heat. Grid connections, completed designs and allocating construction risk remain obstacles, while new reactors’ timelines extend beyond the immediate data-center boom.

Jefferies favors Cameco, Kazatomprom, NexGen and Denison, while BofA prefers Constellation, Cameco, Oklo and Standard Nuclear.

Needham’s Sean Milligan initiated NANO Nuclear with a Buy rating and $33 price target. He highlighted its $8.5 million acquisition of Ultra-Safe Nuclear Corp’s development work behind the 15 MW KRONOS design. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign project is in formal NRC construction permit review, with key milestones targeted for 2027.

Milligan argues that 9.9% initial enrichment could ease fuel sourcing compared with designs requiring approximately 19.75%, while $580 million of liquidity supports the licensing runway.

Authored by Micaiah Bilger via The College Fix,

Among the many woke winners of this year’s prestigious National Book Awards is a black Columbia University professor whose screed attacks “white paint” as racist.

Professor Wendy Walters’ new book, “A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint,” claims that white paint is not the “neutral” architectural design element that it initially appears to be.

Instead, she “interrogates all that we have taken for granted about the substance that colors, or fails to color, the structures and objects that surround us – and what the collective impulse toward white paint can tell us about culture, politics, and individual desire,” the publisher’s description states, in part.

The idea for the book originated with the Ivy League professor’s “genuine and visceral dislike of white paint – a feeling that is at times overwhelming,” she explained in a 2021 video for Creative Capital Foundation on YouTube.

But Walters pushed back on the idea that her emotional response is “possibly irrational.”

“As I tried to understand why my response to white paint was so strong, I discovered numerous examples of the way that it figured into systems of erasure, exclusion, violence, and the masking of power in the social and natural world,” she said in the video.

Most of the examples she gave linked white paint to racism.

In one, white supremacists splattered white paint outside the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas in 2018, and, in another, white paint was used to vandalize a 100th anniversary memorial gallery to the Tulsa race massacre in 2021.

She also mentioned a rainbow crosswalk for “LGBTQIA+ persons” in New Brunswick, Canada being painted over with white paint in an “act of intolerance.”

“I hope to encourage the reader to think about how practices of decoration and adornment might allude to hidden narratives of power, whether or not they recognize them as being so,” she said in the video.

The publisher’s description of her work does not mention racism or white supremacy, and the book isn’t scheduled for release until October.

However, in the 2021 video, Walters linked the book to her past writings about racism. According to her university bio, she “writes regularly about visual culture, political geographies, climate, and race and identity.”

“A Dead White” is not the first to link white paint to racism, though.

Three years ago, Norway’s University of Bergen received a $1.2 million government grant to explore how white paint has contributed to white supremacy around the world, The College Fix reported at the time.

The “NorWhite” study focuses on whether the Norwegian-developed paint pigment titanium dioxide white helped advance white “as a superior color,” Fox News reported.

Why such projects are deemed worthy of awards has a lot to do with the left’s capture of the arts and academia. As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote on Tuesday: “Bluntly, the National Book Award has become a D.E.I. checklist: Only authors with preferred identities, preferred topics and preferred politics stand any realistic chance of winning.”

Stephens mentioned Walters’ book as one example. Other winners, announced last week, include books about “queer” parenting and “Islamophobia in America.”

The problem is not that moderates or right-leaning authors are no good. The problem is that they are being shut out and a broad range of topics and ideas are being ignored.

Maybe Walters is a good writer. Maybe not. Her book isn’t available to the public yet. But this “everything is racist” bent is getting old and boring. Frankly, it’s lazy, too.

Pick something, anything: clean pantries, clowns, Mozart, capitalism, mathematics, milk, Taylor Swift (these are already taken, by the way). Then, argue that it’s racist, smatter in a few “lived experiences” and – voila! – book deals and major prizes. Repeat. Again, and again, and again.

And they wonder why so many Americans have developed a distaste for academia.

Two weeks ago, treasury yields spiked to a 3 year high (still well below 5%), after the first expanded Treasury buyuback operation which had a maximum capacity of $6 billion, resulted in just $5.187 billion in actual buyback offers accepted by the Treasury.

That was a problem because as BofA’s rates guru, Mark Cabana, wrote just ahead of the first buyback (his note is available to pro subs), over the last several operations the 10y-20y buybacks had received $18.7 billion of offers on average, or about 9 times oversubscribed (at the old maximum par amount permissable of $2 billion), and Treasury has always bought the maximum. 

“A purchase below the max would be unprecedented for the 10y-20y bucket,” he wrote.

In the end, the repurchase was some 14% below the max, and that spooked markets because it indicated that dealers were hoping Scott “the  house” Bessent was desperate enough he would accept even lowball bids. In the end, he didn’t even though a handful of lowball offers were indeed accepted.

So fast forward to today when moments ago the Treasury conducted the first expanded “liquidity support” buyback operation targeting 20-30 year nominal coupons, with the same maximum size of $6 billion.

Surely today bid/ask would be much closer and the Treasury would accept all of the cusips eligible for buybacks… otherwise why even bother expanding the buyback operation.

Well… wrong again, because moments after 2pm we got the results from today’s expanded buyback op, and they were even worse than the first one: with $6 billion maximum par amount to be redeemed again, the Treasury received offers for $10.489 billion – identical to the Sept 11 operation – but accepted just $4.078 billion, which is only 68% of the $6 billion cap, down notably from 86% the first time around, which was already a big drop from the 100% it had accepted virtually every time prior!

Why not accept the full $6 billion, again? Well, it appears that “The House” is refusing to play ball with – or pay – the Bloomberg Bros, and the Treasury kicked out virtually all lowball offers today.

Using the same method as the Sept 10 exhibit, none of today’s accepted bonds count as lowball offers, compared to 5 two weeks ago. The rule was 0.5bp or more cheap to a curve fitted through all the accepted yields. Today, every one of the 12 accepted issues came within ±0.6bp of that curve (and just two were a near miss)

In other words, the Treasury decided that just $4.1 billion of the $10 billion were fair, and it turned down about $6.4bn of low ball offers rather than pay up. It also accepted only 12 of 35 eligible issues. The two largest purchases were $1.5bn each of the 3.000% 02/2048 and the 1.875% 11/2051, and both came in right on the curve (−0.1bp and +0.1bp).

Other things to know:

• Accepted prices imply yields of 5.54–5.56% for bonds maturing 2047–2051. That’s about 40–45bp over the 10Y at 5.10–5.16%, which looks sensible for this part of the curve.
• The long end yields less. The 4.625% 02/2055 prices at 5.48%, about 7bp through the 2051s, so yields fall at the very long end. Only $1mm of it was accepted, so it doesn’t change the result.

And while we commend Bessent’s resolve not be bullied around by the Bloomberg bros, the fact that for the second consecutive “expanded” buyback operation, the Treasury accepted well below the minimum, meant that there was far less “liquidity support” than intended, and sure enough yields spiked to a new multi-decade high.

This is turning into quite an interest drama, and many are curious who will win: will Bessent keep turning down lowball offers even if it means a continued meltup in yields, or will he finally cave and accept a few lowball offers allowing a handful of dealers to make a few million extra, if it means not risking the collapse of the bond market. We look forward to the next expanded buyback in two weeks to see which way this clash resolves… 

The CEOs behind frontier AI keep talking like bystanders – warning seemingly daily about ‘existential risk, runaway superintelligence, and competitive pressure’ that’s totally out of their control, so they need big brother to help slow them down. 

Jensen Huang isn’t buying it.

In an interview on The Ezra Klein Show this week, the Nvidia CEO took what the labs call an existential threat and turned it back into a question of product liability and whether executives are doing their jobs.

According to Huang, if a lab can’t contain what it’s building, it shouldn’t be asking for regulation. It should be shut down.

“If they say the alternative, which is: There is no way to contain our experiments… when we test our A.I. models, it will get out, and it will damage the world – then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down,” he said – framing this as a responsible engineering call.

“If you’re going to build a self-driving car – let’s say it’s a robo-taxi, and there’s a really difficult condition. As an engineer, we just have no idea how to solve this problem because these cars are not programmed, they’re trained. So we have no idea how to train these cars, and we have no idea how to align them to the safety standards that are expected on the road,” Huang said. “What’s the answer? Don’t ship it.”

Jensen Huang: “Now, if they say [that their models aren’t safe] … then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down.” pic.twitter.com/aCkpmvUEXI

— The Midas Project (@TheMidasProj) September 23, 2026

Continues here:

🚨Jensen Huang just took a shot at OpenAI, Anthropic and AI doomers:

“Nobody’s building more compute than the people asking to be slowed down.”

and also attacked Geoffrey Hinton’s 10% doom prediction:

“All of his predictions have been wrong. Just because it comes from a… pic.twitter.com/KmNzYdRbWy

— ℏεsam (@Hesamation) September 23, 2026

Huang’s argument is about liability and responsibility to shareholders. A lab that damages the world, he argues, would face costs to humanity. “Because the cost to humanity, the damage is too great,” he said. “The shareholder, the liabilities – it could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities. I mean, the liability’s incredible.”

The Great Panic

More than 1,300 AI lab employees have signed a letter saying each company is under “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration.” When Klein read that to Huang, the Nvidia CEO rejected it. “No, no, that last sentence. Nobody’s putting the pressure on them,” he said. He called the letter’s first paragraph “fantastic” and said he “completely” agreed with third-party safety auditors, but not with asking to be let off existing law. “This is the first time that I’ve heard a company or C.E.O. say that I need the laws, I need the antitrust laws to be relieved. I need the liability laws of products to be relieved so that I can pace myself.”

Instead, Huang blamed the executives. “These are companies with agency. These are C.E.O.s with agency,” Huang said. When Klein countered that the labs were using that agency to ask for help, he didn’t budge. “If I believe that I’m about to launch a product that is unsafe, it is completely in my ability, my power and my responsibility, and I’m incentivized to do so, to not launch the product.” In his telling, the cyber, product-liability and property-damage laws already on the books cover AI labs too.

He had no more patience for the field’s elder statesmen. When Klein raised ‘AI Godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton’s view that a 10 percent chance of societal destruction is not unreasonable, Huang dismissed it. “I would tell Geoff that it’s irresponsible to say all that. All of his predictions have been wrong. Enough predictions. That 10 percent chance is not grounded on science,” he said. “It’s not grounded on research. Just because it comes from a scientist doesn’t make it scientific. Those predictions are hurtful.”

Nvidia, he said, puts 20 percent of the company on design and 80 percent on verification, while most labs today run 80 percent on capability and 20 percent on safety verification. Klein called the coming reversal “the flip,” and Huang agreed. “A.I. needs to accelerate to be safe. I want them to get more compute, but allocated toward evaluation, to alignment – and I think they’re doing that.“

None of this requires a global treaty. It requires holding AI companies to the standard every other industry already lives under.

We also need to consider who’s making the argument. Nvidia is now the world’s largest company, worth $5.4 trillion, and its chips are what the labs buy whether they spend the compute on capability or on safety. The flip doesn’t shrink that bill. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of compute necessary to develop these models increased by a factor of 10, because the evaluation is so rigorous,” Huang said. The one outcome that costs Nvidia is the one the letter asked for: an agreed slowdown.

If a gun manufacturer makes a weapon that fires despite its safety being on, it shouldn’t get US military contracts (oh well). If an automotive manufacturer cannot stop its cars from randomly crashing, it gets sued into oblivion. And if a frontier AI lab cannot contain its models, the solution isn’t to beg for government intervention so they can keep building.

The solution is to turn off the servers, go home, and shut the lab down.

Jensen Huang $NVDA and Lisa Su $AMD are “first cousins once removed” and both running trillion dollar businesses

This is the new benchmark of success for Asian parents to set for their kids lmao pic.twitter.com/jyT7saPCtu

— litquidity (@litcapital) September 22, 2026

Update (1230ET): Following US District Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s earlier decision, the Trump administration said in a legal filing that it has restored access for now to three media outlets the president had banned from White House grounds last week.

Reporters from CNN and MS NOW started returning to the White House grounds after a federal court had ordered a suspension of the ban.

The networks made announcements during their broadcasts on Thursday.

*  *  *

As Melanie Sun reported earlier for The Epoch Times, a federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to temporarily restore White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico while they challenge the revocation of their press passes in court.

Federal Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order against the White House ban, reinstating hard pass access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in the early hours of Sept. 24.

Trump announced on Sept. 18 that he was banning the three news outlets from White House premises over their “constant ‘reporting’ fake news.”

The White House revoked their access the following day.

In letters to the outlets dated Sept. 22, the White House said the organizations had violated “the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

The outlets subsequently filed for a temporary restraining order, and a remote hearing was held on Sept. 23.

The judge issued the order hours after the hearing, saying the court’s decision was “dictated by the application of well-known D.C. Circuit precedent that this Court must faithfully apply.”

Kelly pointed to two prior court decisions. A 2019 decision sided with reporter Brian Karem, whose White House press pass was restored because the government failed to provide prior notice.

The other decision was the landmark 1977 Sherrill v. Knight case, which held that once the White House makes press facilities available to bona fide journalists, it cannot deny access arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. Denied applicants are entitled to notice of the factual basis for the decision, a chance to respond, and a written statement of reasons.

The Trump administration has argued that these precedent cases were wrongly decided.

Kelly said the media outlets and the three journalists listed as plaintiffs had shown that without the court’s relief, they were likely to suffer irreparable harm, and that at a minimum, their procedural due process claim under the Fifth Amendment had a “likelihood of success.”

Plaintiffs are also likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process.

They did not “receive fair notice” of either the “conduct” that would lead to a sanction or of “the magnitude of the sanction that the White House might impose,” Kelly said.

Balance-of-hardships and public-interest arguments also favor the plaintiffs, Kelly said.

In a filing after the hearing, the government submitted an MS NOW report dated Sept. 23 to support its case. The article claimed that unnamed administration officials were considering attaching Trump’s name to Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

Trump dismissed the report as “a ridiculous lie” in a Sept. 24 post on Truth Social.

By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday rejected Commonwealth Edison’s “notice of cancellation” of a transmission security agreement, or TSA, for a 1.8-GW, $20-billion data center PowerHouse Hillwood Holding is developing in Joliet, Illinois.

In part, the contract dispute centers on the TSA’s credit support requirements. PowerHouse Hillwood contends it met the agreement’s initial credit requirements via a $1 posting, according to FERC’s decision.

The dispute is pending in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, according to the decision. In declining to take jurisdiction over the dispute, FERC said the courts can work it out just as well as the federal agency.

“Though we decline to assert primary jurisdiction over the interpretation of ambiguous contract terms involving credit support, our commitment to fair cost allocation, ratepayer protection, and regulatory clarity remains unwavering,” FERC Chairman Laura Swett and Commissioner Lindsay See said in a joint concurrence.

FERC’s decision highlights the “criticality” of the potential reforms that the agency proposed in large load interconnection show cause orders it issued in June to regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, the commissioners said. RTOs and ISOs have until mid-November to respond to the show cause orders.

Developing “clear and consistent” terms for connecting large loads with the transmission system is crucial, Swett and See said.

“It is also more important than ever that RTO/ISOs and their transmission owners may propose pro forma Cost Recovery Agreements,” they said. “And finally, it is more important than ever that any such agreements contain strong, consistent language that both protects customers from improper cost shifting and provides certainty to contracting parties.”

FERC Commissioner David Rosner said the dispute shows why the agency in its show cause orders directed RTOs and ISOs to develop pro forma cost‑recovery agreements for large loads. 

“Requiring security deposits helps ensure both project viability and transparency,” Rosner said. “Cost-recovery agreements matter because they enable efficient and accurate planning, and ensure that project risks stay where they belong: with the developer, not the public.”

FERC Commissioner David LaCerte lambasted the $1 letter of credit posted by PowerHouse Hillwood.

“The idea that $1 may provide appropriate security to any such agreement strikes me as an embarrassing legal fiction: insulting to the underlying ratepayers, stakeholders, and the grid itself that bear the real risk of this project,” LaCerte said. “Treating that risk as collateralizable for less than the price of a cup of coffee to me trivializes the very obligations that such a guarantee purports to secure.”

Update(1225ET): Crude tumbles on a new Reuters report signaling a return to [dubious?] ‘deal in motion’ headlines: US and Iran reportedly discuss phased deal to reopen Hormuz and end US blockade, according to Reuters citing sources

This seems just a reiteration of Iranian demands, but crude still reacted (per Rtrs):

• A senior Iranian official said the most plausible way to end the impasse would be a phased arrangement, with Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz in return for the US lifting its economic blockade and Tehran potentially gaining access to frozen assets.
• Neither side wants to surrender leverage driving diplomacy
• Iran signals flexibility on fees, not on Strait of Hormuz
• Gulf states reject Iranian control of the strait

*  *  *

It was just this month which saw the Iran conflict spill over into a renewed fight between the Saudi coalition and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Now Iran is threatening to expand the fight further, even into the Indian Ocean.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, warned Thursday of another significant expanse of the war if the Islamic Republic suffers attack again.

“Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond,” said Safavi in a video published by Iran’s Fars news agency.

This marks the first time that an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader explicitly mentioned hitting targets in the Indian Ocean as a heightened military threat.

The strategic British military base at Diego Garcia, which is also heavily used by the United States, lies deep in the Indian Ocean – some 2400 miles away.

The Iranians are believed to have actually fired ICBMs on the base at the height of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury.

Diego Garcia was first targeted on March 21st, with The Wall Street Journal at the time reporting that one missile had a mid-flight malfunction, while the other was engaged by an SM-3 interceptor missile fired from a US Navy vessel, though it’s unclear whether this latter projectile ever hit its target.

Brent surged to around $106 after a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran may expand the war to the Indian Ocean if the US or Israel attacks again, further undercutting hopes of a deal. —Bloomberg

Iranian negotiators are vowing they will not back off Tehran’s firm conditions for ending the war, after this week sitting down with the US team in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Meanwhile another attack on the Saudi kingdom by the Houthis:

Saudi led coalition in Yemen says it intercepted six ballistic missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthis

“They broke the agreement and committed another vicious act. We have therefore toughened our conditions,” spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brig. Gen. Hossein Mohbi told AFP in an interview this week. He also said that if the US doesn’t change its trajectory, it “will only make things difficult for themselves”.

“We are not their playthings, and they cannot unilaterally violate an agreement they signed whenever they please,” he emphasized.

Bloomberg just dropped the most disturbing investigation I have read this year, and every AI builder should read it and take it seriously.

On February 28, two Tomahawk missiles hit an elementary school in Minab, a small town in southern Iran. 156 people died. At least 123 were… pic.twitter.com/RqT1lwzsLP

— Ihtesham Ali (@ihteshamali) September 23, 2026

“We believe we have won this war, and we are currently consolidating that victory into a total deterrent force,“ he added.

* * *

TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline system issued a notice requiring an “immediate pressure reduction” on Mountaineer XPress Line 100 between the Mt. Olive Compressor Station in Jackson County and the Saunders Creek Regulator Station in Cabell County, West Virginia, warning that an “expected mechanical issue” would reduce scheduled volumes.

Columbia Gas Transmission moves Appalachian NatGas to markets across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and Southeast, with connections carrying supplies deep south to export terminals on the Gulf of America.

The affected Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia feeds two main outlets:

• Regional markets: Columbia’s TCO trading pool, serving Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic customers.
• Southern markets: The Leach interconnection in Kentucky, where gas enters Columbia Gulf Transmission for transportation toward the Southeast and Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.

NatGas research firm Criterion Research provided clients earlier today with an update on the outage:

TCO declared force majeure this morning following an unexpected mechanical issue on its Mountaineer XPress (MXP) system between the Mt. Olive Compressor Station and Saunders Creek Regulator Station in West Virginia, with the pipeline set to cut the MXPSEG MA42 constraint to zero beginning with the Sept. 25 Timely Cycle.

TCO estimates 1.8 MMDth/d of firm service will be affected, roughly matching the 1.88 MMDth/d currently scheduled through MXPSEG.

MXP is a 2.7 Bcf/d Appalachian takeaway system moving Marcellus/Utica supply south through West Virginia into TCO’s broader system. Upstream MXP receipts have not yet materially responded, with Sherwood flowing ~714 MDth/d, Corral ~267 MDth/d and Viking ~5 MDth/d today, but the full restriction should begin showing up in tomorrow’s nominations and could force significant rerouting or production cuts if the roughly 1.8 Bcf/d cannot find alternate paths. TCO has not provided a restoration timeline and expects to issue another update Friday morning.

October gas futures climbed 4.5%, or 13.6 cents, to $3.159 per million British thermal units on Nymex as of 11:00 a.m. ET. Prices have jumped more than 12% since early Wednesday. 

Flow restrictions can tighten downstream supplies even when natural gas remains abundant at producing wells across Appalachia.