Merz clings on as Germany’s political center crumbles
Subscribe nowwith a one-month trial for only $1, then enjoy the first year at an exclusive rate of just $99.
German state polls yield historic defeat, familiar paralysis Diego Faßnacht reports that the CDU’s historic losses in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin have deepened Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s political crisis without producing a clear alternative. Germany remains trapped between coalition paralysis.
Takaichi buries Abe’s Russia rapprochement Scott Foster reports that Sanae Takaichi has abandoned Shinzo Abe’s effort to improve ties with Moscow, aligning Japan more firmly with Ukraine while escalating military signaling near Russia. The shift sacrifices a potentially useful energy relationship as Middle East supply risks intensify.
Duma elections reinforce the political status quo James Davis reports that Russia’s wartime Duma elections against the backdrop of Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow preserved the existing political order while bringing more veterans into the governing system and laying the groundwork for an eventual succession.
Russia’s new jet-powered drones mark latest evolution in air war above Ukraine
The air war between Russia and Ukraine has evolved constantly since the start of the conflict. The latest example is Russia’s deployment of a new type of long-range, jet-powered drone, which is having a significant effect on Ukraine’s ability to defend its cities against aerial attack.
In an interview on September 14, Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat told the Financial Times that Ukraine was intercepting only about 60% of attacks by the new Geran-5 drone. This compares with the 95% interception rate Ukraine’s air defences achieve against other drone variants.
The Geran-5’s cylindrical fuselage and straight wings make its profile closer to that of a cruise missile than a conventional long-range drone. Russian sources indicate it has a range of up to 1,000km and a maximum operating altitude of around 6,000 metres, which is higher than earlier drones.
Geran-5 drones also travel faster than previous models, with an estimated top speed of approximately 600 kilometres per hour. And unlike earlier variants, these drones are fitted with anti-jamming capabilities. Together, this makes them particularly difficult for Ukraine’s ground-based air defences to intercept.
Inhat said Ukraine has been forced into the “very intensive use” of its fighter jets since Russia began using the Geran-5 in August, with pilots shooting down these drones directly.
But the effectiveness of the Geran-5 extends beyond its speed and range. According to Yuri Knutov, a Russian military expert, these drones incorporate machine vision linked to a digital terrain map, which enables them to identify and select targets autonomously.
Russia has been using the jet-powered Geran-5 drone against Ukraine since August.
Ukraine air war
Immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the air war over Ukraine followed expected lines, with both sides relying heavily on combat aircraft. These aircraft had two specific roles: to engage opposing aircraft directly, and to strike targets in support of forces on the ground.
However, the situation soon changed. With air defence systems taking such a toll on aircraft from both sides, the air war over Ukraine became more stand-off in nature. More long-range tactics were employed instead.
From 2023, the Russians in particular came to make full use of the glide bomb. These bombs, fitted with stabilising wings and navigation aids, could be launched around 70km away from their target, beyond the reach of most anti-aircraft defences. They represented a less risky means of delivering ordnance to the battlefield.
However, drones swiftly became the dominant tool of air power. They have no crews to risk and, given their relative simplicity, can be produced at low cost in large numbers. Smaller drone variants have been used by both sides close to the frontlines, while larger, long-range drones have struck targets deeper inside Ukraine and Russia.
The issue with the earlier long-range drone variants was that they were relatively easy to shoot down. This is because, being propeller-driven, they are slow. For several years, the principal Russian long-range drones have been the propeller-driven Geran-1 and Geran-2 – upgraded Russian copies of the Iranian Shahed-136 drone.
Drones have become the dominant tool of air power in the war between Russia and Ukraine.Naeblys / Shutterstock
The first jet-powered drone, the Geran-3, was deployed in 2025. It was significantly faster than the Geran-2, travelling at 330km/h compared with the Geran 2’s 185km/h. While it had a considerably shorter range of just 600km, against the Geran-2’s possible 2,500km, it could fly higher, reducing its vulnerability to air defences.
Later that year, the jet-powered Geran-4 appeared in the skies above Ukraine with an increased top speed of 500km/h and range of 850km. And in August 2026, the Geran-5, with its faster speed and even longer range, was first used operationally by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s military intelligence service has published details of the components identified in the Geran-5 drone, highlighting the extent to which its supply chain draws on foreign technologies. These include a Chinese-supplied jet engine, digital processors made in the US, and transistors manufactured in Germany.
The component list suggests Russia has established resilient supply chains that enable it to circumvent western sanctions and procure commercially available technologies from multiple countries, before manufacturing the final system domestically.
Russia is also able to mass-produce these new jet-powered drones. Ukrainian military intelligence reports that Russia is prioritising Geran-4 and Geran-5 production in order to build up stocks ahead of an autumn and winter campaign against Ukraine.
This may prove devastating, as Ukraine is running low on its stock of western-supplied Patriot ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles. These missiles are the only truly effective means of shooting down the Geran-5 drone.
Ukraine’s deputy head of military intelligence, Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, relayed these fears in August. He announced that Ukraine now needed new interceptor missiles “with the appropriate speed” to intercept the latest jet-powered Gerans.
Push for Creole courses in schools stokes historic anti-Haitian feeling in Dominican Republic
In early September 2026, a lawmaker in the Dominican Republic introduced a bill that would require all public schools in the Caribbean nation to offer courses in Haitian Creole. It was met with a swift and fierce public backlash.
Since then, Dominican and Haitian media outlets and pundits have debated the merits and challenges the proposal will undoubtedly face if it comes to a vote, let alone is implemented. As it stands, the level of political and social opposition means the proposal has little chance of progressing.
Much of the criticism has revolved around issues of Dominican national sovereignty, since Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island. Though the two nations have been separate and independent since the 19th century, Dominican nationalists often foreground a 22-year period from 1822 to 1844 when Haitian troops occupied the Dominican Republic. In fact, the Independence Day that is celebrated every Feb. 27 in the Dominican Republic celebrates its independence from Haiti in 1844, not from Spain, its one-time colonial power.
Some nationalist Dominican groups feel that requiring students to study Haitian Creole is one step closer to an unwanted “unification” of the island that they believe has been planned since this occupation. Haitian immigration to the Dominican Republic is often characterized as an ongoing peaceful invasion – a nationalistic narrative that has been perpetuated by Dominican politicians for over 50 years.
The growing size of the Haitian immigrant population in the Dominican Republic – estimates range from 500,000 to several million people – often feeds these nationalistic fears. In certain industries, particularly agriculture and construction, Haitians form the overwhelming majority of the workforce.
The backlash notwithstanding, the Creole language is an indelible part of the Dominican Republic, and has been maintained in the country by migrants for hundreds of years. However, Creole has been systematically excluded from public spaces where you might expect it, like on signage or in public spaces, such as hospitals, where migrants might need an interpreter.
Creole and the Haitian diaspora
Haitians have moved to the neighboring Dominican Republic in large numbers over the last century, forming the largest diaspora in the Caribbean and representing almost half of the entire immigrant population in the region.
This immigration increased substantially after the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, an event that further plunged the country into a period of economic instability and gang violence.
All that makes Haitian Creole the second-most widely spoken language in the Dominican Republic, after Spanish. Haitian Creole, or Kreyòl, is the national language of Haiti, alongside French, and is the only language spoken by the entire population.
Though it is often derogatorily dismissed as a “dialect” of French, or as “broken French”, Creole is a fully constituted language with its own language academy, orthography and grammar. It has been an official language of Haiti since 1987.
Supporters of the nationalist group ‘Antigua Orden Dominicana’ take part in a protest against Haitian immigration in Santo Domingo on April 27, 2025.Stringer/AFP via Getty Images
My own research shows that many Dominicans of Haitian descent grow up speaking Creole at home as a first language, particularly in the border region and in Haitian enclaves throughout the country. In these communities, it is common for Haitians and Dominicans to live alongside one another, work together and live in mixed-marriage households where children learn both Creole and Spanish.
A multicultural reality
Because of the widespread presence of Creole in the country, calls to teach the language in Dominican schools have been made before, though they have been resolutely rejected.
In 2017, for instance, the president of the national teachers union – the Asociación Dominicana de Profesores – publicly stated that it would be a mistake to teach Creole in schools, as it would cause Dominicans to start “acting and thinking like Haitians.”
These anti-Haitian attitudes reflect the overtly racial overtones of the immigration debate. Scholars and intellectuals have long argued that the rejection and hatred of Haitians by some sections of Dominican society are actually a rejection of the Blackness that Haitian identity and culture represents. These anti-Black attitudes allow politicians to scapegoat Haitians for problems within Dominican society.
But for Julio César Beltré, the legislative deputy who proposed the bill, the measure is common sense. As a native of the Azua province near the Dominican-Haitian border, he says that he sees the need for Creole language skills daily in his hometown, and argues that knowledge of Creole would offer a “practical advantage” to Dominicans in the business, work and social spaces that they share with Haitians.
“Learning a neighboring language,” he added, “doesn’t mean adopting an identity or a political position. It’s just a tool of communication.”
Since introducing the bill, Beltré has made the rounds on popular Dominican morning shows and news programs to discuss the legislation and address the criticism it has received. One of the most surprising aspects of the proposal, for many, is that Beltré is a member of the country’s ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Moderno (PRM), which in recent years has made its name on its strict and brutal approach to Haitian immigration.
People wait in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, to cross into the Dominican Republic in 2024.AP Photo/Matias Delacroix
In July, the government announced it had deported more than 226,000 Haitians in the first half of the year alone. The party has been criticized internationally for human rights abuses against Haitian immigrants. On Sept. 14, Dominican President Luis Abinader – of PRM – said that the proposal does not reflect the party’s position, and that he does not support the proposal “in the slightest.”
Support on the street
While most headlines have focused on the backlash to the bill, there are many Dominican voices coming out in support. With the expanding Haitian population in the Dominican Republic, the next logical step in many citizens’ minds is a national education policy.
News outlet El Avance took to the streets to interview Dominican passersby about the proposal, and many stated that they support the bill. “We share borders,” said one person. “We have to know what our neighbors are saying.” Jonatan Familia, host of the extremely popular news program De Último Minuto, said he thinks teaching Creole would add to the educational system and benefit Dominican students.
The public relations secretary for the national teachers union has also publicly supported the initiative, a complete reversal of the group’s response a decade ago.
Overcoming the language barrier
Despite the backlash now, Dominican organizations have developed and offered Creole language courses for decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, Radio Enriquillo – a regional radio broadcast of the Catholic church – offered Creole lessons throughout the southern region of the country.
Some schools and institutions actively teach the language – at least 15, by my count. The nation’s preeminent public university, the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, has offered Creole courses at its main campus in the nation’s capital for more than a decade. In addition to these semester-long courses for students, they also offer nine-week courses on Saturdays, which are open to the general public. More recently, several of their satellite campuses throughout the country have begun teaching the language.
The Dominican government also offers Creole language training for some public servants. The INESDYC, the academic training arm of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, offers three different levels of Creole courses as well as a conversation course for its future diplomats. Meanwhile, Western Union – whose financial services allow Haitian migrants to send remittances to Haiti – has in recent years begun offering introductory Creole courses for staff members.
The limitations that the language barrier imposes between Haitians and Dominicans have been recognized by public, private and religious institutions alike, which have all sought to remedy it in their own piecemeal ways.
Though it is widely expected that this bill will be defeated on a floor vote, it has clearly spurred a heated national conversation around educational policy for Haitian Creole. It remains to be seen whether or not this newest initiative will lead to a shift in national policy, but evidence shows that public opinion may be slowly turning in its favor.
After seven years, a spacecraft company is releasing its Otters into the wild
Imagine starting a space company in October 2019 with the aim of changing the world. Then, a few months later, a global pandemic shuts the world down.
“Little did we know what the world had in store for us,” said Trevor Bennett, an engineer who co-founded Starfish Space after a few years at Blue Origin. “But that’s kind of become part of our story, showing some resilience along the way.”
At Blue Origin, he saw, up close, the ambitions of billionaires to build big rockets and put massive numbers of satellites into orbit. Bennett and his co-founder, another engineer from Blue Origin named Austin Link, began to think about the implications. How would humanity deal with that increased volume of satellites in orbit? Could low-Earth orbit be preserved?
Ideas like asteroid mining or building infrastructure on the Moon seemed a little too far out at the time, but improving the ability to move around in space, deorbiting threats, and extending the life of assets there seemed more plausible. An obvious business case was extending the life of large satellites in geostationary orbit, but just as important, Bennet and Link felt like managing these ever-growing constellations in low-Earth orbit would become vital.
“So we had two business cases that we thought were meaningful,” Bennett said. “What we needed was a vehicle to go match that, and that was Otter.”
Otter, at last
Seven years after Starfish’s founding, the first Otter will finally go to space this fall. With a spacecraft bus about the size of a large washing machine and a mass of approximately 350 kg, an Otter will fly on a Falcon 9 Transporter mission next month.
This will largely be a demonstration mission for NASA. Named SSPICY—for Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability—the mission will see Otter fly up to multiple older spacecraft and get close to them. Otter will inspect multiple US-owned, defunct satellites, approaching within hundreds of meters to gather information about spin rates, current conditions, and more. This is the first time NASA has funded a commercial debris inspection mission, and the agency is paying Starfish $15 million.
“All of these will be inspections to start,” Bennett said of the SSPICY mission. “But then there will be an opportunity for us to use the remaining life of Otter to do something more.”
The Otter spacecraft that will be used for the SSPICY mission.
Credit: Starfish Space
The Otter spacecraft that will be used for the SSPICY mission. Credit: Starfish Space
The initial missions will not refuel the Otter spacecraft, but that’s the long-term goal. The company chose water propellant precisely because it is an abundant fuel source across the Solar System.
Over Starsfish Space’s seven years of existence, Bennett and Link have kept the company fairly small. It has about 120 employees and has raised about $150 million to date. It has chosen to procure its spacecraft bus from Astro Digital and focus on developing software and maneuvering technologies to enable precise rendezvous and docking and the ability to maintain a long life on orbit to service multiple vehicles.
A long and winding road
There have been several demonstrations over the years. The first mission, Otter Pup 1, launched in 2023. But the external orbital transfer vehicle suffered a failure, and it ejected the Otter Pup 1 spacecraft prematurely at a spin rate of 330 degrees per second. Over a few weeks, the Starsfish team recovered the spacecraft, but one of its thrusters eventually failed.
It has had more success with two later demo missions, including Otter Pup 2, which launched in 2025 and has been flying in close proximity to a target spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. It has gotten to within 1 km so far, and if all goes well, a docking will occur in the coming months.
Starfish also partnered with Impulse Space last summer and used its software to fly the Mira spacecraft after that vehicle had completed its primary mission. Starfish sought to demonstrate that a single lightweight camera system, along with its closed-loop guidance, navigation, and control software, could autonomously rendezvous with another spacecraft. It worked.
Now comes the big test, however: flying a full-fledged Otter for NASA. Starfish has five more Otters in production for additional missions to showcase docking, de-orbit, and life extension capabilities. But you only get one chance to make a first impression, and Bennett said he is both nervous and excited.
“There is always a tension that comes with seeing the first of anything fly, right?” he said. “The other part of this is huge amounts of excitement. I think the excitement comes because this is a new kind of capability that’s finding its way to orbit. The pride part is the amount of effort that it took to get here from ourselves, from the team members, from people working with us, from the customers believing in that this can happen and helping us walk that path.”
“This is a moment to celebrate getting here and affording us this opportunity to go do something big,” he said.
Allies unite behind Saudi Arabia as Houthis step up attacks
Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani military chiefs are to meet to discuss how to support Saudi Arabia under a joint defence pact, after Saudi’s top religious authority told troops to be ready to lay down their lives to fight Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis.
The Houthis have launched strikes on the Saudi-backed government in Yemen and repeatedly fired into Saudi Arabia, disrupting oil flows from the world’s largest energy exporter, as part of a wider Middle East war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February.
The Houthis said they had fired dozens of missiles and drones at Saudi targets on Thursday, while authorities in Saudi Arabia said they had intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Houthi fighters.
Saudi Arabia had earlier issued emergency alerts for areas including the holy city of Mecca, as well as Jeddah and Yanbu, the main Saudi Red Sea oil port.
Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, the kingdom’s top religious authority, called on soldiers to be ready to lay down their lives to fight the Houthis until the group is ousted from power, according to a statement late on Thursday.
Amid the fighting, the Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish foreign ministers met within the framework of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which was signed in August. They condemned attacks targeting Mecca and other civilian sites, while affirming Saudi Arabia’s right to defend itself.
“The ministers also discussed arrangements for holding an urgent meeting of the chiefs of staff of the three countries to discuss ways to support Saudi Arabia under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, which stipulates that an attack against any one of the parties constitutes an attack against all parties,” a Saudi statement said.
The meeting was announced shortly after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sought to distance Iran from the Houthis in an American television interview on Thursday.
“The Houthis are responsible for their own actions,” Pezeshkian told the Fox News program “Special Report with Bret Baier” a day after he appeared before the UN General Assembly in New York.
Turkey’s defence ministry said Chief of General Staff General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu would travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday to meet his Saudi and Pakistani counterparts.
Ankara has previously said it could help meet Riyadh’s military needs, especially on technical issues, but officials have said any support at this stage would be largely bilateral and in the spirit of their alliance, since the joint defence agreement has not yet been ratified by Turkey’s parliament.
SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY IN NEW YORK
The Pezeshkian interview and speech took place amid a pause in fighting between the US and Iran and a brief attempt at diplomacy in New York, with Qatar serving as intermediary between the warring parties.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters on Thursday that Tehran had conveyed a proposal to the United States via intermediaries under which the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened if Tehran’s conditions were met.
Under Iran’s proposal, hostilities would end on all fronts, including Lebanon, within seven days. The US would lift its blockade on Iranian ports, release Iran’s frozen funds and waive its oil sanctions, he said.
“The Strait of Hormuz will be reopened on the last day,” Araqchi said, adding that talks with the US on other issues, including Iran’s nuclear issue, would then start.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that Tehran was reviewing Washington’s response to its peace proposals.
Oil prices fell on Friday as markets weighed the possibility of a truce, despite the number of ships recorded transiting the Strait of Hormuz dropping to nine on Thursday, half the 10-day average.
The war, which US President Donald Trump launched alongside Israel, has killed thousands of people and disrupted global trade and energy supplies, adding to inflationary pressures.
While the fighting between the US and Iran has been stop-start, Iranian allies have mobilised with Hezbollah confronting Israel in Lebanon and the Houthis advancing in Yemen.
Iran and its allies have significantly squeezed oil exports from Saudi Arabia, a US ally. The Houthis have disrupted ship traffic at the mouth of the Red Sea while Iran has effectively limited tanker traffic at the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for 20% of the world’s oil exports before the war.
FINANCIAL PRESSURE ON IRAN TIGHTENED
Security experts have debated exactly how much Iran directly influences the Houthis, a Shi’ite Islamist movement that evolved from a local insurgency into a powerful armed group controlling much of northern Yemen.
However, Yemeni government, Iranian and regional sources have said the Houthis’ advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast was carried out with direct guidance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Washington has announced a shift in tactics to extend the reach of its financial sanctions by targeting companies from third countries that do business with Iranian firms, a practice known as “secondary sanctions”.
Iranian airlines were barred from neighbouring countries including the UAE and Oman on Thursday in response to new US sanctions, the first big impact of a shift in US policy to target companies in third countries that do business with Iran.
A flight ban, if sustained, could deepen Iran’s isolation and worsen an economic crisis in the country, which is already facing a US blockade of its ports at sea.
It’s the year of the democratic socialist. But the group that helped start the earthquake currently transforming the Democratic Party almost didn’t make it to 2026.
After suffering major losses last election cycle after a deluge of pro-Israel lobby spending, Justice Democrats, which supports progressive candidates getting elected to Congress, was on the verge of being written about in the past tense.
“Everyone sort of doubted that there was a comeback to be had. I think a lot of people, AIPAC included, saw last cycle as the harbinger for what’s to come: They were on the rise, JD and the left were on the decline. For the first time ever, we didn’t endorse a new candidate since our founding, and because we had to focus on defending against $100 million in spending from AIPAC,” says communications director and spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. “The truth is, that moment was really — for lack of a better word — the apex of AIPAC’s momentum and ability.”
But Justice Democrats resurrected itself, had its most successful primary season to date, and helped put democratic socialism on the map. So what changed?
The group says it won big this year, even being massively outspent, because it tapped into the brewing frustration among voters — frustration directed at Democratic Party leaders. “We understood as soon as Donald Trump won that clearly the Democratic establishment was unfit to fight back, and what voters were looking for as we’ve seen throughout this cycle, is this amorphous fighter that they want,” says Andrabi. “That fight doesn’t just look like, as we say so often, press releases and strongly worded letters. It looks like fighting corporate establishment. It looks like fighting AIPAC. It looks like fighting crypto and AI.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing, Andrabi speaks to host Akela Lacy about how the group that helped elect Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib has seen their candidates make impressive gains in the primaries, and how they’re planning to leverage their wins — and what they can learn from their losses — beyond November.
This primary season, Justice Democrats endorsed 15 candidates; seven won, with democratic socialists knocking out three incumbents. That includes Darializa Avila Chevalier who toppled Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat in New York, Melat Kiros who beat Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney who took out Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan. Those three are all but guaranteed to head to Congress next year, along with the four other candidates who won.
“This work doesn’t happen overnight. These losses don’t happen overnight. It takes years and years to build this progress,” says Andrabi. “These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party. The Democratic Party can either listen to them or be forced to listen to them, as they have been this cycle when we beat them.”
“Until they start taking lessons from the left on what to actually fight for, they will continue to be running on cycle-to-cycle losses and wins instead of really looking at, long-term, how can we take back power and ensure that we don’t consistently backside into this fascist and authoritarian regime that is overrun by the same corporate interests that the Democratic establishment is also funded by.”
For more, listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Akela Lacy, senior politics reporter at The Intercept.
Jessica Washington: I’m Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. So, Akela, how are you doing? What’s been top of mind for you this week?
AL: I am really stuck on this news that apparently hackers now have information on all FBI agents, which is crazy. Hackers claimed that they were able to breach a bunch of FBI services and steal a bunch of information about federal agents.
That’s on top of another insane story that I saw on Thursday morning about yet another rogue AI agent, but this time it hacked an Australia government healthcare portal — an OpenAI agent. I don’t know if you saw that, but that really stuck with me.
JW: All of these AI attacks, everything that’s come out, I keep thinking back to our interview with Karen Hao, who wrote “Empire of AI,” and how so much of the stuff that she’s warned about is now something that people are talking about in the discourse. It’s all really scary stuff, but it’s also stuff that’s kind of been reported on before, so it is interesting to see it all blow up now.
As someone who started in television, I have to say I cannot stop thinking about this Paramount deal. So for those who don’t know, on Monday, Paramount reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros., which would give Trump ally David Ellison control of a massive media empire, which includes both CNN and CBS News. Ellison is reportedly considering tapping Elon Musk for an investment, which would give the billionaire a stake in two of the largest news organizations in the world.
AL: This is all happening while the White House is waging a war on mainstream media outlets: CNN, Politico, and MS Now. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the White House efforts to strip those outlets of their White House press credentials. But we saw President Trump this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York ask CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins why she was there because she wasn’t supposed to be covering him — but she wasn’t at the White House.
So the state of our media ecosystem is healthy as ever.
JW: Things are going great in our democracy. In other news, ProPublica reported that in 2024, the FBI was seeking to launch an investigation into a potential pay-to-play scheme between Sen. Susan Collins and one of her top donors, a former defense contractor who reportedly told federal agents that he had received millions in federal contracts by donating to campaigns of politicians. The investigation was reportedly halted after President Donald Trump returned to office and gutted the entire bureau.
Akela, you had a really interesting campaign finance story come out this week as well, relating to Sen. John Fetterman. What happened there?
AL: I got a text on Monday from a source who had seen an email that the Fetterman campaign sent from a domain called, “gopsquad.com.” The story we basically did was about after finding several other conservative email domains that Fetterman was using to send this campaign fundraising email after he delivered a surprise video speech to the Republican midterm convention earlier this month, was that he’s either renting or buying Republican targeted email lists to raise money right now.
We’ve been covering Fetterman’s fall from grace over the past several years, but his fundraising numbers have really struggled as he has pursued this rightward turn on issues from immigration to Iran to Israel. Many of his small dollar donors, we reported in, in recent years, were asking for their money back.
We see his campaign now pretty openly just asking Republicans for money. Something funny — well, funny or depressing —that happened on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Mike Lee from Utah was sending out emails fundraising off of Fetterman’s fundraising. I’ll just read you this email.
The subject line: “I just got this email from John Fetterman.” “Friend, I just got an email from John. He’s basically a Republican now. I need your help to draft him. Sign here. Thanks, Sen. Mike Lee.” Which is pretty chef’s kiss, if you ask me.
JW: I have to say: gopsquad.com is probably my favorite part.
AL: Not subtle.
JW: Not at all subtle. Is there anything else that you’re following that you want to talk about?
AL: We’re still waiting to learn the name of the ICE officer who shot a 28-year-old Venezuelan delivery driver in Austin, Texas. I spoke with sources there who said that the local district attorney’s office and the Austin Police Department are cooperating to basically get whatever information they can from HSI — the Department of Homeland Security Investigations — which apparently has not declined to give them any information, but also hasn’t given them any information yet.
So we’re seeing a very similar playbook as to what we saw after the ICE shootings in Minneapolis, where local law enforcement and prosecutors are basically fighting with federal agencies to try to get any information — the bare minimum, this person’s name — out of this. The Travis County district attorney, which encompasses Austin, has apparently been in close touch with the Minneapolis prosecutor to learn how they navigated the situation.
I’ll remind our listeners, we interviewed Mary Moriarty, the Minneapolis prosecutor, who was working on prosecuting the ICE shootings in Minneapolis earlier in the year.
Thinking about ICE and the election, I’ve been reporting on groups that are trying to fight back against potential election interference. They’re planning for a ton of different scenarios, one of which includes ICE potentially coming to the polls and being there to intimidate voters of color and immigrant voters as well.
These groups are trying to prevent that harassment, and so they’re there to monitor, to report, and to keep people safe against a terrifying new threat. Obviously, voter intimidation isn’t new. I spoke to the NAACP, who had mentioned, we’ve been fighting on this issue “for the last 117 years.”
But ICE at the polls is new. What Trump has been discussing in terms of election sabotage scenarios are very new, and so these organizers are trying to use the tools they learned in the resistance to ICE movement that we saw pop up in January and February to try and keep our election safe as well.
On that topic, Akela, I know you also speak with Justice Democrats communications director and spokesperson Usamah Andrabi about how progressives are preparing for the general after a really impressive sweep in the primaries. Let’s hear that conversation.
AL: I speak now with Usamah Andrabi, Communications Director and Spokesperson for Justice Democrats, the group that brought us AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and many more.
Usamah, welcome to the Intercept Briefing.
Usamah Andrabi: Thanks for having me.
AL: I want to start by taking our listeners back to a different time.
It’s 2018. The “Squad” has just been elected to office, and a fresh new crop of democratic socialists and progressives are making themselves known on Capitol Hill.
Think: AOC joining a sit-in to protest for a Green New Deal outside of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. For listeners who aren’t familiar with the legacy of Justice Democrats, they have your group to thank in large part for that moment in time and for bringing us the Squad. But a lot has changed since then. How is Justice Democrats different today from in 2018, and what’s the same?
UA: What’s the same, first and foremost, is the commitment to the values that we had then are the same commitment we have to those values, and those are the values that we demand of the candidates we recruit, support, and endorse. Because those are the values that Democratic voters share — values that put the needs of working-class people above the needs of corporations and billionaires, and taking on lobbies like AIPAC, crypto, or AI.
I think that’s a little bit of what’s changed, is what we have seen since 2018, really, is the increased appearance of more and more moneyed interest organizing against the Squad, organizing against left-wing politicians, because they are bringing working-class people into the halls of power and bringing their needs to the top of the agenda for the Democratic Party. Billionaires hate that.
We had the Squad get elected in 2018. Then two years later, folks like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush won very specifically against deeply pro-Israel politicians like Eliot Engel and [William] Lacy Clay, and they won without compromising on those values. That’s a really scary thing for the Israel lobby, who has really had a sharp control over how Democrats unconditionally support the Israeli government and military like Republicans have for decades.
What I think has happened is, we’ve had some wins, we’ve had some losses, and we’ve had to learn a lot from those losses and understand how to organize our donors better, organize funders, organize progressives, really, to coalesce more around independent candidates and broaden this network.
I talk a lot about how I feel like in 2024, Democrats across the board suffered a lot of losses. We suffered two of our best members of Congress, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush lost their seats. And obviously, the Democratic Party lost every single other thing they could have lost. It felt like the job was to go home, everyone was supposed to do their homework and come back stronger to fight back against this very clearly fascist agenda that was laid out for us.
The left went home. We did our homework. We organized coalitions, we built broader donor networks, and we really invested a lot in candidate recruitment at Justice Dems.
And it feels like the establishment came back even weaker. Despite having weeks and months and years to really prepare for what Donald Trump promised he was going to do, they came back flat-footed and continue to look as weak as possible. That’s why I think you’re seeing so many successes for the left this cycle, because we are a true balm to the ineptitude of the Democratic establishment.
“You’re seeing so many successes for the left this cycle because we are a true balm to the ineptitude of the Democratic establishment.”
AL: We’re going to run through some of those wins in a second; many of our listeners are already familiar with them because we’ve talked a lot about these candidates on the show.
But I want to go back to this money thing before we get into that because, as you mentioned, coming off of those major losses of Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman to money from the pro-Israel lobby last cycle — I don’t think anyone expected you all to notch as many wins as you did in the primaries this year.
We read obituaries of Justice Democrats, right? And that outside spending, as you mentioned, still has not gone away; it’s only increased. But it still wasn’t enough to stop the candidates behind the rise of democratic socialism that everyone is talking about, who were, to your point, far outmatched in terms of spending.
I’ll just run through the numbers quickly. You endorsed 15 candidates; seven of them won, with democratic socialists knocking out three incumbents. That includes Darializa Avila Chevalier who toppled Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat in New York, Melat Kiros who beat Rep. Diana DeGette in Colorado, and state Rep. Donavan McKinney who took out Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan. Those three are all are but guaranteed to head to Congress next year, along with the four other candidates who won. Three of your other candidates won or came in the top two slots in the California primaries, which are nonpartisan, and are headed to runoffs in November. And only five candidates lost.
So what made this cycle different?
UA: First and foremost, love to prove our haters wrong at all times. [Laughter]
A lot of spite drives that. But also, it’s exactly that. Everyone sort of doubted that there was a comeback to be had. I think a lot of people, AIPAC included, saw last cycle as the harbinger for what’s to come: They were on the rise, JD and the left were on the decline. For the first time ever, we didn’t endorse a new candidate since our founding, and because we had to focus on defending against $100 million in spending from AIPAC.
The truth is, that moment was really — for lack of a better word — the apex of AIPAC’s momentum and ability. Because on the other side of that, as we had been working for years to expose, was the toxic involvement of AIPAC in these primaries and the right-wing network of billionaires who are actually funding this.
It took many years for us to break down AIPAC, and it took a lot of losses to get to that point, but it was worth it. We did a lot of polling. We invested a lot of money in research to bring this message to voters.
Cori and Jamaal’s losses unfortunately were the final nails in the coffin for a lot of people to wake up to realize how the Israel lobby really functions in our politics — paired with the fact that obviously we watched a genocide get livestreamed on our screens for years at this point, and voters began to wake up to understand: Why is it that a majority of us oppose this genocide — we support an arms embargo, we support a ceasefire — yet only a minority of left-wing politicians in Congress are responding to our demands?
They understood that that was the role of the Israel lobby, spending infinite amounts of money and buying members of Congress to ensure that they would do their bidding. Even before the 2024 election, we were very clear that this cycle was going to have to be a cycle where we went back on the offense, made big bets, and fought back really hard.
We knew we were going to have to endorse a lot more candidates, spread the board out across the country, really, to make sure that AIPAC didn’t just have two members of Congress to target but had 15 different candidates, as well as meeting where Democratic voters were at.
We know no matter if Kamala won or if Donald Trump won, there was still a lot of work to do to rebuild this Democratic Party to actually represent the needs of the working class. We understood as soon as Donald Trump won that clearly the Democratic establishment was unfit to fight back.
What voters were looking for, as we’ve seen throughout this cycle, is this amorphous fighter that they want. That fight doesn’t just look like, as we say so often, press releases and strongly worded letters. It looks like fighting corporate establishment. It looks like fighting AIPAC. It looks like fighting crypto and AI.
“There’s no going behind, under, or any other prepositional phrase around AIPAC or these lobbies. The only way to defeat them is to go right through them and beat them head-on.”
For so long, even people who call themselves progressive have tried to figure out, how can we go around, under, or behind these lobbies and skirt this very particular line to avoid their wrath? We try to make it clear to everyone, even in the cycle where we lost the most we’ve ever lost, that there’s no going behind, under, or any other prepositional phrase around AIPAC or these lobbies. The only way to defeat them is to go right through them and beat them head-on.
We knew that this was an existential crisis for us. As you said, people are already reading our obituaries, and we wanted to make it clear that this work doesn’t happen overnight. These losses don’t happen overnight. It takes years and years to build this progress.
The excitement that you are seeing from the Democratic electorate across the country for our candidates, it’s taken years to build, and it’s taken years of the Democratic establishment failing to actually live up to their potential and what the demands of working-class people across the country have been.
AL: I want to talk about this process that you’re talking about, this iterative process of bench-building that gets lost in a lot of the horse-race analysis.
But first, I just want to mention, we had one of your candidates, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, on the show earlier this year to talk about Republican gerrymandering efforts as part of this last-ditch plan to fight off what is expected to be big losses for Republicans in November. Pearson is running in one of the districts at the forefront of that gerrymandering fight.
Even with the momentum we’ve seen against Republicans and against the Democratic establishment, as we’re talking about, what can Democrats do in the face of this massive gerrymandering push? How do you think that could potentially affect Pearson’s race?
I’ll just mention this again: Justin Pearson is running in a seat that was vacated by longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who is the last Democratic representative in Tennessee, so this is an important race.
It’s very easy for us far away in the Democratic establishment to see these sort of Republican gerrymanders and say, “All right. Well, it’s cooked. There’s no chance of us doing anything here. We can put forward our standard DCCC candidate and talk about it a little, but we’re not going to invest any resources in there.”
I think that would be a failure. This is the tip of the spear of our modern civil rights movement. We are seeing the Voting Rights Act gutted in front of our face, take away the last Black-majority district in the state of Tennessee at a time when Justin J. Pearson was ostensibly going to win his Democratic primary against Steve Cohen.
“When he talked about whether or not he wanted to do this, he understood no matter if he wins or loses, this is a fight worth having.”
When he talked about whether or not he wanted to do this, he understood no matter if he wins or loses, this is a fight worth having. It’s worth showing Democratic voters in the electorate, and the establishment more than anyone, that we can go into these Republican districts and these rural communities and not compromise on our most basic values.
Justin has not changed the policies and agenda he was running for when he was running against Steve Cohen to what he’s running for now. He has been the leader in that state on taking on AI data centers, and he is still the leader taking them on as his Republican opponent has unleashed them on Republican areas of this district.
He’s uncompromised on standing up against the genocide and endless wars abroad and U.S. taxpayers funding for that, and he’s demanding Medicare for all. These are extremely popular policies, not just in the bluest districts across the country, but across the board ideologically. He is showing an example of how we don’t have to run Amy McGraths everywhere we go in these red districts to win over “red voters.”
“He is showing an example of how we don’t have to run Amy McGraths everywhere we go in these red districts to win over ‘red voters.’”
These are working-class voters who are also been shivved and fucked by the same establishment that is run by Republicans and Democrats. These are people who are getting their hospitals and schools closed down in rural communities, who are getting their ACA subsidies cut and Medicaid subsidies cut.
This is a failure of the establishment of both parties. We can show that a different way is possible. Obviously, we need to fight to restore the Voting Rights Act, and we need to expand the Supreme Court and reform this court so we cannot continue just to see fights that people who are still living have fought for to be taken away in the same breath.
There’s a lot of work to do. It feels really difficult to know how we can claw back some of this institutional power when our institutions are so broken and corrupt. But I think that visionary agenda and ideals are what we need to see more from the Democratic Party, rather than simply being a party that is not Republicans.
That’s what these candidates have been so exciting for voters across the country about are that they, for the first time, are giving Democratic voters in a lot of these districts an affirmative positive agenda that centers their most urgent crises and actually has bold enough solutions to tackle those crises.
“That visionary agenda and ideals are what we need to see more from the Democratic Party, rather than simply being a party that is not Republicans.”
AL: This criticism came up a lot in this cycle, and this is the kind of thing I think that often says more about the person that is saying the criticism than the people they’re actually targeting. This is often lodged against candidates on the left or candidates backed by Justice Democrats that, “OK, all this is great, congratulations on your win, but once you get to Congress you’re not actually going to be able to do anything because there aren’t enough of you yet.” What do you say to that?
UA: You could have said that to us nine years ago, right? That would’ve been the case. Yet one of the most popular politicians in this country is AOC, and the most popular politician is Bernie Sanders, who has these same values. So clearly there’s an appetite from the American electorate for more voters like that.
People know who Ilhan Omar is, people know who Rashida Tlaib is, and it’s not simply because Fox News uses them as an attack every other week. It’s because they have been standing up and been the most courageous leaders in Congress, standing up for the values they need, not only on Palestine, but no one is louder about needing clean water in the state of Michigan than Rashida Tlaib. Ilhan Omar is the reason that the state of Minnesota has universal school lunches for children. These are leaders who have actually delivered on the promises that the Democratic Party has only hypothetically talked about.
Coming off a cycle where we lost two members, it’s very easy for people to say “Well, you have no power in Congress.” Yet we are sending seven new leftists to Congress this cycle, at least. It’ll be really telling how big the hypothetical Democratic majority is in Congress, because if it is seven-member majority, then you’re starting to ask a lot more different questions of, well, now you have a block of new members of Congress who can actually sway what policy and what agenda we are fighting for in this party.
So this shit doesn’t happen over fucking night. It takes years and years and cycles to build this block in Congress. You have to bring the people with it, and it takes time to organize and convince the masses of the working class to really buy into an electoral project that has screwed them time and time again, and to have that revolutionary optimism that there’s something to be done here.
There’s a lot of promise with this new class of members who are now joining an already existing class of members. We will nearly double our size in Congress, and that’s a big deal. You can look at far smaller groups of members of Congress that have wielded much more power than the amount that we’re sending to Congress.
These leaders were elected with the mandate to challenge the Democratic establishment, and so they will have to do that. More than anything, it’s up to the Democratic establishment on how they want to respond to the clear demands of their voters. These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party. The Democratic Party can either listen to them or be forced to listen to them, as they have been this cycle when we beat them.
“These candidates that we elected this cycle are giving you a blueprint on a silver platter on how to excite your base and how to energize your party.”
AL: I do have to ask here, Cori Bush is the anomaly in the success stories that we’re talking about, right? What happened in that race? Why do you think that this momentum did not extend to her challenge to take back her old seat from Wesley Bell in Missouri?
US: In North Carolina. We saw two races, Kat Abughazaleh and Junaid Ahmed in Illinois, lost at the hands of big money from AIPAC, crypto, and AI. Saikat Chakrabarti in Nancy Pelosi’s seat also lost the primary as well to a lot of big spending from seemingly pro-Israel donors.
The truth is, we are always going to be up against this insurmountable amount of money. To the best of our ability, we have to organize our resources and organize our people to fight back against that. But it’s also the truth that we don’t take corporate PAC money. We don’t take money from billionaires, and so our resources are limited, and we’ve grown that. We’ve grown that pool. We’ve expanded our donor network to be able to run 15 candidates and win seven races.
“We are always going to be up against this insurmountable amount of money.”
But there’s not an infinite amount of resources, and so those losses are proof that the left still also has work to do. We do need to build more resources. We do need to build better connections to ensure that champions and fighters like Cori Bush, who to me really embody the fighter that Democratic voters are talking about, can be sent back to Congress.
Because in the absence of them, we have useless corporate shills like Wesley Bell, who have done absolutely nothing for their community since they got to St. Louis — and it shows.
A big part of that is a resource constraint, also, the truth is, Cori had to go up against nearly $15 million of attacks last cycle, and that’s really recent. It’s not just the money that was spent against her this cycle. You have to look at what happened last cycle, because it’s all the same attacks. They ran the same playbook all over again, and it’s effective.
When you have a 20 to 1 outspending situation, and the only thing you’re seeing on TV and mail is how much you should dislike Cori Bush, it works at a certain point. That’s why it worked last cycle. Cori is a deep proof point that the left still has some work to do to really ensure that all of our champions can get to Congress.
AL: I want to move now to some of the news of the week. This week, ICE shot yet another person in Austin, Texas: 28-year old food delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez from Venezuela. After he was released from the hospital he was taken to an immigration detention center with a bullet still in his back, according to him and his lawyer.
If Justice Democrats candidates make it to Congress in November, what power do they have to push Democrats to do more to stop ICE from killing and terrorizing people? What can they do, particularly in a House session where we expect Democrats, if they win power to be putting a laser focus on investigating Trump’s corruption, for example?
UA: We should first and foremost be bold and listen to where voters are at. A majority of voters do not believe that ICE needs to exist. That’s understandable because both you and I were alive at a time when ICE didn’t exist — and yet I’m still living.
AL: What a time.
UA: What a time that was. The proof is in the pudding that we don’t need an ICE to have a “safe” America, whatever that means. But clearly the fascist governments need ICE to execute immigrants in this country and shoot down our neighbors and kidnap our families.
“Both you and I were alive at a time when ICE didn’t exist — and yet I’m still living. … We don’t need an ICE to have a ‘safe’ America, whatever that means.”
First and foremost, we should start from pushing to abolish ICE and ending this agency for all. Delia Ramirez, one of our Justice Democrats in Congress, has been leading the charge on this, calling to abolish ICE and also to dissolve the Department of Homeland Security, [which] in many ways, is also a relic of our lifetime. It is a relic of the George W. Bush era.
I am baffled when there are Democratic leaders in this country who are so obsessed with defending an institution created by George W. fucking Bush. I remember when we didn’t like George W. Bush, and we didn’t agree with his policies. I’m not sure why the Democratic Party of 2026 should be the same as the Republican Party of 2004.
It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me, and I think we are always, on immigration over the last 20 years, have always been allowing the right to dictate what the agenda and our playground should be on immigration policy, on border policy, on all of these policies. And as a result, have always tried to be a diet Republican Party on immigration policy, when the most popular policies we ever put forward on immigration were things like a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers and abolishing ICE, now.
We have to be bold and not only end this agency, but also, as many people are talking about, prosecuting the people who were in charge of ICE and these officers who were killing folks.
“I’m not sure why the Democratic Party of 2026 should be the same as the Republican Party of 2004.”
The ICE agent who was the shooter in Austin wasn’t even wearing a body cam. As if that’s enough anyway. Then there’s so many different accounts and these lies. We are living through another evolution of our criminal legal system being so extrajudicial and so outside of the bounds of what should be legally allowed that I think we have to massively reign in this agency. We cannot do it in a mealy-mouthed way that says we need to pay lip service to this right-wing propaganda, while continuing to allow our immigrant neighbors and families to be murdered and shot down in the streets while they’re trying to deliver food to your house.
AL: In the Austin shooting the district attorney in Travis County, which is where the shooting happened, which is where Austin is, they are still trying to figure out the name of this officer, and they are waiting on getting footage from other ICE officers in the vicinity who had body cameras on, and they’re also trying to get footage from local hospitals to figure out where this officer who was allegedly injured went, because they do not yet know his name.
UA: But they know the man who he shot’s name, so.
AL: Yes. Much of the news this week centered on President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media and his trip to New York City, where he met with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and attended the United Nations General Assembly.
Outside the UNGA, Jewish leaders protested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. Mamdani once said he would arrest Netanyahu if he came to New York, though he didn’t have the authority to do so, and the two battled publicly this week.
Many people praised Mamdani’s pledge to arrest Netanyahu, even though it had not really any teeth, but as an example of what we’re talking about, of just wanting Democrats to do something — the kind of sentiment that has animated many voters who’ve supported Justice Democrats candidates this cycle.
Democrats are heading into this lame-duck session for Trump where there is still little appetite among leadership to do something substantive on Israel — though last week we saw an unusual refusal from top Democrat Rep. Greg Meeks to approve Trump’s latest proposed $2.8 billion sale of more bombs to Israel.
What is the strategy for the progressive bench on this issue right now? It seems like every time one of these packages comes up, there’s this big dust-up over OK, what’s going to happen? And every time, a few more Democrats either vote against it or, as in this case, voice some sort of opposition. But where do you see this going in the next Congress?
UA: The writing is on the wall if even Chairman Greg Meeks is suspending some of these things. You can go to the FEC’s website to see why that is an interesting development.
AL: [Laughter] Just in terms of support that Meeks has gotten from the pro-Israel apparatus in the past is what you’re referring to, I’m assuming.
UA: Yes. He’s been a dear ally to the lobby historically. But I think, like we saw on the vote on the Massie amendment, for the first time a majority of Democrats are voting to say, “We’re not going to send money to Israel.” A lot of people can say, “Well, that’s just a performative vote,” all these things.
Look, I worked in Congress. Those performative votes don’t happen in that sort of way, unless the people are pressuring members of Congress to get to this point. That’s what we’re seeing, is that you are seeing Democratic voters across the country reject you if you have an endorsement from AIPAC or you take a single dollar from AIPAC, which is why AIPAC has to hide its money so much this cycle.
“You are seeing Democratic voters across the country reject you if you have an endorsement from AIPAC or you take a single dollar from AIPAC, which is why AIPAC has to hide its money so much this cycle.”
That’s what we’re going to see coming into this new Congress, is a real thrust of energy for the pro-Palestinian movement within Congress now that you are really doubling the amount of leaders in Congress who are unabashedly against the endless supply of military funding and resources to the Israeli government.
You have a renewed movement to really organize even more members. You can look at the co-sponsor for the Block the Bombs, Delia Ramirez’s arms embargo bill has a lot of members you would not have expected even a cycle ago to do so. But that’s the power of not only these elections, but also mass movements across the country demanding that their leaders actually stop the endless supply of weapons.
There will absolutely have to be a fight in Congress for this next Congress to say we need to stop funding the Israeli government and military, and the Democratic voters are behind us. That might be a fight that has to challenge leadership on that fight, because obviously leadership has historically been more aligned with funding the Israeli military and government.
But at a certain point they have to also see the writing on the wall. They are beginning to see that. There’s a lot of opportunities with a Democratic majority to show voters that we are hearing them, that we also don’t think your tax dollars should fund a fucking genocide for three to four to five years after also already funding decades of apartheid.
That’s where we have to move next is not only ending funding right now, but ensuring that we never fund this military and government, and actually push towards a solution where we can end the apartheid state that Israel is running over the Palestinian people, and actually have a place where everyone has equal rights and dignity, which currently does not exist, obviously.
AL: You mentioned that you used to work in Congress, and I’m taken back to the fond days when I first met you around circa 2018 when you were working for then Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan. And since that time, we have been having this same conversation about the fight over the future of the Democratic Party.
Where do you see Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and party leadership more broadly, either fitting into or obstructing your vision for the future? In that vein, I’m curious there’s been a lot of talk about where will Justice Democrats’ candidates land on, supporting a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in 2027? What conversations are you having around that? Where do you see this conversation going?
UA: Look, the corporate establishment will always be a barrier to progressive change and delivering for the needs of the working class. That, they have proven. They have made it clear. They have said it on the record.
These are not my feelings. They’re theirs. These elections, these campaigns, have proven that they are on the wrong side of the Democratic Party electorate, and they are in the minority, as they always have been. But it’s really eye-opening for people in leadership to have races like people like Claire Valdez, and Zohran, and Darializa become these leaders in New York, in your backyard, speaking of both Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who obviously represent New York in the Senate and the House.
It doesn’t stop there. As much as people want to say every city is not New York — well New York is not Philly, is not Denver, is not Dallas, is not California, is not Tennessee. Let’s be fucking for real. This is happening across the country. There is a bloc of leaders across the country who are actually responding to the needs of the working class.
Like I said, they got elected on a mandate to challenge the Democratic establishment. They will be pushing this Democratic Party to meet the needs of voters, be it pushing for Medicare for All, or an arms embargo on Israel, or a stop to AI data centers, or raising taxes on billionaires. All universally popular fucking policies that the Democratic Party could lead on.
So often this question has been framed as, what will the left do when they get to Congress? How will they deal with these sorts of institutions? We should be asking Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and everyone else that question far more, which is: What are you going to do about the fact that your electorate is making clear that you are not fighting for the policies they are looking for?
When you come out to say you oppose Medicare for All after being a co-sponsor for it for a few cycles, you are in the minority of Democratic voters. I promise in your district particularly I imagine maybe, what, 5 percent of voters agree with you. It’s incumbent upon Democratic leadership to wake up and decide where they want to be on these issues and how they want to lead this party, because do they want to be a one-term House majority?
They can win back the majority a lot because Republicans are failing and because the left is showing voters what an opposition party could actually look like and what a governing party could actually look like. The establishment is not doing that. Until they start taking lessons from the left on what to actually fight for, they will continue to be running on cycle-to-cycle losses and wins instead of really looking at, long-term, how can we take back power and ensure that we don’t consistently backside into this fascist and authoritarian regime that is overrun by the same corporate interests that the Democratic establishment is also funded by.
We absolutely are looking at this new crop of leaders joining this already existing group of progressives to really have a sizable influence in bringing the people’s power to the halls of Congress more than anything, and using their coordinated megaphones in many ways to bring light to the issues that people need them to.
Because even if we take back the House majority, Donald Trump is still president, even if we take the Senate back. He can veto any bill, and that’s a reality, but that should not stop us from showing people what we could do if we had power.
“What we could do if we had power should not simply look like turning back the clock to what it looked like before Donald Trump, which is what some of the agenda I’m seeing from Democratic leadership is.”
And what we could do if we had power should not simply look like turning back the clock to what it looked like before Donald Trump, which is what some of the agenda I’m seeing from Democratic leadership is, let’s roll back this. Let’s get this back. The status quo three, two, five, seven, eight, pick a fucking year, was not good enough for working-class people, so why would we go back to that?
Obviously, we need to roll back all these attacks. We need to claw back the destruction that the Trump administration has done, but that’s obviously also not enough. We need universal healthcare. We need housing for all. We need to make billionaires pay their fair share. We need to stop fucking AI data centers from destroying every community, and raising our utility bills and poisoning our water. There are a litany of crises that we are facing. Mealy-mouthed solutions are not what Democratic voters are looking for.
They are making that deeply clear, and no matter how much fear-mongering around socialism or the Red Scare you want to do, the truth is, voters support these policies because these policies support voters.
AL: If we’re picking years, I pick 2004. [Laughter] I think you’re onto something there. We’re going to leave it there, Usamah. Thank you so much for joining me on The Intercept Briefing.
UA: Thank you, Akela.
AL: We want to hear from you. Tell us what you’re following or want to see more coverage of. Email us at podcasts@theintercept.com or leave us a voice mail at 530-POD-CAST that’s 530-763-2278
That does it for this episode.
This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Jordan Uhl is our social media producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our managing editor.
Nara Shin is our copy editor. William Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
Slip Stream provided our theme music.
This show and our reporting at The Intercept do not exist without you. Your donation, no matter the amount, makes a real difference. Keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com/join.
And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts. Do leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find our reporting.
Across the Country, Youth Prisons Are Closing. This State Is Building More.
Across the country, states have been shuttering their youth prisons as juvenile crime has plummeted and research shows the facilities are not effective at keeping youth out of trouble after release. From 2000 to 2022, the number of the highest-security facilities for kids has dropped by more than 40%, the most recent federal data shows.
In contrast, Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services has budgeted $360 million to build two new facilities with a total of up to 256 new beds for youth. Construction is set to begin this fall, and they are expected to open in 2028 and 2029.
According to Tennessee officials, the state doesn’t have enough space for kids who courts have found committed crimes. In the last few years, it has held dozens of teens overnight in temporary places, including, at one point, office buildings. In an emailed response to WPLN and ProPublica, the agency attributed the lack of bed space to a number of factors, including teens’ needs for specific mental health services and temporary staffing issues in its facilities. And it said that national trends “do not determine” whether Tennessee has enough youth beds available.
But juvenile crime is down in Tennessee, too, and advocates and experts say the state’s push for more prisons does not line up with the needs of the kids in its care.
“The argument that’s made is that [juvenile crime is] worse than ever, right? Or the kids are out of control,” said Josh Rovner with the nonprofit research and advocacy group The Sentencing Project, which seeks to reduce incarceration across the country. “The data doesn’t back that up.”
Tennessee said youth are committing more violent crimes. But fewer are entering the juvenile justice system.
To explain its need for more youth prisons, Tennessee’s DCS points to a recent state-commissioned study. It shows that police reports of violent juvenile crimes in Tennessee — including murder, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft and crimes with firearms — have increased since 2013.
But not every report results in an arrest, for a number of reasons; multiple people might call police for the same crime, for example. Data from the same report shows that the number of kids arrested and entering the system, even for violent crime, has decreased over that time period. Murder was the only violent crime included in the report for which arrests increased, from 15 cases in 2013 to 26 in 2024. That number is still lower than it was at its peak in 2018.
“The argument that’s made is that [juvenile crime is] worse than ever, right? Or the kids are out of control. … The data doesn’t back that up.”
Josh Rovner, senior research analyst at The Sentencing Project
The state oversees different types of facilities for kids in the justice system, ranging in security level from group homes to prisons surrounded by barbed wire. DCS leaders said in a state hearing that the agency has reached maximum capacity and run out of beds in high-security facilities. DCS said in a recent statement that the number of youth needing space in a particular type of facility can remain high day to day even as overall arrests decline.
In a 2024 lawsuit over Tennessee’s juvenile justice system, advocates said the state is not appropriately utilizing the bed space it currently has, putting kids into the highest-security facilities without considering their need for mental health treatment and other services. Because of juvenile privacy laws, no publicly available data shows what charges land youth in which setting.
In response, DCS acknowledged that it sometimes places youth in facilities based on capacity, but denied that it improperly held youth in the highest-security facilities. The case is ongoing.
Tennessee promised its new prisons would be rehabilitative. Experts say they are too big to succeed at that mission.
Unlike the adult system, the juvenile justice system is set up to rehabilitate, not punish, based on decades of research showing that youth are more capable of change.
DCS told WPLN and ProPublica that it is designing the new facilities to provide care that addresses the trauma youth have experienced, including behavioral health treatment tailored to their individual needs. The design includes dedicated spaces for education, job training and recreation. It also includes rooms for mental health staff to do their work, including “calming rooms” for youth.
The agency also describes its existing prisons as rehabilitative. All three of the state’s highest-security prisons are run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews and his company, Wayne Halfway House. The company is required by its contract and state policy to provide mental health treatment, education and other services to imprisoned youth.
The 2024 juvenile justice lawsuit, which an advocacy group and multiple unnamed youth in the system filed against DCS, argued that the department places youth in facilities that are more punitive than rehabilitative. Some teens placed in prison, the lawsuit said, should not be there at all.
The lawsuit also claimed that Tennessee’s juvenile justice facilities keep youth from accessing education and mental health treatment. Two facilities run by Wayne Halfway House, according to the lawsuit, have had policies barring youth from attending school if they misbehave. One teen, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and other mental health conditions, did not get needed individual therapy for months while in a Crews facility, the lawsuit stated, and only got a couple of hours of education each day. Several other contractors’ jails and treatment centers across the state are referenced by name in the lawsuit.
DCS said in a legal filing that it didn’t have enough information to respond to all of the specific allegations about youth mentioned in the suit, but it pushed back against many claims, including that youth were provided inadequate education or mental health treatment. It also denied that the teen in the Crews prison was kept from therapy or education, but did acknowledge that some youth in the juvenile justice system may temporarily “receive minimal educational services.”
Wayne Halfway House said in a statement that it disputes the allegations in the lawsuit and referred the newsrooms to “numerous state audits and/or reports” during that time that refute those claims. It declined to share the specific documents it was referencing. “Wayne Halfway House programs are compliant with state policies and law,” the company wrote in its statement.
Daniel Macallair is the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to reduce society’s reliance on incarceration. “These institutions are not humane places,” he said, referring to large-scale youth facilities. “They’re not rehabilitative. They never have been.”
According to Macallair, who has been working on juvenile justice reform for more than 40 years, any facility with more than 10 kids becomes unwieldy, distracting from rehabilitation and becoming more correctional. Research shows that larger facilities often involve harsher treatment of youth, including higher rates of sexual abuse and practices such as solitary confinement. One of the prisons that DCS is planning would have up to 160 beds, making it the largest in the state.
“These institutions are not humane places. They’re not rehabilitative. They never have been.”
Daniel Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
By contrast, the programs that have proven to help youth avoid future crimes are small and based in the communities they are from, Macallair said.
Missouri, a nationally lauded example, has established small facilities throughout the state, keeping youth — even those who commit violent crimes — close to home for therapeutic programs. Research has shown that not only are these community-based programs more effective and affordable, but they lead to low rates of reoffending and high rates of high school graduation.
DCS told WPLN and ProPublica that it provides community-based services for youth who can safely remain at home. But Tennessee data shows that the vast majority of youth in the system were not allowed to stay in their communities last year.
One way to assess the rehabilitative success of youth prisons is whether youth are rearrested after release. But Tennessee officials acknowledge that they cannot measure that in a comprehensive or accurate way because the state lacks a centralized way of tracking when a youth commits a new crime.
Tennessee has pushed against outside oversight of its youth prisons. Experts say this is a crucial reform.
The state says there will be a bid process to determine who will operate the new facilities. Right now, two providers run all of the state’s private youth prisons — Wayne Halfway House and Youth Opportunity Investments, a company that runs lower security facilities.
In response to questions about the new facilities, Wayne Halfway House said it would not comment about its business plans. It also noted that the facilities in which it holds youth in state custody for committing a crime are classified by the state as “residential treatment centers,” not youth prisons. Across the country, states use different terminology to refer to these facilities. By federal law they are supposed to provide treatment, but they also are secure facilities, often with barbed-wire fences and cells that lock, that hold youth long-term after a court finds them responsible for a crime — similar to adult prisons.
Experts say robust independent oversight is crucial to keep youth in juvenile justice facilities safe, but Tennessee does not have this. Instead, it has one agency that helps families navigate the system but lacks enforcement power and a new Juvenile Justice Review Commission tasked with releasing its first set of recommendations in 2028.
“The main goal is to bring more transparency to what’s going on inside these facilities, to make that information public, to make recommendations about ways it can improve,” said Michele Deitch, a criminal and juvenile justice expert at the University of Texas at Austin. “You really need the external body that is independent.”
In 2024, a bipartisan group of Tennessee lawmakers introduced a bill that would give oversight and enforcement power to an independent organization instead of just DCS. Under the bill, DCS would be required to suspend a facility’s license or stop placing youth there until it fixed violations.
Lawmakers felt that DCS had a conflict of interest — it is responsible for both finding beds for children in these institutions and sanctioning providers if they are not following the rules or regulations.
Wayne Halfway House, which pays a legislative lobbyist and also makes political donations in the state, opposed the bill. One of the bill’s sponsors said that a lobbyist for the company pushed to exempt privately run facilities from the bill, and the proposal made it into an amendment filed in the House.
A lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House said at the time that the company had concerns about how the bill would “affect accountability in the governance of youth corrections in Tennessee.” In a recent statement, the company said it supports the state’s policies and laws that “rigorously oversee organizations like ours and hold us to high standards for operational performance.”
This line, delivered during Xi’s speech at the White House arrival ceremony, provides a better key to understanding the summit than the rich references to the history of US-China exchanges and the lavish language of mutual friendship.
The United States and China remain deeply divided over trade, artificial intelligence and geopolitical influence. The summit did not produce breakthroughs directly in those issues.
But what was proposed can set a constructive path for the two countries: two increasingly powerful and ambitious countries do not have to treat each other’s national successes as an existential threats.
The central question in US-China relations is changing. It is no longer simply how to deal with China’s rise. Much of that transformation has already occurred.
The harder question is whether Washington and Beijing can accommodate each other’s ambitions without allowing structural rivalry to spiral into confrontation. That explains Xi’s invocation of the “Thucydides Trap,” an idea he also raised during Trump’s visit to China in May.
The Thucydides Trap describes the danger that can emerge when a rising power confronts an established one, generating fear and strategic competition that can ultimately produce conflict. Xi’s use of the phrase therefore addresses the structural problem underlying US-China competition.
China does not intend to abandon its pursuit of technological, industrial or geopolitical strength. The United States, under Trump, is equally explicit about restoring American industrial power, technological leadership and national influence. “Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,” Xi stated.
This proposition carries greater weight today because China’s position has changed. Chinese companies have become global leaders and exporters in electric vehicles, batteries, drones, telecommunications, renewable energy, electronics, robotics and increasingly artificial intelligence.
China also possesses considerable leverage in supply chains crucial to advanced manufacturing. The sensitivity of US officials to Chinese restrictions on critical minerals was evident ahead of the summit, including concerns over yttrium, which is important to aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing.
The United States retains enormous advantages of its own in advanced semiconductors, frontier AI, capital markets, research universities and military capabilities. The emerging reality is therefore one of sustained coexistence between two countries possessing different but formidable sources of power.
There is good reason, however, to remain cautious about diplomatic visions. US-China history contains striking examples of warm rhetoric followed by rapid deterioration.
During the 1868 Burlingame mission to Boston, which Trump referenced at the dinner reception, American leaders celebrated expanding relations with China and promoted greater trade and mobility between the two countries. Yet within little more than a decade, domestic economic and political pressures helped reverse that openness, eventually culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act.
The lesson is that goodwill is fragile unless institutions make it durable. That makes implementation the real test of the Washington summit.
One potentially important test is already emerging in artificial intelligence. AI captures almost every contradiction in US-China relations. It is a source of intense technological competition, economic power and national-security concern. Yet the risks created by advanced AI do not remain neatly inside national borders.
Xi specifically identified AI as an area of shared responsibility. In his arrival remarks, he said China and the United States should develop and manage AI “for good,” keep it under “human control,” and ensure that it promotes people’s well-being.
That language has taken on added significance because China is also expanding its domestic AI-governance architecture. On September 14, 2026, China’s National Technical Committee 260 on Cybersecurity released AI Safety Governance Framework 3.0.
The framework emphasizes risk awareness and the principle that AI should remain safe and controllable, and organizes governance around three elements: risk classification, technical responses, and broader governance measures.
The over 130 pages in Framework 3.0 address risks arising not only from AI model development but also from deployment, applications, and derivatives. It considers unreliable outputs and hallucinations, malicious cyber activity, privacy and data risks, increasingly autonomous AI agents, embodied AI systems, social and emotional dependence, resource and environmental pressures, and the malicious use of AI in connection with dangerous weapons.
The contrast with current US federal policy is notable, although it should not be overstated. Washington also addresses AI security and national security risks.
But the administration’s overarching policy strongly emphasizes accelerating innovation, reducing regulatory burdens and maintaining American technological leadership. A June executive order, for example, explicitly argued against “overly burdensome regulation” while calling for faster AI innovation and adoption.
However, the US technology sector is raising increasingly urgent warnings about the risks of the technology it is simultaneously racing to develop, with Anthropic’s CEO calling for AI development to “slow down.”
Researchers have left leading AI laboratories while calling for stronger external oversight, and executives from major companies have publicly urged stronger safeguards even as commercial competition accelerates.
China is articulating its priorities differently: technological development should continue, but alongside continuous risk classification, technical safeguards and government-led governance. Framework 3.0 is not binding regulation, and its publication does not by itself prove that Chinese AI systems will be safer.
But its breadth matters because it shows Beijing trying to define AI safety as a problem that spans the entire technological lifecycle and society. That suggests another dimension of U.S.-China competition is emerging alongside the race for the most powerful AI: a competition over who helps define the global rules of AI.
The United States benefits from the extraordinary global influence of its AI companies, semiconductor industry and research institutions. China, meanwhile, is trying to translate its regulatory rigor and government-corporate collaborations and increasingly detailed AI governance frameworks into a larger role in international standard-setting.
This need not become another zero-sum contest. The United States and China can establish a layer of shared expectations around catastrophic misuse, cyber risks, increasingly autonomous systems and maintaining meaningful human control of AI.
The most important signal after the Washington summit is not whether US-China relations are warming. It is whether two countries powerful enough to disrupt each other, and the rest of the world, can build a form of competition in which the two countries co-flourish.
If they can, “strategic stability” could become more than a rhetorical phrase and serve as the operating principle for the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship, all the while deftly avoiding the Thucydides Trap.
Gerui Wang is an assistant professor at Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Israel Allies Foundation Names Joni Lamb No. 1 Christian Ally of Israel for 2026
The Israel Allies Foundation announced its 2026 list of Israel’s Top 50 Christian Allies in Jerusalem, recognizing Christian leaders for their public advocacy, humanitarian assistance, and religious support for Israel.
Joni Lamb, the late co-founder and former president of Daystar Television Network, was named the list’s top Christian ally posthumously. Lamb provided assistance to Holocaust survivors and mobilized prayer and other support for Israel through Daystar’s international platform and its Daystar House of Hope Israel initiative.
In 2024, Lamb received the Israel Allies Award for her support for Israel following Oct. 7. She died in May 2026.
Paula White-Cain, who leads the White House Faith Office and is a longtime spiritual adviser to President Trump, placed second. White-Cain has emphasized Jerusalem’s importance to the Judeo-Christian faith and mobilized tens of thousands of religious leaders through the National Faith Advisory Board. She is the only person to have ranked No. 1 on the annual list more than once since it was established.
“In a time when support for Israel is often tested, these Christian leaders have chosen clarity, courage, and conviction,” Israel Allies Foundation President Josh Reinstein said. “They lead not just in words alone, but by faithful action. Their example strengthens the bridge between our communities and advances the cause of faith-based diplomacy.”
Other figures included on the 2026 list are Pastor Larry Huch, Scott Jennings, Erika Kirk and Lionel Messi. The full ranking includes pastors, broadcasters, organizational leaders and other public figures from around the world.
The annual list was released in conjunction with the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, and recognizes Christian figures whose work the foundation says has strengthened support and practical cooperation with Israel.
The Israel Allies Foundation coordinates a network of more than 1,700 legislators involved in faith-based diplomacy supporting Israel. The organization operates through 66 parliamentary caucuses worldwide.
Rocket Report: Era of cheap launch is over? Astra sets early 2027 target for return
Welcome to Edition 9.12 of the Rocket Report! The big story in the global launch industry remains SpaceX’s plans to wind down Falcon 9 operations for commercial launches, possibly within the next two or three years. That has created a scramble among satellite operators and some positioning among up-and-coming launch providers. Notably, in this week’s newsletter, there’s a story about how Firefly expects launch to become more expensive, and that customers got too used to rapid, reliable launch with the Falcon 9. I’m not sure that philosophy will work out long term.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
The best-named rocket in the world is sadly delayed. French launch startup HyPrSpace announced that it has pushed the inaugural flight of its Baguette One suborbital rocket to 2027, European Spaceflight reports. The 10-meter Baguette One rocket is a single-stage vehicle is capable of carrying up to 300 kg. It is powered by the company’s hybrid propulsion system, which combines liquid oxygen with solid polyethylene fuel.
An appetizing launch … Originally the company had been targeting 2026 for the suborbital rocket’s debut. In moving the target to 2027, however, the company revealed that the vehicle’s launch site will be the French Directorate General of Armaments location at Biscarrosse in southwestern France. “Seeing Baguette One lift off from French soil, after years of development and testing, will be a historic moment for HyPrSpace and its teams,” said HyPrSpace CEO Nicolas Billecocq.
Astra targeting “early” 2027 for return to flight. In a lengthy interview with The Debrief, Astra chief executive Chris Kemp said the company is targeting early 2027 for the launch of the Rocket 4.0 vehicle. The rocket, 18.9 meters tall, aims to eventually deliver up to 1 metric ton to low-Earth orbit. Kemp said Astra is aiming to make hundreds of rockets per year.
New rocket, same Kemp … “We chose not to do what a lot of other companies are doing,” Kemp said. “We’re not making a reusable rocket. We’re not making a very expensive engine cycle where the engines are very, very expensive. We’re trying to build a soda can.” And how good will Rocket 4.0 be? “I think this is going to be the most reliable, most affordable rocket ever produced in the history of the world,” Kemp said.
Rocket Report
Keep up with the latest in space exploration and rocket launches.
Down Under launch site may be nixed. A launch site under development in southern Australia, near Adelaide, may not go forward, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. The Native Vegetation Council denied variations to the heritage agreement at Whalers Way, where Southern Launch hopes to build a space facility. Southern Launch’s bid to create the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex has been met with ongoing opposition from conservation groups, including the local Eyre Peninsula Environmental Protection Alliance.
Endangered species … One reason for this is that the proposed site is a recognized conservation area for native vegetation and fauna. Rebecca Boulton from Birdlife Australia welcomed the upholding of the heritage agreement in place at the site since 1987, a habitat she said was home to two endangered bird species. “A couple of species down there at Whalers Way are part of our recovery team, so the mallee whipbird is one of the species that we work with, and the Eyre Peninsula is the stronghold for that species,” she said. (submitted by SubWoofer2)
Serious concerns about space debris. Over the last decade, the European Space Agency has produced an annual report that provides a transparent overview of global space activities and assesses the quality of efforts to preserve the sustainability of spaceflight. In its most recently released Space Environment Report, published earlier this month, there are some striking—and concerning—changes. For example, the European report has dramatically increased its projections of future satellites in this year’s report after reassessing the current trajectory of large constellations, Ars reports.
Sustainability concerns … Based on the growing number of launches, the European scientists modeled a number of different scenarios. Assuming that satellite launches continue to increase—by far the most likely trend—even if operators continue to follow best practices in terms of disposing of older satellites and avoiding collisions, the orbital environment will still become significantly more cluttered. In its technically precise language, the European Space Agency is essentially saying we’re on a road that could ultimately lead to something like the Kessler syndrome. Also worth noting: The projections in ESA’s 2026 report do not include the new category of orbital data centers.
Ariane 6 has a turbopump issue. Europe’s Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket, in the middle of an important ramp in launch rate to its initial target of nine to ten launches per year, will be unable to reach its goal of eight missions this year, according to Space Intel Report. An issue with the rocket’s turbopumps was discovered during ground testing in August, but repairs may be possible on site at the Guiana Space Center.
Not great for Amazon … After the report, the European Space Agency acknowledged the issue, saying it would need to “adjust” this year’s launch manifest. This will delay launches of European spacecraft as well as commercial customers such as the Amazon Leo constellation, which had been counting on Ariane 6 because its other major launch vehicles, New Glenn and Vulcan, are also experiencing technical issues.
Era of cheap launch is over? Several rocket company CEOs, speaking at World Space Business Week in Paris, made some interesting comments in the wake of SpaceX planning to wind down its Falcon 9 program. Most striking were those from Firefly Aerospace Vice President of Strategy Michael Creech. “The customer got comfortable with a high reliability and a low price, that frankly did not support the launch market,” Creech said during a panel discussion, Via Satellite reports.
A new normal … Creech said the industry will “reset” over the next six months to two years. “You’re seeing launchers move away to developing solutions with better revenue. This tells you this subsidized cost-per-kilo model wasn’t supporting launch companies, which led to the current-day crisis of a supply shortage,” he added. “Hopefully the new normal will be a growth environment for launch technologies and not another race to the bottom on price.” Although there is a crunch in launch now, there are enough emerging providers that Ars believes price will definitely be a major factor in launch choice in the coming years.
Beijing-based Chinese startup raises big money. Space Epoch finalized a B++ financing round, bringing its total Series B capital raised over the past six months to more than 2.3 billion yuan ($343 million), Satnews reports. The funding will directly support the qualification and assembly of Space Epoch’s flagship launch vehicle, the medium-lift Yuanxingzhe-1 rocket.
An impressive start … Yuanxingzhe-1 is rated to deliver up to 13.8 metric tons of payload into low Earth orbit in a fully expendable configuration, while supporting propulsive vertical landing recovery operations for the first-stage booster. In May 2025, the company successfully completed a vertical landing during a suborbital test at sea with the Yuanxingzhe-1 vehicle. An orbital test flight of the rocket could come before the end of this year.
How did SpaceX streamline the Raptor engine? The Construction Physics newsletter recently dove into the publicly available material on SpaceX’s Raptor engine to explore how the company simplified the design of the machine from the initial Raptor 1 version to the Raptor 3 version. The result is an excellent read on some of the things SpaceX engineers did in their pursuit of an engine to power the super heavy lift, rapidly reusable Starship rocket. Importantly, the article also notes that the Raptor 3 remains a work in progress.
Simpler, but not simple … “While this streamlining has made the Raptor engine simpler in the sense that various individual parts have been eliminated, it was still an enormously complex task to get it to work, and there’s a huge amount of internal complexity added to the Raptor 3 that these pictures don’t show,” the newsletter states. “And the problems haven’t been completely ironed out: the first launch attempt of Starship’s flight test 13 was aborted automatically by the vehicle’s flight software at T-0 (right before liftoff) this past July when several Raptor 3 engines failed to start.”
Starship stacked for next orbital flight. SpaceX assembled a Starship-Super Heavy rocket on the launch pad at Starbase in South Texas early Wednesday as it awaited approval for the vehicle’s first orbital flight, Spaceflight Now reports. Liftoff of Starship Flight 14 could come as soon as Monday, Sept. 28, but first SpaceX needs to receive regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
A dawn launch … The rocket’s Starship upper stage, designated Ship 41 or S41, began its journey from production site about three miles west of the pad at around 7:45 p.m. CDT (0045 UTC) Tuesday night. Nearly 5.5 hours later, the 52-meter-tall (171 feet) ship was lifted by the launch tower’s chopsticks and carefully placed atop Super Heavy booster B21. Assuming approval from the FAA, SpaceX could launch Flight 14 as soon as 7:15 am CDT (1215 UTC) on September 28 on a nearly 10-hour mission that will see the deployment of 26 next-generation Version 3 Starlink satellites.
Next three launches
September 26: Electron | Owlright, Owlright, Owlright | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 00:15 UTC
September 26: Falcon 9 | USSF-385 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 11:56 UTC
September 28: Starship | Flight 14 | Starbase, Texas | 12:15 UTC
