🚨 HAPPENING RIGHT NOW 🚨
A nor'easter that rolled ashore Friday is still pounding the Mid-Atlantic coast this weekend, flooding streets and swamping cars in shore towns like Surf City, New Jersey. Gov. Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency across eight counties as the National Weather Service warned of “major coastal flooding” through Sunday night, with more than 37,000 New Jersey customers and nearly 28,000 in New York already without power. The storm is also lashing Long Island and pushing into New England and the Carolinas before it finally clears out.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th, 2026
Before we get to today's headlines, here's what happened on this date in history: two hundred and four years ago on this date, French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris that he'd finally cracked the code of the Rosetta Stone, the granodiorite slab unearthed in Egypt in 1799 that had stumped Europe's sharpest minds for more than two decades. He'd actually broken through two weeks earlier, bursting into his brother's office shouting “I've got it!” before collapsing from exhaustion — only to find the long-sought inscription was little more than a bureaucratic notice honoring a minor Ptolemaic king.
Congress made a history-changing appointment on this date in 1779, naming John Adams as minister plenipotentiary to negotiate peace with Great Britain — a job so daunting Adams privately admitted he felt “a great deal of diffidence” about it. He set sail that November with two young sons, including future president John Quincy Adams, and after a shipwreck scare and a trek over the Pyrenees, went on to help negotiate the 1783 Treaty of Paris that forced Britain to relinquish its claim to the United States.
🤝 Trump, Xi Strike $30 Billion Tariff Deal, China Commits to Buying US Coal
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping capped their three-day Washington summit Friday with a deal cutting tariffs on $30 billion in “non-sensitive goods,” from U.S. farm products and medical devices to Chinese-made toys and appliances. China also committed to buying 10 million metric tons of American coal in both 2027 and 2028, reversing a sharp pullback from last year's trade tensions.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said “a lot more details” on the agreement will be released Monday, calling the terms “hammered out after weeks of negotiations”
The two sides are still working through separate concerns over rare-earth and critical-mineral supply chains
A new U.S.-China Board of Trade will handle future negotiations on additional tariff reductions and trade disputes
⚖️ Report Reviving Seven-Year-Old Bribery Claim Against Susan Collins Is a “Political Hit Job,” Her Camp Says
A ProPublica report reviving a seven-year-old claim that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, benefited from an illegal straw-donor scheme is drawing sharp pushback from her office, which calls it a rehash of a case the FBI already cleared. Collins dismissed the source, convicted felon Martin Kao, bluntly: “I do not understand how anyone would take the word of a felon who's been convicted twice... He is a convicted liar.”
Collins' deputy chief of staff, Annie Clark, said “the seven-year-old allegations made against Senator Collins and her staff in this piece are categorically false”
The Biden-era DOJ and FBI investigated the same donation years ago and closed the matter in 2021 without charges
Collins faces a competitive re-election fight against Democrat Troy Jackson, with control of the Senate potentially riding on Maine's outcome
🏃♀️ Nearly Every Senate Democrat Skips or Walks Out of Hearing on Protecting Women's Sports
Eight of the 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee skipped Wednesday's hearing on protecting women's sports entirely, while two more left within the first hour and no Democrat called a witness. Ranking member Dick Durbin dismissed the hearing as a “vendetta,” saying, “I will not ask questions, and I already did not call any witnesses.”
Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said “women should not again be asked to cede their opportunities just to make men comfortable”
Sen. Ashley Moody noted Republicans have passed related legislation three times this Congress and said “not one Democrat voted to protect women's sports”
Witness Kim Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women's Sports, testified about her daughters competing against male athletes
🚨 GOP Senator Unveils Seven-Bill Push to Codify Trump Immigration Crackdown After 426 Arrests in Indiana Sweep
A five-day operation dubbed “Operation Safe Community: Indiana” wrapped up last week with 426 arrests of people ICE says had records for violent and drug crimes, giving fresh momentum to Sen. Jim Banks' seven-bill push to codify Trump's immigration agenda into law. “This is why Donald Trump was elected in 2024: for mass deportation,” the Indiana Republican said.
Banks' package touches birthright citizenship, family-based immigration, H-1B visas, noncitizen commercial driver's licenses and TPS authority
Senate Majority Leader John Thune acknowledged a 50-vote reconciliation threshold poses an obstacle for the package's SAVE Act voter-ID provisions
Banks rolled out a related bill this past week barring non-citizens from receiving Pell Grants
— Fox News
🚀 Saudi Arabia Intercepts Six More Houthi Missiles, Foreign Minister Warns Threat “Goes Global”
Saudi Arabia's air defenses shot down six ballistic missiles Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired toward Taif and Yanbu, briefly triggering emergency warnings in Jeddah and Mecca. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud warned the threat to shipping “is not just about Saudi Arabia,” calling it “a risk to international security stability.”
The Trump administration continues supplying intelligence and targeting support to the Saudis without direct U.S. combat involvement
Yanbu is a major Red Sea oil-export hub, making the Houthis' expanding reach along Yemen's coast especially alarming to Saudi officials
The State Department has renewed travel warnings for the region in the wake of the missile activity