🚨 HAPPENING RIGHT NOW 🚨
British counterterrorism police released all five suspects arrested near RAF Fairford, the U.S.-linked air base in Gloucestershire, on bail Monday after a weekend raid triggered by a farmer who spotted masked men and unmarked vans near the perimeter overnight. All five are U.K. nationals in their early-to-mid twenties, and investigators are still probing whether they were acting as proxies for a foreign state, even as Iran's embassy in London flatly denied any involvement, calling the speculation “unfounded and malicious.” RAF Fairford has hosted U.S. B-1B bombers flown in the campaign against Iran, intensifying scrutiny of the base's security.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29th, 2026
Before we get to today's news, here's what happened on this date in history: on September 29, 1988, Stacy Allison became the first American woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, capping a grueling push up the 29,035-foot peak after an earlier attempt that season was turned back when a climbing partner developed altitude sickness. Undeterred, Allison returned for a second try and stood atop the world's highest mountain alongside three teammates before beginning the long, dangerous descent. Her feat made her an instant celebrity in mountaineering circles and helped inspire a generation of female climbers who followed her up Everest and other peaks in the decades since.
Eighty-eight years ago, British, French, German and Italian leaders concluded the Munich Agreement on September 29, 1938, a last-ditch effort to avert war in Europe by allowing Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew home declaring he had secured “peace for our time,” a promise that collapsed less than a year later when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and ignited World War II. The agreement is remembered today as a cautionary tale about the price of appeasing aggressive dictators.
🏭 Trump Unveils $15 Billion Iowa Steel Plant, the Largest US Steel Mill in Six Decades
President Trump announced a $15 billion investment in what the White House calls the largest new integrated steel plant built in the U.S. since the 1960s, with Mesabi Metallics building the Iowa facility using iron ore from a new company mine in Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range.
The project is expected to create 1,750 permanent jobs and 5,000-6,000 construction jobs, with combined Iowa-Minnesota investment near $18 billion in its first phase
Full production is projected at 10 million tons of steel annually — roughly one-tenth of total U.S. steel output — though first steel isn't expected until 2030
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Trump “is delivering on his promise to rebuild American industry, reshore manufacturing, and create new jobs”
🚶 DHS Issues Warning as New Migrant Caravan Crosses Into Mexico From Honduras
A caravan of several hundred migrants — mostly Hondurans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Ecuadorans and Haitians — left San Pedro Sula, Honduras on Sept. 20 and has crossed into Mexico headed for the U.S. border, prompting DHS to warn that anyone entering illegally “will be apprehended, prosecuted, and removed from the country.”
DHS said the border “has remained closed and secured for the last 16 months” and that “the days of 'catch and release' are over”
Border Patrol is tracking the group's movement in coordination with international partners, though no arrival timeline has been given
A Honduran migrant traveling with seven family members said the group has no formal leadership and is driven by “hunger and need,” not politics
🚀 SpaceX's Starship Reaches Orbit for the First Time, Deploys 26 Starlink Satellites
SpaceX's Starship reached Earth orbit for the first time Monday on its 14th test flight, overcoming the loss of an engine minutes after liftoff from Texas to complete the milestone roughly 26 minutes into the flight before an early splashdown in the Pacific.
The rocket deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites while in orbit; Elon Musk said the satellites “were operational and operating”
Flight controllers cut the mission short — about three hours in orbit instead of the planned six-orbit, 10-hour flight — after the engine loss
NASA plans to use a modified Starship as its Artemis lunar lander, part of SpaceX's longer-term push toward sending humans to Mars
🤖 Trump Dines With Anthropic's Amodei at White House in Bid to Thaw Frosty AI Relationship
President Trump had dinner Sunday with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei at the White House, their first one-on-one sit-down after months of friction over the company's refusal to let the Pentagon use its AI models for autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance — tension serious enough that Amodei was the only major AI leader left off last week's state-dinner guest list for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A federal appeals court recently upheld a Pentagon classification of Anthropic's models as a “supply chain risk,” barring their military use
Trump has pushed back on Amodei's calls to slow AI development, arguing the U.S. can't afford to fall behind China, and said of AI safety incidents, “I'm not worried about it”
Nvidia separately unveiled a new “Open Agent Safety Platform” (CEO Jensen Huang: “trust and innovation are not in conflict”), while Bill Gates has warned unchecked AI “is certainly powerful enough to drive events that...cause a billion deaths”
📺 Sarah Huckabee Sanders' Welfare Ad Featuring Slacker 'Brad' Sparks Conservative Backlash
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is facing backlash from fellow conservatives over a new reelection ad featuring a fictional young white man named “Brad” who plays video games and lounges on the couch while collecting taxpayer-funded welfare — a character Sanders uses to promote her push for work requirements on able-bodied adults without dependents.
The Federalist's Sean Davis called it “great policy” paired with a “terrible ad that is so dishonest and insulting”
Daily Wire's Matt Walsh argued the ad unfairly casts Republicans' own voting bloc as “losers,” despite data showing women and Black Americans make up larger shares of welfare recipients than young white men
Sanders defended the ad and her work-requirement push Monday despite the intraparty criticism