Good morning, and a warm welcome to all our new subscribers. In today’s edition:

• 🇺🇸 Census citizenship debate
• 👗 NY Fashion Week is here
• 💎 Cleaning lady solves diamond heist

…and much more.

Ready, Set, Go: Today’s news should be a ~4.36-minute read (1,159 words).

+In the know: Today is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Remembering September 11, 2001.

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“Actions are the seeds of fate. Deeds grow into destiny.”

–Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

This week, the Trump administration proposed a series of sweeping new changes to how the 2030 US census would count America’s population, in a move that’s drawn pushback from Democrats.

• Under the proposal, anyone who isn’t a US citizen or green card holder would be left out of the population count, with legal residents awaiting green cards not being counted.
• Trump’s plan would also add a citizenship question to the census form while removing questions about race and ethnicity.

Why it matters: The population data collected by the US census is used to determine how all 435 House seats are split up across states, along with deciding each state’s voting districts and share of federal funding for public services. The census has historically counted all US residents, regardless of citizenship status, while some form of race data has been collected in every census since 1790.

Behind the proposed change

The Trump administration argues that the Constitution doesn’t require all noncitizens living in the US to be included in the population used to apportion House seats.

• The administration’s interpretation centers on who qualifies as an inhabitant of a state. Under their interpretation, people without permanent legal status lack the ties to the US needed to be counted as an inhabitant.
• The administration also views race and ethnicity questions as sensitive and less useful to the census’s primary task of counting the population, and argues that removing them would make forms easier to complete and could lead to a more complete count.

On the other hand: Opponents of Trump’s proposal, including Democratic lawmakers, point to the 14th Amendment’s language calling for House seats to be apportioned according to the “whole number of persons in each State,” without distinguishing based on citizenship or immigration status.

• Civil rights groups and census researchers say removing race and ethnicity questions could make it harder to enforce anti-discrimination laws in redistricting, equal-employment protections, and other areas like healthcare.
• Critics also warn that Trump’s plan to collect citizenship information could discourage some immigrants and mixed-status households from responding, potentially making the census count less accurate.

The potential impact: While the exact effect of Trump’s proposed change is currently unclear, Pew Research in 2020 found removing unauthorized immigrants from the census apportionment count would’ve caused three states—CA, FL, and TX—to lose a House seat.

Looking ahead… The public can weigh in on the proposal through Oct. 13, after which the administration will review the feedback before moving toward a final rule. Any such change is expected to face legal challenges, with the next administration also likely having an opportunity to weigh in before the next US census in 2030.

📊 Flash poll: Do you think the US census should count all residents, including immigrants living in the country illegally, or should it only count US citizens and green card holders?

• All US residents
• Only US citizens and green card holders
• Unsure/other

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Here are five stats from this past week that made our team go “whoa.” Hopefully you will, too.

🤖 In a recent NBC News poll asking what kinds of info people would be comfortable getting from AI, 74% of Americans say they trust AI for recipes—while no other topic broke 34%, and some topics like parenting advice or where to vote were below 20%.

🍿 Higher movie ticket prices are helping to disguise a decline in domestic theater attendance since the pandemic; through mid-August of this year, domestic theaters had sold 568.4 million tickets, marking a ~30% decrease from the same period in 2019 (or 248 million fewer tickets).

🛢️ The Iran war has now cost US consumers $100+ billion in higher energy prices, with the bill rising another $1 million every two minutes, per real-time estimate from Brown University.

👟 Nike, which is getting kicked out of the S&P 100 index later this month after an 18-year run, has seen its market capitalization fall from a peak of $264 billion in 2021 to ~$54 billion today (-79.5%).

🍺 Most top nonalcoholic US beer brands have up to a max of 0.5% ABV—one-tenth the alcohol content of an average beer—rather than completely zero alcohol, per a new WSJ report.

BUSINESS & MARKETS

• 🏘️ US existing-home sales fell 2% in August to a seasonally adjusted 3.98 million annual rate, the lowest in over a year; it comes as national median home prices rose 1.6% from a year ago, while average 30-year mortgage rates are at a 14-month high (6.76%).
• 🛢️ Brent crude futures close above $107/barrel (+6.3%), marking the fifth consecutive day of gains and the highest level since May.
• 📈 Consumer Price Index for August, the most widely used measure of US inflation, is set for publication early this morning; annual inflation stood at 3.4% in July.

SPORTS, MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT

• 📺 Jimmy Kimmel says his ABC show will publish interview with Texas’ Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico on YouTube, rather than network broadcast, citing threats from the FCC over equal airtime rules for political candidates.
• 🙏 Barry Melrose, former NHL player and coach who spent 25+ years as a beloved ESPN hockey analyst, died at 70.
• 👗 New York Fashion Week kicked off yesterday with a star-studded show at Rockefeller Center.

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SCIENCE, SPACE & EMERGING TECH

• 🪐 Mercury has shrunk by 10%-30% more than scientists previously thought—up to 14 miles in diameter, or ~1.4% of its volume—since forming 4.5 billion years ago, new study finds.
• ☕ Drinking scalding hot coffee and tea, rather than warm, roughly triples a person’s risk of developing cancer in their esophagus, per world’s largest study of such a link.
• 🤖🌕 NASA and IBM launch new AI model to help map the Moon, identifying potential ice deposits, selecting potential safe landing sites for future expeditions, and more.

US, WORLD, & POLITICS

• 🏛️ Inaugural GOP midterm convention holds second and final day, featuring a keynote address from Vice President JD Vance and closing remarks from President Trump; it comes after Trump’s Day 1 speech included a promise of $5,000 checks from the federal gov’t for all US adults if Republicans win the midterm elections.
• 🗳️ Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee loses Democratic primary to former CVS executive Helena Foulkes by a wide margin; McKee is the first incumbent governor since 2018 to lose a party primary.
• 🧑‍⚖️ US Supreme Court again blocks Missouri’s new congressional map that would likely lead to additional GOP House seat, in second such order this week; Missouri now plans to hold a general election based on the old map, after using the new one for primary elections (a highly unusual event).

☝️ Lego recently unveiled its upcoming PlayStation set, featuring a nearly 1:1 exact replica of the original PS1 gaming console made from 1,911 individual pieces (available October 4).

🤔 Did you know? The fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, a 36-letter word that feels suspiciously like bullying. The term traces its roots to Roman poet Horace, who used a similar word in the first century BCE to poke fun at writers fond of unnecessarily long words.

📰 Worth a read: I turned off my algorithm for 24 hours. Is this how social media used to be?

🖱️ What we’re clicking:

• How much of the internet is written with AI?
• 6 things homeowners never regret buying
• A cleaning lady bit into an apple—and solved a legendary diamond heist

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How well did you pay attention this week? Find out here.

1. The average of four numbers is 18. Three of the numbers are 12, 17, and 21. What is the fourth number?
2. A rectangular backyard is 18 feet long and 12 feet wide. A fence will go around the entire yard except for a 4-foot-wide gate. How many feet of fencing are needed?
3. A jar contains only red, blue, and green marbles. ⅓ are red and ¼ are blue. If there are 60 marbles total, how many are green?

(keep scrolling for the answer)

📚 An indie comic creator went from overlooked to sold out basically overnight after a TikTok reviewer stopped by his quiet Anime NYC booth and posted a video praising his work. 

The clip racked up 1+ million likes, sent 25,000+ new followers his way, and helped fans buy up every available copy, including extras his brother drove in from Pennsylvania at the last minute. 

1. 22
2. 56 feet
3. 25 green marbles

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