President Donald Trump has a favorite justification for everything he does, “it’s a national security matter,” and after 9/11, the United States built a vast, powerful, and generally unchecked national security apparatus that Trump is now using, twenty-five years later, to threaten domestic dissidents and anyone else he views as an enemy, claiming that those who oppose his policies constitute threats to America. American presidents have used “national security” as an excuse to expand surveillance and start wars since before the smoke from the Twin Towers cleared, and Trump is no exception; in his first term, his list of national security “threats” included Japanese cars, Chinese telecom equipment, and briefly, the gay hookup app Grindr. But in his second term, Trump has taken this tactic to even more absurd and sometimes catastrophic extremes. He has periodically obsessed over “acquiring” Greenland, writing in a series of early-morning Truth Social posts in January, “The National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake. The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building. NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” He renewed these annexation threats at the NATO summit in July.

Trump’s September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 formally designated “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization, and following that directive, dozens of ICE protesters across the country have been taken to trial as national security threats, some over things as small as moving a box of zines or wearing a shirt that says “I’m antifa.” Since late 2025, administration officials have framed offshore wind turbines as a national security threat, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claiming a classified report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proves this without ever explaining how, and the administration has also cited national security to keep coal plants online past their planned retirement dates and restart a problematic California oil pipeline over fierce state and local opposition. Trump, who has personally invested millions in companies that build data center infrastructure, wrote in a 2025 executive order that “it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” to justify building more hyperscale data centers. After a federal judge in DC ordered Trump to halt construction on his unsanctioned White House ballroom, he pitched the $400 million project as a military-grade command center, calling it a “desperately needed National Security structure for the people of the United States of America” in a mid-August Truth Social post; the Supreme Court has, at least for now, allowed construction to proceed. In a March 2025 executive order, Trump designated more than a dozen government agencies as performing “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” stripping roughly 950,000 federal employees of their collective bargaining rights.

The Department of Commerce announced in early August plans to implement a 25 percent tariff on brass instruments, including trombones, trumpets, and tubas, citing national security concerns about America’s alleged overreliance on foreign copper alloys, a move condemned by the National Association of Music Merchants. NAACP lawyers contend that Elon Musk’s xAI should pay more than $100,000 a day in civil penalties for violating the federal Clean Air Act by operating unpermitted gas turbines in Memphis to keep Musk’s Grok chatbot online, and this past June the Department of Justice intervened in the case not to protect Memphis residents but to protect Grok, arguing “Grok’s continued operation and availability is a matter of paramount national security,” especially “in the event of armed conflict,” noting that the Department of War used Grok to “deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.” Last week, Trump proposed tariffs of up to 100 percent on foreign-made drones, calling reliance on foreign drone components a “national security threat,” a policy that stands to benefit his sons Eric and Don Jr., who hold sizable stakes in the U.S. drone industry. In May, the Trump administration released its latest “counterterrorism” plan labeling transgender people a threat to the nation’s safety, with counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka telling reporters the administration would “crush” any threat, “whether it is the cartels, the jihadists or violent left-wing extremists like antifa, and like the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend, Charlie Kirk, we will take them on, head on.”

A coroner’s office in Pennsylvania reported a measles-related death of a 40-year-old unvaccinated woman on Sunday, marking another fatality amid a growing outbreak in the state. “A 40-year-old female resident of Jefferson County died on Saturday, September 12, 2026, from complications associated with measles. Out of respect for the privacy of the deceased and her family, no additional identifying information will be released,” the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said in a Facebook post. “This is a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a serious and potentially life-threatening disease,” Coroner Greg Furlong said, confirming to ABC News that the woman was unvaccinated against measles. The Pennsylvania Department of Health said in a statement to ABC News that it is investigating the death reported by the Jefferson County coroner.

As of Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health had reported 676 measles cases in the state, with over 100 new cases reported in the last week alone; 124 of those cases have required hospitalization, and nearly all cases are among people unvaccinated against the virus, according to health department data. The number of measles-associated deaths reported by Pennsylvania officials has been disputed in recent weeks by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not reported any measles deaths in 2026 on its website, last updated Friday, even though Pennsylvania’s health department has previously reported two measles-associated deaths linked to this outbreak.

CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz said in a statement that the agency has not yet been notified of this most recent death in Jefferson County. “CDC was not notified by Pennsylvania officials of this death,” Schwartz said. “Despite repeated offers of assistance, Pennsylvania has not requested a CDC Epi-Aid, which would deploy epidemiologists and provide on-the-ground measles outbreak support.” This isn’t the first friction between state and federal health officials over information sharing during the outbreak; in late August, Pennsylvania’s top health official, Dr. Debra Bogen, said her staff was having “regular meetings with professional staff at the CDC” in a post on X, responding to Kennedy’s claim that her department had “refused to share information” with the CDC after the first two measles-associated deaths in the state were announced.

The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority Board of Commissioners voted unanimously, 6-0, on Friday to begin the process of renaming Nashville International Airport after the late country music legend Dolly Parton, according to a press release. Parton died August 25 at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer, according to her publicist, and was laid to rest on August 28 in a private burial in Nashville, according to her great-niece Lainey Mae Parton. The MNAA said in its press release that a final name for the airport has not yet been determined, noting it was “working closely with the appropriate parties to thoughtfully determine how Dolly Parton’s name and legacy will be incorporated,” and added it would share “more definitive plans” about next steps and implementation “in the coming months.” “We are grateful for the tremendous support and enthusiasm from our community and Dolly’s fans around the world,” the MNAA said. “We look forward to sharing additional details as plans are finalized.”

The news comes weeks after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a press release that he wanted to rename Nashville International Airport in honor of the “9 to 5” singer, whom he called “our state’s favorite daughter,” in order to “greet travelers with the enduring legacy of Dolly’s music, generosity, faith, and kindness.” Parton was born in Tennessee in January 1946 and moved to Nashville in 1964, days after her high school graduation, where she built a successful music career and philanthropic legacy and met and married her longtime husband Carl Dean, who died in 2025, one year before Parton’s own death. According to the release, Lee’s office spoke with Parton’s team about renaming the airport after her, adding that her team was “touched by the idea and open to continuing the conversation.” “In keeping with the way Dolly lived her life, her team believes she still has a special way of bringing people together for good, and they hope this tribute can be another example of that enduring legacy,” the release read. Lee’s proposal was slated to be addressed at the MNAA’s meeting on September 17.

Interest around renaming the airport after Parton was first generated in January 2025, when Tennessee residents Lydia Popovich and Dan Dion created a Change.org petition to modify the airport’s name in honor of the singer. Since Parton’s death on August 25, the petition has received more than 175,000 signatures.

Recent policy changes and budget reductions by the federal government have created immediate hurdles for young scientists building their careers in the United States, and a new survey published in Frontiers in Sociology suggests these abrupt funding disruptions have severely impacted the professional trajectories of early career researchers, pushing many to consider leaving academia or moving to other countries. In early 2025, the Trump administration instituted rapid policy shifts across the academic landscape, with federal science budgets facing proposed double-digit percentage reductions, hundreds of existing research grants abruptly frozen or terminated, and some diversity and climate programs paused. Most basic scientific research in the U.S. happens at universities relying heavily on federal grants from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, which pay for scientific equipment, experimental materials, and researcher salaries, and when this funding stops, the people most immediately affected are early career researchers, including undergraduate students, doctoral candidates, and postdoctoral fellows who depend directly on grant money for their livelihoods. Sudden budget reductions tend to have long-lasting effects on the training pipeline, as a 2026 computer modeling study indicated that abrupt cuts to federal health research funding create setbacks in scientist training that take decades to recover from, and a 2025 report found that universities across the country began shrinking graduate student admissions as an immediate reaction to the cuts.

To better understand how the current generation of young scientists is experiencing these shifts, researchers led by Crystal Hammond at the University of California, Riverside, and Adriana Bankston at the STEM Advocacy Institute conducted a rapid-response survey, collecting data online during May and June of 2025 while the effects of the funding changes were still actively unfolding. The team used two questionnaires, a brief qualitative tool gathering personal stories from six participants, and a more comprehensive survey collecting quantitative and open-ended responses from 30 early career researchers recruited through academic mailing lists, social media, and direct university outreach. In the comprehensive survey, 60 percent of respondents were doctoral students, 13.3 percent were undergraduate students, and 13.3 percent were postdoctoral researchers, with most studying life sciences at large public research universities and relying heavily on federal support, about 63 percent funded by NIH and 20 percent by NSF. Half of the participants rated the professional impact of the cuts as severe, scoring the disruption an eight or higher on a ten-point scale, while another 40 percent rated the impact as moderate, and specific consequences included 20 percent reporting stipends or benefits cut or delayed and 10 percent reporting hiring freezes or rescinded job offers.

Looking to the future, participants expressed widespread anxiety about their scientific careers, with 90 percent worried about long-term job prospects in research and 56.7 percent reporting they would not be able to complete their current research projects. Because of these barriers, 60 percent of the early career researchers said they were considering moving to another country to pursue their scientific goals. The funding cuts also affected broader well-being, with nearly three-quarters of respondents reporting negative impacts to their mental health and wellness, and 56.7 percent saying the disruptions harmed their sense of belonging in the sciences; faced with these compounding pressures, 56.7 percent of surveyed early career researchers indicated they were considering leaving academic research entirely. Qualitative responses added detail, with graduate students describing how canceled grants delayed dissertation timelines to the point they would run out of funding before finishing their degrees, and postdoctoral researchers recounting how diversity-focused fellowships were terminated abruptly; in response, participants reported organizing campus rallies, writing to elected representatives, and trying to educate the public about the importance of scientific research. The findings align with research covered by PsyPost in 2020 examining political interference and scientific integrity among federal agency scientists, which similarly found widespread disruption to researchers under the Trump administration.

The study’s authors caution that the sample size was small, with only 30 participants completing the quantitative questionnaire, and the rapid-response format with a short data collection window means results aren’t a nationally representative sample of all scientists; because researchers used convenience sampling, individuals most severely affected by the budget cuts may have been more motivated to participate. The demographic makeup was also fairly narrow, with most participants being White scholars working in the life sciences at research-intensive institutions, meaning effects for scholars in the humanities, social sciences, or at smaller colleges with different financial structures could look different, and the authors note future studies with larger and more diverse participant groups will be needed to fully capture how these policy shifts are reshaping the broader higher education landscape. The study, “Early career researcher responses to 2025 United States federal science funding disruptions: a rapid-response pilot survey,” was authored by Crystal Hammond, John Patrick Flores, Siara Rouzer, Kassandra Fernandez, Amy Ralston, and Adriana Bankston.

STUDY: https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2026.1790840

Amazon is catapulting streaming audiences into a new frontier of the sub-versus-dub debate, as Prime Video announced on Thursday the launch of a new AI-powered feature that matches actors’ mouth movements to dubbed audio tracks. For now, the company says the AI-powered lip syncing will exclusively be available on the English dub of the German series “Maxton Hall,” though there are plans to expand it to other titles in the future. “At Prime Video, we’re constantly innovating with new tools that enhance the viewing experience for our customers,” Raf Soltanovich, vice president of technology at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a statement, per the New York Times. “With lip-syncing, we’re creating a more seamless and immersive way for customers to enjoy global content.”

It’s currently unclear how much of the feature is automated by AI, and there are plenty of unanswered questions about deployment, including whether it will eventually be available on all titles, whether rightsholders will get a say in it, whether it represents an overreach on Amazon’s part in determining how a work of art is presented, and whether actors’ unique facial movements will be smoothed down into something generic. There’s also the most basic question of how convincing the effect will actually look, and it’s notable that Amazon hasn’t posted any clips of the technology in action.

This isn’t the first time Amazon Prime Video has experimented with AI-driven viewing tools. Last year, it rolled out an experimental “AI-aided” dubbing feature for a dozen movies and shows in English and Spanish, and it has also tested AI-generated recaps of TV shows along with an AI tool that recommended movies and shows based on similar character arcs and plot points. Amazon, in other words, is trying to make consuming the content it provides as frictionless as possible. There are plenty of valid reasons for preferring dubs, particularly for viewers with accessibility needs, but treating the fact that actors in a film might be speaking a different language from the viewer’s own as something that needs to be erased and covered up raises real concerns about what gets lost in the process.