The nationwide, bipartisan movement to eliminate so-called "junk fees" for renters has reached Massachusetts, where landlords are now forced to share the total price of what they are renting out with a future tenant before asking for any personal information.

Massachusetts is only the latest in a series of states which have introduced similar legislation against hidden fees in the rental market in recent years, including California and Colorado, as Americans struggle with a housing affordability crisis.

A study by the National Consumer Law Center found that junk fees cost American tenants hundreds of millions of dollars a year, disproportionately impacting the lowest-income and marginalized renting households, who spend a higher share of their wages on these hidden costs.

According to U.S. Census Bureau data, over 21 million renter households—the equivalent of about half of all renter households—spent more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent in 2023, enough to be considered cost-burdened.

Map Shows States With Laws Limiting 'Junk Fees' for Renters

The nationwide, bipartisan movement to eliminate or limit so-called rental "junk fees" is growing, as lawmakers try to offer relief to struggling tenants.

^{Giulia Carbonaro (Newsweek)}

The federal government on Wednesday proposed rescinding a Bureau of Land Management rule that allows the department to consider conservation as part of its multi-pronged approach to federal land management.

The change comes as the Trump administration continues pushing for increased resource utilization of public lands, including through logging and mining.

The proposal drew immediate reactions — with political leaders praising the reversal as helpful to energy production but conservation groups decrying it as another harm to public lands access.

https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/09/12/feds-propose-rescinding-public-lands-rule-which-made-conservation-an-official-use-of-blm-land/

The New York Times on Monday published a blockbuster report detailing how US President Donald Trump’s administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to high-powered artificial intelligence chips just days after receiving a massive investment in Trump’s cryptocurrency startup.

As the Times report documented, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) ruling family, had one of his investment firms deposit $2 billion into World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Just two weeks later, wrote the Times, “the White House agreed to allow the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips, a crucial tool in the high-stakes race to dominate artificial intelligence,” despite national security concerns about these chips being shared with China.

NYT Archive Article: archive.is/IIcca

'Impeachable': Explosive report on Trump's massive crypto 'scandal' stuns observers

The New York Times on Monday published a blockbuster report detailing how US President Donald Trump’s administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to high-powered artificial intelligence chips just days after receiving a massive investment in …

^{Brad Reed, Common Dreams (Raw Story)}

Here is the written opinions about it, not just the video

msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinio…

Stephen Colbert’s Emmys speech reminded us what America is missing right now

Stephen Colbert just delivered a much-needed lesson accepting an Emmy for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

^{Hannah Holland (MSNBC)}

The Trump administration on Monday added Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in almost 30 years, a stinging rebuke to a traditional U.S. ally that reflects a recent surge in cocaine production and fraying ties between the White House and the country's leftist president.

Even as it determined that Colombia had failed to comply with its international counternarcotics obligations, the Trump administration issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered major aid cuts, citing vital U.S. national interests.

US designates Colombia as failing to cooperate in the drug war for first time in nearly 30 years

The Trump administration has added Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in nearly three decades.

^{AP via Scripps News Group (News Channel 5 Nashville (WTVF))}

Thanks to a unique corporate ownership structure that gives him complete control of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has essentially created his own personal California super PAC, allowing him to spend Meta’s money on politically protecting his priorities in the heart of the tech industry — and, possibly, against the interests of his corporate rivals. Meta confirmed that the company plans to spend tens of millions of dollars as part of the initial investment and said that it would figure out who had ultimate decision-making power over candidates to back, and whether Meta’s own social media products were used to promote those candidates, once the super PAC was up and running.

“It’s essentially a way for [Zuckerberg] to spend the company’s money on his political choices, whereas at a company like Google, there’s not a single person who’s a majority shareholder who can dictate what the company does,” Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor specializing in election law, told The Verge. “It’s interesting, because Zuckerberg could just spend his own personal money to do this. But instead, he’s doing it through the company.”

Meta created its own super PAC to politically kneecap its AI rivals

Thanks to a unique corporate ownership structure that gives him complete control of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has essentially created his own personal California super PAC.

^{Hayden Field (The Verge)}

For the hundreds of men who were detained at Alligator Alcatraz, entering the gates of the makeshift migrant detention center in the Everglades meant exiting the labyrinthine but familiar federal immigration process and entering what several immigration attorneys described as an alternate system where the normal rules don’t apply.

One Guatemalan man detained at the tent site was accidentally deported to Guatemala before a scheduled bond hearing, his attorney said, reminiscent of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

A 35-year-old Cuban man could not be located at the California detention facility where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they had sent him, leaving his family and attorney frantically trying to determine where he was for more than a week, they said.

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald. The Herald had obtained the names from two detainee rosters.

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-internet-ban-balkh-0554049d724b8c8e0fb1e668ff34bbd2

Texas Tech University declined to say Monday why its police officers arrested a student who was filmed in a heated exchange at a vigil for Charlie Kirk — an incident that drew national attention, with Gov. Greg Abbott cheering her arrest for mocking the conservative activist’s assassination.

The university police department would only say that the student, 18-year-old Camryn Giselle Booker, was charged on Friday with simple assault, a class C misdemeanor that typically does not result in jail time. The department said the arrest happened in a “free speech area” near the student union. She was booked into the Lubbock County jail at 4:52 p.m., and released the next day at 2:11 p.m. after paying a $200 bond, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said.

Texas Tech student Abbott blasted for mocking Charlie Kirk is jailed

Texas Tech University declined to say Monday why its police officers arrested a student who was filmed in a heated exchange at a vigil for Charlie Kirk.

^{Benjamin Wermund (Houston Chronicle)}

O’Rourke has acknowledged that his group sent more than $1 million to Democratic groups in the Texas House. But he’s said the money had no strings attached and didn’t demand any actions as Paxton has claimed. He said they simply were supporting Democrats like any other political action committee is allowed to do in the name of supporting free speech.

The case continues, even though the Democrats who fled the state have returned and the redistricting maps are now passed.

Paxton may still be winning a larger battle against O’Rourke by forcing him and Powered By People into court, where they’ve now had to spend nearly $400,000 in legal fees on the case, according O'Rourke. And until Friday’s ruling, the group’s accounts were frozen, making it unable to do any of its usual activities.

Beto O'Rourke scores win against Ken Paxton — but at a great cost

Every time it looks like the Texas AG is getting the best of O’Rourke in court, the former El Paso congressman pulls off another victory.

^{Jeremy Wallace (Houston Chronicle)}

Amid a conservative firestorm over online speech, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr on Tuesday rejected the notion that the government should crack down on social media posts following conservative organizer Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“I think you can draw a pretty clear line, and the Supreme Court has done this for decades, that our First Amendment, our free speech tradition, protects almost all speech,” Carr told POLITICO’s Alex Burns on stage at the POLITICO AI & Tech Summit.

Archive article: archive.ph/5yNJ5#selection-699…

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/16/fcc-brendan-carr-social-media-free-speech-00565292

An appeals court ruled Monday that Lisa Cook can remain a Federal Reserve governor, rebuffing President Donald Trump’s efforts to remove her just ahead of a key vote on interest rates.

The Trump administration is expected to quickly turn to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch bid to unseat Cook. The Fed’s next two-day meeting to consider its next interest rate move begins Tuesday morning. And Cook’s lawsuit seeking to permanently block her firing must still make its way through the courts.

The White House campaign to unseat Cook marks an unprecedented bid to reshape the Fed’s seven-member governing board, which was designed to be largely independent from day-to-day politics. No president has fired a sitting Fed governor in the agency’s 112-year history.

https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-cook-trump-56e36badb0d1e9752e306fd6609747bd