Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years in prison this morning in Manhattan. "You had it all," the judge told him. "But you threw it all away." Miriam Haley said: "It is a life sentence for me."

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years this morning. Trump called for the annihilation of Iran at the UN and then met with Iranian leaders the same day. Xi arrived in Washington. Here is Wednesday.

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years in prison today. The judge said he threw it all away. Miriam Haley said it is a life sentence for her. He said he is not a violent man and expects to appeal.

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced Wednesday in a Manhattan courtroom to 15 years in prison for the sexual assault of Miriam Haley, a former television production assistant, in 2006. He appeared in a wheelchair, his hands cuffed to his seat. Judge Curtis Farber told Weinstein: "You had it all. Your legacy could have been cemented with greatness. But you threw it all away by assaulting Miriam Haley." Haley told the court: "It is a life sentence for me. I've been further traumatized in exercising my right to hold him accountable." Weinstein addressed the court, denying the allegations while saying "I do have remorse for Miriam Haley's pain" and "I am not a violent man." He is expected to appeal.

The legal history is specific and matters. Weinstein was originally convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years. New York's highest court overturned that conviction in 2024, ruling he was prejudiced by testimony from women whose allegations were not part of the case. A second jury convicted him again at a retrial last year. Today's 15-year sentence is the conclusion of a case that cycled through the criminal justice system for more than six years, survived an appellate court reversal, and returned to the same Manhattan courthouse where it started. Weinstein is 74 and in failing health. He is expected to remain incarcerated until at least his late 80s. The movement his exposure helped ignite in 2017, one that changed how institutions handle allegations of sexual misconduct, produced this sentence today in the city where his crimes occurred. Haley said she thought about ending her pursuit of justice many times. She did not. The judge said Weinstein threw it all away. The sentence is what accountability looks like when someone does not stop.

On Tuesday, Trump called for the annihilation of Iran at the UN. Hours later, his envoy had a three-hour meeting with Iranian leaders that Trump called "very good."

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump called for the annihilation of Iran. After his remarks, Trump told reporters that US officials had a "very good" three-hour meeting with Iranian leaders. Iranian state media confirmed that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Both things happened in the same afternoon. At the podium: annihilation. In the meeting room: a "very good" three hours between the foreign minister of Iran and the American envoy who has been conducting Ukraine peace talks since Monday. The gap between those two things is not a contradiction to be explained away. It is the operational reality of a conflict that has been running for more than six months without a formal declaration, that the president said on September 11 he is not looking for a deal on, that he said on September 17 he hopes is towards its end, and that he now described to the UN as deserving annihilation in the same week his envoy was shaking the foreign minister's hand. The word "annihilation" at a podium and a "very good" meeting in a side room are the two speeds at which this administration is managing the same war on the same day. The oil market has been reading both.

Xi Jinping arrived in Washington today. Trump greeted him planeside — a rare gesture reserved for the most significant guests.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in the United States on Wednesday for a bilateral summit with President Trump in Washington. Trump greeted Xi at the plane's stairs as he arrived, a rare diplomatic gesture that presidents typically reserve for the highest-stakes bilateral relationships. It is the second Trump-Xi summit of the year.

A planeside greeting is a specific diplomatic signal. Presidents do not typically walk out to meet foreign leaders at their plane. The protocol is reserved for relationships the greeting president wants to publicly elevate. Trump walking out to meet Xi as his plane arrived is an image that every foreign ministry in the world is reading. The meeting follows Tuesday's Greenland deal signing, Monday's Haiti extradition, and a week of UNGA diplomacy in which the UN as an institution has been somewhat sidelined by bilateral arrangements. Xi skipped UNGA entirely and came directly to Washington, which tells you where he thinks the relevant conversation is happening. The Trump-Xi summit agenda covers trade, AI governance, Taiwan deterrence, and the US-China technology competition. The agenda is the geopolitical map of the next decade. The two people who will decide the most about it are in the same building right now.

The Trump administration just announced it is removing 760,000 people from the Affordable Care Act. It says they were fraudulently enrolled or do not exist.

The Trump administration announced it will remove 760,000 people from Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage, the federal health insurance program created in 2010, alleging that the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program or do not actually exist.

The ACA covers roughly 20 million Americans through its marketplace. Removing 760,000 people is a 3.8% reduction from the program's enrollment base, applied in a single administrative action. The administration's fraud claim is the mechanism: if enrollees are fraudulent, the administration argues it has the authority and obligation to remove them without the standard verification and notice process that ACA regulations require. The people who lose coverage through this action, if they exist and are not fraudulent, lose their health insurance without the advance notice ACA rules require. If they do not exist, nothing changes for anyone. The distinction between those two outcomes is the entire dispute. The administration says they are fraudulent. The enrollees, if they exist, will find out when they try to use their coverage. The ACA has been the subject of Republican repeal and administrative rollback attempts since its passage in 2010. A 760,000-person fraud purge is the largest single administrative reduction the program has faced.

The US is on the brink of a measles epidemic. Active outbreaks are running in four states. Health experts say we are overlooking the real problem.

Measles is making a comeback. Active outbreaks are documented in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, with hundreds of cases mostly among unvaccinated people. Health experts are warning that the country is overlooking the threat of a full-scale epidemic as local and federal politicians debate the definitions and impact of the measles-associated deaths that the CDC removed from its website last week after RFK Jr. questioned them.

The US was declared measles-free in 2000 after decades of vaccination. The measles vaccine is among the most effective vaccines ever developed: two doses confer roughly 97% immunity. What has changed is vaccination rates, not the vaccine. Communities with lower vaccination coverage, driven by a combination of vaccine hesitancy, religious exemptions, and the broader erosion of trust in public health institutions, have become measles-susceptible populations. Four simultaneous active outbreaks in four different states describes a pathogen finding those populations efficiently. The CDC's removal of measles deaths from its official count last week, reported in this brief on September 11, is now arriving in the same week health experts are warning of an epidemic. The data system designed to track the threat is being managed for political reasons at the same moment the threat is escalating. Both of those things are happening simultaneously.

Hurricane Polo is a Category 5 storm, one of the strongest ever recorded. It arrived the same week scientists confirmed August was the hottest month in history.

Hurricane Polo has strengthened to a Category 5 storm, the highest rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale with sustained winds exceeding 157 miles per hour, and is being described as one of the strongest storms ever recorded.

This brief has tracked Hurricane Karina, which threatened Hawaii in early September, and the Gulf storm that made landfall near Texas on September 1. Hurricane Polo is a new storm, a new name, and a new Category 5. Three major storms across two ocean basins in three weeks, arriving in the same month scientists confirmed was the hottest in human history, describes a climate pattern that is producing severe weather at a frequency and intensity that the infrastructure of the affected regions was not designed to absorb. The specific path and landfall risk for Polo have not been fully established in today's reporting. What is established is the strength: one of the strongest storms ever. In a year that has produced record heat, record wildfires, record diesel prices, and a federal flood insurance program paying homeowners to abandon their coastal homes, another record-strength storm is the season's continuation of the same story.

Eight sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln attempted suicide during its deployment. The deployment lasted 286 days. The ship is now docked.

There have been eight suicide attempts across the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, the ship and its accompanying fleet of destroyers, cruisers, and submarines, since the beginning of its deployment, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed Wednesday.

This brief has covered the USS Abraham Lincoln across multiple entries since August 13, when it was reported that six sailors had tried to jump overboard during its record-setting deployment. The ship finally docked in Thailand on September 3 after 286 days at sea, its hull covered in rust. Acting Navy Secretary Cao's confirmation of eight suicide attempts across the full carrier strike group is the first official acknowledgment of the mental health crisis aboard the vessel. A 286-day deployment is the longest continuous deployment of a US carrier strike group in modern history. The Iran war drove it. The service members who could not endure it are the human cost of a deployment decision that was made at a level far above the sailors who executed it. Eight attempts in 286 days on a single carrier group is a statistic that the Navy has now confirmed. The families of those eight sailors have been living with that number without official acknowledgment until today.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, the Veterans Crisis Line is available by calling or texting 988 and pressing 1.

The DOJ just told a federal court that access to the White House press briefing room is a "privilege." It also said that CNN, MSNBC, and Politico reporting jeopardized national security.

The Department of Justice defended the Trump administration's ban on CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House in a court filing Wednesday, arguing that press access to the White House is a "privilege" not a right and urging the court to reject the outlets' First Amendment lawsuit. The DOJ separately argued that the three outlets' reporting on a range of issues jeopardized national security and spread falsehoods.

The DOJ's "privilege" argument is the administration's legal theory for why the press ban does not violate the First Amendment. The argument runs as follows: the First Amendment protects the press from government interference with publishing, but does not compel the government to grant any particular reporter or outlet access to government spaces. Access to the White House briefing room is not a constitutional right but a privilege extended at the president's discretion. The national security and falsehoods arguments go further: they provide a substantive rationale for why the privilege was revoked for these three outlets specifically. A court that accepts the privilege theory has no need to reach the national security argument. A court that rejects the privilege theory still has to evaluate what standard applies to access decisions. What the DOJ filed today is the legal framework the administration wants courts to use. Whether the courts accept it will determine whether future presidents can remove any outlet they dislike from the press pool by calling their coverage a national security threat.

The thread underneath Wednesday

Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Manhattan judge who told him he threw it all away, Miriam Haley saying it is a life sentence for her, Weinstein saying he is not a violent man and expecting to appeal, the second conviction and the second sentence closing a legal odyssey that began with the #MeToo movement he helped ignite. Trump called for the annihilation of Iran at UNGA on Tuesday and then his envoy had a "very good" three-hour meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi the same afternoon, the two speeds of the same war running simultaneously in the same building. Xi Jinping arrived in Washington and Trump greeted him planeside in a diplomatic gesture that tells every foreign ministry in the world how much this bilateral relationship matters to the administration managing it. The Trump administration announced the removal of 760,000 ACA enrollees on fraud claims, the largest single administrative reduction the program has faced. Active measles outbreaks are running in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah with health experts warning of a full-scale epidemic in the same week the CDC's death count is being managed for political reasons. Hurricane Polo has strengthened to Category 5, one of the strongest ever recorded, the third major storm in three weeks across two ocean basins in the hottest month in human history. Eight sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln attempted suicide during its 286-day deployment, the Acting Navy Secretary confirming the number that has now been officially acknowledged for the first time. The DOJ told a federal court that press access is a "privilege" and that CNN, MSNBC, and Politico's coverage jeopardized national security, the legal framework the administration wants courts to use for all future press ban disputes. A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll found most voters say the 2026 midterms are all about Trump and they disapprove of him. ICE is requesting mobile detention facilities in Pennsylvania buried in its expansion paperwork. Used cars are now priced like new cars. Netanyahu and NYC Mayor Mamdani traded public attacks ahead of UNGA. The Ten Commandments is being displayed in public schools and educators are pushing back in court.

Eight sections, 56 days until the midterms. The Trump-Xi summit continues Thursday. See you tomorrow.

What to watch tomorrow: Watch the Trump-Xi summit for any trade, technology, or Taiwan signal, because the agenda covers the geopolitical map of the next decade and the two people most able to change it are meeting right now. Watch whether a federal court issues any preliminary ruling on the DOJ's "privilege" argument in the press ban lawsuit, because the speed of the court's response signals how seriously it is treating the First Amendment question. Watch the measles outbreak trajectory in the four active states, because health experts warning of a full-scale epidemic in the same week the CDC's count is under political management is a specific combination of conditions that historically precedes an outbreak's acceleration. And watch Hurricane Polo's track for any landfall threat, because a Category 5 described as one of the strongest ever recorded arriving in the same three-week window as Karina and Lowell is a storm season that is not finished. See you tomorrow.

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