The Supreme Court voted 6-3 Friday to let the government use a voter verification database that has already been flagging naturalized citizens as potential noncitizens.

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 Friday to let the government use a voter verification database already flagging naturalized citizens as potential noncitizens. Ethiopia's Tigray war reignited. The Pope warned of a "paradise of machines." The week closed with a lot happening at once. Here is Friday.

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 Friday to let DHS use a citizenship database to check voter rolls before the midterms. The database has already flagged naturalized citizens as potential noncitizens. Justice Jackson said burdening lawful voters outweighs a nonexistent harm.

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 Friday to allow the Department of Homeland Security to use the SAVE system, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, a 40-year-old federal immigration database DHS expanded into a voter citizenship verification tool, to check the citizenship of millions of Americans on state voter rolls ahead of the November midterms. The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that "burdening even a few lawful voters outweighs the 'nonexistent harm' of stopping the government from doing what it likely has no authority to do." A lower court judge noted the database had already caused states to cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens and force them to provide proof of citizenship before voting. In January, 70 Missouri county clerks, both Republicans and Democrats, warned that the database kept flagging people they knew were citizens: in St. Louis County, more than a third of the flagged voters had registered the day they became naturalized citizens.

The Missouri data point is the most specific thing about today's ruling and it is worth reading clearly. Naturalized citizens, people who were not born in the United States but legally became citizens through the naturalization process, are being flagged by this database as potential noncitizens on the day they registered to vote immediately after their naturalization ceremony. The database apparently cannot reliably distinguish between a recent immigrant who is still in the naturalization process and a person who just completed it. A voter whose name appears on a citizenship verification flag 55 days before the election may face challenges at the polls or have their registration canceled. The Supreme Court's majority reasoned that federal law requires the government to respond to states seeking to verify citizenship. Jackson's dissent called it an action the government "likely has no authority to do." The election is 55 days away. The database is now live.

Ethiopia's Tigray war just reignited. Separatists seized three airports, launched heavy artillery attacks, and declared: "We are in the situation of full-blown war now."

In northern Ethiopia, Tigrayan separatists seized control of three regional airports and launched heavy artillery attacks on government forces, breaking the 2022 ceasefire that ended a two-year civil war. A leader of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or TPLF, told reporters: "We are in the situation of full-blown war now." The fighting, which erupted Wednesday, has spread from Tigray to the Afar and Amhara regions. Ethiopia's army said it had repelled attacks in its first public comment on the renewed fighting.

The 2020-2022 Tigray civil war is among the most devastating conflicts of the 21st century that received the least international coverage. According to African Union estimates, it killed approximately 600,000 people, displaced millions, and triggered a famine across Tigray and the Afar region. The 2022 ceasefire was fragile from the start: the underlying political disputes about Tigray's autonomy, resource control, and the status of disputed territories were not resolved, only paused. The resumption of fighting, the seizure of airports, and the spread to two additional regions in three days describes a conflict returning at scale, not as a skirmish. The Tigray war reigniting in the same week as UNGA means it will compete for international attention with Iran, Gaza, Yemen, and Ukraine simultaneously. The people of Tigray, Afar, and Amhara who lived through 600,000 deaths the first time are the ones now watching the artillery start again.

Dozens of UN delegations walked out as Netanyahu addressed UNGA. He called his critics antisemites. The Palestinian Authority leader was not in the room; he was denied a US visa.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to a half-empty chamber at the UN General Assembly on Thursday after dozens of delegations walked out in protest at the start of his address. Netanyahu called his critics "antisemites" and praised President Trump for joining Israel's strikes on Iran. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the General Assembly by video stream after the Trump administration denied visas to Palestinian delegates for the second consecutive year. More than 100 people were arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace sit-in outside the UN protesting Netanyahu's appearance.

The image that the UN General Assembly produced on Thursday: a half-empty chamber, a prime minister praising military strikes while calling walkouts antisemitic, a Palestinian president speaking by video from outside the country because he was not allowed in, and more than 100 people arrested on the street outside. This is the 81st UN General Assembly. The institution was founded in 1945 after a war that killed 70 to 85 million people with the specific purpose of providing a forum where disputes could be addressed through speech rather than violence. The speech inside the chamber on Thursday described ongoing strikes, ongoing walkouts, and ongoing denial of access. The arrests on the street described what the overflow of that forum looks like when the forum itself is producing those images.

Pope Leo XIV warned that a "paradise of machines" could undermine humanity during his first visit to France. He was talking about AI.

Pope Leo XIV raised existential concerns about scientific progress, life, and human rights during a speech on his first papal visit to France, warning that a "paradise of machines" could undermine humanity.

The phrase "paradise of machines" is the Pope's specific framing for a concern that the AI industry's own CEOs have been raising all week: that a technological system built to serve human flourishing could produce conditions that undermine it. The Pope's framing is distinct from the AI CEOs' framing in one important way: the CEOs are worried about capability runaway, about AI systems becoming so powerful they escape human control. The Pope is worried about value displacement, about humans voluntarily organizing their lives around technological convenience in ways that erode the things that make human life meaningful. Both concerns can be true simultaneously. They also produce different policy responses: the capability concern calls for technical guardrails, the value concern calls for a cultural reckoning about what humans are building technology for. The Pope spoke in France the same week the US and China held a state dinner whose guest list was the board of directors of the AI industry, and whose stated diplomatic product was that both leaders want to leave AI exactly where it is. The paradises of machines are already under construction. The Pope came to France to say so.

Switzerland is voting on whether to tighten its famous neutrality. The outcome could reshape the country's relationship with Russia and every future conflict.

Switzerland is holding a referendum on whether to tighten its famous neutrality policy, a vote whose outcome could reshape the country's ability to participate in European defense mechanisms and sanctions regimes in response to future conflicts.

Swiss neutrality is one of the most durable political traditions in the world. Switzerland has not participated in a war since 1815 and formalized its neutrality in the Treaty of Paris that year. Its neutrality has made it a host for international diplomatic negotiations, humanitarian organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross, and major financial institutions. The Russian invasion of Ukraine created specific pressure on Swiss neutrality: the EU imposed sanctions on Russia, Switzerland chose to adopt equivalent measures, which critics argued violated the spirit of neutrality even if it was technically permitted. The referendum is asking Swiss voters to define more precisely what neutrality means in a world where economic sanctions, arms transfers to allied nations, and participation in multilateral defense frameworks are the instruments of geopolitical conflict rather than the battlefield deployments neutrality was designed to avoid. A yes vote tightens the definition and constrains future Swiss participation in collective Western responses to authoritarian aggression. A no vote preserves flexibility. Switzerland is one country. The question it is voting on is not.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour died this week. He was born a year before Israel's creation. He spent 75 years painting what he saw.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour died this week. Born in 1947, a year before Israel's creation, Mansour spent his life as a painter documenting the faces and landscapes of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. He was 79.

Sliman Mansour is best known for his 1973 painting "Carrying the Cross," which depicted a giant figure carrying Jerusalem on his back — an image that became one of the most iconic works of Palestinian visual culture. He was a founder of the Palestinian arts movement after 1967 that deliberately used local materials, clay and earth and coffee grounds, because he refused to buy Israeli art supplies during the occupation. His work was a form of presence: an insistence that the places and people he painted existed and would be documented regardless of whether the international community was watching. He died in the same week that the Palestinian Authority president was denied a US visa to attend UNGA and spoke by video from outside the building. Mansour spent 75 years painting so that the faces he depicted could not be made invisible. He will not paint them anymore. They are still there.

Fiji just declared a national emergency over HIV. It has the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemic. Nobody saw it coming.

Fiji's government declared a national emergency in mid-September because of a startling rise in HIV infections, making it the site of the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemic.

Fiji is an archipelago of more than 300 islands in the South Pacific with a population of roughly 900,000 people. It is not a country that appears in discussions of global HIV burden. The epidemic concentrated historically in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and specific vulnerable populations in high-income countries. The emergence of Fiji as the site of the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemic is a public health surprise of the kind that happens when surveillance systems miss an outbreak in its early stages. The factors driving Fiji's epidemic have not been fully detailed in today's reporting beyond "startling rise." The national emergency declaration activates government response resources and signals to international health organizations that assistance is needed. A country declaring a national emergency over an epidemic is a country that has acknowledged the outbreak is beyond what its normal health infrastructure can manage. Fiji is asking for help. The world's attention is on UNGA and the state dinner.

The world's nations signed a global pandemic preparedness treaty Friday. COVID-19 killed seven million people. The treaty is the world's attempt to make sure the next one does not.

Nations signed a global pandemic preparedness treaty aimed at helping countries prepare for and defeat future pandemics, the first binding international pandemic preparedness agreement since COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic killed at least seven million people by the World Health Organization's confirmed count, likely more than 20 million by excess mortality estimates, and produced the most significant disruption to global economic, social, and educational systems since World War II. The treaty that nations signed Friday during UNGA week is the formal international response to the documented failures of the COVID-19 response: delayed information sharing, inadequate supply chain coordination for vaccines and medical equipment, unequal vaccine distribution between high-income and low-income countries, and the absence of binding commitments from nations to cooperate during a health emergency. Whether a treaty creates binding behavior depends entirely on whether the signatories comply when the next outbreak arrives and their domestic political incentives are in conflict with their treaty obligations. The COVID-19 pandemic produced enough evidence about how nations behave under those conditions to read the new treaty with appropriate calibration. It was signed. That is the first step. The next step requires a different kind of emergency than the one that produced it.

The thread underneath Friday and the week

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to let DHS use a citizenship database to check voter rolls before the midterms, a database that Missouri county clerks from both parties have documented flagging naturalized citizens as potential noncitizens, with 55 days until the election. Ethiopia's Tigray war reignited as Tigrayan separatists seized three airports and declared full-blown war, spreading to Afar and Amhara, the conflict that killed 600,000 people in its first iteration returning. Dozens of UN delegations walked out as Netanyahu addressed UNGA, called critics antisemites, and praised Trump for joining Iran strikes, while the Palestinian Authority president addressed the assembly by video after being denied a US visa for the second consecutive year. Pope Leo XIV warned of a "paradise of machines" in France, the value displacement concern arriving the same week the state dinner in Washington seated the AI industry's leadership alongside the two leaders who want to leave AI exactly where it is. Switzerland voted on whether to tighten its neutrality in a referendum whose outcome reshapes its relationship with collective Western responses to authoritarian aggression. Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour died at 79, having spent 75 years painting what he saw. Fiji declared a national emergency over the world's fastest-growing HIV epidemic. Nations signed a global pandemic preparedness treaty during UNGA week. Trump called Iran's plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz "not acceptable." More than 100 protesters were arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace sit-in outside the UN. Trump's approval rating hit 32%, matching Bush's Iraq-era lows, with two-thirds of Americans disapproving of his handling of the Iran war. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow third-country deportations.

Eight sections, 55 days until the midterms. The week is closed.

What to watch this weekend: Watch whether the SCOTUS SAVE database ruling produces any immediate state-level voter roll purge announcements, because the 90-day rule prohibiting purges within 90 days of Election Day means states cannot purge before November 4, but the database can still generate flags that challenge individual voters at the polls. Watch the Ethiopia Tigray fighting for any ceasefire effort, because a conflict spreading to three regions in three days with airports seized is a conflict whose next 72 hours determine whether it becomes a contained flare or a reopened front. Watch the Switzerland neutrality referendum for results, because a yes vote is a specific geopolitical signal from the continent's most deliberately neutral country about whether Western collective action is now expected from everyone. And watch Pope Leo XIV's France visit for any additional AI statements, because the "paradise of machines" warning delivered from the oldest continuous Western institutional voice to the country that has been leading European AI regulation is the kind of intervention that changes the political weather around a debate. See you Monday.

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