A short weekly recap of the political and cultural stories that moved the fastest between September 14 and 20, 2026.
Press passes pulled. On Friday President Donald Trump said he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over what he called “FAKE NEWS,” and warned that other outlets could follow. On Saturday the White House confiscated those outlets’ press passes and turned their reporters away at the gate, Reuters reported. CNN called the ban “an illegal assault” on its constitutional rights; MS NOW and Politico said they would defend their First Amendment protections. The New York Times and The Washington Post backed the banned outlets. The fight sits on top of last year’s AP pool ban and earlier credential fights that federal judges reversed in Trump’s first term.
Mail ballots stay open. On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to let the Postal Service enforce a new mail-ballot rule before the November midterms — a clear loss for Trump’s push to tighten voting by mail, Reuters and AP reported. A Boston federal judge had blocked the measure while states and voting-rights groups challenge it. Justices Alito and Thomas dissented; Justice Kavanaugh agreed the midterms should not be disrupted but left the door ajar for a later case. Early voting is already underway in some states.
Riyadh in the blast radius. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis claimed missile and drone strikes on “sensitive sites” in Riyadh and Aramco facilities in Yanbu on Saturday — their first claimed hit on the Saudi capital in the current escalation, Reuters and AP reported. Saudi-led coalition forces said they intercepted a ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh and thwarted other attacks. Flames and thick smoke rose near King Khalid International Airport, where firefighters put out a blaze at an Aramco-marked fuel depot. The weekend kept oil-shipping and MidEast war risk in the midterm price story.
Ballots under drones. Russia’s first full wartime State Duma election wrapped Sunday with United Russia on track for a comfortable win (about 57.5% in early results), Reuters reported — a vote Putin cast as a test of support for the Ukraine war. On the final day Moscow’s mayor said Ukraine launched an “unprecedented” drone assault, with more than 1,600 drones downed since Saturday, including hundreds headed for the capital; three people were killed in the Moscow region and a facility at the Moscow oil refinery was damaged. Kyiv did not comment on the strikes. Critics say the ballot offered no real dissent; Ukraine called it a “pseudo election.”
AfD again, Merz digs in. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, exit polls put the far-right AfD first at about 37%, ahead of the SPD, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU slumped toward or below the 5% threshold — its worst state result since 1949, Reuters and the BBC reported. Other parties still refuse to govern with the AfD. Merz called the night “a disaster” but vowed to stay chancellor and push economic, tax and welfare reforms. In Berlin, Die Linke led the CDU in projected results. Two weeks after Saxony-Anhalt, Germany’s firewall politics remain the European story of the autumn.
Stadium politics. Culture caught fire when Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour after “Free Palestine” remarks, with promoter Messina Touring Group citing venue pressure, Reuters reported. At his first show since the split, in Philadelphia on Saturday, Sheeran told the crowd the Oct. 7 attacks were “horrific” while calling Gaza’s civilian toll “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” apologized for “mistakes,” and said he never wanted to be an activist musician, the BBC reported. Support acts quit in solidarity with Macklemore; protesters gathered outside. Free speech, Israel–Palestine and stadium gatekeeping are now midterm-adjacent culture fights.
The through-line: press access and mail voting collided with November, Gulf escalation kept energy politics hot, Russia voted under fire, Germany’s mainstream kept losing ground to the AfD, and a pop tour became a free-speech referendum.
Sources: Reuters; Reuters; Reuters; Reuters; Reuters; Reuters; Reuters; BBC; BBC; AP via PBS
