Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst.
A federal judge in Boston has again blocked the U.S. Postal Services Plan to follow
an order by President Trump. That order seeks to restrict mail-in voting for the midterm election. As NPR's Hansi Law Wang reports, the Supreme Court is already set to review the Postal Services Plan. The ruling by U.S. District Judgingeer Tawani effectively extends an earlier court
“order stopping the U.S. Postal Service from moving head with key parts of its plan.”
We should note U.S. P.S. is a financial supporter of NPR. The Postal Service's plan involves delivering mail-in ballots only to people on voter lists that the states would have to turn over to the mail agency. Just Tawani found that plan is likely illegal because U.S. P.S. has no authority to control voting by mail.
While the legal fight continues, mail-in voting for the midterm general election has officially started with North Carolina just beginning to send out its absentee ballots. The price of diesel is at a record high today, $5.85 a gallon, that's according to Triple A. But those prices have been ticking up for months amid global shortages and do in part to the Warren Iran.
And here's Willa Rubin as more on how this is playing out for one farmer. Dale Heminger runs a dairy and cabbage farm in Upstate Newark, and diesel is his fuel. We have to run tractors and harvesters and trucks, and they almost exclusively run on diesel.
“The cost for a gallon of diesel is up about $2 over the past year.”
That means fuel has cost Heminger close to $45,000 for a tank of $10,000 gallons. Last year, it was $25,000. It's really putting a pinch on things. And because crop prices are often set in advance, there isn't much wiggle room. For price takers, we can't just pass it on, so we have to weather the storm.
He says they're bracing for the harvest, and for the next six months, to be very tight financially. Willa Rubin and Piano's. A federal judge in Minnesota has ruled against Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company in its challenge to ban on explicit deep fake photos.
This impures Bobby Allen reports, Musk's lawyers are you the ban is a free speech violation. Musk's XAI lets users generate sexual images using artificial intelligence, including realistic looking images that remove people's clothes.
“After a law in Minnesota banned AI services known as Nudify Apps, XAI Suit, alleging that”
the rules violate the first amendment.
Now a federal judge in Minnesota is allowing the state to enforce its crackdown on sexually explicit deep fakes, but Musk's suit can go forward in the meantime. Other states, including Texas and California, have passed laws targeting the proliferation of AI-powered Nudify Apps, Bobby Allen and PR News. You're listening to NPR News from Washington.
The commissioner of the WNBA will step down at the end of this year, Kathy Engelbert has led the league since 2019 through a boom and popularity along with some growing pains, and Pierce Becky Sullivan has more. Kathy Engelbert was the first person to be named WNBA commissioner. Before her, the league's top executive was merely president.
Since she came on in 2019, the league has grown tremendously in ratings and attendance.
Earlier this year, the league finalized a new media rights deal, worth more than $3 billion
for the next 11 years. She oversaw his historic new Union contract agreed to last winter, and the league is in the middle of expanding from 12 teams to 18. Her critics say the WNBA should have done even more to capitalize on the arrival of young superstar players with big fan bases like Caitlyn Clark and Angel Reese, and plenty of
complaints do still persist, such as the quality of officiating and keeping players safe from her asment. Becky Sullivan and PR News. Golfcarts are popular with tourists, but Rome Italy isn't on board. The city is mounting a crackdown, as hundreds of the carts start carrying tourists through
the historic center. Critics say the drivers are parking illegally and making congestion worse. But advocates say the carts are silent, they occupy less space than tourist vans and buses, and they don't produce air-choking exhaust that also stains the historic monuments. Wall Street lower by the closing bell of the Dow down 271 points, NASDAQ down 77, S&P 500
down 29. This week on the NPR politics podcast, Democratic Socialists are having a moment. What's their goal? The goal being to eventually re-align the Democratic Party to perhaps someday develop of an independent party, but we recognize that in the United States there's just a two-party
system. How Democratic Socialists are staking out political territory.
