White House blocks media again despite lawsuit

Richard Hall | October 06, 2026

Hello and welcome to The Brief. Just two years after President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement completed an unlikely return to power in the United States, their ideological brethren in Latin America, the bolsonaristas, look set to do the same in Brazil. We explore what that means for Brazil and the U.S. below.

We also have some tips on where and when to see the best fall foliage, and take a look at how climate change has made the pursuit more difficult.

IN TODAY’S BRIEF

More media bans
Leaf-peeping
Health gamble
What Brazil’s election means for the world
Trump’s plummeting Hispanic support
Paxton’s loss of control

READ THIS FIRST

POLITICO blocked from traveling with Trump on Air Force One

Samuel Corum—Getty Images

The White House on Monday blocked POLITICO from boarding Air Force One and carrying out its print pool duties, marking the latest escalation in an ongoing battle over media outlets’ access to President Donald Trump.

“Many outlets including POLITICO are granted access to attend and cover presidential events unilaterally, but traveling with the President of the United States aboard Air Force One is a privilege not a right,” a White House official tells TIME. The official adds that Trump is “the most accessible President in American history, and that he will “continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press.”

In the White House pool system, a rotating group of journalists accompanies the President to events and shares updates with the wider press corps. But that pool system has been complicated by the President’s most recent efforts to punish media organizations whose coverage he objects to.

POLITICO is one of three outlets, along with CNN and MS NOW, that Trump announced that he was banning from the White House on Sept. 18, claiming that they were repeatedly publishing “fake news.” A federal judge has since ordered their credentials restored. —Connor Greene

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REVERB

Live concerts bring millions of fans together through music. Behind the scenes, REVERB channels that energy into environmental action.

See how REVERB has helped eliminate 4.6 million single-use bottles and is driving an entire industry to make sustainability part of every show.

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HAPPENING NOW

When is the best time to see peak fall foliage?

Lokman Vural Elibol—Getty Images

If you’re looking to pin down the best time and place to catch a glimpse of reds and oranges before winter descends, you might find the task trickier than expected. Experts say that predicting peak fall foliage has never been an easy task, and climate change is only complicating the matter.

“There's a lot of things that create variation in the colors across the landscape, and all these things can interact somewhat unpredictably,” says William Keeton, a professor of forest ecology and forestry at the University of Vermont. “Climate change, as with everything, just scrambles the deck.”

New England and upstate New York are among the most promising areas in AccuWeather’s forecast, with wet weather in late spring and early summer and the prospect of drier conditions and cooler nights heading into autumn potentially setting the stage for memorable views.

However, AccuWeather forecasts less vivid colors in parts of the lower Mississippi Valley and Southeast, citing cloud cover, rain, and a lack of clear, cool nights.

Colorado and the Carolinas could also see duller colors and brittle leaves due to drought conditions in the region. —Simmone Shah

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HEALTH CHECK

Gambling is sending more people to the ER

Aaron M. Sprecher—Getty Images

Legalizing gambling can come with big health problems. That’s the conclusion of a recent study out of Ontario, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, which found that after the Canada legalized single-event sports betting in 2021 and Ontario expanded its private online gambling market in 2022, emergency department visits for gambling disorders doubled.

Most of the people who landed in the emergency department were men, and almost one third of the visits led to hospitalizations. “This rise in severe presentations might be a bit of a warning signal of a wider increase in harms across the general population,” says Ryan Forrest, a public-health doctoral student at the University of Toronto and one of the authors of the study. “We think about things like financial distress, family and relationship problems, worsening mental health—and those things are not captured in the emergency department data.”

Many of the patients showed up at the emergency room with major depression and suicidality, and some had other mental-health or substance-abuse diagnoses, Forrest says.

Doctors at the emergency department noted in patients’ records that gambling had contributed to those other issues. —Alana Semuels

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SEABOUND

Nearly 90% of the world’s goods travel by ship. From the food on our shelves to the packages at our doors, shipping touches nearly every part of our lives, and so does its carbon footprint.

Seabound is betting on an unexpected solution: a box of rocks. By turning limestone into a sponge that captures CO₂ emissions, the company is proving that small innovations can help change the course of global shipping.

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IN FOCUS

What Brazil’s election means for the U.S. and the world

Eraldo Peres—Associated Press

An elderly establishment political figure wins power from a right-wing populist, promising a return to normalcy after his predecessor’s norm-shattering tenure was marred by corruption allegations. The ousted leader refuses to concede defeat, his supporters storm government buildings, and he is accused of planning a coup. Now out of power, the populist is prosecuted for alleged crimes committed during his time in office, but his movement roars back after just one term away, fueled by voter anger over crime and the economy.

If the Bolsonaros’ comeback in Brazil sounds familiar, it is because Americans watched Donald Trump follow an almost identical arc.

There are a few differences, of course. Unlike Trump, former President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election. His son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, led his father’s movement back to the brink of power, outperforming opinion polls to finish ahead of leftist incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday and setting up an Oct. 25 runoff. If he wins, Washington will have a familiar friend in Brasília.

Trump is a close ally of the elder Bolsonaro and said he had been following the election "very closely." Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern that the Trump Administration has tried to tip the scales in favor of the Bolsonaros, citing tariffs Trump linked to the elder Bolsonaro's coup trial and a fresh 25% levy on Brazilian goods weeks before the vote.

Yet the kinship may be shallower than it looks. Oliver Stuenkel, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tells TIME that politics in the U.S. and Brazil have been "uncannily similar for the past decade," but that doesn’t necessarily mean Trump will get what he wants.

"I think that you're going to have a rapprochement on the personal level, on the symbolic level," Stuenkel says. "At the same time, what I've been seeing across Latin America, talking to diplomats in countries currently governed by pro-Trump presidents, is that you do have a lot of the rituals, but then you also continue doing business with China."

Trump would likely welcome a Bolsonaro victory as a boost to his "Donroe Doctrine," his second Administration's push to reassert U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. But Stuenkel doubts it will change Brazil’s trajectory.

"When you look under the hood, I continue to see Latin America shifting away from the United States," he says. "It's very visible in opinion polls, companies diversifying in response to U.S. tariffs and all that. Also, more limited migration ties."

"Bottom line: Trump is not reversing the fact that U.S. influence is waning in Latin America," he adds.

ONE NUMBER

24%

Just 24% of Hispanic Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday. It is the lowest share among the group in either of Trump’s two terms, and comes two years after gains among Hispanic voters helped him win back the White House.

SOURCE: REUTERS/IPSOS

A VIRAL MOMENT

Campaign leak

Leaked audio obtained by POLITICO appears to capture Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton complaining that he has little control over his campaign, which he said is being directed by Washington, D.C.

AMINI

Across the Global South, Amini is working to ensure nations are not left out of their digital future. From climate intelligence to sovereign AI, Amini is building the infrastructure countries need to own their data, strengthen public services and create economic opportunity on their own terms.

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