Afternoon audio brief for Tuesday, September 29, 2026 — tap play above to listen with slides and subtitles. Here's what happened: Jack Smith went before the Senate, consumer confidence hit a twelve-year low, and a tropical flood threat is building across the Southwest. Six stories, in four minutes.
Former special counsel Jack Smith testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, his first public accounting of the investigations that led to criminal charges against President Trump. Smith told lawmakers his work proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that Trump engaged in "serious crimes," and said he would not "be silenced" by Trump's threats of prosecution. Republicans running the hearing framed it as an inquiry into how Smith's probes were conducted. The testimony puts the stalled federal cases back at the center of Washington's political fight, with millions of viewers watching a live broadcast that would have been unthinkable a year ago. (CBS News; additional reporting from CNN, LA Times, NYT)
American consumers turned sharply more pessimistic this month. The Conference Board's consumer confidence index fell to its lowest reading since 2014, according to the WSJ, with CNBC reporting the slide was driven by escalating fears over rising prices and the job market. Elevated gas and everyday-goods prices are weighing on households' outlooks. The reading matters because consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of US economic activity — when confidence drops this far, economists watch for pullbacks in big-ticket purchases, and the mood shift lands squarely in the middle of midterm season. (WSJ; additional reporting from CNBC, ABC News, Bloomberg)
The remnants of Hurricane Polo are dragging a plume of deep tropical moisture toward the Southwest, and forecasters are warning of life-threatening flash flooding in the region. The Weather Channel maps the moisture surge hitting the Southwest on Tuesday, while FOX Weather's timeline shows the dangerous, tropically-enhanced rain stretching toward the Southern Plains and Midwest in the days that follow. USA Today reports a huge "hybrid storm" will form over the US as the system merges. Communities from New Mexico — where flooding has already been reported near Newcomb — to the Midwest should monitor local warnings through the next seventy-two hours. (The Washington Post; additional reporting from FOX Weather, The Weather Channel, USA Today)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that a "foreign actor" was involved in the apparent terror plot near RAF Fairford, the US bomber base in rural England that became the center of a major security scare. The New York Times and WSJ describe the quiet English villages and towns around the base that were rattled by evacuations over the weekend. Some evacuated residents are now returning home, according to the BBC, while US and UK investigators continue the probe. With American strategic bombers stationed at Fairford, the incident has direct US national-security stakes and keeps transatlantic counterterrorism cooperation in focus. (Fox News; additional reporting from NYT, WSJ, BBC)
The administration's ban on roughly one billion dollars' worth of Canadian imports went into effect Tuesday, CNN reports — everything from Canadian whisky to motorcycles, with about eight hundred million dollars of last year's imports being alcoholic beverages. AP and CNBC document the full list of barred products as the tit-for-tat trade fight with Ottawa escalates. The Hill notes the move followed President Trump calling Canada "one of the worst countries in the entire world." For consumers, expect Canadian bottles to start disappearing from US shelves in the coming weeks; for border-state retailers and importers, it's the latest and sharpest shock in a fast-moving trade war. (CNN; additional reporting from AP, CNBC, The Hill)
Measles is at a thirty-five-year high in the United States, and the CDC has now reported two deaths from the disease, Al Jazeera reports. The largest cluster is Pennsylvania's outbreak, which has crossed nine hundred confirmed infections — ABC News counted thirteen new cases in the state's latest update, and the New York Times has tracked the outbreak's growth toward a thousand. Health officials are urging families to verify their vaccination records; measles is among the most contagious viruses known, and the current surge is concentrated largely among unvaccinated communities. (Al Jazeera; additional reporting from NYT, ABC News, Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
The Stateside Beat Audio · 2026-09-29 · afternoon · Narrated edition, compiled from CBS News, WSJ, The Washington Post, Fox News, CNN, and Al Jazeera.
