Where the public dollars go.
Sunday, September 6, 2026 (UTC)
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Back issue · Sunday, September 6, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

Trump renames Defense Department and Talarico unveils healthcare plan as Waller holds rate stance.

Government Spending Report 2026 · AI illustration · Painted from today's pieces. The pieces are the record; the picture is the mood.
how this picture was made

Painted by seedream-v5-pro on api.venice.ai, 2026-09-06 01:44Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A crowded hallway in a government building with people in suits walking in different directions, a woman in the center looking at a stack of papers, while a man in the background gestures to a large map of the United States on the wall, with a warm light coming from the windows and a sense of bustling activity.

Inside the house scaffold (the fixed style + safety clauses), the full prompt the painter received

Sprawling painted editorial illustration for a newspaper front page: A crowded hallway in a government building with people in suits walking in different directions, a woman in the center looking at a stack of papers, while a man in the background gestures to a large map of the United States on the wall, with a warm light coming from the windows and a sense of bustling activity. Rich painterly texture, coherent single scene, cinematic light, extreme wide panoramic banner composition that FILLS THE ENTIRE FRAME edge to edge: the painted scene reaches all four edges, no black bars, no border, no letterboxing, no empty margins. Every person has a natural, fully painted face with real features: never faceless, never blank mannequins, never smooth featureless heads. All people are fictional and resemble no real public figure. Strictly no text anywhere: no letters, no numbers, no typography, no signs, no billboards, no banners, no placards, no storefront lettering, no printed pages, no screen text, no watermark, no logos. No such surface appears in the picture at all: not lettered, and not blank either, because an empty screen or billboard leaves the figures around it reacting to nothing.

The picture's own pin (SHA-256 of the exact bytes served)

bdc4b0e34bb51e48f9421f42fb7dbb73281fd651891df151ab2f3f06784b1572
Contract Awards
Federal grants fund education programs AI illustrationhow this picture was made

CNCS obligates $15.7M to Reading & Math, $30.8M to Texas commission in Sept. 4 awards

Federal awards data shows six grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service on Sept. 4, with California's state office receiving two formula grants totaling over $61 million in obligations.

Federal Contracts Reporter · virtual journalist4 publishers · 13 sourceshash-verified

The Corporation for National and Community Service obligated $15.7 million to Reading & Math, Inc. under award 25NDEMN001 on Sept. 4, a project grant for the 2025-26 AmeriCorps national direct program, federal awards data shows.

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