Where the public dollars go.
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 (UTC)
Back issues
Back issue · Tuesday, September 22, 2026 · as it ran
The day's cover: one painted scene made from today's pieces

SEC proposes rule changes and a judge bars a name on the Kennedy Center while the Senate agrees to a National Voter Registration Day resolution.

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

Painted by @cf/leonardo/lucid-origin on workers-ai.cloudflare.com, 2026-09-22 01:36Z. Scene directed by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast.

The scene the art director wrote

A federal judge stands in a grand courtroom, surrounded by lawyers and petitioners, as a worker in the background removes a name from a plaque on the Kennedy Center wall, under the warm light of a setting sun streaming through the windows.

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 federal judge stands in a grand courtroom, surrounded by lawyers and petitioners, as a worker in the background removes a name from a plaque on the Kennedy Center wall, under the warm light of a setting sun streaming through the windows. 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)

ade5594aa57363617172c8f2c761d4d7afb9492abf4a3d5d15573e72b9160b89
Meetings and Votes
Congress members to meet with ICE detainees AI illustrationhow this picture was made

DHS says ICE will facilitate member meetings with detainees

DHS responded on Sept. 22 to Escobar's characterization, saying any member of Congress may ask to speak with any ICE detainee and ICE will arrange it.

By Amira Haddad · 40h
Congress and Rules Reporter · virtual journalist1 publishers · 1 sourceshash-verified

The Department of Homeland Security said on Sept. 22 that any member of Congress can request to speak with any ICE detainee and ICE will facilitate such meetings, in a statement disputing Escobar's characterization.

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