☰ Sections Got a tip? Search

Cranberry Journal

Saturday, October 17, 2026

Also in this edition
Markets
  • S&P 5007,659.44−1.09%
  • Nasdaq26,140.03−2.15%
  • Dow52,002.41−0.34%
  • 10-yr yield5.10%+0.18%
  • Crude$99.02+2.61%
At the close · Oct 17

National News

Top stories in National News

A tall land drilling rig with equipment and soil piles at its base stands in a bare ploughed field under heavy grey clouds. The Numbers

Oil Averaged $96 in the Spring. The Economies of America's Oil States Shrank.

In the second quarter, when West Texas crude averaged $95.65 a barrel, the current-dollar economies of Alaska, New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming and West Virginia grew faster than any others. Measured in real terms, West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota shrank, along with Kansas and Nebraska. Real mining output fell in every big energy state. The oil price raised the value of what they produced, not the amount.

By Thomas Gutierrez  

More in National News

A yellow diamond road sign reading FLOODED stands on muddy gravel beside a desert road running with water, as a white car drives through under a grey sky.

A Pacific Hurricane Made Landfall in Baja. Its Flood Watches Reach Iowa.

Hurricane Polo came ashore in Baja California Sur early on Tuesday and is expected to die over the mountains of northern Mexico within a day. Its moisture will not. On Tuesday morning the National Weather Service had flood watches in force across 470 forecast zones in 10 states, from Arizona to Iowa, and forecasters warned of "locally catastrophic flooding" in New Mexico and southern Colorado.

By Cory Chamberlain  

Rows of empty office cubicles with vacant chairs under fluorescent light

The Government Paid $6.7bn Last Year for Work Nobody Did

The Government Accountability Office estimates the deferred resignation programme cost $6.7bn in 2025, about 70 percent of the $9.5bn the federal government spent on paid administrative leave that year. Roughly 144,000 employees drew salaries while on leave before separating. GAO also says nobody can verify the savings, because the payroll data is not tracked that way.

By Cory Chamberlain  

A FEMA staff member at a laptop speaks with a resident across a desk at a disaster recovery centre.

The Plan to Halve FEMA Lost in Court Because Nobody Wrote Down Why

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully in directing FEMA to cut its workforce roughly in half. The record contained no reasoning for the cut, the officials who discussed it used Signal and deleted the messages, and the judge will now presume those messages would have shown unlawful conduct.

By Cory Chamberlain  

White roses and a small American flag placed in the incised names on the bronze parapet of the September 11 Memorial.

More People Have Now Died From That Day Than Died On It

At the Memorial this morning, families will read 2,983 names and the ceremony will hold seven moments of silence. Six mark the attacks. The seventh is for those who have died since, of illnesses traced to the dust — a number that passed the toll of the day itself some years ago and is still rising.

By Cory Chamberlain  

Airmen in hard hats standing in an electrical substation, one reaching up with a long insulated hot stick to operate a switch, with transformers and switchgear behind them.

You Cannot Ban the Equipment You Cannot Find

An executive order can stop the next transformer at the border on the day it is signed. The equipment already energised across the grid is governed by a different phrase in the same document, and that phrase has no deadline attached.

By Cory Chamberlain  

The domed California State Capitol in Sacramento at the end of a tree-lined lawn, with traffic lights in the foreground.

California's Largest State Union Voted 96.2 Per Cent to Strike on 21 October. It Will Not Say How Many of Its 100,000 Members Voted.

SEIU Local 1000, which represents about 100,000 California state employees, said on 8 October that 96.2 per cent of members who voted authorised a one-day strike on Wednesday 21 October. The union has not disclosed turnout, its contract expired on 30 June, and the state labour board has sent the dispute to mediation. No mediation date has been announced.

By Margaret Holloway  

US government building facade

The Federal Workforce Shrank by 272,000. The Cost Was $9.5 Billion in Pay for Not Working.

The federal government paid employees $9.5 billion in paid administrative leave in 2025, a sixfold increase from 2023, as part of the DOGE-driven workforce reduction effort. The Department of Government Efficiency formally shut down on July 4. Eighteen of twenty-two major agencies lost more than 10 percent of their workforce. The Department of Education lost more than 45 percent.

By Daniel Okafor  

Workers on a manufacturing production floor

Manufacturers Are Coming Home. The Workers Are Not There Yet.

Thirty-six percent of OEM manufacturers had reshored or were actively reshoring in 2026, up from twenty-nine percent in 2025, according to the Reshoring Initiative's second annual survey. The constraint is not capital. Sixty-six percent of respondents rated hiring skilled technicians as very difficult or at crisis levels.

By Daniel Okafor  

Construction workers on a building site

The Workforce Shrank. The Jobs Did Not.

A 596,000 decline in foreign-born workers since January 2026, combined with a parallel drop in labor force participation among US-born workers, has left employers in construction, healthcare, agriculture, and manufacturing unable to fill open positions. The labor shortage the crackdown was supposed to solve has deepened.

By Daniel Okafor  

A coastal residential street under a foot or more of standing water, the centre line just visible beneath the surface, with stilted beach houses, mailboxes and utility poles on both sides under a flat grey sky.

Eight-Tenths of a Foot Below Sandy: The Nor'easter, Product by Product

A 995-millibar coastal low is driving major coastal flooding from the Delmarva to southern New England across multiple high-tide cycles. Emergency declarations cover eight New York counties and eight in New Jersey. Every figure below is tied to the National Weather Service product that carried it and the hour it was issued, because forecasts move and this one has several tide cycles left to run.

By Daniel Okafor  

A scattered pile of red and white "I Voted" stickers on a dark surface.

In Thirty-Six Races This Year, Being a Woman Decides Nothing

More than 700 women are on the ballot for Congress and governor this year, a record. In 36 congressional races both candidates are women. That second number is the one that describes something new, because it is where the variable everybody measures drops out of the contest entirely.

By Margaret Holloway  

Workers walking through a large distribution warehouse lined with pallet racking, captured with motion blur.

The Best Organising Year in Decades Still Loses Ground

Workers won NLRB elections at the highest rate in decades last year — 93,517 of them, up 19 percent. Union density is 10.0 percent, and 14.7 million members in a workforce of about 147 million. Both numbers are real. One is a flow and the other is a stock, and the arithmetic between them is unforgiving.

By Margaret Holloway  

National Guard troops clearing snow after a blizzard.

A State Cannot Budget for a Rule Announced After the Snow

Massachusetts asked in April for a major disaster declaration covering a February blizzard that dropped up to 37 inches and cut power to about 290,000 households. The request was denied in July and the appeal denied on Thursday, on the ground that winter weather is not new to the Northeast and federal aid is not a backstop for routine state budgeting.

By Cory Chamberlain