New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a video of himself planting an olive tree alongside Palestinian families from Gaza, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of anti-Semitism in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
Published On 25 Sep 2026
UPDATED with more details: A bipartisan group of lawmakers officially introduced legislation Thursday to create a 20% federal film and TV incentive, a first-of-its-kind tax credit designed to lure production back to the United States.
The Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act would apply to compensation paid directly related to a production, excluding residuals. It also would create additional incentive “uplifts” of 5% for productions in opportunity zones or federally declared rural disaster areas. Other sweeteners are being proposed for productions across 10 or more states, as well as for producers of independent productions and for those who increase their domestic production “relative to a historical foreign base amount.”
Click here to read the proposed federal film and TV incentive bill.
Even though industry boosters have called for such an incentive for years, the prospects for the proposal gained new momentum late last month when President Donald Trump endorsed such legislation.
RELATED: Trump Celebrity Supporters: Famous Folks In Favor Of The 47th President
The co-sponsors of the incentive include Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Reps. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA), Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) and Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA). Other backers include Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY).
The productions eligible for the credit include film and TV productions where the total cost exceeds $1 million and where 75% of the production is in the U.S. There also are provisions for post-production and visual effects. Excluded are news, live sports, talk shows, daytime dramas, social media content, advertising and corporate videos.
The credits also can be transferred to another taxpayer, a key point for producers and studios. The authors also say that the credits can supplement state incentives, something Schiff has said will help U.S. incentives compete with those in other countries.
There still are challenges ahead, even with the backing of the president and members of both parties. The House already is in recess through the midterms, and the Senate is about to adjourn soon. The hope now is to attempt to pass legislation during the lame duck session at the end of the year, perhaps by attaching it to a major funding bill, Schiff said in a call with reporters Thursday.
“So much of the film industry, in particular, have moved overseas because the United States has simply not been willing or able to match the tax incentives,” Schiff said. “States have tried, and California has certainly tried, but can’t on its own make up for the very substantial incentives overseas.”
The bill has created some unusual alliances. Schiff said he worked with the White House on the legislation and credited Trump with generating the momentum for the long-in-the-works proposal for such an incentive. He also said that he worked with Jon Voight, who is serving as Trump’s “ambassador to Hollywood,” and Spencer Pratt, the reality star who ran for Los Angeles mayor earlier this year.
RELATED: Jon Voight Has A Plan To Save Hollywood: Will Trump Or Anyone Else Care?
The Wall Street Journal editorial page already has weighed in against the idea of film incentives, deeming them “handouts” to Hollywood. But backers of the tax credits are trying to highlight broad support across the industry and across party lines, while emphasizing the benefits to below-the-line crew members.
Friedman said on the press call, “I just want to remind people that the U.S. gives incentives to a variety of industries — semiconductor chips, the energy sector, pharmaceutical research and development. When we decide that an industry is important, we are the United States, and it’s up to us to determine what industries we’re going to support and what’s going to be in our country and not be in our country. This is a signature industry for the United States, and certainly for us in Los Angeles.”
MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement that the bill was “a true gamechanger for American creators, workers, and businesses — a federal incentive that supercharges production at home, fuels jobs and growth in local communities, and makes the United States a more competitive destination for the next generation of great film and television.”
Christopher Nolan, president of the Directors Guild of America, called the bill “the most significant legislative effort in a generation to promote domestic film and television production, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports. This moment is the cumulation of years of work by the entertainment guilds and unions, in partnership with the MPA and lawmakers from both parties.”
Schiff said that he didn’t think that the dynamics for getting the bill passed will change much depending on who wins control of Congress in the midterm, but said, “I would be more concerned, frankly, with whoever is in the majority, this getting kicked to next year.” Sanchez had talked of striking while the iron is hot, he noted, and “the iron is very hot right now. We’re all very focused on this. The president is focused on this. I wouldn’t want to see that bleed into next year.”
Spot Bitcoin ETFs traded in the U.S. continued their positive capital inflow for the sixth consecutive trading day, recording net inflows of approximately $190.7 million on September 24. According to SoSoValue data, BlackRock’s IBIT fund led the way in inflows into Bitcoin investment products.
The highest net inflow of the day was in BlackRock IBIT, with $162.6 million. Other net inflows included $12.9 million into Fidelity’s FBTC fund, $10.2 million into Morgan Stanley’s MSBT fund, $4.9 million into Franklin Templeton’s EZBC fund, and $4.1 million into Bitwise’s BITB fund.
In contrast, WisdomTree’s BTCW fund recorded a net outflow of $4 million. Despite the differing capital movements among the funds, the overall net flow of US spot Bitcoin ETFs remained in positive territory.
The inflow into Bitcoin ETFs was among the data showing continued investor demand for spot Bitcoin investment products. With net inflows of approximately $190.7 million on September 24, the positive flow streak reached six trading days.
A similar trend was observed in US spot Ether ETFs. According to SoSoValue data, spot Ether ETFs recorded net inflows of approximately $66.1 million on September 24th. This marked the fifth consecutive day of net inflows into Ether ETFs.
Among Ether ETFs, BlackRock’s ETHA fund stood out with a net inflow of $26.8 million. Fidelity’s FETH fund saw a net inflow of $21.5 million, while Grayscale’s Mini ETHE fund experienced a net inflow of $17.8 million.
The data revealed that both Bitcoin and Ether-focused spot ETFs continued to experience positive capital inflows in recent trading days.
*This is not investment advice.
UPDATED with White House response: Shortly after CNN said that it was denied access to cover the arrivals at the White House State Dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping tonight, MS NOW announced that it, too, had been barred.
The news came on the same day a federal judge ordered the White House to restore hard passes to the networks’ journalists and those of and Politico.
The coverage at the North Portico was scheduled to be open to pre-credentialed media, a wider scope of reporters and photographers than the White House press pool.
CNN White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said that they were told that their credential to cover the event was only for a camera and audio, not an editorial presence. She had requested that she and her producer attend.
“Again, no editorial presence, just a camera and audio, which certainly seems like a reaction to President Trump saying that he wanted the CNN coverage of the event,” Holmes said.
The White House said on its rapid response account that it was a “pre-credentialed event,” and “contrary to what the fake news wants you the believe, they don’t just get to have free rein into every part of the White House, every event, and every press call.”
The exclusion came after U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered that credentials for CNN, Politico and MS NOW be restored, ending Trump’s five-day ban of the outlets from the White House grounds.
The outlets returned to the White House around noon. Then, hours later, Trump complained that CNN and MS NOW were not covering the state visit.
Trump claimed that the networks “refused to cover one of the Biggest and Most Beautiful Events to take place in many years, the arrival at the White House of the Highly Respected President of China, Xi Jinping, and his beautiful wife, Madam Peng. The event was magnificent — Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there. That’s why they have such poor Ratings. Tonight’s State Dinner at the White House, for President Xi, will be spectacular!”
In fact, network correspondents said that they were not able to get access to the White House on Thursday morning. And after the White House pulled CNN from the TV pool on Monday, the other four networks in the pool declined to replace them in the rotation. That has meant a dearth of video images from the White House, as TV pool coverage has yet to resume.
Worldcoin [$WLD] had dropped in value by 11% in the early hours of the 24th of September, when bull activity was at its highest. The capital pullout has driven the decline across $WLD’s Spot and perpetual markets.
The impact on price could, in fact, exacerbate beyond the present dynamic, forcing the asset to trade even lower in the coming trading sessions.
Capital flow data showed that traders sold $280.92 million worth of $WLD in the perpetual market over the past 24 hours.
The sell-off was more than the total $WLD purchased within that same period, putting its netflow at a negative $41.45 million. This is a significant difference.
When capital moves out of an asset’s perpetual market at this scale, it can trigger further selling as demand fails to keep pace with selling pressure. The same trend is visible in the Spot market, where investors are also pulling out capital as demand struggles to catch up.
The Spot market saw massive inflows of $WLD across multiple exchange venues, bringing its total inflow to around $63.89 million, more than the outflow.
When there is more inflow than outflow in the Spot market, it confirms that there are more investors selling their assets in the Spot market than there are holding on for the long term.
The netflow here stays positive, with a reading of $6.02 million, adding another pressure to price, which is already not getting sufficient demand to prevent it from a decline.
Analyzing the perpetual market further through the lens of the Funding Rate data on the chart shows that there is a possible chance.
The conditions with the Funding Rate data show that while it plummeted significantly, dropping towards -0.0096% in the early hours of the day, it has since seen a recovery to -0.0046% on the chart while trending upward.
This drop-to-rise pattern shows that following a large exposure to short contracts, the amount of long contracts in the market rose within that period.
Still, this does not confirm a bullish reversal, as the presence on the negative side of the Funding Rate shows that short positions still dominate overwhelmingly.
Comparing liquidation data from long and short positions further weakens the optimism. According to CoinGlass, of the total $4.36 million liquidated, long positions lost roughly $4.32 million to the market compared to shorts that lost just $39,090 within this same period.
This means that for every $1 lost by shorts, longs lost around $110.50. Simplified further, it means that it is more profitable, if properly positioned, to short $WLD than to go long on the asset.
Investors’ best approach would be to maintain a cautious stance as capital outflow and liquidated capital put longs positioned at risk.
More concerning is the rising Funding Rate, which shows investors may be attempting a stop hunt to further liquidate long positions before continuing downwards.
$WLD faces continued selling pressure as perpetual and Spot Market Netflow data shows that capital moving against the asset.
Negative Funding Rate and heavier long liquidations keep downside risks elevated despite the recent recovery in funding.
Some individual victims lost $1 million or more after someone posing as Coinbase support warned that their crypto was at risk. On Sept. 23, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sentenced Ronald Spektor to four to 12 years in prison, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. Prosecutors put the losses at approximately $15,944,000 across about 100 U.S. victims.
The 23-year-old from Sheepshead Bay pleaded guilty Sept. 2 to all 31 counts of the indictment, including first-degree grand larceny and first-degree money laundering. Chun imposed the promised sentence over prosecutors’ objection; the district attorney’s office had sought seven to 21 years. Gonzalez said: “This case should put crypto scammers on notice: we will follow the digital trail wherever it leads and aggressively pursue those responsible.”
The sentencing follows Spektor’s indictment in the Coinbase impersonation case, announced in December. The district attorney’s office stated:
“The defendant was also ordered to forfeit cash, cryptocurrency and personal property with an estimated value of more than half a million dollars and make restitution of almost $16 million.”
The forfeiture and restitution are separate orders; the value of property subject to forfeiture is far below the amount victims lost. Under New York law, the four-to-12-year term sets a minimum and maximum: Spektor can first appear before the state parole board after serving the minimum, though credits for certain nonviolent offenders can move that date earlier, and release is at the board’s discretion.
Spektor contacted Coinbase users while pretending to represent the exchange, prosecutors said. He told them a hacker threatened their assets and directed them to move their funds into a new wallet. Victims believed they alone controlled those wallets, but Spektor could access them and emptied them after the transfers. Coinbase says its representatives will never call users to request a fund transfer.
Investigators traced the stolen assets through repeated swaps at cryptocurrency exchanges and onward to services where the funds could be gambled, converted to cash, or used to buy gift cards and digital assets. Prosecutors said large portions reached gambling platforms and online storefronts. In a separate Coinbase impersonation case involving fake websites, criminals obtained account credentials and verification codes; Spektor’s victims were persuaded to make the transfers themselves.
The false security warning was central to the theft. A person who sends crypto to an address supplied by an impersonator can lose control of the funds even when the transfer is made from a legitimate account. Phishing and wallet fraud schemes can use messages, calls, and lookalike services to make a fraudulent request appear to come from a trusted company.
Prosecutors linked Spektor to the thefts through transaction records, blockchain analysis, digital evidence, and search warrants. They said his home internet address was connected to multiple wallets that cryptocurrency was stolen from. Investigators also found that he recruited others on online forums to work as social engineers and bragged about the scheme on Telegram.
Messages recovered by investigators showed Spektor claimed to have lost $6 million in cryptocurrency through gambling and implied that he had made millions through scams. That figure reflects what he wrote, rather than a separate accounting of gambling losses. Prosecutors also said texts on his phone showed he disposed of a hardware wallet and bought another after online fraud allegations surfaced.
The Federal Trade Commission warns that scammers may claim money is at risk and direct people to move it to an account the scammer controls. The Brooklyn district attorney advised users to verify unexpected security claims through a company’s established channels before moving funds. That warning addresses the pressure used in Spektor’s scheme: victims were told their assets were at risk from a hacker and needed to move fast.
In a separate Singapore police operation involving Coinbase, officers reached more than 145 potential scam victims before funds were lost. The police-led effort used blockchain analysis and information from participating exchanges to identify people at risk. Authorities reported preventing more than $4.2 million in potential losses.
UPDATED with more details: A bipartisan group of lawmakers officially introduced legislation Thursday to create a 20% federal film and TV incentive, a first-of-its-kind tax credit designed to lure production back to the United States.
The Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act would apply to compensation paid directly related to a production, excluding residuals. It also would create additional incentive “uplifts” of 5% for productions in opportunity zones or federally declared rural disaster areas. Other sweeteners are being proposed for productions across 10 or more states, as well as for producers of independent productions and for those who increase their domestic production “relative to a historical foreign base amount.”
Click here to read the proposed federal film and TV incentive bill.
Even though industry boosters have called for such an incentive for years, the prospects for the proposal gained new momentum late last month when President Donald Trump endorsed such legislation.
RELATED: Trump Celebrity Supporters: Famous Folks In Favor Of The 47th President
The co-sponsors of the incentive include Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Reps. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA), Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) and Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA). Other backers include Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH) and Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY).
The productions eligible for the credit include film and TV productions where the total cost exceeds $1 million and where 75% of the production is in the U.S. There also are provisions for post-production and visual effects. Excluded are news, live sports, talk shows, daytime dramas, social media content, advertising and corporate videos.
The credits also can be transferred to another taxpayer, a key point for producers and studios. The authors also say that the credits can supplement state incentives, something Schiff has said will help U.S. incentives compete with those in other countries.
There still are challenges ahead, even with the backing of the president and members of both parties. The House already is in recess through the midterms, and the Senate is about to adjourn soon. The hope now is to attempt to pass legislation during the lame duck session at the end of the year, perhaps by attaching it to a major funding bill, Schiff said in a call with reporters Thursday.
“So much of the film industry, in particular, have moved overseas because the United States has simply not been willing or able to match the tax incentives,” Schiff said. “States have tried, and California has certainly tried, but can’t on its own make up for the very substantial incentives overseas.”
The bill has created some unusual alliances. Schiff said he worked with the White House on the legislation and credited Trump with generating the momentum for the long-in-the-works proposal for such an incentive. He also said that he worked with Jon Voight, who is serving as Trump’s “ambassador to Hollywood,” and Spencer Pratt, the reality star who ran for Los Angeles mayor earlier this year.
RELATED: Jon Voight Has A Plan To Save Hollywood: Will Trump Or Anyone Else Care?
The Wall Street Journal editorial page already has weighed in against the idea of film incentives, deeming them “handouts” to Hollywood. But backers of the tax credits are trying to highlight broad support across the industry and across party lines, while emphasizing the benefits to below-the-line crew members.
Friedman said on the press call, “I just want to remind people that the U.S. gives incentives to a variety of industries — semiconductor chips, the energy sector, pharmaceutical research and development. When we decide that an industry is important, we are the United States, and it’s up to us to determine what industries we’re going to support and what’s going to be in our country and not be in our country. This is a signature industry for the United States, and certainly for us in Los Angeles.”
MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement that the bill was “a true gamechanger for American creators, workers, and businesses — a federal incentive that supercharges production at home, fuels jobs and growth in local communities, and makes the United States a more competitive destination for the next generation of great film and television.”
Christopher Nolan, president of the Directors Guild of America, called the bill “the most significant legislative effort in a generation to promote domestic film and television production, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports. This moment is the cumulation of years of work by the entertainment guilds and unions, in partnership with the MPA and lawmakers from both parties.”
Schiff said that he didn’t think that the dynamics for getting the bill passed will change much depending on who wins control of Congress in the midterm, but said, “I would be more concerned, frankly, with whoever is in the majority, this getting kicked to next year.” Sanchez had talked of striking while the iron is hot, he noted, and “the iron is very hot right now. We’re all very focused on this. The president is focused on this. I wouldn’t want to see that bleed into next year.”
Block has joined the x402 Foundation and added Bitcoin Lightning support to the payment protocol as the company expands its push into payments for AI agents.
Block on Thursday said Lightning is suited to the low-cost, high-volume payments that agentic commerce will depend on.
“Bringing Lightning to x402 is a concrete step toward making Bitcoin everyday money for people and the agents acting on their behalf, and we’re excited to help the industry build on it,” said Steve Lee, head of Block’s Bitcoin development initiative Spiral.
x402 is an open payment standard that enables AI agents and web services to autonomously pay for API access, data and digital services.
Block joins Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and crypto companies including Coinbase and the Solana Foundation in backing the x402 Foundation, which launched in April under the Linux Foundation.
The move builds on Block’s participation in the Universal Commerce Protocol, an effort to enable AI-driven commerce for small businesses, according to the company’s announcement.
An Iowa judge has tossed out Donald Trump‘s lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer, concluding that the president and his allies “stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability.”
Trump has sued over Selzer’s pre-election 2024 poll that showed Kamala Harris ahead by three points. As it turned out, Trump won Iowa by more than 13 points. Trump filed suit under a state consumer fraud law, and Rep. Marianne Miller-Meeks (R-IA) later joined his case as another defendant, as did former State Sen. Bradley Zaun.
Iowa District Court Judge Scott Beattie wrote in his opinion, issued on Wednesday, “Election polling is speech protected by the First Amendment, both because it involves a conversation between a pollster and a voter and because the poll itself is speech. Reporting such a poll during a presidential and congressional election year is speech about a matter of public concern, occupying the summit of the pyramid of First Amendment values. The First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.”
Trump claimed that because of the poll, his campaign devoted more resources to the state. But the judge rejected the notion that the poll was commercial speech.
The judge wrote that the lawsuit “identifies no act any Plaintiff took because of a poll. Roughly seventy-two hours separated the first publication from the close of the election. Within that period, according to reporting the Petition relies upon, President Trump publicly rejected the poll as ‘a fake poll’ conducted by ‘a Trump hater’ who had ‘oversampled, by a lot, Democrats.’ A party who publicly called the poll false did not rely on it, whether or not it was fabricated.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said that the president planned to take his case to the Iowa Supreme Court “to see it through to a just and winning conclusion.”
The Des Moines Register and Gannett “knowingly ran a phony poll from the now disgraced Democrat pollster Ann Selzer in a unlawful attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election and to defraud Americans into believing Kamala Harris was winning the state of Iowa and nationwide, mere hours before she lost Iowa and the overall election by huge margins,” the spokesperson said. “This scam was designed to damage President Trump’s dominant campaign in the final days of the race.”
Selzer and the Register have denied such claims.
Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who led Selzer’s defense, said in a statement, “We’re pleased that the court recognized what we’ve said all along: This lawsuit was laughable from the beginning and never should have been brought. The First Amendment does not allow anyone in government, least of all the president, to punish people under the banner of ‘fake news.’”
Selzer said in a statement, “Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome. What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected.” She added that she was grateful that the judge’s ruling “recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference.”
Former President Barack Obama thanked reporters in his final news conference as president, telling them, “You’re not supposed to be sycophants. You’re supposed to be skeptics,” and, “You’re not supposed to be complimentary, but you’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power.”
In September 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his efforts to control how the news media covers him by banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House. The outlets sued the Trump administration in response, calling it a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
Critics of Trump have compared his hostility toward the media with former President Barack Obama’s handling of journalists. For example, one Facebook post (archived) said “that’s how a real man deals with the press” beneath a purported quote from Obama at his last briefing with White House reporters in 2017:
I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I’ve enjoyed every story that you have filed, but that’s the point of this relationship. You’re not supposed to be sycophants. You’re supposed to be skeptics. You’re supposed to ask me tough questions. You’re not supposed to be complimentary, but you’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power.
Users made similar posts (archived) referencing Obama’s apparent words from that news conference on Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived).
The quote about the importance of a press critical of the president is correctly attributed to Obama.
In a video of Obama’s final news conference as president available on the Obama White House YouTube channel, Obama says the quote at 1:48.
What Obama says matches transcripts kept by the American Presidency Project and the Obama White House archive (emphasis ours):
But I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I’ve enjoyed every story that you have filed. But that’s the point of this relationship. You’re not supposed to be sycophants, you’re supposed to be skeptics. You’re supposed to ask me tough questions. You’re not supposed to be complimentary, but you’re supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power and make sure that we are accountable to the people who sent us here.
And you have done that. And you’ve done it, for the most part, in ways that I could appreciate for fairness even if I didn’t always agree with your conclusions. And having you in this building has made this place work better. It keeps us honest. It makes us work harder. It made us think about how we are doing what we do and whether or not we’re able to deliver on what’s been requested by our constituents.
For further reading, we recently investigated a claim that former President Joe Biden revoked press passes and compared his administration’s changes with Trump’s recent ban.
