Nation and world news – at a glance – for September 5

Texas attorney general sues to stop voter registration push

(NYTimes) — Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas went to court Wednesday to try to stop county leaders in San Antonio from sending out more than 200,000 voter registration applications to unregistered residents of Bexar County. The lawsuit followed a letter Paxton sent days earlier warning Bexar County officials, most of whom are Democrats, against proceeding with the mailing. The county’s governing commissioners voted 3-to-1 Tuesday to approve the proposal anyway. Paxton has also threatened to sue Harris County, which includes the Democratic stronghold of Houston, where officials have been weighing a similar effort to expand the number of registered voters before the November election.

Shootings on highway near Seattle injure 5 people

(NYTimes) — A string of seemingly random shootings along Interstate 5 in Washington state Monday injured at least five people and struck up to seven vehicles, police said. The shootings occurred in two bursts, when vehicles traveling between Seattle and Tacoma were targeted by a shooter apparently firing at random. The first series of shootings occurred around 8:30 p.m. local time, when three vehicles were struck with bullets while driving on I-5 near Seattle. In one vehicle, a person was grazed with a bullet and another was injured by broken glass; in another vehicle, a woman was critically injured. More shootings occurred around 11 p.m.

A democracy with everything but a choice

(NYTimes) — In November, voters in rural Perry County, Missouri, will face a ballot with candidates for a bevy of local offices. All the candidates in the uncontested races are Republicans. Amid the feverish handicapping of an election often called crucial to the future of American democracy, Missouri tells a story repeated time and again across a deeply polarized country where it can feel futile to run in a stronghold of the other party. In half of all races for partisan offices, candidates are elected without opposition. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats failed to field a single candidate for half of all partisan offices — well over three times the rate of Republican no-shows.

Biden expected to block U.S. Steel takeover

(NYTimes) — President Joe Biden is preparing to block an attempt by Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel on national security grounds, according to three people familiar with the matter. A decision to block the takeover would come after months of wrangling among lawmakers, business leaders and labor officials over whether a corporate acquisition by a company based in Japan could pose a threat to national security. A move by Biden to block the deal on those grounds could roil relations between the two nations at a moment when the United States has been trying to deepen ties with Japan amid China’s growing influence in East Asia.

Internet archive loses court appeal in fight over online lending library

(NYTimes) — When libraries across the country temporarily closed in the early days of the pandemic, the Internet Archive, an organization that digitizes and archives such materials as webpages and music, had the idea to make its library of scanned books free to read in an online database. The question of that library’s legality became a long-running saga that may have finally ended Wednesday, when a New York appeals court affirmed that the Internet Archive violated copyright laws by redistributing those books without a licensing agreement. A final appeal could potentially be taken to the Supreme Court.

With new Taliban manifesto, Afghan women fear the worst

(NYTimes) — No education beyond the sixth grade. No employment in most workplaces. No long-distance travel if unaccompanied by a male relative. No leaving home if not covered from head to toe. And now, the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, according to a manifesto released late last month that codifies all of the Taliban’s decrees restricting women’s rights. A majority of the prohibitions have been in place for much of the Taliban’s three years in power. But for many women, the release of the document feels like a nail in the coffin for their dreams and aspirations.

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