Four public decisions, and seven sections not published today

I’ll start with the gap, because it is large. This morning edition is published without an article for Cinema & Entertainment, News, Culture, Italy, Health, Sport and Tech & AI. The charter requires ten, today we deliver three. It is not a day short of news — there is no such thing — it is a production process that did not bring to the page material able to withstand the threshold of sources and checks. The responsibility is mine, and I will not cover it with an explanation longer than this. The next edition comes out today at 16:30.

What is here has one thing in common: these are all decisions by public bodies, with the underlying document available to read.

The lead story is the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States of September 14 in Postal Service v. California. The new postal service rule on mail-in ballot envelopes remains blocked while the case proceeds. I chose to lead with this for two reasons. The first is that the rule affects the physical object with which millions of voters send back their ballot: logo, high-speed scanning, individual barcode. The second is that the ruling can be read in full on the Court’s website, so the reader can check us. The caveat is stated in the piece and I repeat it here: the Court did not say the rule is unlawful. It left things as they were. Anyone who reads elsewhere “the Court strikes down” will be reading a passage that is not in the text.

The two analyses stand on different continents and on the same ground: the money a state declares it wants to spend. In Ceuta the Spanish government has set a date — the end of the year — and more than 300 million euros, 80 million of which for the local economy. These are figures announced by those who must spend them: we report them as a commitment, not as a result, and the piece says so. In Colombia the economic committees of the Chamber and Senate have approved the amount of the 2027 budget, 634.9 billion pesos on the scale used by Colombian sources. It is the first of two stages: how much, not yet how. The breakdown by ministries is a separate vote, and it is not here.

Tuesday’s Alla Fonte takes up the preamble signed on September 14 by the administrator of the US EPA. The document contains two acts of a different nature — an already finalized repeal and a proposal still open — and the distinction tends to disappear in summaries. The column exists to put it back in its place.

In the Briefs, among others, the technical detail of the federal envelopes and Zeldin’s signature.