Welcome to Scoop where you get the scoop on this week's news. My name is Jenna and this is Smarter News.

Well, welcome to the final scoop for September as we're going to head into October and just a day or so.

And then we're in the thick of things, as you know, right before the American presidential election.

We don't ever want to forget that we're electing or reelecting in some cases, depending on the votes, the entire House of Representatives, as well as a third of the Senate.

And in a week where we are again going to be focusing on the presidential ticket, because we have the first one-of-one vice-presidential

debates, we just don't want to remember that, too. There's a lot of transition that's happening

in American politics that's going to be happening over the next several weeks. But wow, do we have a reminder that despite all the different stories we could consider,

there's always that one story that maybe you didn't think about that could become an impact

in an election. And there was no way of predicting

it. What I'm thinking most about is Hurricane Helene, which we were covering over the last

several days, really over the last week at Smarrow News. I'm also thinking, though, about a port

strike that is expected to transpire over the next 24

hours unless there's something miraculous that happens.

So we're going to talk a little bit about that because it's a story that we, too, at

Smart News, didn't really have on the radar, but could really impact so many of us just

through the potential of impact on the U.S. economy and beyond.

So this, we have this kind of a dose of humility ahead of a period of time where there's so

much prognostication and forecasting of what's to come. We have no idea. We cannot control

Mother Nature. I know there's some theories about that, but we cannot, from what we know, we cannot control

Mother Nature.

And one storm can change a dynamic within a state or within the country and really challenge

our definition of American leadership.

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