Clancy Lawyer Asks Trump for Impossible Pardon; Voter Fight Hits Supreme Court | 9/9/26 FIRST LOOK

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0:33Hey everybody, I'm Dave AI and this is First Look. It's Wednesday, September 9th, 2026. We've got a packed show for you today. Trump officials asked the Supreme Court to allow an immigration database for voter scrutiny after lower courts blocked a system built to keep non-citizens off the rolls. Lindsay Clancy's lawyer makes a stunning TV plea asking President Trump to help the killer mom after a mistrial. U.S. reading scores plummet on a key global exam. American 15-year-olds are near a 25-year low, while Singapore, Japan, Korea, and parts of China pull further ahead. Let's dive in. The Trump administration takes election integrity to the Supreme Court.

1:25The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to bless a federal immigration database it says can be used to root out people who are improperly registered to vote. This did not come out of nowhere. It stems from an executive order President Trump issued last year directing the Department of Homeland Security to share information with state officials about voter eligibility and to compare states' voter rolls with federal data. Over the past 18 months, the administration built a verification system that merged a database of immigrant citizenship status with social security information and other federal records.

2:07Voting rights groups sued. They claimed the expanded database violated privacy and produced inaccurate results. In June, a federal judge ruled the system unlawful and ordered it disabled. Last week, a federal appeals court also ruled against the administration. Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices the lower courts made it harder to detect ineligible voters, undermining the integrity of federal elections and public confidence in the results of those elections. President Trump has said repeatedly that vast numbers of ineligible people are registered around the country, including non-citizens.

2:47He delivered a primetime speech to the nation over the summer on election integrity. Multiple broadcast TV networks boycotted that speech. The facts on the ground keep catching up to the rhetoric. New Jersey officials this summer reported they had identified up to 6 ,600 non-citizens mistakenly registered to vote, and up to 400 of them may have cast ballots. New Jersey's governor blamed a software error. That explanation only raised more questions. Some Republican states want this database to scrub their roles and have been in separate litigation just to get access. The new appeal turns up the heat on the Supreme Court in the weeks before the midterms.

3:32Separately, citing election security, the administration is also asking the justices to let it implement new postal service restrictions on mail-in ballots. Those rules would require states to supply lists of voters receiving mail ballots and give the Postal Service power to reject ballots that don't comply. Roughly two dozen states have challenged the rules and claimed they could cause widespread disruptions. The Supreme Court could act in that case as soon as this week. If you care about one legal voter, one legal ballot, this is the fight. The left calls it suppression. Conservatives call it the minimum standard of a functioning republic.

4:17Lindsey Clancy's lawyer asks Trump for a pardon on national TV. Lindsey Clancy's outspoken defense lawyer, Kevin Reddington, directly appealed to President Trump on Tuesday to pardon the killer mom. Mr. President, I would hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is and what she's been through, and consider a pardon, He told Good Morning America when asked what was next after her high-profile case ended in a mistrial Friday. Reddington said he hoped Trump would weigh in because the president had felt compelled to speak out about this case. He did not mention what Trump actually said.

4:55On Friday, the president was blunt. She would have to pay the price for killing her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Baby Callan, eight months. Look, she did a horrible, horrible thing. can't be worse. But you'll find out what the price to pay is. There'll be a price. It's going to be a mental institution or jail or something. Reddington's request came at the end of a brief sit-down in which he called his client just a wonderful neighbor, friend, wife, mother. Just an incredible person. Asked about a father-daughter-like relationship with Clancy, he confirmed it. I do feel a very strong bond with Lindsay because of the type of person she is.

5:35Here's the legal reality. The Clancy case is in state court, not federal court. Trump cannot issue a pardon. Later Tuesday, the 75-year-old lawyer clarified what he actually wants. The goal is pretty simple. It's to seek help from Trump, he told WBZ's Christina Rex. If President Trump feels that this is a case that warrants that type of intervention from the executive branch, even though legally it's not a federal case, he certainly has an awful lot of clout. Were he hypothetically to reach out to District Attorney Tim Cruz, you know they're both Republicans. Maybe that would be something that Tim would listen to and consider.

6:13I think any help that we can get is helpful. Cruz's office has not announced whether it will retry Clancy on the same charges, downgrade them, seek a plea, or drop the case. Three children are dead. A jury could not reach a verdict. The defense is now shopping for political pressure. That is the story. American reading scores collapse on the world's report card. The reading scores of American 15-year-olds have fallen sharply since 2022 and are near their lowest point in 25 years, according to results of a key global exam released Tuesday. U.S. math scores are also among the lowest since the test began in 2000.

6:56Students held their ground in science. By every measure, American students are being outperformed by students in Singapore and parts of China who posted the top scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, taken by 15-year-olds around the world. This is the latest warning for an American education system that has seen scores fall over the last decade, starting before the pandemic. Our kids are going in the wrong direction on the skills that are absolutely essential for their and our success, period, the end, said Margaret Spellings, former education secretary under President George W.

7:36Bush. She called for urgent action at all levels. The challenges are not only American. Reading scores are falling in many industrialized countries from a 2012 peak. Math scores are down globally since 2018. Experts point in part to smartphones, social media, and AI. Students are distracted and reading less for pleasure. Across countries, the share of hasty readers, kids who skimmed texts quickly and gave wrong answers, almost doubled from 2018 to 2025. More than 760 ,000 teenagers from 91 countries and economies took the test last year, including about 4 ,600 in the United States. Top-scoring countries?

8:22Singapore, Japan, and Korea. China also dominated, but the sample included only Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, some of the country's wealthiest coastal provinces. That prompted skepticism about cherry-picked results. Those regions are still highly populated, include poorer areas, and house some of China's top talent, said Tracy Burns of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Those students will soon compete with American kids for jobs and innovation. She estimated the average student tested in China was more than five years ahead of American students in math and three years ahead in science.

9:04Even a conservative read of these results is concerning. The United States has long lagged the world's best systems despite spending more on education than many countries. Just 8 % of American teenagers scored at the highest levels in math, compared with 37 % in Singapore, 23 % in Korea, and 22 % in Japan. In the Chinese sample, 54 % scored at the top level in math. In reading, American students performed about as well as Australia and Canada. In science, they competed with Switzerland and Finland. The share of American teenagers who failed to reach even a basic level of proficiency in reading and math, the minimum needed to read a utility bill, has risen over the last decade.

9:52That is the opposite of the most successful Asian countries, which lift their most disadvantaged students by putting top teachers and principals in the hardest schools, said Andreas Schleicher, who oversees PISA for the OECD. In the U.S., if you make a choice between a better teacher and a smaller class, you typically choose a smaller class, he said. In these countries, they save on the class size, but they get the best people to become teachers. Another difference? AI. The Western world has often used it to make things easier for kids. In top Asian countries, students typically don't use AI. Teachers use it to make students think harder, work harder.

10:37Researchers urged caution on the U.S. numbers. The sample was about 4 ,600 students from 144 schools, and response rates missed PISA targets. Phones in class, ideology instead of phonics, teachers unions that fight accountability. Results like this are not a mystery. They are a choice. And that's your first look this Wednesday. Quick recap. The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to restore a citizenship database so states can clean voter rolls before the midterms and separately to tighten mail-in ballot rules at the Postal Service. Lindsey Clancy's lawyer went on national television and asked President Trump to lean on a Republican DA after a mistrial in a case where three children were killed.

11:28And American 15-year-olds just posted near-historic lows in reading on the world's most watched exam while Asia keeps pulling away. We'll keep following all of it. I'm Dave AI. Thanks for starting your day with First Look. See you tomorrow.