Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Huge El Niño projected to cause 450,000 deaths in next six months
Huge El Niño projected to cause 450,000 deaths in next six months
“A super El Niño is projected to cause 451,000 heat deaths from September to February 2027, affecting Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India, Brazil, and the US. Researchers urge emergency measures to save lives.
New report predicts a heavy toll from Nigeria to the US – and comes on top of existing impacts of the climate crisis
More than 450,000 people are projected to die from the additional heat brought by the super El Niño in the next six months, according to estimates by climate scientists.
The toll is on top of the early deaths resulting from temperatures already driven up by the climate crisis. It will strike across the globe, from Indonesia to India, and Nigeria to the US. Many further deaths are expected from the droughts, wildfires and flooding that El Niños bring.
The heat deaths have been estimated at regional level, and the researchers said the projections therefore identified where measures to protect people could be put in place and save lives. Such actions could include better heat forecasts, cooling centres where people can shelter, increased staffing for medical facilities at the hottest times and protections for outdoor workers.
The El Niño currently heating up the planet burst through the highest temperature ever recorded for the phenomenon on Monday, several months before its expected peak. The heat is so much greater than previous events that scientists have called it “mind-blowing” and “Godzilla-level”. El Niños are natural climate events but may be made worse by global heating.
“The estimate of 451,000 people is such a large number that it can be numbing, but it is made up of parents and children, grandparents and neighbours, people going to work, caring for families, and living their lives,” said Prof Michael Greenstone, co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab and at the University of Chicago, who co-authored the report.
The estimate of deaths is for the period September to February 2027, which is when current temperature forecasts end. But elevated levels of heat deaths are expected to continue until June or July 2027.
The most affected countries in the next six months are the tropical nations of Nigeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India and Brazil. The US is in the top 20 most affected nations, with 3,500 projected additional heat deaths. More broadly, the Sahel region in Africa and south-east Asia are heavily affected.
The El Niño is also a “postcard from our future”, the researchers said, pushing up temperatures to the level the climate crisis is projected to deliver in 20 years’ time.
“Increasing emergency response and better targeting our efforts can save many lives this year,” said report co-author Dr Tamma Carleton at the University of California, Berkeley. “But 20 years from now, once today’s extreme temperatures become the new normal, we don’t want to be in a constant state of emergency.. We need to mobilise now to design, deploy and evaluate the tools that will save lives in the years ahead.”
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The projections were made using peer-reviewed methods that track the month-by-month relationship between temperature and additional heat deaths in 24,378 regions across the world. This was combined with the forecasts for higher temperatures due to El Niño in the months ahead. The baseline was the number of heat deaths in the average month from 1996 to 2025.
“People have been able to forecast when there’s going to be shocks to crops, and give advance warning of that,” said Greenstone. “This new report is opening the door to being able to do it for an even more important outcome – I would say the most important outcome – which is death.” The report will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, but Greenstone said that, given the urgency of the situation, “it would have been irresponsible to sit on it”.
Food supplies will also be hit by El Niño, with the World Food Programme warning in August that its impacts were likely to push about 50 million people into acute hunger and drive prices up. A major El Niño in 1877-1878 led to more than 50m deaths due to drought and famine, with India, Brazil and China severely affected.
Prof Friederike Otto, at Imperial College London, told the Guardian on Monday: “The [current El Niño] event is a huge redistribution of energy in the climate system and is dangerous, because it is unfolding on top of a much warmer, human-influenced climate system.
“So, in many places around the world we will see never-before-experienced heat extremes, with all their consequences on health, food security and water stress. El Niño comes and goes, but as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels, it occurs on an increasingly hotter baseline, making it much more difficult for communities to deal with the consequences.”
The Guardian’s climate forum 2026: On Tuesday 20 October, join Damian Carrington, and our panel of experts—including Professor Andy Haines, Katie White MP, Asad Rehman, Shruti Suresh Gareth Thomas and Amy Fairman for a hopeful and solutions-focused evening. Book tickets here or at guardian.live“
In Court Filing Defending Media Ban, White House Says Access Is a ‘Privilege’
In Court Filing Defending Media Ban, White House Says Access Is a ‘Privilege’
“President Trump banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico for alleged conduct violations, asserting access is a privilege. The White House filed a defense; the outlets sued over First Amendment rights. Judge Kelly will hold a hearing Wednesday.
President Trump determined that CNN, MS NOW and Politico were in “violation of the standards of professionalism and decorum” expected at the White House.
White House officials said in a court filing Tuesday that President Trump had determined that CNN, MS NOW and Politico had breached standards of conduct, leading to their expulsion from the White House grounds.
The alleged violations, said the filing, include “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”
“Access to the White House is a privilege — not a right,” reads the filing, which argues that Mr. Trump’s action against the three news outlets does not violate the First Amendment and aligns with a long history of presidents favoring some journalists over others.
The filing, furthermore, claims that the White House’s denial of access is a preliminary matter and that the outlets have until Friday to contest the decision.
The clash began last Friday, when Mr. Trump announced on Truth Social, the platform that he owns, that he would ban the three outlets, saying they “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES.” On Saturday morning, journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds and had their press passes confiscated.
By Monday morning, the news organizations had sued, arguing that the president’s ban “brazenly discriminates based on editorial viewpoint,” and was an affront to their First Amendment rights. They said that the move had blindsided its targets, depriving the outlets of the warning that any such drastic action required. They “received zero advance notice that the president would ban a news organization from the White House if he dislikes its coverage,” according to the complaint.
U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, who was nominated in 2017 by Mr. Trump, will hold an emergency hearing on Wednesday to consider the media outlets’ request for a temporary court order undoing the access ban.
The government filing Tuesday night included copies of letters sent earlier in the day to each banned news outlet. In addition to accusing the organizations of failing to meet standards of conduct, the letters identified specific stories that allegedly either spread falsehoods or threatened national security. The letter to CNN, for example, cited a January 2026 story that “disclosed ‘top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker,” the letter reads.
One of MS NOW’s alleged infractions, according to a White House letter, was a June 2026 story claiming “a source said that President Trump ‘underestimated the willingness of Iran to resume conflict.’” Politico is accused of publishing a “document detailing funding for the White House ballroom containing intricate descriptions of how the Secret Service would invest in security improvements,” according to a White House letter.
The three media outlets did not immediately comment on the White House’s filing.
In their lawsuit, the media outlets argued that the White House had not afforded them due process to contest their expulsion. In its response, the White House claims that it has provided the companies with “sufficient post-deprivation process.”
But Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said, “they can’t suspend you and then give you a post hoc justification for it.”
In 2018, Judge Kelly ruled against Mr. Trump in another media access case. Mr. Trump had expelled CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House grounds. But Judge Kelly ordered his credentials restored, saying Mr. Trump hadn’t given Mr. Acosta enough notice to challenge the action.
Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social last week that in light of Judge Kelly’s ruling in the Acosta case, the government would “almost without question” have to appeal the upcoming ruling.
Other news organizations have responded to the ban with acts of support and solidarity. The consortium of five TV networks that covers the president as the so-called TV pool — ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News and CNN — suspended its immersive coverage of Mr. Trump, and some news outlets temporarily withheld publication of photos of Mr. Trump’s events.“
Monday, September 21, 2026
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
An NPR investigation finds the Justice Department has removed or withheld Epstein files related to President Trump.
The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR's investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.
The Justice Department declined to answer NPR's questions on the record about these specific files, what's in them and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ's stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.
Following NPR's reporting, the House Oversight Committee's ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., released a statement about the missing files.
"Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes," Garcia stated.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents.
Other files scrubbed from public view pertain to a separate woman who was a key witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Maxwell is seeking clemency from Trump.
Some of those documents were briefly taken down and put back online last week, while others remain hidden, according to NPR's comparison of the initial dataset from Jan. 30 with document metadata of those files currently on the Justice Department's website.
NPR does not name victims of sexual abuse.
When asked for comment about the missing pages and the accusations against the president, a White House spokeswoman told NPR that Trump "has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him."
"Just as President Trump has said, he's been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told NPR in a statement. "And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him. Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender."
The White House has previously pointed to a statement from the Justice Department that says the Epstein files contain "untrue and sensationalist claims" about the president.
In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."
First woman accuses Trump of sexual abuse
According to the newly released files, the FBI internally circulated Epstein-related allegations that mention Trump in late July and early August 2025. The list, collected from the FBI's National Threat Operations Center, included numerous salacious allegations. Agents marked most of the accusations as unverifiable or not credible.
But one lead was sent to the FBI's Washington office with the purpose of setting up an interview with the accuser. The lead was included in an internal PowerPoint slide deck detailing "prominent names" in the Epstein and Maxwell investigations last fall.
The woman who directly named Trump in her abuse allegation claimed that around 1983, when she was around 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump, "who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out."
Out of more than 3 million pages of files released by the Justice Department in recent months, this specific allegation against Trump appears only in copies of the FBI list of claims and the DOJ slideshow.
But a review of FBI case file logs and discovery documents turned over to Maxwell and her attorneys in the criminal case against her point to one place the claim could have come from — and how serious investigators took it.
The FBI interviewed this Trump and Epstein accuser four times. That is according to an FBI "Serial Report" and a list of Non-Testifying Witness Material in the Maxwell case that were also released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Only the first interview, conducted July 24, 2019, is in the public database. That interview does not mention Trump.
Of 15 documents listed in a log of the Maxwell discovery material for this first accuser, only seven are in the Epstein files database. Those missing also include notes that accompany three of the interviews. The discrepancy in the file for the Trump accuser was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.
According to NPR's review of three different sets of serial numbers stamped onto the files, there appear to be 53 pages of interview documents and notes missing from the public Epstein database.
In the first interview document, the woman discussed ways Epstein abused her as a girl and, in identifying him to investigators, showed a cropped photo of the disgraced financier. Her attorney said it was cropped because she "was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation."
The FBI agents noted it was a "widely distributed photograph" of Epstein with Trump.
A woman whose biographical details and description of Epstein's abuse found in the FBI interview also line up with details from a victim lawsuit. In the December 2019 filing, "Jane Doe 4" does not mention Trump, and the woman voluntarily dismissed her claims against Epstein's estate in December 2021.
Attorneys for this accuser declined to comment.
Elsewhere in the released Epstein files, someone in the FBI wrote on July 22, 2025, before the list and slide presentation were compiled, that Trump's name was in the larger case files and that "one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate."
Second accuser says she met Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The other woman whose mention of Trump made the DOJ's presentation appears in Maxwell discovery files released last month in what's known as a Testifying Witness 3500 material list.
In the first interview of six with the FBI conducted between September 2019 and September 2021, the second woman detailed how Epstein and Maxwell's abuse began while she was around 13 years old and attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts and described how, at one point, Epstein took her to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to meet him.
"EPSTEIN told TRUMP, 'This is a good one, huh,'" the interview report reads.
In a 2020 lawsuit against Epstein's estate and Maxwell, the second woman added that both men chuckled and she "felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why."
That interview was removed from the DOJ's public files some time after initial publication on Jan. 30 and was republished Feb. 19, according to document metadata.
The Justice Department told NPR the only reason any file has been temporarily removed is that it had been flagged by a victim or their counsel for additional review.
Multiple FBI interviews with other people refer to the second woman's meeting with Trump while she was a minor and being abused by Epstein. One interviewwith a fleeting mention of Trump was removed from the public database and subsequently restored last week, while another interview with the woman's mother is still offline. After publication, the Justice Department said, the file required additional redactions and will be reposted soon.
In that conversation, the mother recalled hearing that "a prince and DONALD TRUMP visited EPSTEIN's house," which made her "think that if they are there then how could EPSTEIN be a criminal," according to NPR's copy of the file that was first published.
The possible omission of files that mention these women's particular allegations against the president come as the Justice Department has warned about other documents it has published in full that include what it calls "untrue and sensationalist claims" about Trump.
At the same time, the Justice Department has removed and reuploaded thousands of pages in recent weeks to fix improperly redacted victim names. That includes documents related to the allegations from these two women, who separately say they were around 13 years old when Epstein first abused them.
Robert Glassman, who represents the woman who testified against Maxwell, sharply criticized the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
"This whole thing is ridiculous," he told NPR. "The DOJ was ordered to release information to the public to be transparent about Epstein and Maxwell's criminal enterprise network. Instead, they released the names of courageous victims who have fought hard for decades to remain anonymous and out of the limelight. Whether the disclosures were inadvertent or not—they had one job to do here and they didn't do it."
A DOJ spokesperson told NPR that the department is working "around the clock" to address concerns from victims and handle additional redactions of personally identifiable information that have been flagged.
"In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure," the statement reads. "That said, because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature."
NPR's Saige Miller and Ryan Lucas contributed reporting.
Have information to share about the Epstein files? Reach out to Stephen Fowler through encrypted communications on Signal at stphnfwlr.25. Please use a nonwork device.“
Sunday, September 20, 2026
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