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Millions Gear Up to Take Part in September's Global Climate Strikes
Millions will take part in global climate strikes on the 20th + 27th September, and the "Week for Future" in between. Organisers say that it is on course to be the largest global mobilization against climate breakdown, with over 6000 people in 150 countries pledging to organise events to date.
Global
Millions will take part in global climate strikes on the 20th + 27th September, and the "Week for Future" in between. Organisers say that it is on course to be the largest global mobilization against climate breakdown, with over 6000 people in 150 countries pledging to organise events to date.
The weeklong movement will surround the UN Climate Summit being held on the 23rd of September in New York, which aims to meet the climate challenge by accelerating actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
"It is time for world leaders to wake up to the truth of the climate crisis. By demonstrating people's power we will make this week a turning point in history. The climate crisis is an emergency. We have to act like it so we will stop our business as usual and show governments what people want: climate justice. This September, millions of us will walk out of homes and workplaces onto the streets and demand an end to the age of fossil fuel." say school strikers.
The range of actions is huge: from people downing tools and walking out of work to join strikes, rallies, music concerts and marches. From teach ins in libraries, people's assemblies discussing actions and policies benefiting their local communities, protests targeting fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate crisis, and the banks that fund them; to spending the day raising awareness in communities and pushing for solutions to the climate crisis that have justice and equity at their heart.
"This shouldn't be just the children's responsibility. Now, the adults also need to help us. We are calling for them to strike from their work, we need everyone. There is nothing we can't do, iIf not you, then who else, if not now, then when? Greta Thunberg
Support for the strikes and week of future has been growing with parents, academics, bakers, trade unions, doctors, farmers, caretakers, celebrities, and teachers among those organising for September 20-27.
Unions across the globe are building solidarity with the school strikers and are now gearing up with inspiring action plans to support the climate strikes.
Pioneering companies and banks have also declared themselves closed for business so employees can join youth strikers in the streets.
Throughout the week the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice will also take hundreds of actions around the world as part of its annual Reclaim Power mobilisations calling for the transformation of the energy system.
Quotes:
-I am joining the strikes because I believe it's time to resist and to take charge of the future that belongs to us, not to the fossil fuel companies.A.G. Sano, Philippines - artist
-We need you to be a part of it because we need every age involved Young people have been leading here but now it's the job of the rest of us to back them up. Bill McKibben 350.org
-I support the climate strikes to push climate leaders to act for a brighter future for everyone" EKPE Dzidodo Koudjo, Chairman of VIVAS FM, a farmer solidarity organisation, Togo
-I'm going to participate in the Global Climate Strikes on September 20th because I believe it's our responsibility to take care of our house Flavia Rugai Freire, Brazil School Striker
-Millions of people we work with are already living with the devastating consequences of climate change. For communities across South Asia struggling to survive extreme monsoon rains, floods and landslides, and those in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe whose farmland was destroyed by Cyclone Idai, the climate crisis is part of their everyday lives.
Climate justice means supporting our sisters and brothers in the global south who are already suffering. It's time for the wealthy countries who have done the most to cause climate change to step up by cutting emissions and providing finance for those most impacted.
We'll be working with young people, indigenous communities and rural women - whose experiences are too often overlooked - to rise up and demand climate justice. Harjeet Singh, ActionAid's global lead on climate change
-We stand with the youth who are taking a stance today and raising up their voices to be able to have a real impact. Joey Bergstein, CEO, Seventh Generation
-We should act immediately, regardless of governments, corporations, or individuals. Steven Ko CEO of O'Right
-At Lush, we've always championed environmental justice, and a just transition to renewable energy. We are acutely aware of the urgency of the climate crisis and that's why we're participating in the Climate Strike. From now until September we'll be motivating our customers to join us on the streets and demand that global leaders take bold steps to safeguard our futures." Brandi Halls, Director of Brand at Lush Cosmetics.
-Multinational corporations aren't going to give up anything unless we fight. This is a fight for ourselves, for our future, and for future generations. This is a fight for justice for all: workers, students, parents, teachers, conservatives, liberals, socialists, and everyone else. We can fight against climate breakdown, and we can fight against environmental destruction. We need to all be part of this, or else the establishment won't budge. We can do this, if we do this together." Evan Cholerton, Earth Strike International
-Climate breakdown is one of the greatest human rights issue we face. It means food supplies failing, fuel shortages, dwindling access to drinking water, and homes being swallowed by the sea. It means forced migration and worsening resource conflict. It means more frequent and ferocious natural disasters. Protesting against climate breakdown is about much more than emissions and scientific metrics - it's about building a just and sustainable world that works for all of us.
The world needs a global 'green new deal' that tackles the root causes of inequality and the climate crisis together. We need a deal based upon the principles of climate justice and universal rights for all." May Boeve 350.org
I encourage all to support the Global Climate Strikes on September 20th and September 27th to demand immediate climate action. We need everyone on the streets both days to show solidarity for those who are fighting the climate crisis and those who are currently affected by it. This goes beyond tracking emissions - we need to be equally protecting the Amazon and Indigenous peoples as well as make changes to have clean, safe water and land for all animal life. See you on the streets. - Andrea Shaw, Earth Strike
Students led the way, but it's time for workers to join in. Make no mistake: this is our last chance. As wildfires multiply and food security is already being threatened in some regions, we realize it's not only our future, but our present safety that's at stake. Governments must act. And if they don't, we intend to do whatever's necessary to force their hand. - Francois Geoffroy, La Planete s'invite au Parlement
"We need world leaders to wake up to the truth of the climate crisis. And because we don't have a single year to loose, we're going to make this week a turning point in history. We young people have understood that the climate crisis is an emergency. And We ask Everyone to act like it, to stop business as usual with us. This September, millions of us across the globe will join us on the streets to demand the end of empty commitment but real change and real climate action" Luisa Neubauer, Fridays for Future Germany
Notes
Support for climate strike grows
- Parents' letter
- 224 Academics support the brave stand of the school climate strike children
- Teachers want climate crisis training, poll shows
- Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union supports the Climate Strike
- Trade Union supports students climate strikes
- Green Building Store joins the Global Climate Strike
- Doctors against climate catastrophe
- Workers strike will reveal if firms really care about climate change
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
'We Don't Waste Our Time' With Courts, Says Trump, Bragging of Extrajudicial Murders in Pacific and Caribbean
Critics have described Trump's boat strikes as extrajudicial killings that violate due process. At a meeting during this week's gathering of the UN General Assembly, he seemed to agree.
Sep 23, 2026
Critics have often described President Donald Trump's campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific—which have taken the lives of at least 234 mostly unknown people—as extrajudicial killings that flout the very basics of due process.
On Tuesday, Trump essentially described them that way too, seeming to suggest that killing people outside the law is the whole point.
"For years, administrations just played games, and they'd bring them to a court in Miami or something, and the judge would release them immediately, and they'd go back to selling drugs," Trump said. "But now, we don't waste our time doing it."
He was speaking at a meeting of the Washington-led "Shield of the Americas" coalition, an alliance of leaders and foreign ministers ostensibly dedicated to stamping out drug cartels and other criminal organizations across the Americas.
The boat strike campaign—known first by the Defense Department as “Operation Southern Spear” before it was rebranded last month as Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere—is part of this effort. The administration says the more than 70 vessels it has targeted with lethal strikes since last September were engaged in “narco-trafficking,” and that killing their operators is a justifiable form of self-defense.
The principal illicit cargo on the maritime routes targeted by Southern Spear is cocaine. But the White House rarely provides any evidence publicly to substantiate that the boats it targets are involved with drug trafficking, and members of Congress have complained that even classified briefings lacked hard evidence. Some of those killed in the strikes have later been identified as ordinary fishermen and other civilians with no known ties to the drug trade.
An investigation from the Washington Office on Latin America found in July that the military has relied on extraordinarily broad criteria to launch the strikes against anyone deemed to be "affiliated" with a secret list of designated terrorist groups. They do not require the commanders launching them to know the identities of those aboard a vessel or have any evidence that it is carrying drugs at all.
Even if the boats were engaged in drug trafficking as the administration claims, wrote Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, in a report released earlier this week, there are no “international legal rights to unilaterally use military force” to counter drug cartels or other organized crime groups that have not mounted any “armed attack” against the US.
The strikes, Saul added, were not a “last resort” or “necessary or proportionate” since the US had not tried to use non-lethal means like intercepting or boarding them before resorting to bombings.
Concurring with several other UN experts, he said that the strikes were "contrary to international law, violate the human right to life, and plausibly constitute crimes against humanity," including "murder."
Trump's comments on Tuesday seemed to underscore what Saul and others critical of the boat bombings have emphasized: that rather than using lethal force as a last resort to repel an immediate threat, his administration was simply killing suspects as an alternative to avoid a cumbersome legal process.
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said in a post on social media that Trump's comments were "worthy of the International Criminal Court."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has suggested the administration’s calls to “dismantle” the ICC are in part out of concern that the court, which prosecutes war crimes and other international criminality, could be used to prosecute members of the Trump administration over the boat strikes.
Trump described the ICC as “anti-American” and “evil" during a speech at the UN General Assembly earlier on Tuesday, in which he also threatened to "annihilate" Iran and celebrated that he was claiming the "spoils" of war from Venezuela.
During that same speech, he also boasted that his administration “has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea," a claim that his administration has not provided evidence to substantiate.
An internal analysis by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), reported on in July by the Washington Post, found the opposite, in fact, stating that the strikes “failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States.”
As Trump heralded the boat strike campaign before the eyes of the world on Tuesday, a coalition of more than 70 lawmakers across the Americas called for the US to end what it said were "hundreds of extrajudicial killings of civilians."
The statement was signed by 15 Democratic members of the US Congress, including Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). It was also signed by lawmakers from Puerto Rico as well as 12 other countries across the Americas—Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
"The identities of nearly all the victims remain publicly unknown, and many families lack effective or safe avenues to obtain information or redress. Coastal and fishing communities face fear and uncertainty as these attacks put lives and livelihoods at risk," the lawmakers wrote.
"The rights to life, due process, and protections against the arbitrary use of force are core principles of democratic rule of law that our countries have committed to uphold," they added. "Allegations of drug trafficking, however serious, do not circumvent or override these protections, nor do they justify lethal force against people who pose no imminent threat."
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'Sickening and Unacceptable': Anger Mounts as Trump and Vance Gleefully Rip Healthcare From 750,000
"Just six weeks out from the election, the Trump administration continues to kick working Americans while they’re down."
Sep 23, 2026
Anger and alarm are growing over the Trump administration's Tuesday announcement that it is removing at least 750,000 people from their Affordable Care Act coverage because they were "fraudulently" enrolled, a claim that drew deep skepticism from health policy experts and advocates.
Cynthia Cox, senior vice president at KFF, said fraud undoubtedly exists in the ACA marketplaces, noting that "some brokers have enrolled people without their knowledge or switched their plans so the broker could get a commission on the sale." But she warned that at least some of the hundreds of thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration "were likely legitimately enrolled."
Leading Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, announced the large-scale disenrollment during a celebratory press conference on Tuesday, proclaiming that the ACA purge would save American taxpayers $2.2 billion.
“Rather than addressing rising healthcare costs, the administration is forcing more Americans to become uninsured, live sicker, die younger, and risk being one emergency away from financial ruin," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Families USA. "People are uninsured because of this administration’s own aggressive policies to push and price people out of their health plans, making it harder to get on and stay on coverage."
Among the criteria the administration used to determine whether someone was fraudulently enrolled in the ACA, according to Oz, was if they had "never filed a claim." But health policy experts say it is hardly uncommon for healthy people to not use their insurance in a given year.
The Trump administration did not provide specific breakdowns of why the roughly 750,000 people were stripped of ACA coverage. Vance said during Tuesday's press conference that the federal government uncovered a "fraud ring" involving 40 brokerage agents who funneled around 50,000 people into market place coverage—but the vice president admitted that "some of those people were probably legitimate."
Oz and Vance insisted that the administration went to great lengths to contact those they suspected were enrolled without their knowledge or consent. The officials also said the administration was scrutinizing more than 400,000 additional ACA enrollees for purported fraud, potentially pushing the number of people removed from the program above 1 million.
Ailen Arreaza, executive director of ParentsTogether, said in a statement Tuesday that "while millions of families across the country struggle to afford groceries, housing, childcare, and healthcare, this administration is celebrating taking health coverage away from three-quarters of a million people."
"That tells us everything we need to know," Arreaza added.
Analysts estimate that around 10 million people have lost health insurance coverage since the start of President Donald Trump's term, due in large part a Republican budget package that slashed Medicaid by around $800 billion and did nothing to extend enhanced ACA subsidies, sending premiums soaring for millions of marketplace enrollees—and pricing many people out of coverage.
American voters have consistently ranked healthcare costs as a top concern heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Joel Payne, chief communications officer at MoveOn Political Action, said Tuesday that "just six weeks out from the election, the Trump administration continues to kick working Americans while they’re down."
"It is sickening and unacceptable for this administration to boot 750,000 Americans off their healthcare instead of focusing on lowering costs and ending the war in Iran," said Payne. "The American people and MoveOn members won't forget this betrayal when polls open in November."
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'This Would Be a Nuclear Genocide': Global Outrage Grows Over Trump's UNGA Threat Against Iran
"We must stop this madman," said US Sen. Ed Markey.
Sep 23, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing global condemnation for his threat to "annihilate" Iran during a Tuesday speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
Dr. Tara Drozdenko, director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said on Tuesday that the president's speech "clearly constitutes an implied threat to use overwhelming nuclear force against Iran and the Iranian people broadly."
"This would be a nuclear genocide," Drozdenko emphasized. "Any threat to use nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and his decision to do so should be strongly condemned by government, military, and civil society leaders."
Drozdenko acknowledged that Trump's long history of unhinged rhetoric might make his statements easy to dismiss, but warned even empty threats involving nuclear weapons can have serious real-world ramifications.
"President Trump’s nuclear threats against Iran reinforce a counterproductive lesson also imparted by President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats against Ukraine," she said. "Specifically, these threats encourage other countries to conclude that protecting and securing themselves from authoritarians with nuclear weapons requires obtaining their own nuclear arsenal."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) also said that Trump's menacing rhetoric toward Iran must be taken seriously.
"Trump threatened to 'annihilate' Iran," Markey wrote in a social media post. "His 'October surprise' must not be a mushroom cloud from a nuclear attack. With these threats and assistance to Saudi Arabia, Trump is inferring mass slaughter and escalating an arms race in the Middle East. We must stop this madman."
Robert Tait, US correspondent for The Guardian, wrote an analysis on Tuesday arguing that Trump's threat against Iran was "stunning, even for him."
Tait noted that it has been decades since the UN General Assembly has "witnessed such a display of bellicosity from a superpower leader," especially since it was delivered in a "forum created in the aftermath of the Second World War, with the explicit aim of preventing future conflicts."
"Whether or not the latest threat should be taken literally," Tait added, "little of what he said about Iran seemed reassuring."
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'Solar For All, Everywhere': Global Leaders Pitch the Sun as a Solution to Climate Crisis in Open Letter
"The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out."
Sep 23, 2026
As the world braces for the impacts of what's been described as a "Godzilla El Niño" cycle—one projected to drive extreme weather events that could kill nearly half a million people in the months ahead—and heat record after heat record is shattered due to rising global temperatures, a group of global leaders published an open letter Wednesday urging people yearning for a solution to the climate crisis to look up—though reminding them to protect their eyes—to see that renewable energy remains the key to humanity turning things around.
Set to be delivered to the United Nations during this week's meeting of the General Assembly, the open letter—which can also be endorsed by anyone who supports its demands—calls for global cooperation on "universal access" to solar power, one of the three key pillars of the renewable energy triad that also includes wind energy and battery storage.
"That clean energy trinity has broken out of its Chinese base and over the last few years expanded quickly across the planet—from Karachi to California to Cuba, solar panels are going up faster than any energy source has ever grown," writes author and climate activist Bill McKibben, a signatory to the open letter, in a Guardian op-ed Wednesday.
"At the last possible moment, with backs to the wall, we still have our face to the sun." —Bill McKibben
The letter speaks of "great fear" matched with "great hope" about whether humanity can or will act in time to avoid the worst impacts of a rapidly warming planet.
The letter states:
Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.
We know that these crises are connected. The oil that governments fight over is also the carbon pollution that is warming our climate. The bad air quality in Delhi, the high price of fuel in Vietnam, the cost of electricity in the United States, the terrifying floods in the Himalayas – they all connect back to fossil fuels.
Until we end that dependence, we’ll never be able to address the climate emergency and stop fighting these endless oil-soaked wars. That’s why today we are inviting the world to unite around a common cause: repowering the world with cheap, clean energy.
The signatories call on "governments, businesses, institutions and the public to work together to provide clean, affordable energy to everyone, everywhere by 2030."
"The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear," the letter states. "We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out."
As McKibben notes, the coalition behind the effort is international and diverse. The signatories to the letter, he explains,
range from the most popular active politician in the US (that would be Bernie Sanders) to the most morally grounded spokesperson of the global south (Yeb Saño of the Philippines, say, whose witness after devastating hurricanes helped produce the Paris accords). It comes from great diplomats such as Laurence Tubiana (who helped midwife those Paris agreements) and celebrities and activists such as Jane Fonda. There are leaders from the world of clean energy (Danny Kennedy, for instance, the secretary of the Global Solar Council), and stalwarts from the continents most damaged by rising temperatures (South Africa’s Kumi Naidoo, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative). Clean energy entrepreneurs, such as Muhammad Mustafa Amjad of Renewables First in Pakistan, but also the world’s most famous rock climber, Alex Honnold, who runs his own solar non-profit.
The message of their letter, explains McKibben, "is simple, but its three words convey the solution to so many of the interlocking crises we now face: clean energy now."
"If a resurgent movement demands action, we finally have the tools to make that demand matter – a working planet that runs mostly on sun and wind is in tantalizing reach," he concludes. "At the last possible moment, with backs to the wall, we still have our face to the sun."
The full text of the letter and its signatories follows:
We, the undersigned, write this letter out of great fear and great hope.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever-worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.
We know that these crises are connected. The oil that governments fight over is also the carbon pollution that is warming our climate. The bad air quality in Delhi, the high price of fuel in Vietnam, the cost of electricity in the United States, the terrifying floods in the Himalayas – they all connect back to fossil fuels.
Until we end that dependence, we’ll never be able to address the climate emergency and stop fighting these endless oil-soaked wars. That’s why today we are inviting the world to unite around a common cause: repowering the world with cheap, clean energy.
We are calling on governments, businesses, institutions, and the public to work together to provide clean, affordable energy to everyone, everywhere by 2030.
From the nearly 1 billion people who still lack access to reliable electricity, to the billions more of us who pay too much for dirty fossil fuels.
We know this world is within reach.
Building clean energy is now the cheapest and fastest way to slash energy bills, reduce pollution, and provide electricity access to the places that need it most.
With cheap solar, wind and batteries, we can create huge and rapid change.
California is already using just half as much natural gas to generate electricity as it did three years ago, thanks to solar and batteries. In Pakistan, people have put up millions of solar panels in just months, relying on social media for instruction. Each month, millions more people across sub-Saharan Africa are getting electricity for the first time with home solar kits.
This energy transition is already moving quickly - but we need it to go much quicker. And so we come together to urge two steps.
First, we must build clean power for everyone. For the first time ever, we can reliably bring electricity to the 1 in 10 people on Earth living without regular access.
We ask everyone who can afford it to donate something so that others can turn the lights on for studying, cooking, and medical care - and never have to think about a gallon of diesel or gas again. It takes just $15 to give access to clean electricity for one person for a generation.
Second, we need to build clean power everywhere, and to make that happen we need to build a movement powerful and beautiful enough to force governments to take large-scale action.
Individual steps alone are not enough: too many of our leaders will resist action, until we demonstrate together how much we want them to move. We must demand that governments stop building coal, oil, and gas projects we no longer need, and start building the clean-energy systems that works - no pollution or wars required.
One important day along this path will be 20 June, as the summer solstice approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, generating the most solar power of any day on earth yet. We will celebrate that day as Sun Day, coming together to celebrate and accelerate this great shift.
The path forward is difficult, but the way is clear. We want solar for everyone, everywhere, before the decade is out.
We know that standing up to the powerful can be scary. But if there is one thing that unites us, it is that we live beneath the same sun. That unity is our strength, and we must use it to act now.
Signed,
Muhammad Mustafa Amjad- Director of Programs, Renewables First
Alyssa Barber - Content Creator, @NewLifestyleABB
Lauren Bash - Content creator and filmmaker
Rachel Bender - Disability rights advocate, @rachcutiepie
Tzeporah Berman - Chair, Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative
Caitlin Blunnie - Content Creator, 2Liberal Jane
Jessica Craven - Content Creator, @jesscraven101
Nick Cutsumpas - Founder @ Farmer Nick
Summer Dean - Founder, Climate Diva Media
Christiana Figueres - Former UN Climate Secretary and Founding Partner, Global Optimism
Jane Fonda - Actor, activist, and founder, Jane Fonda Climate PAC
Nela Cadinanos Gonzalez
Saul Griffith - Engineer and co-founder, Rewiring America
Malynda Hale - Actor, Filmmaker, Creator
Fletcher Harper - Executive Director, Greenfaith
Alex Honnold - Professional climber and founder, Honnold Foundation
Danny Kennedy - Chair, Global Solar Council
Catherine McKenna - Founder, Climate and Nature Solutions & Women Lead on Climate
Bill McKibben - Author, climate activist, and co-founder, Third Act
Kumi Naidoo - President, Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative
Ky Polanco - Co-Founder, @Feminist
Sean Taylor Pugerude - Creator & Community Organizer, @heyseantaylor
Abbie Richards - Researcher and Educator, @abbiesr
Tom Rivett-Carnac - Founding Partner, Global Optimism
Bernie Sanders - U.S. Senator for Vermont
Yeb Saño - Board Chair, Laudato Si’ Movement
Jacob Simon - Creator and Educator - @jacobsimonsays
Laurence Tubiana - CEO, European Climate Foundation
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Extreme Heat Caused by 'Super El Niño' Could Kill Over 450,000 People in Coming Months: Report
"This is such a large number that it can be numbing, but it is made up of parents and children, grandparents and neighbors, people going to work, caring for families, and living their lives."
Sep 23, 2026
A report published Wednesday by researchers at the University of Chicago's Climate Impact Lab estimates that extreme heat fueled by this year's "Super El Niño" event could kill more than 450,000 people in the coming months, in addition to deaths from drought, wildfires, and other extreme weather.
The report notes that "anomalously warm conditions" caused by the record-shattering El Niño—which refers to the warming of ocean-surface temperatures in the Pacific—"will resemble the higher temperatures that climate change is projected to deliver 20 years in the future... and will lead to 44% more extremely hot days than we would expect in a normal year."
Climate Impact Lab researchers projected that the extreme heat will result in 451,000 more lives lost through February 2027, compared to a typical year.
"This is about 65 times larger than the 6,800 people believed to be dead or missing from the recent Nepal flash flood," the new report observes. "With current forecasts suggesting El Niño will remain in place through spring 2027, we expect all of these numbers to grow even higher, particularly as impacts such as higher-than-average temperatures and heat-related deaths will linger into June and July."
Nigeria is expected to see the largest number of El Niño-related deaths over roughly the next five months, at 31,400. Indonesia, Sudan, India, and Brazil will see more than 10,000 deaths each through February, according to the Climate Impact Lab.
"This is such a large number that it can be numbing, but it is made up of parents and children, grandparents and neighbors, people going to work, caring for families, and living their lives,” Michael Greenstone, a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab, said in a statement. "This report allows decisionmakers to see exactly where emergency actions can be taken now to save tens of thousands of lives in the coming months."
The impact lab's report describes this year's El Niño as a "postcard from our future," noting that "it is bringing temperatures climate change is projected to deliver 20 years in the future."
"Twenty years from now, once today’s extreme temperatures become the new normal," said Tamma Carleton, faculty head of research for the Climate Impact Lab and co-author of the new report. "We don’t want to be in a constant state of emergency."
The report was released shortly after United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned in his final address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday that "a supersized El Niño" is "speeding straight for humanity."
"As tragic events have shown, impacts are arriving sooner, hitting harder, and spreading further than many anticipated," said Guterres. "Now we face a near-certain breach of the 1.5°C limit."
On Saturday, The Washington Post observed, the average ocean-surface temperature in a portion of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean reached 3.05°C, "the highest peak sea surface temperature anomaly on record."
"The record anomalous reading occurred two months earlier in the year than the previous peak in November 2015 and an El Niño in 1877 that contributed to a famine that wiped out 3 to 4% of the global population," the Post added.
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Paltry Concessions Given to Secure Paramount-Warner Merger Deal Decried as 'Meaningless Bullshit'
"Billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top," said one critic.
Sep 22, 2026
"A settlement that promises less than nothing."
That's how one critic of Paramount Skydance's planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday described the paltry concessions extracted by Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other state officials to enable the proposed $111 billion media megamerger.
Critics argue that the proposed settlement agreement lacks meaningful antitrust enforcement and hands control of major news and entertainment properties to a billionaire family closely aligned with President Donald Trump.
“Every! single! one! of these concessions is meaningless bullshit,” writer Cory Doctorow said Tuesday on Medium. “Bonta just handed the American movie and TV sector to two of the most odious creeps to draw breath, surrendering without firing a shot."
The settlement, which was announced Monday, clears a major roadblock to Paramount CEO David Ellison's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures, and numerous cable networks. The combined company would control nearly 30% of both US theatrical film distribution and basic cable channel licensing.
The agreement contains a pledge to distribute at least 30 films annually for the first two years, then 32 movies each year after, invest hundreds of millions of dollars in US film production, maintain existing theater rental terms for three years, not sell Paramount and Warner Bros. studio lots for five years, and create an editorial independence board for CBS News and CNN.
In a Monday Substack post, American Economic Liberties Project research director Matt Stoller pointed out an apparent loophole in the settlement's film distribution requirement.
“They only have to distribute that many films,” he wrote. “They can make half as many. And those can be co-produced. So in fact, if you add up the numbers, Ellison promised to make fewer films going forward than Paramount and Warner are putting out today."
The settlement's editorial oversight board for CBS News and CNN have also come under fire. The five-member board overseeing the two entities will be appointed and paid by the combined company. Reuters reported Tuesday that the board would have no explicit investigative authority and that the company would be empowered to fill vacancies.
“As we learned from the failed and widely panned Facebook oversight board, a fake bipartisan oversight committee won’t save CNN,” Jessica González, the co-chief executive of the advocacy organization Free Press, said Monday. “We have all the evidence we need from the Ellisons’ destruction of CBS about what they do to warp journalism at Donald Trump’s request.”
David Ellison's father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison, is a Republican megadonor.
Seth Stern, a media attorney and chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that "it's unclear how the attorneys general or courts can constitutionally hold Paramount accountable for the board's actions or inaction without themselves interfering in content."
Stoller noted that the agreement's force-majeure clause, which would reportedly allow Paramount-Warner to dodge its commitments in the event of economic recessions, strikes, and other labor disruptions.
Other opponents of the proposed deal bristle at the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of Saudi and Emirati investment in the new company that would be created if the merger is approved.
Alvaro Bedoya, a senior adviser to the American Economic Liberties Project, lamented that “today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored, and bullied their way to the top."
“Layoffs will follow. People from [Los Angeles] to Atlanta will lose their jobs, small businesses will lose their contracts, your cable bill and movie ticket will be even more expensive,” he continued. “Dissent against money and power will be even harder to find.”
“This did not have to happen," Bedoya stressed. "Thanks to an extraordinary outpouring of grassroots anger against the merger, a coalition of 12 state attorneys general sued to block it. They beat Paramount in court, winning a court-ordered pause on the merger, and beat them again at the negotiating table, getting the conglomerate to agree to pause the merger until as late as next June.”
“But the Ellison family does not care about the law. Instead, they loudly threatened to leave California if their merger did not go through immediately," he added. "[Gov.] Gavin Newsom caved to that pressure. So did [former state Attorney General] Xavier Becerra. And eventually, so did Attorney General Rob Bonta, agreeing to a weak settlement that will be exceedingly difficult to enforce.”
Stoller said that "there are a bunch of reasons they cleared the deal, such as threats to move the studio out of California, corruption, and general incompetence."
"I personally think CNN is terrible, and I’m glad it’s going to be discredited," Stoller wrote. "I also find it embarrassing that the Democratic AGs used antitrust law in an attempt to shade news coverage. But it’s downright comical they demanded that David Ellison not corrupt CNN by having David Ellison appoint a board ensuring that David Ellison not do that."
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'It Should Be Illegal': Trump's 1,156 July Stock Trades Involved AI, Big Oil, Weapons-Makers, and More
By failing to report some transactions within 45 days, the president appears to have violated a key federal law, again.
Sep 22, 2026
Donald Trump has been repeatedly ripped as "the most openly corrupt president in American history" by a range of critics, and the Republican faced fresh criticism on Tuesday after disclosing more than 1,100 securities transactions from July.
"The 1,156 purchases and sales totaled between roughly $79 million and $270 million," CNBC reported. "Purchases totaled at least $43.6 million, while sales came to at least $35.6 million... in what appears to be a broad reshuffling of his portfolio."
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has previously sounded the alarm over Trump's "unprecedented" trading, said on social media Tuesday that "it should be illegal for the president to trade individual stocks—period."
As Trump continues to rail against regulations on artificial intelligence, the filing with the Office of Government Ethics shows recent transactions involving tech giants including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle.
The president is also waging an illegal war on Iran with no end in sight, and those who manage his portfolio made trades involving military contractors such as GE Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, and SpaceX.
CNBC highlighted that the Northrop Grumman sale—worth $250,001 to $500,000—occurred the same day that "Trump signed an executive order tightening supply chain requirements for defense contractors and restricting waivers for certain critical materials sourced from China and other covered countries," though the disclosure does not include timing.
Iran has responded to Trump's war by restricting ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused fuel prices to surge worldwide. The president was accused of cashing in on the crisis he has created after he disclosed June stock transactions. The new filing shows more trades in oil and gas giants, including Chevron and ExxonMobil.
The Washington Sun pointed out that "Trump also purchased up to $500,000 worth of stock in Axon Enterprise, the manufacturer of Tasers, which has done tens of millions of dollars worth of business with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection."
While "Trump is ostensibly aware of the contents of his portfolio, given that he personally certified his most recent disclosure, which bears his signature," the Sun noted, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle tried to dismiss any allegations of corruption in a statement to multiple outlets.
"President Trump's stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions," Ingle said. "All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000."
"Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold," he added. "All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest."
However, as the Sun highlighted, "a number of Trump's trades were disclosed more than 45 days after they were made—in violation of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which also applies to top officials in the executive branch. It’s not the first time the president has run afoul of the stock trading law."
Just in: Trump reported making another 1,158 stock trades in July 2026.It appears he violated the Stock Act, again, by failing to report all of his trades within 45 days. extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden...
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— Zach Everson (@zacheverson.com) September 22, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Despite bipartisan support at times, congressional efforts to fully ban trading by lawmakers, their dependents, and the president and vice president have been unsuccessful.
In July, 13 Democrats in the US House of Representatives helped Republicans pass a purported congressional stock trading ban— even though the bill wouldn't apply to Trump or Vice President JD Vance, and the GOP tacked on a voter suppression provision demanded by the president.
The Senate has not yet acted on the bill, officially called the Stop Insider Trading Act, and condemned by critics as "a Trojan horse."
Trump's disclosure came a week after Bloomberg reported that "Trump has traded more securities than every member of Congress combined since he returned to office" last year. From January 2025 to June 2026, lawmakers reported a collective 22,200 transactions while the president made nearly 28,700.
Donald Trump and every member of Congress should be working for the American people — NOT their stock portfolio.
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— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) September 18, 2026 at 6:03 PM
Sharing the reporting on social media last week, House Democrats wrote: "The American people deserve a president that serves their interests, not his own wallet."
Annual financial disclosures released this summer show that Trump pocketed at least $2.2 billion—over half of it from his family’s cryptocurrency grift—during his first year back in the White House.
Following that revelation, Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, called on the chamber to pass legislation aimed at stopping "the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry," and warned that a failure to do so "will only turbocharge Donald Trump's brazen crypto corruption."
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Amnesty Slams UEFA for Allowing Israel in Nations League Despite 'Occupation, Apartheid, and Genocide'
"The beautiful game should bring people together, not rubber-stamp apartheid."
Sep 22, 2026
Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday slammed the Union of European Football Associations for allowing the Israel men's team to participate in upcoming Nations League matches despite the Israeli government's continued systemic human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Steve Cockburn, Amnesty International’s regional director for Europe, called Israel's participation in the UEFA games "unconscionable," citing "clear evidence that Israel’s football association continues to support illegal settlements."
Cockburn said that UEFA should have long ago suspended the Israel Football Association (IFA) over its "refusal to exclude clubs based in illegal settlements" in the occupied Palestinian territories.
"As the money keeps flowing from FIFA and UEFA to the IFA," Cockburn said, "they risk contributing to the sustainability of illegal settlements and of Israel’s unlawful occupation... and therefore Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ human rights."
"Sport should never be used as a public relations spectacle for states committing atrocities," Cockburn added. "As the Israel team travels to Europe, Palestinian families are being displaced and dispossessed, their land stolen, their olive trees uprooted, and their histories erased by settlers with the support of the Israeli military. The beautiful game should bring people together, not rubber-stamp apartheid."
As explained in a Tuesday report from BBC, Israeli's inclusion in the Nations League has been a source of controversy for months.
Delegates for the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), which faced signifiant public pressure to boycott matches between Ireland and Israel, recently voted in favor of playing the matches, although roughly 30% of delegates voted in favor of a boycott.
Regardless, more than 160 Irish athletes on Monday signed an open letter organized by Irish Sport for Palestine urging FAI to reconsider its vote in favor of the matches.
Heimer Hallgrimsson, manager of the Irish men's team, tried to justify the matches by arguing that Ireland was playing against Israel, which meant it was really playing "against genocide."
The IFA shot back at Hallgrimsson, accusing him of "ignorance, hypocrisy, and stupidity."
The BBC also noted that the two scheduled matches between Israel and Ireland will be played on neutral cites in Hungary and Serbia "against a backdrop of ongoing and increasingly volatile disagreement between the two countries about Israel's military offensive in Gaza."
Cockburn praised efforts by sports fans to keep pressure on the UEFA to "demand accountability, justice and, fair play."
"When rules are broken, when occupation, apartheid, and genocide are ongoing," he emphasized, "we cannot look the other way.”
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Majority of Democratic Voters Want to Prosecute Both Biden and Trump Administration Officials Over Gaza
The vast majority of Democratic voters believe Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza and want its supporters in both parties to face consequences.
Sep 22, 2026
The majority of Democratic voters believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza for the past three years. And they want the American politicians in both parties who supported it to pay.
In a poll released on Monday by the Center for Strategic Politics and commissioned by the magazine Liberal Currents, 683 Democratic voters were asked whether the next Democratic administration should "pursue criminal prosecution of members of the Trump and Biden administrations for actions taken related to Israel’s genocide in Gaza."
More than half, 57%, of the Democrats surveyed answered "yes," while only 22% answered "no" and another 22% said they "don't know."
Self-described "socialists" and "progressives" were most bullish on Gaza-focused prosecutions. But so were 52% of "liberals" and even 48% of Democrats who called themselves "moderate" or "conservative."
It is one of several questions in the poll about a hypothetical Democratic administration prosecuting its predecessors over policies considered deadly and destructive.
About two-thirds, 66%, said they wanted to see Trump administration officials prosecuted for actions taken during its aggressive war with Iran, which has led to the deaths of more than 1,700 civilians and wrought economic turmoil.
Nearly three-quarters, 72%, believed Trump officials should face similar accountability for their campaign of extrajudicial strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which have killed more than 234 people in what a top United Nations official recently said may constitute "crimes against humanity."
And more than three-quarters said they wanted to see Trump officials face legal penalties for actions committed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which have waged a violent mass deportation campaign that has entailed numerous documented due process violations, instances of racial profiling, and several shootings of immigrants and US citizens without clear justification.
The question about Gaza is the only one in the survey in which Democrats were asked about the prospect of prosecuting members of their own party as well as Republicans. And while fewer Democrats ultimately answered yes, it indicates that their ire toward the American politicians supporting the genocide transcends party loyalty.
The poll results come as some activists pursue accountability for the Biden administration in other ways. Last week, organizers launched a campaign to pressure universities and other prominent institutions to cut ties with what they called the "Genocide 20."
These are officials like former Secretary of State Tony Blinken and former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who crafted and defended the administration's policy of unrestricted military aid for Israel despite mounting evidence that it was killing scores of civilians and enacting a campaign of starvation against the people of Gaza.
The United States provided Israel with at least $17.9 billion in military assistance between October 7, 2023, and the end of former President Joe Biden's term in January 2025, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. During that period, more than 47,000 Palestinians were confirmed killed, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, the US has continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, including $3.8 billion in regular annual military aid, while the Trump administration has approved billions more in arms sales and expedited weapons deliveries. The death toll has risen to nearly 74,000, according to official figures, but independent experts have suggested this may be a significant undercount.
According to Monday's poll, more than 4 in 5 Democrats said that “foreign policy (including Israel and Iran)” is important to them in deciding which candidates to support, compared with just 4% who said it is not.
Foreign policy has been a critical dividing line in several recent Democratic primaries, in which voters have revolted against candidates backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
This includes Democratic Michigan Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who was defeated by Abdul El-Sayed in a contest for the US Senate despite her more than $30 million in backing from AIPAC, which helped to turn it into the most expensive Democratic primary ever.
AIPAC-backed House candidates have similarly suffered high-profile defeats at the hands of progressives calling to cut off US funding for Israel. Some of the victors include Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, and Aisha Wahab, who won a special election in California.
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'FAA Should Not Use My Constituents as Guinea Pigs': House Democrat Demands End of AI Air Traffic Control
"Dangerously rushing a system that holds Americans’ lives in its hands is not a good use case for artificial intelligence."
Sep 22, 2026
A Democratic US congressman on Monday urged the Federal Aviation Administration to immediately suspend a new artificial intelligence system being used to help manage air traffic around Washington, DC, accusing the agency of using passengers as "guinea pigs" without adequately vetting the new technology.
The Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Trajectories (SMART) system, developed by AI firm Air Space Intelligence under an $875 million contract, began limited operations Monday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, and Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the system uses AI to synthesize roughly 200 data streams—including weather, flight paths, airline schedules, airport capacity, and controller staffing—to anticipate congestion and recommend ways to avert delays and cancellations.
The FAA claims that use of SMART will result in fewer flight delays and cancellations, optimized airspace, more predictable operations, and lower airfare costs for consumers.
"To really improve the flying experience for the American people, we needed to build a 21st century scheduling tool like SMART,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “By fundamentally reshaping how we manage our airspace and preventing problems before they happen, SMART will slash those frustrating delays, reduce stress on air traffic controllers, and lower travel prices."
“It's always going to be a human that manages the airspace in America,” Duffy promised. “Humans control the airspace, humans make decisions.”
The industry trade group Airlines for America called SMART “exciting and bold," while United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told The Washington Post that “if it works as we think it can, it will do more to reduce delays and cancellations than anything that’s happened in decades."
However, Congressman Don Beyer (D-Va.)—whose district includes Reagan National Airport—said in a statement that “the FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system."
"The safety of the 24 million people traveling through DCA each year must be the top priority," he added, referring to the International Air Transport Association code for Reagan National Airport.
The FAA should not use my constituents as guinea pigs for an unproven AI air traffic control system that has Americans’ lives in its hands.I’m calling on the FAA to immediately suspend use of this AI system at Washington area airports until its safety has been established.My full statement:
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— Congressman Don Beyer (@beyer.house.gov) September 21, 2026 at 1:25 PM
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation concluded that the January 2025 midair collision between a US Army Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet, operated by PSA Airlines—which killed 67 people—was caused by a chain of human errors.
"Residents of this region are still uncertain about air safety after last year’s fatal accident, and the administration did shockingly little to educate the traveling public about this development before implementing it in one of the most complex airspaces in the world," Beyer said.
The congressman continued:
Unfortunately, I was informed today that air traffic controllers were not consulted on the SMART system’s design and development, and were not trained on using it prior to the system’s adoption at local airports. I was further informed that the air traffic controllers have been told the SMART system can adjust schedules and potentially even routes. Despite outward appearances, the airlines reportedly were privately "panicking" about the hasty implementation of this system. I do not know why the administration felt the need to race it into use, but it is unacceptable to use AI as a substitute for rebuilding the human-directed air traffic controller workforce.
“Dangerously rushing a system that holds Americans’ lives in its hands is not a good use case for artificial intelligence," Beyer asserted. "I call on the FAA to immediately suspend its operation, at the very least until it is clearly established beyond doubt via air traffic controller feedback and independently verified stress testing that the technology is safe."
Duffy responded to Beyer's concerns in an interview with Fox News' Brian Kilmeade, saying: "I like Don [but] this is just complete stupidity. The problem with this analysis is our new software is predictive, so we can predict weather and make better decisions on when we fly and weather."
Beyer isn't the only lawmaker voicing concerns over the use of SMART. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday that "safety must always be the FAA's number one priority. This is extremely concerning, and we need immediate answers about what this means for travelers."
The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) said that it was not involved in the SMART rollout.
“NATCA has not been involved in the design, testing, or implementation of SMART and therefore cannot speak to its effect on the air traffic control workforce at this time,” the union said, adding that any new technology “should complement and not replace the experience, training, and professional judgment of air traffic controllers who are responsible for the safety of the National Airspace System.”
The FAA's launch of SMART comes as the agency continues to suffer from a shortage of certified air traffic controllers. The Washington Post reported that the FAA had about 11,000 certified controllers as of April, more than 1,500 short of its official target of 12,563.
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