US President Donald Trump speaks in the White House Rose Garden on September 17, 2026. (Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/White House)
A senior Iranian official said that “our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds, and an end to the naval blockade.”
Three days after saying that he’s weighing whether or not to “annihilate” Iran in a bid to end his increasingly unpopular and protracted war against the Middle Eastern nation, US President Donald Trump on Sunday again said that he is deciding if he should destroy the entire country of over 90 million people.
Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst reported he “just spoke with President Trump about the situation with Iran” and that the US leader said he’s “in a deciding mode and that very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future.”
Trump said he is considering three strategies for ending the 204-day war: “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.”
“My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up, they better behave,” Trump added, according to Yingst.
Fox correspondent: "The president said the US is in constant communication with the Houthis, and that they've agreed not to fight the United States. But the big headline here is the president said he's in a deciding mode as it relates to Iran, adding that the Iranians better… pic.twitter.com/nCTMRlEvWY
On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Al Jazeera that Tehran has conveyed its conditions for ending the war to Qatari mediators and is “awaiting President Trump’s response.”
“Our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds, and an end to the naval blockade,” Rezaei added. “It is in Washington’s interest to accept these conditions. Trump’s threats will not achieve any results. We are prepared for a decisive war.”
Iran’s military responded to Trump’s latest threat by warning US allies Sunday that they will be considered “complicit” if American strikes resume, vowing “painful attacks” in retaliation.
Trump—who has been threatening to destroy Iran since at least 2019—is facing pressure on multiple fronts to end his highly unpopular and illegal war of choice, in which at least 23 US troops have died and tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed or wounded.
Americans are feeling the pain of higher consumer prices, especially for gasoline and diesel fuel, for a war that many say is making the country less safe. Six in 10 US voters queried in a new Fox News poll said Trump was wrong to wage war on Iran, while 7 in 10 respondents believe that his administration has no clear strategy for ending the conflict.
Republican lawmakers are also increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with the war and distancing themselves from the conflict ahead of November’s midterm elections, with some going as far as helping to pass a war powers resolution directing Trump to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, and one—outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky—supporting the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
People protest outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas, on September 21, 2026, a day after Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot and wounded by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation. (Photo by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)
“This isn’t law enforcement,” said US Senate candidate James Talarico. “It’s lawlessness.
Democrats in Congress on Monday evening were demanding a full, independent investigation into US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s shooting on Sunday of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, as it was reported that he had been held in an ICE detention center with a bullet still lodged in his back—close to his spine—and that he was finally being taken to a hospital only after he lost feeling in the left side of his body.
In a video posted on social media, US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) recounted how Perez was initially hospitalized after ICE agents in an unmarked SUV sideswiped his car as he was making DoorDash deliveries in Austin, Texas, and then shot him through his windshield as he was trying to pull over.
But “only a few hours after being shot, he was forced out of the hospital,” said Castro, “and sent over to what is known as STIPC, in Pearsall, Texas, along I-35, the South Texas ICE Processing Center.”
Castro and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) spent Monday attempting to gain permission to visit with Perez and raising alarm over the fact that ICE’s bullet had not been removed from his back before he was taken to STIPC, where he was reportedly forced to sleep on a floor.
“He reported that he’s in incredible pain, that he’d not been given any medication,” said Castro. “It’s basically abuse that you would take somebody who has been shot and move them from a hospital to a prison, that kind of prison, within a matter of hours, and then also, it looks like, start the process to deport them immediately.”
Update on the condition of Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez at the South Texas Ice Processing Center. He’s being taken to the hospital. He is in tremendous pain and tells us that the bullet is still inside his left side. He can’t move the left side of his body. pic.twitter.com/SWquC2AOrj
Perez entered the country two years agoafter using the CBP One application to set up an appointment with immigration agents. The app was introduced by the Biden administration, but President Donald Trump abruptly terminated it immediately after he took office last year. Perez was permitted to enter the country, applied for asylum, and received a work permit.
As Common Dreams reported Monday, Perez’s lawyer, Kate Goldfinch-Lincoln, and his wife were unable to make contact with him when he was first taken from the hospital on Sunday.
After Perez briefly called in from the detention center to a press conference held by Goldfinch-Lincoln on Monday, she said she received a call from another detainee who told her “that officers came in and handled Wilber roughly.”
“According to this detainee, Wilber then lost feeling on the left side of his body, including his arm and leg,” she said. “Wilber has a bullet lodged near his spine. I was told that he was handcuffed, shackled at the feet, placed in a waist chain, and taken to a hospital. I am waiting to find out how he is doing and what his current condition is. We need answers. We need to know that Wilber is safe and receiving appropriate medical care. So far, he has not.”
Just a dude who was in the country legally and had a work permit working….ICE shoots him for no reason then refuses him medical care. And now he is facing paralysis. https://t.co/RQu23w8OAh
In response to the update on Perez’s condition, Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico said: “This isn’t law enforcement. It’s lawlessness.”
Casar called Perez’s transfer back to the hospital “a positive first step,” and credited immigrant rights advocates and community members for “speaking up.”
“Now, we have to make sure he fully recovers, is reunited with his family, and gets to tell law enforcement the full story of how he was shot in the back by ICE,” said Casar.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) were among the lawmakers calling for a full investigation into the shooting and ICE’s treatment of Perez.
“This is absolutely horrific,” said Frost. “ICE must be stopped. Their regime of cruelty will continue until they are held accountable.”
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
US President Donald Trump stands next to a bell before ringing it to open the New York Stock Exchange ahead of the launch of tax-deferred investment accounts for children in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 6, 2026. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
By failing to report some transactions within 45 days, the president appears to have violated a key federal law, again.
Donald Trumphas 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…
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 helpedRepublicans pass a purported congressional stock trading ban— even though the bill wouldn’t apply to Trump or Vice President JD Vance, and the GOPtacked 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.
Sharing the reporting on social media last week, House Democratswrote: “The American people deserve a president that serves their interests, not his own wallet.”
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.”
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
A protester is seen in Los Angeles during a climate change demonstration holding a placard that says, “There is no Planet B.” (Photo by Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“Seven of nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level,” said one scientist.
Like other recent warnings from climate scientists, the message sent by the latest Planetary Health Check report on Monday was clear: “We need to move fast,” as the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the group behind the report, said.
“Seven of nine planetary boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level,” said Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute (PIK).
The report finds that seven measures of the Earth’s health are no longer within the “safe operating space”: ocean acidification, freshwater change, land system change, climate change, modification of biogeochemical flows, introduction of novel entities, and change in biosphere integrity.
Just two markers, stratospheric ozone depletion and the increase in atmospheric aerosol loading, have shown improvement over the last decade, said the Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at PIK.
Today, we launched the Planetary Health Check 2026. Seven of nine Planetary Boundaries are transgressed, and pressure on all seven is at its highest recorded level. Yet, we still have a window to change course. But we need to move fast.https://t.co/QQM6PKOQSf
“The diagnosis is unambiguous,” said Boris Sakschewski, the lead author of the report. “Pressure is rising across every planetary boundary already outside the safe operating space. It means that the risk of large-scale, persistent, and potentially irreversible change is increasing, while our margin for error in tackling these problems is shrinking.”
The scientists behind the report emphasized that with recent news regarding the state of the planet’s crucial coral reefs, forests, and extreme weather events like heatwaves and flooding, it should come as no surprise that the Earth’s boundaries have been transgressed, as continued fossil fuel emissions have caused runaway planetary heating.
Earlier this month, United Nations scientists said the planet can no longer avoid at least a temporary temperature rise above 1.5°C over preindustrial levels.
Oceans have also become so warm that stressed coral reefs have less and less time to recover from climate damage, as Common Dreams reported last month, and a UN report last year found that the world’s governments are not moving fast enough to end the destruction of forests.
Last month and the summer of 2026 both set heat records, with extreme heatkilling more than 1,000 people across Europe, and wildfiresspreading across the continent and Canada. Record-breaking heat was also recorded in parts of Asia and the Middle East.
In June, the UN Children’s Fund found that nearly every child on Earth is now exposed to at least one climate hazard driven by fossil fuel emissions, including flooding, heatwaves, and drought.
“Pakistan’s 2025 monsoon floods affected more than 6.9 million people,” said PIK. “Global ocean heat content reached a new record in 2025, with Hurricane Melissa rapidly ramping up to a Category 5 hurricane and striking Jamaica after passing over exceptionally warm seas. From January 2023 to September 2025, bleaching-level heat stress impacted about 84.4% of the world’s coral reef area, making it the largest global coral-bleaching event observed to date.”
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, chair of Planetary Guardians, implored readers of the Planetary Health Check report to “read that list again: Pakistan, the Caribbean, Europe, the reefs beneath our oceans. These are not separate emergencies; the planet is telling us, in every region at once, that it is out of balance.”
“As chair of Planetary Guardians, I hear this same story wherever I go, whether from a pastoralist watching the rains fail season after season or a coastal community watching the sea rise,” said Ibrahim. “The 2026 Planetary Health Check puts data behind what communities on the frontlines already know from living it. We do not have the luxury of treating these as separate crises any longer.”
Rockström emphasized that while “we do not have the luxury of time… we do have the knowledge, capacity, and solutions to change course.”
“Accelerating action to return to the safe operating space across all planetary boundaries is essential to protect lives and livelihoods,” said Rockström, “and to deliver on the promise of shared future prosperity.”
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
This year’s so-called “super El Niño” is entering into record-breaking territory.
Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific now equal the previous daily record set in 2015 and will likely keep rising in the days ahead.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon in the Pacific that reshapes weather patterns around the world and temporarily boosts global temperatures.
The current El Niño event – which has been underway since June and is expected to last until next year – has been developing faster than any previous event on record.
The strength of an event is tracked using the “Niño 3.4 anomaly”, which measures how much warmer sea surface temperatures in a section of the central Pacific are than average.
As of 19 September, the daily anomaly in the Niño 3.4 region stands at 3.07C, putting it in a statistical tie with the previous record of 3.08C.
Some scientists, using a different baseline for calculating the anomaly, have already called the new record.
Either way, this is remarkable, in part because of how early in the calendar year it is occurring. El Niño typically peaks in the winter months, most commonly in November or December.
Every strong El Niño on record has continued to strengthen after mid-September – and there is every reason to think that this one will as well.
El Niño events are typically classed as “weak” when the Niño 3.4 anomaly reaches 0.5C, “moderate” above 1C, “strong” above 1.5C and “very strong” above 2.0C.
For this year’s event, the Niño 3.4 anomaly has now reached 3.07C, which puts it in a statistical tie with the record set on 18 November 2015, set during a “very strong” El Nino event.
The chart below shows how the strength of the current El Niño (red line) is dramatically outpacing both 2015-16 (blue) and another “very strong” event in 1997-98 (light blue).
Daily Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies, 1982-2026, each relative to a centred 30-year climatology (ONI convention). Chart by Carbon Brief.
ONI is calculated by subtracting the latest 30-year average temperature in the Nino 3.4 region from daily sea surface temperatures. This approach allows for the most recent years to be compared against the most recent 30-year period. It removes much of the influence of longer-term, human-driven warming from the index.
(While meteorological organisations typically track changes to ONI on a three-month rolling average basis, Carbon Brief’s analysis looked at how the metric is changing on a daily basis.)
If ONI is calculated using a baseline of 1991-2020 then the current El Niño has already set a new record.
Since the start of June, El Niño’s strength has been greater than any other year. In early September in both 1997 and 2015, anomalies were around 1.9C – more than one degree below where they are this year.
Introduced by NOAA in 2024, the RONI index adjusts for tropical ocean warming linked to human-caused climate change. To do this, it takes sea surface averages in the Nino 3.4 region and subtracts out temperature anomalies observed across the tropical oceans (between the latitudes of 20 degrees north and south).
This approach may better remove the influence of climate change in this specific region, but can also diminish the apparent strength of strong El Niño events, such as the current one, which extend well outside the Niño 3.4 region.
The chart below shows daily RONI values, which are record setting for this time of year, but remain below an all-time daily record set during the 1982-83 El Niño event.
Daily relative Niño 3.4 (RONI) anomalies for every year, 1982-2026. Chart by Carbon Brief.
RONI stood at around 2.5C in mid-September, some 0.7C below the 1982 record.
However, that record was set in late December, at the peak of the event.
The 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2015-16 events added between 0.5C and 1.9C to their RONI values between mid-September and their peaks.
On track to smash monthly and seasonal records
Because daily El Niño values are noisy, scientists typically turn to monthly or seasonal averages to compare El Niño events.
The latest full calendar month for which data is available – August 2026 – had a Niño 3.4 anomaly of around 2.45C. This is higher than the peak of every prior El Niño event on record except 2015-16 – where the anomaly reached 2.75C – and 1877-78, when the anomaly sat at around 2.7C, based on a reconstruction of sea surface temperatures using sparse ship data.
The figure below shows the monthly evolution of the five strongest El Niño events on record alongside 2026, as well the current forecast from 14 seasonal forecast models.
Monthly Niño 3.4 anomaly (degrees C) for the five strongest El Niño events on record, for 2026 through August and the 2026-27 forecast across 14 models, each relative to a centred 30-year climatology (ONI convention). Data from NOAA CPC, Copernicus C3S, ECCC and JAMSTEC. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Taken together, the models project a peak monthly anomaly later this year of around 4.1C, with 80% of the 674 individual model runs falling between 3.4C and 4.6C.
Every single model run peaks above the 2015-16 record. The projected margin over that record, some 1.3C, is larger than the entire gap between the strongest and fifth-strongest El Niño of the past 150 years.
Some caution here is warranted, however. No seasonal forecast system has ever been verified against an event of this size, because none has ever occurred. The models also predicted temperatures slightly warmer than observed this summer, with real-world observations for August coming in around 0.3C below forecasts.
However, all strong El Niño events on record have continued to strengthen well into the winter – and the models are in near-unanimous agreement that this one will, too. If the forecast holds, the current event will peak between November and January at a level far beyond any event previously observed in the instrumental record.
El Nino’s effect on global temperatures typically lags rising ocean temperatures in the Pacific by several months, so most of the impact will be felt in 2027 rather than 2026.
Carbon Brief’s most recent “state of the climate” quarterly analysis found 2026 on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year on record. The next update in early October will examine what a record El Niño means for 2027.
El Niño: Indonesia fire emissions in 2026 ‘on track’ to match record for this century
Explainer: How the ‘super El Niño’ will reshape the world’s weather
Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures?
State of the climate: First quarter of 2020 is second warmest on record
Donald Trump urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
