Climate Change Brings Shocking, Deadly Floods; Trump’s Continuing Anti-News Media Moves–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 31, 2026

Indy Digest: Aug. 31, 2026

Climate change is taking lives—suddenly and violently.

By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the devastating flooding in Nepal after a glacier collapsed (!) last Wednesday, Aug. 26.

Here’s the latest news as of this writing, according to NBC News:

More than 900 people were killed by the devastating flooding in Nepal, officials in the South Asian country said Monday as the number of those listed as missing almost doubled to 4,247, including 592 foreign nationals.

The government “has mobilized all available resources and efforts at its disposal for search, rescue, and relief and recovery operations,” a spokesperson for the Nepali Foreign Ministry told a news conference Monday, before thanking a number of countries, including Qatar, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, for helping out with relief efforts.

“So far, 903 bodies have been recovered,” the spokesperson said, adding that 10,000 people had been rescued, including 323 foreign nationals.

Separately, Nepal’s disaster agency said 4,247 people were missing as of 1 a.m. ET Monday. …

Chinese state television broadcaster CCTV attributed the disaster to “glacier instability resulting from the long-term effects of climate warming” in a report Sunday. “It struck suddenly, with a large peak flow, high speed, severe destructive force and a wide impact area,” the broadcaster said.

The myriad videos of the sudden flood are shocking. According to The Conversation, the glacier collapse caused a landslide that was “originally thought to be an earthquake, as the seismic energy registered as a 4.4 magnitude quake on seismographs.”

Closer to home: A deadly flood in the Grand Canyon over the weekend was caused by monsoons intensified by El Nino. The latest as of this writing, according to The Associated Press:

The bodies of a Texas chiropractor and at least one other person have been found after a major weekend flash flood swept through the Grand Canyon, and forecasters warned more flooding was possible as heavy rain shrouded the canyon walls.

Saturday’s flash flood severely damaged the only water pipeline into the canyon. Officials barred tourists from staying at lodges and hotels inside Grand Canyon National Park and issued emergency water restrictions for year-round residents.

More than a dozen hikers, including two on a dream trip with their chiropractor friend, remain missing Monday following waves of rain in the Bright Angel Creek area of the tourist destination that hosts 4.4 million visitors a year. …

The link to human-caused climate change and the heavy Arizona rain is pretty strong, said climate scientist Daniel Swain of the California Institute for Water Resources.

A few months ago, Swain and colleagues published a study in the journal Weather and Climate Extremes finding that during the summer, short-term intense downpours in the West—akin to the one that hit the Grand Canyon—have become 10% stronger since 2000.

You know all of those nightmare scenarios we’ve been hearing about climate change for decades? We’re experiencing them right now.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• If you have not heard about the president’s temper tantrum regarding something said by Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker—something that was provably accurate and inoffensive by any sane measure—well, here’s a gift link to a Washington Post piece: “Welker, ahead of the airing of her show ‘Meet the Press,’ told NBC D.C. affiliate WRC-TV that Trump is ‘going to loom large’ over the November midterm elections. She noted that he endorsed several candidates in the primaries and said he had ‘some mixed results.’ Trump took issue with Welker’s characterization, insisting in a Truth Social post that his record of endorsements is, ‘without question, the strongest Endorsement in the History of Politics.’ ‘Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,’ Trump said in a post on Truth Social, saying he hoped its chairman, Brendan Carr, ‘will take this Threat to our Country very seriously.’” This is 25th Amendment, impeachment-level dictatorial lunacy.

• Here are two more stories about the Trump administration’s disregard for the news media. First, The Independent (U.K.) says: “In February of this year, federal prosecutors twice sought search warrants for account information for the YouTube channel of (Minnesota journalist Georgia) Fort and the journalist Don Lemon, both of whom have pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection to a protest at a Minneapolis church in January that they were covering. A judge twice rejected the request, writing that the government had failed to establish probable cause of a crime and that he wanted Lemon and Fort to be informed of the request so they could have a chance to challenge it. About a month after the judge’s ruling in late February, the government said it was withdrawing the request. Less than a month later, the DHS served Google with a different request for the YouTube information. This time, DHS utilized a different method that didn’t require approval from a judge, only a sign-off from a DHS official. It served Google an administrative summons citing an arcane provision of federal law—19 USC 1509—dealing with customs imports. The provision gives the DHS broad power to inspect records in order to determine whether duties and taxes are being correctly levied on imported items. It also instructed the recipients of the summons to keep it secret. … ‘It’s outrageous conduct on so many levels. It’s hard to know where to begin,’ said John Roth, who served as the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security from 2014 to 2017.”

• Second, The New York Times (gift link) reports: “When leaders from the world’s most powerful countries gather next week for the Group of 20 finance meeting in Asheville, N.C., they will be joined by throngs of journalists from newsrooms around the globe. Missing from among them, though, will be several reporters from three of the largest newsrooms in the United States. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has not granted credentials to individual reporters for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News to cover the event, which will draw finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s biggest economies. Alan Rappeport, an economic policy reporter who reports on the Treasury Department for The Times, has been excluded from the meeting. Since he began covering the department in 2017, he has attended nearly a dozen G7 and G20 meetings in person. … A spokesman for the Treasury Department said in a statement that the department would be welcoming ‘nearly 300 members of the media from approximately a dozen countries,’ including reporters from NPR, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera.”

• With the insanity comes cruelty. The CBC reports: “A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) video showing men in chains being walked onto an apparent deportation flight to Haiti has sparked outrage, with critics accusing Washington of sowing fear in Haitian communities as it ramps up deportations to the violence-hit country. The video, shared on social media platform X late on Thursday, shows several Black men being led up a set of stairs onto a plane, their hands and feet bound and tied to a chain around their waists. ‘Haiti TPS has been TERMINATED,’ reads the post, which said the footage was from a ‘Haiti repatriation flight’ on Thursday. ‘Those with terminated TPS are in our nation Illegally. They have two options: LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED.’ TPS refers to temporary protected status, a U.S. designation that allows foreign nationals to live and work in the United States without fear of deportation when conditions in their home countries are deemed too dangerous. … According to the United Nations, about 1.5 million Haitians are now internally displaced amid gang-related violence. At least 1,408 people were killed and 656 others were wounded across Haiti between April 1 and June 30 alone.” The lack of basic humanity here is chilling.

• Oh, hey, Trump thinks your community is dumb if it rejects data centers. ABC News reports: “President Donald Trump on Monday stressed his strong support for controversial data centers, a key issue ahead of midterm elections, with the president urging communities to ‘let Data Reign.’ ‘The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign,’ Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday morning. The president has long emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence advancement, repeatedly expressing his desire for the U.S. to beat China in the global AI race. ‘If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!’ Trump wrote.”

• And finally … we’ll end with a bit of weird news: An island suddenly appeared in British Columbia’s largest reservoir … and then disappeared just as suddenly. The CBC reports: “No one knows where it came from or where it went, but a massive new island might be floating out somewhere in the Williston Reservoir in northern B.C. The forested land mass caught the attention of B.C. Hydro and local residents earlier this month after it was spotted bobbing in the massive man-made lake north of Mackenzie. Rocky Avery says video and pictures of the island were taken by a boater and later shared with him. He posted them on social media, and they quickly went viral. ‘It was a pretty amazing sight to see, never seen anything like that in my 40 years in this country,’ said Avery. … Satellite imagery dated July 21 confirmed the island was in fact real, and floating in the main body of the reservoir west of Finlay Bay, about 100 kilometres west of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.” It was approximately the size of two football fields!

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