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Episode Date: September 24, 2026

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly. A federal judge is ordering the Trump administration to temporarily restore White House access to three media outlets, CNN, MS Now, and Politico. Last week, President Trump revoked the White House press credentials of journalists from the three news organizations. They sued arguing their First Amendment rights were being violated. In a court filing, the Justice Department alleges CNN, MS Now, and Politico, had jeopardized national security and spread falsehoods with their reporting. President Trump welcomes China's President Xi Jinping to the White House today. Iran, trade, and the future of artificial intelligence are expected to be among the issues discussed. NPR's Emily Fang says this is Xi's first state visit to the U.S. in more than a decade. Trump and Xi will hold bilateral meetings on tariffs and the war on Iran. The two countries are trying to maintain what China calls strategic stability, a dayton and the relationship. And just before the meetings this week, the U.S. announced a two-month extension of a trade truce that lets it access Chinese-made rare earth products.

But other sources of tension remain, including new Chinese actions designed to block U.S. sanctions and recent U.S. legal actions against importing and selling Chinese drones and internet routers. Emily Fang and Peer News, Washington. Flock surveillance cameras, the AI-powered license-plained readers, are coming under scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Experts in policing and privacy offered their insights yesterday to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. NPR's Meg Anderson says critics of the technology point to reports of police officers abusing it. Senators from both parties want more guardrails for the technology, which captures billions of license plates every month and can track people over time. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, said flock is treating all Americans like criminals.

One witness at the hearing, Lindsay Isaacs, has personal experience with that. She was wrongly accused of causing a fatal car accident. She spent two weeks in jail, including in solitary confinement. I was terrified. I was facing the possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison for a crash that I knew I had not been involved in. Senator Holly said he invited the CEO of flock and several other surveillance companies to testify, but they did not attend. Meg Anderson, NPR News. The outer bands of Hurricane Polo continue to dump heavy rains on southwestern Mexico.

Forecasters say flooding and mudslides are likely as Polo dumps four to six inches of rain per hour on some areas. That storm has fluctuated between a Category 4 and a Category 5 hurricane over the last 24 hours. The National Hurricane Center in Florida says Polo is expected to remain offshore and begin moving away from southwestern Mexico later today. This is NPR News from Washington. The top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee is pressing the Trump administration to explain a recent policy change with implications for the U.S. Census. As NPR's Hansi L. Wong reports an agency policy and scientific integrity no longer includes language that bans political interference. In letters citing NPR's reporting, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is demanding answers about why the Commerce Department removed language. that said it is the agency's policy to make sure scientific findings, quote, are not suppress,

delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence, unquote. Warren says she's concerned cutting that explicit ban on political interference could hurt the reliability of official statistics from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The Commerce Department removed its ban on political interference last month after the Census Bureau released a highly unusual document by a team with ties to the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by officials from President Trump's first administration. Anzi Luong, NPR News. Six Flags is being sued by three people who say they suffered traumatic brain injuries

from riding the now-closed X2 roller coaster at the company's Magic Mountain Amusement Park in Southern California. There's been no comment from the company. Fast food giant McDonald says it plans to spend more than $8 billion over the next decade to update its restaurants. It will include shifting to more automation. McDonald's has 46,000 restaurants around the world. The company's shares fell almost 5% on word of the changes. I'm Dave Mattingly, NPR News, in Washington.