USA & Canada Intelligence Brief — Wednesday, September 23, 2026

USA & Canada Intelligence Brief — Wednesday, 23 September 2026

The White House spent Wednesday courting one autocrat while fighting its own reporters. Trump drove out to an air base in the evening to greet China’s Xi Jinping on the tarmac; his lawyers had stood in a federal courtroom hours earlier, defending a ban on three American newsrooms.

The two quarrels met in a single sentence. A government lawyer asked the judge to leave the reporters locked out at least until the Chinese president has gone home, because, he said, national security matters most during such a visit.

American voters are angry about money and not consoled by the alternative. In a poll published on Wednesday, 44 per cent of registered voters call their vote for Congress a message of opposition to Trump, against 19 per cent who call it a message of support, yet only about a quarter approve of each party in Congress.

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is embarrassed by his president’s guest. Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican of Mississippi, told the chamber on Tuesday that Trump should not have invited Xi, and called him “a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator”.

Ottawa is deliberately looking past Washington, and was taunted for it. Prime Minister Mark Carney spent the week in New York building coalitions with Europeans and never met Trump, who wrote on Wednesday morning that Canada is “destroying itself” through immigration.

Canada now has three votes running at once, and Trump is on every ballot. British Columbia’s premier called a snap election for 24 October in which he named the American president more than twenty times, while Quebec votes on 5 October and Alberta holds its referendum on 19 October.

Read across the Associated Press through PBS, NPR, NBC News, Reuters, the White House’s own briefing page and the Press Democrat of California. Then the Canadian Press through BNN Bloomberg and the Chronicle-Journal of Thunder Bay, the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa, the Hill Times and the Bank of Canada.

Washington Rolls Out The Carpet, And Bolts The Door

The welcome for Xi Jinping was designed to flatter, and it went ahead on Wednesday evening. Xi arrived in Washington and “was met with a rare planeside greeting” from Trump at Joint Base Andrews, the military airfield outside Washington that receives visiting leaders, rather than being driven to the White House, the Associated Press reported after the event.

The First Lady gave the reason in plain terms. Melania Trump told Fox & Friends, the morning programme of the Fox News Channel, on Wednesday that her husband chose to go himself because “they have a great relationship”, adding: “He’s coming on our soil, and we need to welcome them with the most respect.”

The staging at the airfield was exact. A red carpet 100 feet long was unfurled at the foot of the aircraft steps, where a 21-person honour guard waited with Trump and Melania Trump, and Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan came down and shook their hands, the Associated Press reports.

Thursday carries more of it. The Office of the First Lady says the arrival ceremony on the South Lawn will feature 479 military personnel from every branch of the armed forces, a review in the Rose Garden, and a flyover by one B-2 Spirit bomber and four F-22 Raptor fighters.

It is a repayment, not a first meeting. The visit reciprocates the ceremony that met Trump in Beijing in May, where, the Associated Press reports, a red carpet, an honour guard and about 300 Chinese youths waving both flags chanted “Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!” — though Xi himself was not at the airport.

What steadies the reading is that nobody expects much of it. The Associated Press writes that “expectations are low that the trip will produce any major breakthroughs”, with tensions high over trade, artificial intelligence, Trump’s war with Iran and China’s designs on Taiwan. The black-tie dinner on Thursday evening will seat technology chiefs including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

This desk read no Chinese source today, so the account above is an American one. The Associated Press describes a three-day visit beginning on Wednesday, while the Office of the First Lady calls Thursday 24 September the day of the state visit proper. Both are correct, for different things.

A Judge Starts Where The White House Is Weakest

The ban that Trump announced on Friday 18 September reached a courtroom on Wednesday afternoon. Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump nominated to the bench in 2017, heard the emergency request of the three banned newsrooms, CNN, MS NOW, the cable channel formerly called MSNBC, and Politico, a Washington political news site, and did not rule from the bench, the Associated Press reports.

He opened not on free speech but on fair procedure. Kelly reminded both sides that he must apply the rulings of earlier press-access cases, two of which held that journalists are entitled to be heard before a pass is taken away, and said: “I think it is fair to say that the processes that the court laid out wasn’t followed here.”

The government did not concede the precedent. Justice Department lawyer Michael Velchik argued that those earlier rulings were wrong, and put the administration’s case in one line: “Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right.”

He rested the rest on the President’s duty to protect the country. Velchik told the court that “The president should be able to take immediate action to protect national security”, the Associated Press reports, and asked that the passes not be restored while Xi Jinping was in Washington.

The administration’s written case was broader than the courtroom argument. In a filing late on Tuesday it said the outlets had breached “standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues and publishing sensitive or classified information”.

It listed what it called reporting incidents. They included coverage of “‘top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker”, an alleged leak investigation, and a document on funding for the White House ballroom with “intricate descriptions of how the Secret Service would invest in security improvements”, the Associated Press reports.

The President had already said plainly what moved him. Trump told reporters on Friday that the outlets “purposely write negative news, and they do that because they want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration”, NPR, the American public radio network, reports.

The newsrooms’ lawyer called the process absent rather than merely flawed. Theodore Boutrous called the ban an “unprecedented, unreasonable punishment” imposed “without a semblance of due process”, and told the court it was “probably the clearest case in history” of viewpoint discrimination.

He said the security argument arrived late. Boutrous told the court “Suddenly it’s a national security case”, and added: “I guess the light bulb went off and they all decided ‘Start talking about national security’.”

Trump expected to lose and said so first. He wrote before the hearing that he expected the “totally disloyal” Kelly to rule against him, adding that “as usual, we’ll go for appeal”, NBC News reports.

He was right. Early on Thursday 24 September, hours after this edition’s reporting window closed, Kelly granted a temporary restraining order of 14 days and ordered the White House to restore the three outlets’ access at once, holding that the ban was likely unconstitutional, NBC News reports.

The reasoning was the one he had flagged. Trump, the judge wrote, did not dispute that the outlets “did not receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before their hard passes were revoked”, and nothing in the record showed “formally articulated standards” of conduct.

He dismissed the security rationale in the administration’s own words. Kelly wrote: “Certainly, that is not what President Trump said when he announced that he was ‘banning’ Plaintiffs from the White House — instead, he focused on the alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reporting.” He called one standard the government offered “so vague it hardly does the trick”.

The White House had not answered by the time this edition closed. It did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment, NBC News reports, and a senior White House official had defended the ban earlier in the week: “Nobody close to the President was surprised at his action to hold the fake news accountable.”

The press corps had already answered in its own way. The five-network pool that films the President suspended its coverage, and at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday evening journalists from Fox News, CBS and NBC were present but not shooting video, while crews from NewsNation, Newsmax, Right Side Broadcasting Network, One America News and LindellTV were, the Associated Press reports.

The industry lined up behind the three. An amicus brief from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the White House Correspondents’ Association and 49 media outlets and industry groups, among them the Associated Press, the New York Times and Reuters, told the court that “the targeted expulsion of news media from White House grounds injures the public interest”.

Anger That Finds Nothing To Vote For

The American mood this week is fury without relief. A poll by SSRS for CNN, taken online and by telephone from 16 to 17 September among 1,206 adults and published on Wednesday, finds 44 per cent of registered voters describing their vote for Congress as a message of opposition to Trump and 19 per cent as a message of support.

The network calls that a high for an incumbent president going back to the presidency of George W. Bush. The margin of sampling error is 3.5 percentage points for the full sample and 4.1 points among registered voters.

The money numbers are worse than the political ones. Just 27 per cent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down 22 points from 2018; 20 per cent approve of his handling of inflation; and 28 per cent call economic conditions good, a fall of 41 points from 2018.

The poll also asks how people feel, and the answers are anxious. Some 57 per cent say they feel uncertain about their own finances, and more than a third are not confident of keeping their present standard of living — worse, the pollsters note, than the readings at the end of the Great Recession.

The doubt reaches inside his party. Only 35 per cent of Republicans strongly approve of Trump, against 66 per cent in September 2018; half of Republicans disapprove of his handling of inflation, and 59 per cent say the war in Iran has hurt their finances.

What stops this becoming a rout is that the opposition inspires nobody. Democrats lead the congressional vote by 49 to 41 per cent, a narrower margin than the 12 points the same poll found in September before the 2018 midterm elections, and about a quarter of Americans approve of each party in Congress.

Prices are the mechanism behind all of it. Two-thirds of Americans say Trump has worsened economic conditions, and majorities say the war in Iran and the new tariffs have hurt their own finances.

A Signature In New York That Is Not Yet A Law

Tuesday brought the document behind one of Trump’s boldest claims. He, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen signed a security agreement at United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, after months of quiet talks, the Associated Press reports.

Trump had described it in grander terms at the General Assembly. He said a deal with Denmark gives the United States “permanent control over security and all other needs” in Greenland, the Arctic island under Danish sovereignty, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

The text says something more careful. It reaffirms “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark” and recognises Greenlanders’ “right to self-determination”, according to the Associated Press’s reading of the accord.

What the United States gains is room to build. It may “modernize and expand” its activities at the Pituffik Space Base in the north-west, set up “defense areas” at Narsarsuaq in the south and Mestersvig in the east, and “may establish additional defense areas in Greenland”.

It also shuts the door on Moscow and Beijing. The accord provides that “no state that is not a member of NATO shall be allowed to establish its own manned or unmanned military installations in Greenland”, nor keep a lasting military presence there.

The gap between the claim and the paper is the point. The agreement “does not have an end date”, but it will only “enter into force” once the “necessary parliamentary processes of the Kingdom of Denmark, in conjunction with Greenland, have been completed” — a signature, not yet a law.

Trump called it “a dream come true” for the United States, NBC News reports. The network’s own assessment is cooler, headlining the result as “No invasion, a few compromises and the status quo”.

Ottawa Looks Past Washington, And Is Taunted For It

Canada’s answer to a broken negotiation is to spend its week elsewhere. Carney and Trump were both in New York and did not meet, on Carney’s first trip to the United States since trade talks collapsed last month, the Canadian Press reports.

The government says so in its own voice. Its release of Wednesday opens by declaring that the international order faces a rupture and that Canada is building a new one. It quotes Carney: “At this pivotal moment in history, the world can count on Canada.”

The money is modest and pointed. At an event on ocean monitoring co-hosted with Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, Carney pledged C$82 million (about US$58 million). “Canada is an ocean nation,” he said; von der Leyen said 30 countries have promised support, and that “We must listen to the ocean and we must protect it much more.”

The larger cheque went to Gaza and the West Bank. Ottawa announced a further C$100 million (about US$71 million) for Palestinians, of which C$80 million (about US$57 million) is humanitarian aid. That brings its total since October 2023 to more than C$600 million (about US$426 million).

Carney himself did not give Canada’s set-piece speech. Foreign Minister Anita Anand addressed the General Assembly for the second year in a row, Global News, a Canadian television news service, reports.

Trump answered the week’s diplomacy with a post. On Wednesday morning he claimed Canada is “destroying itself” by admitting millions of people “essentially unchecked and unvetted”. He called it a “Liberal takeover that will end very badly”; the Canadian Press notes that he offered no evidence.

The grievance behind the courtesy is trade. Trump has imposed tariffs of 50 per cent on a range of Canadian goods, and is set to block imports of others later this month. He has also ordered Canadian-origin products removed from United States government purchasing systems, the Canadian Press reports.

Europe is the hedge, and it is not yet a deal. Von der Leyen last week opened the door to Canada becoming what she called the first “associate member” of the European Union, and the two sides meet in Montreal on 29 October.

At home the fight is over a single bill. The Building Canada Strong Act, or Bill C-39, was introduced on 21 September by Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon. It runs to 232 pages and amends both impact-assessment law and the Canada Labour Code, the Hill Times, an Ottawa politics weekly, reports. Unions and the New Democratic Party call it an attack on labour; the government says Canada needs it to build. The Conservatives, the official opposition in Ottawa, have made the cost of living their line of attack instead.

Three Canadian Ballots, And Trump On All Of Them

The newest of the three came as a surprise on Tuesday. Premier David Eby, whose New Democratic Party is the centre-left party governing the Pacific province, went to Government House in Victoria to ask Lieutenant-Governor Wendy Cocchia to dissolve the legislature, setting voting day for 24 October, the Canadian Press reports.

He called it a firebreak. Eby mentioned Trump more than twenty times outside Government House, called the moment an “existential” one for the province, and said: “When you smell smoke you don’t sit and wait to see what happens next.”

He accused his opponents of going easy on the American president. Trump is “targeting our businesses and he is threatening our sovereignty”, Eby said. He added: “At a time when Trump is creating more uncertainty, the last thing we need to do is abandon the front line.”

His timing is what his critics attack. Eby governs on the one-seat majority he won at the 2024 election, and called the vote a week after scheduled municipal elections, despite pleas from local leaders not to overlap the campaigns, the Canadian Press reports.

The opposition united within two hours. Seven legislators from CentreBC, the breakaway caucus that split from the British Columbia Conservatives, rejoined that party, the Canadian Press reports.

Their interim leader is new to the job. Lorne Doerkson, who called Trump “the bully south of the border”, said of the election call: “I think David Eby is going to regret this.”

The province’s books are the vulnerability. Finance Minister Josie Osborne said last week that the deficit forecast had grown by C$450 million (about US$319 million) to a record C$13.8 billion (about US$9.8 billion). The Canadian Press reports that the rise was largely a “calculation error” on natural gas royalties.

Quebec, the French-speaking province, votes first, on 5 October. Its leaders were preparing on Wednesday for the third and final debate, hosted by Radio-Canada, the French-language public broadcaster.

The pro-independence Parti Québécois is ahead and the appetite for change is the story. Léger’s survey of 1,001 Quebec voters for Le Journal and TVA puts the party at 29 per cent among decided voters, and finds 65 per cent wanting a change of government, up four points.

Alberta, the oil-producing western province, votes on 19 October on ten questions, the last of them on staying in Canada. Premier Danielle Smith said on Monday that she is “not a neutral party” and wants Alberta to remain, after her own party president complained about a C$4 million (about US$2.8 million) advertising campaign.

What This Means From Latin America

The state visit is the item to watch from São Paulo. Any easing of tariffs between Washington and Beijing would move demand for the ore, soya and copper that South America sells to both. The Associated Press reports that expectations of a breakthrough are low.

The oil price is the transmission line. November West Texas Intermediate settled at US$92.16 a barrel in New York on Wednesday, up 1.8 per cent, after Iran’s President told the General Assembly that Tehran would not surrender. That is dearer fuel for the region’s importers, and better receipts for its exporters.

Canada’s search for company includes Brazil. Ottawa lists Brazil among the founders of a new coalition on multilateralism launched at the United Nations on 21 September, alongside Australia, Barbados, the European Union, India and Kenya. That places Brasília beside Ottawa among governments assembling coalitions of the willing.

The Greenland text is a precedent worth reading closely. A great power obtained wide military access while the document reaffirmed the smaller party’s sovereignty and left ratification to its parliament — the shape of bargain a region used to asymmetric negotiation will recognise.

What We Are Watching

• The appeal against Judge Kelly’s order — from 24 September. He granted a restraining order of 14 days early on Thursday and told the White House to restore access at once, NBC News reports. Trump said before the hearing that “as usual, we’ll go for appeal”.
• The Trump–Xi summit at the White House — 24 September. The arrival ceremony on the South Lawn carries 479 military personnel and a flyover, the Office of the First Lady says. Trade and artificial intelligence are the practical tests.
• The close of the state visit — 25 September. Xi and Peng Liyuan take tea at the White House and then visit the National Archives, where the Trumps will see them off.
• Ratification of the Greenland accord — no date set. The agreement enters into force only when the parliamentary processes of Denmark, together with Greenland, are complete.
• The Quebec general election — 5 October. The Parti Québécois stands at 29 per cent among decided voters in Léger’s survey for Le Journal and TVA. The final debate closes the campaign.
• The Alberta referendum on its future — 19 October. Ten questions, the last on whether to stay in Canada. The premier says she is not neutral and wants the province to remain.
• The British Columbia election — 24 October. Premier David Eby called it citing an “existential” threat from Trump, and governs on a one-seat majority, the Canadian Press reports.
• The Canada–European Union summit — 29 October, in Montreal. It will show whether von der Leyen’s talk of Canada as an “associate member” becomes anything.
• The American midterm elections — 3 November. Democrats lead the congressional vote by 49 to 41 per cent in that poll, and about a quarter of Americans approve of either party in Congress.
• The United States funding deadline — 11 December. The House of Representatives passed the Senate’s extension on 1 September, moving the cliff past 30 September, as reported at the time. This desk has not verified that Trump signed it.

For how these stories developed, see the USA & Canada Intelligence Brief for 22 September and 21 September. Those editions carry the United Nations speech and the filing of the lawsuit.

North American politics and trade policy and their bearing on this hemisphere run through our pillar coverage of The United States & Canada. That section carries the daily record behind this brief.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened at the hearing on the White House press ban on 23 September?

Judge Timothy Kelly, whom Trump nominated in 2017, heard the three banned newsrooms on Wednesday afternoon and did not rule from the bench, the Associated Press reports. He began with fair procedure rather than free speech: “I think it is fair to say that the processes that the court laid out wasn’t followed here.” Justice Department lawyer Michael Velchik answered that “Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right” and that “The president should be able to take immediate action to protect national security”. The outlets’ lawyer Theodore Boutrous called the ban an “unprecedented, unreasonable punishment” imposed “without a semblance of due process”, NPR reports. Early on Thursday 24 September Kelly granted a restraining order of 14 days and told the White House to restore access at once, holding the ban likely unconstitutional, NBC News reports.

Does the Greenland agreement give the United States control of the island?

No. Trump told the General Assembly on 22 September that a deal with Denmark gives the United States “permanent control over security and all other needs” in Greenland, NBC News reported. The text was signed that day in New York by Trump, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Jens-Frederik Nielsen. It reaffirms “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark” and recognises Greenlanders’ “right to self-determination”, the Associated Press reports. It lets the United States expand at Pituffik Space Base and create “defense areas” elsewhere, and bars non-NATO states from military installations. It has no end date, but it enters into force only once the parliamentary processes of Denmark, together with Greenland, are complete.

What do the new American polls say about the midterm elections of 3 November?

The poll behind these figures, conducted by SSRS among 1,206 adults on 16 and 17 September, was published on 23 September. It finds 44 per cent of registered voters calling their congressional vote a message of opposition to Trump, against 19 per cent for support — a high for an incumbent president back to George W. Bush, the pollsters say. Democrats lead the congressional vote by 49 to 41 per cent, narrower than the 12-point lead the same poll found in September before the 2018 midterm elections, and about a quarter of Americans approve of each party in Congress. Just 27 per cent approve of Trump on the economy and 20 per cent on inflation. The margin of sampling error is 3.5 points overall and 4.1 points among registered voters.

Why is British Columbia holding an election on 24 October?

Premier David Eby, whose New Democratic Party is the centre-left party governing the Pacific province, asked Lieutenant-Governor Wendy Cocchia to dissolve the legislature on Tuesday 22 September, the Canadian Press reports. He called the moment an “existential” one and named the American president more than twenty times. “When you smell smoke you don’t sit and wait to see what happens next,” he said. He governs on the one-seat majority he won at the 2024 election, and his opponents united within two hours, with seven legislators from CentreBC, the breakaway caucus that split from the British Columbia Conservatives, rejoining that party. Their interim leader Lorne Doerkson said: “I think David Eby is going to regret this.”

Sources: CNN, NPR, PBS News carrying the Associated Press, NBC News, the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, California carrying the Associated Press, and the White House briefing page. Then the Canadian Press through BNN Bloomberg and the Chronicle-Journal of Thunder Bay, the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa, Global News, the Hill Times and the Bank of Canada. Canadian-dollar amounts are converted at the Bank of Canada daily average rate for 23 September, C$1.4096 to the US dollar. The one market figure printed, November West Texas Intermediate at US$92.16 a barrel, is Wednesday 23 September’s New York settlement, taken after the 20.00 UTC close; Tuesday’s closes did not verify, so no change on the day is printed anywhere. The hearing is reported from the Associated Press, NPR and NBC News, none of them a party to the case; Judge Kelly’s order came early on Thursday 24 September, after this edition’s Wednesday window, and is reported from NBC News, last checked at 06.55 UTC on Thursday. The account of the welcome at Joint Base Andrews follows the Associated Press’s copy filed after the greeting, not its morning preview. No Chinese source was read today, so the account of the state visit is an American one. Reporting window 22–23 September 2026.

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