Today’s Top Stories from NBC News
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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2026
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In today’s newsletter: Russia has coerced thousands of Ukrainian prisoners to denounce their leaders and country in propaganda videos. An NBC News poll shows how Americans’ views of immigration are shifting. And the data center debate crosses religious lines.
Here’s what to know today.
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Volodymyr Srebrodolskyy, a Ukrainian soldier with gray hair and deep wrinkles, smoked a cigarette while speaking to his Russian captor behind the camera. “I don’t want to go back there,” Srebrodolskyy said, appearing to have turned against his country. “It would be good if all of this ended quickly.”
The video was Russian propaganda. Weeks before it was posted on Telegram, Srebrodolskyy was fighting for Ukraine on the eastern front line against the men who captured him. Now, he was following their script.
The propaganda worked. Arguments over whether Srebrodolskyy betrayed his country tore apart his hometown of Karpylivka. Some labeled him a traitor.
Srebrodolskyy died in captivity weeks after the video was shared. When his body was ready for burial this spring, some of his neighbors — believing the propaganda — threatened violence against the village mayor if he allowed Srebrodolskyy to be placed in the town’s cemetery. Others defended him, saying he went to war willingly, without trying to evade the draft.
The arguments put the fate of his body in limbo.
Thousands of such videos have been posted to Russian social media channels, some of them airing on state-run television. They follow a formula: Ukrainian prisoners decry their commanders, decline to return home, denounce corruption and say they hope for the war to end soon. The message has been repeated since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 with few variations, reinforcing Moscow’s narratives about the country it invaded and seeding distrust toward the army in Ukrainian communities.
Read the full story here.
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President Donald Trump is set to deliver a speech today to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, highlighting peace deals he has worked on, U.S. actions in the Western Hemisphere and progress on his 20-point peace plan in Gaza, according to U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz. Trump will also touch on the “importance of ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon,” Waltz added.
The speech comes as the U.N.’s Human Rights Council found in a report last week “reasonable grounds to believe” that the U.S. had committed war crimes during attacks against an Iranian school and residential area in February. The war in Iran is about to enter its eighth month.
Trump is also expected to sign a deal today with leaders of Greenland and Denmark giving the U.S. “permanent control over security” of the strategic Arctic territory.
Meetings with several world leaders this week, including Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are also expected.
Here’s what else to know.
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The share of registered voters who rank immigration and border security as the most important issue facing the country shrank between 2024 and 2026, a new national NBC News poll found. Just 7% of people surveyed this year ranked the issue as the most important, compared to 14% in 2024. More voters were concerned with the cost of living and the economy, as well as the war with Iran, the survey showed.
In another shift, voters were more inclined to prioritize immigration reforms over border security. This year’s poll found that 51% of voters think it’s more important to prevent discrimination against immigrants and create a pathway to citizenship, and 46% say it’s more important to secure the border. Those numbers were flipped two years ago when 53% prioritized border security and 43% prioritized preventing discrimination and a pathway to citizenship.
Take a closer look at the results.
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- For subscribers: NBC News’ chief data analyst Steve Kornacki zeroes in on the race that could flip Ohio to a blue state — and the key counties that could tip the scales — in The Data Dive, a subscriber-exclusive newsletter on the numbers, trends and data shaping the biggest stories heading into the midterms.
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- CNN, Politico and MS NOW sued the Trump administration over the president’s decision to ban the outlets from the White House, and other TV networks refused to provide pool coverage of the president’s activities in protest.
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- U.S. military leaders are divided on whether Trump should get involved with the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis.
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- A federal appeals court introduced a new wrinkle into the fight over congressional maps in Missouri by ordering the new map be used in November, even though the Supreme Court twice rejected Republicans on the issue.
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A grand jury will not pursue charges in the death of Nolan Wells, District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said yesterday, while forcefully rejecting months of speculation that race played a role in the death of the Mississippi teen this summer.
Wells was with friends celebrating July Fourth and was last seen on Horn Island, a barrier reef off Mississippi accessible only by boat. His body was found two days later. “Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that,” Myers McIlrath said. The district attorney also took aim at the Wells family’s lawyer, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who previously called into question whether race was a factor in Wells’ death.
Read more details from the grand jury report.
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This summer, as players in the data center and AI world tried to win over skeptical communities, I heard the last four words I ever expected to be associated with the debate over the facilities: What would Jesus do?
That question was one of many that came up as residents in Westover, Alabama, grilled developers about their plans to bring a data center to the area.
We know that data centers are one of the few topics that Americans of diverse political backgrounds seem to agree on. It turns out they’re coming together across religious lines too. As one organizer for an interfaith group put it to me, “Not everyone shares faith beliefs, but everyone has light bills.”
That’s not to say everyone is reading from the same handbook — data center proponents are tapping into their faith too.
— Bracey Harris, enterprise reporter
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- Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery cleared a major hurdle after the California State Attorney General’s Office announced a settlement resolving a 12-state legal challenge to the deal.
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- Presley Gerber, the 27-year-old son of supermodel Cindy Crawford whose death is being investigated as a suspected overdose, checked into a rehab facility hours before he was found unresponsive.
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Thanks for reading the Morning Rundown. Today’s newsletter was curated for you by Elizabeth Robinson.
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