Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify warUS military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical end times" to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the marines, air force and space force. Continue reading...

Wigdor LLP accuses billionaire of trying to destroy those who seek to hold him to account for alleged sexual assault'A law firm that represented multiple women who accused former Jeffrey Epstein associate Leon Black of sexual misconduct alleged in a Manhattan civil suit on Monday that the powerful financier deployed multiple frivolous and malicious lawsuits" as retaliation for representing these accusers.Wigdor LLP claimed Black, who co-founded and formerly chaired Apollo Global Management, tried to use his billions to buy his own form of justice" and to weaponize the civil justice system to silence and destroy those who seek to hold him to account for alleged sexual assault". Black has emphatically denied all wrongdoing. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's commerce secretary has acknowledged visiting convicted sex offender on private island in 2012

US president criticises prime minister for third time 24 hours, describing him as not Churchill' over initial refusal

Jorge Pederson, 30, had been on life support after weekend attack which left more than a dozen others wounded

Donald Trump has insisted that Israel did not put pressure on the US to launch the initial strikes over the weekend, telling reporters that Iran 'was going to attack first'. The US president also threatened to cut off all trade with Spain after the Nato ally refused permission for two jointly operated bases to be used in US strikes on Iran

Move comes day after department said it would drop fight against law firms that stood up to Trump's executive orders

George Calicut Jr has been in prison for more than 25 years for murder, though there were no witnesses or evidence against him

Proponents of the measure announce they have collected 1.3m signatures to put the issue on the midterm ballot

Prosecutors argued Colin Gray gave 14-year-old son, who is accused of killing four in 2024 shooting, access to firearm

More than 1,000 lawsuits were resolved last year, including multimillion-dollar payouts tied to overturned convictions

Jurors hear how July 4 protest outside ICE turned violent, sparking rare federal case against left-wing demonstratorsA little after 11 pm on the 4th of July last year, police officer Jeremiah Zapata, adrenaline pumping through his body, crawled along Tanglewood drive, a quiet residential street on the outskirts of Fort Worth.A few minutes earlier, an urgent call had come over the radio. A lieutenant responding to a call at the Prairieland detention center, a nearby ICE facility, had been shot. Zapata was one of the first officers to respond to the scene, where another officer told him that the suspects had fled along Tanglewood. Moving slowly in his cruiser underneath a light rain, Zapata used the spotlight on his police cruiser to search for what he assumed the suspect looked like - someone dressed in all black, running with a rifle. Zapata admitted he had tunnel vision" as he frantically searched for a suspect. Continue reading...

Entertainment giant keeps average of $7.58 of each ticket for events at major concert venues, court hears

Republican is accused of improperly claiming more than $9,000 in funds meant to subsidize housing costs for members of Congress

State department urged US citizens in 14 countries to leave, but many flights have been canceled

Trump long promised to end endless wars', but the US has joined Israel in attacking Iran. We want to hear how people in the US are reactingHundreds of people thought to have died in Iran following the strikes by US and Israeli forces on Saturday with the numbers expected to rise. Six US service members have been killed since the conflict began on Saturday.For the last decade Donald Trump has denounced US military intervention in other countries; back in December 2016 the then president elect said; We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with." Continue reading...

Formula One's newest team join the grid having designed a car from scratch in only 12 months with the aim of becoming a championship-winning forceWhen the new Formula One season begins on Sunday in the usual fever of excitement and anticipation, consider amid the maelstrom the Cadillac team. Before the lights go out in Melbourne, F1's newest entrant will have a deserved chance to take a breath and savour for but a moment, their remarkable achievement of simply having made it to the grid.The US team backed by General Motors has been built, aside from those involved in the preplanning, from scratch in what will be a year and a day since its entry was formally approved. As their team principal, Graeme Lowdon, explained, that process had begun in an empty room with a screwdriver and an A4 sheet of paper. Continue reading...

If POTUS can really bomb peace, stability and women's rights into the Middle East, I'll take my hat off to him. Judging by his role in Gaza, I won't hold my breathDonald Trump says Keir Starmer has damaged the special relationship by not helping him more in the US-Israel war on Iran. But you have to remember that when you do help, Trump pretends you didn't anyway, and also pisses on your war dead. Still, what could be more enticing than the Americans trying to sell you a timeshare on a war in the Middle East?And so to Iran. War is the realm of uncertainty," said Carl von Clausewitz, who - and not to be a bitch - I still think of as a more impressive military theorist than Pete Hegseth. Certainly, Carl had fewer Crusades tattoos than the US defence secretary. Hegseth is 100% certain about all his nailed-down positions, even the ones in apparent conflict with each other. And it feels like a great sign that he, Marco Rubio and JD Vance already seem to have different rationales for why this war was launched. This is an administration that came to power on an explicit no more wars" ticket - but look, as Pete keeps saying, this isn't a regime-change war. If that seems confusing, given he first said it about 10 minutes after US-Israeli strikes had just cratered the ayatollah's compound, Hegseth has since been on hand to scoff that what's going down in Iran is no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise".Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The lesson here isn't that one AI company is more ethical than another. It's that we must renovate our democratic structuresOpenAI is in and Anthropic is out as a supplier of AI technology for the US defense department. This news caps a week of bluster by the highest officials in the US government towards some of the wealthiest titans of the big tech industry, and the overhanging specter of the existential risks posed by a new technology powerful enough that the Pentagon claims it is essential to national security. At issue is Anthropic's insistence that the US Department of Defense (DoD) could not use its models to facilitate mass surveillance" or fully autonomous weapons," provisions the defense secretary Pete Hegseth derided as woke".It all came to a head on Friday evening when Donald Trump issued an order for federal government agencies to discontinue use of Anthropic models. Within hours, OpenAI had swooped in, potentially seizing hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts by striking an agreement with the administration to provide classified government systems with AI. Continue reading...

US county attorney is confident' her office will be able to pursue charges in cases which led to criticisms of use-of-force policies

The league and its players, locked in a contentious 17-month standoff, must agree to new CBA terms by 10 March or threaten not starting the season on timeIt's not dramatic to say the labor negotiations between the WNBA and its players feel like an old-timey western standoff. The opposing sides have been holding in a quick-draw stance over a new collective bargaining agreement for the past 17 months, passing proposals back and forth that contain what each side envisions for the future of the league. But with less than 70 days until the 30th WNBA season is supposed to tip off, there's still no resolution.The two sides blew past the original deadline of 31 October 2025 and the 9 January extension, entering a status quo" period. The league said that if a term sheet hasn't been agreed to by 10 March, the 2026 season is at risk of not meeting its planned 8 May start. Continue reading...

British institutions can keep politicians somewhat in check. But in the US, shamelessness has become contagiousIt is both sad and ironic that, 250 years after the revolt against George III, the British monarchy is teaching its former colony lessons about accountability. While elite impunity is rampant in the US - from a president who conspired to steal an election, to the Epstein class" - the man formerly known as Prince Andrew is facing both shame sanctions and legal consequences. The same is true for a towering member of the British establishment, the man still known as Lord Mandelson. Just what explains the difference?Being shamed is not the same as being convicted in a court of law - a difference that those pushing back against #MeToo and other supposedly woke movements never failed to emphasize. But both can be crucial for upholding norms of decency as well as democracy. Successful shaming depends on someone credibly accused of misconduct being part of groups whose approval matters to them. Larry Summers might well be resigning from Harvard because it would just have been too uncomfortable to face students and colleagues who might have voiced their disapproval of the attitudes revealed in the Epstein files. By contrast, certain Republicans appear to feel utterly unashamed, no matter how cruel or racist their utterances, because constituents do not seem to mind or because they can safely keep away from any unpredictable encounters (after all, GOP congressmen systematically cancel town halls). Continue reading...

Nominees for key Senate seat to be set while voters choose in congressional contests reshaped by GOP gerrymanderThe first votes of the 2026 midterm cycle will be cast on Tuesday, with a pair of high-stakes US Senate primaries in Texas that will test both parties' appetite for political change in the Trump era.Voters across the state will decide their nominees for a critical Senate seat, as well as for several key congressional contests reshaped by a mid-decade gerrymander sought by Donald Trump to preserve the GOP's fragile House majority. Continue reading...

Trump says the war could last weeks or far longer'. Plus, what a high schooler detained by ICE for 10 months wants you to know

The world's most popular podcaster seemingly disapproving of ICE does not mean he has soured from the administrationJoe Rogan, the world's most popular podcaster, is struggling to sleep. In an interview last week, he complained that the madness" of the news cycle - from the release of the Epstein library, to US military strikes on Iran - has him overwhelmed". For some, this admission is just the latest sign that the world's most popular podcaster might be regretting his role in cheerleading Donald Trump back into office.It follows seemingly scathing criticism of ICE after the killing of Renee Nicole Good. Rogan compared ICE to the Gestapo in a short clip that quickly went viral. It led this newspaper to reasonably ask Has Joe Rogan fully soured on Trump's presidency?", with ABC, Bloomberg and CNN all recently reporting on Rogan's apparent disapproval of ICE. Continue reading...

Trump administration accused Luis Munoz Pinto of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang. Now living in Colombia he hopes to clear his name and study engineering in the USIt was the busiest hour of the evening in Bolivar Square, one of the most iconic spots in Bogota, Colombia's capital. Amid the buzz of smiling tourists, however, Luis Munoz Pinto sat very still, his head in his hands, as memories of his deportation from the United States to a Salvadorian prison flooded back.Munoz Pinto, 27, was one of more than 250 Venezuelan men accused by the Trump administration of being part of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang and deported from the US to the brutal terrorism mega-prison called Cecot in El Salvador last March. Continue reading...

The president needs a quick win to avoid a quagmire - but he needs a long war to justify potential emergency powersDonald Trump has trapped himself in his war with Iran by announcing that his intention is regime change. That uncertain objective is linked to his most urgent objective at home. While pursuing regime change in Iran, he is desperately attempting to stop regime change through the midterm elections. He needs a swift victory in Iran to avoid a quagmire, but he needs a long war to attempt the assertion of unconstitutional emergency authority over the electoral process.Plunging into war followed Trump's signature style: he negotiated in bad faith, turned to bombing when the sides were making significant progress", according to Oman's foreign minister, was heedless of international law, and shut out congressional consultation. He offered as his imperative Iranian imminent threats", which the Pentagon briefed congressional staffers after Operation Epic Fury began was simply without basis in fact. There was no intelligence suggesting an imminent threat". Where's the WMD? Continue reading...

This is a war without a plan, without a strategy, and without any clear understanding of where it leads or how it endsI've spent the last several days checking with foreign policy experts, analysts and specialists in the Middle East for their understanding of Donald Trump's real goal in Iran, and how anyone (including him) will know he's achieved it.Several told me that Trump is seeking the kind of war" that the US executed in Venezuela - an abduction of a leader by special forces or, as in June, surgical airstrikes on locations where Iran appeared to be building nuclear bombs.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and on 15 March in the UK Continue reading...

The technology most people use only as a chatty tool for daily tasks is reportedly aiding US military aggression. And there is not much we can do about itThere are a lot of things that AI can do. It can sort out your shopping list, and it can keep your kids entertained when they're mutinous by spinning up a tailor-made bedtime story for them. It can make you more efficient at work, and can help our government operate more effectively.What is written less about, and what we need to shout louder about now, are the risks inherent in the militarisation of AI. In the last three months Donald Trump's White House has reportedly used AI twice to effect regime change, or to - in the most recent case in Iran - get as close to doing so as possible, and leaving it up to rank-and-file Iranians to finish the job.Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World's Favourite App Continue reading...

After the league gathered for the combine, we look at the plots that will dominate the news cycle in the coming weeks and monthsBarring a gas mask situation, we know who will be the No 1 overall pick in the draft. The Raiders need a viable long-term solution at quarterback after Geno Smith flamed out last year. Indiana's Fernando Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner and national champion, is the top quarterback on the board and will be the first named called on 23 April. After Mendoza, the real intrigue begins. Continue reading...

US president says relationship is not what it was' after PM defends decision not to allow use of British bases

None of the prime minister's critics engages with the hard strategic dilemmas arising from Britain's perilous dependency on US powerIt is not easy being a friend of Donald Trump, but it is a lot less dangerous than being his enemy. There isn't a huge range of options in between. War in the Middle East is exposing how limited the choices are for a British prime minister.The US president doesn't see alliances as long-term relationships based on mutual advantage, but as rolling transactions on a mafia model. The boss offers protection in exchange for tribute and loyalty.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnistGuardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?

He lasted just 11 days as White House communications director, before being fired from the Trump administration. The financier and broadcaster discusses working for the president - and becoming his biggest criticIf somebody walks into your office and says they're friends with Donald Trump, they're either exaggerating the relationship, or they don't understand the relationship," says Anthony Scaramucci. Because nobody is friends with Donald. You're a transaction in this guy's field of vision."Scaramucci should know. He has been non-friends with Trump for more than 30 years, though these days he's more an outright enemy. Just as the attention-devouring president once stalked Hillary Clinton on the debate stage, Trump looms large in Scaramucci's story. The two men seem to haunt each other. When we meet in London during a stopover in his hectic schedule, the conversation rarely drifts away from Trump for more than a few minutes. Conversely, the 62-year-old financier and broadcaster has become one of Trump's most vocal and penetrating critics. We fight like New Yorkers," Scaramucci says. He doesn't really come back at me, because he knows I'm going to come back at him." Unlike Trump's presumptive friends, Scaramucci does understand Trump, he claims. There's something called Trump derangement syndrome'; I think I have Trump reality syndrome'. I know what he is, I know what he does, I know what he's capable of and I know the danger of him." Continue reading...

Democrats disturbed by rationale that Trump ordered pre-emptive strikes out of concern about Tehran retaliation

Trump said military campaign could go far longer' then initial four-to-five week projection as violence and chaos ripple across Middle East - key US politics stories from Monday 2 March at a glanceDonald Trump has laid out four goals in Iran and said the US campaign had been projected to last four to five weeks but could go far longer than that".On Monday, the US president offered his most extensive comments yet about the war, going beyond two video messages and a series of brief phone interviews with reporters that offered sometimes conflicting objectives. Continue reading...

US first lady Melania Trump has chaired a meeting of the United Nations security council on children and education in conflict, two days after her husband, Donald Trump, and Israel launched attacks on Iran that prompted a UN warning about child safety. The UN event happened days after Iranian state media reported that an airstrike killed at least 165 people at a girls' school in southern Iran. Melania Trump did not comment on reports of strikes on the Iranian school. 'The US stands with all of the children throughout the world. I hope soon peace will be yours,' she said

State laws had limited sharing of information with parents about gender identity of trans students in public schoolsThe US supreme court has decided to block a series of California laws that can limit the sharing of information with parents about the gender identity of transgender students in public schools. This ruling marks a victory for parents who challenged these protections on religious and due process grounds.The emergency request was granted on Monday and the decision was made along party lines, with the three liberal justices dissenting. Continue reading...

Trump boycotted the dinner in 2017 and has not attended any in either of his terms as presidentDonald Trump said Monday he will attend the White House correspondents' association dinner for the first time as president.Writing in a social media post, Trump said: In honor of our Nation's 250th Birthday, and the fact that these Correspondents' now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!" Continue reading...

Ruling retains boundaries for 2026 elections despite state court ruling it was unfair to Black and Hispanic residentsThe supreme court on Monday sided with Republicans in ruling that the boundaries of the only GOP-held congressional district in New York City do not need to be redrawn for the 2026 elections, despite a court ruling that the district is unfair to Black and Hispanic residents.Over the dissent of the court's three liberal justices, the conservative majority halted the state court ruling that had ordered New York's redistricting commission to redraw the district held by Nicole Malliotakis that covers Staten Island and a small piece of Brooklyn. Continue reading...

The first lady's UN security council speech came days after Iranian media reported an airstrike killed 165 people and injured 96 others at girls' school

US military also says three US fighter jets were shot down in friendly fire' incident, all six crew members survived

Zinke, interior secretary during Trump's first term, cites health problems and declines to run again in MontanaRyan Zinke, a Montana Republican who served as interior secretary during Donald Trump's first administration, said he would not seek re-election to a fifth term in the US House, citing health concerns.The decision gives Democrats an outside chance to pick up a House seat in a state that has veered to the right politically over the past decade. Continue reading...

The war in the Middle East triggered by the joint US and Israeli attack on Iran expanded dramatically on Monday, with casualties and destruction reported across at least nine countries, including major strikes on Tehran.

After spending taxpayers' money, Florida governor will likely be left holding bill for $608m promised by Trump administration

Bill and Hillary Clinton last week faced hours of questioning from lawmakers about the convicted sex offender