by Coral Murphy Marcos, Shrai Popat, Anna Betts and T on (#70TM5)
This liveblog is now closed.The US Senate failed on Thursday to re-open the government and to vote to fund the military during the federal government shutdown, ensuring that the standoff will stretch into next week.The Senate vote on a short-term Republican funding bill failed for the 10th time with just 51 votes. A second vote on Pentagon funding in the afternoon similarly failed in a floor vote, meaning the process to begin fully funding military operations also becomes a non-starter. After the votes, senators are expected to leave Washington for the weekend, almost guaranteeing the shutdown lasts until at least Monday. Continue reading...
US president said we need Tomahawks and a lot of other things' as he meets Zelenskyy; fraud sentence of disgraced serial fabulist Santos commuted - key US politics stories from Friday 17 October at a glanceDonald Trump has played down hopes that he will supply Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, saying during a White House meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the US may need them for a future conflict.Responding to a question on whether the US would send the cruise missiles requested by Ukraine, Trump said: We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other things that we've been sending over the last four years to Ukraine. Continue reading...
Justice department submits emergency filing as Trump pushes to expand use of military in Democratic-led citiesThe Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to permit the deployment of national guard troops to Illinois, as the president pushes to expand the domestic use of the military in a growing number of Democratic-led cities.In an emergency filing, the justice department urged the court to overturn a lower court ruling that halted the deployment of several hundred national guard troops to the Chicago area. The district judge had raised doubts about the administration's justification for sending troops, questioning its explanation in light of local conditions. Continue reading...
The sweeping exhibition Monuments, which features 19 contemporary artists, opens in LA on 23 OctoberIn 2021, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, finally removed the Confederate statues that had inspired a series of violent and eventually deadly white supremacist rallies in 2017.The statue of Robert E Lee, which had been surrounded by white men with torches in a famous far-right propaganda image, was melted down. But the statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which stood at the heart of a 2017 Ku Klux Klan rally, was given to a California-based arts non-profit, which pledged to use it for transformation, not further veneration". Continue reading...
Lawmakers urge president to allow for repair of housing and utilities after Typhoon Halong devastates villagesMike Dunleavy, the governor of Alaska, has asked Donald Trump to declare a major disaster after a powerful storm devastated villages in the state's south-west, displacing 1,500 people and prompting large-scale air evacuations.The state's senators and congressman urged the president to approve the declaration to allow additional federal resources into the region to repair housing and utilities before winter. The scale of the disaster has surpassed the state's ability to respond, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Nick Begich, the Alaska congressman, wrote. Continue reading...
According to complaint, Mahmoud Amin Ya'qub al-Muhtadi participated in attack on Israel, then applied for US visaThe FBI has accused a Louisiana resident of participating in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 - then lying about his past and fraudulently obtaining a visa to live in the US.According to a recently unsealed FBI criminal complaint, Mahmoud Amin Ya'qub al-Muhtadi armed himself and gathered a group to cross from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel during the attack that left nearly 1,200 people dead. Continue reading...
More than 2,500 US rallies are planned in all 50 states as protesters call for limits on presidential powerMillions are expected to show out for protests on Saturday at more than 2,500 locations across America, from small towns to large cities, to speak against the Trump administration.No Kings, the coalition behind a mass demonstration in June, is again calling people to the streets to send the simple message that Donald Trump is not a king, pushing back against what they see as increasing authoritarianism. Continue reading...
The indictment of critics including John Bolton rings alarm bells as the US president expands his power and seeks to use the justice system to exact revengeHe who saves his country does not violate any law," Donald Trump posted after beginning his second term - emboldened, perhaps, by the supreme court's bombshell ruling on presidential immunity last year, which many say gave the office-holder the powers of a monarch.Millions of Americans are expected to push back against the president's growing power at No Kings protests across the US on Saturday. The demonstrations come as former intelligence and national security officials warn that the country is sliding towards competitive authoritarianism", in which elections and courts survive but are systematically manipulated by the executive. Continue reading...
His ruthless use of the national guard to menace cities and political enemies is unprecedented. He is preparing for battle against the enemy within'Donald Trump had better hope the members of the Nobel committee are not paying attention to what's happening inside the United States. If they did take a look, they'd notice a jarring pattern. While the US president likes to play the peacemaker abroad, at home he is Trump, bringer of war.It's easy for the first fact to conceal, or divert our attention away from, the second. This week was a case in point. It began with Trump travelling to Israel, where he was hailed as a latter-day Cyrus, a mighty ruler whose name would be spoken of for millennia to come, the man who had brokered what he himself boasts is an everlasting" peace.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Signs of credit stress send markets in Europe and Asia down, while investors turn to safe haven assetsEuropean stock markets fell on Friday and gold hit a record high after two US regional banks said they had been exposed to millions of dollars of bad loans and alleged fraud.Signs of credit stress rattled markets across Europe and Asia. In London the FTSE 100 fell 0.9%, Germany's Dax fell 1.8%, Italy's FTSE Mib fell 1.5%, the Ibex in Spain was off 0.3% and France's Cac 40 dropped 0.2%. Continue reading...
by Kejan Haynes in Las Cuevas and Natricia Duncan in on (#70TRE)
Relatives of Trinidadian man believed killed in US military strike on alleged drug boat say he was denied due processRelatives of two men from Trinidad believed to have been killed in a US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean have accused Donald Trump of killing poor people" without due process and are demanding justice.Chad Charpo" Joseph and Rishi Samaroo, from the fishing village of Las Cuevas in northern Trinidad, are thought to be among six people killed in a US airstrike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela. Continue reading...
Palestinian activist can speak across country at events while pushing back on Trump's attempts to deport himA federal judge has lifted travel restrictions within the US for Mahmoud Khalil, allowing the Palestinian activist to speak at rallies and other events across the country while he fights the Trump administration's efforts to deport him.Khalil, who was freed from a Louisiana immigration jail in June after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) amid student and activist roundups, had asked a federal magistrate judge to lift the restrictions that had limited his travel to New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, Louisiana and Michigan. Continue reading...
Overdoses have been declining nationally since August 2023, but Alaska is far behind in that progressWhenever he can, Shane Shelton offers neighbors naloxone, an overdose reversal medication, and a place to sleep out of the cold.The 54-year old's home is known as the Dog House" in Williwaw, Alaska - on the outskirts of Wasilla in Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) borough. In this neighborhood, family homes with manicured lawns sit side by side with yards piled with old tires and tarps, some with makeshift walls nailed around them to hide the mess and avoid fines. People come to the Dog House to get high - and keep one another alive. Shelton said he had administered naloxone more times than he could count, and cannot get enough of it. Continue reading...
The former national security adviser is not the first person the president has retaliated against - he's gone after James Comey, Letitia James and a host of othersThe Trump administration filed charges against former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday, the latest target of an ongoing retribution campaign aimed at Donald Trump's enemies.Bolton surrendered to authorities on Friday for the charges over mishandling classified materials. Continue reading...
The president is upset with his photo on the magazine's cover. I, too, have a bone to pick with my scalpWhy are we so obsessed with hair? Just a bunch of fibers sprouting out of your skin, yet we make a massive fuss over it. Those with it, flaunt it. News anchors, fashion models, that damned Jeremy Allen White. Boy, does he love to show off. His hair should be nominated for an Emmy, just on thickness alone. What did he do to deserve that floppy mess on top of his head? I thought this country was a meritocracy? Nope. He's obviously benefitted from a family history of thick locks.Call me greedy if you must, but I don't just want some hair - the sad remnants of a life in decline - I want a lot of hair. I want so much hair that I have to employ a live-in barber to trim me up twice a day just to keep it all from consuming my entire face. I want people in the streets screaming at the top of their lungs. Look at that hair! The guy under it isn't so bad, either!"Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist Continue reading...
by Rachel Leingang, Dharna Noor and Alice Speri on (#70TMP)
Groups across climate, democracy and Palestine solidarity have been talking for months about how to band togetherWhen Donald Trump named leftwing billionaire George Soros as the next on his growing list of targets for retribution, he was also targeting the long list of progressive causes that Soros funds.Soros's Open Society Foundations (OSF) network, now run by his son Alex, is a major funder of non-profits large and small, across sectors including democracy, voting rights, climate justice, racial justice, Palestinian rights and higher education. Public documentation of the group's grant-making shows thousands of worldwide recipients receiving anywhere from small amounts to multimillion-dollar grants, and include major non-profit organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union. Continue reading...
Ex-national security adviser turned Trump critic expected to surrender to authorities FridayJohn Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who has since become one of the US president's biggest Republican critics, was expected to surrender to the authorities on Friday and make an initial appearance in court to face criminal charges that he mishandled classified information.The justice department filed federal charges against Bolton, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act. Continue reading...
The withdrawal of Israeli troops and the establishment of an international stabilisation force are key in securing long-term peace, but the plan is dangerously vague on these issuesTwo years of death and destruction in Gaza ended once Israel and Hamas signed off on Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan. A ceasefire is in place. Humanitarian trucks have begun to roll in. Hostages and prisoners are being exchanged. Israel has begun a first-phase pullback from the territories it controls, and under Trump's plan its troops will eventually be deployed in a buffer zone along Gaza's land border.Given these developments - all part of the opening phase - dismissing the momentous changes in Gaza is to deny reality. There have already been disputes over the return of the bodies of Israeli hostages, but there are unresolved longer-term problems that could derail the ceasefire and imperil the rest of the Trump plan.Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace StudiesDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Eighteen-count indictment handed down as US president calls former ally a bad guy'. Plus, director Kathryn Bigelow on AI, Andy Warhol and nuclear Armageddon Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.The justice department has filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who became one of his biggest critics. Bolton is accused of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.What did Trump say about the charges? In response to a question about the charges, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he was not aware of them but that Bolton was a bad guy".What has Trump said? In a presidential memo, Trump said the government needed to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence", adding a comment that Soros was at the top of everything".What has OSF said? We have always and will continue to adhere to our rigorous compliance practices and operate within the bounds of the law while also refusing to surrender our legal and constitutional rights to free speech, association, due process, and the rule of law without challenge," an OSF spokesperson said. Continue reading...
Trump allies would love an excuse to step up their crackdown. Nonviolence, both disciplined and open-hearted, must define the dayThey have a Hate America' rally that's scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall," the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Fox News on Friday. It's all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. They're all coming out."The Republican Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer said the party's terrorist wing" was holding the Hate America" rally. Democrats want to keep the government shut down to show all those people that are going to come here and express their hatred towards this country that they're fighting President Trump," said the House majority leader, Steve Scalise. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, embellished the story on Fox, referring to the demonstrations' paid protesters" and adding: It begs the question who's funding it." Continue reading...
Second round of protests at more than 2,500 sites are set for Saturday, including in cities where Trump has sent troopsDonald Trump has promised to crack down on dissent and sent troops into US cities. His allies are claiming antifa, the decentralized antifascist movement, is behind plans to protest. He's looking for any pretext to go after his opponents.Still, this Saturday, even in cities with troops on the ground, millions of people are expected to march against the president as part of a second No Kings" protest. The last No Kings protest in June drew several million people across more than 2,000 locations. This time, more than 2,500 cities and towns nationwide are hosting protests. Continue reading...
Only a handful of North American athletes have spoken out against Israel's assault on Gaza, a silence shaped by fear, sponsorship and the policing of speechI will not just shut up and dribble... I get to sit up here and talk about what's really important." So proclaimed LeBron James in 2018 when confronted with the question of whether athletes have the right to speak about the political and social justice questions of their time.Yet since 7 October 2023, elite athletes in North America have had startlingly little to say about what most human rights groups in the world, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the United Nations have characterized as Israel's genocide in Gaza (a situation currently in flux due to a mutually agreed upon ceasefire and prisoner exchange).Nathan Kalman-Lamb is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Derek Silva is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at King's University College at Western University. They are co-authors of The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game and co-hosts, with Johanna Mellis, of The End of Sport podcast. Continue reading...
Cody James Williams used facial recognition to call for help as his mother suffered medical emergencyAuthorities in Michigan are saying a three-year-old boy is a hero after he managed to unlock his mother's phone using her face while she experienced a severe epileptic seizure and then summoned life-saving help on a video call.Cody James Williams' actions serve as a good reminder for all parents that you should talk to your kids [about what to] do in an emergency", the Oakland county sheriff, Michael Bouchard, said at a 14 October news conference where he honored the boy by symbolically deputizing him as a junior member of his office. Continue reading...
The Vegas signing of the former Team Canada goaltender, acquitted but still suspended, exposes a sport where talk of values" masks a deeper culture of silenceOn Thursday, the Vegas Golden Knights announced that goaltender Carter Hart will join the team on a professional tryout contract. Hart was one of five former Team Canada World Junior players initially charged with sexual assault stemming from an incident in 2018, and, though acquitted earlier this year, remains suspended by the NHL until 1 December. In a statement about Hart's contract signing, the Golden Knights said that the team remains committed to the core values that have defined our organization from its inception" and that the team expects that our players will continue to meet these standards moving forward".Which sounds all well and good, but there's a difference between expecting someone to meet a standard and maintaining it - or even enforcing it. It's not surprising that Hart is back on the ice in the NHL. For one thing, he was indeed acquitted, along with the other four accused, which is technically grounds for readmittance, whether one agrees with the ruling or not. For the league, the union, and the teams, the story is - or can be - relatively simple: a player cleared by the courts is ready for a comeback. But the real reason Hart's return will strike many as unsurprising is because, well, this is just how hockey works. That is, yes, everyone can talk about values and standards and expectations, but in reality hockey is still driven by silence. Continue reading...
The US president, JD Vance and Nigel Farage seem to believe that checking facts is a form of censorship. Nonsense: speech is only free when it is anchored in truthFacts are becoming less sacred by the day in Donald Trump's US, where many of his supporters now deny the very existence of truths. To them, inconvenient evidence is by definition bias". His followers and those who fear his fist are falling into line: media, universities and that infamous regiment of tech zillionaires who stood right behind him on inauguration day. The day after Trump's election victory was certified by an electoral vote tally in Congress, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg announced that, starting with the US, the company would get rid of factcheckers and replace them with community notes similar to X".A similar hammer blow has just struck Full Fact, the exceptionally valuable UK factchecker whose word is a gold standard for honesty. Google has pulled its 1m funding. Along with the ending of sizeable donations from Meta, the charity tells me this amounts to a loss of a third of its funding.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
From Jack Johnson to Larry Bird, American sport has grappled with the racial myth of the Great White Hope. Now the Mavericks' new phenom, 18-year-old Cooper Flagg, inherits the mantle - whether he wants it or notEvery time Jack Johnson's big Black fists smashed into a white fighter's face, he wasn't just breaking the bones of his opponents, but the spirit of White America. Blow after blow after blow. Out of this shame, a mythos was born. One after another, white fighters propped up like scarecrows. One after another, collapsing. As cultural critic Gerald Early has argued, Johnson's fights became less about sport and more about the drama of race in America, with every knockout symbolizing a direct challenge to white supremacy. For the next 100 years, across multiple sports, whites have tried to find the next champion to return them to glory. This myth-making even inspired Howard Sackler's Pulitzer-winning play The Great White Hope.In basketball, figures like Jerry West and Pistol" Pete Maravich represented Anglo excellence before the NBA's full desegregation revealed the overwhelming superiority of African-American players. By the time Larry Bird rose in the 1980s, the Great White Hope narrative had simply been repackaged for a new generation. Bird was a badass hick from Indiana. Bird was a godsend to Boston's white working class. Bird was Magic's equal. Bird was the Great White Hope disguised as the Great White Hope denier.I don't want to be seen as the Great White Hope. I just want to be a great basketball player, period. Continue reading...
by Anna Betts in New York and Sam Levin on (#70TFD)
Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo tried to knock each other down while Curtis Sliwa took shots at bothZohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and current frontrunner for New York City mayor, faced off with Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor now running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, at the first New York mayoral election debate on Thursday night.Here are some key takeaways from the evening. Continue reading...
The Democratic nominee and the former governor of New York clashed repeatedly, while Sliwa criticized them bothNew York City's three mayoral candidates faced off on Thursday night in the first of two televised debates, less than three weeks before voters head to the polls.On stage were Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo - now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June - and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped out of the race several weeks ago, did not participate. Continue reading...
John Bolton, who served in Trump's first administration, faces charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information. Key US politics stories from Thursday 16 October at a glanceJohn Bolton, a former national security adviser in Donald Trump's first administration, has vowed to defend his lawful conduct" after a federal grand jury indicted him on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have been signed off on from prosecutors in the US attorney's office despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year. Continue reading...
by Sam Levin, Robert Mackey, Marina Dunbar, Lucy Camp on (#70SW9)
This blog has now closed. Read our latest politics story hereA reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest developments out of the Middle East, as Israel and Hamas continue to carry out various aspects of the US brokered ceasefire deal.This includes the news today that Israel returned the bodies of 30 Palestinians to Gaza, bringing the total number handed over to 120, according the Gaza health ministry and Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. Continue reading...
Refiled complaint, after judge tossed initial suit last month, also targets individual reporters and book publisherAfter a federal judge tossed Donald Trump's $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, book publisher Penguin Random House and two Times reporters last month, the US president filed a 40-page amended complaint on Thursday.US district court judge Steven Merryday in Florida gave Trump 28 days to refile and amend the action he threw out on 19 September. Continue reading...
Alvin Holsey just took over the US southern command late last year for a position that normally lasts three yearsAmid escalating tensions with Venezuela and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced on social media.Adm Alvin Holsey's abrupt departure comes less than a year after he took over as head of the US military's southern command, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The posting typically lasts three years. Continue reading...
President says plans will lead to many more beautiful American children' but unclear if companies will sign upThe Trump administration announced on Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other infertility treatments.In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx. Continue reading...
A network of former intelligence and security officers says democratic decline is accelerating under Trump's ruleThe United States is on a trajectory" toward authoritarian rule, according to a sobering new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration - and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, the NSA, the state department and other national security agencies. Continue reading...
Pritzker, a billionaire, says he plans to donate winnings from playing blackjack on Las Vegas tripThe Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, made more than $1.4m while gambling in Las Vegas last year, according to federal tax filings released by his campaign team.Pritzker, already a billionaire with a family net worth of $41.6bn, who is widely seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, won the money after playing blackjack at a Las Vegas casino while on vacation with his wife and friends, according to his campaign spokesperson. Continue reading...
Hawks want regime change. Democrats and others are right to warn against illegal and unauthorised use of forceThe drumbeat is growing louder. Covert operations are supposed to remain just that, but on Wednesday Donald Trump confirmed that he had approved secret CIA actions in Venezuela and suggested that he was considering strikes on its territory. These comments follow the administration's extrajudicial killings at sea: attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean that have left at least 27 dead - a frightening new precedent denounced by UN experts as illegal. The US has already built up forces in the region, with about 6,500 troops now stationed there. No to war in the Caribbean ... No to regime change ... No to coups d'etat orchestrated by the CIA," railed Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's dictator, after Mr Trump's remarks.The US president's repeated claim that each boat strike saves 25,000 American lives is even more preposterous than it first sounds. The fentanyl that killed 48,000 people in the US last year did not come from Venezuela; most of it is from Mexico. But MrMaduro's regime looks increasingly isolated. The US has designated Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang as a terrorist organisation that has invaded" the US, claiming that Mr Maduro is personally responsible. It has used that posturing to justify deportations and to boast - against the evidence - that Mr Trump has cut violent crime in cities. Continue reading...
by Natricia Duncan in Kingston, Kejan Haynes in Port on (#70SWA)
Rishi Samaroo and Chad Charpo' Joseph believed to have been on boat Trump alleged was carrying drugs to USFamily members and neighbours have identified two men from Trinidad and Tobago who are believed to be among six people killed in a US airstrike on a boat allegedly transporting drugs from Venezuela.Without providing evidence, Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the strike in international waters had killed six narcoterrorists" and claimed that intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics" and said that it was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks". Continue reading...
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