Tiffany Smyth is married to Seamus Culleton, who despite having a valid work permit was detained in SeptemberThe wife of an Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for five months - despite having a valid work permit - is pleading for help in instigating his release from the dire conditions" he is facing in detention.I just want him home where he belongs. I want us to be able to finish what we started," Tiffany Smyth, wife of Seamus Culleton, said during a Wednesday press conference. Continue reading...
US attorney general goes on attack during questioning by House judiciary committee over handling of filesThe US attorney general Pam Bondi attacked and insulted Democrats during a House judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday as she defended the justice department's handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.Democrats pounded Bondi with questions about the way the department has complied with a law last year mandating the complete release of the files with specific and limited room for redactions. Since releasing the documents after the statutory deadline, the justice department has come under intense scrutiny both for releasing the names of survivors and redacting, without explanation, the names of people who may have committed crimes. Continue reading...
Man who was detained released after several hours of questioning in connection to Guthrie's disappearanceThe FBI announced on Wednesday that it was conducting an extensive search" along multiple roadways close to the Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie who has been missing for 10 days.The development came after authorities released a man earlier in the day who was detained in a traffic stop following several hours of questioning in connection to the investigation", according to reports. Continue reading...
Small opening cut into floor at Merchant's House Museum indicates site was probably used as safe house', experts sayA landmark house in Manhattan preserved as a museum to New York's 19th-century history has revealed an even more intriguing secret: its previously unknown status as a refuge for people who escaped slavery before and during the civil war.The Merchant's House Museum's link to the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who secured the safe passage of enslaved people to freedom, was discovered when archaeologists looked beneath the drawers of a built-in dresser in the wall of a hallway leading to bedrooms on the building's second floor. Continue reading...
The racism was not new. What was new was the inability to look past it. For a moment, at least, the blinders were offJohn from New Mexico, a self-professed lifelong Republican, called into C-Span's Washington Journal earlier this month with penitence on his mind.I voted for the president and supported him," he began. But I really want to apologize."Jamil Smith is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
The Grateful Dead and some other interesting influences define the best and worst of this year's crop of topsMajor League Soccer's 31st season is nearly upon us, and fans across the league are busy offering takes. Takes on roster building, on relevance, on playoff potential. And, of course, on kits.It at times feels like there is nothing soccer fans across the globe like more than discussing kits and kit culture. Supporters, even those entirely bereft of any fashion sense to speak of, start offering up terms normally reserved for the catwalk come release day. Continue reading...
Unemployment rate was 4.3% in January with gains 13,000 less than the 143,000 jobs added a year ago, report showsThe US jobs market added 130,000 jobs in January, according to a highly anticipated labor market report released on Wednesday, a surge of job growth after months of fatigue in the labor market.The unemployment rate was 4.3% in January, a slight cooling since the fall. Economists predicted 70,000 in job gains and an unchanged unemployment rate for January. Continue reading...
It's not virtue signaling. It's vitriol signaling about their own perceived persecutionCan someone explain to me why Megyn Kelly is so angry? In an interview with Piers Morgan, the political commentator began ranting so hard about Bad Bunny's Super Bowl half-time show that I was starting to worry about her health.I'm sorry Piers. To get up there and perform the whole show in Spanish is a middle finger to the rest of America!" she roared. We don't need a Spanish-speaking, non-English performing performer, and we don't need an ICE- or America-hater featured as our primetime entertainment."Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Nearly half (49%) of all American adults disapprove of handling of immigration, NBC poll finds, versus 34% in AprilSupport for Donald Trump's immigration efforts has dropped dramatically following a wave of public revulsion over violent scenes in Minneapolis involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, new poll figures show.The figures arrive as administration officials continue to double down on ICE enforcement, which has been getting increasingly more dangerous. Continue reading...
by Ashifa Kassam, European Community affairs correspo on (#73G88)
US vice-president's post marks first time Trump administration used the word to describe the massacresThe White House has deleted a social media post in which the vice-president, JD Vance, referred to the Armenian genocide, prompting anger from members of the Armenian diaspora as well as opposition politicians across the US.The post was made during Vance's two-day trip to Armenia to mark a visit by Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, to a memorial for the up to 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman troops more than a century ago. The now-deleted post on Vance's official X account said he was visiting the memorial to honour the victims of the Armenian genocide". Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans on (#73G6W)
The archdiocese agreed to pay 600 abuse survivors a $305m settlement before the Vatican confirmed Aymond's exitPope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of the Roman Catholic archbishop of New Orleans, Gregory Aymond, on Wednesday - one day after the archbishop concluded a series of meetings with survivors of a clergy molestation scandal that has embroiled the city's church leadership for years.Aymond had submitted his resignation to global Catholic church leaders at the Vatican, as he was required when he turned 75 in November 2024. But the Vatican didn't immediately accept it, plotting for Aymond to remain in position until the New Orleans archdiocese settled a federal bankruptcy protection case that it filed in the spring of 2020 amid the continuing fallout of the decades-old worldwide clerical abuse crisis. Continue reading...
Ex-CNN anchor brings on Joseph H Thompson to defend him from charges related to coverage of a church protestFormer CNN anchor Don Lemon has hired a federal prosecutor, who quit amid the White House's immigration blitz on Minneapolis, to defend him from charges related to his coverage of a church protest.Lemon officially brought Joseph H Thompson on to his legal team, according to a Tuesday court filing. Thompson, who Donald Trump had appointed acting US attorney for Minnesota in June, reportedly resigned in January over the justice department's treatment of immigration enforcement. Continue reading...
Both the number of workers participating in union elections and the success of elections dropped offThe number of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped 30% in 2025 after the Trump administration left the federal labor watchdog powerless, according to an analysis released on Wednesday.The number of workers participating in union elections dropped by 59,000, a 42% decline compared with the year prior, according to the report from the Center for American Progress. The total number of union elections fell from a 10-year high of 2,124 in 2024 to 1,498 in 2025. Continue reading...
Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie reveal names they say DoJ redacted for no apparent reason'. Plus, at least 10 dead, including suspect, after school shooting in Canada
Over the last 10 years, the terms of political debate have changed completely - and week by week they seem to get worseThe notion of virtue-signalling - the act of performing progressive stances that don't cost you anything in order to burnish your own moral credentials - has been around since at least the 00s. In a political sense, it meant always being the one who reminded others to say chairperson" not chairman"; always manning the barricades for signs of bigotry, always being on the right demo. If its values were sound - all we're talking about, really, is trying to systematise courtesy to others - it was often easy to lampoon, because it felt performative and had a hair-trigger.But what has risen in its wake - vice-signalling - cannot be seen as its mirror or answer, any more than dehumanisation could be seen as the equal and opposite of decency. They're not in the same rhetorical category. The term doesn't bring itself to life; for that you need the US president. Cast your mind back to 2015; although Donald Trump had said he might run for election to the highest office in every cycle this century, his speech in Trump Tower was his first campaign launch, and it was where he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico. In seemingly unplanned remarks - the grammar was off, the structure meandered, the vocabulary was vague and repetitive - he said [Mexico] are sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and they're rapists." Continue reading...
Some Russians have dismissed the Games over the continued exclusion of their athletes. But the truth is international sport is still important to MoscowDuma member Vitaly Milonov didn't mince words when asked four years ago about the international ban against Russian athletes.There's no point in humiliating ourselves and begging to be let in," said the St Petersburg deputy, a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. We have our pride." International events had been corrupted by the United States, he claimed in a 2022 interview, just weeks after the International Olympic Committee and other governing bodies imposed the ban. Only Russia can say no. Other countries will accept whatever nonsense the Americans force on them - teams of vegans, queers and lesbians." Continue reading...
The 21-year-old has dominated speed skating for three years running. In the next 11 days, he could become not just an Olympic champion but the face of the Winter GamesEach Winter Olympics produces one or two figures who come to define it. The stars whose performances transcend result sheets and medal tables and settle into memory as shorthand for the event itself. For decades, America has waited for their next one: someone capable of cutting through the noise of the crowded sports landscape and centering themselves in the national conversation.Jordan Stolz may be him. Continue reading...
Proposed legislation, named after Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein's abuse, also tackles jurisdictionDemocrats in Congress were joined on Capitol Hill by survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse to introduce legislation to end the statute of limitations and restrictions on jurisdiction in civil sexual abuse cases.The move comes less than two weeks after the justice department released 3.5m pages of heavily redacted documents related to Epstein, as ordered by the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act. Continue reading...
Individual detained Tuesday south of Tucson, Arizona, in relation to case of mother of NBC's Savannah GuthrieA suspect in the abduction of US television host Savannah Guthrie's elderly mother, Nancy, was taken into custody in Arizona on Tuesday, nine days after the 84-year-old woman was reported missing, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the case.The Pima County sheriff's department issued a separate statement online late on Tuesday saying deputies had detained a subject during a traffic stop" and that the individual was being questioned in connection to the Nancy Guthrie investigation". Continue reading...
Trump, outraged by clip of six lawmakers, called them traitors' and said behavior was punishable by death'A Washington DC grand jury declined to indict six Democratic lawmakers who were denounced by Donald Trump after they made a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders.Federal prosecutors had sought an indictment against the Democrats who participated in the video, including Elissa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan, who all have military and intelligence backgrounds. Continue reading...
Unprecedented raid elevates concern that the president will seek to interfere in this year's midterm elections - key US politics stories from 10 February 2026 at a glanceWhen the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Fulton county election office in Georgia last month, the decision was based on debunked claims from election deniers and came after a referral from a White House lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election, a search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday reveals.The FBI's investigation originated" from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, an attorney who sought to overturn the 2020 election and contacted justice department officials to urge them to file a motion at the US supreme court to nullify the election. Olsen began working at the White House last year to investigate supposed election fraud. Continue reading...
Ronald Palmer Heath killed a traveling salesman in 1989; last year the state had a record 19 executionsA man convicted of killing a traveling salesman he and his brother had met at a bar has become the first person executed in Florida this year.Ronald Palmer Heath, 64, was pronounced dead at 6.12pm on Tuesday after a three-drug injection at the Florida state prison near Starke. Heath was convicted of first-degree murder, robbery with a deadly weapon and other charges in the 1989 killing of Michael Sheridan. Continue reading...
Elon Musk's younger brother and the woman were involved for about six months between 2012 and 2013Jeffrey Epstein engineered an intimate relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk and on the board of directors at Tesla, according to emails from the Department of Justice's recent release of documents involving the convicted sex offender. The younger Musk and the woman were involved for around six months between 2012 and 2013, with Kimbal Musk describing them as dating".In the lead-up to Musk and the woman's first meeting, Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nikolic labored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing - with Nikolic telling Epstein: please prepare [the woman] -;)" Continue reading...
The Democratic congressman Ro Khanna read out the names of six wealthy men included in the Jeffrey Epstein files.In a post on X at lunchtime, Khanna, of California, named the six as Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Leslie Wexner. He said he and his Republican colleague Thomas Massie had forced the Department of Justice to disclose the 'hidden' names.Reading the names in the House of Representatives, Khanna availed himself of protection from any defamation lawsuit by the speech and debate clause of the US constitution.
by Danny Monteverde and David Hammer of WWL Louisiana on (#73FN4)
Series of meetings is mandated by $305m settlement agreement for 600 survivors of decades-long abuse scandalA small number of victims of New Orleans' Catholic clergy abuse scandal filed into a local church office recently for the first of 10 group meetings with Archbishop Gregory Aymond.The New Orleans archdiocese agreed to the meetings as part of settling its six-year-old federal bankruptcy protection case in December. Such group and one-on-one meetings are some of the non-monetary terms of a settlement that is expected to otherwise pay about 600 abuse survivors $305m. Continue reading...
The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said he met the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein twice after his 2008 conviction, backtracking on his previous claims that he had cut ties after 2005.Lutnick admitted he had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 in testimony on Tuesday before the Senate appropriations committee.Democrats, including House members Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu, Melanie Stansbury, as well as Senator Adam Schiff, have called for Lutnick to step down
Kalshi says incredible weekend' after $145m in bets on Bad Bunny's opening song and guests during half-time showOnline prediction market Kalshi hit a daily record on Super Bowl Sunday, surpassing $1bn in trading volume, the company announced on Tuesday.Kalshi's CEO, Tarek Mansour, called it an incredible weekend", telling CNBC that Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad". Continue reading...
Churches in Springfield provide networks of support as Haitians face uncertainty over the future of TPS legal protectionsAt morning services at Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, on Sunday, congregants greeted one another with hugs and expressed gratitude for a rare piece of good news. Nearly a week before, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end legal protections for 350,000 Haitians in the US.The church is one of several in Springfield that provide services in Haitian Creole and has opened its doors to thousands of Haitians living in the small city in south-western Ohio. Addressing the ruling, pastor Carl Ruby explained in his sermon that during times of suffering, the silence of God doesn't mean the absence of God. Continue reading...
Former police chief Michael Reiter claims Trump also said thank goodness you're stopping' Epstein in 2006 phone callDonald Trump slammed Jeffrey Epstein about two decades ago, claiming everyone has known he's been doing this", a former Palm Beach police chief claimed.Michael Reiter's account of a conversation with Trump, contained within the justice department's release of 3m Epstein files, dramatically contrasts with the US president's public statements. After Epstein's arrest in July 2019, Trump said I had no idea" when asked if he knew about his former friend's abuse of teenage girls. Continue reading...
From Pennsylvania to Montana, the White House's war on woke' has targeted US monuments that address topics like racism and Indigenous historyBlank spaces now exist where a series of panels about enslavement once appeared on the walls of the President's House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The site, which honors the home of George Washington and John Adams, is a major landmark that bore artwork and informational signs for more than a decade. But on 22 January, National Park Service (NPS) workers used hand tools to pry off 34 panels to comply with a presidential executive order designed to reframe the national narrative. The panels that highlighted the lives of people enslaved by George Washington when Philadelphia was the US capital in the 1790s are now in storage.The removal is one of several across the nation, as NPS staff aim to conform with Trump's executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" issued on 27 March 2025. Public markers, monuments and statues that the Trump administration considers disparaging to past or current Americans have been flagged at more than a dozen parks. Two exhibits at Montana's Little Bighorn battlefield national monument that discuss Indigenous history and the Battle of the Little Bighorn have been targeted and deemed noncompliant. Additionally, signage about climate change at Muir Woods national monument in California and visitor brochures at Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home national monument in Mississippi that referred to Medgar Evers's killer as racist were also removed. Continue reading...
The Puerto Rican star's vision of American identity moved beyond colonial tropes to span an entire hemisphereBy now, many of us have a favorite part of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl half-time performance. It's a dense, rich set that invites rewatching to take in every thoughtful, exuberant detail - even though it's barely 14 minutes long.My most beloved part occurs a little more than nine minutes into the homage, when the cuatro puertorriqueno appears. The stringed instrument has its own moment in the spotlight, shown in the talented hands of the cuatrista Jose Eduardo Santana just before Ricky Martin performs. Continue reading...
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