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Trump said he thinks his defense secretary has done a great job'

Fraught time for Ken Martin as new reporting details cash-flow problem and divisions over party's directionMounting financial pressures and growing internal turmoil at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have intensified scrutiny of chair Ken Martin, as new reporting detailed a deepening cash-flow problem, management concerns and widening divisions over the party's direction less than 100 days before the November midterm elections.The latest reporting has underscored both the committee's financial distress and the toll it has taken on Martin personally. The New York Times reported that the embattled DNC chair, who took the helm last year, became the subject of an internal HR inquiry after throwing his phone in the direction of a junior aide's desk during a heated exchange in early July, prompting a formal complaint. The Times, citing people familiar with the matter, also reported that the incident nearly cost him his job and has contributed to growing isolation with the party as the committee grapples with mounting financial strain. Continue reading...

Defense department updated database of casualties to list four service members deceased in Overseas Operations'A controversial move by the Pentagon to reclassify casualties in the Iran war is being taken by US military veterans as a sign of disrespect for the dead.It's such a huge disrespect for the families," said Michael E Smith, a retired US rear admiral and the founder of National Security Leaders for America. To claim that they weren't killed as a result of the war - oh, it was just overseas operations - is just ludicrous." Continue reading...

Tornado that blackened midday sky rips roofs off homes and flips vehicles in town of MenashaA tornado struck north-eastern Wisconsin on Monday, blackening the midday sky and sending workers sheltering in office basements as ferocious winds splintered homes, scattered twisted metal across a highway and knocked out power to more than 30,000 people.The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado in Winnebago county, about 90 miles (145km) north-west of Milwaukee. Damage was reported in cities including Appleton and Menasha, where police chief Matt Albrecht said some homes and businesses were severely impacted". Continue reading...

Prosecutors claim singer killed Rivas Hernandez after she threatened to expose relationship and ruin his music careerA Los Angeles judge ruled on Monday that singer D4vd must stand trial over the killing, sexual abuse and mutilation of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez.Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided after a five-day preliminary hearing that prosecutors had provided enough probable cause to put the 21-year-old singer, who was born David Burke, on trial. Prosecutors have claimed Burke killed Rivas Hernandez after she threatened to expose their relationship and ruin his burgeoning music career. Continue reading...

A parasite called cyclospora has sickened thousands of people across at least 41 states and prompted waves of headlines about weeks-long "explosive diarrhea". But as Guardian health contributor and reporter Melody Schreiber tells host Carter Sherman, Donald Trump's cuts to the CDC and FDA have kneecapped the agencies' ability to contain the dangerous outbreak - which is now growing rapidly. Melody and Carter trace one food supplier's role in the outbreak, discuss the future of public health and reveal tips for safe eating and cooking.

Bryan Kohberger, convicted of killing four college students in 2022, claims he pleaded guilty due to bad legal adviceA man convicted last year of killing four college students in Idaho has filed to withdraw his guilty plea and seek a new trial, claiming he pleaded guilty due to bad legal advice.Bryan Kohberger was convicted of breaking into a six-bedroom house in 2022 and killing four University of Idaho students in their early 20s. The victims - Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin - were found dead with dozens of knife wounds. Goncalves also showed evidence of asphyxiation and blunt force trauma. Continue reading...

Democrat Jamie Raskin pushes Fifa to release records of contact with Trump, administration and family businessJamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, has launched an investigation into Fifa president Gianni Infantino, seeking documents that would detail the ties between soccer's governing body and Donald Trump and his administration.In a Sunday letter, Raskin wrote to Infantino and called for Fifa to provide any documents and communications related to gifts, payments or benefits provided to Trump and his associates, as well as the visitor logs for Fifa's office space in Trump Tower, which it acquired last year. The committee also requested that Infantino sit for a transcribed interview. Continue reading...

Emergency appeal comes after court upheld ruling blocking president's order ahead of November midtermsThe Trump administration has asked the supreme court to clear the way for an executive order from Donald Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting.The emergency appeal comes after an appeals court upheld a ruling blocking the president's order in nearly half the country ahead of November's midterm elections. Continue reading...

David Huerta was arrested while protesting against an ICE operation during crackdown in Los AngelesThe Department of Justice has moved to dismiss charges against a prominent California union leader who was arrested while protesting against an immigration raid in Los Angeles last year, in the latest US government case against protesters to fall apart.David Huerta, the president of Service Employees International Union United Service Workers West, was arrested at a June 2025 demonstration and has been fighting the charges ever since. On Monday, the US attorney's office in LA filed a motion to dismiss the charges against him. Continue reading...

Today show host says her family will always ache for' mother Nancy, who has been missing for nearly six monthsSavannah Guthrie has posted a new video asking those responsible for her mother's unsolved disappearance to do the right thing" and point her family to their matriarch's location after nearly six months.In a new Instagram video posted on Monday, captioned Bring her home" alongside a yellow heart emoji, the NBC Today host issued an emotional public plea, saying: It has been months since our mom was taken from us. Our family is in agony. We are in a nightmare that will not end. Nothing about our situation has changed. We have done our part. We will never stop looking for her." Continue reading...

Authorities say teenage suspect arrested and search for second suspect continuing after Bite of Seattle shootingThree people were killed and four others including a toddler were wounded in a shooting on Sunday evening at a food festival near the Space Needle in Seattle.A suspect aged 15 was arrested. A search for a second suspect continued into Monday, according to authorities. Continue reading...

Kentucky senator has been absent and not seen in public since mid-June after he was hospitalized due to a fall

At a time when the quickening pace of global heating has never been clearer, climate policies are being deprioritisedA new and ominous word has entered the vocabulary of firefighters struggling to cope with the vast wildfire sweeping through south-west France. A pyrocumulonimbus is a fire-generated thunderstorm that can whip up winds in unpredictable ways, making the containment of a blaze and assessment of its likely course far more difficult. A known phenomenon in North America and Australia, firefighters believe France is suffering its first in the Bordeaux region, as the country endures the consequences of the third major heatwave of the summer and prepares for a fourth.The dire statistics of the ongoing fires in France and Spain tell a story of deepening devastation and human misery. A far greater expanse of French land has already been burnt this year, compared with the 30,000 hectaresduring the whole of 2025, while 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the Gironde. In Spain, the environment ministry has calculated that over 170,000 hectares have been affected, compared with 29,000 last year. Over100,000 people have been forced to flee.Do 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...

Julie Masino faced criticism as restaurant chain was called woke' and soulless' after unveiling modernized logoCracker Barrel's CEO, Julie Masino, is stepping down, the restaurant announced on Monday, nearly a year after the company was swept into a political maelstrom over proposed modernizations to its branding.Critics on social media denounced the Tennessee-based rustic restaurant chain as woke" as well as sterile and soulless" after it unveiled an updated logo that removed Uncle Herschel, the overall-clad man leaning against a barrel in the restaurant's original logo, last August. Donald Trump weighed in on the updates soon after, posting: WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!" and demanding on social media that the company admit a mistake". Continue reading...

Salamanca City Central says it is pausing project with Realbotix as it addresses concerns including data privacyA New York school district has walked back plans to introduce a humanoid robot at its high school after the proposal sparked backlash from educators and community members.The Salamanca City Central school district announced on 24 July in a social media post that its pilot project with Toronto-based tech company Realbotix had been put on hold while we work through enhanced student data privacy agreements with the New York State Education Department and continue engaging with our community and stakeholders". Continue reading...

The supply of soccer seems to be enormously exceeding demand. It's made the sport feel utterly overwhelmingOn Friday, the Scottish Premiership kicks off its 2026-27 season. The following Friday, the Dutch Eredivisie begins anew, and England's Carabao Cup sets off on its ponderous journey. The various European club competitions have already begun their qualifying rounds - and did so on 7 July, in the case of the Champions and Conference Leagues. Liga MX is two rounds into its Apertura season; Major League Soccer resumed its regular season on 16 July. Other soccer is available elsewhere and at other times.It has been only a week since the World Cup ended.This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond, helmed this week by Leander in Jonathan's absence. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he'll answer the best in a future edition.Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Guardian US contributor whose book on the US men's national soccer team, The Long Game, is out now. You can buy it here. He teaches at Marist University. Continue reading...

Former top US health official wrote about challenging interactions with publicity-fixated Trump during CovidDiary entries released by a Republican senator in an attempt to damage Anthony Fauci also show the former top US government science adviser's growing disillusionment with Donald Trump in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, branding the president rambling", crazy", desperate", bumbling", incompetent", an idiot", a true embarrassment", totally nuts" and truly an obnoxious adolescent".From the earliest days of the crisis six years ago, Fauci noted in his journal challenging interactions with the publicity-fixated Trump. On 27 February 2020, amid the first stirrings of public alarm, he wrote of a surprise late-night call, in which the US president wanted to chat about the coronavirus situation in general". Continue reading...

Europe and US risk being outpaced on innovation, as happened in the car industry, warns Pascal SoriotAstraZeneca must operate at Chinese speed" to ensure it does not suffer the fate of the western automotive industry by losing out to more innovative rivals, the drug company's boss has said.The FTSE 100 company is watching the rise of China's pharmaceutical industry closely and collaborating to take drugs to global markets, but its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said the US and European pharmaceutical sectors must focus on increasing the speed of innovation. Continue reading...

Chicagoans come together for cathartic and communal screaming experience as activity gains traction across USPeople strolling along North Avenue Beach, a sandy strip on Lake Michigan, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, are apt to see something unusual on Sunday evenings.That's because Chicago's Scream Club" meets there every week during the city's warmer months, bringing together a community of up to 300 people who like to scream out over the water - and it's an activity that seems to be spreading across the US. Continue reading...

Coalition says Chemours downplayed health and climate risks in bid to fast-track the compound's useA coalition of 17 environmental groups is demanding the Environmental Protection Agency reject a new Pfas that chemical giant Chemours is attempting to fast track for approval for use in cooling datacenters, and would almost certainly pollute regions around the facilities.In formal comments submitted to the agency, the groups accuse Chemours of using bad science to downplay the chemical's toxicity and climate risks. Approving Chemours' application as it is would violate the law, the Earthjustice legal non-profit, a lead author of the comments, wrote. Continue reading...

Matthew Wolfe's Fires in the Night examines Earth Liberation Front, a US eco-anarchist movement, and its legacy of radical environmentalismAre echoes of 1990s radical environmentalism returning louder or fading away? It's a question posed by Fires in the Night, a new book on the history of the Earth Liberation Front (Elf), a loosely grouped band of US Pacific north-west activists that used economic sabotage and arson to protest environmental destruction.The members called themselves the Family" and were known to the outside world as Elves, owed to the acronym for the group Elf. Unlike rightwing extremists of the era, they practiced non-violence toward life, though not property. They were labelled domestic terrorists and practiced leaderless resistance". Continue reading...

Republicans have moved to dismantle a 60-year-old demographic reporting system. Now the agency wants to choose what it seesWorkplace discrimination isolates. When a Black manager is passed over for a promotion, or a pregnant worker is quietly sidelined, they are left with a polite excuse and a lingering suspicion. They cannot see the company-wide spreadsheet. They cannot know if others are hitting the same invisible wall. For 60 years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has kept a spreadsheet of its own: an annual demographic snapshot compiled from employer reports. That nationwide record lets the agency see beyond any one complaint.Last Tuesday, however, the EEOC's Republican majority voted 2-1 to begin dismantling that reporting system. Two days later, the proposal entered the Federal Register, arguing that requiring employers to classify workers by race and sex may itself violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The rule is not final: comments are due on 24 August, and a hearing is set for 11 August. Continue reading...

The meet had lower stakes with no Olympics or worlds this year, but Nikki Hiltz, Sha'Carri Richardson and Cooper Lutkenhaus all took advantage of the momentIn two years' time, tens of thousands of fans will pack into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum - with tens of millions watching around the world - as the world's fastest and strongest athletes compete at the 2028 Olympics.But this vast audience ebbs and flows in the long years between Olympics. On the other side of the country, around 5,000 fans filed into New York's Icahn Stadium this weekend for the USA Track & Field national outdoor championships. Continue reading...

New tariffs, gas price rises, the deaths of thousands, insecurity ... We're living at the whim of one capricious, vain, easily bored man and his gang of stoogesYou would be forgiven, as the US and Iran traded strikes over the past few days, for thinking that it was only last month that the two signed the Islamabad Memorandum, which formalised the process of ending the war and established a 60-day period to negotiate the final terms of a deal. That's because it was only last month. But there has been so much talk and bluster and strike and turn tail that the conflict feels like it has started and ended several times already. The whole war is only five months old but is already settling into a sort of permanent feature of life, one that is all repetitive theatre now, each act indistinguishable from the one before it to all but the most plugged-in observers. The war is over. The war is at its peak. The Iranians are brave people. The Iranians are scum, not least their leaders. The Iranians don't want a ceasefire. The Iranians are begging for one. The strait of Hormuz is open, it is shut, it is partly open.To recap, where we are now in the war that was only supposed to last a few weeks but is now entering its sixth month is that the US has expanded airstrikes on Iran in a major military punishment". Iran has once again struck US base targets located across the region. The Houthis have claimed their own blockade over a second shipping chokepoint - the war now extends from the Gulf to the Red Sea. Trump can't get out. Iran now understands the powerful leverage of the strait and its geographical, and therefore military, advantage in controlling it. Trump cannot end the war with that bargaining chip in its hands and the Iranians will not end the war without it. He can't withdraw on terms that merely restore the prewar status quo. And Trump can't go all in. Boots on the ground would be an extended bloody campaign that would claim many lives. In the US, the deaths of 18 troops so far and how the Pentagon appears to be trying to undercount that number has triggered outrage.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Southern and central states from California to Mississippi face heat indexes above 100F amid another heat domeAt least 40 million people were under extreme heat warnings across central and southern parts of the United States on Sunday as high temperatures and severe humidity gripped large swaths of the country for a second straight day.Heat indexes well above 100F (38C) stretched from Minnesota down to Mississippi, extending west into southern California and Nevada. Parts of the south-west were expected to see highs of 120F (49C), according to the National Weather Service. Continue reading...

Figures are source of dispute as US defense department days ago reduced record of troops killed and woundedThe Pentagon updated its official war casualty database over the weekend, adding more than 140 wounded service members. The Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) also introduced a new casualty category labeled Overseas Operations" for personnel killed and wounded starting July 7".According to the updated database, the official toll for the earlier phase of the US-Iran war, known as Operation Epic Fury, now stands at 14 service members killed and more than 400 wounded in action. Continue reading...

Israeli prime minister says ICC's war crime charges are bogus' and plans to be in New York for UN gathering this fallBenjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, is fomenting hate" by calling the Israeli prime minister a war criminal who should be arrested over Israel's war in Gaza if he visits the city for the United Nations general assembly.Netanyahu said he intends to be in New York in September to address the annual UN gathering of world leaders, despite the mayor's suggestion that he is not welcome. Mamdani said on Wednesday that while New York City does not have legal authority to execute an arrest warrant issued by the world's top war crimes court, he encouraged the federal government to do so. Continue reading...

Scott Gottlieb responds to report that company contacted the White House seeking to delay a recall announcementFormer Food and Drug Administration commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb said on Sunday that it was not standard operating procedure" for Taylor Farms to ask the White House to intervene as the company prepared to announce a recall tied to a massive cyclospora outbreak.Appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, Gottlieb was asked about a report from the Wall Street Journal that Taylor Farms contacted the White House seeking to delay a recall announcement while federal investigators were preparing to publicly link the company to the multi-state outbreak. Continue reading...

Tom Homan comments on officer's eligibility to serve after reports that agent's two ex-wives had accused him of abuseTom Homan, the Trump administration border czar", on Sunday said he did not believe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer at the center of a recent fatal shooting in Maine should have ever cleared vetting".Speaking to CNN's State of the Union, Homan was asked by host Dana Bash about the officer's eligibility to serve following reports that two of his ex-wives had accused him of abuse.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

Singer rebukes Trump administration after it uses her song Firework over footage of missile striking Iranian naval shipPop star Katy Perry has condemned the Trump White House after it used her hit song Firework in a TikTok video showing US military strikes on Iranian targets, saying she never approved the use of her music.The White House video, which featured Firework playing over footage of a missile striking an Iranian naval ship, has amassed more than 6 million views. The post was captioned: Iran has been warned." Continue reading...

Even if no reactors are built, Donald Trump's announcement of a double-standards deal with Riyadh has wrought further damage in a new era of proliferationEven as he threatened to escalate an unlawful war sold in part as preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump opened the door to proliferation in the region on Wednesday. The US announced that it had signed a deal with Saudi Arabia which would potentially allow the kingdom to enrich uranium in future and to avoid the fullest inspection rights for the international watchdog.Experts have long warned that a civilian nuclear programme could create a path towards a nuclear-armed Riyadh. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince and de facto leader, has said that if Tehran gets a nuclear weapon, we will have to get one". Concerns are magnified by the agreement's terms. Washington previously argued that the gold standard" was the United Arab Emirates' agreement to permanently forgo enrichment and accept full monitoring by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Weakening it sets a precedent that Russia or China could also cite in nuclear deals in future. Continue reading...

New law prohibits retailers from using personal data to charge different prices for identical productsNew Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed a new law prohibiting businesses from using shoppers' personal information to charge different prices for identical products, making her state the third in the US to ban the practice.The Fair Price Protection Act passed by New Jersey's legislature seeks to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, in which retailers can use data including online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers. Continue reading...

Sara Gilson was fatally shot less than two weeks after accusing her husband of pedophilia on social mediaAn Oklahoma woman known for posting on social media about parenting her children was fatally shot in an apparent murder-suicide by her husband a short time after she published a clip alluding to allegations that he had molested a minor, according to authorities and court records.Sara Duffey - who was 43 and also went by Sara Gilson - Jeremiah Shawn Duffey, 48, were both found dead with gunshot wounds on Thursday at a home in suburban Tulsa, said statements from local police. Investigators suspected that Jeremiah had shot Sara and then himself. Continue reading...

Both restaurant work and medicine involve abusive training and relentless devotion to minutiae - and the joy of offering comfortI pass a mother heaving in grief while her son's heart monitors flatline. It is the last time she will ever hold his hand. For me, this is another day on call in the intensive care unit as a pediatric physician. For her, this is the day her life shatters.Later that night, a striking, charismatic surgeon from work treats me to an exquisite meal. Served outside a trailer, humidity barreling through our scrubs, the food is neither extravagant nor decadent. It is, however, the most succulent Texas barbecue brisket I will ever taste. This is the night I rest my head on his shoulder and he doesn't flinch. This is the night an us" was born. Continue reading...

Dr Annie Andrews says her mission remains the same' as she now aims to unseat Darline Graham, sister of the late Republican senatorIt was early Sunday morning and Dr Annie Andrews was far from the political fray, dropping her youngest daughter off at a summer camp, when she heard the news.It was shocking and unbelievable," she says of the death of Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator who defined South Carolina politics for a generation aged 71. It's a profound moment for the whole state of South Carolina." Continue reading...

Around town, on the pitch and even in the pool, the New York mayor keeps his suit on - what do his sartorial choices tell us?Playing football. Playing in the sand. Dancing on a stage with Alicia Keys and the entire New York Knicks roster. Swimming in a swimming pool. Swimming in the ocean.Traditionally, a suit and tie would be considered inappropriate attire for each of these activities. Yet over the past year Zohran Mamdani has seemingly been on a one-man crusade to prove otherwise: to convince people that a formal suit is, actually, suitable for all activities. Continue reading...

The collapse of the rules-based order is not confined to the land: we're imperilled as centuries of maritime cooperation sink beneath the wavesThe US military campaign to protect merchant shipping from Iranian attacks by asserting direct maritime control in the strait of Hormuz is not an idea unique to Donald Trump's administration. Almost exactly 200 years ago, in the period 1825-27, a powerful US naval squadron led by Commodore John Rodgers was sent to the Mediterranean to defend American ships from the depredations of Greek corsairs and pirates.For all the new-minted republic's brave talk of liberty, the US squadron did not assist Greece's ongoing regime change" struggle for independence from the Ottoman empire. Its sole, self-serving purpose was to defend US trade, markets and business interests. After abandoning his call for a people's revolution in Tehran, this, too, is what Trump's reckless war with Iran has now boiled down to.Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator Continue reading...

Eighty-five million Americans are disaffected and less likely to vote, our survey found. Our democratic revival depends on a sense of communityOur country is at a crossroads between democracy and authoritarianism. And the only antidote is an organized, engaged citizenry. But at this critical moment when we need people to lean into the fight for our future, we find that far too many people have given up.In a comprehensive, multiracial study, Sojourn Strategies, Ariel Research Partners and Richard Shafranek found that 35% of the US electorate - 85 million people - are disaffected, characterized by high levels of disillusionment and low levels of trust in government and politics. Our democratic revival depends on solutions that transform people from disaffected bystanders into powerful civic agents.Julie Fernandes is managing director of the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund, a community of organizers, researchers and funders who are working together to strengthen state-based community organizing, and associate director of the Rockefeller Family FundKatrina Gamble, PhD, is founder and CEO of Sojourn Strategies, a Black woman-owned social impact consulting firm that brings a people-centered approach to advocacy campaigns, research and philanthropic advising Continue reading...

Abdul El-Sayed may be buoyed by a younger, anti-establishment coalition as he runs against an establishment candidateAbdul El-Sayed spends a fair amount of his day not taking himself so seriously. He jokes about his haircut, films selfie videos with supporters and has taken - more than once - to cringey dancing and lip-syncing on camera.But ask him after a long day on the campaign trail to explain the difference between a virus and a bacterium, and the epidemiologist takes over from the entertainer. Continue reading...

Experts say evidence for cognitive screening desired by health secretary not great' as taskforce idle since last yearThe US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has called for better Alzheimer's screening - but a critical federal panel that might have helped researchers find practical ways to do that has been prevented from meeting for more than a year.The panel, formally called the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), had planned to issue a recommendation on screening for cognitive decline this year, alongside 13 other topics as varied as autism screening and food allergy prevention. Continue reading...

GOP legislative priorities could be at odds with voters as midterms come into view and Democrats attempt a resurgenceWhen the chief Republican budget writer took to the floor of the House of Representatives this week to tout a plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on the war with Iran, he avoided using the words war", conflict" or even Iran".Just baseline battlefield readiness" is what Jodey Arrington said the money in the $95bn budget blueprint would be used for. Bullets and bombs to finish the job and come home safely and victoriously, strengthen our food supply, and ultimately safeguard the integrity of our elections." Continue reading...

More than 330,000 Haitian immigrants in limbo as Trump administration seeks to end temporary protected statusMore than 330,000 Haitian immigrants in the US are set to lose their ability to legally live and work in the country as the Trump administration seeks to terminate their temporary protected status. An estimated 13,000 are nursing assistants, who care for 65,000 patients every day.I get up at 5am every morning and I take two buses to work to clean the rooms of the residents. I give my heart," said a nursing home housekeeper with TPS from Haiti, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. These residents are like my grandmother." Continue reading...

Exclusive: CSI Aviation and GlobalX accused of violating civil rights as part of Trump immigration crackdownVenezuelan men sent last year to a notorious Salvadorian terrorism prison by the Trump administration are suing the US aviation companies that transported them there.A lawsuit filed this week in federal court in Washington DC accuses the companies CSI Aviation and GlobalX of violating the Venezuelans' civil rights, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence and other violations, for their role in flying the three planes that took the men to El Salvador. Continue reading...

Judge rejects administration's request to lift injunction secured by several Democratic-led states on 25 JuneA federal appeals court on Saturday declined to allow Donald Trump's administration to implement in 23 states his executive order that aims to tighten rules for mail-in voting before the November elections that will decide control of Congress.The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals rejected the administration's request to lift an injunction several Democratic-led states secured on 25 June from a lower-court judge who concluded that key parts of the Republican president's order were unconstitutional. In asking the court to pause the US district judge Indira Talwani's ruling while it pursues an appeal, the Department of Justice argued that because government agencies had yet to finalize actions and policies to implement Trump's directive, any lawsuit challenging his order was premature. Continue reading...

Analysis finds more than 4 million Americans lost Snap benefits, or food stamps, from July 2025 to March 2026More than a million children across the US have lost access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) food benefits since Congress approved the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).The analysis found that more than 4 millions Americans were removed from Snap from July 2025 to March 2026, marking a significant decline in participation in the federal food assistance program. Continue reading...

Progressive former state senate president gains nomination after Graham Platner dropped out over sexual assault allegationsIn a race defined by scandal, withdrawals and a frantic hunt for a replacement candidate, Maine Democrats hit reset on their chaotic Senate primary on Saturday as Troy Jackson officially secured the party's nomination.He took the stage at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor to rapturous applause, a standing ovation and Noah Kahan's Northern Attitude blaring over the speakers. Continue reading...