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Fulton county office was raided in January amid Donald Trump's claims that 2020 election was fraudulentRights groups have sued to protect voter information that was seized by the FBI in a controversial raid in Georgia at the behest of Donald Trump in his renewed push to invalidate the 2020 election.The NAACP and other civil rights organizations filed a motion on 15 February to prohibit the Trump administration from misusing the voter information" taken from an elections warehouse in Fulton county, Georgia, late last month. Continue reading...

Exclusive: First meeting to be held over domestic payments system aimed at reducing reliance on US networksUK bank bosses will hold their first meeting to establish a national alternative to Visa and Mastercard, amid growing fears over Donald Trump's ability to turn off US-owned payment systems.The meeting, chaired by Barclays' UK chief executive, Vim Maru, will take place this Thursday and bring together a group of City funders that will front the costs of a new payments company to keep the UK economy running if problems were to occur. Continue reading...

Property where abuse took place purchased for $13.4m in 2023 by Texas businessman Donald Huffines' familyThe family of a self-identified Trump Republican" running for office in Texas bought Jeffrey Epstein's New Mexico ranch where the sex trafficker abused teenage girls and young women, according to new documents.A spokesperson for Donald Huffines, a Texas businessman and former GOP state senator now running for comptroller, confirmed the purchase to the Santa Fe New Mexican, a local media outlet. Continue reading...

It's awkward, nobody seems to know what is going on, and the president's thumb is at half-mast. It's almost a metaphor for diplomatic relations between the US and the UKWhen Liz Truss tweeted a photo of herself standing next to Donald Trump, she captioned it right about everything". All that effort, all that security clearance and long-haul travel and whatnot, to reach the pinnacle of proximity to your spiritual leader, and that's the best she could come up with? It was bafflingly lame. And yet the least confusing thing about this scene were the words.What exactly is going on in this photo? Truss clearly knows where she is, because she's grinning with a kind of victorious serenity, as if she's finally achieved the plaudit she knew all along was hers. At the same time - not wishing to be unsisterly - she doesn't appear to have brushed her hair, so it doesn't feel like this photo opportunity was in anyone's diary. It looks like a selfie you'd catch when you run into your favourite contestant from The Traitors on your way through an airport. No time to worry about your grooming; it's the chance of a lifetime, every second counts. Continue reading...

Former US president clarifies they're real' answer that he gave during quick-fire interview roundHours after Barack Obama caused a frenzy by saying aliens were real on a podcast, the former US president has posted a statement clarifying that he has not seen any evidence of them and that he was merely trying to stick with the spirit" of an interviewer's rapid round of questioning.In a conversation with the American podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen over the weekend, Obama appeared to confirm the apparent existence of aliens during a segment in which the host asks guests quick questions and the guests respond with quick answers. Continue reading...

In Instagram post, TV host whose mother disappeared 15 days ago in Arizona says you're not lost or alone'The TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie issued a fresh appeal to anyone who knows the whereabouts of her missing mother, saying that you're not lost or alone" and it is never too late to do the right thing".The Today anchor, who is stepping away from NBC's morning broadcast, urged whoever has her or knows where she is" to come forward, but did not make reference to any ransom demands or communication with any abductor. Continue reading...

In an age in which every gripe is highlighted and performative fury is good business, there is an argument that long-termism has become impossible

Guardian sources say MLS's inquiry into Ernst Tanner has been held up by concerns over non-disclosure agreementsPhiladelphia Union sporting director Ernst Tanner continues to be under investigation by Major League Soccer and remains on administrative leave with no resolution expected to come soon, multiple sources told the Guardian last week.Tanner was the subject of wide-ranging allegations of misconduct raised by a Guardian investigation late last year, including a complaint made by the MLS Players Association to the league alleging multiple instances of racist, sexist and homophobic behavior. After the Guardian published its story, the Union placed Tanner on administrative leave and MLS reopened an investigation into his behavior that had been closed early in 2025 due to lack of corroboration. Tanner has denied the allegations throughout, saying he will cooperate fully with the league as he [works] to clear my good name and reputation". Continue reading...

Critics say what was once a showpiece for the league has turned into a glorified practice session. But there are signs an updated version may have workedBasketball Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady flashed a look of disdain when recalling last year's NBA All-Star Game.The All-Star Game that we witnessed last year was not an All-Star game," McGrady told the Guardian. I don't know what that was." Continue reading...

The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupted on Sunday, sending lava fountains, ash and smoke into the air. The US Geological Survey said it was the 42nd episode of lava fountains since the current series of intermittent eruptions began in December 2024. The plume from the latest eruption reached more than 10,000 metres (35,000 feet), according to the National Weather Service Continue reading...

A study says IHL is at critical breaking point' amid horrendous violations in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere. But to declare its demise would be prematureIs international humanitarian law (IHL), the law designed to spare civilians as much as possible the hazards of warfare, at risk of imploding? That is the conclusion of a new compendious study of current armed conflicts around the world, citing the killing of civilians and other atrocities in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere. While the threat to IHL is not yet existential," it warns, it is at a critical breaking point."There is no doubt that the disregard for civilian life in these conflicts has been horrendous. In Gaza and Sudan, it has risen to the level of genocide. But do these represent serious violations of the law or its demise?Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments Continue reading...

Files show convicted sex abuser messaged with Ken Starr and others about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey FordJeffrey Epstein sympathized with Brett Kavanaugh during the then-supreme court nominee's contentious 2018 confirmation and even suggested Republicans should have been harder on Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault.Emails and text messages released by the Department of Justice show Epstein was closely monitoring the confirmation and seemed to believe that Ford's allegation of sexual assault could derail the process. Continue reading...

Experts say discounts on IVF procedures an attempt to fulfil campaign promise but savings only a fraction of total costTrumpRx, the US president's much anticipated drug discount program, went live earlier this month with coupons available for just 43 medications, including four required for in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, and experts say this is likely a half-measure to fulfill Trump's 2024 campaign promise to make IVF treatment universally accessible.We've been hearing about TrumpRx for a long time," said Dr Richard Paulson, a professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Southern California. TrumpRx was supposed to fix all of the problems in terms of prescription drug costs and so on, and it has not done that. The only two classes of drugs that are actually cheaper on Trump RX are the GLP-1 agonists - those are the obesity medications - and fertility drugs." Continue reading...

Figures said to reflect increased Russian military targeting of cities and infrastructure. Plus, the week the Cuban crisis got real

Maga is a recapitulation of the dark side of American history that cohered into nativist nationalism a century agoDonald Trump's posting of a video depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes was the most overtly racist act of a president since Woodrow Wilson segregated the federal civil service - or since Trump's previous racist gesture. The racist imagery Trump posted was so egregious that the video's misogyny representing Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as animals was overlooked. Trump's denigration of women is implicitly assumed as business-as-usual and not newsworthy: Quiet, piggy!" And down the memory hole are the 3m long-suppressed documents from the Epstein files in which he is mentioned in its unredacted pages more than a million times", according to the Democratic representative Jamie Raskin, who was permitted access.The only Black Republican US senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, said of the Obama portrayal: It's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House," though Scott did not disclose any list, which could have been drawn from an encyclopedia of offenses beginning decades before Trump's birther campaign. During Trump's first administration, in 2020, Scott chose to call out one incident as indefensible": Trump's tweet of a video of a supporter chanting white power". Trump's latest racist post was preceded on 11 January by his predictable vandalism of Black History Month in an interview with the New York Times with a remark about the Civil Rights Act of 1964: White people were very badly treated."Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The world No 5 says she has been disturbed by events back home, and is not afraid to speak up about issues in the United StatesWhile getting treatment and preparing for this week's Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Coco Gauff has had the news on in the background almost every day.Gauff could be forgiven if she's not up-to-date on everything that's been happening back in the United States: she is on the road for nearly 11 months a year, often thousands of miles away from her home in Delray Beach, Florida. Continue reading...

Kaja Kallas rejects fashionable euro-bashing' by US leaders and says other countries look up to us' - key US politics stories from 15 February at a glanceThe European Union's foreign policy chief has criticised US claims that Europe was facing civilisational erasure" and rejected what she called fashionable euro-bashing".Kaja Kallas told an audience at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that other countries looked up to Europe for its values, such as press freedom. Continue reading...

Shipwreck hunter found Lac La Belle steamer, one of most sought-after missing ships', after nearly 60-year searchSearchers recently discovered the wreck of one of the most sought-after missing ships" in Lake Michigan, that had sunk to the bottom of the lake over 150 years ago.A shipwreck hunter and scuba diver named Paul Ehorn made the discovery after having searched for the Lac La Belle passenger steamer for nearly 60 years. Shipwreck World, a group that works to locate shipwrecks around the globe, announced on Friday that the team led by Ehorn found the wreck about 20 miles (32km) offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Continue reading...

Britain won two mixed team gold medals, while there were individual triumphs for Norway's Anna Odine Strom and Italy's Lisa VittozziBrignone smashed her leg at the end of last season, fought her way back, and now look!Goodness me, she's almost perfect as she nears the end, and 1:03.23 is her time! That puts her 0.74 up on Colturi, Hector and Stjernesund, plus a whole 1.02 on Shiffrin! Continue reading...

Authorities await DNA test results from pair of gloves found near home as search continues to draw national attentionThe search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC's Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, has entered its third week, as investigators ask neighbors within a two-mile radius to share home video footage and authorities await DNA test results from a pair of gloves found near the home.Nancy Guthrie was last seen on the evening of 31 January, when she was dropped off at her home in the Catalina foothills north of Tucson, Arizona, after having dinner with her older daughter and son-in-law. She was reported missing the following day, after she failed to arrive at a friend's house to watch a church service. Continue reading...

Ofelia Torres, 16, spotlighted her dad Ruben's illegal detention last fall during Trump's crackdown in ChicagoA Chicago teenager, whose father was detained by immigration authorities while she navigated cancer, died on Friday, a family spokesperson said.Ofelia Torres, a 16-year-old in Chicago, had been undergoing treatment for an aggressive and rare form of cancer since late 2024. As she and her family struggled with the medical procedures, her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained by immigration authorities while at a Home Depot in October, leading to a contentious and public case that highlighted the human effects of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown. Continue reading...

US military forces have boarded another oil tanker linked to Venezuela in the Indian Ocean. The Veronica III was tracked by the Pentagon from the Caribbean after it left Venezuela on the day Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, was captured by the US. This is the second tanker seized by US forces after the Aquila II was boarded last week Continue reading...

Trump sparked public backlash when he abruptly began demolishing the East Wing to clear space for his ballroomNew renderings released this week provide the most detailed vision yet of Donald Trump's proposed $400m White House ballroom addition.The renderings, submitted by the project's architects and released on Friday by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), depict a vast sprawling structure, expected to be around 90,000sq ft, from multiple angles. Continue reading...

Real estate agent brothers Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander - known as closers' - are on trial in New York for sex traffickingIn their time as real estate brokers, the Israeli-American Alexander brothers - twins Alon and Oren and older brother Tal - were known as closers", the salesmen who could a get a sale over finish line, often to wealthy hedge funders who were then making hay in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.Their technique, one real estate expert explained outside the 26th floor of the federal court house in lower Manhattan last week, was based on the sense that the property salesmen were just like their clients" - young, eager and successful. Kim Kardashian and then-husband Kanye West, Jared and Ivanka Trump were clients. Continue reading...

Elation as anti-extremists fight back against influence of billionaire megadonors through grassroots organizingChris Tackett started tracking extremism in Texas politics about a decade ago, whenever his schedule as a Little League coach and school board member would allow. At the time, he lived in Granbury, 40 minutes west of Fort Worth. He'd noticed that a local member of the state legislature, Mike Lang, had become a vocal advocate for using public money for private schools - despite the fact that Lang campaigned as a supporter of public education.With a little research, Tackett found that Lang had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn, billionaire megadonors whose deep pockets and Christian nationalist views have consumed the Texas GOP. Tackett published his findings on social media, and soon enough, people started asking him to create pie charts of their representatives' campaign funds. These charts evolved into the organisation See It. Name It. Fight It. Continue reading...

The American Indian Movement was established in Minneapolis more than 50 years ago in response to police brutality. After ICE agents flooded the city this winter, neighborhoods reprised citizen patrolsOutside the Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis's Native American cultural corridor, a group of watchers huddled around a small firepit. Some cuddled into heated camp chairs, as others grasped steaming cups of coffee as they scanned the intersection for ICE agents.A volunteer periodically monitored a local chat group for reports of ICE agents in the area. Foot patrollers equipped with heated handwarmers and orange whistles were dispatched throughout the neighbourhood, and watchers with cars took off in pairs. Continue reading...

The US president has twisted the 1823 doctrine to suit his quest for domination. It originally had a very different vision for the AmericasThroughout Bad Bunny's mesmerizing performance during the Super Bowl, the word America" kept expanding, like an accordion, stretching out to embrace people of all nationalities. Together we are all America," his football read, and he obviously meant it, in the largest, most hemispheric sense. Near the end, after shouting God bless America" (his only words in English), Bad Bunny ran through a long list of countries in the western hemisphere.That inclusiveness enraged Donald Trump, who erupted on social media, and tried to take the word back, declaring the half-time show an affront to the greatness of America". By which, of course, he meant the United States. Continue reading...

Critics say Trump administration's rapidly expanding system is open to abuse and risks alienating communities from local policeHomeland Security watchdogs who were forced out of their jobs warn that the Trump administration's alarming" rush to deputize hundreds of local police departments to enforce federal immigration law - while gutting independent oversight - risks a threat to civil rights nationwide."When the experienced civil rights watchdogs had their jobs cut last year by the Trump administration, they were in the process of scrutinizing the controversial federal program allowing local police to conduct federal immigration enforcement work, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal. Continue reading...

Our studies in civil resistance offer insight into the level of popular organizing needed to repel assaults on democracyIn the wake of two horrifying killings of legal observers in Minnesota, on top of the abduction of countless immigrant community members, the country has reached a turning point. Backlash against ICE's lawlessness and aggression has reverberated so loudly that even Trump has heard it. But the effects on ordinary Americans contemplating what they would do if they lived in Minneapolis or St Paul is perhaps even more profound.The extraordinary level of grassroots solidarity and creative resistance in anti-ICE protests in Minnesota has given people a new appreciation for the power that mass non-cooperation can have in resisting the Trump administration's drive toward authoritarianism. And it has created an awareness of why such action is clearly needed.Mark and Paul Engler are co-directors of the Whirlwind Institute, a social change strategy center. A new and expanded 10th anniversary edition of their book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century has just been released. Continue reading...

We didn't see Super Bowl LX coming, but some of us were early believers in Ben Johnson's Bears, Trevor Lawrence's Jaguars and the fallibility of the ChiefsIt doesn't take long for the egg the start dripping from our faces. The early September headline accompanying our 2025 NFL predictions - Will it be Mahomes, Jackson or Allen in the Super Bowl? - was the ultimate hedge. After all, what were the odds that one of them wouldn't emerge from the AFC?Then there was the reality. Mike Vrabel's dramatic turnaround of New England. The Bears transforming from worst-to-first in the NFC North under Ben Johnson. The first-half magic of Daniel Jones. The successful pairing of Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Sam Darnold. Continue reading...

Opposition challenger Peter Magyar is ahead in the polls on a promise of hope. Orban is betting on fear of war to stay in powerAfter 16 years of uninterrupted power, Viktor Orban is facing his biggest electoral challenge. For years Hungary's prime minister has spun weak policy performance as success. The rise of a rival, Peter Magyar, and the opposition Tisza party has exposed the limits of that strategy.The economy is stagnating, despite repeated promises of a long-awaited takeoff. Over the past decade and a half, Hungary has slipped from being one of central and eastern Europe's strongest performers to one of its weakest. Public services, from healthcare to transport, are widely seen as neglected, and Policy Solutions surveys show that voters have noticed. Hungary is not alone in facing a cost of living crisis, but comparisons offer little consolation to voters who were assured that Orban's model would deliver exceptional results.Andras Biro-Nagy is a senior research fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest and director of Policy Solutions. He is the author of The Path of Hungary's EU Membership Continue reading...

Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said the pressure on the island's people was unacceptable". Key US politics stories from 14 February at a glanceDanish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has said she believes Donald Trump still wants to own Greenland, despite dialling back his recent threats to seize it by force.Asked at the Munich Security Conference if the US president still wanted to own the Arctic island, Frederiksen said: Unfortunately, I think the desire is the same." Continue reading...

It was another day of high drama at the Milano Cortina Games as Lucas Pinheiro Braathen made history for Brazil and South America, among other plotlinesWomen's dual moguls: It's all very civilised out on the snow, the athletes have a hug when they reach the bottom. I was thinking the snow looked a bit grubby but it turns out the authorities put out pine needles - I think to help skiers find their way.Anyway, they've zipped through very quickly and have already sorted the quarter finals, with four Americans in the final eight. Continue reading...

Luis Munoz Pinto, 27, who was sent to notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador, would like to clear his name after US judge's rulingA US federal judge's order that some of the Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador must be allowed to return to the United States to fight their cases has been greeted with hope and a sense of vindication - but also fear - by one of the deportees.

Speaking with progressive YouTuber, former US president stressed unprecedented nature' of agency's actionsBarack Obama publicly gave his support to demonstrators in Minneapolis for standing up to the unprecedented nature" of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota.Speaking in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday, the former president discussed the power that US citizens hold when standing up for the values they believe in and his hopes for the next generation of American leaders. Continue reading...

Ilia Malinin entered the Olympic free skate as the runaway favorite. Early mistakes triggered a meltdown that laid bare the brutal math of modern figure skatingWhat made Ilia Malinin's Olympic defeat so shocking was not simply his years-long dominance entering Friday night. It was how completely the competition had tilted in his favor before he even stepped on the ice.For nearly three years, Malinin had been men's skating's guiding light: unbeaten since late 2023, winner of back-to-back world titles, the skater who recalibrated the sport's technical ceiling and then made winning look procedural. He arrived at the Milano Ice Skating Arena leading by more than five points after the short program and carrying the most difficult planned program in the field. Under almost any normal competitive logic, that combination should have been decisive. Continue reading...

Clients including Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach cut ties to firm after communications came to lightCasey Wasserman, a leading Hollywood talent agent whose clients include Chappell Roan, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar, is selling his business after communications with Ghislaine Maxwell were exposed as part of the US justice department's recent dump of investigative documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.Wasserman, grandson of the late famed Hollywood dealmaker Lew Wasserman, said late on Friday he was putting his eponymous talent and marketing agency on the block, citing the impact on the company from past personal mistakes" and telling staff he felt that he had become a distraction" to its work. Continue reading...

Brass Solidarity was formed after George Floyd's murder, and now also marks the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at its weekly meetupA week after a federal officer shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, a troupe of brass players, percussionists and singers gathered at the site of the killing, to play a blaring, defiant rendition of the O'Jays' Love Train.Trumpeters, trombonists and sousaphonists had lined up along the ice-slicked sidewalk or were balancing on the snowbanks, blowing up clouds of condensation. Continue reading...

13% of federal civilian workforce is affected, although DHS - which spurred budget standoff - remains fundedA limited US government shutdown came into effect on Saturday - the third of Donald Trump's second term - after negotiations between the White House and Democrats in Congress failed to agree on new restrictions for federal immigration agents.The shutdown affects about 13% of the federal civilian workforce and is confined to agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which screens airline passengers. Continue reading...

Sheriff's, FBI and forensics vehicles passed through roadblocks 2 miles from missing 84-year-old woman's homeLaw enforcement investigating the disappearance of Today show host Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy, sealed off a road near her home in Arizona late Friday night.A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock that was set up about 2 miles (3.2km) from the house. Continue reading...

A documentary about Mississippi examines competing forces: the nostalgic celebration of the old south and the refusal to sanitize the brutal history of enslavementNatchez swallowed a master narrative about the old south."In Suzannah Herbert's documentary Natchez, the opening remark from National Park Service ranger Barney Schoby functions as both diagnosis and thesis. The film that follows does not evade the Mississippi town's contradictions. Instead, it actively adjudicates them, staging white people's curated nostalgia against Black people's historical knowledge, lived experience and institutional fact. Continue reading...