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Jackson's body lay in repose at his Rainbow/Push Coalition headquarters as thousands visited to pay their respectsSome were older, some were younger and some were strangers, but many more were friends - they had lined up down the blocks of Chicago in mercifully mild weather for a chance to say goodbye to the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.Friday was the last day of public visitation as Jackson lay in repose at the headquarters of his Rainbow/Push political activism coalition in the city he called home. Continue reading...

Plumes of smoke rose above Tehran and explosions could be heard across the city on day two of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a statement the Israel Defense Forces said the country's air force was striking targets 'in the heart of Tehran'. The strikes came after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first wave of attacks. Although Israel said it was targeting military assets in Iran, there have also been reports of a high civilian death toll

Ex-official calls transfer of unaccompanied girls as young as 13, many pregnant due to rape, a human rights violationAll unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers. Continue reading...

Kash Patel's partying went viral and the US men's team came to Washington. Now it's all part of the culture warAh, hockey. The most impish of sports. A bunch of blissfully beefy individuals wearing colorful sweaters zoom around in skates chasing a wee little object called, of all things, a puck". It's adorable. It's like A Midsummer Night's Dream for people missing teeth. These days, if you're talking about hockey, you probably are thinking about HBO Max's gay sex-capade romance, Heated Rivalry. In the TV series, two hockey players on opposing teams fall in love, engaging in various erotic scenarios in between smashing each other into plexiglass. Actually, maybe that second part is connected to the first part.Heated Rivalry has become an absolute phenomenon, enthralling American audiences despite all the factors that might prevent someone less than tolerant from connecting with the show - it's gay, it's about one of our least popular major team sports, and most damning of all, it's Canadian. It might as well be about talking beavers. And yet, it's a major hit that's done a lot of good for healthy representation of the LGBTQ+ community. Continue reading...

A reporter ponders on how to repair a religious structure long thought of as good but supported by an evil undersideIn 1965, just shy of my junior year at the Jesuit high school of New Orleans, with good potential as an offensive end, I had an epiphany in the muddy slog of August football practice: Why are you doing something you don't like?Soon after, I quit, and was trailed by guilt for a dereliction of duty. Jesuit vaunted student achievements of all kinds. I played on the golf team and did some pieces for the school paper. Jesuit fostered a fraternal culture, molding friendships I carry to this day. Continue reading...

News of Ali Khamenei's killing sparks backlash from Marjorie Taylor Greene and other America First loyalistsDonald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, with a promise. We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with," the then US president-elect said in December 2016.Trump has pushed his isolationist message in the decade since, repeatedly assuring his America first" base that there would be no repeat of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Continue reading...

Thousands go missing every year, including more than 5,000 Native American and Alaska Native women and girlsSavannah Guthrie is moving back to New York to resume anchoring NBC's Today show and acknowledging that her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, may not be found a month after she disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the middle of the night.We still believe in a miracle," Guthrie said in a video last week announcing a $1m reward for her mother's return in an enduring mystery that has gripped the US for four weeks. We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone." Continue reading...

Footage released by Iran's state media show the aftermath of a school building in the south of the country reportedly destroyed by US and Israeli strikes. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for

The Iranian foreign minister says Donald Trump's aim of regime change is mission impossible' after US-Israeli strikes hit multiple sites in Iran.Reports say at least 201 people have been killed and there are growing fears the move could plunge the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.The Guardian's Patrick Wintour explains what we know so far and what to expect

Aggression feeds a sense that the US is operating outside global norms and helps to fuel a more complex currency outlook

A halt on trade flows through the strait of Hormuz could spell trouble for many developed economies

The America First president who built his political brand on opposing foreign military adventures has unleashed a war of choice aimed at regime changeIt turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed candidate of peace," is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel's war on Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars." Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end - and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into," he said.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University Continue reading...

The regime may now have to meet Trump's demands merely to save itself. And he needs a coherent plan to deal with what he has unleashedThe coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning formally reignited a conflict that had been simmering since last summer's 12-day war. They targeted key command structures and killed senior figures, most notably Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who had been in power since 1989. Donald Trump marked his demise with a post saying one of the most evil people in history" was dead, adding: This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans."Israel has published reports claiming that Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Admiral Ali Shamkhani, head of the defence council, have also been killed. In response, Iranian forces have fired missiles and drones at Israel, at US bases in the Gulf, Iraq and Jordan, and at some civilian targets across the Gulf. Events are moving quickly, but far from predictably.Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House Continue reading...

Strikes on Iran by the US and Israel, as well as Donald Trump's announcement that the supreme leader Ali Khamenei had been killed lead the news pages

War launched by US and Israel on Iran has quickly escalated prompting anxiety and concern in whole region

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death confirmed by state media in Iran as Trump urges citizens to take back' their country

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US and Israel strike Iran; supreme leader confirmed killed; fierce domestic criticism of military action - key US politics stories from 28 February at a glanceThe US launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel. Hours after the bombs started falling across Iran, Trump claimed the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, calling it the greatest chance" for the Iranian people to take back" their country. State media in Iran later confirmed his death.The announcement came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the heavy and pinpoint bombing" was to continue through the week or as long as necessary. There was no immediate comment from Iran on Khamenei's status. Continue reading...

Crowds gather in DC, New York and beyond to denounce Trump's Iran strikes as an illegal act of war

The question of who owns and authorizes the month holds particular relevance amid attacks on Black history in the USThere is a myth that persists about Black History Month that can be heard in the common gripe: They gave us the shortest month of the year" (they, the unnamed powers that be). Jarvis Givens, the author of I'll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, hates it. Every time I hear that backhanded comment it doesn't seem right," said Givens, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren't given' anything."The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people's past in this country are under attack. Official recognition of Black American resistance to centuries of racial injustice is being challenged by local, state, and national efforts to restrict, ban and possibly criminalize such information in public schools, universities and other institutions. So the sentiment that Black history can be quite literally given or taken away by state officials is valid.Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man Continue reading...

Joint operation prompts Tehran to retaliate with missile attacks on bases across Middle East

The US joined an Israeli assault after intel suggested Iran's top clerics and commanders could be hit at once

The building appears to be among many devastated in Trump's major combat operations' as long expected attacks arrive

Coordinated daylight assault on Tehran sparked Iranian retaliation and plunged the region into wider conflict

Iran strikes are attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out Epstein and tariffs with the thunder of cruise missilesIn 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without deciding whether it should. The George W Bush administration failed to ask whether the costs, risks and likely consequences of regime change justified the gamble. The result was tragedy - for Iraq, for the Middle East and for America.Donald Trump's attack on Iran now follows the same pattern - but with an even narrower logic of performative power. In the run-up to Iraq, Washington devoted enormous energy to planning the invasion. Almost no attention was given to the more important question: was war necessary, and could it realistically produce a stable political outcome?Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Continue reading...

Body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in pond north of Atlanta in FebruaryThe son of the rapper Lil Jon drowned after ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials in the US state of Georgia said.The body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in a pond north of Atlanta in early February. Continue reading...

Imam Shuaib Din was not hit by multiple shots fired by Abdul Raouf Afridi, who ambushed him outside his homeA man has been arrested for recently shooting a gun at prominent Muslim leader Imam Shuaib Din in Utah, the police department in the city of Sandy said Saturday.Din's suspected attacker was identified as Abdul Raouf Afridi. Police said the man was arrested on 12 counts of aggravated assault, including felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, dangerous discharge of a weapon from a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon as a prohibited person. Continue reading...

The US president upended half a century of US foreign policy in an eight-minute video with another attempt at Middle Eastern regime changeIt was another date that would live in infamy. But whereas Franklin Roosevelt declared war in sombre tones to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump did it his way.The US president wore a white USA" cap, dark jacket and white shirt open at the collar. He stood at a blue lectern bearing the US presidential seal and a black microphone, with the Stars and Stripes behind him, presumably at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He released a video on his own social media network, Truth Social, at 2.30am on Saturday - a time when most Americans are asleep but Trump is often found rage-tweeting into the night. Continue reading...

In a televised statement, Sir Keir Starmer has said British planes 'are in the sky today' in the Middle East 'as part of coordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests and our allies'. This came after the US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran, prompting Tehran to fire retaliatory strikes against Israel and US bases across the Middle East Continue reading...

After Zohran Mamdani's upset, a new wave of challengers targets incumbents, driven by fury at Donald TrumpThey are impatient, unafraid and hungry for change. Inspired by Zohran Mamdani's shock victory in last year's New York mayoral race, a wave of insurgents is mounting primary challenges against Democratic incumbents ahead of November's midterm elections.The emboldened lineup of primary challengers - often, but not always, from the party's progressive wing - has been fuelled by anger over the party's tepid response to Donald Trump's authoritarianism, complicity in the war in Gaza and a crushing affordability crisis. Continue reading...

Members of Congress swiftly denounced the president's military action against the Islamic Republic alongside Israel

Nomma Zarubina, convicted of lying to the FBI, is the latest Russian woman accused of using her sexual wiles for spyingNomma Zarubina, 35, now sits in a New York jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last week to charges that she lied to the FBI about her contacts with the FSB, Russia's biggest domestic intelligence service.But, in a playbook that comes straight from the cold war, the striking-looking Zarubina - known as Alyssa" to her Russian handlers - was tasked with meeting prominent Americans in order to lure them into the orbit of Moscow intelligence. Continue reading...

In a rare public address, former president said US is experiencing dark days' and urged Americans to vote

As a result of New York's most severe winter in years, the city may see a drop from it's estimated 3 million ratsSince arriving from Europe in the 1600s, New York City's rats have survived hurricanes, floods, terrorist attacks, riots, fires, a pandemic (they actually thrived during that), the Dutch and Crocodile Dundee II.But as a result of New York's most severe winter in years, when the city saw snow, then a historic deep freeze, then even more snow, the rat population might now be about to decline. For a bit. Continue reading...

The first lady is a Trump and therefore automatically qualified to do anything her heart desiresWe ended DEI in America," Donald Trump boasted during his State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday.Unlike many things the president said in his excruciatingly long SOTU speech, this was actually half true. The Trump administration's war on woke" has pushed a lot of large companies and institutes to retreat from the diversity, equity and inclusion policies they used to pretend to be proud of.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Volunteers offer moral and legal support, and document ICE actions with the aim of holding people accountableAs ICE operations ramped up across the US over the past year, vans emblazoned with imagery of the Statue of Liberty have been deployed in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and most recently, Minneapolis. Liberty Vans, or camioneta de la libertad in Spanish, are on a mission to defend vulnerable communities in the crosshairs of federal enforcement.Volunteers in the small fleet of three vans - which are named for the second world war Liberty ships that delivered supplies to Allied forces - offer moral and legal support, stand in visible solidarity with families and document ICE operations so people can see the human impact of the military-style raids that have become a daily part of American life. Continue reading...

Businesses are vying for a refund, with nearly $175bn on the line, but customers are unlikely to benefit from reversalAt 8am, two hours before the US supreme court officially slapped down Donald Trump's liberation day" tariffs on 20 February, Joseph Spraragen's phone was already ringing off the hook.The seasoned New York-based attorney and his 40-strong specialised trade team at Grunfeld, Desiderio, Lebowitz, Silverman & Klestadt (GDLSK) had spent months filing hundreds of lawsuits for heavy-hitter clients, including luxury brands Prada and Dolce & Gabbana, in protest of the US president's decision to impose sweeping import taxes last April. Continue reading...

With David Ellison's Paramount Skydance poised to buy Warner Bros Discovery, the president is tightening his grip on the US mediaFor many years, Donald Trump has trashed CNN and has taught his loyal followers to do the same.During the 2016 presidential campaign, angry chants of CNN sucks!" reverberated at his campaign rallies, and he still jumps at every opportunity to disparage star CNN journalists such as Kaitlan Collins. Continue reading...

Democrats hope to capture the House, but the Senate could be a heavier lift in November's midterm electionsOn the first Tuesday of November, Americans will decide whether to keep Congress under Donald Trump's control, or hand power to the Democrats. The first national elections since the 2024 polls that brought Trump back to the White House, the 3 November midterms will be a crucial test of whether the president's handling of top issues such as the economy and immigration have met Americans' expectations. On Tuesday, voters will cast ballots in initial state primaries, with more to follow in the months ahead.Up for grabs in November are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate, and if Republicans lose their majorities in either chamber, it will alter the course of Trump's presidency. Should Democrats take the House, they will gain the power to issue subpoenas as they investigate his administration, and can block the president's legislative agenda. Should they wrest control of the Senate from the GOP, Democrats could stop Trump from appointing nominees to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including the supreme court. Continue reading...

Israel and the US launched strikes against Iran as Donald Trump declared the start of 'major combat operations' and called on Iranians to rise up against their government. The US president's comments came soon after explosions were heard across central Tehran. One apparent strike hit near the offices of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran was preparing a 'crushing retaliation', an Iranian official told Reuters

Donald Trump said the US had begun 'major combat operations' in Iran, warning that there may be US casualties. The strikes, which the US president said were aimed at destroying Iranian missiles and annihilating its navy, follow repeated US-Israeli warnings that they would strike Iran again if it pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Trump told members of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's armed forces, to lay down their weapons, promising they would be granted immunity. The other option, according to Trump, was 'certain death'

He's the Democratic politician with movie-star looks and a picture-perfect family, dogged by accusations of being a smoothtalking elitist. Can he really unite the American left and win the most powerful office in the world?When you think of the politician Donald Trumpisn't, when you think of the norm he broke, the archetype he shattered, you might well picture aman who looks alot like Gavin Newsom. Tall and handsome, hair coiffed just so, with a blond wife and four photogenic kids at his side, Newsom, who has been the governor of California since 2019 and is often described as the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for the White House in 2028, looks the way professional politicians, and especially presidential candidates, look in the movies.It's dogged Newsom for years, that look of his, perennially suggesting that he is, in the words of one California newspaper, too ambitious, too slickly handsome, and too patrician-seeming", especially for a populist age that cherishes the authentic and has no truck with anything either phoney or elite". The elite tag especially has hung around Newsom's neck for decades, thanks to the fact that his ascent to the top of California politics has seemed smooth and unbroken, apparently eased by a childhood spent in the orbit of the Getty family, when that name was a byword for astronomical wealth. Continue reading...

DoJ says it will not ask US supreme court to rehear tariffs case despite president's complaint on Truth SocialThe Trump administration said refunds of tariffs struck down by the US supreme court will take time", according to court documents filed by the Department of Justice.Businesses including FedEx have lined up to demand reimbursement for US tariffs they have paid but that the court last week deemed were imposed illegally, prompting heavy criticism from Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Hours after exclusion of Anthropic, OpenAI announces fresh Pentagon deal, but says it will maintain same safety guardrails at the heart of the dispute

I know what I did, and more importantly, what I didn't do,' former US president says after six-hour depositionBill Clinton told a congressional committee on Friday he had no idea of the crimes" Jeffrey Epstein was committing and insisted he did nothing wrong" in his relationship with the convicted sex trafficker.The former president's remarks came in his opening statement in a deposition to the House of Representatives' oversight committee, a day after his wife, Hillary Clinton, appeared before the same body and called the proceedings partisan political theater" and an insult to the American people". Continue reading...

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Anthropic has resisted allowing its Claude AI system to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems - key US politics stories from Friday, 27 February at a glanceDonald Trump said Friday he will direct all federal agencies to IMMEDIATELY CEASE" all use of artificial intelligence technology from Anthropic.The US Department of Defense and Anthropic hit an impasse with neither side backing down as a deadline for an agreement lapsed on Friday afternoon. The Pentagon had demanded the AI company loosen ethical guidelines on its systems or face severe consequences. Continue reading...

Neither president nor anyone in administration has reached out after Good was killed by immigration officer, says familyThe family of Renee Good, an unarmed US citizen and mother who was killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis last month, said in an interview with NBC News that neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his administration has contacted them since her death.There's a reason that we hired our own investigators - to make sure that the truth is transparent and available, to make sure that this is really taken seriously, and to make sure that we know what occurred," Brent Ganger, Good's brother, told NBC News. Continue reading...

Trustees unanimously voted to place Alberto Carvalho on leave and appointed Andres Chait in the interimTwo days after the FBI searched the headquarters of the Los Angeles unified school district and the home of its superintendent, the district board of education placed Alberto Carvalho on administrative leave.The board met in closed session meetings for several hours on Thursday and Friday to discuss Carvalho's employment with the nation's second largest school district. The trustees unanimously voted Friday to place Carvalho on paid leave, and appointed another high ranking district official, Andres Chait, to serve as interim superintendent. Continue reading...