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Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and more react to death of the civil rights leader at the age of 84

Get the files out', says former secretary of state; Tricia McLaughlin's departure comes amid shutdown of agency in charges of ICE surges

Case became focal point for immigration after he was deported to El Salvador where he faces gang threatsImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.The Salvadorian national's case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials. Continue reading...

Jackson's two presidential runs brought the civil rights movement into the heart of the Democratic party and opened doors for others to walk through

Some universities and colleges have taken action involving faculty or affiliates named in the documents. We want to hear about what's happening where you study or workAs fallout from the large release of documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein continues, a handful of US universities have taken action against faculty or affiliates named in the files.At some campuses, professors have been placed under review, research centres closed, conferences cancelled or public explanations issued. Students and staff have responded in different ways, including petitions, open letters and campus forums. Continue reading...

We would like to hear your memories of the civil rights trailblazer - whether you met him or just valued his workThe Rev Jesse Jackson, a civil rights campaigner who was prominent for more than 50 years and who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, died on Tuesday at the age of 84. Jackson championed the rights of Black, poor and working-class people with his rainbow coalition".We would like to hear your tributes and memories of Jesse Jackson - whether you met him, or appreciated his work. Continue reading...

The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84, his family said on Tuesday. Jackson, an eloquent Baptist minister raised in the segregated south, became a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He had advocated for the rights of Black Americans and other marginalised communities since the civil rights movement of the 1960s

Marco Rubio arrived at the Munich security conference with a disturbing message for European governments: empire is greatFresh from toppling the president of Venezuela and taking control of the world's largest oil reserves, the Trump administration's top diplomat arrived at the Munich security conference on Saturday with a rather new and very disturbing message for European governments.Empire is great. Empire is back. Empire is American.Mehdi Hasan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo Continue reading...

Civil rights icon, who died Tuesday, shifted Black politics and leftist coalition-building from the sidecar of the Democratic party to the driver's seatBy the early 1980s, the Democratic party was facing a crossroads. The 1980 landslide election of Ronald Reagan, who clenched the presidency with a whopping 489 electoral college votes against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, swiftly pulled the Democratic party to the right in the political and cultural wave of the Reagan Revolution".For those Democratic constituents left behind, however, a challenge was mounting, mostly within US industrial cities whose economies were ransacked by Reagan's trickle-down" economics. Record tax cuts for the wealthy had come at the expense of a contracted social safety net, thus exacerbating inequality and collapsing much of the working class into the poor. Grassroots resistance campaigns spawned across the country in response to this dire urban crisis that had disproportionately devastated African Americans, and between 1982 and 1984 they had registered 2 million new Black voters - the largest gain in registered Black voters since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Continue reading...

The American won her first Winter Games title at 41. She did so while advocating for Black athletes, mothers and the deaf and Down's syndrome communitiesElana Meyers Taylor had already cemented her place in Olympic history long before Monday night. She had competed with and against men on the World Cup tour and at the world championships to help force women's monobob into the Winter Olympic program. She had surpassed the speed skater Shani Davis as the most decorated Black athlete in Winter Games history. She had stacked more Olympic medals than any female bobsledder ever, reaching the podium at Vancouver, Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing.But even at the age of 40, with a bad back and a concussion history, even with the added responsibility and time pressures of motherhood, even after five visits to an Olympic podium that would have been enough for a different athlete to call it a day, she had never let go of her dream of standing alone on the top step. Continue reading...

When daily life feels like a black hole of apps and feeds, it's no surprise we crave the intimacy of physical mediaUsually, my handbag is a medley of digital devices and life essentials - my phone, iPad, chargers, keys, tampons. But lately, you're likely to also find a half-done newspaper crossword, a ton of stationery, the book I've restarted three times, and whatever scraps and trinkets I've picked up throughout the day to put in my scrapbook.Analog is back, and it feels like we need it more than ever. In a world where getting just about anything done means being sucked into a digital black hole of apps, sign-up forms, harrowing social media feeds and carnivorous advertisers, it's no surprise that we keep reaching back for the comfort of the physical: Polaroids, vinyl records, real birthday cards. It all helps us slow down and appreciate a world where not everything is online. Continue reading...

The US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a Baptist minister raised in the segregated south who became a close associate of Martin Luther King and twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, has died at 84 Continue reading...

Billionaire says he exercised terrible judgment' in maintaining contact with sex offender and Ghislaine MaxwellThe billionaire Thomas Pritzker has stepped down as executive chair of the hotel chain Hyatt, after revelations over his ties with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Pritzker said he had exercised terrible judgment" in maintaining contact with the sex offender and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in recruiting and grooming underage girls. Continue reading...

The Trump administration has bought warehouses across the US that could hold thousands. But resistance is growingThere is a vast building, reportedly the size of seven football fields, in Surprise, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix; ICE bought it for $70m. Another building, along the southern border in San Antonio, Texas, was valued at $37m; it's 640,000 sq ft. In January, ICE bought a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, Pennsylvania, not far outside of Philadelphia, for $87.4m. In Williamsport, Maryland, outside Hagerstown, the cost of a facility on a nearly 54-acre plot was $102m.These are massive, industrial spaces, built for holding goods to be shipped elsewhere. Warehouses are drafty and difficult to heat, hard-floored and high-ceilinged, not meant for human habitation. But the Trump administration is aiming to convert them into vast detention camps for immigrants. Some of the buildings could house as many as 9,000 people at a time. The rapid slew of new warehouse purchases by deportation agencies brings to mind the words of the ICE director, Todd Lyons, who told a conference last year that he wanted the effort to operate like Amazon Prime, for human beings". Continue reading...

The Californian once had ambitions of winning gold at the Winter Olympics. But now he is more interested in what skiing can do for the soulGrowing up in the Hayward Hills, just south of Oakland, California, Mallory Duncan lived a hybrid lifestyle throughout his childhood. Weekdays were spent at school, avoiding homework, disrupting class and getting in trouble. Weekends at Alpine Meadows, a ski resort on the north-west shores of Lake Tahoe, were for jumping off cliffs and skiing powder with friends. Every Sunday he would have dinner at his grandad's house, watch football and listen to jazz.I've come to accept that I don't always fit into the ski industry," says Duncan, a professional skier, award-winning film-maker, entrepreneur and saxophonist. I live in Portland and love the city life, music and the integration of art into my work. Being exposed to many different types of experiences helps me be more creative in everything I do." Continue reading...

Hopes of success remain low after Trump points finger at Zelenskyy and Moscow keeps up hardline demands

There's a lesson here for the UK and the anti-WHO Nigel Farage - Trump attacks it in public, but in private he knows he still needs itDonald Trump is persistent. In his first term as president, he withdrew the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July 2020, giving the necessary one-year notice period. Soon after, Joe Biden was elected, and he reversed this executive order within days of being in office, reinstating the US support for the agency on 20 January 2021. While many hoped this would be the end of the story, Trump came back with a vengeance in his second term and immediately signed an executive order withdrawing on 20 January 2025.This means that - buried under news of other Trump-related chaos - the US formally left the WHO at the end of last month. It is just the second time in the agency's history a major power has left. In 1949, during the cold war, the USSR withdrew citing unhappiness with the US influence over the organisation. In 1956, with concerns over disease surveillance and spread, the USSR re-engaged with the UN system.Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh Continue reading...

By trusting the US, we handed Trump a kill switch. Yet Europe's digital sovereignty is an achievable goalThe French judge Nicolas Guillou knows exactly how deep Europe's dependence on US tech is. Guillou and his colleagues at the international criminal court are under US sanctions. They can no longer use e-commerce, book hotels online or hire a car. Their home smart devices ignore them. Credit cards from European banks no longer function, because Europe has still not developed its own EU-wide payments system, so most electronic purchases go through Visa and Mastercard. Converting euros to foreign currencies is extraordinarily difficult because everything passes through dollars. Living in Europe is no protection against Donald Trump bricking your digital life.This dependence is not limited to mod-cons. Last year, the chairman of the Danish parliament's defence committee said that he regretted his part in Denmark's decision to buy US-made F-35 fighter jets: I can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse. Buying American weapons is a security risk that we can not run." He is not alone. Spain has abandoned plans to buy F-35s.Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties Continue reading...

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet delegates from Russia and Ukraine in Geneva. Key US politics stories from 16 February at a glanceDonald Trump has piled pressure on Ukraine to reach a deal with Russia fast" before US-brokered talks in Geneva on Tuesday. Ukraine better come to the table, fast," the US president told reporters onboard Air Force One while en route to Washington.Trump is pushing to end the conflict, which began when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but two previous rounds of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi did not yield any signs of a breakthrough. Continue reading...

In ruling, judge cited quote from Orwell's novel 1984 describing process by which authoritarians rewrite historyA federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery exhibit at a Philadelphia historic site, pending the outcome of ongoing litigation after the city sued the federal government over its removal.The National Park Service last month dismantled and removed a long-established slavery-related exhibit at the Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington, in response to Donald Trump's claims, which have been rejected by civil rights groups, of anti-American ideology" at historical and cultural institutions. Continue reading...

Police confirm suspect is one of dead in incident at boys' hockey game that injured four in PawtucketAt least three people are dead and three more hospitalized in critical condition in a mass shooting at an indoor ice rink in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, during a high school hockey match on Monday afternoon, the police said.The Pawtucket police chief, Tina Goncalves, told reporters at a news conference that the suspect is one of the dead. Continue reading...

State's governor had demanded impartial inquiry into the shooting of the VA nurse by federal immigration agentsMinnesota law enforcement authorities have said the FBI is refusing to share any evidence on its investigation into the death of Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal immigration authorities in late January.Pretti was shot on 24 January by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials in Minneapolis during the Trump administration's surge of immigration enforcement operations in the city. His killing came just two weeks after an immigration official shot and killed Renee Good and 10 days after the shooting of Julio C Sosa-Celis. Continue reading...

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...