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While most politicians haven't taken the platform seriously, the Reform UK leader is an astute content creator - and is reaping the benefitsNigel Farage was born to be a TikTok star. He joined the platform in March 2022, announcing it's got to be done, it's where it's at" in a video that has been watched more than 600,000 times. He is still one of the first politicians to bother taking the platform seriously, and it is paying him vast dividends. The Guardian reported last week that Farage is outperforming all other UK parties and candidates on TikTok in terms of engagement and average views, according to data from 22 May to 17 June.Farage has been prolific in his output since his election candidacy was announced. He posted several times a day for the first two weeks of his campaign, flooding the algorithm with short, characterful videos that resonate powerfully with his fanbase. The recipe to his success is clear: he's willing to be opinionated, comical and - most compellingly in British politics - himself. Continue reading...

New $297.9bn budget signed by Gavin Newsom, the state's governor, does not specify what programs it would aidCalifornia plans to spend up to $12m on reparations legislation under a budget signed by Gavin Newsom, marking a milestone in the state's efforts to atone for a legacy of racism and discrimination against Black Californians.The reparations funding in the $297.9bn budget the California governor signed over the weekend does not specify what programs the money would go toward. Lawmakers are not considering widespread direct payments to Black Californians this year.California's first-in-nation reparations taskforce releases final reportCalifornia's proposals to rectify past discrimination advance through senateThe forgotten history of what California stole from Black familiesThink reparations are impossible? The story of Japanese Americans proves otherwise Continue reading...

Strategist reiterates his months-long calls for party to look at staggering talent' of governors for candidateJames Carville, the strategist who has been one of the few establishment Democrats to have been warning about Joe Biden's age issue before the president's disastrous debate performance Thursday, has called on his party to deliver change" and replace the president as its nominee for November's election.In an interview Monday with the Guardian, he also said it would be in the US's best interest for Biden's Democratic presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to help persuade him to half his re-election - and support an open nomination convention in Chicago in August to select a new ticket for the party. Continue reading...

The USMNT have crashed out of Copa America early. At best they have stagnated under their coach's leadership as they aim to build for 2026You can't deny they played for him, and for each other. This was no capitulation, no cowed or callow performance against one of the world's best teams.So Gregg Berhalter has not lost the locker room. But how, after this, can he not lose his job? How can anyone trust that he is the man to shape the USMNT into a team good enough to make a major impact at the 2026 World Cup? They have at best stagnated since Qatar 2022, and perhaps even regressed. Continue reading...

Joe Biden denounced the 6-3 ruling, saying it undermined the rule of law' and was a terrible disservice to the people of this nation.' Plus: proposed protections for workers in extreme heat

Ever since Biden's poor performance at debate, the California governor who's spent years seeking a national stage finds himself at the centre of oneTo paraphrase Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch, lately it's been Newsom, Newsom, Newsom" all day long.He's been at the Vatican for a climate summit, and in Alpharetta, Georgia, for a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He's all over the TV, actually - on Fox News and MSNBC, and in advertisements airing in Tennessee. Continue reading...

Media analysts say Sinclair, known for anchors reciting script in lockstep, promotes conservative talking pointsSinclair, one of the largest owners of US television stations, has established itself as an influential player in the conservative movement by using trusted local news channels to spread disinformation and manipulated video of Joe Biden, media analysts say.The company, which gained notoriety in 2018 for requiring local anchors across the country to read the same segment, has since created a national news show that produces stories distributed to its stations - often at the expense of local news coverage, the experts say. Continue reading...

Before she joined Donald Trump in asking Georgia state officials to find 11,780 votes' in 2020, Mitchell was the feminist flag bearer of the Equal Rights amendment in OklahomaMeet the election operators:

Janelle Monae's trousers do not represent a vagina. They represent a vulva. Have some respect!I have a stick up my arse about the difference between less" and fewer", and women in the generations below have the same about vagina" and vulva", and even though the principle is the same - why not just use the right word, instead of the wrong one? - I have never been able to see their problem. Everyone's got the gist. Why make a scene?It happened that I recently spent some hallowed time with millennials and also saw Janelle Monae, live, and this all coincided at a festival that it would be crass to mention for the 91st time - but suffice it to say, I have finally come round to their point of view. Continue reading...

Voters share their reactions, highlight limitations of format and whether event has changed their intentionsUS voters shared their reactions to Thursday's presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, highlighting limitations of the format, weak performances from both candidates and whether the event has changed their voting intentions. Continue reading...

As the party asks who is to blame for the US president's poor performance against Trump, calls grow for Biden to widen his teamWhen Joe Biden became engulfed in a plagiarism scandal during his first US presidential campaign in 1987, his adviser and friend Ted Kaufman was blunt: There's only one way to stop the sharks, and that's pull out," he said.When Biden was contemplating another run for the White House in 2015, it fell to another longtime confidant, Mike Donilon, to deliver the verdict. I caught him looking at me and gestured, What is it, Mike?" Biden later wrote in his memoir. I don't think you should do this,' he said." Continue reading...

Cyclists such as sprint world champion Marshall Major' Taylor were early stars of the sport in the US. But many felt compelled to move abroadWhen cycling first took the US by storm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Americans joined in the new pastime. One Black cyclist, Marshall Major" Taylor, became a world champion in 1899. Yet American cycling installed a color line in professional racing. Opportunities became so limited that Black competitors had to take them wherever they could find them - including on the vaudeville stage and in Europe. Their story is documented in a new book, Black Cyclists: The Race for Inclusion, by Robert J Turpin, a professor of history at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina.We fall into the trap that history is linear," Turpin says. With race relations, we think about the end of the Civil War: Slavery ended, and things gradually got better and better for Black people.' My book shows what we already know: Things actually got worse for Black people in the US, especially from the 1880s through the 1920s ... It got harder for Black cyclists to compete as professionals or even win prize money in general." Continue reading...

Ex-cabinet minister reiterates backing for Donald Trump and claims Biden doesn't like Britain' in leaked recording

The US were eliminated from the Copa America with a 1-0 loss to Uruguay on Monday night, a defeat that will increase pressure on US Soccer to remove coach Gregg Berhalter before a World Cup on home soil in 2026.Uruguay scored in the 66th minute when Nicolas de la Cruz swung a free-kick into the box. Matt Turner parried a header by Ronald Araujo, who jumped over defender Tim Ream, but the rebound fell to Mathias Olivera and he tapped the ball home. Continue reading...

The transcript of nearly 150 pages shows grand jury heard testimony of teenage girls' rape at his Palm Beach mansionFlorida prosecutors knew the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient and a missed opportunity to imprison him a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday.The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many by law enforcement over the past two decades into Epstein's rape and sex trafficking of teenagers - and how his ties to the rich and the powerful seem to have allowed him to avoid prison or a serious jail term for more than a decade. Continue reading...

In speech from White House, president said ruling undermined the rule of law' and compared their charactersJoe Biden has issued a full-throated denunciation of the US supreme court's decision to grant his predecessor, Donald Trump, broad immunity from criminal charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, calling it a dangerous precedent" that overturned the basic principle of equality before the law.In a 5-minute speech from the White House, Biden said the 6-3 ruling undermined the rule of law" and rendered a terrible disservice to the people of this nation" because it means Trump is much less likely to be held legally accountable for inciting a mob to launch a deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

The US president said in remarks following the US supreme court's ruling that granted broad immunity to Donald Trump and other presidents from prosecution that it set a 'dangerous precedent'. 'I know I will respect the limits of presidential power as I have for the last three-and-a-half years, but any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,' he said.

In ruling that Trump enjoys absolute immunity' for official acts' as president, the court has set a disturbing precedent

This live blog is now closed. You can read our latest reporting on Donald Trump's immunity case here:

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are safely through to the second round, while Emma Raducanu saw off a lucky loserBBC don't appear to agree with my judgment. None of the matches I'm into have commentary, and on the main show they're showing Heather Watson - down 0-2 to Greet Minnen now that you ask.Shang saves break point with a flick down the line and eventually hangs on but, more importantly, Tim Henman thinks Naomi Osaka will win the women's competition. I may or may not have deposited money with my local turf accountant pending the same inevitability. Continue reading...

City to pay $300,000 to Robert Williams, whose driver's license was incorrectly flagged in shoplifting investigationThe city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a Black man who was wrongly arrested for shoplifting, and to change how police use facial-recognition technology to solve crimes after the software identified him as a suspect.The conditions are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams. His driver's license photo was incorrectly flagged by facial-recognition software as a likely match to a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018. Continue reading...

The supreme court ruled that Trump has some immunity - making him less likely to face trial in the election subversion case before the electionThe US supreme court's decision Monday that Donald Trump has some immunity from criminal prosecution marked a win for the ex-president. While Trump's not off the hook in his Washington DC federal election subversion case, he is even less likely to face trial in these proceedings before the election. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say Read ran over John O'Keefe with an SUV and fled scene in 2022, but jury was unable to reach verdictA mistrial has been declared in the Karen Read case after a jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges that she murdered her boyfriend, a Boston police officer.The local district attorney's office quickly issued a statement saying that prosecutors intend to retry the case, which jurors first began hearing in late April. Continue reading...

About 84,000 people crossed into the US in June, the lowest monthly total since Biden assumed office in January 2021Undocumented crossings at the US's southern border have fallen to a three-year low, marking the lowest in Joe Biden's presidency just a short time after he signed a controversial executive order limiting immigration there in June.The latest data from the federal Customs and Border Patrol obtained by CBS News is the most recent since Biden signed his executive order - and comes as the president is accused of failing to address concerns about the amount of people crossing into the US without permission. Continue reading...

Stark dissent from liberal supreme court justice says decision will let presidents commit crimes with impunityIn a stark dissent from the conservative-majority US supreme court's opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was a mockery" that makes a president a king above the law".The court ruled Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for official acts" he took while president, setting up tests for which of the federal criminal charges over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election are considered official and sending the case back to a lower court to decide. Continue reading...

Campaign announces record fundraising in wake of Trump debate but wealthy Democrats undecided on path forwardA silver lining of Joe Biden's pernicious debate performance was, according to a succession of upbeat emails from the president's re-election campaign, a record fundraising haul.By Sunday night, only three days after he stumbled through 90 painful minutes in the company of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, more than $33m had dropped into Biden campaign coffers. Debate day itself was our best grassroots fundraising day ever", officials announced. Continue reading...

Sunday's first round vote puts Marine Le Pen's radical right within touching distance of power. The priority must now be damage limitationIf Emmanuel Macron still harboured hopes that his decision to gift Marine Le Pen a snap parliamentary election would pay off, they are surely dispelled now. Following humiliation in last month's European polls, Mr Macron recklessly gambled that historic levels of support for Ms Le Pen's National Rally party (RN) would melt away once protest voters were confronted with the prospect of a radical right government for the first time in postwar history. So how did that work out?A high turnout in Sunday's first round saw RN comfortably win first place with 33.1% of the vote, almost two points up compared with three weeks ago. For context, this is the first time that the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen has broken through the 20% barrier in a legislative election. The hastily assembled New Popular Front (NPF), combining the forces of the left, scored 28%. Mr Macron's centrist Together coalition trailed in at 20.8%, in third place. In an act of hubristic folly, Mr Macron thus appears to have blown up his power base in parliament, transformed himself into the lamest of lame duck presidents, and handed Ms Le Pen's youthful protege, Jordan Bardella, a decent chance of becoming France's next prime minister. Continue reading...

There are now no GOP women in South Carolina's state legislature - and just two female Democrats in the senateThe only three Republican women in South Carolina's senate took on their party and stopped a total abortion ban from passing in their state last year. In return, they lost their jobs.Voters removed senators Sandy Senn, Penry Gustafson and Katrina Shealy from office during sparsely turned out primaries in June - and by doing so completely vacated the Republican wing of the five-member Sister Senators", a female contingent that included two Democrats and was united in its members opposition to the abortion ban. Continue reading...

An aversion to risk among the Democrats has kept the US president in the race for the White House. But win-at-all-costs logic isn't great for politics at the best of timesI remember when people thought the free world was in peril because its self-appointed leader didn't have a big enough vocabulary. There were also rumblings that, at 56, he was past his prime. This was George W Bush.There was detailed analysis of his favourite words (folk", folksy"), the span and structure of his sentences and what grade it would put him in at school. A lot of this information was passed by word of mouth, one person in 100 being online and telling everyone else, and none of us in the UK were sure what US grades meant, but we knew it didn't put him in one of the high ones. Did he have the intelligence of a nine-year-old? A 14-year-old? Continue reading...

Study came after suicide of Lt David Metcalf, who logged his symptoms, and examination of his brain by scientistsA military study analyzing US Navy Seal veterans who died by suicide discovered patterns of brain damage associated with blast exposure.The latest lab survey provides additional evidence of the ways that blast exposure can damage the brain, the New York Times first reported on Sunday. Continue reading...

Only a whole-hearted endorsement of the New Popular Front coalition can stop the National Rally in second-round votingIt was an impressive score for a coalition frantically cobbled together only three weeks ago. On Sunday, France's broad leftwing electoral alliance, the New Popular Front, won about 9m votes, behind Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) but comfortably ahead of Emmanuel Macron and his allies.As a result, French voters face a stark choice when they head back to the polls on 7 July: do they want some type of coalition government with a centre of gravity to the left of the current one, or do they want to give the far right the keys to state power for the first time since the second world war?

Biden campaign launches counter-offensive amid fears that frail appearance at debate could mean defeat in NovemberWith the White House scrambling to prevent Joe Biden's candidacy being enveloped in a full-blown crisis, several state governors were said to be subtly positioning themselves as late substitutes while avoiding being seen to do so.The Biden campaign has launched a counter-offensive, including furious networking among senior Democrats, to counteract fears that the 81-year-old president's frail appearance in last week's debate had made defeat at the hands of Donald Trump in November's election inevitable. Continue reading...

A lack of domestic ambition and the federation's insular culture has caught up with the national team

Meme-stock influencer Keith Gill disclosed a 6.6% share in the pet food and medicine e-retailerShares of Chewy rose 15% premarket on Monday, before reversing sharply, after a filing showed Keith Gill, the stock influencer known as Roaring Kitty", had picked up a 6.6% stake in the pet products e-retailer.The turbulent rally comes days after the investor, known for triggering the meme-stock rally of 2021, posted an uncaptioned picture of a puppy on the social media platform X that briefly sent Chewy shares to a near one-year high on Thursday. Continue reading...

Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration party is in reach of becoming the biggest political force in parliament. Plus: the songs of summer

France can look in the mirror and ask what went wrong - or vote for the left to limit the National Rally's grip on powerFor all of my adult life, the Le Pen family has felt like a shadow hanging over my head. Jean-Marie, the father, used to make jokes about the Holocaust. He was a former French paratrooper in Algeria who was accused of torturing prisoners. Then along came his daughter, Marine, who looked less threatening but more ambitious. Then her niece, Marion, who proved even more reactionary.The Le Pen influence appeared to be growing, but I always had the naive idea that reasonable" people, from the right as well as from the left, would never let them win. It proved true in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election: the French then voted massively for Jacques Chirac. It proved true again in 2017 and 2022, when Marine also reached the second round and was defeated by Emmanuel Macron, the promising young outsider who wanted to dismantle the left-right dividing line. It's no longer true.Pierre Haski is a former foreign correspondent and a former deputy editor of the French daily Liberation. He is also president of the press freedom NGO Reporters without Borders Continue reading...

A finance bill was the trigger, but the backdrop is government debt and blinkered interventions from western institutionsThere is as yet no resolution after an unprecedented week in Kenyan politics. What began as protests against a rushed-through finance bill has revealed a crisis of legitimacy within the executive, the legislature and the police that were sent to do the government's bidding. And while the protesters have been very clear about their demands - reject the finance bill - outsiders who are accustomed to simplistic narratives about African politics have been scrambling and failing to understand what these events really mean.Kenya is experiencing a polycrisis of sorts. The finance bill is the immediate trigger: an annually produced document that lays out the government's fiscal strategy, and which normally passes without much comment. But this year it attracted an unprecedented level of attention because it contained several proposals for the taxation of everyday goods, including bread, sanitary towels and more. Kenyans were already struggling with the effects of a collapsing currency and the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis. However, the government was not merely looking to meet its financial obligations but to increase year-on-year spending from the last finance bill, which had already introduced a number of new taxes.Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, political analyst and author of Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya Continue reading...

A Guardian analysis of autopsy records reveals record-high overdoses in 2023. Harm reduction advocates are fighting to save lives on the streetsThey died in parks, cars, motels, alleyways, bus stops, bathrooms and tents. Some collapsed on busy city streets, others in remote desert terrain. The oldest victim was 81. The youngest was one day old.A new analysis by the Guardian reveals that fentanyl claimed the lives of more than 2,100 people living on the streets of Los Angeles county and in homeless shelters between 2014 to 2023.From 2022 to 2023, there was a 15% increase in deaths of unhoused people in which fentanyl was ruled to be one of the primary causes.The number of fentanyl deaths has surged over the last five years, with 633 fatalities among the unhoused in 2022, 255 in 2020 and 30 in 2018.Black Angelenos make up only 9% of the county's overall population, but accounted for 27% of all fentanyl deaths of unhoused people in the last decade. Continue reading...

Proposition 47 is back on the ballot, in yet another sign that crime will be a key topic this election yearCalifornia voters will get to decide whether a law that was heralded as a breakthrough in criminal justice reform will remain intact, the latest signal that anxieties and fear around crime has risen to the top of the state's political agenda in this election year.A measure to undo much of Proposition 47, the landmark 2014 law that downgraded several non-violent felonies to misdemeanors, officially made it onto the ballot on Friday. Continue reading...

The Reform leader plays on the politics of resentment - and that's attractive to a generation that has known so much precarityIn an election of few surprises, a shocking development has been Nigel Farage's sudden popularity among young people. Recent figures show the Reform leader - an antiquated figure who, with his pinstripes, tweeds and cigars, would be at home in a Thatcher cabinet - outperforms Labour on TikTok (in early June, Farage was beating Labour on a views-per-video basis by 30% - and the Tories by more than double). A YouGov survey on 18 June indicated that Farage's popularity among 18- to 24-year-olds dwarfs that of the Conservatives; and Reform has scored its highest polling numbers since it originated as the Brexit party in 2018.With young people often bashed for their woke" politics (including by the Reform leader himself), it may surprise some that Farage - who has spouted rhetoric about Muslims not having British values, and suggesting diversity in hiring is disastrous" - would resonate with this group. But his success relates to his courting of younger voters by aligning himself with misogynistic figures - most notably the influencer Andrew Tate - who have increasing cachet with young men in particular. In an appearance on the Strike It Big podcast (hosted by two 25-year-olds, who interviewed Tate as a guest last year), Farage described Tate as an important voice" for the emasculated". Continue reading...

The US's pursuit of Assange under the Espionage Act created a dangerous precedent that threatens journalistic practicesJulian Assange's lengthy detention has finally ended, but the danger that his prosecution poses to the rights of journalists remains. As is widely known, the US government's pursuit of Assange under the Espionage Act threatens to criminalize common journalistic practices. Sadly, Assange's guilty plea and release from custody have done nothing to ease that threat.That Assange was indicted under the Espionage Act, a US law designed to punish spies and traitors, should not be considered the normal course of business. Barack Obama's justice department never charged Assange because it couldn't distinguish what he had done from ordinary journalism. The espionage charges were filed by the justice department of Donald Trump. Joe Biden could have reverted to the Obama position and withdrawn the charges but never did.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs Continue reading...

Do you have a friend you contact only when you need to be mean-spirited? Or someone you would categorise as a chaos friend? If not, you just might be one ...The New York Times recently explored the vexing problem of the medium friend'": people who aren't your ride or die, but more than mere acquaintances. How much of each other's bandwidth should you take up? Is there an imbalance in how you perceive your friendship?I am less interested in the problem than the expression (and the man in the article who, mind-bogglingly, ranks his friends in a spreadsheet). We are increasingly attuned to the importance of friendships for our wellbeing and becoming more thoughtful about how we make and maintain them. Perhaps it is time to try labelling friends, like plastic jars in tidy people's pantries on Instagram? Continue reading...

The US president has squandered his leverage over Netanyahu even as the Israeli leader continues to undermine himSince Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, Joe Biden has shown nearly absolute support for Israel and its leaders. His administration has sent hundreds of weapons shipments that have enabled the Israeli military to sustain its brutal war on Gaza; used US veto power at the UN security council to block multiple resolutions demanding a ceasefire; and undermined the legitimacy of both the international court of justice and the international criminal court because of their criticisms of Israeli actions. Biden has been willing to destroy the facade of an international rules-based order to protect Israel and the extremist government of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.You would think that Netanyahu would show deep gratitude to an ally like Biden who demonstrates such unconditional backing for nearly nine months, often acting against his own and larger US interests. Instead, Netanyahu has consistently ignored and defied Israel's most important ally - and paid no price for it. Now the Israeli premier is openly mocking Biden and his administration: on 18 June, Netanyahu released an English-language video claiming the US was withholding weapons that Israel needs to continue its war. On 23 June, Netanyahu continued venting his contempt of Biden and overall US support, telling the Israeli cabinet that the Biden administration has dramatically decreased arms supplies in recent months.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron's snap election gamble has backfired spectacularly as voters of the left and right united to reject himSooner or later, possibly as early as next week, France's far-right National Rally (RN) is going to take power. That's the main lesson of Sunday's first round of snap parliamentary elections, in which Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration nationalists amplified their European election score on a far higher turnout.President Emmanuel Macron's gamble of dissolving parliament and seeking a clarification" from voters after an ultra-short three-week campaign backfired spectacularly on his own supporters. His centrist coalition finished a distant third behind the RN and the leftwing New Popular Front (NFP) in the popular vote and looks set to keep fewer than 100 of its 249 seats in the 577-member national assembly. After Sunday's first ballot, Macron called for a broad rally in support of republican and democratic candidates" and against the extreme right. But few people are listening.Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre Continue reading...

US aircraft maker reverses decision it made nearly 20 years ago to outsource part of production amid safety crisis

The PM's unbending belief in Britain as a meritocracy blinded him to the realities of race, class - and his own flawed projectIn Nairobi's industrial South B district stands the Highway secondary school, alma mater of Rishi Sunak's father. It was established for Asian boys in 1962, one year before Kenya's independence, during a time when there were separate schools for whites, Asians and black Kenyans.Days after Sunak became prime minister, the principal told the Kenyan press that his premiership was an indication that with determination and focus, one can be anything in this world. We are not limited if the example of the UK premier is anything to go by." The celebration reflected an aspirational approach to life, emerging from deep within the postcolonial experience, that conceives of the world in terms of centre and periphery, and in which success is defined by proximity to that centre. Endeavour to excel", the Highway school motto, is hand-painted neatly on a blue sash on its walls. Continue reading...