The former president is not in immediate danger of jail, but his problems are piling up fast. Not least the fact that, in his family, loyalty means nothingNothing in life is certain except death and rich people jumping through complicated hoops to avoid paying taxes. In case you needed any more convincing about the tax side of that, please see the latest travails of the Trumps.On Thursday, the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were charged with a “sweeping and audacious illegal payment scheme” of tax-related crimes. While that may sound juicy, it is duller (but no less devious) when you dig into the 15-count indictment. There is no smoking gun, just mounds of details about company perks, such as payment of school fees and rents that weren’t reported properly. Lots of grubby ruses that add up to massive, and possibly illegal, tax savings. Continue reading...

• Founder of 1619 Project was initially denied tenure at UNC• ‘It’s not my job to heal the University of North Carolina’The journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said on Tuesday she will join Howard University, a prominent historically black college in Washington, as its Knight chair in race and journalism, turning down a similar position at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill even though it reversed a controversial decision to deny her tenure.Related: Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance sorry for since-deleted anti-Trump tweets Continue reading...

Making measures such as mask-wearing a matter of individual choice sends a message that they’re no longer importantAt a time when Covid cases in Britain stand at some 25,000 per day and are doubling every nine days or so, the government has chosen to lift nearly all remaining Covid measures. Boris Johnson stressed in a press conference on 5 July that this didn’t mean the pandemic was over. Far from it. He acknowledged the policy change would lead to even more infections, hospitalisations, even deaths. But his repeated mantra was that we must change the way we deal with the pandemic and “move from universal government diktat to relying on people’s personal responsibility”.This stress on “personal responsibility” has been a defining part of the government’s message throughout the pandemic, frequently accompanied by the suggestion that rises in infection are the result of irresponsible behaviour: flouting rules, holding house parties or (as Matt Hancock claimed when speaking about spiking cases in Bolton), choosing not to get vaccinated. But never before has personal responsibility been the government’s sole tool in the fight against Covid. Continue reading...

Six months on, as politicians and the rightwing media downplay the attack or shift the blame, fears of a replay growIt has been described as America’s darkest day since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But whereas 9/11 is solemnly memorialised in stone, a concerted effort is under way to airbrush the US Capitol insurrection from history.Six months on from the mayhem on 6 January, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the heart of American democracy to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory, Republicans and rightwing media have variously attempted to downplay the attack or blame it on leftwing infiltrators and the FBI. Continue reading...

The government wants us to take responsibility, but isn’t so keen on giving us the data we need to make informed decisions

Writer who announced Republican run for Senate in Ohio last week tells Fox News he now thinks Trump was ‘a good president’The Hillbilly Elegy author turned Republican Senate candidate JD Vance has apologised for a former political position: critic of Donald Trump.Related: Republicans’ effort to deny the Capitol attack is working – and it’s dangerous Continue reading...

After nearly two decades, the US military has left Bagram, now Afghan forces have invited the press inside the huge, eerily quiet facility Continue reading...

The 2021 fire season here in the US west is predicted to be among the worst. It’s forced us to be ready for anythingOn the first day of summer, I woke up to the acrid smell of hot tar. Even before my sleepy brain could name the source, my body tensed with anxiety: wildfire season was underway. Given the deepening drought and record-setting heat across most of the American west, this year’s fire season is widely predicted to be among the worst in recent memory – which is saying something, because last year’s was grotesque.More than 10.5m acres burned across the region in 2020, the highest annual total since accurate records began nearly 40 years ago. At least 43 people died as a direct result of the flames, and researchers estimate that thousands more died from the effects of sustained smoke inhalation. Entire neighborhoods were flattened, and evacuations lasted weeks, accelerating the spread of the coronavirus. In rural Washington state, where I live, my neighbors and I were trapped inside for days by smoke so thick we could barely see across the street. Continue reading...

Terms like residential school are deeply inadequate. These were not schools; they were prisons and forced labour campsWe’d all heard the stories, long before they started to receive this summer’s 24/7 coverage by every news station in Canada. Long before ground-penetrating radars confirmed the presence of unmarked graves, we knew that our missing family members did not simply “disappear” nor attempt and fail to run away from residential schools, despite what we were told by missionaries and government officials. Indigenous communities are necessarily close-knit, and we live in the histories of our people despite every effort at the eradication of our knowledges, cultures, languages – and of our lives.Published in 2015, the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report of Canada (TRC) estimated that 4,100 named and unnamed students died in Canada’s residential schools. To keep costs low, the report said, many were likely buried in untended and unmarked graves at school cemeteries, rather than sending the students’ bodies back to their home communities. Often, parents were not notified at all, or the children were said to have died from sickness – an excuse commonly used to justify intentional genocides of Indigenous nations, predicated on our supposed biological inferiority. Continue reading...

People have a right to safety. That’s why we must acknowledge crime and insist that we have the best solutions to address its root causesIn the wake of last summer’s mass uprisings against the police state that killed Geoge Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among so many others, many on the progressive left believed that real change was imminent. Unprecedented numbers of people poured into the streets, day after day, week after week, in the midst of a global pandemic. Polls showed a massive upsurge in support for the Black Lives Matter movement. So-called establishment politicians appeared to be on the back foot, with lawmakers in Minneapolis going so far as to pledge to abolish their police department and replace it with a community-based public safety model. Large municipalities across the country saw a wave of action, from calls to remove police officers from schools to more demands to defund police departments. Politicians and public figures who had previously been loath to wade into issues of police brutality unequivocally acknowledged the need for drastic reform. Floyd’s gruesome death at the hands of police, and the months of protest that followed, felt like an inflection point – at long last, elected officials and the general public alike seemed jolted out of the usual refrains. Enough was enough.Yet just over a year later, the state of policing appears largely unchanged. Almost no US cities have reduced their police budget – some, in fact, have expanded them – and efforts toward the goals of the defund movement have mostly stalled. In addition, a small but notable rise in crime since last summer has changed the picture. While some of this comes from cynical and nakedly misleading crime statistics produced by police departments, and much of it is media narrative, the truth is that many people do not feel safe. Support for BLM has fallen in the past year while support for the police has dramatically risen. This is something people care about, and defensive explanations that this is a bogus narrative are not going to cut it. The left needs a compelling counternarrative around crime in addition to our critique of policing. It is clear that street action and grassroots legislative pressure is not enough: The left needs to win power at the local level, where most police budgets are controlled, with a clear mandate for radical action around crime and policing. Continue reading...

Business districts in cities across the US offer economic opportunity – but can they have an impact beyond the world of retail?Like hundreds of other shopping districts, Sacramento’s Florin Square had to shut its doors during the pandemic.The space in California’s state capital is part cultural center and incubator and has been home to Black entrepreneurs since 2003. At the mercy of Covid-19 closures, evolving guidelines and elusive government aid, many similar operations failed to recover, with an estimated 200,000 more small businesses shuttering in 2020 than in the average year. Continue reading...

As America marks six months since the Washington insurrection, politicians and rightwing media are trying to eradicate it from US history. Plus, RIP Big Jake, the world’s tallest horseGood morning.As America marks six months since the 6 January attack on the Capitol on Tuesday, politicians and rightwing media are attempting to erase the insurrection from US history. Continue reading...

Still miffed by the ‘best sidekick ever’ millstone, the Bulls icon spared no one in a scorched-earth GQ interview. None of it comes as a shock, nor should the fact he keeps taking the baitOnce a staple of the fin-de-siècle Chicago Stadium scoreboard, the M&M race was the sprinkling on top of the ultimate sporting delight, a tasty bit of timeout entertainment to keep Bulls fans amped as the best basketball team on the planet schemed amid the screams. But when Michael Jordan turned up at the arena one day for shootaround, this sweet in-game set piece – an 8-bit, one-lap time trial between three candy-coated sprinters – transformed into something altogether sour: yet another opportunity to dupe Scottie Pippen.Related: NBA finals predictions: Bucks or Suns? Our writers share their picks Continue reading...

Ingrid and Tzvi Ainsworth, aged 66 and 68, have been formally identified as victims of the apartment building collapse in FloridaAn Australian woman with a “contagious love for life” and her devoted husband are among the latest deaths confirmed after an apartment building collapsed in Florida.Miami-Dade police formally identified Ingrid and Tzvi Ainsworth as victims of the Champlain Towers South building collapse in Surfside. Continue reading...

Operation Save America opposes Covid vaccination, women in power and same-sex marriage – and allies are making inroads among legislatorsHundreds of anti-abortion protesters lined blocks along a four-lane thoroughfare called Indian School Road in Phoenix, Arizona, enduring the suck of whooshing cars and blistering late June desert heat to advocate for their cause – effectively, theocracy in America.Rising temperatures promised a sweaty, nauseous apex of 104F for the protest in front of Camelback Family Planning and abortion clinic. Their ranks were defined by gruesome and bloody signs, some taller than the protesters who held them, a microphone and an amplifier. Continue reading...

Will the Milwaukee Bucks end a 50-year drought or can Chris Paul lift the Phoenix Suns to the team’s first NBA title? Our writers predict the winner, key players and dark horsesLimit the Bucks’ second and third options. Giannis Antetokounmpo, who remains day-to-​day with left knee injury, will find a way to hit baskets when he gets on the floor. It might be in transition. It might be in the half-court. But over the course of the series, he will have one or two Giannis Games. Limiting Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday and Antetokounmpo’s supporting cast will be the key. As the Suns’ rim-protector, much of the defensive responsibilities will fall on Deandre Ayton. The former No 1 overall draft pick has undergone a metamorphosis during this year’s playoffs, and he will need to bring every bit of his defensive savvy to bottle up the Bucks. Oliver Connolly Continue reading...

More than 117 still unaccounted for after remaining structure is brought downFour more victims were discovered in the rubble of the collapsed South Florida condo building on Monday after crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the last of the structure, allowing search efforts to resume.Miami-Dade’s assistant fire chief, Raide Jadallah, told family members that the bodies of three more people had been found, raising the death toll to 27 people. Daniella Levine Cava, the county mayor, later said another body had been found, bringing the toll to 28, with 117 people remain unaccounted for. Continue reading...

The 20-year-old Belgian, who was 6ft 10in tall, lived on a farm in Poynette and was a ‘superstar’The world’s tallest horse has died in Wisconsin.Big Jake, a 20-year-old Belgian, lived on Smokey Hollow Farm in Poynette. Valicia Gilbert, wife of the farm’s owner, Jerry Gilbert, said Big Jake had died two weeks ago but declined to give the exact date of death when the Associated Press reached her Monday via Facebook. Continue reading...

Leaders of Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah describe high stakes as Delta variant poses threatSeveral Republican governors with lagging vaccine rates in their states have urged residents to accept the shots as the Biden administration comes under pressure to reopen US borders to overseas visitors.The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, West Virginia’s Jim Justice and Spencer Cox of Utah warned against vaccine hesitancy, which some disease experts, including the White House chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said could create “two types of America”. Continue reading...

Rescuers hope demolition will give them access to underground garage of Surfside building where victims may be buriedRescuers were given the all-clear to resume work looking for victims at a collapsed south Florida condo building after demolition crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the building’s remains in a plume of dust.Miami-Dade County’s mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, said the demolition went “exactly as planned” at about 10.30pm on Sunday. Continue reading...

The late defence secretary’s micromanagement style – arrogant, bullying and ignorant – helped ensure the disastrous outcomeDonald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense under George W Bush, who died on 30 June at the age of 88, enjoyed one all-important attribute, which was to appear larger than he actually was. He enhanced his comparatively diminutive 5ft 8in stature with the aid of thickly padded shoes with built-up heels, which caused him to waddle when he walked. His staff called them the “duck shoes”. But he inflated his presence in other ways, too, promoting the image of a clear-thinking, decisive commander while determinedly deflecting responsibility when initiatives he had championed careened into disaster.When American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, he hurried out of his office and headed for the site of the impact, spending a minute or so helping to carry a stretcher bearing one of the casualties. Meanwhile, the country was under attack, but no one knew where the chief executive of the US armed forces was to be found. As a senior White House official later complained to me: “He abandoned his post.” The excursion elevated him to heroic status, as a decisive, take-charge leader, an image that persisted in part thanks to his heavily staffed publicity apparatus. It played no small part in distracting attention from his impatient neglect of warnings prior to 9/11 that a terrorist attack was likely. Continue reading...

Cases of Iremamber Sykap and Lindani Myeni have challenged the state’s view of itself as a ‘mixing pot’ free of discriminationIn April, as many Americans sat glued to their screens watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, two fatal police shootings in Honolulu went largely unnoticed.The killings of Iremamber Sykap, a Micronesian teeenager shot by an officer eight times, and Lindani Myeni, a 29-year-old Black man who had recently moved to Hawaii with his wife and children, took place just nine days apart. Continue reading...

The body created by the speaker will have a broad mandate to examine the facts, circumstances and causes of the Capitol attackNancy Pelosi’s creation of a House select committee to investigate the 6 January insurrection reopens the possibility of a comprehensive inquiry into myriad security failures and the causes of the deadly attack on Congress by a pro-Trump mob.Related: Nancy Pelosi signals hard line on formation of 6 January select committee Continue reading...

Housekeepers say plans to cut daily cleaning and save money means they’ll have longer hours and more dangerous workThe hotel industry is rebounding from the pandemic, but workers now fear planned labor cuts could cost tens of thousands of jobs and increased workloads for those who remain.Several of the largest US hotel chains have outlined different ways of working, which labor groups say amount to a slide in standards that could have a profound impact on workers’ lives. Continue reading...

A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia Continue reading...

The Men in Blazers co-host and native Liverpudlian traces the origins of his love affair with America in the just-published memoir (Re)born in the USAMore than a third of Britons watched Dallas during the soap opera’s heyday. With only three TV channels before 1982, there wasn’t much else on. But the massive viewership also implied a nation eager for escapism.“Eastenders, Coronation Street, Brookside, vicarious delight in the travails of working class Londoners or Mancunians, those were your choices,” Roger Bennett recalls. “The message of these was always: ‘you think your life’s terrible? Look, you’re better off than these people are, so shut the hell up’.” Continue reading...

Speaking at a White House party marking the Fourth of July, Joe Biden urged Americans to get vaccinated to stave off a rise in cases of the coronavirus Delta variant. 'Think back to where this nation was a year ago,' the president said in a speech on the theme of 'Independence Day and independence from Covid-19'. The Biden administration has missed its aim of having 70% of adult Americans with at least one shot by the holiday weekend

Sparks were flying on and off the track at the Stadium Super Trucks circuit in Ohio as drivers Bill Hynes and Bo LeMastus squabbled on the side of the racecourse. The pair were seen squaring up to each other before Hynes slapped LeMastus, he in turn responded by throwing his steering wheel and later was spotted holding a fire extinguisher as he ran towards Hynes but he was stopped by officials. The confrontation arose after Hynes turned LeMastus' truck and got out to confront him about his dangerous driving during the race

There are signs of renewal in a city that has weathered crisis after crisis, but what its future looks like remains an open questionFor most of the past year, Manhattan’s signature yellow cabs have been a rarity on the avenues and cross-streets. Now, as the city picks up and office workers begin to return, they too are returning – but not yet on a pre-pandemic scale. At the same time, the city is gridlocked by traffic.A patchwork of indicators suggest the recovery from a pandemic that hit hard and early, caused close to 30,000 deaths out of a 8.4-million population and placed the metropolis in an economic deep-freeze will be similarly uneven. Continue reading...

A couple in Altadena have collected more than 40,000 rabbit-related items and put them on display. It all started with a pet nameThe Bunny Museum, in Altadena, California, began with a spontaneously uttered pet name. “I started calling him my honey bunny,” says Candace Frazee of her partner and museum co-founder, Steve Lubanski. “You know, you’re just kissing away, and you just come out with it.” Because of the nickname, Lubanski got Frazee a plush bunny for Valentine’s Day. In return, Frazee bought Lubanski a ceramic bunny for Easter. Then things escalated, and the couple – who got married in a bunny-themed ceremony – started exchanging bunny gifts on a daily basis. Now their collection contains over 40,000 bunny items and is housed in its own museum. Continue reading...

The partially collapsed Miami-area condo has been demolished. Demolition crews set off explosives to bring down the damaged remaining portion of a collapsed South Florida condo where no one has so far been found alive. The demolition Sunday night was key to resuming the search for victims of the 24 June collapse, with the approaching Hurricane Elsa storm adding urgency to the project. So far, rescuers have recovered the remains of 24 people, with 121 still missing.

'We have much to gain together by partnering to develop new green technologies,' the top US diplomat to Australia, Mike Goldman, says in a video message. The chargé d’affaires at the United States embassy in Canberra adds: 'As partners, we have a shared obligation to protect our planet by taking the climate crisis head on, just as we’ve taken on every crisis over the past 70 years' Continue reading...

Coronavirus coordinator defends move at event: ‘You’re protected if you’re vaccinated. You’re not protected if you’re not’Americans marked their nation’s 245th birthday on Sunday with fireworks, hotdogs, marching bands and a sense of great relief, after the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of nearly all celebrations last year.Related: Delta variant will cause US Covid surges, Fauci says, as poll reveals vaccine resistance Continue reading...

There’s no benefit to using jargon in job ads. Applicants can smell the BS – and this can cost you potential employeeAre you looking to hire a “team player”, a “self-starter”, or someone “proactive” to “take it to the next level”? Well, maybe you should stop.The labor market is tight and small businesses across the country are desperately trying to fill open positions. To do this, most of us are placing job listings on various sites in the hopes of attracting a good, skilled worker. But unfortunately, the jargon we’re using is having the opposite impact. Continue reading...

The pandemic upended college life, forcing tuition to be moved online. Now in-person classes are back – and students are happyFor Hannah Cron, a sophomore at Lipscomb University in Tennessee, the impact of the pandemic offered many positives.As someone who suffered from chronic illness, the switch to online learning meant she was able to easily sit in class with a heating pad, take her medication, or leave class without causing a disruption. Continue reading...

Calls for reform include increasing benefits in line with cost of living as employers provide fewer retirement pensionsNancy Reynolds, age 74, of Cape Canaveral, Florida, works as a cashier at Walmart while struggling to make ends meet on her work income and social security benefits of just $709 a month.“I can’t live on $709 a month, so I have to work. I have no choice, even though my body says you can’t do much more,” said Reynolds. Continue reading...

The fast-rising Republican is topping polls and raising millions of dollars – but what if the former president wants his job back?Florida has seen a different side of Ron DeSantis these last 10 days. At the forefront of the state’s response to the Miami condo collapse, and now marshaling operations as Hurricane Elsa barrels across the Caribbean, the rabidly Trumpian Republican governor has appeared a steady yet calming leader in the face of multiple unfolding crises.Related: Trump exposed as prosecutors make first move in high-stakes chess game Continue reading...

Biden rolls out fresh policy proposals to try to counter rising crime as Democrats look to bat away Republican attacksRising crime rates in the US and efforts from the White House and in Congress to pass sweeping police reform legislation have thrust crime policy into the center of the national political debate.In early mayoral, congressional and senatorial campaigns, attacks are flying back and forth over whether candidates are tough on crime or want to defund the police, often using blunt language that masks the nuances of a complicated issue. Continue reading...

A 2016 document from the Sons of Confederate Veterans offering guidance on rallies, lawsuits and the media is firmly rooted in skewed ‘Lost Cause’ ideologyA 2016 internal document from the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) organization lays out detailed tactics for members to use in preventing the removal of Confederate monuments and symbols, including lawsuits, rallies, media management and political campaigns.The SCV is a neo-Confederate group dedicated to preserving what it sees as southern heritage, in particular Confederate statues and war memorials. That task has become far more controversial recently amid the rise of Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests, which frequently target such statues as memorials to racism and slavery. Continue reading...