US news | The Guardian

The quarter-finals got going with some sparkling highlights. We hand out honours and dishonours from the latest round of actionArsenal Continue reading...

The House, Senate and electoral college maps pose the party's biggest issue. It's time to focus on structural changesIt's much worse than the usual disarray. Even after hopeful election results last week, Democrats are shut out of power in Washington, bewildered over the 2024 election, and staggered by Donald Trump and Elon Musk's blitz to rapidly assert power over the media, universities and the courts, while dismantling huge swaths of the federal government.Exiled to the political wilderness, Democrats have blamed their messaging and messengers. They have sought different ways to talk about trans rights, abortion, immigration and populist economics. They have sought their own network of social media influencers and podcasters so that they can talk to young or occasional voters. Continue reading...

Retaliatory tariffs enforced hours after Trump announces a pause on dozens of levies except China. Plus, France could recognize Palestinian statehood

Exclusive: legislation, named after 2016 Trump slogan, would ban lobbyist gifts and revolving door' restrictionsThe California representative Ro Khanna is introducing legislation that would force White House officials to abide by strict anti-corruption measures after Donald Trump dismantled ethics rules established by his predecessor that turns the president's own catchphrase against him.The Drain the Swamp Act" - shared exclusively with the Guardian and deliberately invoking Trump's own 2016 campaign slogan - would convert into permanent law the ethics requirements previously established by executive order, including bans on lobbyist gifts and revolving door" restrictions. Continue reading...

Prices are likely to go up across the board, from blueberries to new cars, but exactly when and how is unclear. Here's what we know so farDonald Trump backed down on some of his largest tariffs Wednesday afternoon, though the trade war is far from over and the US is still imposing major levies on Chinese goods and a 10% tariff on the vast majority of its other imports.All imports are subject to 10% tariffs, with higher tariffs still in place for certain industries like steel, aluminum and cars. As of Wednesday, the president put a 125% tariff on all Chinese imports. Continue reading...

Mario Nawfal has interviewed Serbian, Belarusian and Slovakian leaders and Russian minister of foreign affairsAn online influencer whom Elon Musk frequently boosts on X has been conducting in-person interviews with Russian figures and key allies of Vladimir Putin.Musk, Donald Trump's billionaire ally and the owner of X, has consistently reposted and engaged with Mario Nawfal, a Dubai-based Australian influencer who with Musk has given a platform to far-right figures and movements around the world. Continue reading...

Beth Benike, whose products are manufactured in China, is terrified' what Trump trade war will mean for Busy BabyBeth Benike knew the tariffs were coming.The Minnesota veteran invented a placemat with bungee cords that hold toys or utensils, keeping them off the floor when babies toss them. It's one of several products she created for Busy Baby, a company she runs with her brother. They are manufactured in China. Continue reading...

The US is bombing Houthi rebels and supporting Netanyahu's campaigns as it sleepwalks into new conflictsThroughout the last presidential campaign, Donald Trump portrayed himself as the candidate who would bring peace to an unstable world. He promised to use his deal-making experience to negotiate an end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's war on Gaza, among other global conflicts.If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace," Trump told a rally in Michigan on 1 November, as he urged Arab and Muslim American voters to choose him over the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. Continue reading...

The Knicks coach has long been accused of overworking his starters - a rep that resurfaced when Mikal Bridges spoke out. But a closer look at the data complicates that narrativeTom Thibodeau just became the fourth-winningest coach in New York Knicks history, passing Pat Riley on Saturday as his team notched their 49th win of the season. But as has often been the case with Thibodeau's coaching milestones, the moment wasn't met with pure celebration. Instead, familiar questions around a controversial overtone of his NBA coaching career loomed - namely, Thibs Minutes Syndrome.Thibodeau has long carried a reputation for running his starters into the ground, a narrative built on his unwavering reliance on his first unit and reluctance to tap into his bench. This year, Knicks starters lead the NBA in total minutes played by more than 500 minutes. And the concern isn't new: last year, as New York's best chance to make the NBA finals in decades unraveled amid a cascade of injuries, criticism of Thibodeau's substitution patterns resurfaced with a vengeance. Continue reading...

Pete Hegseth suggests military could return to Central American country to secure' strategically important canalThe US defence secretary has floated the idea of the country's troops returning to Panama to secure" its strategically vital canal, a suggestion quickly shot down by the Central American country's government.Pete Hegseth suggested during a visit to Panama that by invitation" the US could revive" military bases or naval air stations and rotate deployments of its troops to an isthmus the US invaded 35 years ago. Continue reading...

As I discovered then, global problems need international responses. By working together, we can protect jobs and living standards

With the country enveloped in gloom and facing mayhem from the US and Russia, it's hard to imagine a more fraught time to take powerGermany is about to get a new fitness trainer. So declared Markus Soder, one of the political leaders who have just announced a coalition agreement. In one of the quirks of the country's constitution, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) will play a significant role in the new administration, and Soder used his moment in the limelight to play the entertainer.It was a curious way to announce the arrival of a new government, expected to be sworn in during the first week of May. Since the elections of 23 February, Germany will have been in limbo for two and a half months, and all while Donald Trump rampages across the world.John Kampfner is the author of In Search of Berlin, Blair's Wars and Why the Germans Do It Better Continue reading...

Miami's advancement to the Champions Cup semi-finals shows the team now excels while being the aggressorsLionel Messi and Inter Miami are through to the semi-finals of the Concacaf Champions Cup after a wild, come-from-behind 3-1 victory over Los Angeles FC at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.Messi himself buried the decisive goal from the penalty spot in the 84th minute while LAFC missed a raft of chances late on to either put the two-legged series beyond doubt or snatch what would have been a shocking late victory. Continue reading...

Move comes after stock market turmoil; Ice chief says deportations should run like Amazon Prime' - key US politics stories from 10 April at a glanceDonald Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries except China, whose tariffs he raised to 125% on Wednesday.After insisting for days that he would hold firm on his aggressive trade strategy, Trump announced that all countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a reprieve - and only face a blanket US tariff of 10% - until July. Continue reading...

Rory McIlroy's four-year-old daughter Poppy has stolen the show at the Masters Par Three Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, sinking an incredible putt alongside her father. The remarkable shot sparked heartwarming celebrations from McIlroy and his family, as well as playing partner Shane Lowry. The traditional Masters curtain-raiser gives golfers the chance to play on the famous course with their families.

Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, who served under Trump, targeted as president's persecution of critics intensifiesDonald Trump's persecution of critics intensified on Wednesday when he ordered the justice department to investigate a whistleblower and a cybersecurity director who refuted unfounded claims of election fraud.The US president signed memorandums targeting Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, former homeland security officials who served in the first Trump administration. Continue reading...

White House says order will make America's showers great again' and end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure'A global trade war roller coaster was not enough to distract Donald Trump from fulfilling one of his longtime priorities Wednesday: changing the federal definition of showerhead", a move the White House said would end the Obama-Biden war on water pressure".Trump has complained for years about inadequate water pressure in American showers, sinks and toilets, and has blamed federal water-conservation standards for the problem. Continue reading...

Lawyers accuse Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino of killing Oscar Omar Hernandez, and of assaulting two other teensA Los Angeles-area youth soccer coach was charged with the murder of a 13-year-old boy, as well as the assault of two other teenagers, during a court hearing Tuesday.Prosecutors accused Mario Edgardo Garcia Aquino, 43, of killing Oscar Omar Hernandez, whose body was found by the side of the road in Ventura county. Garcia Aquino was charged with murder with special circumstances during the commission or attempted commission of lewd acts with a child. Continue reading...

Yafang Zhou, 59, was removed by system of ropes and pulleys' by first responders who crawled in to save herA San Diego woman who was last seen on 25 March was found in a storm drain on Monday, and succumbed to her injuries shortly after.A Palomar medical center doctor pronounced Yafang Zhou, 59, dead at about 4.15pm Monday, just hours after first responders extracted her from the drain. Continue reading...

Order punishes Susman Godfrey, which helped Dominion Voting Systems get millions from Fox for 2020 election liesDonald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday punishing the law firm that helped Dominion Voting Systems obtain a $787.5m settlement from Fox for lies about the 2020 election.The order against the firm, Susman Godfrey, marks the latest effort by the president to punish attorneys and firms who have opposed his interests. Continue reading...

Jo Ellis was thrust into the spotlight after Matthew Wallace amplified baseless claims of her involvementA transgender woman who was erroneously identified as a helicopter pilot involved in the Washington DC crash that killed 67 people has filed a lawsuit against one of the conservative influencers who spread the false claims about her.Jo Ellis, whom the Guardian wrote about after she was thrust into the spotlight, is suing Matthew Wallace, the person behind the X account, for defamation, claiming Wallace concocted a destructive and irresponsible defamation campaign" that monetized a false narrative" about her. Continue reading...

Trump announced a pause for most countries - except China whose tariffs he raised to 125%Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries except China, whose tariffs he raised to 125% on Wednesday.After insisting for days that he would hold firm on his aggressive trade strategy, Trump announced that all countries that had not retaliated against US tariffs would receive a reprieve - and only face a blanket US tariff of 10% - until July. Continue reading...

Decision transfers control of ATF away from US justice department to the defense department for first timeThe Trump administration has replaced the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, as the interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and installed Dan Driscoll, secretary of the army, in his place, according to two people familiar with the matter.The abrupt change, which was announced to senior ATF officials on Wednesday morning, for the first time placed control of the embattled agency responsible for enforcing the nation's gun laws to the defense department. Continue reading...

Proposed procedural change would shield Republican representatives from having to vote on chaotic trade policy

Court filing reported by Reuters shows White House appealing against judge's order to restore full access to the APChina's move to impose 84% retaliatory tariffs against the United States is unfortunate and a losing proposition for Beijing, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said on Wednesday, as he urged China to come to the table" with the Trump administration.I think it's unfortunate that the Chinese actually don't want to come and negotiate, because they are the worst offenders in the international trading system," Bessent said in an interview with Fox Business Network.I can tell you that this escalation is a loser for them, that they have some very smart the economist and the academicians, technocrats within their bureaucracy, and they would be telling the leadership that we do not have the edge here. They are the surplus country that their exports to the US are five times our exports to China. So they can raise their tariffs. But so what?No one wins in a war. But it's proportionality. And the proportionality for the Chinese is going to be much worse.That is the big win here. The US is trying to rebalance toward more manufacturing. China needs to rebalance towards more consumption.If China starts devaluing, then that is a tax on the rest of the world and everyone will have to keep raising their tariffs to offset the devaluation. So I would urge them not to do that and to come to the table. Continue reading...

Public health experts argue he failed to give a full-throated endorsement of an extremely effective vaccineThe health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on a press tour that his response to a large measles outbreak in west Texas should be a model for the world". The statement came after Kennedy attended the funeral of a third measles victim over the weekend.Kennedy's response to the outbreak has been widely criticized by epidemiologists and public health experts, who argue he failed to give a full-throated endorsement of an extremely effective vaccine, that cases appear to be severely undercounted and that officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been deployed late. Continue reading...

World No 2 makes 11th attempt at career grand slam but others in his way include Ludvig Aberg and Shane LowryThe hardest walk at Augusta National is the one to the 1st tee. A venue and tournament that takes itself so seriously applies a heavy weight of expectation to competitors. This is totally phoney in a way, ridiculous in fact, but the Masters thing" exists. Nobody feels that burden more acutely than Rory McIlroy, who on Thursday afternoon will begin his 11th attempt to march into the pantheon of golfing greats. Psychology matters in McIlroy's quest to complete a career grand slam, not technical ability. It is the inches between McIlroy's ears that are far more significant than 7,500 yards of picture-perfect golf course. Augusta's great paradox is that beauty and splendour play such menacing tricks on the mind.The theory of now or never in relation to McIlroy and the Masters is a prevalent one. He landed in Georgia with two wins in the calendar year, in itself a first. The 35-year-old won at Pebble Beach and Sawgrass while playing considerably short of his best, proof not only of his outrageous talent level but maturity. In a non-tribal environment, the foot traffic following McIlroy's every move over Tuesday and Wednesday this week has been quite the sight. Continue reading...

Advocacy groups condemn action as an excuse to move a cruel, anti-immigrant, authoritarian agenda'The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it will begin monitoring immigrants' social media accounts for antisemitism, prompting some advocacy groups to push back and condemn the news as an excuse to move a cruel, anti-immigrant, authoritarian agenda".In a statement on Wednesday, USCIS said that it will start considering aliens' antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests". Continue reading...

Beijing is braced for turbulence due to swingeing tariffs. But it sees a bigger, more promising story of US hegemonic declineNo one, least of all consumers and workers, will win the ferocious trade war that Donald Trump has unleashed. This is a game of who can bear more pain", in the words of one analyst. And because trade is at the heart of US ties with its biggest tariff target, China, the rest of the bilateral relationship is likely to deteriorate. That too is concerning.Yet China, despite the economic struggles of recent years, may see a longer-term opportunity in the current crisis. Beijing's response to the initial US tariff announcements was measured. Now it vows to fight to the end" and has imposed an additional 50% tariff on US goods - taking the total to 84% - in retaliation for tariffs that Mr Trump now says will hit 125%.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

President says at National Republican Congressional Committee dinner that world leaders are kissing my ass'

Trump says he will raise US tariffs on Chinese exports to 125% and unveils 90-day pause for other countries

Exclusive: Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire seeks to set limits on special government employees in response to Musk's White House roleA Democratic senator has introduced a bill that would prohibit awarding government contracts and grants to companies owned by special government employees, taking aim at Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO.The bill, authored by Jeanne Shaheen, the longtime Democratic New Hampshire senator, is an attempt to prevent conflicts of interest and was crafted in response to Musk's role in the White House, where Donald Trump has designated him a special government employee, according to a Senate aide. Special government employees, which also include many members of Musk's so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge), serve a limit of 130 days and are exempt from some financial disclosure rules. Continue reading...

US Treasury secretary indicates openness to trade agreements after stock markets fall further in Europe

Falling demand suggests loss of financial confidence in US as Donald Trump escalates trade standoff with China

The DoJ is investigating, with Cal-Maine's profits nearly eight times as high as at the start of the bird flu outbreakThe US's largest egg producer has reported soaring profits as consumer prices hit record highs thanks to avian flu - and alleged price-fixing which is being investigated by the Department of Justice.Cal-Maine's profits more than tripled compared with the same quarter last year - and are nearly eight times as high as at the start of the bird flu outbreak in February 2022, according to financial results published on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Early morning swims were a daily ritual for my dad until age and illness took its toll. On a recent visit, I hatched a plan to get him in the ocean again

Donald Trump bragged about countries 'kissing my ass' to negotiate tariffs during a dinner for Republicans on Tuesday. The US president said: 'We're going to do much better than that this time, because this time I'm doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs.' He added that Congress should not get involved in the negotiations because 'they don't negotiate like I negotiate'

US president may have used some hypothetical maths but chances are slim that such sums are being raised

Politicians and student activists decry outlandish' deportation of Felipe Zapata Velazquez to ColombiaA campus protest is planned at the University of Florida on Wednesday in support of a Colombian student deported by the Trump administration following his arrest for alleged traffic violations.The family of Felipe Zapata Velazquez, 27, said on Tuesday he was undergoing a physical and emotional recovery process" in his home country after police arrested him in Gainesville on 28 March for offenses including having an expired tag and suspended driver's license, then turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Continue reading...

Records suggest Quest Diagnostics erroneously detected opiates. Lawyers say parole requests were jeopardized in the processThousands of drug tests used by a major US diagnostic company in California prisons last year are suspected to have generated false positive results, an enormous error that has jeopardized the parole requests of some incarcerated people, according to civil rights lawyers and prison medical records.California prison officials have known about the issue for months, but have failed to clear people's records or reverse the consequences people have faced from the tests. Continue reading...

Sergei and Marina were building a new life in California after protesting the Ukraine war. But Sergei was arrested during a routine check-in - and everything has changedSergei and Marina escaped Russia three years ago under threat of arrest after protesting against the Ukraine war, seeking asylum in the US. Now their best chance of remaining together, as a family, is to flee again.In a whirlwind three weeks, the couple's plans to rebuild their lives in the US were abruptly upended. Continue reading...

Since Roe was overturned, a growing number of would-be abortion providers have begun to leave the country in search of an education as training in the US dwindlesOn paper, it should not be difficult for Dr Sebastian Ramos to learn to perform abortions. As a family medicine doctor, Ramos works in a specialty that frequently provides the procedure. He lives in deep-blue California, where it is still allowed. And the administrators running Ramos's residency program - a kind of apprenticeship that US doctors must undergo to become full-fledged physicians - support Ramos's desire to learn how to do it.But over the course of his three-year-long residency, Ramos is guaranteed just three days' worth of training at Planned Parenthood. Residents get to participate in only a handful of abortions. Continue reading...

We cannot be neutral with respect to fake news, misinformation or outright liesIn western academia, everything began with philosophy. Ever since, especially since the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution of the 17th century, there has been a long, centrifugal process, with discipline after discipline making its distinctive contribution and marking out its methods and its domain of inquiry. Raphael's painting The School of Athens displays this perfectly, with the two great philosophers Plato and Aristotle in the centre. Yet even here, Raphael points at the specialisation of knowledge that is about to explode. Plato points upwards, symbolising his interest in the timelessness of metaphysics. Aristotle gestures downwards, emphasising his interest in the empirical.Today, at university, students and researchers focus on a single sub-branch of, say, modal logic, labour economics or organic chemistry. Knowledge has accumulated and fragmented. Renaissance men (or women) are almost nonexistent.Andrew Graham is a political economist, former master of Balliol College, Oxford and former director of the Scott Trust Continue reading...

As president proposes new cuts, data shows 11 corporations collectively recorded nearly $500bn in profits since last cutsEleven top US consumer goods corporations spent more than three times more on share buybacks than they did on taxes, using their savings from the 2017 Donald Trump tax cuts to supercharge purchases that enriched investors instead of lowering prices on goods essential to daily life, according to a new report.The findings are part of a new analysis of company filings by the Groundwork Collaborative economic thinktank. They come as the US president proposes $5tn in new tax cuts that would again lower the corporate tax rate, and likely lead to more buybacks. Continue reading...

Doug Ruch embarked on dying to serve tour' after learning he had fewer than 18 months left amid cancer battleA Texas man who recently learned he likely had fewer than 18 months to live amid his battle with cancer is using the time he has left trying to voluntarily perform community service - including feeding people who are unhoused - in each of the US's 50 states.Doug Ruch, 55, of San Antonio, said he embarked on what he named the dying to serve tour" after his terminal diagnosis made him reflect on things he could have done differently or better". Continue reading...