Academics join groups including Black Lives Matter and Sunrise Movement following Mitch McConnell’s remarks on Biden nomineesA group of 18 legal academics has issued an extraordinary joint letter urging the US supreme court justice Stephen Breyer to retire so that Joe Biden can name his successor.The intervention came after Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, warned that Biden would not get a supreme court nominee confirmed in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the chamber and a vacancy arises. Continue reading...

Cool normality helped exorcise ghost of 2018’s disastrous Helsinki summit but what else was achieved?1) The weird and unpredictable Trump era is over. In 2018 Donald Trump held a disastrous summit with Putin in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The then US president said he believed Putin’s assurances that Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 US election with a joint press conference that was so humiliating for America that Trump’s senior adviser Fiona Hill considered bringing it to a close by whacking a fire alarm or faking a medical emergency.In Geneva, by contrast, cool normality was on display. Biden was well prepared for the US-Russia summit. He cut a relaxed figure, telling Putin he wanted a “predictable” relationship after a period defined by rogue Kremlin behaviour. The summit flowed along conventional diplomatic lines: a handshake, several hours of intensive talks and separate press conferences afterwards. The ghost of Helsinki was exorcised. There will be an agreed record of what was discussed, unlike in 2018 when Trump met Putin alone, without aides or even Trump’s own interpreter. We don’t know what was said. Continue reading...

We knew Trump sought to use the neutral administration of justice as a tool for settling scores with enemies. But the scope of the operation is disturbingIn 1941, the German Jewish lawyer and political scientist Ernst Fraenkel published a slender volume called The Dual State. One of the first scholarly treatments of the Third Reich, Fraenkel understood Hitler’s state to be characterized by an unusual “dual” character. In large measure, the state operated by arbitrary decree – something Fraenkel called rule by “prerogative”. This “prerogative state” essentially functioned as a form of institutionalized lawlessness. At the same time, the Third Reich also maintained elements of a “normative state” – that is, an administration of justice that remained, at least formally, bound by operative law.Without drawing any false equivalence with the Nazi state, we can say that the Trump administration likewise demonstrated this dual aspect. This emerges with disturbing clarity in recent reports documenting the lengths Donald Trump went toward turning the Department of Justice (DoJ) into a partisan tool. The Department of Justice, we must bear in mind, is a vast agency with more than 100,000 lawyers, many of whom are exceptionally skilled and principled civil servants dedicated to upholding the rule of law. Yet the reports of the past week make clear how loyalists installed in key positions can rather radically deform the administration of justice while remaining within the formal confines of the law. Continue reading...

Attorney for the British socialite, who is fighting sex trafficking charges, says Maxwell also faces ‘hyper-surveillance’ from guardsGhislaine Maxwell, the British socialite fighting federal sex trafficking charges in New York, remains subjected to raw sewage, water deprivation, “hyper-surveillance” by overbearing guards and other unacceptable treatment in jail, according to her lawyer.Maxwell, 59, is preparing for a possible November trial on charges she procured four underage girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted. Continue reading...

For fair-weather supporters tournaments offer a taste of the pain – as well as the joy – of being a seasoned followerFootball is about pleasure and pain, a zero-sum ball game. The level of joy we feel at a goal or a victory is mirrored precisely in the pain of others. This pain is, in a sense, at the heart of football fandom; for without despair, there can be no joy.I recall Colin Moynihan, as minister for sport in the last years of the Thatcher government, saying something well-meaning, but specious about football. It was along the lines of the game being a good thing for the economy because when their team won, its supporters’ productivity would improve. Didn’t they have spads in those days? Surely someone should have explained that the opposite would also apply for the productivity of supporters of the losing side. If he had been a passionate fan of a club, he would have known this to be true. Continue reading...

The meeting got off to a frosty start as Putin told Biden in front of a chaotic press pool jostling to put questions to the leaders that their two countries had 'a lot' of issues that required talks at the highest level. 'I think it's always better to meet face to face,' Biden said, adding that he hoped they could find 'predictable and rational ways to disagree'

Alabama pastor who worked to bridge racial divides won 52% of the vote in runoff against Mike StoneThe Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) tamped down a push from the right at its largest meeting in decades on Tuesday, electing a new president who has worked to bridge racial divides in the church and defeating an effort to make an issue of critical race theory.Ed Litton, a pastor from Alabama, won 52% of the vote in a runoff against Mike Stone, a Georgia pastor backed by a new group called the Conservative Baptist Network that has sought to move the already-conservative denomination further right. Continue reading...

After shaking hands for the cameras, the US president, Joe Biden, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, plunged into hours of face-to-face talks on Wednesday at a lush lakeside Swiss mansion. It was a highly anticipated summit at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries Continue reading...

Close the loopholes, crack down on the havens: there are plenty of ways to make billionaires do the right thingIn June 2016, while researching an article for Vanity Fair, I asked Donald Trump if he was using tax havens to escape tax. “I know a lot about tax havens, but I don’t use them,” he told me. “There is greater incentive in many ways to keep your money in the United States.”Fellow billionaires may chuckle, because they know this too, following decades of attacks by special interests on the US tax system. Their goal, as the Texas Republican congressman Bill Archer once said, has been to pull it “out by its roots and throw it away so it can never grow back”. Continue reading...

Correspondence reveals how the former president tried to enlist officials to overturn the election. Plus, a Fox reporter goes off-script to attack her employer

America loves adversity porn about ‘thriving’ from hardship – and even a deadly global pandemic is apparently no exception

After years of government corruption, repression and violence, many Iranians are expected to boycott Friday’s electionsRap and K-pop aren’t music genres you’d expect an Iranian presidential hopeful to be familiar with. And yet, during the second televised debate ahead of the countrywide poll on 18 June, one of the candidates displayed an impressive knowledge of the contemporary musical landscape.“They play rap on their own programmes, but they have banned rap. Our teens have moved on to K-pop or Korean pop. Our own rap [music] is still underground,” said centrist Abdolnaser Hemmati, the former governor of the Central Bank of Iran. Continue reading...

Democrats are pushing for investigations into Trump’s justice department for data seizures from Eric Swalwell and Adam SchiffTop Republicans are moving to block a Senate inquiry into the Trump justice department’s secret seizure of data from Democrats to hunt down leaks of classified information, fearing a close investigation could damage the former president.Trump, who is facing a mounting crisis of legal problems and political criticism, still wields huge power among Republicans, and has hinted recently at a return run for the White House. Continue reading...

Ever since same-sex marriage became legal across the US, there has been a baby boom in the gay community – from New York City to Utah – as these touching images show Continue reading...

Crew of lawyers including L Lin Wood and Sidney Powell battling federal inquiries and defamation suits that threaten their careersA crew of conservative lawyers still pushing disinformation that echoes Donald Trump’s false claim that the election was rigged are now battling federal inquiries, defamation lawsuits and bar association scrutiny that threaten to cripple their legal careers.Former justice department officials say Trump’s legal loyalists are weakening trust in the American electoral system via persistent repetition of his baseless claims. They note that some are actively backing Republican drives in key states to change election laws seen as undermining voting rights for communities of color. Continue reading...

Ellis Brown III, who was found guilty of beating a restrained and prostrate suspect, had been forced out of a neighbouring forceA former St Louis police officer with a track record of violence, including the killing of a mentally disturbed Black man that was condemned as amounting to an execution, has been convicted of beating a suspect as he lay restrained and prostrate on the ground.Ellis Brown III was found guilty by a federal jury last week after an internal police inquiry cleared him over a car chase in 2019 which ended with the then detective severely kicking Steven Kolb after he surrendered. Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s oldest son is flogging videos of himself online, while Ivanka is keeping an unusually low profileMy father, you won’t be surprised to hear, is not a billionaire who, until a few months ago, served as the 45th president of the United States. But if he was, do you know what I would be doing right now? Swigging champagne on a yacht in the Med with the internet off, I reckon. You know what I would absolutely not be doing? Selling sad little videos of myself saying “Hello!” and “Happy birthday!” for $500 a pop on a video messaging service called Cameo. And yet, according to recent reports, it seems Donald Trump Jr is spending his days doing exactly that.What gives? Is the former president’s eldest child desperate for attention or desperate for money? Continue reading...

Those who bear a disproportionate share of a carbon tax will mobilise against it … unless they are given reason not toIn his classic book, The Logic of Collective Action, the late great Mancur Olson explained that the hardest policies to implement are those with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs. Olson’s argument was straightforward: individuals bearing the costs will vigorously oppose the policy, while the beneficiaries will free ride, preferring that someone else take up the cudgels.Olson’s insight applies to the single most pressing policy challenge facing humanity today, namely the climate crisis. The starting point for addressing it, economists agree, is a tax on carbon. The resulting reduction in emissions would deliver benefits to virtually everyone on the planet. But specific segments of society – Olson’s concentrated interests – will bear a disproportionate share of the costs and mobilise in opposition. Continue reading...

The 10 richest dynasties, such as those behind Walmart and Mars, grew their net worth by $136bn during the pandemic, report findsSelf-made billionaires including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk made huge profits during the Covid-19 pandemic but a new report shows there’s no beating family money when it comes to getting – and staying – really, really rich.Ten of the US’s richest families, including the Walmart family and the dynasties behind industries including candy and cosmetics, also saw their assets balloon over the pandemic, with a shared increase in their combined net worth of over $136bn in 14 months, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published on Wednesday. Continue reading...

The untitled memoir by the president’s son-in-law will be published in 2022Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump and a senior adviser in his administration, has secured a book deal to recount Trump’s presidency.Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced that Kushner’s book will come out in early 2022. Kushner has begun working on the memoir, currently untitled, and is expected to write about everything from the Middle East to criminal justice reform to the pandemic. Financial terms were not disclosed. Continue reading...

More than a year after shutting down, the Golden State rolled back social distancing and mask requirements on TuesdayBars at full capacity. No masks for vaccinated Disneyland goers. Fans sitting side-by-side at Giants and Dodgers games.California rolled back its major public health restrictions on Tuesday, 15 months after it became the first state in the US to shut down to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Continue reading...

Her appointment would be a win for progressives who have pushed for laws to govern monopolies and growing corporate powerJoe Biden reportedly plans to name Lina Khan, an antitrust researcher who has focused on the immense market power of big tech, as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a key win for progressives who have pushed for tougher laws to tackle monopolies and growing corporate power.The Senate confirmed Khan as a commissioner to the FTC earlier on Tuesday, with strong bipartisan support. Biden intends to tap her as chair of the commission, sources told Reuters, a decision that follows the selection of fellow progressive and big tech critic Tim Wu to join the National Economic Council. Continue reading...

Andy Slavitt under fire from the right for saying Americans should have been prepared to ‘sacrifice a little bit’The US death toll in the coronavirus pandemic passed 600,000 on Tuesday. As it did so, a former White House Covid adviser, Andy Slavitt, was under fire from the right for saying Americans could have avoided such severe losses if they had been prepared to “sacrifice a little bit for one another”.Related: Telemedicine companies seeking to cash in on Covid pandemic boom Continue reading...

Chief executive sends ‘very strong’ message to US staff where many workers are vaccinated against CovidThe chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions. Continue reading...

Figures at major houses said book might stoke ‘staff uprising’ and it would be ‘too hard to get a book that was factually accurate’

Capitalism is reshaping the property market, locking younger generations out of buying somewhere to live and expecting us to be happy about it

The rise of confessional politics has its origins in the left’s post-60s turn away from structures and towards the individual“We are perhaps living at the end of politics,” Michel Foucault wrote in the late 1970s. With the exhaustion of utopias and radical alternatives to capitalism, what was now at stake, he memorably wrote, was to develop “new types, new kinds of relations to ourselves”. Political advancement is not delivered through “parties, trade unions, bureaucracy and politics any more”, he wrote. Instead, politics has become “an individual, moral concern”.In this new definition of politics – in which “everything is political” and “the personal is political” – the self was thought to have become the battlefield of contemporary politics. At that time, many intellectuals, including Foucault, announced the “end of the age of revolution”, opening an era where transforming oneself became the most popular conception of social change. With the collapse of collective “grand narratives”, they argued, we had now to look inwards. Beginning in the late 60s, political change would be reframed as a struggle against oneself, against our “inner enemy”. One had to confront the “fascist within”. Continue reading...

Before Trump, Obama’s justice department did more to hurt press freedom than any administration since Nixon. Here’s how we stop history repeatingThe US Department of Justice is under increasing fire for the still-unfolding scandals involving the secret surveillance of journalists and even members of Congress in the waning days of the Trump presidency. Some of these actions were even initially defended by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice.In response to the growing scandal – and the scathing condemnations from the surveillance targets at the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN – the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has vowed the DoJ will no longer use legal process to spy on journalists “doing their jobs”. The Times, the Post and CNN are set to meet with the justice department this week to seek more information on what happened and extract further promises it won’t happen again. Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin has refused to give any guarantee that the opposition leader Alexei Navalny will get out of prison alive, saying nobody imprisoned in Russia should be given exclusive treatment.In an extended and testy interview with NBC News before his Geneva summit with Joe Biden, the Russian president refused to use Navalny's name, leaving journalist Keir Simmons to say 'his name is Alexei Navalny'.

Framework comes five months after violent mob attacked the Capitol but takes care to remain ‘ideologically neutral’The White House has published its first ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism five months after a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington.The framework released on Tuesday by the national security council describes the threat as now more serious than potential attacks from overseas but emphasises the need to protect civil liberties. Continue reading...

But there is no sign of a thaw in Russia-US relations. Plus, the White House releases first domestic terrorism strategy, and has California’s drought solved the mystery of a 1965 plane crash?Good morning.Anticipation is building as Joe Biden prepares to meet Vladimir Putin at a Geneva summit on Wednesday, but there is no sign of a thaw in Russia-US relations. Continue reading...

Millions have avoided in-person consultations in the past year and providers see ‘asynchronous’ care as the future of healthCompanies are hoping to cash in on what has become one of the inarguable winners in the pandemic economy – virtual healthcare – by offering subscriptions to circumvent the complex US health insurance system.Think Netflix, but for medicine. At least, that’s the promise to patients. Continue reading...

In those states, Republicans hold the governorship and the legislature, giving them the power to take aim at abortion access, trans rights, voting and gun safetyDemocrats across the US cheered last month, as Texas legislators staged a walkout from the statehouse to block the passage of a Republican bill that would enact a number of restrictions on voting access.Related: How Republicans came to embrace the big lie of a stolen election Continue reading...

Given the G7’s underwhelming pledge, WHO approval for two Chinese jabs is a welcome boost“Vaccine diplomacy” has evolved into a dirty phrase, not least in relation to China and the notion that its government could be exchanging ineffective jabs for geopolitical capital. At the weekend the G7 pledged just 1bn of the 11bn vaccines needed to immunise low- and middle-income countries, suggesting that the west cannot vaccinate the world alone. But, over the past month, international scientific and public health authorities have confirmed an exciting finding: that, despite the doubts of some critics, vaccines made by Chinese companies actually work. While they may remain ideological adversaries, China and the west now have no choice but to collaborate on vaccinating the world.On 2 June, the World Health Organization finally approved Sinovac for emergency use. Just days earlier, China’s largest state-owned pharmaceutical manufacturer, Sinopharm, had released peer-reviewed phase III clinical trial data proving its vaccine’s efficacy to western sceptics – and had it published in the the Journal of the American Medical Association, no less. Phase III’s “golden seal” means that each vaccine is effective enough to be widely distributed. But critical gaps in safety data for patients over the age of 60 remain for both Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs. While significant, these data holes notably did not deter a major approval from the world’s highest public health authority. With only 6% of the globe fully vaccinated, the need for doses clearlyoutweighs the risks the vaccines may pose. Continue reading...

Thousands of Southern Baptists are gathering to elect their next president amid deep divides over addressing systemic racism and sexual misconductThousands of Southern Baptists from across the US are heading to Tennessee this week to vote for their next president, a choice laced with tension that could push America’s largest evangelical Christian denomination even further to the right and potentially spark an exodus of Black pastors and congregations.Each of the three leading candidates for president presents a unique vision for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and will help guide the Protestant denomination through the thorny issues it currently faces – declining membership, deep divisions over acknowledging the existence of systemic racism and fresh accusations of mishandling sexual abuse allegations. Continue reading...

Once at least 70% of adults are vaccinated, we need to gradually open our borders and adopt a different attitude to what risks we are willing to acceptCovid-19 remains widespread globally and it is unlikely to ever be eradicated. Few countries have not had extensive community spread. Even countries with previous good control, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Vietnam, are seeing increasing numbers of cases.We remain fortunate that in most of Australia we have not seen much community spread. By global standards, we still have only had a small proportion of our population infected. Continue reading...

Pitchers have always bent the rules to make their pitches harder to hit. But this season, with batters struggling, the authorities are starting to crack downIt’s a good time to be a pitcher in Major League Baseball: they are enjoying their most dominant season since 1968, which baseball historians refer to as “The Year of the Pitcher”. And it’s all the more welcome for the pitchers as they’ve spent the last few years being brutalized by the game’s sluggers. It may not last though. According to ESPN, MLB is expected to issue a memo detailing revised enforcement and penalties, forcing a reckoning with one of the league’s primary “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” rules. Continue reading...

Apology came after the extremist Republican congresswoman visited Washington’s US Holocaust Memorial MuseumMarjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Republican congresswoman, has apologized for her comments comparing the required wearing of safety masks in the US House to the horrors of the Holocaust.“I’m truly sorry for offending people with remarks about the Holocaust,” Taylor Greene told reporters outside the Capitol on Monday, saying she had visited Washington’s US Holocaust Memorial Museum earlier in the day. “There’s no comparison and there never ever will be.“ Continue reading...

Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene apologised for comparing Covid-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. ‘I have made a mistake and it's really bothered me for a couple of weeks now, and so I definitely want to own it,' Taylor Greene said. Her apology on Monday came amid calls from some Democrats to censure her for the Holocaust remarks. Her comments had also been denounced by Republican congressional leaders

Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents