US news | The Guardian

Keller wore his Team USA jacket when he entered the Capitol building where he shouted vulgarities at Democratic party leadersKlete Keller, a former Olympic swimmer who won two gold medals for the United States, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to a felony charge related to his participation in the January riot at the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.Keller admitted to obstructing an official proceeding, after prosecutors agreed to drop six other criminal charges they brought against him in February. Continue reading...

Eleven people connected to Women for America First subpoenaed, including Trump 2016 campaign spokesperson Katrina PiersonThe House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Wednesday issued a second tranche of subpoenas to individuals connected to the rally immediately preceding the 6 January riot, where Donald Trump incited his supporters to commit insurrection.The new subpoenas for people involved in the march and rally reflects the select committee’s far-reaching mandate to examine whether the attack on the Capitol was planned in advance, according to a source familiar with the matter. Continue reading...

The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House 'the signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military'. He identified a troop reduction ordered by Joe Biden as the 'second nail in the coffin'.

The Doha agreement, signed in February 2020, set a date for the US to fully withdraw troops by May 2021The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House armed services committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated. Continue reading...

The Low End Theory has never reaped the plaudits or the profits of Nirvana’s Nevermind, but it is a beautyThirty years ago this week, one of the best and most influential albums of all time was released – and it is not the one you are thinking of. While Nirvana’s Nevermind has garnered the headlines and BBC airtime, there is another album of exactly the same vintage that also defined a genre.The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest has shaped the history of hip-hop like few other records before or since. It was the first album ever bought by Kanye West (“Tribe made Kanye,” he has said). Listening to it inspired Dr Dre to make The Chronic. It launched the career of Busta Rhymes, who pops up on the traditional posse cut at the end of the album and proceeds to let off a series of verbal fireworks (“Raarr, rarr / like a dungeon dragon,” indeed). Of its producer, Q-Tip, Pharrell Williams has said: “We’re all his sons. Myself, [producer] J Dilla, Kanye, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Tribe albums.” Add to that list Outkast, The Roots, Gangstarr … Continue reading...

Biden cancels trip as Democrats seek unity over two key bills, with vote on infrastructure measure due on ThursdayDemocrats are on the verge of a make-or-break moment that will determine the fate of Joe Biden’s ambitious economic agenda, as they rush to bridge the internal divisions threatening to derail passage of the sweeping $3.5tn social policy package and a smaller infrastructure bill.Failure would be disastrous for the president and his party’s political prospects in the midterm elections next year, but success was far from certain with less than 48 hours left before a consequential vote in the House on Thursday. Continue reading...

When Black people go missing, police and mainstream outlets do very little, if anything, to recover themWhen the late Gwen Ifill used the phrase “Missing White Woman Syndrome” at a 2004 journalism conference, she was responding to news anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s concern that US media outlets had failed to cover international genocides early on, including Rwanda and Kosovo. Malvaeux told the diverse crowd: “In 1994, during Rwanda, we were looking at Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.” The two figure skaters had received more coverage than a million genocide victims and survivors. Ifill playfully interrupted her, mocking newsroom executives: “If it’s a missing white woman, you’re going to cover that, every day.” The room welcomed her interjection with resounding applause.But rather than being celebrated as part of Malveaux’s criticism of US-centric media, “Missing White Woman Syndrome” has found a life of its own. Commentators widely use it now to describe the disparity in media coverage that missing young, conventionally attractive white women receive over missing Black and brown people. Continue reading...

The company said it would start the process of firing 593 employees who decided not to get vaccinatedUnited Airlines has said nearly 600 US-based employees are facing termination after failing to comply with the carrier’s vaccination policy.In early August, the company became the first US airline to require Covid-19 vaccinations for all domestic employees, requiring proof of vaccination by Monday. Continue reading...

Sports psychologists might not like it, but Steve Stricker’s ‘cut the fluff’ mentality let his team enjoy themselves, and winThe way Justin Thomas tells it, Dustin Johnson’s one frustration was that he didn’t win even more points in the Ryder Cup. “Poor guy went out there, tried to get six points, but all he could do was five,” Thomas joked. Of course there are only five points available, but Johnson is a man who once missed a key putt by six feet because he was holding the green-reading book upside down, and who blew a one-shot lead at the US PGA in 2010 because he didn’t realise he was standing in a bunker.One anonymous fellow pro was repeatedly quoted describing Johnson and his brother as “dumb and dumber”. Over the years, as Johnson peeled off all those weeks at the top of the world rankings, his victories at the US Open and the Masters, and his clean sweep of all five matches in the Ryder Cup last week, you started to wonder who the joke was on. Continue reading...

The former president hopes to block the release of White House records; plus, judge to rule on Britney Spears’ conservatorship

For decades, Kelly hid his predatory behavior in plain sight – and people did nothingAfter a six-week trial, R&B megastar R Kelly has been convicted of nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking and now faces decades in jail. Over the course of the trial, several of Kelly’s victims recounted harrowing testimony of the abuse they suffered at the singer’s hands, starting when many of them were just teenagers.Although a guilty verdict is the best possible outcome in this horrific situation, I can’t help but think about all the other adults who failed these Black girls along the way, and how long it took the justice system to deliver this reckoning. For over two decades, serious allegations of sexual abuse and inappropriate contact with minors have followed the Grammy award-winning singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly. Why did no one do anything about it? The answer is simple and twofold: first, Kelly was a superstar; second, society simply doesn’t value Black girls’ lives. Continue reading...

The state has the country’s lowest case rate. But in the vaccine-resistant Central Valley and rural north, healthcare workers are pushed to the limitCalifornia has the lowest coronavirus case rate in the country. But within the state, the agricultural Central Valley and rural north remain overwhelmed.Resistance to vaccines and public health mandates, combined with the advance of the Delta variant, have triggered an explosion of cases that are pushing already strained public health systems to the brink. In some counties, the case rate per 100,000 people is three or more times that of the state. Continue reading...

Decarceration advocates urge lawmakers to consider sentencing reform instead as prisons have seen high rates of Covid outbreaksThe southern US state of Alabama, which has the highest death rate from Covid-19 in America, is planning to use Covid relief funds to help construct three large prisons and renovate several others.State lawmakers began a special session on Monday to discuss the $1.3bn construction project, which would use up to $400m from American Rescue Plan funds allocated to the state – nearly 20% of Alabama’s federal pandemic relief money. Continue reading...

The political and demographic future of America will look like what Fort Bend county looks like now, demographers believe – but Republicans could halt thatA few nights a week, Mohammad Aziz meets his friend Syed Ali in the parking lot of a strip mall in Sugar Land, the suburban city just south-west of Houston. Syed runs Nash Up Chick, a food truck dishing out Nashville-style hot chicken just off Highway 6. The men, both immigrants from Pakistan, sit in plastic chairs and pass the time in the soupy Texas heat, chatting in a mix of English and Urdu. Continue reading...

After years of underachievement, the team Al Davis built may be good enough to stray into ‘love-to-hate’ territory once againAl Davis died 10 years ago next week, and his beloved NFL team now plays its home games a nine-hour drive from Oakland. But the Raiders are not ready to move away from his go-deep, “Just Win, Baby” legacy – and they may not ever be. Ten years on, they still wear tiny black shield-shaped stickers with AL on those lustrous silver helmets.His 66-year-old son, Mark, who has owned and run the Raiders since his father’s death, angered the legion of loyal fans in Oakland by bolting to Las Vegas before last season, even though he said he tried to get a new stadium built in Oakland even after the city jacked up the rent on the old one. Continue reading...

As legal proceedings over coronavirus begin, history tells us that boosting solidarity is more helpful than pointing the finger

Inspired by her own experience living outside, Thilde Jensen’s images tell the story of those living on the streets from Nevada to New York Continue reading...

Legal strategy could delay and possibly stymie efforts by House select committee into Capitol attacks to see key documentsDonald Trump is preparing to sue to block the release of White House records from his administration to the House select committee scrutinizing the 6 January attack on the Capitol by claiming executive privilege, potentially touching off an extended legal battle over disclosure.The former president also expects top aides – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel – to defy select committee subpoenas for records and testimony. Continue reading...

The Axios political reporter, whose facial expressions launched a meme, grilled the US president on his response to Covid and fact-checked his misleading statementsAustralian journalist Jonathan Swan has won an Emmy award for his widely acclaimed interview with Donald Trump in which he bluntly fact-checked the president’s misleading statements.In August last year the national political correspondent at the Axios news site grabbed international headlines when he doggedly but politely questioned the US president about his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...

Charity helping the refugees says they are happy with the result but urges Ottawa to expedite asylum of remaining ‘Guardian Angel’Canada granted asylum to four people who hid former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in their tiny Hong Kong apartments when he was on the run after stealing a trove of classified documents.The four – Supun Thilina Kellapatha, Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis and their children Sethumdi and Dinath – landed in Toronto on Tuesday and were due to go on to Montreal to “start their new lives”, non-profit For the Refugees said in a statement. Continue reading...

The Senator said Jerome Powell’s policies have weakened US banking regulations and could lead to another financial crisisSenator Elizabeth Warren called the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, “a dangerous man” on Tuesday and vowed to oppose his renomination.Related: Barack Obama: tax the rich, including me, to fund Biden spending plan Continue reading...

Shooting at Capital Gazette office in 2018 in which five people were killed was one of the worst attacks on journalists in US historyA man who killed five people at a newspaper in Maryland was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five life sentences without the possibility of parole.Related: 'We're just a quiet area': Annapolis stunned by Capital Gazette shooting Continue reading...

Facebook may have shelved its plans for an ‘Instagram for Kids’, but the photo-sharing app will continue to prompt complaints that it causes anxiety, depression and body image issues in teenage girlsSorry kids, no carefully curated data-extraction experience for you quite yet. On Monday, Facebook announced that it is “pausing” controversial plans to create Instagram for Kids, a version of its photo-sharing app designed for children under the age of 13.Does this mean Facebook has realised that it might not be in children’s best interest to hook them into social media at a tender young age? Has the company decided to put people above profit? Don’t be silly! The reason the tech giant has paused the project is because we idiots in the media misunderstood it, apparently. In an almost comically condescending blog post and series of tweets, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri explained that the company stood by the need to create a social media “experience” for children. Alas, he said, news about the project leaked before it had figured out all the details. “People feared the worst, and we had few answers at that stage. It’s clear we need to take more time on this.” Continue reading...

Mark Milley faces hostile Republicans at Senate hearing and says calls to Beijing were intended to ‘de-escalate’ tensions

Singer became subject of a missing person’s report but her attorney says Price was recovering from virusThe Grammy-nominated R&B and gospel singer Kelly Price has said she almost died from Covid-19 – and was never missing, as family members feared.Price announced her Covid diagnosis in July. According to the website TMZ, family members said the singer was rushed to hospital about a week later. Continue reading...

The Labour leader is busy unravelling the alliance he built with the left in order to get the job

Drea Kelly puts focus on what happens outside courtroom after singer’s racketeering and sex trafficking convictionThe culture around victim shaming stopped women coming forward sooner about the abuse they experienced at the hands of R Kelly, the singer’s ex-wife Drea Kelly has said.A New York jury on Monday found R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed on women and children. Continue reading...

Former president says billionaires should ‘pay a little bit more in taxes’ to fund healthcare, childcare and the climate crisis fight

We thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrongWe thought the days when our country treated asylum-seekers with cruelty and disdain might be ending. This month we learned we were wrong.Most of us were shaken and horrified, and the country rightfully embarrassed, by images of US border patrol agents on horseback attacking asylum seekers, including at least one child, in Texas. Thankfully, that has been stopped and an investigation is now underway. We need more than an investigation, though: we need to know that nothing like that will ever happen again. Continue reading...

Singer guilty of being ringleader of scheme that preyed upon women and children; plus, Greta Thunberg lambasts world leadersGood morning.A jury has found the R&B superstar R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children. Continue reading...

Guardian analysis reveals region-wide increase in violent deaths, but Black and Latino residents make up majority of victimsOn the night of 3 September 2020, Sonya Mitchell got a call as she was leaving work. Her 23-year-old son, Daimon “Dada” Ferguson, had been shot in a drive-by outside his older sister’s home.In the months before, Mitchell, 56, had been watching reports of shootings in her hometown of Vallejo, in the San Francisco Bay Area, with increasing concern. There was the shooting at a birthday party on 9 June that killed two women and injured a 10-year-old. Three separate shootings had rocked the city on 20 August, including a double homicide that left a 25-year-old man and his 24-year-old girlfriend dead in a car with their infant son. Continue reading...

Democrats have just three days to find alternative deal and are also facing a potential defaultSenate Republicans have blocked a measure to suspend the US federal debt ceiling and avoid a potentially catastrophic government shutdown, leaving Democrats who narrowly control both chambers of Congress only three days to find another way to keep the government operating beyond Thursday – when current funding expires.The legislation was aimed at beating two fast-approaching deadlines that, if left unaddressed, threaten to destabilise the US economy as it struggles to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...

The University of Houston is hoping an extra boost to its teams will increase the school’s standing. But athletics can lead to even more debtRiding the short distance from downtown to the University of Houston campus, light rail passengers arrive at Athletics District station in the shadow of a towering 40,000-capacity football stadium that opened in 2014 at a cost of about $125m.An adjacent $20m, 100,000 sq ft indoor football practice centre opened in 2017. The smart facilities give the impression that you’ve stepped into a big-time institution, and the university’s football team will soon have the cachet to match its bricks and mortar. Continue reading...

Working-class people – even Trump voters – understand the Build Back Better plan will benefit themElizabeth Masters isn’t a natural Joe Biden supporter. A self-described conservative who lives in Parkersburg, in deeply Republican West Virginia, she said she registered to vote in the last election so she could cast a ballot for Donald Trump.Masters says she doesn’t approve when people “just stand for a handout” – she doesn’t think the United States should be spending money on undocumented immigrants, for example – but says anything that will “help people that are trying to do for themselves, I’m all for it”. Continue reading...

Today it’s ‘culture wars’ – but from Caesar to Colston, public art has long been reviled and reinterpreted

Jury finds singer guilty of running a criminal enterprise that recruited women and children and subjected them to unwanted sex and mental tormentA jury has found the R&B superstar R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children.The disgraced singer was found guilty on all nine counts on Monday afternoon after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct, in a major #MeToo victory for Black women and girls. Continue reading...

After R Kelly was convicted in his sex trafficking trial, attorney Gloria Allred, who represented several of Kelly's alleged victims, said the R&B singer is 'the worst' predator she has ever pursued in her 47 years of practicing law. Kelly was convicted by a federal jury on all nine counts he faced after prosecutors accused the R&B singer of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children. Kelly’s lawyer Deveraux Cannick said ‘I’m sure we'll be appealing’.

National murder rate rises nearly 30%, with figure increasing across all regions and from small towns to citiesThe US has experienced its largest-ever recorded annual increase in murders, according to new statistics from the FBI, with the national murder rate rising nearly 30% in 2020 – the biggest jump in six decades.Nearly 5,000 more Americans were murdered across the country last year than the year before, even as rape, robbery, and other property crimes fell, according to FBI figures. Continue reading...

The oldest member of the USA team won all five of his matches in the thrashing of EuropeFor all the talk of the youth movement that powered USA to a record-breaking victory over Europe at the Ryder Cup – and its first consecutive wins on home soil since 1979 and 1983 – it was the team’s elder statesman who made the biggest individual impact.Dustin Johnson, the world No 2 and the oldest member of a team whose average age is barely 29, became the fifth player to win all five matches in a Ryder Cup – an elite class made up of Arnold Palmer in 1967, Gardner Dickinson in 1967, Larry Nelson in 1979 and Francesco Molinari three years ago. Continue reading...