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George Strait, Sly' Stallone and Kiss accept medals from president, who says he was 98% involved' in choosing themDonald Trump on Saturday evening hosted the 2025 Kennedy Center honorees in the Oval Office for a medal-presentation ceremony, celebrating country music singer George Strait, actor-singer Michael Crawford, actor Sylvester Sly" Stallone and the members of the rock band Kiss.This is a great evening, it's a great honor," Trump said. And I'm delighted to welcome to the Oval Office - the world-famous, most famous office in the world, most powerful office in the world - our truly exceptional 2025 Kennedy Center honorees." Continue reading...

White House decision is part of $140m settlement over flight chaos during busy December travel periodThe Trump administration said on Saturday it will waive an $11m fine imposed on Southwest Airlines as part of a $140m settlement over the carrier's meltdown in December 2022 during a busy holiday travel period.Southwest in December 2023 agreed to pay a $35m cash fine over three years over the airline's handling of the meltdown that stranded more than 2 million passengers. It also agreed to provide $90m in travel vouchers of $75 or more to passengers delayed at least three hours getting to final destinations because of an airline-caused issue or cancellation. Continue reading...

Three-person escape is second for state in a year, after 10 people crawled through a wall at a different prisonTwo inmates accused of violent crimes, including second-degree attempted murder, are on the run after escaping from a south-western Louisiana jail on Wednesday by removing pieces of a deteriorating interior wall and using sheets to scale another outside wall, officials said.A third inmate who joined in the breakout died by suicide after he was tracked down. Continue reading...

Patty Murray of Washington state said ICE agents lied to Wilmer Toledo-Martinez to lure him outside before dog attacked himA US senator has condemned the Trump administration after she alleged that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attack dog" mauled one of her constituents.Democratic senator Patty Murray of Washington state said Wilmer Toledo-Martinez suffered horrific" injuries while ICE agents detained him in November. Continue reading...

Andrew Wolfe was shot in the head on 26 November, while Sarah Beckstrom died from her injuriesThe West Virginia national guard soldier who was wounded in the 26 November shooting that killed a colleague of his in Washington DC is slowly healing", according to West Virginia's governor.Andrew Wolfe, 24, was shot alongside fellow West Virginia national guard soldier Sarah Beckstrom, 20, while they patrolled the US capital as part of the Trump administration's push to deploy military members on to the city's streets. Beckstrom died of her injuries the day after she was shot while Wolfe was hospitalized in critical condition. Continue reading...

Another escaped inmate killed himself after being recognized by a tipster and police respondedTwo inmates accused of violent crimes, including second-degree attempted murder, are on the run after escaping from a south-western Louisiana jail on Wednesday by removing pieces of a deteriorating interior wall and using sheets to scale another outside wall, officials said.A third inmate who joined in the breakout died by suicide after he was tracked down. Continue reading...

The former president gave a speech expressing support for LGBTQ+ rights at an LGBTQ+ leaders conference on FridayJoe Biden has criticized Republicans for turning transgender rights into a political football" in a speech that the former US president delivered at an LGBTQ+ event.Speaking at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference in Washington on Friday, Biden urged LGBTQ+ people to get up and fight back" against Donald Trump's second presidential administration. Continue reading...

State court made ruling against ex-lawmaker now serving 11-year sentence for bribery and acting as an agent of EgyptFormer US senator Bob Menendez has been permanently disqualified from seeking or holding public office in his home state of New Jersey after being convicted of federal corruption charges, according to officials.An order on Friday from New Jersey superior court judge Robert Lougy banned Menendez from any position of honor, trust, or profit in state or local government", the state's attorney general, Matt Platkin, said in a statement. Menendez would face a fourth-degree charge of contempt of court if he applies for public office or employment or takes any steps to campaign, run for or be appointed" to such a post, Platkin's statement also said. Continue reading...

Obama, Trump, and Biden stood by their man in Tegucigalpa for the eight vicious, destructive years he was in powerSince President Trump first announced the pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez last Friday, the media has been wading through the long list of criminal acts that led to Hernandez's 2024 conviction for drug trafficking, money laundering and arms dealing. Trump's outrageous pardon is being contrasted with his unlawful, aggressive attacks on boats allegedly trafficking drugs for the government of Venezuela. Missing from the narrative, though, are the other illegal acts committed by Hernandez that weren't about drug trafficking, and thus didn't fall under the justice department's anti-drug mandate when it charged and convicted him in the southern district of New York. Many are the crimes of Juan Orlando Hernandez, and ruinous.And long is the history of US support for him in full knowledge of those crimes. Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden all stood by their man in Honduras for the eight vicious, destructive years he was in power. They ignored his drug connections, supported the military and police that kept him in power through state terror, and countenanced his illegal re-elections. Hernandez was only able to rise to power, and stay there, because of the United States government.Dana Frank is research professor and professor emerita of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup Continue reading...

The right has found a new pitch for young women: conservatives are better-lookingForget expensive moisturizers or designer clothes. Ladies, if you want a quick and easy glow-up, you may want to try Republicanism. This one weird trick of voting against your own reproductive rights will instantly make you 10 times hotter.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Pentagon press passes once held by credentialed journalists are now in the hands of rightwing pundits and Trump alliesBeing a member of the Pentagon press corps was once one of the more prestigious assignments in US journalism, a position reserved for heavy hitters from venerable newspapers and news channels, reporters at the peak of their powers.Not any more. A press conference last week - held at a crucial time for a Pentagon embroiled in scandal - was instead attended by more than a dozen rightwing activists, with the government being held to account by a close ally of Donald Trump, an employee at Turning Point USA and someone from a pillow salesman's nascent media company. Continue reading...

Astrid Tuminez, Utah Valley University's first female leader, had to pivot from personal tragedy to address a wounding that happened to all of us'Astrid Tuminez was on her way to Rome, the trip a kind of pilgrimage after months of grief. Her husband, Jeffrey Tolk, had died suddenly earlier in the year, and the loss had left her carrying a weight she couldn't set down. I felt darkness and a rage I'd never known before. It was like a tectonic shift in my reality," she said.Tuminez imagined quiet days walking through old churches, sitting in dim chapels in Rome. As part of her spiritual healing, she hoped her schedule held a meeting with Pope Leo. But as her flight landed in Atlanta for a short connection, her phone lit up. One sentence, again and again: Charlie has been shot." Continue reading...

Defense secretary defiant but allegations of war crimes and blistering watchdog report increase calls for him to goPete Hegseth is facing the most serious crisis of his tenure as defense secretary, engulfed by allegations of war crimes in the Caribbean and a blistering inspector general report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. Yet despite the long list of trouble and as lawmakers from both parties call for his resignation, Hegseth shows no signs of stepping down and still holds Donald Trump's support.The twin crises have engulfed the former Fox News personality in separate but overlapping allegations that lawmakers, policy experts and former officials say reveal a pattern of dangerous recklessness at the helm of the Pentagon. Democratic legislators have reignited calls for his ouster after revelations that survivors clinging to wreckage from a September boat strike were deliberately killed in a double-tap" attack, while a defense department investigation released on Thursday concluded he violated Pentagon policies by sharing sensitive details via the Signal messaging app hours before airstrikes in Yemen. Continue reading...

Pediatricians say panel's decision will create confusion and access issues, and condemn parody of public health'The entire US childhood vaccine schedule is now open for scrutiny, experts say, after government vaccine advisers took up discussions of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and their components and changed its recommendations on one crucial prevention.Several of the vaccine advisers are longtime anti-vaccine activists, and they were all chosen by Donald Trump's controversial health secretary Robert F. Kennedy after he fired the previous advisers in an unprecedented move to enact dramatic changes to US vaccination policy. Kennedy has been a frequent critic of vaccines. Continue reading...

England will face a rematch of their 2018 semi-final in the opening fixture of their World Cup campaign next summer, after they were drawn alongside Croatia in Group L. England will also play Panama, another side they faced at the Russia World Cup, and Ghana.

Each nation's World Cup is defined, for good or bad, by huge, indelible moments. With a favorable draw, the onus is now on the US to create themChristian Pulisic vividly remembers watching it with his family. So does Tyler Adams, who saw it with his friends from soccer camp. Memories of Tim Howard catching an Algerian header in Pretoria, and hurling it upfield to ignite the counterattack that would lead to Landon Donovan's instantly iconic goal. The goal that spared the United States men's national team's blushes at the 2010 World Cup, sneaking them out of the group stage at Algeria's expense. One of the most iconic moments in US socer history.Pulisic was a few months from turning 12. Adams had just turned 10. Matt Turner would be 16 the next day, and Howard's heroics made him wonder if he ought to devote himself fully to becoming a goalkeeper. Continue reading...

The persecution of brown people and mass deportations will not create the white country of far-right fantasyAs Donald Trump deteriorates and his grasp on power fades, he has been lashing out furiously at female journalists and ethnic groups, most recently Somali Americans. His insults land because of their animosity and his power, not their accuracy. Likewise, his administration's attacks on immigrants are sloppy and driven by lies. It's strikingly clear that the target is not individuals with criminal records. It's anyone and everyone guilty of being brown. Native Americans with tribal identification cards, US citizens, people doing crucial work from construction to nursing, military veterans, college students, people sleeping in their own beds, small children: all kinds of residents of this country are under attack.ICE raids are cruel, inhumane, and do nothing to serve public safety," declares Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect. Masked thugs smashing car windows and dragging parents away from their babies, terrorizing whole swathes of the population, and interfering with the ability of schools and businesses to function does the opposite. The rounds of targeted hatred by Trump and his minions - for people from Haiti during the 2024 campaign, for people from Venezuela this spring and summer, and most recently for people from Somalia - rely on defamatory lies and insults, because the facts about these groups don't support the hate.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell's Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Continue reading...

Whether using frozen Russian assets, ramping up defence production or deepening the relationship with the EU, it is up to us to secure Ukraine's future - and our ownEurope, you have been warned. President Vladimir Putin has waged a full-scale war against Ukraine for nearly four years and this week threatened that Russia was ready right now" for war with Europe if need be. President Donald Trump has demonstrated that the US is ready to sell out Ukraine for the sake of a dirty deal with Putin's Russia. His new US National Security Strategy prescribes cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations". How much more clarity do you need?Now it's up to us Europeans to enable Ukraine to survive armed assault from Moscow and diplomatic betrayal from Washington. In doing so, we also defend ourselves. For a year now, people have been telling me that Trump will eventually get tough on Russia. It's been the geopolitical version of Waiting for Godot. Then his personal real-estate emissaries come up with a 28-point peace plan" that is a Russian-American imperial and commercial deal at the expense of both Ukraine and Europe. Continue reading...

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Settlement one of US's largest and comes after officer killed Konoa Wilson, who was running from teen shooting at himThe city of San Diego has agreed to pay a $30m settlement to the family of Konoa Wilson, the 16-year-old boy fatally shot in the back by a police officer while running away after narrowly missing another shooting by an unknown third party at a train station.The payout is the result of the wrongful death lawsuit Wilson's family filed against the city in June, claiming the officer who shot the teen acted with racial violence". Wilson is half Black, family attorneys said. Continue reading...

US Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem says list will expand to more than 30 countries - key US politics stories from 5 December 2025The US plans to expand the number of countries covered by its travel ban to more than 30, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, has announced.The bans apply to both immigrants and non-immigrants, such as tourists, students and business travelers. It expands on the list of 19 countries already facing travel restrictions, which includes Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Yemen. Continue reading...

Move from CDC advisers mirrors Trump team's regressive approach to longstanding vaccine guidance

Joint statement comes as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow on US-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of warDonald Trump's advisers and Ukrainian officials said Friday they'll meet for a third day of talks after making progress on creating a security framework for postwar Ukraine and are urging Russia to commit to peace.The officials, who met for a second day in Florida on Friday, issued a joint statement that offered broad brushstrokes about the progress they say that's been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a US-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of war. Continue reading...

A manageable World Cup draw hands the co-hosts matches with Australia, Paraguay and a European playoff winner - familiar opponents posing very different challengesThe United States were placed in a World Cup group with Australia, Paraguay, and the winner of a European play-off between Turkey, Romania, Kosovo, and Slovakia in Friday's 2026 World Cup draw in Washington DC. Here's what to know about the co-host's opponents. Continue reading...

Justices to take up case amid legal fight over order to heavily restrict right to birthright citizenship in US

Our live report from a ceremony that was part intriguing spectacle and part prolonged fever dream featuring Donald Trump dancing to the Village PeopleFrance, Senegal and Norway meet in Group of Death'

Ruling compels unsealing of documents from 2006-2007 federal investigation into Epstein in FloridaA federal judge in Florida ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking cases on Friday, citing the recently enacted federal law that overrides traditional secrecy protections.US district judge Rodney Smith ruled that the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law last month by Donald Trump, overrode federal rules prohibiting the disclosure of grand jury materials. Continue reading...

Advisers for the CDC voted to limit the vaccines - here's what happened and why the vote is so significantVaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis B vaccines in a major move signaling the Trump administration's regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.What is the situation now and what does this mean? Continue reading...

These deadly US boat strikes are the latest example of a president corrupting both the law and moralityThe Trump administration looks ever more like a criminal enterprise - and now it seems to have added war crimes to its repertoire. Though even that may be too generous a description.On Thursday, word came that the US military had launched yet another deadly strike on a small boat moving through international waters. This time the attack killed four people, bringing to at least 87 the number of people the US has killed in a series of 22 such strikes on what it says are drug boats - vessels carrying illicit narcotics in the Caribbean or eastern Pacific.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistGuardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US?

Reform UK leader's legal threats, denials and attacks on the media are tactics often deployed by US presidentWhen Nigel Farage angrily denounced the BBC and insulted one of its presenters for raising questions about his alleged schoolboy racism, those who have been studying the tactics of the right noted that his behaviour felt familiar.Is it out of the Trump playbook? I think that's exactly what's going on," said Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster. This is becoming his new modus operandi, turning defence into attack. It's exactly the tactics White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, uses. There are a lot of journalists in this country who just aren't used to it." Continue reading...

Exclusive: Move is part of Trump's broader crackdown on leftwing groups, including designation of antifa as domestic terrorism' group

Advocates demand public health officials listen to autistic voices' after health secretary's debunked vaccine claimsWhen the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its website last month to reflect US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's belief of a causal link between vaccines and autism - a claim that has been debunked by dozens of scientific studies - autism advocates sprang into action.Leaders at the Association of University Centers on Disabilities demanded online that public health officials listen to autistic voices". Continue reading...

Sang Hea Kil is first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to the protestsA tenured professor at San Jose State University in California is fighting for her job after the university fired her last month over her pro-Palestinian activism - the first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.Sang Hea Kil, a longtime member of the university's justice studies department and a faculty adviser for its students for justice in Palestine chapter, is the latest in a growing list of university professors and staff who have been suspended, investigated, and in some cases dismissed or forced out in connection to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that swept US campuses in the first year of Israel's war in Gaza. Continue reading...

The congresswoman from Minnesota responded to Trump's dismissal of Somali Americans as garbage'Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman, has said Donald Trump is lashing out at her and her community with bigotry because he knows he is failing".The US president dismissed Somali Americans earlier this week as garbage" in a racist rant. Continue reading...

Community fears shooting will be written off as gang violence and says examination of complex factors such as online feuds is requiredTashante McCoy was celebrating her grandson's fifth birthday in Stockton, California, on Saturday, when she learned that masked men had opened fire at another child's birthday party on the other side of town.Armed men had walked into the banquet hall where at least 100 people had gathered to celebrate a toddler's birthday, a friend of McCoy's who was at the event would later tell her. At least one man opened fire just as partygoers were preparing to cut the cake. Continue reading...

Kristi Noem said the list of countries from which travel to the US is prohibited will increase to an unspecified number

Defenders rally to Olivia Nuzzi amid book mockery, while rakish David Dimbleby channels his inner DickensIt's publication week for American Canto, the hastily turned around memoir by the former New York magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who took on the challenge of explaining what it was about Robert F Kennedy Jr she found so alluring, a task for which no upper word limit is adequate. Nuzzi, if you've fallen behind, developed romantic feelings for the then presidential candidate, now Trump health minister, while profiling him for the magazine and since I've had to read this sentence, you do too: He was exhausted, and he threw himself onto the bed, his pink shirt unbuttoned, revealing my favorite parts of his chest." If you have a favourite part of RFK Jr's chest, or consider chests in general subject to preference by localised area, this may be the book for you. Continue reading...

Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say

Seventy years after the Montgomery bus boycott, policies hiding in plain sight continue to ravage the Black communityFriday is the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, which began because Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person, as required by law. While her brave act brought national attention to the civil rights movement and triggered student sit-ins to end segregation across the south, it also subjected her and her husband, Raymond, to constant death threats. Consequently, like many other Black families fleeing Jim Crow south's racial violence, in August 1957, Rosa and Raymond moved up north to Detroit.When the Parks arrived in Detroit, they and other Black people did not have to sit at the back of the bus. Nonetheless, the city was permeated by a quieter but no less pernicious type of racism: racist policies, which are any written or unwritten laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity. In my book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America, I demonstrate how racial covenants, redlining, urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending and racialized property tax administration have stymied the Black community.Bernadette Atuahene is the Duggan Professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, the Executive Director of the Institute for Law and Organizing, and the author of Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America Continue reading...

Gary Walters managed the president's official residence for 37 years - now he's sharing his most vivid recollectionsGary Walters has a special feeling" about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors' office there. But asked to contemplate the wing's destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another - some larger than others," Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built. Continue reading...

Ever since the club's very beginning, David Beckham and Jorge Mas have had moments like this Saturday in mindBack on 27 February 2020, days before Inter Miami's first-ever fixture in MLS, I stood next to the club's managing owner, Jorge Mas, and co-owner David Beckham as part of an MLS press junket in New York City. I was there for Sports Illustrated and my show Planet Futbol TV, which I co-hosted with my friend, the late, great Grant Wahl. We were adamant that the Inter Miami story was riveting, not just because of Beckham's influence in MLS, but also because his new club was about to introduce the unique culture of Miami and south Florida - the Latin American capital of the world - to the league.The conversation in 2020 was my second meeting with Mas and my first with Beckham. I remember the sense of excitement from both men, knowing that this Inter Miami project - seven years in the making before their debut in the league - was about to come to fruition after a long, arduous journey. From legal battles with Internazionale over the trademark of the word Inter" to political and structural problems as they tried to make a stadium, Miami Freedom Park, a reality. Now, the club was finally starting life in MLS. Continue reading...