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Carlos Watson was on way to begin serving 10-year sentence when news reached him of his presidential commutationHours before he was scheduled to report to prison and begin serving a nearly 10-year sentence for a federal fraud conviction, former talkshow host and media executive Carlos Watson received clemency from Donald Trump, sparing him from the punishment Friday.Watson was traveling to the Lompoc, California, federal correctional institution when he learned of the presidential commutation afforded to him, as CNBC reported. He published a statement which thanked the president and insulted the Trump-appointed federal judge who sentenced him, Eric Komitee, as conflicted and unethical". Continue reading...

After a two-year retirement prompted by burnout and fatigue, the American skater found her way back to the ice - and became the world champion no one saw comingAlysa Liu hadn't even checked her phone. She didn't know who had called, who had texted or who had screamed at their television when her gold-medal score flashed onto the screen. But she knew exactly who she wanted to call first.My siblings," she said, laughing. They have no idea [what] is happening." Continue reading...

Grants Pass was at heart of supreme court ruling allowing cities to ban sleeping outside even if shelters are lackingAn Oregon judge issued a preliminary injunction on Friday blocking the city at the heart of a US supreme court ruling on homeless encampments from enforcing its camping rules unless it meets certain conditions, as part of a lawsuit filed by advocates.Under the decision by Josephine county circuit court judge Sarah McGlaughlin, Grants Pass must increase capacity at city-approved sites for camping and ensure they are physically accessible to people with disabilities. Continue reading...

Both flights received corrective instructions to avoid possible collision two months after crash killed 67 at same airportA passenger flight preparing to take off near Washington DC and an incoming US military jet received instructions to divert and prevent a possible collision on Friday, officials said.The close call at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport came about two months after a passenger jet and US army helicopter collided near the airport, killing all 67 people onboard both aircraft. The earlier crash - on 29 January - prompted federal investigators to recommend a ban on some helicopter flights in that area. Continue reading...

The university had a history of being a home for cutting-edge discourse on Palestine - until it capitulated to the administration's demandsLast week, Columbia University announced that it would cave to demands by the Trump administration and adopt sweeping measures against pro-Palestinian activity on campus, including new restrictions on protest and the takeover of an academic department from faculty control.The news sent shock waves across higher education institutions nationwide for what appeared a stunning capitulation to attacks on academic freedom and the independence of the department of Middle Eastern, south Asian and African studies, or Mesaas, which became a scapegoat for what the administration viewed as a pro-Palestinian climate on campus. It was also a remarkable turn of events for a university that had for years been a home for cutting-edge academic discourse on Palestine, beginning with the scholarship of Edward Said, a leading Palestinian intellectual. Continue reading...

Trump's executive order supposedly expanding IVF access offered nothing concrete beyond a weird nickname for himselfDonald Trump has clearly been spending far too much time with Elon-I-offer-my-sperm-to-everyone-who-crosses-my-path-Musk. It seems like the creepy billionaire's insemination obsession has rubbed off on Trump: the legally defined sexual predator is now calling himself the fertilization president". Continue reading...

Robert F Kennedy, Trump's health secretary, said he will be laying off nearly 20,000 workers, imperiling crucial servicesMassive job cuts planned for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will pave the way for takeover of crucial services by the private sector, imperiling the US in future health emergencies, health experts and Democratic politicians warn.Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announced the department would layoff 20,000 workers from its roughly 82,000-person workforce on Thursday, or nearly a quarter of the department's headcount. Continue reading...

Foreign nationals caught up in Trump's immigration dragnet are transported sometimes thousands of miles away to an isolated network of lockups and courtsBehind the reinforced doors of courtroom number two, at a remote detention centre in central Louisiana, Lu Xianying sat alone before an immigration judge unable to communicate.Dressed in a blue jumpsuit that drooped from his slight frame, he waited as court staff called three different translation services, unable to find an interpreter proficient in his native Gan Chinese. Continue reading...

New College of Florida fired Kevin Wang, a professor who sought asylum and is authorized to work in the USThe New College of Florida has fired a Chinese language professor under a state law that restricts Florida's public universities from hiring individuals they deem to be from countries of concern".On Friday, Suncoast Searchlight reported the firing of Kevin Wang, a professor who has sought asylum in the US and is authorized to work in the country. According to the outlet, Wang had been teaching classes in Chinese language and culture for nearly two years when he was fired on 12 March. Continue reading...

Roberto Lugo and other artists of color are now feeling heat from Trump's attack on diversity and efforts to rewrite truth of the US's pastArtists, academics and politicians have shared their outrage in reaction to the Trump administration's latest executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum network.Late on Thursday, Trump announced that his administration had ordered a large reshaping of the Smithsonian in an attempt to eliminate what he described as improper, divisive or anti-American ideology". Continue reading...

We're afraid the baseless theory spread by the president stigmatises our kids - and could affect access to careIt was a moment when Donald Trump's larger-than-life presence on the global stage became unexpectedly personal.Near the end of his one-hour, 40-minute speech to a joint session of Congress on 4 March, the US president diverted from his favoured themes of a new golden age of American greatness and grievances against his adversaries to address a more unlikely topic: autism. Continue reading...

I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the government could put me at risk of deportationWhen I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, less than a year ago, I could never have imagined that writing a critical piece about the US government could put me at risk of deportation, threatening the life and career I've built here. But today, that threat is very real.Just this week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested mere blocks from where I live after publishing an op-ed in her university newspaper describing Israel's military campaign in Gaza as genocide. That was the full extent of her activism, yet despite having all her documentation in order, she was taken abruptly and transported to Louisiana, over 1,000 miles from her home.Berna Leon is a visiting fellow at Harvard University, where he teaches political theory. His doctoral dissertation investigated the democratic oversight of intelligence services in the US and UK Continue reading...

The discussion revealed unserious people who don't know when to keep quiet, with Stephen Miller as the real bossOn 13 March, Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who was the policy director for two secretaries of defense and was a member of the House intelligence committee, sent a message on the commercial Signal app: Team - establishing a principles group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours." The Houthis PC small group" would oversee a US air attack on the Houthis in Yemen.Despite Waltz's extensive professional background, he misspelled principals" as principles" - perhaps an ordinary typo, but symptomatic of the shambles to come. Although the secretaries of defense, state and treasury, the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, the vice-president, and the president's chief of staff were among the 18 people included, neither the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, who is a statutory member of the principals committee of the National Security Council, nor any military designee was invited into this group. Instead, the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was sent a link. Waltz noted: Joint Staff is sending this am a more specific sequence of events in the coming days." Continue reading...

We should be talking about how we help everyone enjoy sport, but instead players are being targeted in a dehumanising wayThe hateful language" directed at Orlando Pride's Barbra Banda during their 2-0 defeat of Gotham FC last Sunday, understood to be transphobic and racist in nature, is part of an alarming trend, with several non-white athletes targeted for not fitting westernised standards of femininity.The language directed at Banda from the stands was directly addressed" by stadium security, said the hosts, Gotham FC, in a statement, and the situation was monitored for the remainder of the match". Continue reading...

A Trump executive order aims to uproot anti-American ideology' from the US museum and research complexOn Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution, a behemoth of a research and museum organization that operates more than 20 museum and research centers and is visited by millions of people each year, mainly in Washington DC and New York City. The museums include the National Museum of African Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), which Trump name-checked in his executive order. Trump's executive order instructs Vice-President JD Vance to eliminate improper, divisive or anti-American ideology" from the Smithsonian's museums.The Smithsonian has already come under scrutiny by Trump and his allies. Earlier this year, the institution was forced to close its diversity office and froze all federal hiring. Continue reading...

Our research in October showed that falling back' had a negative impact on women, especially mothers. Do we need to shift the way we think about time?Twice a year we change the clocks. For many it is not clear why and how this change affects us. So last October, with the help of the Guardian, a group of scientists at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Oxford conducted a nationwide survey to understand the impact on people's daily lives.More than 12,000 people answered questions about their wellbeing, satisfaction with life and stress levels, completing the survey in the week before the clocks went back and again in the days immediately after. When we compared the responses, we found that women's mental health and wellbeing suffered in the immediate aftermath of the clocks going back, while men experienced greater wellbeing and greater satisfaction with life. So what does this tell us about the way we experience time?Ruth Ogden is professor of the psychology of time at Liverpool John Moores University. Her study of the effects of clocks changing was undertaken with Prof Patricia Kingori, a sociologist at the University of Oxford's Ethox CentreDo 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...

Many turbulent years have taught my friends never to make plans. Yet, even after Ekrem mamolu's arrest, they have hope

Vice-president and US delegation visit amid growing tension and Trump targets Smithsonian Institution - key US politics stories from 28 March 2025JD Vance told troops in Greenland that the US has to gain control of the Arctic island to stop the threat of China and Russia as he doubled down on his criticism of Denmark, which he said has not done a good job".As the US vice-president toured Pituffik space base, Donald Trump reiterated his previous claims that the US needs Greenland for world peace". I think Greenland understands that the United States should own it," the US president said at a press conference at the White House on Friday. And if Denmark and the EU don't understand it, we have to explain it to them." Continue reading...

President had targeted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for mass terminations. This blog is now closed.Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and Donald Trump's first phone call will take place this morning, a source with knowledge of the matter has told Radio-Canada.It will be their first conversation as leaders and comes days after Trump announced plans to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on cars from overseas, a move Carney condemned as a direct attack" on Canadian workers. Trump later threatened further tariffs if the EU worked with Canada in order to do economic harm to the USA". Carney said:We will defend our workers, we will defend our companies, we will defend our country, and we will defend it together.I'm available for a call, but you know, we're going to talk on our terms as a sovereign country, not as what he pretends we are. Continue reading...

Interim president Katrina Armstrong to transfer to medical center with appointment of board of trustees co-chair Claire ShipmanColumbia University's interim president has stepped down, the latest leadership shakeup at the Ivy League school, which has been aggressively targeted by the Trump administration over pro-Palestinian protests on campus.Katrina Armstrong is being replaced by Claire Shipman, co-chair of its board of trustees, who is stepping up as acting president effective immediately, the university said on Friday evening. Shipman is the university's third president since August, when Minouche Shafik resigned amid intense scrutiny of her handling of demonstrations. Continue reading...

Rumeysa Ozturk was taken from street by masked, plainclothes officers in a Boston-area suburb on TuesdayA Tufts University student who was detained by US immigration authorities this week, in an arrest that caused widespread outrage, cannot be deported without a court order, a US judge ordered on Friday.Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, was detained by masked, plainclothes officers as she walked in a Boston-area suburb on Tuesday, an incident that was captured on surveillance footage that has since gone viral. Ozturk, who is being threatened with deportation to Turkey, is a Fulbright scholar and doctoral student in the US with a visa. Continue reading...

Victory for press freedom' after judge says rescinding funds for radio network requires congressional approvalA federal judge on Friday ordered Donald Trump's administration to temporarily pause its efforts to shut down Voice of America, stopping the government from firing 1,300 journalists and other employees at the US news service that were abruptly placed on leave earlier this month.District judge J Paul Oetken said in a Friday opinion that the Trump administration could not unilaterally terminate Voice of America and related radio programs that were approved and funded by Congress. Rescinding funds for those programs would require congressional approval, the judge wrote. Continue reading...

Harlingen receives more than 21in of rain this week, with 200 people still waiting to be rescued from their homesAt least three people have died after severe storms along the Texas-Mexico border, officials said on Friday.Meanwhile, crews were rescuing residents trapped in their homes by drenching rains a day earlier, which also forced drivers to abandon their vehicles on flooded roads and shut down an airport. Continue reading...

Federal Communications Commission says its DEI efforts may breach equal employment opportunity regulationsThe US's top media regulator on Friday said it was opening an investigation into the diversity practices of Walt Disney and its ABC unit, saying they may violate equal employment opportunity regulations.Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, wrote to the Disney CEO, Robert Iger, in a letter dated on Thursday that the company's diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts may not have complied with FCC regulations and that changes by the company may not go far enough. Continue reading...

White House detailed policy change in filing asking court to suspend appeal by group opposed to affirmative actionThe US Naval Academy has changed its policy and will no longer consider race as a factor when evaluating candidates to attend the elite military school, a practice it maintained even after the US supreme court barred civilian colleges from employing similar affirmative action policies.The Trump administration detailed the policy change in a filing on Friday asking a court to suspend an appeal lodged by a group opposed to affirmative action against a judge's decision last year upholding the Annapolis, Maryland-based Naval Academy's race-conscious admissions program. Continue reading...

Appeals court had upheld block on flights using Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members

Government reports largest outbreak is in Texas, and 70 people across US needing hospitalizationThe federal government reported on Friday that there have been 483 confirmed cases of measles across 20 US jurisdictions so far this year, with the largest outbreak in Texas, and 70 people across the nation needing to be hospitalized.That compares with 285 cases of measles in the US for the whole of 2024. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on its website that 97% of the confirmed cases this year so far involved people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccine status was unknown - and 75% of the cases this year have affected people under the age of 19. Continue reading...

Mikal Mahdi scheduled to be executed by firing squad just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bulletsA second South Carolina death row prisoner has asked to die by firing squad just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets.Mikal Mahdi chose the firing squad on Friday. His execution is scheduled for 11 April. Continue reading...

State department shares new standard for denials based on social media posts, financial donations and membershipsThe United States has ordered consular offices to significantly expand their screening processes for student visa applicants, including through comprehensive social media investigations, to exclude people they deem to support terrorism.Coming after several high-profile visa revocations and targeted arrests over pro-Palestinian campus activism, a state department cable from 25 March, obtained by the Guardian, describes a new standard for visa denials based on a broad definition of what constitutes support for terrorist activity". The directive states that evidence that an applicant advocates for terrorist activity, or otherwise demonstrates a degree of public approval or public advocacy for terrorist activity or a terrorist organization" can be grounds for visa rejection. Continue reading...

Now the 19-year-old Filipina's challenge is to handle the unavoidable pressure and build a successful careerIn the early hours of Friday morning, after nearly two weeks spent slaying giants, Alexandra Eala slumped in her chair inside the vast Hard Rock Stadium, her unforgettable run in Miami finally at an end. Before she could even begin to reflect on her mixed emotions of pride and disappointment, however, she was hit by a wall of noise.The audience, still filled with Filipino fans at 12.45am, had opted to celebrate Eala's achievements with a thunderous standing ovation. She responded immediately, raising both fists to the air and then blowing kisses to all corners of the stadium with a smile. Continue reading...

International donors will need to work with the country's fragmented local administrations as well as its military rulersRestrictions on the press and internet imposed by the military junta that rules Myanmar mean that information about the powerful earthquake that struck the country on Friday, just before 1pm local time, was even more incomplete than usual in the aftermath of a disaster. At least 144 people are reported to have been killed - a death toll that is certain to rise - while a state of emergency was declared in the Thai capital, Bangkok. There, eight people are confirmed to have died while dozens of construction workers arefeared trapped after the high-rise building that theywere working on collapsed. Further aftershocks are expected and will make the work of rescuers andthosedelivering humanitarian assistance in bothcountries harder.The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.7, is the most severe to hit the region since 1956, which means buildings are unlikely to have been designed with this threat in mind. The disaster could not have come at a worse time for Myanmar's people, with more than 18 million already either displaced or facing hunger, according to the UN. In Rakhine state, 2million people are at risk from famine, with the junta accused of inflicting collective punishment" on them. An estimated 6.7 million children live in earthquake-affected areas, including the country's second-biggest city, Mandalay, which is 17km from the epicentre. As this was a Friday, during Ramadan, many people are thought to have been crushed as busy mosques fell down.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...

Justice department looking into whether schools comply with 2023 supreme court ruling ending affirmative actionThe Trump administration has opened investigations into the admissions policies at Stanford University and three campuses within the University of California system, including UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.US attorney general Pam Bondi has directed the department's civil rights division to investigate whether the schools' policies comply with the 2023 US supreme court ruling that ended affirmative action in college admissions, the department said in a statement. Continue reading...

Lawmakers say consuming teeth-strengthening mineral should be individual choice' as dentists oppose moveUtah has become the first US state to ban fluoride in public drinking water, despite widespread opposition from dentists and national health organizations.The Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed legislation late on Thursday that bars cities and communities from deciding whether to add the mineral to their water systems. Continue reading...

The jeopardy over our country's work remains, and we're bracing ourselves for a scary situation we know all too wellWe don't have a reliable count for how many people have been shot in the United States this year. We don't know how many were shot last year either. Or the year before that. These most basic numbers should inform our gun violence prevention efforts. But they don't exist.This is the void of information that is created and persists when critical research is suppressed.Dr Jessica Beard is the director of research for the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting, a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow, and director of trauma research at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University; Dr Elinore Kaufman is the research director for the division of trauma at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Pennsylvania Trauma System Foundation Research Committee. Both are trauma surgeons in Philadelphia. Continue reading...

Jenner & Block and WilmerHale seek to stop executive orders that would halt business with government

The island, with the seventh-largest school district in the US, is unusually reliant on federal fundingMaraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and the principal of the elementary school Escuela de la Comunidad Jaime C Rodriguez for the past seven. She never knows how much money her school in Yabucoa will receive from the government each year because it isn't based on the number of children enrolled. One year she got $36,000; another year, it was $12,000.But during the Biden administration, Caraballo noticed a big change. Due to an infusion of federal dollars into the island's education system, Caraballo received a $250,000 grant, an unprecedented amount of money. She used it to buy books and computers for the library, whiteboards and printers for classrooms, to beef up a robotics program and build a multipurpose sports court for her students. It meant a huge difference for the school," Caraballo said. Continue reading...

The Democratic representative Ritchie Torres joined forces with a Republican to form the congressional Crypto caucus. That's a dangerous moveTwice rejected by American voters in favor of Donald Trump, the Democratic party now faces its most severe crisis of identity in four decades. Nowhere is the party's search for relevance in Trump's America more desperate than in its embrace of cryptocurrency, a sector whose existence depends upon its ability to circumvent the financial regulatory state the Democrats spent a century constructing. How else to explain the Democratic representative Ritchie Torres - whose South Bronx district is the poorest in the United States - joining forces with the Republican Tom Emmer to champion cryptocurrency through their newly formed congressional Crypto caucus.Congressional Republicans have always been uniform in their support for cryptocurrency: in May 2024, just three Republican House members voted against a bill to significantly relax regulations on digital tokens. But since 2016, the cryptocurrency industry has made steady inroads into the Democratic party. That convergence, if it continues, will represent a return to the pre-New Deal financial politics that the party spent a century rejecting.Alex Bronzini-Vender is a writer living in New York Continue reading...

Heidi Markow says charcoal work bought at local art auction just stood out to me as something special'A woman in Pennsylvania has bought what is believed to be a rare Renoir charcoal drawing, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, for just $12 at a local art auction.ABC news reported that Heidi Markow, who owns an antiques business in the state, found the item at a collector's auction in Montgomery county in January. Continue reading...

Former presidential candidate writes op-ed excoriating Signal leak and White House's dangerous' actions

Bangkok declared a disaster area and Myanmar's ruling junta makes rare call for aid after 7.7-magnitude quake. Plus, 200 anti-Musk protests to take place globally on Saturday

After the onePulse Foundation aimed too high and folded, the City of Orlando stepped in to get the process under wayThere were times when Patty Sheehan doubted a memorial to the victims would ever be built at the site of Orlando's Pulse nightclub, where 49 people lost their lives in 2016 in what was then the country's deadliest mass shooting.Among the lowest points for the long-serving city commissioner was when she discovered that a gift shop was included in an ambitious original proposal for a museum to remember the survivors and those killed when a lone gunman claiming allegiance to Islamic State terrorists attacked the gay club. Continue reading...

Immigrants have played a central role to the revival of Middletown, Ohio, while the vice-president has made criticizing immigrants a main theme of his political careerWhen Daniel Cardenas from Coahuila, Mexico, first arrived in Middletown, a post-industrial city of 50,000 people in south-west Ohio, he was immediately enamored.It's a small town with friendly people. You have shops, big stores; there's no traffic," he says. Continue reading...

The widely reviled veep and his wife may not see much of the island they'd like to annex, but the US military base will be lovely at this time of yearThere's a Gerard Butler movie called Greenland, which - via a series of cataclysmic events handled incredibly Butlerishly - ends with Gerard cocooned in a remote secure bunker in Greenland. As the week has worn on, this has increasingly become the mood of today's supposedly super-fun tourist trip to Greenland by the second lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and her husband, the vice-president, JD Vance. Who, come to think of it, does actually look like the Cabbage Patch Gerard Butler.Anyway: Greenland. Like I say, the trip has evolved this week both in style and substance. Originally, it was announced that the second lady was going to take one of her sons, immerse herself in various local events - she's apparently simply fascinated by Greenland's culture - and attend the famous Avannaata Qimussersua dog sled race. No more. Now, it's her husband instead of her son, and the Vances are only going to a military facility. This is a little bit like announcing you're travelling to Kyoto to see the blossoms, then recalibrating" your trip so that all you'll actually be taking in is a tour of the storage facility where they keep the most boring documents from the signing of the 1997 climate protocol. Extremely important, no doubt - and extremely, extremely boring. Or as the White House has chosen to characterise this shift in emphasis: The Second Lady is proud to visit the Pituffik Space Base with her husband to learn more about Arctic security and the great work of the Space Base." It is unclear at time of writing if Pituffik has spa facilities. Presumably it's got something of a year-round apres-ski vibe.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

JD Vance to lead plan as Trump says there's been concerted' effort to rewrite US history with distorted narrative'Donald Trump has ordered an overhaul to the Smithsonian Institution, claiming he will eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology" from the world's largest museum, education and research complex.In an executive order issued on Thursday, the president said there had been a concerted and widespread" effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing objective facts" with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth". Continue reading...