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The first of its kind in the US, a new traffic toll in Manhattan has produced impressive early results while facing looming challengesEvery week, Stan Avedon drives across lower Manhattan, moving bikes between the two NYC Velo shops he's managed for the last 15 years. What used to be a grinding crawl through some of the world's worst traffic is noticeably less painful lately. It's like night and day," he said.Avedon's transformed commute is the result of the most ambitious policy to hit New York in recent memory. Starting 5 January, drivers entering lower Manhattan began paying a $9 congestiontoll aimed at deterring drivers and raise desperately needed funds for the city's deteriorating public transit system. Continue reading...

The administration lied to obscure a genocide. Now a former spokesperson is revealing the disconnect between words and realityPoliticians lie, and the people around them do too. When it's convenient - when the whole world is pulsing with revulsion, for example - they begin to reveal flavors of the truth.The Biden administration lied more than most, its public-facing members particularly. Its policy in Palestine was to embrace the Israelis in a bear hug" - to smother them with love. And there's thin cover for a genocide beyond lies.Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace Continue reading...

Chain has long maintained relationship with undocumented laborers who gather in parking lots, hoping to get hired for a day of painting or roofingThe white vans zipped into the parking lot of the Home Depot in central Los Angeles.Pedro watched from the corner as masked federal immigration agents emerged before grabbing and handcuffing people. Continue reading...

Vance Boelter accused of killing Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding John Hoffman and his wife. Plus, why a professor of fascism left the US

The budget bill was a reminder: the president and House speaker don't care about lawmakers' views. Why not just quit?Like soldiers in a well-disciplined army, Republican members of US Congress do whatever Commander Donald Trump demands. While the foot soldiers may occasionally grumble, they quickly fall in line when Trump intervenes.Republican representatives go through contortions to satisfy the bully in the White House: we hated deficits, goes the party orthodoxy, but now we vote for adding trillions to the deficit; we supported Ukraine, but now we cozy up to the Russians; we scrutinized cabinet nominees, but now we give our advice and consent" to a cabinet of knaves and charlatans.David Kirp is professor emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley Continue reading...

Spectacular violence like Trump's military parade and real violence like Melissa Hortman's assassination are part of a growing trendAmerica reached its apex of self-parody shortly after 7pm on 14 June 2025. In that moment, the background band at Donald Trump's military parade segued from Jump by Van Halen to Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival, just after the announcer explained that M777 howitzers are made out of titanium.Nobody, apparently, had considered the lyrics: Some folks are born, made to wave the flag, they're red, white and blue, and when the band plays Hail to the Chief, they point the cannon at you." If this was some kind of surreptitious protest by the musicians, I salute them, but given the time and the place, sheer obliviousness is a better explanation. The crowd, pretty thin, did their best imitation of a cheer. Continue reading...

The UN aid system for Gaza was safe and dignified. Today we're humiliated or hurt by those tasked with helping usTwelve-year-old Ahmad Zeidan's mother was shot and killed in front of him as she tried to secure food for her starving family at one of Gaza's new US-backed distribution points. He lay beside her body for hours, afraid to stand up and run because any movement might cause his death.His mother's death was one of many over the past few days at the hands of Israeli forces on the way to or at facilities operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). On Sunday 1 June, more than 30 were killed. On Monday 2 June, three were killed. On Tuesday 3 June, 27 were killed. Sunday 8 June, four killed. Tuesday 10 June, 17 killed. On Wednesday 11 June, 60 people were reported killed. Continue reading...

Losing credibility Netanyahu has acted to diminish Iran while he still can, and in doing so regain support from his alliesThere are two ways of looking at events in the Middle East over the past year and a half. One is that the response to 7 October 2023 was a break from the past. The attack by Hamas triggered an Israeli response so vengeful that it has been impossible to fit within the boundaries set by international laws or contain geographically - the genocide in Gaza, the invasion of southern Lebanon, the occupation of the buffer zone in southwestern Syria and airstrikes across that country, and now its attacks against Iran.Then there is the explanation that these events are part of a historical continuum. Regional peace was the result of a volatile status quo that was always vulnerable to disruption. It only looked tenable because it relied on a variety of factors that, working together, looked like a settlement. This fine balance has been tipped by an Israeli government that is now fixated on pursuing its own agenda, singlehandedly rewriting the future of the region in ways that it is unable to explain and unwilling to control.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Marci Shore made news around the world when her family moved to Canada. She discusses Trump, teaching history and how terror atomises societyShe finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She's an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a Slavicist", yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. It's kind of baffling," she says.In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, We Study Fascism, and We're Leaving the US". Continue reading...

Public opinion is clamouring for closer EU cooperation. The last thing we need is Ursula von der Leyen pandering to the far rightDonald Trump's America First" policies are undermining decades of transatlantic cooperation just as Putin's Russia destabilises Europe with direct military aggression. But these twin shocks have unintentionally accomplished something the EU institutions never could. They have made European integration feel not just important, but existential - a matter of democratic survival - for ordinary citizens.From Helsinki to Lisbon, people are suddenly experiencing the same existential unease. Trade wars, defence threats and military aggression don't respect borders. More and more Europeans now recognise that their small, individual nations cannot withstand simultaneous pressure from both Washington and Moscow. They find themselves caught between economic coercion and military intimidation.Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet professor of EU law at HEC Paris and the founder of The Good Lobby Continue reading...

Leaders will push Donald Trump to explain his confidence that there will be peace soon'. Key US politics stories from Sunday 15 June at a glanceAs heavy exchanges of missile fire continue and the death toll mounts on both sides, European leaders want to pin down Donald Trump on his Iran strategy - including getting a definitive response on whether he will use his influence over Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to have the warring parties call a ceasefire or instead let them continue fighting.Predicting peace soon" between Israel and Iran, Trump appeared to have learned little from his 2024 election boast that he could stop the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours". If Israel and Iran can be convinced to call a ceasefire, it might allow the rescheduling of US talks with Iran on its civil nuclear programme that had been set for Sunday but were cancelled after Israel launched its assault on Thursday night. Continue reading...

Malik Tillman scored twice in the first half in a dominant US performance to kick off their Gold Cup campaign7 min: A lot of great seats still available at PayPal Park - another major Concacaf game involving the US that fails to meet attendance expectations.5 min: Chance! Tillman plays through Patrick Agyemang, who beats his defender and the goalkeeper but his slow rolling effort ends up just wide. Had it gone it, he might have been flagged for offside - it looked like a close call from the broadcast. Continue reading...

Man in custody after Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, was apparently shot by member of event's peacekeeping teamA demonstrator who was shot on Saturday during Salt Lake City's No Kings" protest has died, Utah police said on Sunday afternoon.The man, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, had apparently been shot by a man who had been part of the event's peacekeeping team. Continue reading...

The European champions cruised to victory over Atletico, who ended the game with 10 menNovember seems a long time ago ...Paris Saint-Germain's disappointing Champions League campaign continued on Wednesday as they slumped to a last-gasp 2-1 home defeat by Atletico Madrid that left the Ligue 1 leaders in the elimination zone." Continue reading...

US officials say Israelis reported they had opportunity to kill Iranian leader, but Trump waved them off of planPresident Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we're not even talking about going after the political leadership," said one of the sources, a senior US administration official. Continue reading...

Pontiff addresses young people at baseball stadium on Saturday amid No Kings' protests across the countryPope Leo XIV, born in Dolton, Illinois, and a White Sox baseball fan, has been anointed by Chicagoans as the South Side Pope", appearing via video on Saturday at the White Sox ballpark to offer a message to young people.At a mass organized by the archdiocese of Chicago in honor of the new pope, attendees wore baseball jerseys while nuns in habits congregated near the entrance. Others dressed up in slacks and ties, and the sound of Pope parking!" echoed through a megaphone from a nearby parking lot. Continue reading...

Gunman believed to have left Minneapolis region after killing one legislator and wounding anotherThe hunt for the man suspected of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses while impersonating a police officer, killing one legislator and her husband, continued on Sunday more than 24 hours after the killings.Vance Boelter, 57, now on the FBI's most wanted list, is believed to have left the Minneapolis region after allegedly gunning down Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home, according to CNN. Boelter is also suspected of shooting Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their residence, gravely injuring them; a relative posted on Facebook that they were out of surgery and recovering. Continue reading...

Trump's army parade was neither the totalitarian North Korean spectacle that critics had grimly predicted, nor the triumph of Maga nationalism fans cravedOn Saturday, as a crowd of thousands of people near the Washington Monument listened, a loudspeaker dramatically announced the names of America's secretary of defense, vice-president and president. The final name received a modest roar that surely flushed the watching commander-in-chief with validation. With that, and with the boom of a 21-gun salute, the military parade that Donald Trump had coveted for years finally began.A protester, Nicky Sundt, kept a lonely and mostly silent vigil at the side of the road. She held a sign depicting a cartoon Trump brushing back his comb-over to reveal a swastika emblazoned on his forehead. The placard said Save our democracy". Standing near her - as a counterprotest to the counterprotest to the protest, or something," as one of them put it - a group of pro-Trump men held court. One was draped in an American flag. Another had a giant picture of Trump, in a crown, with the exhortation Trump for king". Continue reading...

The Guardian's Tom Silverstone speaks to peaceful protesters and local residents in Washington DC, who express a mixture of anger, concern and curiosity over the imposing military parade that marked the 250th anniversary of the US army and president Trump's birthday

Golfer has seemed irritated by elements of the media since completing the career grand slam but is that really a big deal?A snapshot of Rory McIlroy's new normal arrived the day before the USPGA Championship began. McIlroy's practice round at Quail Hollow was watched by more than 50, inside the ropes. Journalists, content creators, wannabe content creators ... everyone wanted not just a glimpse - you can get that from the bleachers - but a piece of golf's latest grandslam man. McIlroy played a hole while being interviewed for the tournament's main preview show. All soft, knockaround stuff but inevitably a distraction.It was difficult to shake the notion that Tiger Woods would never have tolerated such a scenario. It is also thankfully a truism that McIlroy is not Tiger Woods. The Northern Irishman's chatty, warm personality endears him to so many. In a non-tribal sport people root for Rory, none more so than at Augusta National when more that a decade of frustration ended amid euphoric April scenes. Hardened men shed tears in a media centre, no less. Continue reading...

Department's rapid response team is weaponizing the social platform to champion defense secretary and attack rivalsWhile it's true no president or political leader has ever used social media quite as prolifically as Donald Trump, no recent secretary of defense has ever weaponized X or any other platform, quite like former Fox & Friends weekend host, Pete Hegseth.Hegseth is actively reshaping the Pentagon in his own image since taking over, prompting a social media policy that has taken a dramatic turn towards supporting Hegseth's every move and public appearance. Continue reading...

Governor Tim Walz condemns politically motivated assassination' as search continues for Vance Luther BoelterA prominent Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband were killed and another Democratic state lawmaker and his wife were shot in the early hours of Saturday.State representative Melissa Hortman died, as has her husband, Mark, the state's governor, Tim Walz, confirmed at a press conference on Saturday. Walz said the shooting appears to be a politically motivated assassination". Hortman was the top Democrat in the Minnesota house and the former speaker. The Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were both shot multiple times and are out of surgery, and Walz said he was cautiously optimistic" both will survive. Continue reading...

The president has spent the past decade employing a familiar tactic. Accusing protesters of insurrection' is just the latest exampleDonald Trump and his allies wasted little time in branding the people protesting against immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles as insurrectionists". Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy - particularly the vindictive kind - spoke darkly of a violent insurrection". JD Vance, the vice-president, inveighed against insurrectionists carrying foreign flags" on the streets of the nation's second-biggest city.It didn't escape notice that an insurrection was exactly what the president was accused of instigating on 6 January 2021, when the flag being paraded through the Capitol was that of the Confederate secessionists. And that Trump hadn't shown quite the same enthusiasm for sending in the troops then.Chris Taylor is a subeditor at the Guardian US and author of The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and the Making of the Garifuna Continue reading...

Kennedy Center interim director says he would have consider running for California governor if Harris opts inDonald Trump loyalist Ric Grenell says he would have to" strongly consider running for California governor in 2026 if former vice-president Kamala Harris signs up to campaign for the position.Grenell - a foreign policy adviser to the president and the interim director of Washington DC's John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - made the remark during an interview airing Sunday on the Politico podcast The Conversation with Dasha Burns. Continue reading...

With time, events in Los Angeles of the past week may come to be seen as the anti-immigrant zealot's ultimate revengeWith Los Angeles convulsed by confrontation between pro-migrant protesters and military units dispatched by Donald Trump, no figure apart from the president has loomed larger than Stephen Miller.As the man in the Oval Office, it is Trump who has absorbed the accusations of authoritarianism for usurping the powers of California's government after deploying 4,000 national guard troops and 700 active marines on to the streets of a city that is home to more undocumented immigrants than any other in the US. Continue reading...

Budding scholars pursue overseas jobs amid attacks on education and research, prompting fears of an American brain drainEric Schuster was over the moon when he landed a lab assistant position in a coral reef biology lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO). The 23-year-old had recently graduated with a bachelor's degree in nanoengineering from the University of California, San Diego, into a fiercely competitive job market. He felt like he'd struck gold.But the relentless cuts to scientific research and attacks on higher education by the Trump administration have turned what felt like a promising academic future into unstable ground. Continue reading...

Foreigners treated as enemies, judges under attack: the signs are everywhere in the US. But there are still reasons to hopeLike so many others, I watched the video of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student at Tufts University, as she was surrounded by men dressed in black, some wearing masks. They carried guns. One grabbed her by the collar. The men surrounded her, and one handcuffed her. You can hear her short shrieks of fear.She must have been terrified. I know I was when, as a 19-year-old student, I was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires by members of an irregular taskforce. I know what it feels like and I know what it portends.Miriam Lewin is a leading Argentine journalist and survivor of the dictatorship. She is the author of six books, including Iosi, the Remorseful Spy forthcoming in English in July 2025 (Seven Stories Press). A seven episode podcast about Miriam Lewin's experience as a prisoner of the state and her fight for justice is titled The Burden: Avenger Continue reading...

Some of the world's most powerful firms have quietly toed the line set by the administration to avoid the president's wrathFrom vast protests and all-caps social media posts to acrimonious legislative hearings and pugnacious White House statements, Washington has perhaps never been noisier. But since Donald Trump's return to office, one corner of civil society has been almost eerily quiet.Those leading corporate America rapidly turned down the volume after the president's re-election. Gone are the days of political and social interventions, highly publicized diversity initiatives and donations to important causes. Continue reading...

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Demonstrators at the No Kings' protest across the US tell the Guardian why they took the streets to protestMillions of protestors gathered across the US on Saturday across thousands of events to protest against Donald Trump's administration in a planned series of events called No Kings".Organized by a coalition of groups, the demonstrations were largely peaceful, though they occurred on the same day Minnesota lawmakers were shot, and one killed, in political violence, and just a week after the federal government ordered military to descend on Los Angeles streets to quell protests there. Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. You can read our full report on the No Kings" demonstrations here and our report on Trump's military parade here.It will be a parade fit for a king - which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America.On Saturday, there will be tanks on the streets of the nation's capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army's 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump's 79th birthday.North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.These aren't parades to celebrate a victory and it's certainly not to celebrate the United States army's birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump's ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else. Continue reading...

The president seized on LA protests against immigration raids to deploy troops against civilians in the liberal bastion - a fight he had long been spoiling forHollywood. Silicon Valley. An agricultural sector that grows more than three-quarters of fruits and nuts in America. All contributed to April's news that California had officially overtaken Japan to become the fourth biggest economy in the world, its GDP of $4.1tn trailing only the entirety of the US, China and Germany.But two months later this superpower is locked in a bitter power struggle with Washington DC. Days of protests over immigration raids in Los Angeles prompted Donald Trump to deploy military forces against what he called insurrectionists" despite strenuous objections from state and local leaders. Continue reading...

In scenes that could have been set in Moscow, families queued to sit in helicopters, while tanks and robot dogs paraded Constition AvenueIt may have been billed as a military parade to celebrate the American military's history, but it said even more about the country's present and future under Donald Trump.Soldiers, tanks and even robot dogs paraded along Constitution Ave. on Saturday, as paratroopers swooped in from overhead and military aircraft buzzed past the Washington Monument for the first major military parade held in the US capital since the victory after the first Gulf War of 1991. Continue reading...

Thousands of soldiers, along with tanks and helicopters, march through National Mall on day president turned 79Donald Trump finally got his wish to hold a military parade in Washington DC on Saturday, after thousands of soldiers accompanied by tanks, aircraft and helicopters marched through the National Mall in a celebration of the army's 250th birthday, while across the country, millions of people protested against his administration.It was the first military parade in the nation's capital since 1991 - which celebrated the end of the Gulf war - and took place on the day Trump turned 79. The president had tried and failed to hold such an event during his first term, but made it happen just months into his second, albeit at what wound up being an especially tense moment for the country. Continue reading...

Officers on horseback clear area around federal building with batons and sticks and others fire foam rubber bulletsLos Angeles police moved aggressively to disperse the last of the crowds at Saturday's otherwise peaceful anti-Trump protest downtown, using officers on horseback to clear an area around a federal building with batons and wooden sticks. They fired tear canisters and foam rubber bullets when some of the demonstrators started to regroup.Hours after the main part of the protest had concluded and most of the participants and organizers had left, a crowd of a few dozen people congregated outside a federal office building, away from the approved protest zone, and began shouting at a line of stone-faced US marines standing guard outside the plate-glass entrance. Continue reading...

Melissa Hortman killed and John Hoffman wounded in two separate attacks carried out, police say, by same suspectEarly Saturday morning, Minnesota woke to the news of two targeted attacks on its lawmakers. A gunman killed the top Democratic state legislator, Melissa Hortman, and her husband, Mark, and injured another state legislator, John Hoffman, and his wife Yvette in the Minneapolis area.The suspect, Vance Boelter, remains at large. Continue reading...

Protesters demonstrate at about 2,000 sites nationwide on day US president holds military parade in WashingtonAs tanks and soldiers paraded through the streets of Washington on Saturday, several million people around the country turned out to protest against the excesses of Donald Trump's administration.The protests, dubbed No Kings", rook place at about 2,100 sites nationwide, from big cities to small towns. A coalition of more than 100 groups joined together to plan the protests, which are committed to a principle of nonviolence. Continue reading...

Millions turn out for No Kings' demonstrations; two Democratic state lawmakers shot in Minnesota- key US politics stories from Saturday 14 June 2025As tanks and soldiers paraded through the streets of Washington on Saturday, millions of people in more than 2,000 locations across the US took to the streets to protest against the excesses of Donald Trump and his administration.The No Kings" protests drew over 200,000 in New York and over 100,000 in Philadelphia, while in Los Angeles, where Trump has deployed military force over the past week, protesters gathered outside city hall with many wrapping themselves in American flags. Continue reading...