US news | The Guardian

Colorado man arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes and assault as hostility to journalists risesA Colorado man attacked a TV news reporter while asking if he was a citizen and taunting him that this was life now in the US with Donald Trump's second presidency looming, criminal court documents allege.The man, Patrick Thomas Egan, was arrested on 18 December in Grand Junction on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second-degree assault and harassment.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

Witnesses say Robert Bobby' Cavanaugh struck with pipe after trying to stop neighbor abusing dog on Christmas EveA reputed animal lover from Michigan was reportedly beaten to death while trying to stop his neighbor from beating a dog on Christmas Eve, according to authorities and people who knew the victim.Robert Bobby" Cavanaugh, 60, was riding his bicycle through his mobile home community in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights when he noticed a fellow resident physically abusing a dog, neighbors of the men told the local Fox affiliate. Continue reading...

Amid a US mental health crisis, police officers, firefighters and paramedics are flying to Mexico for treatments they say are transformativeIn mid-September, after the fire season in the American west largely went quiet but before hurricanes ravaged the south-east, seven first responders from across the US traveled to Mexico seeking a therapy they hoped would transform their lives.They had embarked on a sort of pilgrimage, journeying thousands of miles to an airy villa outside the humid beachside city of Puerto Vallarta, where over the course of three days a team would guide them through ceremonies with psilocybin, the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT and tobacco. Continue reading...

National Weather Service says severe storm system is moving east through Alabama and into GeorgiaAt least two people were killed and six more injured as several tornadoes touched down in Texas and Mississippi on Saturday, damaging homes and flipping vehicles as the storm system moved east across Alabama early on Sunday.The US National Weather Service (NWS)'s severe storm tracker indicated the system was moving east through Alabama into Georgia shortly before 4am. The agency issued severe thunderstorm warnings with the possibility of tornadoes in western Georgia and the north-western tip of Florida directly above the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading...

It all seems like political theatre of the absurd - but the disrupter-in-chief has a habit of making the unthinkable inevitableMerry Christmas," Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Christmas Day with a photo of himself and his wife, Melania. So far, so traditional. But the US president-elect was just getting started.In another post, Trump wished merry Christmas to all including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama canal". He poked fun at the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and claimed the US could annex Canada as its 51st state. For good measure, he addressed the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the US to be there, and we will!" Continue reading...

Years torturing yourself before a blank page are followed by months of scrambling for publicity, followed by oblivionThere are only two types of people who make the mistake of writing a book: non-writers, who don't know any better; and writers, who can never be happy and therefore must always seek out pain in order to feel alive. Either way, every book is the product of suffering. The best thing a new author can hope for is to discover that he is a masochist.After two decades as a journalist, I published my first book in 2024. This does not make me special. In the same way that people in relationships often wake up one day married with kids due purely to peer pressure, all professional writers bear the burden of the expectation that they will write a book. With each passing year, those who haven't done so are regarded with increasing suspicion. Typing all those words, but not a single book? Why, don't you have anything to say?Hamilton Nolan is the author of The Hammer: Power, Inequality and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Continue reading...

As democracy's opponents peddle hate, anger and division, our job is to act like citizens of a better countrySo, 2025... Will you finish us off or just leave us with ineradicable psychic and emotional scarring? Will our hyper-capitalist special economic zones ooze out to meet our hyper-capitalist freeports and offer us exciting new opportunities to be indentured serfs, or work abroad as trafficked persons, or perhaps just lurk dangerously in the depths of the very toxic harbour sludge that provoked our mutation into new, nauseating life forms. I hope I get fangs. I've always wanted fangs. And a tail.Like many of you, I'm unsure if 2025 will be able to scar me emotionally - after the past decade, my soul already looks like Deadpool. That's not the peak cute Ryan Reynolds at the start of the movie, or the snazzy mask and cool moves - I mean the naked wealed and welted freak with the face of a Halloween pumpkin in late December. What's left to scar, 2025?AL Kennedy's new novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, is published by Saraband on 9 January Continue reading...

As Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepares for possible negotiations, friends and neighbours should be gearing up for industrial warfareWhenever I come to Ukraine, I find words that have lost their essence elsewhere swell again with meaning. The fight for freedom" is not a pretentious slogan here, but just what you do every day. Sovereignty" is not a slippery abstraction, but the difference between deciding your own fate or having it decreed in Moscow.It's also in Ukraine that one realises that freedom" and sovereignty" exist in a collaborative relationship with others. Ukraine is now defending its neighbours' freedom from an advancing Russia. Kyiv's resistance is benefiting Taiwan's freedom, too. Meanwhile, without help - especially from America - Ukraine would still fight on but, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admits, would find it hard. As speculations about negotiations and potential peace deals loom over 2025, the precise meaning of Ukraine's relationships will need to be defined. What does being an ally" really mean today? What is a true security order"? Will peace just mean, in the words of Olga Myrovych, CEO of the Lviv Media Forum, that Ukraine should rest in peace"? Continue reading...

How can I be a better and more productive parent?I will stop complaining about the task of opening Chupa Chups lollipops whose wrappers were clearly spun from plastic by the T-1000 from Terminator 2. Or the difficulty of reading, and remembering, each of the various all the emails I get from the school about all 136 non-uniform days that take place each calendar year.I will cease moaning about the horrors of parenting while sick myself, in the manner of someone who believes there is a government department that should be swooping in to take my place, or the chore of getting my children to eat anything other than cheesy pasta and cake, and the attendant hardship of having to suffer their constant requests for more pasta and more cake. Continue reading...

Lack of faith in political leaders is leading the socially disaffected to be seduced by violenceTaleb al-Abdulmohsen, the alleged perpetrator of the horror attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, does not, Germany's interior minister, Nancy Faeser, observed, fit any existing mould". He had acted in an unbelievably cruel and brutal manner, like an Islamist terrorist, though he was clearly ideologically hostile to Islam".Faeser is not alone in her confusion about how to understand Abdulmohsen.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Film star's floundering performance in The Tempest exposes flaw in theatreland's reliance on big namesIn 1986, Sigourney Weaver completed her second Alien movie and returned to New York's off-Broadway scene to prove she could do Shakespeare. For Aliens, she received an Academy Award nomination.For Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, she received this review from the New York Times: The Merchant of Venice marks the local Shakespearean debut, in the role of Portia, of Sigourney Weaver and, in all candidness, this is not Ms Weaver's finest three and one-quarter hours... Together, the director and star seem disoriented by Shakespeare." Continue reading...

Firetruck drove around rail crossing arms after waiting for earlier train to pass, according to person briefed on detailsThree firefighters and a dozen passengers were injured in Florida on Saturday after a firetruck drove around rail crossing arms and into the path of a high-speed passenger train after having waited for a previous train to pass, according to a person briefed on what happened.The crash happened at 10.45am in crowded downtown Delray Beach, multiple news outlets reported. In the aftermath, the Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front destroyed, about a block away from the Delray Beach fire rescue truck. Its ladder was ripped off and landed in the grass several yards away, the Sun Sentinel reported. Continue reading...

Circle K in Cottonwood, California, where ticket was sold celebrates $1m bonus as winner remains unknownThe new year will ring in brightly for a lucky Mega Millions winner in California: after three months of the top lottery prize rolling over, a ticket worth $1.22bn matched all six numbers in Friday night's drawing, according to the lottery's website.The winning ticket was sold at the Circle K in Cottonwood, a rural town of about 6,000 people roughly 145 miles (233km) north of Sacramento just off Interstate 5 in Shasta county. The winning numbers, including the Mega, were 3, 7, 37, 49, 55 and 6. Continue reading...

Remarks follow social media posts from Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who vowed to go to war' to defend programDonald Trump on Saturday sided with Elon Musk, a key supporter and billionaire tech CEO, in a public dispute over the use of the H-1B visa, saying he fully backs the program for foreign tech workers opposed by some of his supporters.Trump's remarks followed a series of social media posts from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, who vowed late Friday to go to war" to defend the visa program for foreign tech workers. Continue reading...

Parents believe San Francisco police lack ability to conduct thorough investigation into multifaceted casePoornima Ramarao greeted everyone with a smile as they offered condolences for the death of her son, Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower who was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on 26 November.I am not grieving," she told a small group of friends at a vigil held for Balaji in Milpitas, California, a city about 50 miles (80km) south-east of San Francisco. I have become numb." Continue reading...

Outgoing representative, whose assessment of campaign now feels prescient, saddened to be vindicatedDean Phillips, the Democratic representative from Minnesota who bucked his party to become the only elected official to challenge Joe Biden for the Democratic primary earlier this year, has said he is saddened" by the accuracy of his prediction at the time that the outgoing president could not win re-election.If what I feel now is vindication, it's awfully unsatisfying," Phillips told Politico, adding: The fact was, he was not in a position to win. The fact was his approval numbers were historically low. The fact was his physical decline was real." Continue reading...

Child had run off from family in a split second' as they admired lava within caldera at sunset on 23 DecemberHawaii national park rangers have reissued warnings about volcano tourism after a small child wandered off and came within feet of a 400ft cliff near the rim of Klauea volcano, whose latest eruption had begun on 23 December.The hazards that coincide with an eruption are dangerous, and we have safety measures in place including closed areas, barriers, closure signs and traffic management," said park superintendent Rhonda Loh in a statement. Continue reading...

Plots and sprigged muslin aside, the author's enduring legacy also lies in her relevance as a foil for modern moresFor some, it will be enough merely to re-read Persuasion, and thence to cry yet again at Captain Wentworth's declaration of utmost love for Anne Elliot. But during the many and various celebrations in 2025 that will mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, others, it seems, are planning to take a rather more full-hearted approach. Be warned: there will be breeches.In Bath, where Austen took up residence in 1801, a series of costume balls are to be staged, one with a seaside theme inspired by the uncompleted Sanditon. At Chawton in Hampshire, where she lived with her mother and sister Cassandra from 1809, festivals will be devoted to Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma, the latter to include a Dress Up Day, should you happen to have a sprigged muslin gown hanging at the back of your wardrobe. Continue reading...

Leading FFF teams include Donald Trump's Mad Angry Geezers Athletic (Maga) and Vladimir Putin's Greater Russia United (GRU)It's been a gloomy old year, often reflected in this space - so maybe it's time to inject some festive cheer with an exciting new Swiftian parlour game: Fantasy Football for Fascists (FFF). Ideal for dictators, autocrats, strongmen, neo-Stalinists, far-right nationalist-populists or just students of geopolitics, it's fanatical fun for all the family!Under conventional fantasy football rules, imaginary teams are composed of real-life players from the Premier League. In FFF, the principal players are typically politicians and public figures who exhibit extreme totalitarian tendencies. Leading FFF teams include Donald Trump's Mad Angry Geezers Athletic (Maga) and Vladimir Putin's Greater Russia United (GRU). China has the Xi XI. Continue reading...

President also regrets picking Merrick Garland for attorney general, as he was slow to prosecute Trump for January 6Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year's presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month's election - despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general - reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden's son Hunter. Continue reading...

Judge says coffee giant has no standing in appeal of NRLP finding it illegally fired two workers for trying to unionizeA federal appeals court has largely rejected Starbucks' appeal of a National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) finding that the coffee chain illegally fired two Philadelphia baristas because they wanted to organize a union.The third US circuit court of appeals said the coffee shop giant lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of administrative law judges of the NRLB, the government agency that is set up to enforce labor laws in the US concerning labor practices and collective bargaining. Continue reading...

Organizers try to pre-empt action by incoming president to constrict or eliminate' labor rightsStudent workers are bracing for the incoming Trump administration to constrict or eliminate" their labor rights, after a surge in union organizing on college campuses.Nearly 45,000 student employees formed unions between 2022 to 2024 between 44 bargaining units. As of earlier this year, an estimated 38% of all graduate student employees in the US were unionized. Continue reading...

It's now time to hold space' for everything that happened in 2024 with a list - so here are 10 of the biggest stories from the year in patriarchy2024 was a very demure, very mindful, very dystopian sort of year. I started last year's annual roundup by noting that it had been the hottest year on record and ... guess what? 2024 has now surpassed 2023 as the hottest year ever. Many of the same extreme themes from last year have also persisted: anti-abortion activists are still trying to roll back reproductive rights in the US and the horrific situation for women in Iran and Afghanistan has only got worse.Meanwhile Gaza is still being destroyed, and - despite the fact that an increasing number of experts are terming the bombardment a genocide" - the US is continuing to enable the destruction and much of the world is still continuing to look away. The civil war in Sudan, which started last April, has also spread catastrophically, with women and girls bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis. Continue reading...

President-elect's agenda and Project 2025 playbook align in stripping Corporation for Public Broadcasting's licenseOn the campaign trail this year, Donald Trump routinely criticized US media. The president-elect called for CBS to be stripped of its broadcast license after it aired an interview with Kamala Harris, refused to participate in an interview with 60 Minutes and routinely called journalists the enemy of the people".But perhaps no American media has attracted as much ire from the president-elect as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - a non-profit corporation created by federal law in 1967 to distribute funding to public media organizations like PBS and NPR. Continue reading...

A number of marketplaces have sprung up seeking to make use of anti-establishment fervor - are they here to stay?Among the many odd things to come out of Donald Trump's political movement - see ear bandages, doomed boat rallies and rubbish dancing - one that could be here to stay is more prosaic: the creation of a series of rightwing marketplaces and products seeking to capitalize on anti-establishment fervor.In recent years a number of platforms have sprung up to sell conservative-made items, from anti-woke" dog food to pro-America lipstick, in a pushback against what they claim is cancel culture" in the US - and what others might see as a fairly cynical attempt to cash in on rightwing Americans' political beliefs. Continue reading...

Skye Perryman and her progressive coalition are preparing to fight in court and in the public square against Project 2025 and other foesProgressive groups are preparing a concerted fightback against Donald Trump and Project 2025, the vast far-right policy plan, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, which promises slashing reform to all areas of government when the president-elect returns to power next month.Skye Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, will help lead that fightback via Democracy 2025, a new coalition of litigation, advocacy and policy groups" designed to deploy swift legal defenses" - an effort informed by, but meant to be stronger than, the scramble Trump prompted in 2017, the year Democracy Forward formed. Continue reading...

Trump's eerily familiar evocations of the enemy within' may be harder to shake off than the man who targeted my parentsThe rise of Donald Trump aroused in me an old fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both McCarthy and Trump rose to power as demagogues who fed on the American public's fear of enemies within". My family had cause to fear on the biggest of these counts: my parents were communists from an early age, although they had quit the party in 1939 after Hitler's pact with Stalin. In the heyday of US power, families such as mine were persecuted for a cause in which they no longer believed. We developed ways to avoid or resist persecution that worked pretty well, and I think these help to illuminate the combat that is to come with Trumpism.Some connections between McCarthy and Trump are straightforward, both having been charismatic performers with a base of willing believers, both exploiting patriotism, both making up facts" on the spur of the moment. There is a personal bridge between the two men that is a little more complicated, and perhaps more revealing. The lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn served as McCarthy's chief counsel and later as an adviser to the young Donald Trump. Cohn was an expert in the techniques of public humiliation, of firing people and of surveilling private lives. Cohn suggested to McCarthy, for instance, to wave lists of hundreds of foreign infiltrators and communist spies in front of a gullible press - lists that proved to be blank sheets of paper. Cohn counselled Trump on how to bribe and intimidate New York politicians when the young property mogul encountered rough weather in business. The Roy Cohn who later featured in Tony Kushner's play Angels in America was an accurate picture of the real, combative but self-hating man. Though Cohn died of an Aids-related illness in 1986, he denied to the end that he was gay and seemingly sought to appease his inner demons by aggressing others.Richard Sennett chairs the London Centre for the Humanities Continue reading...

Former housing secretary Julian Castro says Tom Homan embodies dark heart' of incoming administrationJulian Castro, the former US housing secretary, has accused Donald Trump's incoming border enforcement chief of ushering in cruelty part two" towards migrants arriving in America under the president-elect's planned border policies.Speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Castro sharply criticised Tom Homan, Trump's newly appointed border czar", over his comments about family detention centers and the separation of migrant families. Continue reading...

Last surviving member of USS Utah, moored at the harbor when the attack took place, died after a bout of pneumoniaWarren Upton, the oldest living survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the last remaining survivor of the USS Utah, has died. He was 105.Upton died on Wednesday at a hospital in Los Gatos, California, after suffering a bout of pneumonia, said Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors. Continue reading...

Workers who reported symptoms of the illness often faced delayed or denied care and struggled to access benefitsA newly declassified US Senate report found that the CIA's handling of mysterious health incidents known as Havana syndrome has been flawed and marred by inconsistent medical care, delayed compensation and communication failures - all while foreign adversaries remain very unlikely" to be responsible.Many cases of the syndrome have been reported, mostly among US officials posted abroad, and the phenomenon has led to theories they had been targeted by a hitherto unknown weapon using directed energy of some sort wielded by a hostile power. Continue reading...

Americans point to coverage denials and steep profits from insurance industry after Brian Thompson's killingIn a new poll, more than two-thirds of respondents said they believed denials of coverage and profits in the health insurance industry were partially responsible for the killing of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO, in early December.Thompson was shot dead on the streets of Manhattan. His killer fled, sparking a nationwide manhunt, which ended when Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged with the killing after being arrested in a Pennsylvania McDonald's. Mangione's alleged writings indicated that he was angry at the US healthcare industry and saw it as exploitative. Continue reading...

Grand jury upgrades charges against Sebastian Zapeta, 33, with possibility of life sentence without parole if convictedA Brooklyn grand jury has voted to upgrade the charges against Sebastian Zapeta, the man accused of setting fire to a subway passenger last week, to first-degree murder, meaning that the 33-year suspect is facing life without parole if convicted.It's the most serious statute in New York state law, and my office is very confident about the evidence in this case and our ability to hold Zapeta accountable," the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, told reporters after a hearing in Brooklyn criminal court on Friday. Continue reading...

Robert Brooks died after 9 December encounter captured by cameras worn by four of 14 corrections officers presentFootage from body cameras worn by four of more than a dozen correction officers present when the New York prisoner Robert Brooks was allegedly assaulted has been released by the state attorney general's office.Fourteen corrections department employees - two sergeants, 10 correction officers and a nurse - were suspended earlier this month pending the outcome of investigations after Brooks, 43, died following the 9 December encounter. Continue reading...

Security assistance package in works as North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk after Putin-Kim agreementThe Biden administration is pledging to approve fresh military aid to Ukraine in the coming days, including crucial air defense systems, as North Korean forces face mounting casualties in their first major deployment to a European conflict.John Kirby, the US national security communications adviser, told reporters on Friday that in just the last week North Korean troops had suffered more than 1,000 casualties in what he referred to as failed human wave" assaults near the Kursk border-region, which confirms similar figures reported by South Korea. Continue reading...

Over the holidays, this column will explore next year's urgent issues. Today we look at why an unqualified belief in nuclear deterrence can't keep us safeNext November marks 40 years since the US president Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought". The statement was striking - not least because their militaries were pouring billions into preparing for an unwinnable conflict.A year later, at Reykjavik, the two came tantalisingly close to eliminating nuclear weapons entirely. That historic chance slipped away over Reagan's insistence on his unproven Star Wars" missile defence system. The moment passed, but its lesson endures: disarmament demands courage - and compromise. Continue reading...

Blaze engulfed landmark building where Jim Morrison and bandmates posed for a photograph for their 1970 LPFlames engulfed the historic Morrison Hotel, featured on the cover of The Doors' 1970 album of the same name, after a fire hit the landmark downtown Los Angeles building.More than 100 firefighters responded to the fire, which began around 11am Thursday, and had the burn under control in under two hours. Several dozen people inside were able to escape, including possible squatters and three people rescued by firefighters on the third floor. Continue reading...

Nearly 900 flights have been cancelled already as tornado watches are issued in Texas and LouisianaAs the US braces for one of its busiest travel weekends of the year, the threat of severe weather has already led to hundreds of flight cancellations.Tornado watches were issued in the southern states of Texas and Louisiana on Thursday, CNN reported. In Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at two airports, CBS reported. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas activated emergency response resources in the state on Thursday. Continue reading...

So-called moderates are mimicking populist demagogues, with potentially disastrous consequencesIt was once known as the centre right", and this was the year it definitively perished. It never had a coherent political philosophy, but it tended to blend deference to the perceived needs of large business interests, the championing of so-called traditional values that were actually longstanding prejudices, and admiration for established institutions. Above all else, it supposedly offered a cordon sanitaire, preventing anything further to the right from acquiring political legitimacy.That hasn't quite worked to plan. Nigel Farage now claims his populist-right Reform party has a higher membership than the Tories: if true, it is the first time in British history that members of a rightwing rival have outnumbered the Conservative party's. Nearly two decades ago, then Tory leader, David Cameron, dismissed Farage's Ukip as fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly"; but today, Cameron's party has ceded ideological ground to its challengers and the current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, is fighting Reform on Farage's terrain.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

William Webster writes in letter to senators that the safety of the American people ... depends on it'William Webster, the only man to head both the FBI and the CIA, has urged the US Senate to reject Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump's nominees as directors of the bureau and national intelligence, arguing that they are unqualified.Writing to senators, Webster, who is aged 100 and who was appointed by both Democrat and Republican presidents, called on them to weigh the critical importance of nonpartisan leadership and experience" and suggested that Patel and Gabbard possessed neither attribute. Continue reading...

Athena, a four-year old German shepherd, pulled off a Christmas Eve miracle when she rang home after 2amA Florida dog missing for more than a week came home on Christmas Eve and rang its owner's doorbell to announce its return.It was about 2.30am. She came pawing at the door, ringing the doorbell," Brooke Comer told local television station KSBW, which was Christmas Eve. And then that morning I woke up to - she had made it on everybody's [doorbell] camera." Continue reading...

They've been around for ever; now they're running the US. And beneath all the podcasts and punching lie questions of grievance, self-ownership and self-expressionA creature of various talents, and the owner of at least three types of shirt, the Great American Bro can take different forms.The finance bro, for example, favours a Patagonia power vest over his button-ups. The brocialist still thinks Bernie would have won. The gym bro likes to wear the tightest vest he can find, and has biceps you can crack a walnut with. Whatever his particular vibe, however, the bro is a pack animal, most comfortable when surrounded with a group of people who look and act just like him. Continue reading...