US news | The Guardian

Democratic and Republican vice-presidential candidates will face off on 1 October in unusually critical debateThe football coach and the Yale law guy" go head-to-head in New York City on Tuesday night, as two midwesterners with very different styles and vastly diverging messages slug it out over the future of the US.Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, faces the Republican senator from Ohio, JD Vance, in a vice-presidential debate that promises to be unusually significant in this white-hot election year. They will joust for 90 minutes under the moderation of CBS News as they seek to give their respective running mates - Kamala Harris and Donald Trump - a leg up to the White House. Continue reading...

The struggle between liberalism and reactionary strands of thought has gnawed away at the Tories since the party's dawnConservatism, the late philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, emerged into the modern world as a kind of yes but...'" response to liberalism. Conservatives, he observed, believe, like liberals, in the importance of the free market, of private property and of individual choice. They believe also in the overriding significance of community and tradition as setting limits to the reach of individualism. Liberalism, for Scruton, made sense only in the social context that conservatism defends".The relationship between these two philosophical wellsprings of conservatism has never been comfortable. The tension between the individualism of the market and private property and the communality of custom and tradition, between promethean capitalist development and the fetters of history and culture, has always gnawed away at the heart of conservatism. Continue reading...

Ex-president speaks in Prairie du Chien flanked by anti-immigrant posters and lobs insults at Harris and BidenDonald Trump spoke on Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti-immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a notch.Trump's speech in the small community of Prairie du Chien, where a Venezuelan in the US illegally was detained in September for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman and attacking her daughter, was unusually devoted almost entirely to undocumented immigrants. He wrongfully claimed that immigrants in the US are violent criminals, referring to them as stone-cold killers", monsters" and vile animals". Continue reading...

After earlier speech in Monroeville, Republican vice-presidential candidate vows to turn Pennsylvania red' in Newton. This blog is now closed.Tim Walz paid a visit to Ann Arbor to watch a football game between the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota.The Democratic vice-presidential nominee was greeted at the airport by University of Michigan students, who had arrived in a bus donning a banner that read Put Me In, Coach!"I would always tell people in campaigns: If you want a democracy after the election, you have to have an autocracy before the election," Carville said. Continue reading...

Flooding and landslides strike southern Appalachians after hurricane pummeled region and wreaked havocAt least 64 people have been confirmed dead and almost 3.5 million were without power on Saturday, after strong winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Helene wreaked unprecedented havoc across large swathes of the south-eastern United States.Historic flooding continued over parts of the southern Appalachians on Saturday, as first responders worked to reach stranded communities in trying conditions while local authorities began to assess the scale of the damage and displacement. Continue reading...

One of the nation's most storied golf courses is dealing with the aftermath of Helene, the former Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on FridayOne of the nation's most storied golf courses is dealing with the aftermath of Helene, the former Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Friday and was downgraded to a tropical depression as it continued its wrath into Georgia on Friday.Augusta National Golf Club chairman Fred Ridley said in a statement Saturday officials still are assessing how much damage was done to the iconic course, which has hosted the annual Masters Tournament since 1934. Augusta, Georgia, is located in the eastern portion of the state, along the border of South Carolina. Continue reading...

By acting with impunity and tearing up the rulebooks, warmonger leaders are setting an alarming precedentIt's a golden rule of politics that national leaders do not interfere in other countries' elections. Tell that to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who jumped into the middle of America's presidential campaign last week with both feet, wearing size 10 combat boots. The resulting, resounding thud could be heard as far away as Kyiv (which was perhaps the point).Visiting an ammunition factory in pivotal Pennsylvania, Ukraine's war-weary president told Republican nominee Donald Trump that, when it came to his appeaser's policy of cutting off arms supplies and accepting peace on Vladimir Putin's terms, he was talking out of his posterior. And Trump's oddball running mate, JD Vance, was just plain dangerous", he said.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...

Many people say they're living to 100-plus years. But research lauded with an Ig Nobel prize shows some claims are spuriousEarlier this month, an unusual prize ceremony got under way. Five Nobel laureates gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not to receive further accolades themselves, but to present the Ig Nobel prizes. Now in their 34th year, these are awarded to researchers whose discoveries make people laugh, then think".One winner was Saul Justin Newman, whose research probing the quality of demographic data certainly made me laugh and think. Places with surprising clusters of individuals reaching remarkable ages, with centenarians or even supercentenarians (aged 110+) galore, attract lots of attention. Debates focus on their secrets - from Mediterranean diets to superior genetics.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...

Officials say purge violates quiet period provision' prohibiting name removals 90 days before federal electionThe US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Friday against Alabama and its top election official, accusing the state of illegally purging people from voter rolls too close to the November election.Federal officials said the purge violates the quiet period provision" of the National Voter Registration Act that prohibits the systemic removal of names from voter rolls 90 days before a federal election. Continue reading...

A majority of Black residents of key Michigan city don't cast a ballot, but activists and churches are trying to change thatThe largest bloc of registered voters in the city of Saginaw has yet to make a choice between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and probably never will. A majority of Black residents of the biggest city in the most closely contested county of the battleground state of Michigan simply don't vote.To the frustration of civil rights activists and Democratic politicians struggling to secure every ballot in a state that the Harris campaign sees as crucial to victory, more than half of Saginaw city's population has long been unpersuaded that elections make much of a difference to their lives. Continue reading...

Embattled Republican lieutenant governor was expected to return to the campaign trail on SaturdayNorth Carolina's lieutenant governor, Republican Mark Robinson, received burns on Friday night while attending a truck show as he was campaigning for governor, his campaign said.Robinson was making an appearance at the Mayberry truck show in Mount Airy when he was injured, campaign spokesperson Mike Lonergan said in a statement. Continue reading...

Guilfoyle has a personal interest in tearing the Democrat down at a time when Trump's allies have warned him to lay off the attacks - but it isn't very successfulDonald Trump has hired tremendous numbers of women" in his time. Tremendous numbers! We know this not from looking at the actual data, which somewhat contradicts these claims, but because he has told us so himself. Continue reading...

Next month, New College of Florida will welcome activist and writer Steve Sailer, a proponent of scientific racism'New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a white supremacist" and a proponent of scientific racism", at a college-branded public event next month.New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo. That board in turn appointed DeSantis's close ally" Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary. Continue reading...

The vice-president and ex-president both have vowed to block US Steel from merging with Japan's NipponThe Monongahela River winds through the tight Mon Valley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, creating a main artery in the nation's industrial heart, where the steel and coal industries have driven the region's economy and shaped political landscapes since the late 19th century.In the weeks preceding the election, the region is once again playing an outsize role in determining the nation's political future. A controversial Biden-Harris administration plan to kill Pittsburgh-based US Steel's proposed sale to Japan's Nippon Steel is viewed in part as an election-year strategy to shore up critical union support in a must-win swing state. Continue reading...

While election almost certain to be decided by swing states, pollsters explain why growth in national polls is meaningfulKamala Harris has stretched her lead over Donald Trump in the US presidential election race, the latest polling averages show, even while the two candidates appear to be running neck-and-neck in most battleground states.The Guardian's newest poll tracker, based on a range of surveys conducted across a 10-day period, shows the vice-president and Democratic nominee at 48.2%, compared with 44.4% for Trump, the Republican candidate and former president - giving Harris a 3.6-point advantage. Continue reading...

I believed things he told me that I now understand to be ... lies,' Dave Hancock says in new Rittenhouse documentaryA former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to fucking murder" shoplifters outside a pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse - for whom he also worked as a security guard - on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Continue reading...

There is nothing wrong with mining content for data, but it has to be properly regulated and creators must be compensated

Netanyahu has his own reasons for prolonging the conflict, but many Israelis still want to see Hamas and Hezbollah neutralised

The South Siders' soul-sapping run, culminating Friday with the single-season losses record, is what happens when a disgraceful front office intersects with plain old bad luckWhen the history books are written, there will be all manner of different ways to describe the historic putridness of the 2024 Chicago White Sox. The unprecedented loss total will be one. The incomprehensibly bad performance of the team's position players will be another. The three separate losing streaks of 21, 14, and 12 games. There will be ample time for all of it. The White Sox lost their 121st game on Friday night, the most in a modern era that dates to 1901. They are also the worst team of that span by win percentage, sitting at 39-121 with two games left to play. After a scrappy home sweep of the Los Angeles Angels allowed them to avoid a 121st loss at home, the dam finally broke in a 4-1 road defeat to the playoff-bound Detroit Tigers.But maybe the most modern barometer of the White Sox catastrophe of 2024 is the media environment around the team. The club's rights-holding TV broadcasters have been at its throat all season. And as Chicago approached their milestone loss, the White Sox' own social media stopped bothering to tweet out the team's results (or they did until a late, unexpected winning streak). Their efforts turned out to be the only vaguely successful thing about the entire season: FINAL: can be found on the MLB app," one postgame post on X read. Another had this zinger: FINAL: the number of runs we scored was not greater than the number of runs they scored". Soon, there was only this: Continue reading...

Speaking in Arizona, vice-president seeks to turn one of her biggest vulnerabilities into a political strengthKamala Harris accused Donald Trump of playing political games" on immigration - his signature issue - as the vice-president sought to turn one of her biggest vulnerabilities into a political strength during a visit to the US-Mexico border on Friday.Speaking in the Arizona border town of Douglas, Harris declared the US both a sovereign nation" and a country of immigrants" and said as president, she would strengthen controls at the southern border, while working to fix our broken system of immigration". Continue reading...

This blog has closed. Read our latest story hereAppearing with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in New York on Friday, former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump said that he and Zelenskyy have a very good relationship" before going on to say: I also have a very good relationship with President Putin."I think if we win, we're going to get it resolved very quickly," Trump said, referring to Russia's war against Ukraine. Continue reading...

Ex-president complains search results unfairly favor Kamala Harris and display negative stories about himDonald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris.The complaint - the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived - came in an abrupt post on Truth Social. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed.

Two arrested in connection with vandalism in abandoned home owned by the son of Philadelphia Phillies co-ownerTwo people were arrested on Wednesday in connection with vandalism in an abandoned Hollywood Hills mansion owned by the son of a Philadelphia Phillies co-owner.John Powers Middleton, a film producer, owns a property that has long been left vacant and become a popular target for graffiti artists and squatters. Continue reading...

More than 50 patients and staff evacuated from Unicoi hospital in Erwin after deadly hurricane overwhelms areaMore than 50 hospital patients and staff were airlifted from the roof of the building in Tennessee on Friday afternoon in a dramatic rescue operation after flash flooding overwhelmed the area.An urgent evacuation was launched as the storm effects of Hurricane Helene were felt far and wide, with the state emergency agency and the national guard responding to the situation that quickly unfolded at Unicoi hospital in Erwin, Tennessee, about 100 miles outside Knoxville. Continue reading...

Beleaguered mayor in court as prosecutors allege Adams, 64, sought and accepted improper valuable benefits'

Former US president Donald Trump said he had a 'good relationship' with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday ahead of his meeting with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy, who stood alongside Trump, then intervened, saying, 'I hope you have more good relations with us,' gesturing between himself and Trump

Trump's running mate will speak at Lance Wallnau's event in campaign's latest link to extremist Christian right

Category 4 storm made landfall in Florida late on Thursday before weakening and moving through Georgia and the Carolinas Continue reading...

For those that ignored dire evacuation orders, a day of clean-up follows a night of traumatic fearThe warnings about Hurricane Helene were dire and for the residents of Taylor county on the Gulf coast of Florida they were necessary.A mandatory evacuation for Taylor county residents has been ordered," came the first message from local and state authorities. Continue reading...

There are clear reasons why women are running from Trump, but men are flocking to him - and it's vital to understand whyI hesitate to give JD Vance any ideas, but if American women were denied the vote, Donald Trump would be restored to the White House in a landslide. Similarly, if men were removed from the franchise, Kamala Harris would be swept into the Oval Office in an even bigger earthquake. As it is, the two are clashing in an election marked by a gulf so wide, the phrase gender gap" doesn't do it justice. In ways that go deeper than mere politics, and with implications for the world beyond the US, the presidential election is increasingly looking like a war between men and women.The numbers are stunning. An NBC poll this week found men favour Trump over Harris by 12 points, 52% to 40%. Among women, Harris leads Trump by 21 points: 58% to 37%. Put the two together and you have a gender chasm of 33 points. Men may not be from Mars and women may not be from Venus, but when it comes to choosing a US president, they are on different planets.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Sometimes you've got to make the most of your 15 minutes of fame

Voters in the swing state are fired up at the idea of electing the US's first Black Indian American female presidentLas Vegas's historic Westside has long been celebrated for its Black community's entrepreneurship, activism and resilience. The neighborhood became historic" when America's first racially integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1955, employing Black card dealers and chorus line dancers, and welcoming singers such as Sammy Davis Jr and Ella Fitzgerald to not only perform, but to dine and gamble. Today, campaign organizers for Kamala Harris hope the community will play a history-making role again in November.The 2024 presidential election could hinge on how Nevada swings. To win the key battleground state, Democrats will have to run up the score in Las Vegas to overcome deficits in rural counties and the evenly divided electorate in Reno. Continue reading...

We would like to hear about the hardest parts of making sure your kids are happy and healthyAmerica is a nation of remarkable wealth and resources. Per capita investments in education and health care are among the highest in the world. And yet across the US, millions of American children are denied the opportunity to thrive.Recent data shows sky high records of child poverty, with children of immigrants representing over 40% of kids living under the poverty line. Affordable childcare is increasingly hard to find and its cost has been outpaced by inflation. Continue reading...

Program signals possible change of strategy in the eternal war between New Yorkers and their least favorite neighborsNew York's seemingly eternal battle against its rodent population has taken a new twist after the city council greenlighted pilot schemes to deploy rat contraceptives in a new bid to curb their booming population.The Thursday-night vote means that in the next few months pilot programs will begin using ContraPest, a type of rodent birth control, that will be put in special containers aimed at encouraging the rats to ingest it. Continue reading...

On the ballot in November is a measure that will make it a state crime for migrants to cross into the US unofficiallySheriffs in four Arizona counties that sit along the border with Mexico have warned that if voters in November pass a measure to make it a state crime for migrants to cross into the US unofficially, they will have face problems enforcing the new law.Criticisms range from the law being unenforceable because of budget to it being racist", with negative comments coming from both Democrats and Republicans. Continue reading...

Judge faces lawsuit after forcing student to put on jail garments and handcuffs and enter isolated holding cellA Detroit judge who briefly detained a teenage girl who fell asleep in his courtroom during a school field trip to learn about the justice system was demoted to presiding over traffic court as he faces a federal lawsuit.Judge Kenneth King was moved to the state court's traffic division after the incident on 13 August. King was temporarily removed from the bench as he completed mandatory training following his actions. Continue reading...

Tens of thousands of titles, from dictionaries to Leonardo, are restricted across prisons - and its impact is palpableIn recent years the issue of book bans has become a major story in the US, often driven by socially conservative pressure groups, but nowhere has the impact of bans been felt more acutely than in America's enormous prison population, activists and campaigners say.Books can serve as vital connections to the outside world for incarcerated individuals, yet they are frequently censored in US prisons. Campaigners are advocating for public library catalogs to be accessible on carceral tablets. Continue reading...

Adams is bombastic, eccentric and allegedly ethically relaxed. This indictment does not come as a surpriseFor the first time in the modern history of New York City, a sitting mayor has been indicted.Eric Adams will now know the fate of Donald Trump - to be indicted and possibly convicted in a Manhattan courtroom. Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district, has unsealed a 57-page indictment that accused Adams of performing favors for Turkish foreign nationals after accepting more than $100,000 in international plane tickets and accommodations, as well as soliciting illegal donations from them. These donations generated public matching funds for his mayoral campaign in 2021. Continue reading...

Metals and PFAS linked to serious health issues are among compounds found, highlighting need for further scrutinyMore than 3,600 chemicals approved for food contact in packaging, kitchenware or food processing equipment have been found in humans, new peer-reviewed research has found, highlighting a little-regulated exposure risk to toxic substances.The chemicals have been found in human blood, hair or breast milk. Among them are compounds known to be highly toxic, like PFAS, bisphenol, metals, phthalates and volatile organic compounds. Many are linked to cancer, hormone disruption and other serious health issues. Continue reading...

Conservatives say voter registration processing is too slow, while voting rights groups are livid over drop box removalsA battleground Pennsylvania county with a history of election errors is facing heavy criticism from activists on both sides of the political spectrum over the way it is running its presidential vote in 2024.Conservative activists, who have dominated recent election board meetings, say the county isn't processing voter registrations fast enough - something county officials say is simply untrue. Voting rights groups, meanwhile, are furious over a recent decision by the county manager in Luzerne county in the north-eastern part of the state to get rid of ballot drop boxes. Continue reading...

Hurricane Helene made landfall along the Florida coast on Thursday night as a powerful and potentially disastrous category 4 storm, bringing chaos to a wide swathe of the Gulf coast and threatening high winds, storm surges and drenching rainfall. Helene was located about 70km east-southeast of Tallahassee, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 225km/h, the Miami-based UA National Hurricane Center said late on Thursday. The huge storm formed rapidly this week and strengthened as it careened across the warm waters of the Gulf, gathering speed. The National Hurricane Center has said Helene is now a tropical storm as it moves farther inland over Georgia but noted that 'life-threatening storm surges, winds and heavy rains continue'

This crisis is a humanitarian disaster that may destabilize the whole region. Does Biden have any red lines' left?Just after daybreak on Monday, dozens of US-made warplanes began raining bombs and missiles on Lebanon, killing more than 550 people and injuring 1,800 in the hours that followed. By day's end, Israel had carried out one of the most intense aerial bombardments in modern history. The Israeli fighter jets were sent by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, but they couldn't have gotten off the ground without the full support and complicity of Joe Biden over the past 11 months.The Israeli military said it bombed more than 1,600 targets throughout Lebanon that day, claiming it was targeting locations where Hezbollah stored rockets and other weapons it was firing at northern Israel. The death toll, which included 50 children and 94 women, was the country's highest single-day toll since Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended in 1990. Nearly 500,000 Lebanese civilians fled their homes in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa valley and other regions. Continue reading...

While Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels made headlines, scandals like this don't move the needle for US votersEarlier this year, at Donald Trump's hush-money trial, adult film star Stormy Daniels told jurors how at age 27, she met a 60-year-old Trump, whose wife had only recently given birth to their son, for what she thought was dinner. She arrived to find him in satin pyjamas and, during an encounter that included very brief" sex, the business magnate told Daniels that she reminded him of his daughter, Ivanka.I'm not dragging all this up again to put you off your dinner. I'm bringing it up to remind you that, while all these sordid details made headlines and generated jokes on late-night talkshows, they didn't move the needle with Trump's voters at all. His base, which includes evangelical Christians, simply didn't care. Nor were they bothered about Trump's association with Mark Robinson, the disgraced Republican candidate running to be North Carolina's next governor who was allegedly once active on a porn forum called Nude Africa where he boasted about being a perv". Continue reading...

This fling may have been consensual - but let's spare a thought for all the other women in media tainted by unfair associationAnyone who is not a moralist or kidding themselves will admit that a good piece of gossip is one of life's greatest pleasures. Gossip exposes the false sanctimony of the powerful: it reveals the smug and self-righteous to be grubby, selfish and embarrassing - just like the rest of us. If the pronouncements of politicians make history, and the reporting of the media shapes that history's official narrative, gossip runs along behind them, like a bratty younger sibling, filling in their omissions to tell a truer story. You left out this part." That's not what you told me."Maybe this is why media gossip about journalists and politicians carries such a frisson of transgressive delight: it breaks their monopoly on narrative authority. The people who have been appointed to tell us stories about our world, and about ourselves, finally get themselves subjected to the same treatment. It helps, too, to bust the bubble of a media industry that has long demanded more moral gravitas than it has really earned. These are the people, after all, who claim to be holding power to account. But how do they actually behave towards those in power?Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Hurricane Helene is expected to bring life-threatening storm surges as high as 20ft. Plus, Eric Adams chargedGood morning.Hurricane Helene made landfall as a category 4 hurricane in the Florida Big Bend region around 11.10pm ET on Thursday, one of the strongest hurricanes on record to hit Florida. The storm weakened to a category 1 overnight.How dangerous is a storm surge? As a hurricane approaches a coast, the churning winds force ocean water up onto land; atmospheric pressure from the storm also helps squeeze the water ashore. The shallower the continental shelf, the higher the threat of a dangerous surge. Water is heavy, and it can move fast in a surge, sweeping people to their deaths, throwing about boats and vehicles, and pulverizing structures.Follow our live blog here.What did Netanyahu say? We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we reach all our goals - chief among them the return of the residents of the north securely to their homes." He addresses the UN today.What is the scale of the war? Israeli airstrikes have killed about 700 people since Monday - with that day representing the highest death toll in a single day in Lebanon since the civil war of 1975-90 - and reports have suggested Israel is making plans for a ground offensive. Continue reading...