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President blames global travel for lacklustre debate as 25 House members reportedly prepare to call for him to step downJoe Biden will meet with Democratic governors on Wednesday as the president faces increasingly concerning polls and growing calls to withdraw his candidacy, including from a congressional Democrat.Biden will talk with governors and Capitol Hill leaders this week, officials said on Tuesday, to reassure them of his competence and address escalating discontent among party leaders after last week's calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Independent candidate says I am not a church boy' after ex-nanny tells Vanity Fair he assaulted her at his home in 1998Robert F Kennedy Jr has responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted an employee by stating: I am not a church boy," as scrutiny grows over his long-shot run for the presidency.The independent candidate, who is seen as a threat by both the Biden and Trump campaigns, made the statement after his former babysitter told Vanity Fair that Kennedy assaulted her at his home in 1998. Continue reading...

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Jim Farley says country is in love with these monster vehicles' but big cars are not sustainable in the age of EVIt is time for the US to get back in love" with smaller cars, according to the chief executive of Ford.In a wide-ranging interview at the Aspen Ideas festival, Jim Farley said the auto industry needs to focus on smaller EVs and commercial vehicles. He acknowledged that American consumers are in love with these monster vehicles" but said they need to get back in love" with small cars. Continue reading...

Peltier, 79, in poor health and sentenced to life over two deaths in South Dakota, not eligible for another hearing until 2026Leonard Peltier, the 79-year-old Indigenous activist who has spent nearly 50 years in prison for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents, has been denied parole. Many fear the ruling all but ensures that the longest-imprisoned Indigenous American will die behind bars.Peltier has maintained his innocence since he was arrested in connection with the deaths that occurred at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. For decades, advocates such as Coretta Scott King, Nelson Mandela, Pope Francis and James H Reynolds, the US attorney who handled the prosecution and appeal of Peltier's case, have fought for his release. Continue reading...

An alarm rang loudly and continuously in a midtown Manhattan station - and neither commuters nor workers at businesses in the station could identify itFor nearly two weeks, an alarm rang loudly and continuously inside a New York subway station.As the New York Post first reported, the mysterious bell" knelled through the stairway to a downtown 1 train platform at 50th Street in midtown Manhattan, a few blocks north of Times Square. Neither commuters nor workers at businesses located inside the station could identify the source of the incessant ringing. Continue reading...

Congressman Joe Morelle vows to act in wake of supreme court decision - but plan is highly unlikely to succeedA Democratic congressman is calling for a new constitutional amendment to reverse the supreme court's ruling granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a decision that could hamstring the federal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Congressman Joe Morelle, a New York Democrat, raised the idea on Monday, just hours after the supreme court issued its 6-3 decision, which fell along ideological lines. Continue reading...

Lawyers ask New York judge to delay sentencing and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg says he is not opposedDonald Trump has asked the New York judge who presided over his recent hush-money trial to set aside his conviction as he seeks to capitalise on Monday's supreme court ruling granting him broad immunity from prosecution.In what is probably just the first real-world impact of the controversial ruling from the conservative-dominated court, which said Trump cannot be held criminally liable for many acts taken when he was president, Trump's legal team sent a letter to the trial judge, Juan Merchan, asking him to postpone the sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for 11 July, while Merchan weighs how Monday's court ruling affects the case. Continue reading...

Officials shot the animals after a coyote bit the girl, who was attending a supervised summer camp in Golden Gate ParkWildlife officers shot and killed three coyotes at the San Francisco botanical garden over the weekend after a coyote attacked a five-year-old girl.Two coyotes were shot on Saturday and one was shot on Sunday, said Patrick Foy, a spokesperson for the California department of fish and wildlife on Monday. Continue reading...

The president could have made a dignified exit from the race for the White House - but his family has apparently implored him to stay put. Now he seems determined to see things through to the bitter, messy endThe moment Joe Biden walked off the debate stage last Thursday night, the clock started ticking. There was a small window of time after the president's disastrous performance in which he could have made a dignified exit from the 2024 race. He could have called a press conference on Monday morning and said he had carefully assessed the calls made by the New York Times editorial board and high-profile pundits and political consultants urging him to step down. He could have said he had decided it was the best thing to do for the future of the US and democracy itself. Biden would have looked selfless; a man putting country before ego. The Democratic party could have gone swiftly to work, rallying behind a replacement.I am not saying this scenario would have been simple. Of course not. It would have been a mess! But not as much of a mess as the situation we find ourselves in now. The window for a dignified exit has passed. Doubts about Biden's cognitive fitness, meanwhile, are only increasing. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll, 72% of registered voters don't think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president; the same percentage don't think he should be running for president. Among Democratic registered voters, 46% don't think he should be running for president, up from 36% earlier this year. Continue reading...

White nationalists and groups were ordered to pay more than $24m for damages stemming from Unite the Right rallyFour years after deadly violence erupted during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a jury ordered white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay a total of more than $26m in damages to people with physical or emotional injuries from the event.Most of that money, $24m, was for punitive damages, but a judge later slashed that amount to $350,000 - to be shared by eight plaintiffs. On Monday, a federal appeals court restored more than $2m in punitive damages, finding that each of the plaintiffs should receive $350,000, instead of the $43,750 each would have received under the lower court's ruling. Continue reading...

Officials say the Indiana lawmaker had an unloaded pistol in her carry-on bag at the Washington DC airportRepublican US congresswoman Victoria Spartz has been charged with a weapons violation after she brought a gun to the Dulles international airport in Virginia on Friday, according to local authorities.Spartz, a Republican representing Indiana's fifth congressional district, was traveling to Europe for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly when she was stopped and cited for carrying a pistol in her carry-on bag, Axios reported. Continue reading...

While most politicians haven't taken the platform seriously, the Reform UK leader is an astute content creator - and is reaping the benefitsNigel Farage was born to be a TikTok star. He joined the platform in March 2022, announcing it's got to be done, it's where it's at" in a video that has been watched more than 600,000 times. He is still one of the first politicians to bother taking the platform seriously, and it is paying him vast dividends. The Guardian reported last week that Farage is outperforming all other UK parties and candidates on TikTok in terms of engagement and average views, according to data from 22 May to 17 June.Farage has been prolific in his output since his election candidacy was announced. He posted several times a day for the first two weeks of his campaign, flooding the algorithm with short, characterful videos that resonate powerfully with his fanbase. The recipe to his success is clear: he's willing to be opinionated, comical and - most compellingly in British politics - himself. Continue reading...

New $297.9bn budget signed by Gavin Newsom, the state's governor, does not specify what programs it would aidCalifornia plans to spend up to $12m on reparations legislation under a budget signed by Gavin Newsom, marking a milestone in the state's efforts to atone for a legacy of racism and discrimination against Black Californians.The reparations funding in the $297.9bn budget the California governor signed over the weekend does not specify what programs the money would go toward. Lawmakers are not considering widespread direct payments to Black Californians this year.California's first-in-nation reparations taskforce releases final reportCalifornia's proposals to rectify past discrimination advance through senateThe forgotten history of what California stole from Black familiesThink reparations are impossible? The story of Japanese Americans proves otherwise Continue reading...

Strategist reiterates his months-long calls for party to look at staggering talent' of governors for candidateJames Carville, the strategist who has been one of the few establishment Democrats to have been warning about Joe Biden's age issue before the president's disastrous debate performance Thursday, has called on his party to deliver change" and replace the president as its nominee for November's election.In an interview Monday with the Guardian, he also said it would be in the US's best interest for Biden's Democratic presidential predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to help persuade him to half his re-election - and support an open nomination convention in Chicago in August to select a new ticket for the party. Continue reading...

The USMNT have crashed out of Copa America early. At best they have stagnated under their coach's leadership as they aim to build for 2026You can't deny they played for him, and for each other. This was no capitulation, no cowed or callow performance against one of the world's best teams.So Gregg Berhalter has not lost the locker room. But how, after this, can he not lose his job? How can anyone trust that he is the man to shape the USMNT into a team good enough to make a major impact at the 2026 World Cup? They have at best stagnated since Qatar 2022, and perhaps even regressed. Continue reading...

Joe Biden denounced the 6-3 ruling, saying it undermined the rule of law' and was a terrible disservice to the people of this nation.' Plus: proposed protections for workers in extreme heat

Ever since Biden's poor performance at debate, the California governor who's spent years seeking a national stage finds himself at the centre of oneTo paraphrase Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch, lately it's been Newsom, Newsom, Newsom" all day long.He's been at the Vatican for a climate summit, and in Alpharetta, Georgia, for a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He's all over the TV, actually - on Fox News and MSNBC, and in advertisements airing in Tennessee. Continue reading...

Media analysts say Sinclair, known for anchors reciting script in lockstep, promotes conservative talking pointsSinclair, one of the largest owners of US television stations, has established itself as an influential player in the conservative movement by using trusted local news channels to spread disinformation and manipulated video of Joe Biden, media analysts say.The company, which gained notoriety in 2018 for requiring local anchors across the country to read the same segment, has since created a national news show that produces stories distributed to its stations - often at the expense of local news coverage, the experts say. Continue reading...

Before she joined Donald Trump in asking Georgia state officials to find 11,780 votes' in 2020, Mitchell was the feminist flag bearer of the Equal Rights amendment in OklahomaMeet the election operators:

Janelle Monae's trousers do not represent a vagina. They represent a vulva. Have some respect!I have a stick up my arse about the difference between less" and fewer", and women in the generations below have the same about vagina" and vulva", and even though the principle is the same - why not just use the right word, instead of the wrong one? - I have never been able to see their problem. Everyone's got the gist. Why make a scene?It happened that I recently spent some hallowed time with millennials and also saw Janelle Monae, live, and this all coincided at a festival that it would be crass to mention for the 91st time - but suffice it to say, I have finally come round to their point of view. Continue reading...

Voters share their reactions, highlight limitations of format and whether event has changed their intentionsUS voters shared their reactions to Thursday's presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, highlighting limitations of the format, weak performances from both candidates and whether the event has changed their voting intentions. Continue reading...

As the party asks who is to blame for the US president's poor performance against Trump, calls grow for Biden to widen his teamWhen Joe Biden became engulfed in a plagiarism scandal during his first US presidential campaign in 1987, his adviser and friend Ted Kaufman was blunt: There's only one way to stop the sharks, and that's pull out," he said.When Biden was contemplating another run for the White House in 2015, it fell to another longtime confidant, Mike Donilon, to deliver the verdict. I caught him looking at me and gestured, What is it, Mike?" Biden later wrote in his memoir. I don't think you should do this,' he said." Continue reading...

Cyclists such as sprint world champion Marshall Major' Taylor were early stars of the sport in the US. But many felt compelled to move abroadWhen cycling first took the US by storm in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black Americans joined in the new pastime. One Black cyclist, Marshall Major" Taylor, became a world champion in 1899. Yet American cycling installed a color line in professional racing. Opportunities became so limited that Black competitors had to take them wherever they could find them - including on the vaudeville stage and in Europe. Their story is documented in a new book, Black Cyclists: The Race for Inclusion, by Robert J Turpin, a professor of history at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina.We fall into the trap that history is linear," Turpin says. With race relations, we think about the end of the Civil War: Slavery ended, and things gradually got better and better for Black people.' My book shows what we already know: Things actually got worse for Black people in the US, especially from the 1880s through the 1920s ... It got harder for Black cyclists to compete as professionals or even win prize money in general." Continue reading...

Ex-cabinet minister reiterates backing for Donald Trump and claims Biden doesn't like Britain' in leaked recording

The US were eliminated from the Copa America with a 1-0 loss to Uruguay on Monday night, a defeat that will increase pressure on US Soccer to remove coach Gregg Berhalter before a World Cup on home soil in 2026.Uruguay scored in the 66th minute when Nicolas de la Cruz swung a free-kick into the box. Matt Turner parried a header by Ronald Araujo, who jumped over defender Tim Ream, but the rebound fell to Mathias Olivera and he tapped the ball home. Continue reading...

The transcript of nearly 150 pages shows grand jury heard testimony of teenage girls' rape at his Palm Beach mansionFlorida prosecutors knew the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient and a missed opportunity to imprison him a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday.The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many by law enforcement over the past two decades into Epstein's rape and sex trafficking of teenagers - and how his ties to the rich and the powerful seem to have allowed him to avoid prison or a serious jail term for more than a decade. Continue reading...

In speech from White House, president said ruling undermined the rule of law' and compared their charactersJoe Biden has issued a full-throated denunciation of the US supreme court's decision to grant his predecessor, Donald Trump, broad immunity from criminal charges of trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, calling it a dangerous precedent" that overturned the basic principle of equality before the law.In a 5-minute speech from the White House, Biden said the 6-3 ruling undermined the rule of law" and rendered a terrible disservice to the people of this nation" because it means Trump is much less likely to be held legally accountable for inciting a mob to launch a deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

The US president said in remarks following the US supreme court's ruling that granted broad immunity to Donald Trump and other presidents from prosecution that it set a 'dangerous precedent'. 'I know I will respect the limits of presidential power as I have for the last three-and-a-half years, but any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law,' he said.

In ruling that Trump enjoys absolute immunity' for official acts' as president, the court has set a disturbing precedent

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Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner are safely through to the second round, while Emma Raducanu saw off a lucky loserBBC don't appear to agree with my judgment. None of the matches I'm into have commentary, and on the main show they're showing Heather Watson - down 0-2 to Greet Minnen now that you ask.Shang saves break point with a flick down the line and eventually hangs on but, more importantly, Tim Henman thinks Naomi Osaka will win the women's competition. I may or may not have deposited money with my local turf accountant pending the same inevitability. Continue reading...

City to pay $300,000 to Robert Williams, whose driver's license was incorrectly flagged in shoplifting investigationThe city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a Black man who was wrongly arrested for shoplifting, and to change how police use facial-recognition technology to solve crimes after the software identified him as a suspect.The conditions are part of a lawsuit settlement with Robert Williams. His driver's license photo was incorrectly flagged by facial-recognition software as a likely match to a man seen on security video at a Shinola watch store in 2018. Continue reading...

The supreme court ruled that Trump has some immunity - making him less likely to face trial in the election subversion case before the electionThe US supreme court's decision Monday that Donald Trump has some immunity from criminal prosecution marked a win for the ex-president. While Trump's not off the hook in his Washington DC federal election subversion case, he is even less likely to face trial in these proceedings before the election. Continue reading...

Prosecutors say Read ran over John O'Keefe with an SUV and fled scene in 2022, but jury was unable to reach verdictA mistrial has been declared in the Karen Read case after a jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges that she murdered her boyfriend, a Boston police officer.The local district attorney's office quickly issued a statement saying that prosecutors intend to retry the case, which jurors first began hearing in late April. Continue reading...

About 84,000 people crossed into the US in June, the lowest monthly total since Biden assumed office in January 2021Undocumented crossings at the US's southern border have fallen to a three-year low, marking the lowest in Joe Biden's presidency just a short time after he signed a controversial executive order limiting immigration there in June.The latest data from the federal Customs and Border Patrol obtained by CBS News is the most recent since Biden signed his executive order - and comes as the president is accused of failing to address concerns about the amount of people crossing into the US without permission. Continue reading...

Stark dissent from liberal supreme court justice says decision will let presidents commit crimes with impunityIn a stark dissent from the conservative-majority US supreme court's opinion granting Donald Trump some immunity from criminal prosecution, the liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was a mockery" that makes a president a king above the law".The court ruled Monday that Trump cannot be prosecuted for official acts" he took while president, setting up tests for which of the federal criminal charges over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election are considered official and sending the case back to a lower court to decide. Continue reading...

Campaign announces record fundraising in wake of Trump debate but wealthy Democrats undecided on path forwardA silver lining of Joe Biden's pernicious debate performance was, according to a succession of upbeat emails from the president's re-election campaign, a record fundraising haul.By Sunday night, only three days after he stumbled through 90 painful minutes in the company of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, more than $33m had dropped into Biden campaign coffers. Debate day itself was our best grassroots fundraising day ever", officials announced. Continue reading...

Sunday's first round vote puts Marine Le Pen's radical right within touching distance of power. The priority must now be damage limitationIf Emmanuel Macron still harboured hopes that his decision to gift Marine Le Pen a snap parliamentary election would pay off, they are surely dispelled now. Following humiliation in last month's European polls, Mr Macron recklessly gambled that historic levels of support for Ms Le Pen's National Rally party (RN) would melt away once protest voters were confronted with the prospect of a radical right government for the first time in postwar history. So how did that work out?A high turnout in Sunday's first round saw RN comfortably win first place with 33.1% of the vote, almost two points up compared with three weeks ago. For context, this is the first time that the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen has broken through the 20% barrier in a legislative election. The hastily assembled New Popular Front (NPF), combining the forces of the left, scored 28%. Mr Macron's centrist Together coalition trailed in at 20.8%, in third place. In an act of hubristic folly, Mr Macron thus appears to have blown up his power base in parliament, transformed himself into the lamest of lame duck presidents, and handed Ms Le Pen's youthful protege, Jordan Bardella, a decent chance of becoming France's next prime minister. Continue reading...

There are now no GOP women in South Carolina's state legislature - and just two female Democrats in the senateThe only three Republican women in South Carolina's senate took on their party and stopped a total abortion ban from passing in their state last year. In return, they lost their jobs.Voters removed senators Sandy Senn, Penry Gustafson and Katrina Shealy from office during sparsely turned out primaries in June - and by doing so completely vacated the Republican wing of the five-member Sister Senators", a female contingent that included two Democrats and was united in its members opposition to the abortion ban. Continue reading...

An aversion to risk among the Democrats has kept the US president in the race for the White House. But win-at-all-costs logic isn't great for politics at the best of timesI remember when people thought the free world was in peril because its self-appointed leader didn't have a big enough vocabulary. There were also rumblings that, at 56, he was past his prime. This was George W Bush.There was detailed analysis of his favourite words (folk", folksy"), the span and structure of his sentences and what grade it would put him in at school. A lot of this information was passed by word of mouth, one person in 100 being online and telling everyone else, and none of us in the UK were sure what US grades meant, but we knew it didn't put him in one of the high ones. Did he have the intelligence of a nine-year-old? A 14-year-old? Continue reading...

Study came after suicide of Lt David Metcalf, who logged his symptoms, and examination of his brain by scientistsA military study analyzing US Navy Seal veterans who died by suicide discovered patterns of brain damage associated with blast exposure.The latest lab survey provides additional evidence of the ways that blast exposure can damage the brain, the New York Times first reported on Sunday. Continue reading...

Only a whole-hearted endorsement of the New Popular Front coalition can stop the National Rally in second-round votingIt was an impressive score for a coalition frantically cobbled together only three weeks ago. On Sunday, France's broad leftwing electoral alliance, the New Popular Front, won about 9m votes, behind Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) but comfortably ahead of Emmanuel Macron and his allies.As a result, French voters face a stark choice when they head back to the polls on 7 July: do they want some type of coalition government with a centre of gravity to the left of the current one, or do they want to give the far right the keys to state power for the first time since the second world war?

Biden campaign launches counter-offensive amid fears that frail appearance at debate could mean defeat in NovemberWith the White House scrambling to prevent Joe Biden's candidacy being enveloped in a full-blown crisis, several state governors were said to be subtly positioning themselves as late substitutes while avoiding being seen to do so.The Biden campaign has launched a counter-offensive, including furious networking among senior Democrats, to counteract fears that the 81-year-old president's frail appearance in last week's debate had made defeat at the hands of Donald Trump in November's election inevitable. Continue reading...

A lack of domestic ambition and the federation's insular culture has caught up with the national team

Meme-stock influencer Keith Gill disclosed a 6.6% share in the pet food and medicine e-retailerShares of Chewy rose 15% premarket on Monday, before reversing sharply, after a filing showed Keith Gill, the stock influencer known as Roaring Kitty", had picked up a 6.6% stake in the pet products e-retailer.The turbulent rally comes days after the investor, known for triggering the meme-stock rally of 2021, posted an uncaptioned picture of a puppy on the social media platform X that briefly sent Chewy shares to a near one-year high on Thursday. Continue reading...

Marine Le Pen's anti-immigration party is in reach of becoming the biggest political force in parliament. Plus: the songs of summer