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Exclusive: Move is part of Trump's broader crackdown on leftwing groups, including designation of antifa as domestic terrorism' group

Advocates demand public health officials listen to autistic voices' after health secretary's debunked vaccine claimsWhen the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) altered its website last month to reflect US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr's belief of a causal link between vaccines and autism - a claim that has been debunked by dozens of scientific studies - autism advocates sprang into action.Leaders at the Association of University Centers on Disabilities demanded online that public health officials listen to autistic voices". Continue reading...

Sang Hea Kil is first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to the protestsA tenured professor at San Jose State University in California is fighting for her job after the university fired her last month over her pro-Palestinian activism - the first tenured faculty member fired from a public university in connection to campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza.Sang Hea Kil, a longtime member of the university's justice studies department and a faculty adviser for its students for justice in Palestine chapter, is the latest in a growing list of university professors and staff who have been suspended, investigated, and in some cases dismissed or forced out in connection to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that swept US campuses in the first year of Israel's war in Gaza. Continue reading...

The congresswoman from Minnesota responded to Trump's dismissal of Somali Americans as garbage'Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Minnesota congresswoman, has said Donald Trump is lashing out at her and her community with bigotry because he knows he is failing".The US president dismissed Somali Americans earlier this week as garbage" in a racist rant. Continue reading...

Community fears shooting will be written off as gang violence and says examination of complex factors such as online feuds is requiredTashante McCoy was celebrating her grandson's fifth birthday in Stockton, California, on Saturday, when she learned that masked men had opened fire at another child's birthday party on the other side of town.Armed men had walked into the banquet hall where at least 100 people had gathered to celebrate a toddler's birthday, a friend of McCoy's who was at the event would later tell her. At least one man opened fire just as partygoers were preparing to cut the cake. Continue reading...

Kristi Noem said the list of countries from which travel to the US is prohibited will increase to an unspecified number

Defenders rally to Olivia Nuzzi amid book mockery, while rakish David Dimbleby channels his inner DickensIt's publication week for American Canto, the hastily turned around memoir by the former New York magazine journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who took on the challenge of explaining what it was about Robert F Kennedy Jr she found so alluring, a task for which no upper word limit is adequate. Nuzzi, if you've fallen behind, developed romantic feelings for the then presidential candidate, now Trump health minister, while profiling him for the magazine and since I've had to read this sentence, you do too: He was exhausted, and he threw himself onto the bed, his pink shirt unbuttoned, revealing my favorite parts of his chest." If you have a favourite part of RFK Jr's chest, or consider chests in general subject to preference by localised area, this may be the book for you. Continue reading...

Footage seen by US senators shows two unarmed, shirtless men struggling to stay afloat before they were killed, sources say

Seventy years after the Montgomery bus boycott, policies hiding in plain sight continue to ravage the Black communityFriday is the 70th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, which began because Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white person, as required by law. While her brave act brought national attention to the civil rights movement and triggered student sit-ins to end segregation across the south, it also subjected her and her husband, Raymond, to constant death threats. Consequently, like many other Black families fleeing Jim Crow south's racial violence, in August 1957, Rosa and Raymond moved up north to Detroit.When the Parks arrived in Detroit, they and other Black people did not have to sit at the back of the bus. Nonetheless, the city was permeated by a quieter but no less pernicious type of racism: racist policies, which are any written or unwritten laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity. In my book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America, I demonstrate how racial covenants, redlining, urban renewal, blockbusting, predatory mortgage lending and racialized property tax administration have stymied the Black community.Bernadette Atuahene is the Duggan Professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, the Executive Director of the Institute for Law and Organizing, and the author of Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America Continue reading...

Gary Walters managed the president's official residence for 37 years - now he's sharing his most vivid recollectionsGary Walters has a special feeling" about the White House East Wing. He met his future wife Barbara when she worked in the visitors' office there. But asked to contemplate the wing's destruction by Donald Trump, the former chief usher evidently still believes that discretion is the better part of valour.All the presidents and first ladies have made changes in one manner or another - some larger than others," Walters, 78, says with the measured cadence of a man who has spent a lifetime guarding privacy. One of the things that I have seen not commented on was back to when the West Wing was built. Continue reading...

Ever since the club's very beginning, David Beckham and Jorge Mas have had moments like this Saturday in mindBack on 27 February 2020, days before Inter Miami's first-ever fixture in MLS, I stood next to the club's managing owner, Jorge Mas, and co-owner David Beckham as part of an MLS press junket in New York City. I was there for Sports Illustrated and my show Planet Futbol TV, which I co-hosted with my friend, the late, great Grant Wahl. We were adamant that the Inter Miami story was riveting, not just because of Beckham's influence in MLS, but also because his new club was about to introduce the unique culture of Miami and south Florida - the Latin American capital of the world - to the league.The conversation in 2020 was my second meeting with Mas and my first with Beckham. I remember the sense of excitement from both men, knowing that this Inter Miami project - seven years in the making before their debut in the league - was about to come to fruition after a long, arduous journey. From legal battles with Internazionale over the trademark of the word Inter" to political and structural problems as they tried to make a stadium, Miami Freedom Park, a reality. Now, the club was finally starting life in MLS. Continue reading...

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Strike comes amid congressional turmoil over legality of US attacks on suspected drug smugglersThe Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, killing four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions mount over the legality of the attacks.Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization". Continue reading...

State is key in president's effort to secure Republicans' fragile House majority for second half of his term - key US politics stories from 4 December 2025Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year's midterm elections.In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court's ruling that struck down the state's new map in November. The supreme court's three liberal justices dissented. Continue reading...

Judge allows call from manager of Pennsylvania McDonald's to be made public after press urged its releaseAn audio recording of a 911 call that led to Luigi Mangione's arrest has been made public after the press advocated for its release.The audio recording was played in Manhattan state court this week during a proceeding about evidence gathered during Mangione's arrest over the murder of senior United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson a year ago. Mangione was arrested at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania in December last year after the restaurant's manager called 911. Continue reading...

Zoe Rosenberg, 23, studying at UC Berkeley, had said it was a rescue' and will not apologize' for her actionsA California student has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after breaking into a Petaluma poultry slaughterhouse and taking four chickens in an effort she called a rescue".Zoe Rosenberg, a 23-year-old student at the University of California, Berkeley, was convicted of felony conspiracy and three misdemeanor counts in October. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced her to 90 days - 60 of which may involve jail alternates, such as house arrest - far less than the four-and-a-half-year maximum sentence she could have faced. The judge also ordered Rosenberg to pay more than $100,000 to Petaluma Poultry, the Perdue Farms facility from which she took four chickens in 2023. Rosenberg has been ordered to report to the Sonoma county jail on 10 December. Continue reading...

Major win for Trump as majority rejects lower-court ruling that found maps had been racially gerrymanderedTexas can use a redrawn congressional map that adds as many as five Republican-friendly congressional districts, the supreme court ruled on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a major win in his push to boost Republican seats ahead of next year's midterm elections.In an unsigned order, the 6-3 conservative majority court granted a request by Texas to lift a lower court's ruling that struck down the state's new map in November. The supreme court's three liberal justices dissented. Continue reading...

Decision comes less than two weeks after judge ruled similar case against New York attorney general unlawfulA grand jury declined to indict Letitia James on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the decision, a decision that came less than two weeks after a judge ruled that a similar mortgage fraud case brought by federal prosecutors against the New York attorney general was unlawful.The move by the justice department to present the case again to a grand jury was seen as a signal of its determination to prosecute James, who has been one of Donald Trump's top political foes ever since she successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him in New York. Continue reading...

Daughter of James Comey was dismissed by Trump justice department from job as prosecutor in New YorkMaurene Comey, the federal prosecutor who helmed criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, appeared at Manhattan federal court on Thursday, in a lawsuit claiming she was fired as political retaliation against her father, James Comey.Comey was terminated in July, shortly after the federal trial of Sean Diddy" Combs, whose prosecution she led; he was found guilty of prostitution-related crimes. Comey's lawsuit contends that Donald Trump's justice department axed her without explanation or cause, and instead simply cited article 2 of the United States constitution and the laws of the United States" in an email. Continue reading...

Communities remain terrified as Trump administration's crackdown on another Democratic-led city enters day twoDozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration's latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day.The city's immigrant communities remain terrified and traumatized, advocates said, with many in hiding as people have been arrested in public spaces including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe's hardware stores, at bus stops, shopping malls and in residential areas around the city. Continue reading...

President and James McCrery II disagreed over expanding ballroom's size, but change prompted by firm's limited staffDonald Trump has replaced the architect originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom.According to the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday and cited three people familiar with the matter, architect James McCrery II and his boutique firm had been leading the project for more than three months, up until late October. Continue reading...

Order allows troops to remain for now, amid ramp-up after 26 November shooting of two guard membersA US appeals court on Thursday handed a victory to Donald Trump in his effort to keep national guard troops in Washington DC, pausing a lower court order that would have ended the deployment in the coming days.In a written order, the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit lifted an injunction that said the troops needed to leave the nation's capital by 11 December. Continue reading...

A 15-year quest ends with a monument, drawing crowds and nostalgia as Detroit embraces its cult-film pastThe statue looms and glints at more than 11 feet tall and weighing 3,500 pounds, looking out at the city with, how to put it ... a characteristically stern expression?Despite its daunting appearance and history as a crimefighter of last resort, the giant new bronze figure of the movie character RoboCop is being seen as a symbol of hope, drawing fans and eliciting selfie mania since it began standing guard over Detroit on Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Protesters were removed from a New Orleans city council meeting after they disrupted the event to protest against an ICE immigration crackdown in the city. Federal agents descended on New Orleans on Wednesday, making Louisiana's most populous city the latest front in the Trump administration's sweeping crackdown on immigrant communities

From 1990 to 2019, reported cases of acute hepatitis B among kids declined by 99% due to infant immunizationAfter a contentious meeting, vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Thursday to delay a vote on restricting hepatitis B vaccination for infants until Friday.The meeting of the advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) turned confrontational at times before one member introduced a motion to delay the vote, which passed by six to three, to give advisers time to examine the wording before taking a vote. Continue reading...

Renaming adds insult to injury' says lawyer for staff fired from non-profit thinktank by Trump administrationThe Trump administration has renamed the US Institute of Peace after Donald Trump and has planted the president's name on the organization's headquarters despite an ongoing fight over the institute's control.It is the latest twist in a seesaw court battle over who controls the US Institute of Peace, a non-profit thinktank that focuses on peace initiatives. It was an early target of the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge) job-cutting scheme this year, drawing swift legal challenge. Continue reading...

Activists prepare for more targeting of Somali residents by ICE as Trump renews racist tiradeAs Donald Trump went on another extended racist tirade against Somalis on Wednesday, Minneapolis activists prepared for more targeting of the community by conducting trainings on their rights and planning how they would protect their neighbors.In the White House on Wednesday, a reporter asked the president about Minneapolis's mayor, Jacob Frey, who has defended the Somali community. Trump responded: I wouldn't be proud to have the largest Somalian - look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It's not even a nation. It's just people walking around killing each other. Look, these Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country. Billions and billions." Continue reading...

Before Friday's event we also examine a possible overall group of death and where geopolitics could meet footballCroatia are the highest-ranked potential Pot 2 opponents (10th) and reached the final and the semi-finalis at the past two World Cups respectively but, with a maximum of two European teams in each group, drawing them would eliminate for England the possibility of facing Erling Haaland's Norway, who are in Pot 3, or Italy, who are in Pot 4, if the four-time champions get through the playoffs in March. Continue reading...

In a more reasonable, more compassionate country, we would thank Ali Faqirzada for how much he has done on behalf of his people and our ownOn 14 October, Ali Faqirzada - an Afghan refugee, a resident of New Paltz, New York, and a computer science student at Bard College - arrived for an interview at a federal immigration office on Long Island. He was applying for political asylum, a designation for which he was - and remains - a perfect candidate.In his native country, Faqirzada had assisted the American government and Nato with projects designed to improve the lives of Afghan women and help them get an education. But after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the ministry where he, his mother and sister had worked was bombed by the Taliban, and one of its employees was murdered.Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Continue reading...

Climate Cabinet supports candidates in state and city races as the federal government ignores the climate crisisWith a president who has called climate change a hoax", refused to send a delegation to international climate talks, and packed the federal government with former fossil fuel industry employees, this can feel like a dark moment for climate action in the US. But shifting one's focus to local and state law makes for a very different outlook.Analysts have estimated that 75% of the commitments that the US made at the Paris climate agreement - which Donald Trump pulled the nation out of as soon as he took office - can be reached entirely without federal support. Continue reading...

The paper says new rules limiting questions, movement and sourcing violate press freedoms and chill independent reporting

Amazon calls the report flawed and misleading' and says it offers lower prices than competitorsSchool districts and local governments across the country appear to be overpaying for basic supplies because of Amazon contracts that bind them to dynamic pricing, according to a new report based on government data and public records analyzed by the non-profit Institute for Local Self-Reliance.A school district in Denver, Colorado, would have saved about $1m in 2023 had it been able to negotiate for and lock in the lowest of the platform's continuously changing prices, according to one estimate cited in the report. Denver public schools, which spent $5.7m with Amazon that year, could have saved 17 percent" had it consistently received Amazon's lowest prices", the report said. Continue reading...

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, 19, was detained at Boston airport while on the way to see family in Austin for a surprise tripAny Lucia Lopez Belloza had not seen her parents and two little sisters since starting her first semester at Babson College, near Boston in August. A family friend gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.The 19-year-old business student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an error" with her boarding pass; when she reached customer service, she was handcuffed and arrested by what she believed were two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Continue reading...

Touted as a cure for everything from wrinkles to autism, the treatment has been hyped by Robert F Kennedy Jr and various celebrities. Experts say it needs to be regulated

President orders pause on asylum claims and extra scrutiny of migrants from 19 countries after Washington shootingDonald Trump is seizing on the shooting of two national guard members, allegedly by an Afghan man, to press his immigration crackdown still farther. In the aftermath of the attack, which left guard member Sarah Beckstrom dead and colleague Andrew Wolfe in critical condition, Trump directed US Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause all pending asylum applications.USCIS followed up that announcement with more seismic shifts to immigration policy. This is how the White House is reshaping the process for requesting asylum, green cards and citizenship. Continue reading...

President did not follow the usual review process, experts say, making it more likely they would commit other crimesAmong the beneficiaries of Donald Trump's pardons and commutations, there is a group that legal experts and political scientists see as some of the clearest evidence of how such actions undermine the rule of law: those who were released from prison and again arrested for different alleged crimes.During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency - including to someone who was a predatory lender and drug smuggler and to another who ran a Ponzi scheme. Since taking office again, Trump has issued more than 1,600, most for people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress. Continue reading...

Amnesty finds detainees at Florida facility were shackled and left outside in metal cage. Plus, how the dollar-store industry overcharges consumersGood morning.Detainees at the notorious Florida immigration jail known as Alligator Alcatraz" were shackled inside a 2ft-high metal cage and left outside without water for up to a day at a time, a shocking report published on Thursday by Amnesty International alleges.Didn't a judge order the facility to shut down? A federal judge in August ordered it to close after a wave of criticism and a lawsuit by environmental groups. However, by October, the facility was operating again with hundreds of detainees after two Trump-appointed appellate court judges - one whose husband has close ties to the Republican governor Ron DeSantis - blocked the closure ruling.Has the state of Florida responded to the allegations? The press secretary to DeSantis told the Guardian the allegations were fabrications" and part of a politically motivated attack".Why have they released these photos now? It's unclear. Even though the images do not reveal anything new, they keep the pressure on the Trump administration ahead of a 19 December deadline for the justice department to release files, as per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed 19 November. Continue reading...

Co-founders' acquisition of Venture Global shares before key permit granted draws scrutiny as pair deny wrongdoingTwo fossil-fuel billionaires with close ties to Donald Trump bought millions of shares in the company they co-founded just days after a meeting with senior White House officials, who then issued a key regulatory permit that helped expand the company's fortunes in Europe.Robert Pender, an energy lawyer, and Michael Sabel, a former investment banker, are the founders and co-chairs of Venture Global, a Virginia-based company that develops and operates liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals. Continue reading...

Pentagon's Law of War manual clearly prohibits attack, but justification for whole campaign also faces tough questionsGraphic depictions of two survivors being killed by a second US military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug ferrying boat have provoked outrage where previously there was none - or at least relatively little.A firestorm of controversy has greeted a recent Washington Post report which suggested that a deadly attack on a vessel carrying 11 people in the Caribbean was followed with a second assault after the initial strike failed to kill everybody onboard. Continue reading...

Calls for disenfranchisement rest on a single assumption: that women's citizenship is partial and conditionalSexism can be very modern and tech savvy. Misogyny is an ever-evolving idiom, and men and women alike have found particularly of-the-moment ways to operate within the genre. Think of the apps that take images of women and remove their clothes, or the AI bots that men and boys can use to generate pornography or depictions of graphic violence against women and girls for the crime of going to the same school as they do or running for office. Think of the influencers of the so-called womanosphere" who tell their female audiences that women who seek out friendship or equality with men are morons or cows, all through the gleam of a TikTok filter. Sexism may be the world's oldest prejudice and its first unjust hierarchy, but it is continually innovating, adapting to new technologies and the most recent rhetorical needs of male supremacy.But some of the forms of misogyny that have been bubbling up in American political discourse lately can seem a bit retro. I don't just mean the tradwives, who dress alternately like June Cleaver or like Ma Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie - evoking bygone eras, or at least the ways those eras are depicted on television. And I don't just mean the pro-natalists, either, who don weird bonnets and propose national breeding medals for prolific mothers. Since last month's massive election victories for Democrats, some on the right have looked to revive a form of sexism that has been out of fashion for more than one hundred years: the idea that women should not have a right to vote.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

New Celtic manager may not be a big name but he won over the US league with leadership style and attractive footballOther managers won more in Major League Soccer than Wilfried Nancy. Bruce Arena, say, certainly has a fuller trophy cabinet. Nancy, however, lifted more than just trophies. He lifted standards. At Columbus Crew, he set a benchmark for the rest, showing what was possible even with limited resources. Columbus didn't have Lionel Messi or Son Heung-min, but they had Nancy as head coach, and that was often enough.For the past three seasons, the Crew have been the most dynamic, boundary-pushing team in MLS. Nancy's CF Montreal team weren't bad either, establishing the style of play that would come to be known as Nancyball. He changed MLS's managerial landscape for ever. It was only a matter of time until a call came from Europe. Continue reading...

The rookie plays like a linebacker at quarterback. His reckless style is costing his teammates and coaches as well as himselfJaxson Dart wants you to know something: this is real football. It's not soccer or flag. It's tackle football, the kind where quarterbacks go airborne. After taking the latest in a growing compilation of bone-crushing hits, Dart brushed himself off and delivered a post-game sermon on toughness. We're not playing soccer," he said. You're going to get hit. Things happen."Yet these things" continue to happen to Dart at an alarming rate. In his eight NFL starts, he has absorbed as many unnecessary hits as any rookie quarterback in recent memory. On Monday night, Dart took another heavy hit near the sideline in the first quarter of the Giants' 33-15 loss to the Patriots. Dart scrambled out of the pocket on second-and-13 and ran for a first down. As he approached the sideline, Dart could have stepped out and gained fewer yards while still moving the chains. Instead, he braced, lowered his shoulder and was sent soaring through the air by Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss. Continue reading...

In the 21st-century imbalance of power, Europe and Nato have neither the arms nor the wealth to impel Russia or the US to take its peace settlement seriouslyThe failure of this week's peace talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff fits into a now well-established pattern of standoffs on Ukraine during Trump's second term. But the dynamic that produced these talks may be becoming more entrenched. The US and Russian interests driving the process have not changed, while the conflict on the ground is intensifying. The lack of progress this week means there will be another attempt to end the war soon, and perhaps another after that, until, one day, there is some kind of US-backed deal to halt the conflict on terms broadly favouring Russia.The geopolitical algorithm driving this effort is too consistent to ignore. It has been repeated ever since Trump re-entered the White House in January. On the campaign trail, Trump had claimed he could stop the war in a day. That was never going to happen. But from 12 February onwards, when Trump first talked directly to Putin about Ukraine, the intention and approach have not altered. There is no reason to suppose they will do so now. Indeed, Tuesday's impasse may spur them on again.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...