Kaja Kallas rejects fashionable euro-bashing' by US leaders and says other countries look up to us' - key US politics stories from 15 February at a glanceThe European Union's foreign policy chief has criticised US claims that Europe was facing civilisational erasure" and rejected what she called fashionable euro-bashing".Kaja Kallas told an audience at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that other countries looked up to Europe for its values, such as press freedom. Continue reading...

Shipwreck hunter found Lac La Belle steamer, one of most sought-after missing ships', after nearly 60-year searchSearchers recently discovered the wreck of one of the most sought-after missing ships" in Lake Michigan, that had sunk to the bottom of the lake over 150 years ago.A shipwreck hunter and scuba diver named Paul Ehorn made the discovery after having searched for the Lac La Belle passenger steamer for nearly 60 years. Shipwreck World, a group that works to locate shipwrecks around the globe, announced on Friday that the team led by Ehorn found the wreck about 20 miles (32km) offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Continue reading...

Britain won two mixed team gold medals, while there were individual triumphs for Norway's Anna Odine Strom and Italy's Lisa VittozziBrignone smashed her leg at the end of last season, fought her way back, and now look!Goodness me, she's almost perfect as she nears the end, and 1:03.23 is her time! That puts her 0.74 up on Colturi, Hector and Stjernesund, plus a whole 1.02 on Shiffrin! Continue reading...

Authorities await DNA test results from pair of gloves found near home as search continues to draw national attentionThe search for Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of NBC's Today show anchor Savannah Guthrie, has entered its third week, as investigators ask neighbors within a two-mile radius to share home video footage and authorities await DNA test results from a pair of gloves found near the home.Nancy Guthrie was last seen on the evening of 31 January, when she was dropped off at her home in the Catalina foothills north of Tucson, Arizona, after having dinner with her older daughter and son-in-law. She was reported missing the following day, after she failed to arrive at a friend's house to watch a church service. Continue reading...

Ofelia Torres, 16, spotlighted her dad Ruben's illegal detention last fall during Trump's crackdown in ChicagoA Chicago teenager, whose father was detained by immigration authorities while she navigated cancer, died on Friday, a family spokesperson said.Ofelia Torres, a 16-year-old in Chicago, had been undergoing treatment for an aggressive and rare form of cancer since late 2024. As she and her family struggled with the medical procedures, her father, Ruben Torres Maldonado, was detained by immigration authorities while at a Home Depot in October, leading to a contentious and public case that highlighted the human effects of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown. Continue reading...

US military forces have boarded another oil tanker linked to Venezuela in the Indian Ocean. The Veronica III was tracked by the Pentagon from the Caribbean after it left Venezuela on the day Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, was captured by the US. This is the second tanker seized by US forces after the Aquila II was boarded last week Continue reading...

Trump sparked public backlash when he abruptly began demolishing the East Wing to clear space for his ballroomNew renderings released this week provide the most detailed vision yet of Donald Trump's proposed $400m White House ballroom addition.The renderings, submitted by the project's architects and released on Friday by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), depict a vast sprawling structure, expected to be around 90,000sq ft, from multiple angles. Continue reading...

Real estate agent brothers Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander - known as closers' - are on trial in New York for sex traffickingIn their time as real estate brokers, the Israeli-American Alexander brothers - twins Alon and Oren and older brother Tal - were known as closers", the salesmen who could a get a sale over finish line, often to wealthy hedge funders who were then making hay in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.Their technique, one real estate expert explained outside the 26th floor of the federal court house in lower Manhattan last week, was based on the sense that the property salesmen were just like their clients" - young, eager and successful. Kim Kardashian and then-husband Kanye West, Jared and Ivanka Trump were clients. Continue reading...

Elation as anti-extremists fight back against influence of billionaire megadonors through grassroots organizingChris Tackett started tracking extremism in Texas politics about a decade ago, whenever his schedule as a Little League coach and school board member would allow. At the time, he lived in Granbury, 40 minutes west of Fort Worth. He'd noticed that a local member of the state legislature, Mike Lang, had become a vocal advocate for using public money for private schools - despite the fact that Lang campaigned as a supporter of public education.With a little research, Tackett found that Lang had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the Wilks brothers and Tim Dunn, billionaire megadonors whose deep pockets and Christian nationalist views have consumed the Texas GOP. Tackett published his findings on social media, and soon enough, people started asking him to create pie charts of their representatives' campaign funds. These charts evolved into the organisation See It. Name It. Fight It. Continue reading...

The American Indian Movement was established in Minneapolis more than 50 years ago in response to police brutality. After ICE agents flooded the city this winter, neighborhoods reprised citizen patrolsOutside the Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop in Minneapolis's Native American cultural corridor, a group of watchers huddled around a small firepit. Some cuddled into heated camp chairs, as others grasped steaming cups of coffee as they scanned the intersection for ICE agents.A volunteer periodically monitored a local chat group for reports of ICE agents in the area. Foot patrollers equipped with heated handwarmers and orange whistles were dispatched throughout the neighbourhood, and watchers with cars took off in pairs. Continue reading...

The US president has twisted the 1823 doctrine to suit his quest for domination. It originally had a very different vision for the AmericasThroughout Bad Bunny's mesmerizing performance during the Super Bowl, the word America" kept expanding, like an accordion, stretching out to embrace people of all nationalities. Together we are all America," his football read, and he obviously meant it, in the largest, most hemispheric sense. Near the end, after shouting God bless America" (his only words in English), Bad Bunny ran through a long list of countries in the western hemisphere.That inclusiveness enraged Donald Trump, who erupted on social media, and tried to take the word back, declaring the half-time show an affront to the greatness of America". By which, of course, he meant the United States. Continue reading...

Critics say Trump administration's rapidly expanding system is open to abuse and risks alienating communities from local policeHomeland Security watchdogs who were forced out of their jobs warn that the Trump administration's alarming" rush to deputize hundreds of local police departments to enforce federal immigration law - while gutting independent oversight - risks a threat to civil rights nationwide."When the experienced civil rights watchdogs had their jobs cut last year by the Trump administration, they were in the process of scrutinizing the controversial federal program allowing local police to conduct federal immigration enforcement work, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal. Continue reading...

Our studies in civil resistance offer insight into the level of popular organizing needed to repel assaults on democracyIn the wake of two horrifying killings of legal observers in Minnesota, on top of the abduction of countless immigrant community members, the country has reached a turning point. Backlash against ICE's lawlessness and aggression has reverberated so loudly that even Trump has heard it. But the effects on ordinary Americans contemplating what they would do if they lived in Minneapolis or St Paul is perhaps even more profound.The extraordinary level of grassroots solidarity and creative resistance in anti-ICE protests in Minnesota has given people a new appreciation for the power that mass non-cooperation can have in resisting the Trump administration's drive toward authoritarianism. And it has created an awareness of why such action is clearly needed.Mark and Paul Engler are co-directors of the Whirlwind Institute, a social change strategy center. A new and expanded 10th anniversary edition of their book This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century has just been released. Continue reading...

We didn't see Super Bowl LX coming, but some of us were early believers in Ben Johnson's Bears, Trevor Lawrence's Jaguars and the fallibility of the ChiefsIt doesn't take long for the egg the start dripping from our faces. The early September headline accompanying our 2025 NFL predictions - Will it be Mahomes, Jackson or Allen in the Super Bowl? - was the ultimate hedge. After all, what were the odds that one of them wouldn't emerge from the AFC?Then there was the reality. Mike Vrabel's dramatic turnaround of New England. The Bears transforming from worst-to-first in the NFC North under Ben Johnson. The first-half magic of Daniel Jones. The successful pairing of Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Sam Darnold. Continue reading...

Opposition challenger Peter Magyar is ahead in the polls on a promise of hope. Orban is betting on fear of war to stay in powerAfter 16 years of uninterrupted power, Viktor Orban is facing his biggest electoral challenge. For years Hungary's prime minister has spun weak policy performance as success. The rise of a rival, Peter Magyar, and the opposition Tisza party has exposed the limits of that strategy.The economy is stagnating, despite repeated promises of a long-awaited takeoff. Over the past decade and a half, Hungary has slipped from being one of central and eastern Europe's strongest performers to one of its weakest. Public services, from healthcare to transport, are widely seen as neglected, and Policy Solutions surveys show that voters have noticed. Hungary is not alone in facing a cost of living crisis, but comparisons offer little consolation to voters who were assured that Orban's model would deliver exceptional results.Andras Biro-Nagy is a senior research fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest and director of Policy Solutions. He is the author of The Path of Hungary's EU Membership Continue reading...

Mette Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said the pressure on the island's people was unacceptable". Key US politics stories from 14 February at a glanceDanish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has said she believes Donald Trump still wants to own Greenland, despite dialling back his recent threats to seize it by force.Asked at the Munich Security Conference if the US president still wanted to own the Arctic island, Frederiksen said: Unfortunately, I think the desire is the same." Continue reading...

It was another day of high drama at the Milano Cortina Games as Lucas Pinheiro Braathen made history for Brazil and South America, among other plotlinesWomen's dual moguls: It's all very civilised out on the snow, the athletes have a hug when they reach the bottom. I was thinking the snow looked a bit grubby but it turns out the authorities put out pine needles - I think to help skiers find their way.Anyway, they've zipped through very quickly and have already sorted the quarter finals, with four Americans in the final eight. Continue reading...

Luis Munoz Pinto, 27, who was sent to notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador, would like to clear his name after US judge's rulingA US federal judge's order that some of the Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador must be allowed to return to the United States to fight their cases has been greeted with hope and a sense of vindication - but also fear - by one of the deportees.

Speaking with progressive YouTuber, former US president stressed unprecedented nature' of agency's actionsBarack Obama publicly gave his support to demonstrators in Minneapolis for standing up to the unprecedented nature" of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota.Speaking in an interview with progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday, the former president discussed the power that US citizens hold when standing up for the values they believe in and his hopes for the next generation of American leaders. Continue reading...

Ilia Malinin entered the Olympic free skate as the runaway favorite. Early mistakes triggered a meltdown that laid bare the brutal math of modern figure skatingWhat made Ilia Malinin's Olympic defeat so shocking was not simply his years-long dominance entering Friday night. It was how completely the competition had tilted in his favor before he even stepped on the ice.For nearly three years, Malinin had been men's skating's guiding light: unbeaten since late 2023, winner of back-to-back world titles, the skater who recalibrated the sport's technical ceiling and then made winning look procedural. He arrived at the Milano Ice Skating Arena leading by more than five points after the short program and carrying the most difficult planned program in the field. Under almost any normal competitive logic, that combination should have been decisive. Continue reading...

Clients including Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach cut ties to firm after communications came to lightCasey Wasserman, a leading Hollywood talent agent whose clients include Chappell Roan, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar, is selling his business after communications with Ghislaine Maxwell were exposed as part of the US justice department's recent dump of investigative documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.Wasserman, grandson of the late famed Hollywood dealmaker Lew Wasserman, said late on Friday he was putting his eponymous talent and marketing agency on the block, citing the impact on the company from past personal mistakes" and telling staff he felt that he had become a distraction" to its work. Continue reading...

Brass Solidarity was formed after George Floyd's murder, and now also marks the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at its weekly meetupA week after a federal officer shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, a troupe of brass players, percussionists and singers gathered at the site of the killing, to play a blaring, defiant rendition of the O'Jays' Love Train.Trumpeters, trombonists and sousaphonists had lined up along the ice-slicked sidewalk or were balancing on the snowbanks, blowing up clouds of condensation. Continue reading...

13% of federal civilian workforce is affected, although DHS - which spurred budget standoff - remains fundedA limited US government shutdown came into effect on Saturday - the third of Donald Trump's second term - after negotiations between the White House and Democrats in Congress failed to agree on new restrictions for federal immigration agents.The shutdown affects about 13% of the federal civilian workforce and is confined to agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which screens airline passengers. Continue reading...

Sheriff's, FBI and forensics vehicles passed through roadblocks 2 miles from missing 84-year-old woman's homeLaw enforcement investigating the disappearance of Today show host Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy, sealed off a road near her home in Arizona late Friday night.A parade of sheriff's and FBI vehicles, including forensics vehicles, passed through the roadblock that was set up about 2 miles (3.2km) from the house. Continue reading...

A documentary about Mississippi examines competing forces: the nostalgic celebration of the old south and the refusal to sanitize the brutal history of enslavementNatchez swallowed a master narrative about the old south."In Suzannah Herbert's documentary Natchez, the opening remark from National Park Service ranger Barney Schoby functions as both diagnosis and thesis. The film that follows does not evade the Mississippi town's contradictions. Instead, it actively adjudicates them, staging white people's curated nostalgia against Black people's historical knowledge, lived experience and institutional fact. Continue reading...

The Democratic-leaning midwestern state where federal agents killed two citizens is in many ways anathema to the administrationSince the federal immigration surge began late last year, Minnesotans have offered varying theories for why their state was targeted by the Trump administration.It's a midwestern state that hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, including the three times it voted against Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Claims that agreement is unconstitutional could pose problems in talks with Washington over GreenlandDenmark could face legal action over an agreement that gives the US sweeping powers on Danish soil, over claims it is unconstitutional" and could pose problems in talks with Washington over Greenland.The agreement, which was signed under the Biden administration in 2023 and was passed by the Danish parliament last year, gives the US unhindered access" to its airbases and powers over its civilians. Continue reading...

Antoine Massey was convicted on charges of rape and kidnapping before New Orleans jailbreakA man who joined nine others in fleeing a New Orleans jail - then publicly pleaded for help from Donald Trump, a rapper whom the president pardoned and reality TV star Kim Kardashian while on the run - recently got a 60-year prison sentence for kidnapping and raping his ex-girlfriend.Antoine Massey, 32, received his punishment on Thursday at a suburban New Orleans state courthouse, months after his jailbreak-related capture and subsequent conviction at trial of prior charges.Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana contributed Continue reading...

The disappearance in Arizona of the Today show host Savannah Guthrie's mother has captivated the nationNancy Guthrie disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home two weeks ago, setting off a potent chain reaction of federal and local criminal investigation, amateur sleuthing and public obsession that - so far - has resulted in neither the 84-year-old grandmother being located or anyone named as a suspect or, indeed, arrested.It is a case that is both enthralling and baffling the American public, casting doubts on the ability of investigators to get to the bottom of the mystery that each day generates a fresh 24-hour news cycle - but seemingly little in the way of solid fresh leads likely to solve the case. Continue reading...

Secretary of state calls the US a child of Europe' and urges continent to back a new world order

The brilliant American was expected to glide to a gold medal on Friday. It was tough to watch such a gifted athlete discover the ruthlessness of his sportBy the time Ilia Malinin reached the closing stretch of his Olympic free skate, the outcome was no longer really the story. The story was the expression on his face - not panic, not shock, but the dawning realization that a destiny he had controlled for nearly three years had slipped beyond his reach in the blinding span of four and a half catastrophic minutes.For the rising generation of men's skaters, the 21-year-old Malinin has existed less as a rival than as a moving technical horizon. The Quad God. The skater who built programs around jumps others still treated as theory, who pushed the sport into something closer to applied physics. Much like Simone Biles, who took in Friday's contest from the arena's VIP seats, his only competition was himself. Continue reading...

The US flag bearer and first Black woman to win Winter Olympic individual gold carries the lessons of Special Forces into Sunday's 500m speed skating finalOn the ice, Erin Jackson is the picture of control - metronomic in her balance, rhythmic in her stride, a woman whose margins for error are blade thin. But all that control melted away when the speed skater glided on to Fox's Special Forces: World's Toughest Test reality TV series in fall 2023 for a taste of the grueling training that elite US troops endure.She was part of a motley cast that included former Dallas Cowboys star Dez Bryant, NBA clutch shooter Robert Horry and skier Bode Miller, a fellow Winter Olympic champion. But Jackson was less concerned with outshining her athletic peers than with confronting her own fears. To test her anxiety around swimming, Jackson was strapped into a mock helicopter, submerged in icy water and told to hold her breath for at least 15 seconds before freeing herself, grabbing a lifejacket, and paddling to safety. Continue reading...

His shameful stewardship of a once great title highlights how much we lose when private interest eclipses the public goodNot long after being made Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999, Jeff Bezos told me: They were not choosing me as much as they were choosing the internet, and me as a symbol." A quarter of an increasingly dark century later, the Amazon founder is now a symbol of something else: how the ultra-rich can kill the news.Job cuts in an industry that has struggled financially since the internet came into existence and killed its business model is hardly new, but last week's brutal cull of hundreds of journalists at the Bezos-owned Washington Post marks a new low. The redundancies that were announced to staff on a video call, the axing of half its foreign bureau (including the war reporter in Ukraine) - not since P&O Ferries have layoffs been handled so badly. Former Post stalwart Paul Farhi described a decision that affected nearly half of the 790-strong workforce as the biggest one-day wipeout of journalists in a generation". Continue reading...

Epstein files release shows David Stern advised against mentioning being denied previously or criminal charges'An aide to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor advised Jeffrey Epstein to illegally hide his child sexual abuse conviction to obtain a visa to China, according to the latest Epstein files release.David Stern, who was a close associate of both Epstein and the then prince, was asked for his help after the disgraced financier's initial application for a visa was rejected. Continue reading...

Lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving an impasse over much-criticized agency's fundingThe Department of Homeland Security has begun a partial shutdown, after funding for the much-criticized agency expired, with a range of services, including domestic flights and the US Coastguard, now vulnerable to disruption.The shutdown was all but confirmed on Thursday, after the Senate failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the DHS appropriations bill and lawmakers left Washington for a long weekend without resolving the impasse. Continue reading...

This live blog is now closed.The annual rate of US inflation eased in January, according to the latest data consumer price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Over the last 12 months, the cost of goods has increased by 2.4% -down from 2.7% in last month's report.Lawmakers in the House and Senate left Washington on Thursday as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) heads for another shutdown, when stopgap funding lapses tonight. Nearly all Democrats blocked a second attempt to pass the annual DHS appropriations bill as negotiations for guardrails on federal immigration enforcement have stalled. Senator John Fetterman was the only lawmaker to break ranks with the party. Continue reading...

Strike appears to be first in Caribbean since November, with vast majority of recent strikes happening in the PacificThe US military's Southern Command, which oversees operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, said it had carried out its second deadly boat strike this week. The command said the latest strike killed three suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean on Friday.Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations," the Southern Command said in a statement. The command included a video of the strike with its announcement, which shows a boat traveling through the water as it explodes into flames after being hit with what looks like a missile. Continue reading...

Democratic representative also condemns US capture of Nicolas Maduro, Trump's threats to annex Greenland and US support for Israel's war on Gaza - key US politics stories from Friday, 13 February at a glanceAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an age of authoritarianism", as she condemned his administration's foreign policy in front of its allies' top policymakers at the Munich security conference.Speaking at a panel on populism on Friday, the New York representative outlined what she called an alternative vision" for a leftwing US foreign policy, challenging the Trump administration's shift to the right in front an audience of US allies who have grown increasingly wary of the US's increasingly nationalist - and militaristic - global posture. Continue reading...

Charges dropped against two Venezuelan men over January shooting as investigation opened into agents' conductFederal authorities have opened a criminal investigation into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about a shooting in Minneapolis last month, as all charges were dropped against two Venezuelan men.ICE director Todd Lyons said on Friday that his agency opened a joint investigation with the justice department after video evidence revealed sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements" about the shooting of one of the Venezuelan men during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown across the Minneapolis area. Continue reading...

New York congresswoman criticizes unconditional' US aid and calls for enforcement of Leahy lawsAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during a Munich security conference panel on Friday on the future of foreign policy that the Democratic party's next presidential nominee should reconsider the country's military aid to Israel.Hagar Shezaf of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz asked the US congresswoman if she thought the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel". Continue reading...

In a floor speech, Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative, revealed identities of six men after seeing unredacted filesRo Khanna, the US congressman, publicly revealed the names of six men whose identities were redacted from the Jeffrey Epstein files, including Leslie Wexner, a billionaire retail magnate, whom the FBI appeared to have labeled as a co-conspirator.Four of the six men had no connection to Epstein whatsoever and were simply part of a photo lineup assembled by law enforcement, according to reporting from the Guardian. Two of the men who spoke to the Guardian strongly denied knowing Epstein and said they had been arrested by NYPD for unrelated crimes in the past, which likely explains how their photos ended up in the array. Continue reading...

President insists he will also restrict mail-in voting, even if Congress fails to pass the Save America actDonald Trump threatened on Friday to impose a requirement that US voters present photo identification before being allowed to cast ballots in the upcoming midterm elections.Trump insisted he will push for the change even if Congress fails to pass the Save America act, which cleared the House earlier this week but faces an uphill battle in the Senate. The bill would impose a national photo identification requirement to vote, in addition to requiring proof of citizenship to register and drastically limiting mail-in voting. Continue reading...

President of Protect Our Care issues one-word statement to US health and human services secretary: Resign'A prominent healthcare advocacy group is calling for the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to step down from his post after he downplayed Covid risks by saying: I'm not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats."Kennedy, who was appointed secretary of the federal health and human services (HHS) department despite his avowed anti-vaccine activism, made that remark on the 12 February episode of Theo Von's podcast This Past Weekend. Continue reading...

Matt Weston wins gold for Great Britain in the men's skeleton and Ilia Malinin finishes in a shock eighth place in the men's figure skating finalItalian biathlete Rebecca Passler will be able to participate in the Winter Olympics despite failing a doping test, the Italian skiing federation (Fisi) said on Friday. Italy's anti-doping body (Nado) upheld her appeal against a provisional suspension that followed a positive test for the banned substance Letrozole on 26 January.Nado's Court of Appeal acknowledged the possibility of unintentional ingestion or unknowing contamination of the substance. Passler will rejoin her teammates starting Monday, February 16, when she will be available to the coaching staff for the subsequent competitions on the Olympic programme," Fisi said in a statement. Continue reading...