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The Republicans were always the party of big business, but Mr Trump is turning them into a playpen for oligarchsOne person turns up surprisingly often at Donald Trump's side. Not his No 2, JD Vance, nor his wife, Melania, but another man a quarter-century younger and about $300bn heavier: Elon Musk. The two hunkered down in Mar-a-Lago on the night of the election, celebrating the results. This week they were in Texas, watching Mr Musk's staff test-launch a spacecraft. During the campaign, Mr Musk personally chipped in $130m, made speeches at rallies and organised campaigns to get out the vote". Last week, the world's richest man was picked by the president-elect to run a new department of government efficiency". So close are the pair that Mr Musk dubs himself First Buddy".American politics has always been coiled around money, tight as a vine around a trunk. Nearly 25 years ago, George W Bush joked at a swanky white-tie dinner:Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." Nor is it confined to the right wing. Of the two main candidates in this month's election, more billionaires backed Kamala Harris. One result is a highly warped politics that works against the very people it urges to go out and vote.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Changes were tucked into hurricane relief bill and passed by statehouse on Tuesday hours after it was made publicNorth Carolina Republicans are on the verge of pushing through a bill that would give them more power over elections in the state.The changes were tucked into a bill dealing with Hurricane Helene relief aid at the last minute and passed by the state house of representatives on Tuesday, hours after it was made public. Continue reading...

Party calls for generational shift and looks to younger governors after Harris's defeat in presidential electionJoe Biden marked his 82nd birthday on Wednesday as Democrats began searching for a younger generation of party leaders following Kamala Harris's morale-sapping defeat in this month's presidential election.Any birthday celebrations planned by the US president will probably be muted as he returned to Washington from the G20 summit in Brazil a seemingly diminished figure, awaiting the return to power of Donald Trump, who is expected to dismantle many of his achievements in the past four years. Continue reading...

Whitaker, who is seen as partisan loyalist, has a background in law enforcement and not in foreign policy

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State narrowly votes against measure that would have benefited 2 million workersVoters in California have rejected a ballot measure that would have made the state minimum wage the highest in the US by 2026, at $18 an hour.The current minimum wage rates are $16 an hour for most workers and $20 in the fast-food sector. The state's healthcare sector will eventually see its minimum wage reach $25 an hour. Continue reading...

Bill to strip groups deemed to support terrorism' of non-profit status seen as threat to Palestinian advocacy groupsHouse Republicans have renewed a push to pass a bill that would allow the treasury department to strip non-profit groups it deems to be supporting terrorism" of their tax-exempt status.The so-called non-profit killer" bill would give the government broad powers to sanction civil society organizations. Progressive groups have rallied in opposition to the bill in recent days, arguing that Donald Trump's administration could invoke it to punish his political opponents. Continue reading...

The president-elect proposed an archaic method to install people such as RFK Jr and Matt Gaetz - here's what to knowSenate Republicans must soon consider several of Donald Trump's cabinet picks whose nominations were met with intense criticism: Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services.Each of those cabinet announcements landed with somewhat of a thud on Capitol Hill, raising questions about whether the nominees will be able to muster the majority-level support needed in the Senate to get confirmed. Continue reading...

Carmaker does not specify where British cuts will fall but Dagenham and Halewood will not be affected

I don't spend every night in my local. But even when I'm home, the knowledge that it exists makes life betterA closed pub is a sad, sad sight. Where once was life, people talking and laughing, now there is none. OK, bad stuff would have gone on too. I get that. Every pub has a drinker or two who needs the drink they're holding more than they should. These places are, after all, potential vectors for dependence on a highly addictive substance, with all the misery that entails. But I think - hope - that pubs do more good than harm, that they're more of a blessing than a curse.Like most drinkers, I'm inclined to imagine that most of the population drink about the same as me, if not more, and in similar places. When the first lockdown was announced, including, unthinkably, the closing of pubs, Boris Johnson said he found it wrenching to be taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub". I happened to watch him make that speech on a TV in my local pub - it was my birthday. I'm sure I nodded in agreement, though even then I thought it was a bit of a stretch to make the right to go to the pub sound like it was enshrined in Magna Carta. And when I checked, I found that only about half of adults regularly frequent pubs and bars. So not everyone, by a long shot, exercises their inalienable right, although that leaves no small number who do.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

I too suffered this repression. The harsh sentences handed down to democracy activists cannot go unchallengedJoshua Wong, one of Hong Kong's best-known pro-democracy activists, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison on Tuesday. He received a one-third sentencing cut to that period by pleading guilty. Even so, coupled with other charges he faced for his peaceful participation in the 2019 democratic protests, he will be in prison until at least 2027.I spent my formative years with Wong. We were both student leaders in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and co-founded the now-dissolved youth-led political party Demosist in 2016. He gave everything he had to support me in my bid to become the youngest legislator in Hong Kong the same year. In 2020, I departed the city; he remains. The pain of survivor's guilt hits me every night. Continue reading...

Proposition 314 makes crossing the US-Mexico border a state crime, as Trump threatens widespread deportationsThe news that Arizona voters on 5 November had approved the so-called secure our border" initiative hit Reyna Montoya like a gut punch.The measure - proposition 314 on the ballot - makes crossing the US-Mexico border without authorization a state crime, empowering local officials to arrest and deport border-crossers and enhancing criminal penalties for unauthorised immigrants who apply for public benefits. Continue reading...

Detainee, identified as Ana, mocked and leered at by male guards after they strapped her almost naked to a chairA female migrant in mental distress was kept in solitary confinement for a month at a Florida detention center, then mocked and leered at by male guards after they strapped her almost naked to a restraint chair, a federal civil rights complaint alleges.The reported sexual and mental abuse of the detainee, identified solely as Ana, took place at the Baker county detention facility, a rural camp 30 miles west of Jacksonville with a long history of allegations of mistreatment, harassment, retaliation and cruelty to detainees. Continue reading...

Video of arrest of Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, tenured professor at University of California, Irvine, went viralAs riot police arrested 50 people during a May 2024 pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of California, Irvine, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard was escorted away by riot police, her hands zip-tied behind her back.A video of the tenured professor speaking passionately to reporters as she was arrested circulated widely on social media. We cannot have a genocidal foreign policy in a democracy," she says in the video. These police officers out here today - that's thousands of students' scholarships." Continue reading...

It comes as the Kremlin rules out a freeze' in the conflict. Plus, 204 industrial farming lobbyists attend Cop29

Brazil legend features in Saturday's big Championship game between Orlando Pride and Washington SpiritThe 2024 NWSL Championship between Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit on Saturday will be a historic contest and caps off a memorable year. Hosted at CPKC Stadium in Kansas City, it already celebrates a massive milestone in yet another year of growth. The Kansas City Current's home is the first stadium built specifically for an NWSL club and was deservedly awarded the Championship game.As the NWSL commissioner, Jessica Berman, said: It was a natural choice to stage the league's marquee event in a venue that exemplifies the profound impact of infrastructure, investment and community support on the continued development and success of our sport." The 11,500 capacity stadium sold out every game and is on course to do the same in the final. Continue reading...

With them, Trump will tear down any person or institution that tried to restrain his worst impulses or hold him accountableShock" suddenly became the most commonly uttered word in habitually nonplussed Washington DC. After Donald Trump had attempted to subvert the certification of a presidential election, incited a mob, absconded with national security secrets, was convicted as a felon, and waged his Nazi-esque poison in the blood" campaign, his brazen cabinet appointments are so mind-boggling that even hard-bitten cynics gasp.Sheer hypocrisy would have drawn a yawn. But Trump's cabinet selections would have startled even the character of Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, who feigned surprise at discovering gambling in the backroom of Rick's Cafe before pocketing his winnings: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" Continue reading...

Meta's awkward dork' boss has updated his haircut and his wardrobe - and shown the world how much family means to him. He's still a billionaire with skeletons in the cupboardDo they hand out Nobel prizes for PR? Because the team behind Mark Zuckerberg's recent metamorphosis deserves one immediately. Not so long ago, Zuck was widely known as an awkward dork with an unflattering haircut, whose corporate empire did evil things such as fuelling genocidal violence in Myanmar, spreading misinformation and harvesting people's personal information.Now, however, the tech mogul keeps making headlines for far fluffier reasons. This has been the year of the Zucknaissance, with people marvelling over his jazzy new wardrobe and far more flattering hair. In what may be an effort to seem more relatable, he has made his private life a lot more public. It's not clear whether Zuckerberg, who has been married to Priscilla Chan for 12 years, has always been a fan of the big romantic gesture, but he certainly now seems to want to be known as a major wife guy".Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The Harris campaign dumped Biden's FDR-style ambitions for boring neoliberal policy planks that were an electoral dead-endThe post-mortems of Kamala Harris's loss to Donald Trump all agree on one thing: that Harris stuck too close to Biden. It was deliberate, pundits charge, pointing to the now infamous October appearance on ABC's The View, where Harris said There is not a thing that comes close to mind" that she would have done differently. But the pundits are wrong.Harris did distance herself from Biden where it hurt her most. She dumped his Rooseveltian transformative ambitions to bring back big government. Instead, she returned to the Obama-Clinton of a small or neoliberal state that highly influential Democrats like Jake Sullivan had already known was an electoral dead end during the first Trump administration.Daniela Gabor is professor of economics and macrofinance at SOAS, University of London. She is working on The Wall Street Consensus, a book on the return of the transformative state Continue reading...

An economic populism for the majority - irrespective of gender, race, religion, sexual or gender - is the way forwardDid the Democrats really lose because they were too woke", too obsessed with minorities, too radical? After defeat, there always comes the battle for the narrative about why the party lost. As the US left is rediscovering, the most influential voices tend to be those platformed by corporate media outlets whose siren cry is always to march rightwards. And yet even the New York Times concluded that one of the main problems was in fact Kamala Harris's Wall Street-approved economic pitch", which her brother-in-law - chief legal officer at Uber - reportedly helped craft, and which fell flat".The liberal order, always riddled with hypocrisies and illusions, is collapsing, partly because mainstream liberals cannot be trusted to defend liberalism: they are set to conclude that Trumpism must be defeated through imitation. But here's a polling fact that cannot be ignored. In the past 50 years, the number of Americans who believe the Democrats represent the working class" has plummeted, while the numbers who believe they stand up for marginalised groups" has dramatically risen, now exceeding the former.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Amid the normalization of gambling, betting companies are resembling broadcasters and vice versa - and coverage is rapidly becoming a tangled web of vested interestsIn sports broadcasting's equivalent of a team changing its colors from red to blue in mid-season, the Diamond Sports Group, a bankrupt operator of 16 regional sports networks, last month rebranded its channels as the FanDuel Sports Network.The prior name was already linked to gambling - Bally's held the branding rights for three years. But FanDuel is a higher-profile new partner with a much larger parent company. Flutter, headquartered in New York and originating from the Irish-British merger of Paddy Power and Betfair, is the world's largest online betting business. Continue reading...

As the two-point try celebrates 30 years in the NFL rule book, teams are converting a scant 31.3% of them this season, down from 55.1% last yearThe Baltimore Ravens were hardly having the best of days, but they'd successfully negotiated a last-ditch journey Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers by driving 69 yards in nine plays for a touchdown. The Steelers suddenly led by just 18-16 with 66 seconds left.No doubt the Ravens would try a two-point conversion to tie the score and send the game into overtime. But the Steelers, expecting a Tim Tebow-like pop pass, called time out as quarterback Lamar Jackson got ready to take the snap. So the Ravens called another play. Continue reading...

Three years after Halyna Hutchins was killed on set, Olga Solovey says there has been no justice for my daughter' and claims Baldwin has not apologisedThe mother of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was fatally shot on the set of the film Rust by actor Alec Baldwin, has refused to attend the film's world premiere on Wednesday, alleging the star has still not apologised to her over her daughter's death.Rust will premiere at the Camerimage festival in Poland, an event focusing on achievements in cinematography, three years after the prop gun Baldwin was holding went off and fatally injured Hutchins, the film's cinematographer, on the set of the western in New Mexico. Tickets to the premiere sold out quickly on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Dr Oz, best known for his daytime talkshow, leaned heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for US SenateDonald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6tn annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS," Oz posted on X on Tuesday. I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr]." Continue reading...

President-elect picks prominent donor and co-chair of transition team as education secretary; Trump won't rethink Gaetz for attorney general despite mounting scrutiny

Australia's ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, says Australia is 'ready' for a second Trump presidency. In a speech to the Sydney International Strategy Forum via video link, Rudd says 'the team here at the embassy and the government of Australia are ready to work closely with the new Trump administration to continue to realise the benefits of what is a very strong economic and security partnership'Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube

Billionaire and former Senate candidate served in president-elect's cabinet in first administrationLinda McMahon, co-chair of Donald Trump's transition team, has been named as the president-elect's pick for education secretary in his upcoming administration.In a statement, Trump extolled the incredible" job McMahon, the billionaire co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), has been doing as transition team co-chair and said: As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand Choice' to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families. ... We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort." Continue reading...

Interviews for key role conducted at Mar-a-Lago on Monday night as Trump appears intent on firing Christopher WrayDonald Trump is keeping his controversial adviser Kash Patel in the running to be the next FBI director, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the transition team conducted interviews for the role on Monday night at the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago club.The existence of the interviews, made public in a since-deleted post by the vice president-elect JD Vance, underscored the intent to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, years before his current term is up. Continue reading...

John Jessup to resign as commissioner in Hancock, Indiana, and faces prison after guilty plea over incident in Las VegasDays after winning elected office, a Republican politician in Indiana pleaded guilty to trying to sexually assault his daughter in Las Vegas and now must resign his position.John Jessup, the commissioner of Hancock, Indiana, was charged in Nevada in June in connection with a sexual assault that occurred in January, reported the local Greenfield Daily Reporter newspaper and KLAS. Continue reading...

TV personality's medical advice has proven so controversial a 2014 study declared half of it baseless or wrong'Donald Trump has nominated Mehmet Oz, best known globally as Dr Oz, to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator.Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country's budget," wrote Trump in his announcement of Oz's nomination. Continue reading...

Officials incredibly concerned' as Moscow vows response to Kyiv's use of US-made missiles on targets inside Russia

Congresswoman threatens to release what she says are reports of harassment claims filed against colleaguesMarjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Republican congresswoman from Georgia, has intervened on behalf of Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump's embattled attorney general nominee, by issuing a bizarre challenge to her Republican colleagues.Amid intensifying pressure for the release of a congressional report into alleged sexual misconduct that could sink Gaetz's nomination, Taylor Greene demanded similar full disclosure of what she claimed were multiple reports of assault and sexual harassment filed against fellow Republican Congress members. Continue reading...

Last month, 32 people died of accidental overdoses in the city, compared with 70 in October 2023, according to reportSan Francisco saw a 54% drop in overdose deaths in October 2024, compared with the same month a year earlier - the lowest monthly count since the city began publishing the figures in 2020, officials announced this week.Last month, 32 people died of accidental overdoses in the city; there were 70 deaths in October 2023, according to a report of preliminary data from the city's office of the chief medical examiner. Overdose deaths have declined in recent months and are down more than 20% in the span between January and October this year, compared with the same period last year. Continue reading...

Summit leaders have reshoot in Rio after Biden, Justin Trudeau and Giorgia Meloni were no-shows the day beforeThe first time G20 leaders took their photo together at a summit in Rio, they forgot Joe Biden. On Tuesday, they had a reshoot - with the outgoing US president firmly back in the frame.Biden; the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau; and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni all missed the photo on Monday due to what US officials called logistical issues". Continue reading...

The jailing of 45 pro-democracy activists testifies to the ruthless suppression of a once-vibrant civil societyDefending Beijing's draconian crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong, following the extraordinary protest movement in 2019, the territory's former leader, Carrie Lim, would claim that there was no one-size-fits-all" approach to doing democracy. Such rhetoric was, of course, only ever disingenuous sophistry. The conclusion of Hong Kong's largest-ever national security trial on Tuesday confirmed the grisly trajectory of recent years under Ms Lim's successor, John Lee: a consolidation of nakedly authoritarian rule has led to the suppression of a once vibrant and politically diverse civil society.In all, 45 pro-democracy activists were jailed under Hong Kong's punitive national security law (NSL), imposed by Beijing in 2020. Charged the same year with conspiracy to commit subversion against the state, their crime" had been, in fact, to pursue a peaceful route to goals including democratic elections for the city's leader and police accountability. Continue reading...

Trump's billionaire best friend wants young people to fear' childlessness. He'll be right at home in an incoming administration set on rolling back reproductive rightsIs Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity - including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple he had met socially only a handful of times" during a Silicon Valley dinner party.Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. (One of the children has since sadly died.) He's become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement - one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

A look at those who have been and could be offered key positions when Trump takes officeDonald Trump, the former US president set to return to the White House in January for a second term, has begun making selections for his administration, opting for those who have displayed loyalty over those with deep experience.Trump has tasked Howard Lutnick, a longtime friend, with recruiting officials who will deliver, rather than dilute, his agenda. During his first term, several of Trump's key appointees tried to convince Trump out of his more extreme plans. Continue reading...

President-elect's nominee for attorney general is dogged by sexual misconduct allegationsDonald Trump has reportedly told associates that Matt Gaetz, his nominee for attorney general, has a less than 50-50 chance of being confirmed by the Senate, even while pushing forward with his nomination amid damaging sexual misconduct allegations.The president-elect has continued making calls in support of his beleaguered nominee despite resistance from Republican senators because he is confident his insistence will alter the standard for acceptable cabinet choices even if Gaetz fails, the New York Times reported. Continue reading...

California governor will wait until new LA district attorney Nathan Hochman is in office before deciding brothers' fateGavin Newsom said this week that he will postpone a decision on clemency for the Menendez brothers until the new Los Angeles district attorney reviews the case.George Gascon, the current DA, announced late last month that he would recommend the brothers Lyle and Erik be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents, arguing they had paid their debt to society" and wrote to the governor in support of the pair. The brothers have long said they killed their parents after years of abuse. Continue reading...

Governor, who has praised pick of Robert F Kennedy Jr for health secretary, says he is open to working with TrumpDespite launching a governors' group focused on safeguarding democracy during Donald Trump's second term, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado said the coalition wasn't about Trump, a president he's willing to work with on several key issues.In recent days, Polis, a Democrat, also praised Trump's pick of Robert F Kennedy Jr for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, an unexpected endorsement from a governor of a blue state that bucked the national trend and largely moved to the left in the election. Continue reading...

Morning Joe host accuses critics of being disconnected from the real world' amid outcry over Mar-a-Lago visitThe Morning Joe star Joe Scarborough brushed off criticism of last week's meeting with Donald Trump in Florida amid reports that the get-together was motivated by the liberal news network show host's fear of retribution from the US president-elect.Scarborough, along with his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, revealed during Monday's broadcast that they personally met with Donald Trump last week to restart communications" following their unrelenting opposition to his campaign for the White House. Continue reading...

No wonder pop stars and others feel uneasy about the project. However well-intentioned, it now does more harm than goodHey y'all: listen up to the chartbusting, pop-pickin', time-addled DJ: Yes indeed, Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas is back with a bang, a twist and a mix! This time our ultimate white saviour anthem is ready for for a generation weaned on AI remixes: a menage a trois of the original 1984 version mixed in with the 2004 and 2014 versions. Britain is about to feel good and Africa" is finally about to get fed! WICK-ED! Joining us to discuss this is my mate, a fountain of all that is good in the world, the great Sir Bob Geldof ..."We don't know exactly what the forthcoming, 40th-anniversary version of Do They Know It's Christmas?, featuring a mashup of previous versions into a new ultimate mix", will sound like. But I do fear the worst.Nels Abbey is an author, broadcaster and the founder of Uppity: the Intellectual Playground Continue reading...

Investors dash to safe-haven currencies after Putin updates nuclear doctrine and Ukraine fires missiles into Russia

In 1987, the great and good of the art scene designed rides for an avant garde theme park' in Hamburg. Decades later, Luna Luna has been lovingly resurrectedFive years ago, the creative director Michael Goldberg was working from home when he spotted a reference to Luna Luna on an obscure website. I may have yelled on my couch," he laughs now.Goldberg had chanced upon the lost world of Luna Luna, an avant garde theme park" staged in Hamburg in 1987, created by the artist Andre Heller, which featured surreal and playful rides designed by the great and the good of the art world. It included a ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring, a swing ride by their fellow 80s New York name Kenny Scharf, a funhouse by Salvador Dali, a glass maze by Roy Lichtenstein and an entranceway by the abstract art pioneer Sonia Delaunay, to name a few.Top: The carnival is reconstructed. Bottom: Luna Luna Carousel in Los Angeles. Continue reading...