Republican seen as Trump’s top challenger launches campaign with glitch-riddled Twitter eventThe governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, rolling out the news with a campaign video and a glitch-riddled event on Twitter with the owner of the social media site, Elon Musk.DeSantis filed paperwork on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, before his planned event with Musk and an interview with Fox News later on Wednesday evening. Continue reading...
Struggling platform experienced its greatest stress test yet on Wednesday, with glitches piling as more people joined the streamRon DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces was hyped by Elon Musk as “groundbreaking”, and extensively advertised as a new frontier for “free speech” in politics. Instead, the results were a disaster.The event, which marked the first time a major candidate had announced their run for president on social media, marked Twitter’s latest attempt to draw more users and create profit as financial challenges mount. Since taking over the social network, laying off upwards of 80% of staff, Musk’s company has experienced a rise in technical glitches and errors. Continue reading...
In the hospital room I lost it. I stood there awkwardly with wet eyes. And then something incredible happenedThe word that our old friend was about to die travelled as quickly as a Mallee scrub fire. He’d been medically evacuated home from overseas a week or so earlier. He was now in hospital with his family about him, not very responsive and unable to talk.“You should get there quickly. He might only have a day or two.’’ Continue reading...
Drug overdoses kill two to three times as many in state as car accidents, data showsOverdoses involving fentanyl were behind one in five deaths of people ages 15-24 in California, the latest indicator of an emergency that shows no signs of slowing.Drug overdoses now kill two to three times as many people in the state as car accidents, according to data compiled by the consulting group California Health Policy Strategies. Since 2017, deaths related to the synthetic opioid, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, have increased 1,027%. Continue reading...
Democrats and Republicans continue to trade pointed remarks, underscoring that agreement is not in reach to avoid defaultLawmakers exchanged sharp criticism about who was to blame for the protracted standoff over the debt ceiling on Wednesday.As the country nears its deadline to avoid a federal default, talks between Joe Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, continued on Wednesday, as negotiators met again to hash out the details of a potential deal. But both parties simultaneously trade pointed remarks, underscoring that an agreement is not yet in reach. Continue reading...
The Florida governor claims ‘blue-collar roots’ and an Ivy League education but has pursued hard-right policies as he seeks to take on TrumpRon DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, has officially announced his candidacy for the GOP’s 2023 presidential nomination. DeSantis joins a field currently dominated by Donald Trump, the GOP’s most popular candidate, and is widely expected to become his chief contender.Here are 10 things to know about Ron DeSantis: Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Colombia, South Carolina on (#6BWTA)
Convicted murderer faces charges after being indicted over allegations he schemed to steal settlement money from clientsThe convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh is facing federal charges for the first time after being indicted on 22 financial fraud counts over allegations he schemed to steal settlement money from clients.The indictments unsealed on Wednesday do not appear to reveal any new allegations against the once-prominent South Carolina attorney now serving life without parole for killing his wife and younger son. Continue reading...
The rightwing culture warrior has been called ‘Trump 2.0’ – but what, if anything, is driving him to attain the highest office in the land?The official Florida governor’s website invites visitors to “Meet Governor DeSantis”. But anyone who clicks on that option is greeted with the message “Governor Ron DeSantis Biography – coming soon”, along with his photo and a big white space.DeSantis’s admirers project on to that blank page the ideal of a strong chief executive, “anti-woke” warrior and consistent election winner. His detractors fill the vacuum with warnings that the Florida governor represents “Trump 2.0”, “Trump with a brain” and “Trump without the circus”. Continue reading...
Bill which would have required every public school to display text in each classroom condemned by civil rights groupsRepublicans in Texas failed to pass legislation that would have required the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in every public school classroom.The controversial bill, authored by the Republican state senator Phil King, would have required schools to display the Old Testament text “in a conspicuous place in each classroom”, in a durable poster or frame. Continue reading...
Counter lawsuit comes after territory alleged bank ‘facilitated’ exploitation of women and girls by sex offenderJP Morgan has claimed the government of the US Virgin Islands is “complicit in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein”, saying the convicted sex trafficker maintained a “quid pro quo relationship” with some of the territory’s highest officials over two decades.The claim, contained in a legal filing on Tuesday, comes as part of a legal tussle that began with the US Virgin Islands alleging in a New York court that JP Morgan “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls”. JP Morgan denies the claims. Continue reading...
GOP attempt to add work requirements to safety net programs such as Medicaid and Snap could harm families already strugglingAs debt ceiling negotiations come down to the wire with the 1 June deadline looming, some Republican leaders seem determined to use critical safety net programs – specifically, Medicaid and Snap – as a bargaining chip, and millions of America’s most vulnerable families may pay the price.Cuts and restrictions to these essential programs, which offer healthcare and food assistance, will cause further hardship to families who are already struggling – and who in many cases can’t afford the basic essentials like food and shelter. The Republican fixation on appending work requirements to these benefits are also ineffective: data shows these policies are not needed and don’t produce any substantial solutions. Some critics say they also force people to find jobs that don’t actually lead to economic mobility, prolonging their need for federal assistance. Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in New York and Richard Luscombe i on (#6BWNW)
Florida governor, the closest challenger to Trump, is due to launch campaign in conversation with Elon Musk on TwitterThe 2024 Republican presidential primary is due to begin in earnest on Wednesday night with the formal entry of Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor who is the closest challenger to Donald Trump.DeSantis is due to announce his long-trailed candidacy in conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter, followed by an interview on Fox News. The governor is reportedly set to hit the campaign trail after the Memorial Day weekend, with visits to early voting states. Continue reading...
John Roberts speaks on same day lawyers for Harlan Crow decline to cooperate with Senate judiciary committee over gifts scandalThe chief justice of the US supreme court, John Roberts, said he and the other justices were working to hold themselves to the “highest standards” of ethical conduct.“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Roberts told an awards dinner in Washington on Tuesday. Continue reading...
Russian forces planned to invade after conquering Ukraine. Now Europe’s task is to ensure that Moldova’s democracy survivesWhile Russia’s war on Ukraine rages on and Kyiv prepares its counteroffensive, Moldova, the former Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and the EU, is fortunate to be still standing. Had Russia succeeded in its original war aims, not only would it have captured Kyiv and Odesa, but from there it would have been a matter of days before Russian forces had reached Chisinau.Moldovan authorities have no doubt this was Vladimir Putin’s plan. The prime minister, Dorin Recean, is crystal clear: Moldova survives only thanks to Ukrainian resistance. If Moscow had been able to spread the war to Moldova, there is no way it would have been able to put up the kind of fight the Ukrainian armed forces have. Yet, as far as the future of democracy, international law and European security are concerned, Moldova’s fate is as important as Ukraine’s. Continue reading...
Advisory about state’s ‘active hostility’ is beginning of campaign to engage voters ahead of DeSantis presidential run, leaders sayLeaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) say its travel advisory highlighting Florida’s “active hostility” to minorities is only the beginning of a campaign to engage voters in the state and nationally, as the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, prepares to launch his presidential run on Wednesday.Leon Russell, chair of the NAACP, also told the Guardian that the group rejected calling for an economic boycott of the state similar to one that ended with South Carolina lowering the confederate flag in 2015. Continue reading...
Prosecutors seek 25 years for group’s leader Stewart Rhodes in hearings expected to set standard for punishments to followThe founder of the Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, and members of his anti-government group will be the first January 6 defendants sentenced for seditious conspiracy in hearings beginning this week and expected to set the standard for punishments to follow.Prosecutors will urge the judge on Thursday to put Rhodes behind bars for 25 years, which would be the harshest sentence by far handed down over the US Capitol attack. Continue reading...
Both are part of a project to roll back the victories of the feminist and gay rights movements and inscribe in law a firm definition and hierarchy of genderOn Monday, Jim Pillen, the Republican governor of Nebraska, signed a law that bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricts gender-affirming care for anyone under 19. The ban on trans medical care takes effect in October and the abortion ban goes into effect immediately. And so Nebraska has become the latest state to determine through law what might have once been determined by the more pliable tools of custom or imagination: the way that the sexed body a person is born with shapes the kind of life they can live.Be it through forced pregnancy or prohibited transition, the state of Nebraska now claims the right to determine what its citizens will do with their sexed bodies – what those bodies will look like, how they will function and what they will mean. It is a part of the right’s ongoing project to roll back the victories of the feminist and gay rights movements, to re-establish the dominance of men in public life, to narrow possibilities for difference and expression and to inscribe in law a firm definition and hierarchy of gender: that people are either men or women and that men are better.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Poet, 25, vows to fight back after single complaint, which wrongly ascribed The Hill We Climb to Oprah Winfrey, prompts removalAmanda Gorman, the American poet who shot to international stardom when she recited The Hill We Climb at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, has vowed to defeat book bans in Florida after the poem was removed for reading by elementary school children in an educational institution in Miami-Dade county.Gorman, 25, said she was “gutted” to learn that a complaint from a single parent led to her inaugural poem being banned from Bob Graham education center in Miami Lakes.We’ve braved the belly of the beast.We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.Somehow, we do it. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Montgomery, Alabama on (#6BWJY)
Don Siegelman and Robert Bentley co-write opinion piece calling state’s death penalty laws ‘legally and morally troubling’Two former Alabama governors from opposite sides of the aisle said they are now troubled by the state’s death penalty system and would commute the sentences of inmates sentenced by judicial override or divided juries.Don Siegelman, a Democrat, and Robert Bentley, a Republican, co-wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post. Continue reading...
Jensen Huang says Chinese firms will ‘just build it themselves’ if they cannot buy from USThe US risks causing “enormous damage” to its tech industry if it continues restrictions on trade with China, according to the chief executive of the chipmaker Nvidia.Jensen Huang said curbs introduced by the Biden administration, which include restricting the export to China of advanced chips made with US technology, had left the business with “our hands tied behind our back”.
Imagine your boss being fined for calling you after hours. In some European countries, that’s already a reality, and Labour wants us to follow suitThe idea of a clear demarcation between work and life is, for most people, an absurd joke: your life is being invaded, and you have no line of defence to protect yourself. Even if they are thousands of miles from their desk, a worker may still feel chained to it. Text messages and emails can arrive at ungodly hours, demanding prompt replies. Parents may find the nightly ritual of putting their kids to bed is interrupted by a panicked phone call from their boss. Almost as stressful is the idea that, as you collect your belongings to leave the office, you know you can never really leave: somehow, wherever you are, you remain at work.Here is why “the right to disconnect” has become one of the great emancipatory causes for workers, and could be headed for Labour’s next manifesto. For example, Portugal introduced a law at the beginning of last year that imposes a legal duty on bosses not to contact their workers outside of defined working hours. There is one exception – circumstances of force majeure – but otherwise, companies could be fined up to €9,690 (£8,400). In part, this is a response to the phenomenon of working from home: in Britain, 37% of employees now report working from home at least some point in the previous week. While this trend has been liberating for many workers, the Portuguese authorities found it could be exploited by bosses disregarding the idea that a remote worker ever clocked off.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Two laws approved by the house on Tuesday will affect Democratic stronghold of HoustonRepublican lawmakers in Texas are targeting Houston, the state’s largest city and Democratic stronghold, with a series of bills that would limit local authority to administer elections and give that power to the state.House Republicans on Tuesday gave final approval to two bills, both already passed by the senate in April, that would impact elections in Harris county, the third most populous county in the country. One bill, SB 1750, would get rid of the election administrator position in the county, eliminating a nonpartisan role, and give their authority to the county clerk and tax assessor-collector. Another, SB 1933, could give the Texas secretary of state, currently a Republican appointed by Greg Abbott, the governor, administrative oversight of a county office administering elections. Continue reading...
By acting as if Thomas has done nothing wrong, chief justice John Roberts looks pathetic and enabling of unethical behaviorAfter ProPublica and other news organizations exposed one damning revelation after another, it has become unarguably clear that Clarence Thomas is hugely corrupt, has brazenly and repeatedly violated disclosure laws and has shown utter contempt for the most elementary ethical standards. It’s deeply troubling that so few of our political leaders have called for the obvious moral response to this ever-widening scandal: Thomas should resign.There’s been far too much shilly-shallying about all this. It’s not nearly enough to call on Thomas to belatedly comply with disclosure laws or to repay Harlan Crow, the billionaire rightwing activist who has showered $1m in favors on Thomas and his family. Thomas’s myriad violations are too serious, his contempt for ethics and conflict-of-interest rules too blatant, for us to accept half measures or slaps on the wrist. He has disgraced the court. It is time for him to go.From 2003 to 2007, Thomas repeatedly failed to disclose that his wife, Ginni, was paid $686,589 by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which often files amicus briefs to the court.In 2008 and 2009, Thomas failed to disclose that Crow paid roughly $100,000 in private school tuition for a grand-nephew Thomas was raising.In 2011 and 2012, Thomas failed to disclose at least $80,000 in payments to his wife that Leonard Leo – the leader of nationwide efforts to install conservative judges – had secretly arranged to be paid by an organization that filed amicus briefs to the supreme court.In 2014, Thomas failed to disclose that one of Crow’s companies paid $133,363 for three Georgia properties owned by Thomas and his family.For at least two decades, Thomas has taken free luxury travel and vacations from Crow on yachts and private jets (valued at more than $500,000) – and repeatedly failed to disclose those favors.Even though Ginni Thomas repeatedly texted Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to urge more aggressive efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Clarence Thomas failed to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and January 6. Indeed, Thomas was the only justice to back Trump in a case in which all the other justices rebuked Trump and backed releasing White House records about the January 6 attack.Steven Greenhouse, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is a longtime American labor and workplace journalist and writer, and the author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor Continue reading...
The arrest of Imran Khan has led to mass protests and a constitutional crisis looms. But politicians still see the army’s approval as the only way outThe last couple of weeks have been painful for Pakistanis at home and abroad, as the country drifted into chaos and vandalism after former prime minister Imran Khan was arrested on corruption charges earlier this month. As protests and attacks on government and military buildings intensified, at least nine people were killed and thousands arrested, to be tried, it is feared, in military courts. It seems more such days are yet to come.All state institutions, including parliament, the judiciary and the army, are at loggerheads. The country is facing a constitutional crisis, politics has failed and the economy is in a shambolic state. The sad part is that not one player has shown any willingness so far to pull back. The stability of the world’s fifth most populous country is at serious risk. Continue reading...
Investigation finds 93% of fossil fuel company’s climate pledge offsets are worthless. Plus, the truth about booze: how alcohol really affects your bodyGood morning.A new investigation into Chevron’s climate pledge has found the fossil fuel company relies on “junk” carbon offsets and “unviable” technologies, which do little to offset its vast greenhouse gas emissions and in some cases may actually be causing communities harm.What is a carbon offset? A carbon offset is characterized as having low environmental integrity, or being worthless, if it is linked to a forest or plantation or green energy project, including those involving hydroelectric dams, that doesn’t lead to additional greenhouse gas reductions, exaggerates benefits or risks emitting emissions, among other measures.What’s his plan after launching his campaign? Plans for a kick-off rally in DeSantis’s home town, Dunedin, have been reported. NBC said the governor would visit early voting states next week, after the Memorial Day holiday. DeSantis has repeatedly visited such states already, in an extended run-up to his formal campaign launch including the release of a campaign-oriented book. Continue reading...
Gun violence disproportionately affects Black and brown people, but some activists from those communities report being marginalized by peersNurah Abdulhaqq was 12 when she lost a family friend to gun violence – an experience that inspired her to make a change. After the student-led protests against gun violence in 2018 following the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, she got involved as a violence prevention organizer. “I knew that I could lend a different perspective as someone who not only has lost someone close to me to gun violence, but who also lives in an area affected by the school-to-prison pipeline and poverty,” she said.But instead she often found her viewpoint sidelined, especially in the large national-facing violence prevention groups she found herself interacting with, said the Atlanta-based activist, now 19. “There was really not a discussion on Black and brown youth,” she said, or of the fact that gun violence has been the leading cause of death for Black male teenagers and young adults. Continue reading...
The NBA’s all-time leading scorer alluded to retirement after the Lakers’ playoff exit this week. Only he can decide if continuing is worth itWhen LeBron James broke the NBA’s individual scoring record in February, he was unusually reflective. He described his two decades in the league as a rollercoaster: “Like one of the great rides. You get off just wanting to do it again. My career has been like that. Your stomach drops at times, you’re yelling, sometimes you can’t breathe. But you always want to do it again.” He later clarified that: “I’m not going nowhere. But [I know] it sounds like I am. I’m gonna go get something to eat, I’m gonna drink some wine, then I’m gonna drink some Lobos, and I’m probably not gonna sleep tonight. So I will see y’all when I see y’all, and I hope you had a great time too.”Much of what happened to James after that record-breaking night was surprising. At the trade deadline, the Los Angeles Lakers, who started the season 2-10, shipped off Russell Westbrook and revamped their roster. They then staged one of the most impressive turnarounds in recent NBA history and carried their newfound momentum all the way to the Western Conference finals, where they were swept 4-0 by the Denver Nuggets. The Lakers were better than the result suggests: James and his teammates put up a valiant effort against the championship-favorite Nuggets, losing the four down-to-the-wire games by a combined total of just 24 points. The Nuggets’ nearly flawless roster and boundless energy proved too much for an exhausted Lakers team that had been battling hard for months just to qualify for the playoffs. Continue reading...
What would you buy if you were richer than God? Surely something cooler than an eerie statue of your girlfriend for the prow of your yachtI’m always disappointed by the outer reaches of my own imagination when I sit and idly wonder about myself as a rich person. For some reason “having a full-sized pool table” is always involved. Three holidays a year, that sort of thing. Maybe fly first-class. Maybe learn to drive, maybe have a chauffeur, I can’t decide. I think I would stop pausing when burrito places ask me if I want guacamole, but unlearning that behaviour would take a while.I think there is a limit to how much wealth a human being can spend interestingly, and mine caps out just short of the £2m mark. If I were a billionaire I would, simply, be a very boring one. I would retreat into a gated mansion, get a VR headset for my PlayStation that I never use, then pay Robbie Williams to come over and be my mate. That’s about it.Joel Golby is a writer for the Guardian and Vice, and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant Continue reading...
by Charlie Scudder in Arlington, Texas on (#6BWDW)
A year on from massacre of children at Robb elementary parents are pushing to raise the age for buying semi-automatic weaponsDays after a deadly mass shooting in a Dallas suburb, families of another horrific killing gathered in the Texas capitol, demanding a change to the state’s famously lax gun laws.It had been nearly a year since a gunman shot 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, with police waiting more than an hour to confront and kill him. Those children’s parents and relatives hadn’t stopped lobbying Texas lawmakers for stricter gun control. Continue reading...
The law, which the governor has promised to sign, will ban abortion before most people know they are pregnantSouth Carolina’s state senate approved an anti-abortion bill on Tuesday that would ban most abortions at about six weeks, a period when most people are unaware they are pregnant.During a special session to decide whether the bill advances to the governor, who has promised to sign it, the Republican-controlled senate launched into a heated debate over the ban. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Rocklin, California on (#6BWAC)
Casey Rivara stopped his car at a red light to help the birds to safety, but was struck by another driver as he made his way backFamily members of a California man said it was no surprise his final act was one of compassion, after he exited his car at a busy intersection in order to help a mother duck and her ducklings cross the road but was himself struck and killed.When he spotted the ducks, Casey Rivara stopped his car at a red light and got out to help them. Rivara made sure traffic in all directions was stopped, witnesses said, then escorted the duck and her babies to the other side of the street around 8.15pm last Thursday in Rocklin, north-east of Sacramento. Continue reading...
Baseball team apologizes to Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence after removing group from event amid conservative oppositionThe Los Angeles Dodgers announced that the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a well-known San Francisco order of queer and trans “nuns” that has existed since the 1970s, are once again welcome at the team’s annual Pride Night.Last week, the baseball team rescinded the group’s invitation after a Republican senator from Florida wrote a letter accusing the sisters, a group which came to prominence during the Aids crisis, of being anti-Christian activists. The group, which does charitable and protest work in addition to its street drag show performances, was set to receive an award during a ceremony before a 16 June game against the San Francisco Giants. Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly and agencies in New York on (#6BW72)
Video hearing follows news that E Jean Carroll seeks new damages over ex-president’s comments in CNN town hallDonald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home. Continue reading...
The rightwing billionaire declined a request to provide a list of gifts he had given to the supreme court justiceLawyers for Harlan Crow, the rightwing billionaire whose friendship with and gifts to the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas are the focus of swirling scandal, have rejected Senate Democrats’ request for answers about the relationship.In a letter first reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, lawyers for Crow rejected a request from Dick Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, for a list of gifts to Thomas. Continue reading...
Rightwing Florida governor has maintained a consistent distant second place to Donald TrumpThe rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, will launch his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday evening in a live appearance with Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter.NBC News first reported the plan, saying the Twitter Spaces talk at 6pm ET would be moderated by David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur, Musk confidante and DeSantis supporter. Multiple outlets later confirmed the scheme and Musk himself retweeted one report. Continue reading...
Speaking to Christian media, the Florida governor suggested a 7-2 conservative majority in the high court if he is elected presidentIn a speech to Christian media in Orlando, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, envisaged the creation of a “7-2 conservative majority that would last a quarter-century” on the US supreme court should he be elected president next year.Speaking to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, DeSantis said: “I think if you look over the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two.” Continue reading...
Television entertainer whose long and versatile career was followed by imprisonment for indecent assaultFor more than half a century until being jailed as a sex offender in 2014, Rolf Harris, who has died aged 93 after suffering from neck cancer, was one of the most celebrated television entertainers in Britain and his native Australia. He was a musician, singer, artist, comedian – a man who, as one journalist put it, had “a professional life that has skipped across disciplines with the agility of a kangaroo”.He sold millions of records with songs such as Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport (which reached No 3 in the UK charts in 1960), Sun Arise (No 3 in 1961), Two Little Boys (No 1 in 1969), and an improbable reworking of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (No 7 in 1993). He introduced audiences to the joys of such musical instruments as the Stylophone, the didgeridoo and the wobble board, the last his own invention. Continue reading...
Was the Dua Lipa of SW1 too famous to join an online speed awareness course with the plebs? In her own mind, at leastI think being recognised on a speed awareness course would actually have played quite well for Suella Braverman, suggesting she takes her slaps on the wrist like any ordinary person. Getting a speeding ticket is not the worst thing in the world. Let’s face it, it probably wasn’t even the worst thing she did that week. It would certainly have played better than trying to weasel out of the standard course, with or without the requested assistance of the civil servants she usually likes to insult as “the blob”. (Sarah Palin’s abortive pitch-for-power book was called Going Rogue. If the home secretary does write an equivalent tome during her next spell in the political wilderness, I’d like to see it called On the Blob.)For now, there is much to enjoy in Braverman’s sense that she was simply too famous and too distracting to do an online speed awareness course with the plebs. In fact, as attorney general at the time, Suella surely enjoyed a greater degree of anonymity than that afforded by even the better witness protection programmes. Yet the Dua Lipa of SW1 instead opted to take the three points on her licence – a genuinely ridiculous piece of judgment that will somehow not permanently disqualify her from suggesting she’s the best person to have her hands on the nuclear codes.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistThis June, Marina Hyde will join fellow columnists at three Guardian Live events in Leeds, Brighton and London. Readers can join these events in person and the London event will be livestreamed Continue reading...
Suspect named as Sai Varshith Kandula also charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and accused of having Nazi flagA driver who was arrested after crashing into security barriers near the White House has been charged with threatening to kill or harm the US president, along with other crimes.Police named the suspect as 19-year-old Sai Varshith Kandula from Chesterfield, Missouri, which is just to the west of St Louis. He was accused of threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict harm on the president, vice-president or a relative, said a statement from the US park police, who have jurisdiction of the area where the struck barriers are located. Continue reading...
They’re losing their grip on Oxbridge, and Labour threatens to strip elite schools of their charitable status. It just won’t doSpare a thought for the upper middle classes. Buying a private-school education in the UK used to be enough to get into Oxbridge or at the very least become prime minister, but the tide may be (slightly) turning. New research shows private-school pupils are up to a third more likely to get into Cambridge if they move to a state sixth form. Students who stayed at private schools for A-levels had an acceptance rate of 19% last year. But those who moved from a fee-paying school to a grammar school or sixth-form college had a success rate of about 25%. (Similar data from Oxford wasn’t available.)Iain Mansfield, head of education at Policy Exchange, told the Telegraph that the figures suggest universities are discriminating against fee-paying families. “This demonstrates why universities should be selecting on ability, not discriminating based on a child’s background.” If Iain’s mad now, wait until he hears about these things called private schools.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
If Democrats believe they can win the ‘messaging wars’ about a default, they’re deluded. Republicans win either wayThe favored metaphor on the left is to compare the trumped-up debt-ceiling crisis to hostage-taking by the House Republicans.But in a true hostage situation, both sides have something major to lose. The perpetrators risk not getting a payoff or, worse, spending decades in prison. For the families of the victims and the police, the danger is that the hostages will be killed during the negotiations or in the midst of a botched rescue mission.Walter Shapiro is a staff writer for the New Republic and a lecturer in political science at Yale Continue reading...
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