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The breadth of these bills is staggering, and many go beyond their purported goals of protecting children from obscenityWhen Bill Lee donned a cheerleader uniform, fake pearls and a wig as part of high school senior year antics, he probably didn’t think the goofy costume would come back to bite him. But, more than 40 years later, the now governor of Tennessee is at the forefront of efforts to ban the innocent costumes he and his friends once wore, waging a battle that strikes at the heart of our first amendment freedoms.Since the beginning of this year, at least 32 bills have been filed in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia targeting drag performances, with more on the way. Continue reading...

Election could serve as a bellwether for how voters think about public safety as they choose between duelling approachesThere are few issues besides keeping a clean alley that most Chicagoans agree on. Yet, last week, a majority of the city’s voters ousted incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the city’s mayoral primary.With just under 17% of the vote, Lightfoot became the first mayor to fail to advance to the runoff election since Jane Byrne lost the 1983 primary. But the recent election was not a stunning rebuke of Lightfoot, who commanded third place with a loyal base of mostly Black voters on the city’s South and West Sides, but a demand for a radically different approach toward combating crime amid pandemic recovery, with one candidate focused on law and order and the other hoping to boost the social safety net. Continue reading...

Proliferation of bills in Texas, Kentucky and elsewhere ‘exposes fundamental lie of anti-abortion movement’, experts sayFor decades, the mainstream anti-abortion movement promised that it did not believe women who have abortions should be criminally charged. But now, Republican lawmakers in several US states have introduced legislation proposing homicide and other criminal charges for those seeking abortion care.The bills have been introduced in states such as Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Some explicitly target medication abortion and self-managed abortion; some look to remove provisions in the law which previously protected pregnant people from criminalization; and others look to establish the fetus as a person from the point of conception. Continue reading...

Feelgood comedy Champions wins points for casting learning disabled actors – but Hollywood should be aiming higher than the way it treats their characters‘I wanna say the right thing but if I can’t call them the r-word, what can I call them?” Marcus (played by Woody Harrelson) is a basketball coach in court for drunk-driving and aggressive behaviour, and this is what he asks the judge rather pathetically at the beginning of his new movie Champions. “I suggest you call them by their names,” she replies tersely, sentencing him to 90 days’ community service coaching the Friends, a basketball team with learning disabilities. Wow – what a punishment! My heart bleeds.This is Marcus’s chance to redeem himself and ultimately, become A Good Guy. Within 90 days, he must halt his drink problem and stop resorting to violence when he doesn’t get his own way. Oh, and he’s a womaniser too – spending time with some disabled people will probably fix that as well, right? Yuck. Continue reading...

The lawn replacement – largely fallen out of favor in professional sports these days – contains large amounts of toxic chemicalsA report on a possible link between a rare brain cancer that killed six professional US baseball players and toxic chemicals in artificial turf is raising a new round of questions over whether synthetic sports fields pose a health threat to athletes and others who use them.The six athletes, who all died from glioblastoma, played most of their careers with the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that for decades competed on artificial turf in Veterans Stadium, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Continue reading...

The Ravens have left the door open for rivals to discuss terms with their star quarterback. But the market is suspiciously quietSomething is off with the Lamar Jackson situation.This week, the Baltimore Ravens hit Jackson, a former unanimous league MVP, with the non-exclusive franchise tag after failing to secure a long-term deal. It’s unprecedented. We haven’t seen a team put the non-exclusive tender on a quarterback this century. Continue reading...

In an age of distortion, public figures have powerful tools and a responsibility. This is an object lesson in how that can go wrongIn 2014, the Guardian asked me to nominate my hero of the year. To some people’s surprise, I chose Russell Brand. I loved the way he energised young people who had been alienated from politics. I claimed, perhaps hyperbolically, he was “the best thing that has happened to the left in years” (in my defence, there wasn’t, at the time, much competition).Today, I can scarcely believe it’s the same man. I’ve watched 50 of his recent videos, with growing incredulity. He appears to have switched from challenging injustice to conjuring phantoms. If, as I suspect it might, politics takes a very dark turn in the next few years, it will be partly as a result of people like Brand.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnistDo 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...

Jeff Neil says he intervened after thinking of his wife who was sitting next to him on flight from Los Angeles to BostonA man who led the charge in subduing a fellow passenger who tried to stab an attendant on a flight from Los Angeles to Boston and attempted to open the aircraft’s emergency door has said he intervened after thinking of his wife – who was traveling with him – and his family.“Honestly, I did it for [them], first and foremost,” Jeff Neil told the Boston television news station WCVB. Neil, who is from the relatively nearby community of Exeter, New Hampshire added that he hopes the man with an apparent mental illness whom federal authorities charged with the attack on the flight “gets the help that he needs”. Continue reading...

In his thrilling book The Great Escape, Saket Soni tells the true story of a brutal labor camp in MississippiFew labor organizers tell stories as skillfully as Saket Soni.Originally from New Delhi, Soni enrolled in the University of Chicago at 18 to learn how to write plays. “I think my parents may have been the only ones in Indian history to let their son come to the United States to study theater,” he says. Continue reading...

They know our first sympathy must be with Ukraine, as is theirs. But they need our support in this time of repressionLast April, Masha Moskaleva, a 12-year-old girl from the Tula region south of Moscow, drew a picture in her school art class that upset the teacher. The teacher ran to the head; the head called the police; the police told the FSB, Russia’s state security service, which interrogated Masha. Her father, a single parent, was arrested, beaten, fined and placed under house arrest. His daughter was taken into state care.Moskaleva’s crime was “discrediting the military” – an offence passed into law after the invasion of Ukraine to criminalise dissemination of the truth. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Masha’s picture showed a woman and child, hand in hand, next to a Ukrainian flag. Missiles fly towards them from a Russian flag, on which is written “No to war”. Continue reading...

Investigators are looking at invoking an exception that can bypass attorney-client privilege if legal advice is used for furthering crimeFederal prosecutors involved in the criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents argued to a US judge on Thursday that one of the former US president’s lawyers should answer more questions before a grand jury over objections of attorney-client privilege.US prosecutors have been seeking to invoke the so-called crime-fraud exception that allows them to compel testimony about communications between an attorney and a client when they have evidence to suggest legal advice was used in furtherance of a crime. Continue reading...

Proposal will creating ‘a little bit more breathing room’ for American families, Biden says – but Republicans dismiss his plansJoe Biden on Thursday unveiled his budget, a sprawling policy vision that the president says reflects his commitment to building a fairer economy while drawing a sharp contrast to Republicans who are demanding steep cuts to federal spending programs.Biden formally introduced his spending plan, which he has described as a “blue-collar blueprint”, in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that helped lift him to the White House in 2020. It was an unusually high-profile rollout for a budget proposal that is often greeted with a resounding thud on Capitol Hill. Continue reading...

Governor has 21 counties under emergency orders while 16m people in the state are under flood watch warningsAn impending atmospheric river and rapidly melting snow has put communities across California on high alert for flash flooding, mudslides and rockslides as the subtropical storm surge moves over the state. Rivers and streams could also quickly rise beyond capacity and breach, the National Weather Service warned. Overall, some 16 million people are under flood watch warnings.The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has declared a state of emergency for 21 counties, including some mountain communities still digging themselves out from the snow. “The state is working around the clock with local partners to deploy life-saving equipment and first responders to communities across California,” Newsom said on Wednesday evening. “With more dangerous storms on the horizon, we’ll continue to mobilise every available resource to protect Californians.” Continue reading...

Local official tells panel of chaotic response Ohio derailment and operator’s chief executive makes first appearance before CongressNorfolk Southern’s decision to call for the burning of five derailed train cars in East Palestine, Ohio, was “jaw-dropping” and a consequence of poor communication by the railroad, a local emergency management official told a Senate panel on Thursday.Eric Brewer, director and chief of hazardous materials response for the emergency services department in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, just over the state line from East Palestine, described to the chamber’s environment and public works committee an initially chaotic response to the 3 February derailment. Continue reading...

Republican Senate leader ‘tripped at a hotel during a private dinner’ and is receiving treatment, according to a spokespersonThe Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was taken to hospital in Washington DC on Wednesday night after he tripped and fell at a hotel, a spokesperson said.David Popp said McConnell, 81, fell “during a private dinner”. Continue reading...

People once hoped the two powers could forge a better relationship. Now the best hope is stopping deteriorationLooking back, it is hard to believe that in the Obama era there were serious discussions about whether a “G2” could emerge – with the US and China coming together, never easily but earnestly, and in good faith, to tackle the world’s great problems.The costs of mutual hostility are now greater and clearer than they were back then: the risk of global economic recession, a failure to tackle the climate crisis, and even of military conflict in the future. Yet far from strengthening, bilateral relations have nosedived. The relationship between China and the US is not only at its lowest point for years, but appears to be trapped in a downward spiral. For now Beijing, in particular, seems to be giving up on fixing it. Its support for Moscow has contributed to the deterioration, but is also driven by its belief that the partnership helps to buttress it against US hostility. How and when the war in Ukraine ends could prove critical for US-China relations. Continue reading...

CDC says animal-to-human transmission is rare but study’s lead investigator calls for closer look at virus in rats for new strainsNew York City rats may be renowned for carrying pizza through the subway but according to a new study, they can also carry the virus behind Covid-19.The study released on Thursday in mBio, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, concluded that New York rats among a population of roughly 8 million are susceptible to three Covid variants. Continue reading...

In an aggressive confrontation at a Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator, clashed with Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, a US labor union. 'You need to shut your mouth,' said Mullin after a testy interaction in which Mullin asked the union head what he did to earn his salary. 'You’re out of line,' O’Brien retorted. Bernie Sanders attempted to mediate between the two men, to little avail

Military members and veterans of the Afghanistan war offered harrowing eyewitness testimonies of the chaotic and deadly withdrawal from the country’s longest conflict, during an hours-long congressional hearing on Wednesday.They also pleaded with Congress to help the Afghan allies left behind.

Baseball games are getting shorter as pitchers and batters are forced to quicken play. It may help bring in the younger fans the game cravesMajor League Baseball’s hottest new star is the talk of spring training. No, it’s not some big-name prospect. It’s not a human being at all, in fact, but rather a timekeeping device. Yes, the buzz is all about how baseball is incorporating the pitch clock into its everyday routine, as those behind the scenes attempt to revitalize a game struggling to keep pace with the modern world.For years, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has been tweaking the rules to shorten the length of games – presumably to attract younger fans as contests have become longer over the years – without alienating the traditionalist bent of its core audience, a feat akin to a hippopotamus trying to walk a tightrope. The most notable “innovation” prior to this offseason had been the introduction of an additional baserunner in extra-inning games as way to avoid extended stalemates. Most fans have not warmed to the idea – but those actually working games like it, so it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future. Continue reading...

Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, argues with union’s Sean O’Brien as Bernie Sanders seeks order in Senate hearingA Republican senator who once had to reassure voters he didn’t think he was “Rambo” and was a mixed martial arts fighter before entering politics got into a vocal brawl with a union boss during a public congressional hearing, saying: “You need to shut your mouth.”Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma exchanged verbal fire with Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, during a hearing staged on Wednesday by the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee. Continue reading...

Carlson has been caught out of character. Is it over for him? Somehow, I don’t think so“I hate him passionately.”Thanks to new court filings in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News we now know exactly how the network’s star host, Tucker Carlson, really feels about Donald Trump. Two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, around the same time that Carlson was publicly singing Trump’s praises to his audience of millions, he was also sending private texts to members of his staff about how much despised the guy. It’s almost like Carlson doesn’t believe a single word he says on TV.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Here’s a dirty secret: both Republicans’ debt hysteria and Biden’s proposed tax hikes are pure theater. Neither will happenPresident Biden is proposing to trim the federal budget deficit by close to $3tn over the next 10 years. He was an FDR-like spender in the first two years of his presidency. Has he now turned into a Calvin Coolidge skinflint?Neither. He’s a cunning political operator.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.comThis article was amended on 9 March 2023 to correct an editor’s error in the standfirst. Biden has proposed tax hikes for wealthy Americans, not tax cuts. Continue reading...

Six-year-old shot Abigail Zwerner on 6 January while she was teaching class, leaving her seriously injuredA six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in January will not face criminal charges, a prosecutor in Newport News, Virginia, said on Wednesday night.On 6 January, the first-grader shot Abigail Zwerner while she was teaching class at Richneck elementary school, leaving her seriously injured. Continue reading...

Zah, first president of the largest tribal reservation in the US, worked tirelessly to correct wrongdoings against Native AmericansPeterson Zah, a Navajo Nation leader who guided the tribe through a politically tumultuous era and worked tirelessly to correct wrongdoings against Native Americans, has died.Zah died late on Tuesday at a hospital in Fort Defiance, Arizona, after a lengthy illness, his family and the tribe announced. He was 85. Continue reading...

US bank moves against former employee in attempt to make him liable for any penalties from civil lawsuitsThe US bank JP Morgan is suing the ex-Barclays boss and its former employee Jes Staley, over his relationship with the late billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The lawsuit is JP Morgan’s attempt to make Staley liable for penalties it may face as a result of two separate legal battles that accuse the lender of helping Epstein’s sex trafficking of women and girls. Continue reading...

The actor has been complaining about the hurt that critics can deliver. But someone has to call out stinkers, as you would think he’d agree

As books become intellectual property assets, publishers become asset managers trying to future-proof their toxic investmentsThe news that many of Roald Dahl’s books had been edited by the publisher Puffin to excise “offensive references to gender and race” has unleashed a brouhaha among the literary establishment, anti-woke crusaders and just about everyone online.The revisions brought simmering debates about censorship in the name of creating a more genteel, accepting society to their head. An added valence, that the books are for children, seemed to weigh in favor of those who believed references to women as “hags” or to a “weird African language the monkeys spoke” should be scrubbed so that future generations can be shielded from prejudiced thoughts. Continue reading...

Latest attack reported to include use of hypersonic missiles, of which Moscow is only believed to have a few dozen. Plus, the 10 worst places to live in the US for air pollution

In 2022, many Republicans who embraced election denialism were re-elected and, in some cases, elevated to higher officeDonald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election brought the US to the brink of a democratic crisis. Refusing to concede his loss to Joe Biden, he attempted to use every lever available to try and throw out the results of the election, pressuring state lawmakers, Congress and the courts to declare him the winner.Those efforts didn’t succeed. But Trump nonetheless created a new poison that seeped deep in the Republican party – a belief that the results of US elections cannot be trusted. The belief quickly became Republican orthodoxy: it was embraced by Republican officeholders across the country as well as local activists who began to bombard and harass local election officials, forcing many of them to retire. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol – in which thousands stormed the building, and five people died – was the starkest reminder of the potential violent consequences of this rhetoric. Continue reading...

My scorn for convention hid a pit of insecurity. I was just another urban millennial, and never as singular as I imaginedOvernight, I’ve started listening to Radiohead. For the millions who have already experienced the pleasure of transcending their mortal form via Weird Fishes, this won’t seem particularly notable. But I have spent my entire life this far avowedly not listening to Radiohead, a band reserved for boyfriends. Now, to paraphrase Thom Yorke himself, it’s as if I’ve knocked a hole in a wall and can see out on to another plane I never knew existed.This is just one of a series of drastic U-turns I’ve made in recent months that have significantly undercut my previous conception of what sort of person I am. I’ve gone from seven years of declaring that I would never get on a bike in London, to being an annoying cycling evangelist.Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara MediaDo 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...

Nothing could be more fulfilling than making the countryside safe for walkers. No one should have to risk their neck on a rickety stileI know what my dream job is, partly thanks to something I once wrote here about a nasty fall I had one Easter Sunday. A riveting piece, which you doubtless remember. It was on Gower, during a long walk, when a knackered old stile by a patch of wild garlic proved no match for my bulk. I still sport the scar. Two years on from this unhappy incident I was stopped while out shopping in Sketty, a suburb of Swansea. This nice woman told me that her husband, being in charge of paths for Swansea council, had read the piece, worked out where the now-destroyed stile was, and got it fixed.I expressed my gratitude, but my first, thrilling thought was this: there is a head of paths? That’s an actual thing? How wonderful. I want that job. I want to get up every morning, sift through reports of poor signage, overgrown-ness and death-trap stiles, consult my maps and then go out and rectify. I believe I have also written about an encounter with some path-clearers. I’m serious about this. I left the woman my number for the path man to call me so we could talk for hours, but he didn’t. If he was worried I’d want his job off him, he was on the right, well, track. Continue reading...

The frightening character who appears amid union disputes can be traced back to a single factory – which wasn’t unionizedIn New York – a city poised to hire its first “rat czar” after rat sightings doubled in the past year – street-side rodents are fairly commonplace. But the rat stationed on a Union Square curb is something of a different beast. This one is roughly 10ft tall, with incisors the size of iPads. Its eyes are bloodshot, its claws extended, and its belly marked with what look like open, oozing sores. Depending whom you ask, its name is “Scabby”, or just “the Rat”.Since January, give or take, the Rat has been strapped into the bed of a Ford F-150, staring down Tammany Hall. The historic building is poised to become a giant pet store, Petco’s New York flagship, a three-floor bestial mall equipped with its own animal hospital. Continue reading...

Wild African serval known as Amiry was captured by police in January after being spotted in treeA wild cat captured earlier this year with cocaine in its system is now living at an Ohio zoo.The African serval known as Amiry was captured in late January after being spotted in a tree in Oakley, Ohio, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, the local news outlet WLWT5 reported. Continue reading...

Powerball prize winner Edwin Castro now has a mansion nestled among the homes of Ariana Grande and Jimmy KimmelCountless people ask themselves what they would do if they hit the jackpot, and the California man who took home the world’s largest ever lottery prize has now shown his answer to that age-old question.Edwin Castro, winner of the historic $2.04bn Powerball jackpot in November, recently spent $25.5m buying a five-bedroom, six-bathroom mansion in Los Angeles’s glitzy Hollywood Hills, the real estate publication Dirt and the city’s Times newspaper first reported. Continue reading...

Secretary of state’s reluctance to speak to Russian counterpart impedes US, says envoy who helped arrange WNBA star’s releaseA former US diplomat who participated in efforts to free the WNBA star Brittney Griner from jail in Russia has harshly criticised the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the Biden administration over their approach to diplomacy with Moscow.Cameron Hume, a career diplomat who was an ambassador under Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, said: “For a secretary of state to not want to even get body language or two words from Sergei Lavrov about the situation in Moscow, in the Kremlin, in the people who are close to [Vladimir] Putin, during a time of war was striking to me. Continue reading...

Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk denied giving tours related to the January 6 riots until video was releasedBarry Loudermilk, the Republican representative from Georgia who has been accused of giving tours of the Capitol building days before the January 6 insurrection, will lead a new House committee that will investigate the Democratic-controlled January 6 select committee.On Tuesday, Loudermilk criticized the select committee, saying: “The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this.” Continue reading...

Officers used excessive force and failed to protect Black residents, a report launched following the death of Breonna Taylor has foundA report published by the US justice department following the botched police raid that killed Breonna Taylor has found that Louisville’s Metro police department routinely engaged in a pattern of excessive force that deprived people of their rights.The litany of abuses revealed in the report comes amid a reckoning in the US with the brutality and racism of American policing. Continue reading...

Press secretary criticizes Fox News host for depicting security footage as what he described as ‘peaceful chaos’

A combination of flash flooding, gusty winds and rain could bring more woes for state still recovering from heavy snowstormA fresh atmospheric river is expected to bring more weather chaos to California even as the state is still digging itself out from massive amounts of snow that left mountain communities buried for weeks.Northern and central California are set to receive most of the rain this weekend, which forecasters have warned could cause flash flooding as warm rain hits the state’s almost record snowpack. The state will see moderate to heavy rain, flooding, gusty winds and heavy snow in high elevations through the weekend, according to the National Weather Service. Continue reading...

Merrick Garland condemns ‘unacceptable’ police conduct after review concludes officers violated residents’ civil rightsLouisville police engaged in unlawful practices that violated residents’ civil rights and discriminated against Black people and people with behavioral health deficiencies, the US justice department concluded on Wednesday following an investigation prompted by the killing of Breonna Taylor in a botched police raid in 2020.The city of Louisville agreed to a consent decree to reform policing practices. Continue reading...