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Machaela Cavanaugh promises to hold up legislation unless bill to block gender-affirming healthcare for youth is droppedWhen state senator Machaela Cavanaugh set out to block every bill brought by the Nebraskan legislature this session, it was kind of an accident.She was so incensed by the advancement of LB 547, a bill looking to block gender-affirming healthcare for young people in Nebraska, she promised to hold up every single bill the legislature brought – including those she agreed with – unless her colleagues agreed to drop it. Continue reading...

It was hard to escape the sense of the absurd as a 21st-century democracy relived a medieval fantasyIt rained. Of course it did. It wouldn’t have been a proper coronation if it hadn’t. Brits wouldn’t have had it any other way. We were born to suffer. Keep calm and carry on.The first guests had started arriving at Westminster Abbey from early in the morning. Among them the lucky MPs who had received an invitation. Though many Tories had been complaining it was all a stitch-up by Number 10. That Rishi Sunak had hand-picked favourites and those he wanted to get on side. Whatever. Let’s hope they had strong bladders. It was going to be a long morning. Continue reading...

US homeland security secretary calls circumstances ‘difficult’ as ending of pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions approachesThe US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday that immigration authorities faced “extremely challenging” circumstances along the border with Mexico days before the end of asylum restrictions implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.A surge of Venezuelan migrants through south Texas, particularly in and around the border community of Brownsville, has occurred over the last two weeks for reasons that Mayorkas said were unclear. On Thursday, 4,000 of about 6,000 migrants in border patrol custody in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley were Venezuelan. Continue reading...

Casey Cole White escaped from county jail last year helped by Vicky White, who died from self-inflicted gunshot woundAn Alabama jail detainee charged in the death of a high-ranking guard who helped him escape while he engaged in an affair with her pleaded guilty Thursday to the escape in exchange for having the murder case dismissed.Casey Cole White, 39, entered the plea agreement in Lauderdale county court, avoiding a June trial on the charge of felony murder in the death of Vicky White, the assistant director of corrections at the local jail. He continues to await trial on a separate murder charge. Continue reading...

Meg Ryan was declared ‘unrecognizable’ in headlines after attending a screening – even though the tabloids clearly recognized herOh no, it’s happened again. Every now and again a famous woman over the age of 45 has the temerity to go out in public without following The Rules of Ageing While Female and all hell breaks loose. This time the offender is Meg Ryan. The 61-year-old actor attended a documentary screening in New York this week, sparking immediately scrutiny from all the usual tabloids about her appearance and how much plastic surgery she might have had. Both the Daily Mail and Page Six declared Ryan “unrecognizable” in their headlines. Which is weird, because they clearly recognized her. Continue reading...

Reparations committee says admission of wrongdoing is not enough and seeks funding for services for descendants of enslaved peopleCalifornia’s reparations taskforce is due to vote on recommendations for a formal apology for the state’s role in perpetuating a legacy of slavery and discrimination that has thwarted black residents from living freely for decades.The nine-member committee, which first convened nearly two years ago, is expected to give final approval at a meeting in Oakland on Saturday to a list of ambitious proposals that will then be in the hands of state lawmakers. Continue reading...

Higher rates slow the renewable energy transition and shield oil and gas producers from competition by low-carbon producersIn late 2021, consumer price inflation surged in many countries. Prices shot up again following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response, central banks drastically tightened monetary policy – raising interest rates from near zero to around 5% or more. Since the interest rate hikes have failed to bring down core inflation to the target rate of 2% favored by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB), the pressure for further rate hikes has been insistent.We have long doubted that central bank rate rises could control the new inflation at a socially acceptable price. In most countries, wages lag well behind inflation. Too much of the rise in prices clearly reflects the impact of higher profit margins and obvious supply bottlenecks.Thomas Ferguson is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and director of research at the Institute for New Economic ThinkingServaas Storm is a senior lecturer at the Delft University of Technology Continue reading...

The dieting program is closing after 40 years. That doesn’t mean we’re moving towards body acceptanceI was 10 years old when I learned what bodies should – and shouldn’t – look like. Kirstie Alley was on TV, pointing to a paparazzi photo of what her pudgy stomach looked like before she tried Jenny Craig’s weight loss program. But after testing the brand’s signature mix of dieting, meal plans and personal coaching, Alley showed off her new physique: smooth, with no bumps peeking out from her body-con dress.Sitting cross-legged in front of the television, I peered down at my own stomach. It felt soft when I poked it. I decided it could be slimmer. That night, I went upstairs to my mother’s scale and weighed myself. It was the first time I ever knew my weight. Continue reading...

The contract that the writers are striking for could set a powerful precedent that AI must work for people, rather than being used to marginalize people to juice profitsThere is nothing particularly novel about thinking to yourself, “You know, my job used to be pretty decent. Now, I’m working harder and the money is getting scarcer. What happened?” You might think this, in 2023, as a college professor or a cab driver or a journalist or a factory worker. This is America – our entire economy is built on making millions of jobs worse, in order to make a few people very rich.What would be remarkable is if – when you realized that your once-good job was being made worse in order to satisfy the profit hunger of some faraway investment banker – you were able to actually do something about it. That, in our nation, would be news. That would be something for everyone to cheer for. The plain old workers standing up against enormous companies to stop the process that is turning their careers into execrable “gigs”. Is it a fairy tale? No, my friends. Welcome to the Great Writers Strike of 2023. Continue reading...

The required app often doesn’t work – and if it does it may send families a thousand miles along the border for their appointmentsWhen they arrived in Ciudad Juárez on 17 March, across the US-Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, Nestor Quintero and his family were penniless, hungry and homeless. But their primary concern was getting their hands on a smartphone.The 35-year-old Venezuelan migrant had found out in Tapachula, a city close to the Mexico-Guatemala border, that people hoping to enter the US to ask for asylum needed to secure an appointment through a recently introduced mobile phone app known as CBP One. Continue reading...

Across the Commonwealth, the contrast with the jubilation of 1953 is stark. Times have changed, but have the royals?When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, there were celebrations across the Commonwealth. In Barbados, people were jubilant and the government even issued a postage stamp to commemorate the moment.Things have changed a great deal since then. Most Commonwealth citizens feel removed from the monarchy and will be going about their business as usual today. Curiosity will capture some of our attention, but for the average Barbadian man and woman the occasion will pass without much fanfare.Suleiman Bulbulia is a commissioner on Barbados’s constitutional reform commission and a former member of the republican status transition advisory committee Continue reading...

Lawsuit, filed two years after shooting at a FedEx facility where eight were killed, alleges advertising influenced the gunmanThree victims of a 2021 mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indiana are suing the gun manufacturer for the advertising of its products that the suit claims directly influenced part of the shooter’s actions.The lawsuit was filed two years after the shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, when Brandon Scott Holes, a former employee at the facility, went on a rampage and killed eight. Continue reading...

Anger mounts that white subway rider who put Black man in chokehold was released without chargeAs New York City authorities continue to investigate the killing of an unhoused Black man who was put into a chokehold by a white transit passenger, anger and frustration mounted over the lack of an arrest in the case, reinforcing longstanding racial disparities over who gets charged for crimes in the city and nationally.“His killing is a reflection of deep racial bias in our society,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the Guardian on Friday. “And the way he was treated after death is a reflection of other biases with regard to people who suffer mental illness. Continue reading...

Dennis Maliq Barnes of New Orleans announces he will attend Cornell University this fall to study computer scienceThe 16-year-old American high schooler who set what is believed to be a US record after collecting more than $10m in college scholarship offers is bound for the Ivy League.Dennis Maliq Barnes announced on Friday that he plans to enroll at Cornell University for the fall semester to study computer science after his 24 May graduation from New Orleans’s International high school. The Ithaca, New York, university only accepts 9% of applicants, and just 7% of its 15,000 or so students are Black like Barnes, according to the US News & World Report. Continue reading...

Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of cases stemming from the January 6 insurrectionA Kentucky man with a long criminal record has been sentenced to a record-setting 14 years in prison for attacking police officers with pepper spray and a chair as he stormed the US Capitol with his wife.Peter Schwartz’s prison sentence is the longest so far among hundreds of Capitol riot cases. The judge who sentenced Schwartz on Friday also handed down the previous longest sentence – 10 years – to a retired New York police department officer who assaulted a police officer outside the Capitol on 6 January. Continue reading...

Source confirms marine’s identity as Daniel Penny, 24, of West Islip, Long Island, but Penny has not yet been charged with a crimeThe US Marine veteran who was recorded placing Jordan Neely in a chokehold on the New York City subway before the Michael Jackson impersonator died on Monday could face a manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide charge, an expert told the Guardian on Friday.A source with knowledge of the case first confirmed the marine veteran’s identity as 24-year-old Daniel Penny of West Islip, Long Island. Attorneys for Penny later provided his name to news outlets after it was widely circulated late on Thursday by social media users, citing information from people who recognized him in cellphone video footage of Neely’s final moments. Continue reading...

The eight people are now protected from prosecution, limiting the possibility of a conspiracy indictmentHalf of the 16 so-called fake electors in Georgia who sought to falsely declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election have accepted immunity deals in the local criminal investigation into the matter, their lawyer said in a court filing on Friday.The immunity deals to the eight came in April, according to the filing, after the Fulton county district attorney’s office called their lawyer and said prosecutors were willing to make the arrangement – about four months after the lawyer asked about the prospect of such deals. Continue reading...

Her departure comes as emergency declarations come to an end: ‘I have never been prouder of anything I’ve done’Rochelle Walensky, who played a key role in the Biden administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, announced she will step down as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The announcement came as the World Health Organization said Friday that Covid is no longer a global emergency. The waning of the pandemic was a good time to make a transition, Walensky said. Continue reading...

Video of Donald Trump’s deposition in his civil rape trial in New York City was released to the public on Friday. The footage, from last October, included a previously reported but never publicly seen exchange in which the former president mistook a picture of his accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll, for a picture of his second wife, Marla Maples. Carroll says Trump raped her in a department store in New York in the mid-1990s. She is suing for battery and for defamation, over comments he made while denying the claim, which she made in a book in 2019 Continue reading...

Historic two-week tour of US ends with call for nationwide commitment to address racial discrimination in dealings with lawThe US must move beyond piecemeal reform and slogan-making and tackle the ongoing scourge of police brutality and law enforcement’s discrimination against Black people, a United Nations mission has concluded at the end of a historic two-week tour of the country.UN experts completed their first official visit to the US as part of a system of global inquiries set up by the human rights council after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. As they ended their tour on Friday in Washington DC, the experts called for a nationwide commitment to address discrimination suffered by Black Americans in their daily dealings with the law.A call for an end to racial profiling in policing.A dramatic reduction in the use of solitary confinement in US jails and prisons, and the total abolition of isolated incarceration for children under 18.Passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which tackles racial bias and excessive use of force but which has stalled in Congress.An end to stereotyping of Black women and girls as angry and “aged up”.Rooting out of white supremacist law enforcement officers to ensure that they no longer wear the badge. Continue reading...

Law that is seen as thinly veiled power grab sets up commission with power to investigate complaints against DAsGeorgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, signed a bill on Friday that makes it possible to oust elected district attorneys from office if they are believed to not be adequately enforcing the law. It’s a move that is seen a thinly veiled power grab to push out Democratic prosecutors, include some who said they would not prosecute abortion-related crimes.The new law sets up a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Statewide Qualifications Commission with the power to investigate complaints against district attorneys and remove them if they have sufficient cause. The law outlines a series of offenses for which a prosecutor can be removed, including “willful and persistent failure” to carry out their duties and categorically refusing to prosecute crimes they are required by law to pursue. Continue reading...

Former president shown pointing to photograph of writer who accuses him of rape and saying ‘That’s my wife’Video of Donald Trump’s deposition in his civil rape trial in New York City was released to the public on Friday.The footage, from last October, included a previously reported but never publicly seen exchange in which the former president mistook a picture of his accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll, for a picture of his second wife, Marla Maples. Continue reading...

Kari Lake speaks at Budapest meeting of US Republicans and European allies aimed at cementing rightwing tiesUS Republicans and their European allies tore up news headlines and ejected a Guardian journalist from a conference of radical rightwing activists, on the same day that they highlighted the importance of free speech.Speaking at the second annual meeting in Budapest of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), Kari Lake, a failed Republican gubernatorial candidate, said that “truth-tellers and peacemakers” were being destroyed by “fake news”. Continue reading...

Leonard Leo arranged for Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas to be paid $25,000 and emphasized ‘no mention of Ginni’ on the payments

Divided state panel had voted against recommending clemency for Glossip, 60, condemned to death for murder of motel ownerThe US supreme court on Friday halted the execution of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip, whose case has drawn support from the state’s Republican attorney general after an investigation shed new light on evidence relating to the 1997 murder Glossip was convicted of commissioning.The justices acted after a divided Oklahoma state panel on 26 April voted against recommending clemency for Glossip, 60, who was scheduled to be executed on 18 May for his role in the murder of motel owner Barry Van Treese. Continue reading...

Effort to recall Republican Cochise county supervisor Tom Crosby needed 4,900 signatures but fell 600 shortAn effort by residents of an Arizona border county beset with election denialism to recall a county supervisor who has championed false election claims has failed, its organizers announced.The Committee to Recall Tom Crosby, a Republican in Cochise county, said it did not get enough signatures in time on a petition to trigger a recall election. The group needed nearly 4,900 signatures but gathered about 4,300, coming close to success before the 3 May deadline to submit the petition. Continue reading...

Calls mount for Elizabeth Hoover, anthropologist at UC Berkeley who said she had Indigenous heritage, to resignA University of California at Berkeley anthropologist known for her work on food justice in Native American communities is under fire after she long claimed she was Indigenous and has conceded that she is in fact white – fueling calls for her resignation.Elizabeth Hoover, who was hired as an associate professor in 2000 researching Native American food sovereignty, published a letter of apology on her personal website earlier this week. Continue reading...

Person was reported as having turned over picture of storage room where majority of classified documents were locatedFederal prosecutors have gained the cooperation of a person who worked at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the New York Times reported, as they seek a more complete picture of whether the former US president took steps to remove classified documents from a storage room in response to a subpoena for their return.The identity of the cooperating witness and the extent of the information divulged remains unknown, but the person was reported as having turned over a picture of the storage room where the vast majority of the classified documents at the property had been located. Continue reading...

In a case that raises interesting questions about the dividing line between inspiration and plagiarism, the singer-songwriter took a stand for artistic freedom and won• Ed Sheeran cleared of infringing copyright in Marvin Gaye lawsuitIt’s easy to supply a punchline to Ed Sheeran’s threat to quit music entirely if he lost his latest copyright court case. So easy, in fact, that on Thursday morning, listeners to Boom Radio – one of those stations aimed at listeners deemed too old for BBC Radio 2, which is big on adverts for retirement homes and not typically a hotbed of biting satire and snark – could have heard their breakfast show DJ doing precisely that, willing on Sheeran’s loss.It’s also easy to look askance at the aw-shucks tone of Sheeran’s response to his victory in the trial. “I’m just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy,” he said. While is true it’s also a slightly reductive view of a notoriously driven and competitive artist who has sold 150m records in 12 years, had a vast influence over modern pop and demonstrated an impressively ability to assimilate musical trends from grime to Afrobeats into his immediately recognisable sound. Continue reading...

It’s everything he had hoped for, just the wrong era. Still, one makes the best of these thingsAre you all set for the coronation? Whether you plan to pay the “people’s homage” – swearing aloud the newly proposed oath of allegiance to the king while watching it at home – is, of course, a private matter between you and your television set. This morning, Charles’s friend Jonathan Dimbleby suggested that this faintly controversial innovation was some ghastly evangelical idea of the archbishop of Canterbury’s (I paraphrase), and that Charles himself would find it “abhorrent”. Which feels fairly definitive.Even if the archbish hasn’t made a bish, it must be said that the full-spectrum reverence of the run-up to the coronation can leave one always on the point of collapsing into giggles. I hugely enjoyed a Spectator article this week about the spoon used to anoint the sovereign with holy oil, which was described as a “very special one” (agreed), “one of the most beautiful examples of that humble genus” (OK), and “doubtless the world’s most important spoon” (sorry, I’ve gone). Continue reading...

Agreement designed to curb increase of people arriving into US marks dramatic precedent for two countries, experts sayAn agreement between the United States and Mexico designed to curb the surge of migrants arriving at the US doorstep marks a dramatic new precedent in relations between the two countries, analysts said, warning that the deal could further overwhelm border cities already struggling to cope.Under the agreement announced in a joint statement Tuesday, Mexico will continue accepting migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away from the US. Continue reading...

Shares in US regional banks pummelled this week amid fears of more collapses in sector

Carol Martin corroborates E Jean Carroll’s account of aftermath of alleged rape, and judge keeps door open to Trump appearance. Plus, why aren’t there better menstrual products?

Much of the talk has been about Neely’s mental health – in large part so we don’t have to talk about our larger societal healthJordan Neely was choked to death in the middle of the day on a New York City subway car on Monday, and since then people from New York City’s leaders to media commentators have put the focus on the 30-year-old Black man’s mental health. The New York governor Kathy Hochul stated that “some of the factors” in Neely’s death were “people who are homeless in our subways, many of them in the throes of mental health episodes”. Mayor Eric Adams spoke about “serious mental health issues in play here”. John Macari, a retired New York police lieutenant and podcaster told Fox News: “You have people commuting on a train who have to deal with mentally ill people who are a danger to themselves and others.”But Jordan Neely didn’t kill himself. He was killed, and not by his medical history. A 24-year-old white ex-marine put him in a chokehold for “some 15 minutes,” according to Juan Alberto Vazquez, a witness at the scene, and the medical examiner has ruled Neely’s death a homicide. So instead of focusing on Neely’s past, maybe we should be asking what kind of state of mind does it take to strangle a man to death in public. Continue reading...

Stanley Kurtz’s crusade against ‘woke civics’ in schools has shaped Republican bills across the USWhen two US senators – a Texas Republican and a Delaware Democrat – introduced a bill in June 2022 to expand grants for civics education, most observers saw it as something of an olive branch between the parties.But despite initial momentum, three now-familiar letters stopped the bill in its tracks: CRT. Continue reading...

Experts say union upsurge for journalists and graduate students is pleasing but blue-collar workers require assistance tooUnion supporters have had plenty to applaud with regard to organizing college- educated workers, notching up dozens of unionization victories involving graduate students, adjunct professors, journalists, nurses and workers at museums, non-profits and video-game companies.But some labor supporters who laud these victories are warning that something is awry, that there isn’t nearly enough unionization of non-college-educated, lower-paid workers, whether factory workers or fast-food workers. Continue reading...

As Eastwind Books of Berkeley shutters in California, local residents mourn the loss of a communityThe author Hua Hsu remembers going to Eastwind Books of Berkeley as a kid. His parents would drive 50 miles north from their home in Cupertino to the small shop near the Berkeley campus. There, his parents, Taiwanese immigrants, would buy books and newspapers from Asia that they couldn’t find elsewhere in the Bay Area.Later, when Hsu – now a staff writer at the New Yorker and author of the National Book Critics Circle award-winning memoir Stay True – was in college at the University of California, Berkeley, he developed his own relationship with the store, mostly as a place where ethnic studies and Asian American studies professors had students buy their books for class. Continue reading...

Conglomerates want to turn us into gig workers or replace us with AI scabs. Writers across the world are uniting to fight backI and 12,000 of my fellow Writers Guild of America colleagues went on strike this week against the conglomerates that make and control much of the “content” consumed by global audiences. Late night comedy-variety shows have gone dark; untold numbers of productions have been disrupted and are in the process of shutting down; studio gates and corporate offices are being besieged by thousands of picketers.Our last strike, back in 2007, caused more than $3bn of economic damage in Los Angeles alone. This strike could be even more costly. Continue reading...

If Mark Robinson wins gubernatorial race in 2024 there would be no one to hold back a wave of rightwing bills in the stateTo Mark Robinson, gay and transgender people are “filth”, homosexuality is an abominable sin, and the transgender movement is “demonic” and “full of the spirit of the antichrist”.Muslim Americans, meanwhile, are invaders, and Robinson is not afraid to dabble in antisemitism: in his mind an international cabal of Jewish financiers make up a modern-day “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, who rule the banks in “every single country”. Continue reading...

Secretariat’s Triple Crown records remain unbeaten to this day. Fifty years on, jockey Ron Turcotte reflects on a ‘generous, kind and gentle’ legendEven in 2023, the name Secretariat is recognizable to millions of Americans otherwise unversed in horse racing. Tributes to the most famous racehorse of the 1970s are everywhere. More than 250 streets in the US are named after Secretariat (more than any human athlete), he was one of ESPN’s top 50 North American athletes of the 20th century, and, somewhat confusingly, he even served as the basis for a character in Netflix’s hit animated sitcom BoJack Horseman.This weekend’s Kentucky Derby marks the 50th anniversary of Secretariat’s victory at Churchill Downs, which was itself the first step in the horse’s signature achievement – winning the 1973 Triple Crown. Continue reading...

In the aftermath of the sprinter’s death at the age of just 32, her USA teammate remembers a talented athlete who did things her own wayThe post-race glory photo-op is a time honored tradition, an occasion for athletes to get their hit of global adulation in case their compatriot fans forget to tune in to the medal ceremony. Tori Bowie never looked more resplendent than she was in a snapshot of USA’s 4x100m women’s team after their remarkable triumph at the 2016 Olympics.Interlocked with Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tianna Bartoletta in a postcard for #blackgirlmagic, Bowie served a little bit of everything on that hot and sticky evening at João Havelange Stadium on the penultimate night of the Games. She flexed serious power with those washboard abs and flashed pops of color with her fuchsia headband – a silken cousin to the bonnets many Black women use to preserve their locks. But instead of wearing it to bed, Bowie wore hers on the world’s biggest stage. Gardner says that was typical of Bowie: “never what the world asked for, always unapologetically her”. Continue reading...

Blume’s groundbreaking books shepherded me and millions of others through the trials of adolescence – and they’re still as relevant as everIt is a truth universally acknowledged that being a teenage girl sucks. Struggling with a changing body, navigating the schoolyard hierarchies, feeling disconnected from your parents, being sexualised in ways you are both ready and not ready for – like most of my peers, I went through the wringer between the ages of 12 and 18.When I look at my six-year-old daughter now, I worry about what she’ll have to face in the hormone trenches – but I’m comforted that, like me, she’ll have Judy Blume. Continue reading...

Neely, 30, whose subway death was ruled a homicide by New York’s medical examiner, remembered as kind and lovingJordan Neely had a fan club.The 30-year-old Michael Jackson impersonator had amassed a following within New York City and beyond, with thousands online admiring the young man’s aptitude for dance and creating a Facebook group to share his performances. Continue reading...

Despite gestures towards inclusivity, the ceremony remains rooted in outdated religious and feudal idealsAt the heart of the coronation of Charles III on Saturday is a very deliberate national deception about religion. In some ways, the deception hides in plain sight, not attracting attention. Pre-coronation speculation has focused instead on more trivial things – Camilla, Harry, Meghan – or on monarchy’s general popularity in the post-Elizabeth era. But when you watch and listen to the coronation itself, the religious deception will be hard to miss – and harder to believe.Many will instinctively want to be generous about the coronation and will not want to spoil the party. In that spirit, they might call this weekend’s ritual a historical pretence that pleases many and does no particular harm. If they were being stronger-minded, as they ought to be about an event that inevitably says so much about this country to itself and the world, they could instead call the ritual what it is: a lie at the heart of the British state.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

All hail the nature arbitrary of privilege that’s hereditary