The Indiana Pacers star spent most of the Paris Olympics on the USA bench. This postseason he has become a ruthless stealer of dreamsSelf-awareness may be Tyrese Haliburton's greatest attribute. That was obvious at last summer's Olympics as the 25-year-old All-Star was confined to the Team USA bench.Instead of hitting out at online fans who kept tabs on Indiana Pacers star's smiles, high fives and other displays of team spirit to make up for his lack of on-court statistics, Haliburton seized on the chance to dunk on himself. After the US pipped France in the final, Haliburton posted a selfie with his gold medal. When you ain't do nun on the group project and still get an A," he wrote. Continue reading...
From bloody noses to body-check complaints, the league's physicality is under the microscope. But players and historians say the toughness isn't new - we're just finally watchingLast July, Las Vegas Aces star A'ja Wilson took a shot to the face from Seattle's Nneka Ogwumike that left her nose gushing. Wilson later said she'd never seen so much of her own blood. It didn't affect her game too much though: she finished with 24 points and 20 rebounds, telling reporters of the jab, I think it made me great."When Caitlin Clark entered the league in the same season and was almost immediately swatted around like a fruit fly by veterans with years of experience and plenty of size on her, she didn't complain (though many of her fans sure did). Clark came back this season bigger and better, delivering her own message to the veterans who knocked her around as a rookie. Continue reading...
If it goes ahead we will see the construction of a surveillance state that is in some ways worse than the USCanada got duped. We avoided electing an outright Trump sympathiser, but we still elected a prime minister who will align our policies with the United States. Despite all the anti-Trump rhetoric and celebration of the idea that Canada was independent and had no desire to be like the US, we are now passing Maga-inspired legislation.The newly elected Mark Carney government tabled a border bill that will give law enforcement sweeping powers in obtaining citizen's data, and will align Canada with the US's refugee policies. Bill C-2, or the Strong Borders Act, is presented as a border security bill. However, its reach extends beyond border applications to nearly all legislation.Erica Ifill is an economist and award-winning political columnist Continue reading...
Security officers grabbed and pushed to the ground Alex Padilla after he tried to ask a question at a news conference. Key US politics stories from Thursday 12 June 2025Democrats have criticized the forcible removal of a senator who posed a question on Donald Trump's immigration crackdown at a news conference as violent", horrifying" and a stunning abuse of power".Secret Service and FBI officers grabbed, shoved and pushed to the ground Democratic senator Alex Padilla before handcuffing him after he showed up and asked a question at the conference held by the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. Continue reading...
Frontrunners Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani take the spotlight, sparring over their records and qualificationsSeven Democratic candidates vying to become New York City's next mayor clashed on Thursday night in the second and final debate before the June primary.The two-hour debate quickly turned combative with the frontrunners, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and democratic socialist assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, sparring over their records and qualifications. Continue reading...
J.J. Spaun shot a superb 66 to lead the way after day one of the US Open but brutal Oakmont left its mark on plenty of the big namesJJ Spaun can't make his birdie putt on 13. But he's now sole leader of the US Open, because Ludvig Aberg makes a mess of the par-five 12th, going for the pin with his third and finding sand, then only splashing out into the rough. After bundling his chip eight feet past the hole, he does extremely well to make the putt coming back and limit the damage to bogey. Meanwhile Adam Scott bounces back from an opening bogey at 10 with birdies at 11 and 12, while Eric Cole does the same with birdies at 12 and 14. All change at the top!-2: Spaun (4*)
Josh Hawley, a senator, threatened multiple organizations with inquiries, claiming they were bankrolling civil unrest'Immigration and civil rights organizations across the US are warning of a growing effort to undermine their advocacy work as rightwing lawmakers accuse them of fueling the demonstrations against federal raids in California.Advocacy groups voiced alarm on Thursday after Josh Hawley, a Republican US senator from Missouri, threatened multiple immigration and civil rights groups with investigations over claims that they are bankrolling civil unrest" in Los Angeles. Continue reading...
Rowena fire grows to 3,500 acres with evacuation orders issued for hundreds of homes in Columbia River Gorge areaA growing wildfire in Oregon has destroyed multiple homes and prompted evacuation orders in the Columbia River Gorge area, in what officials are calling an early warning of the fire season ahead.The so-called Rowena fire had grown on Thursday to 3,500 acres and remained 0% contained, prompting officials to issue evacuation orders for hundreds of homes and to temporarily close a section of an interstate highway. Continue reading...
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, appeared to acknowledge that the Pentagon had contingency plans to take Greenland and Panama by force if necessary during a congressional hearing on Thursday. When repeatedly asked by representative Adam Smith if invading the two countries was a policy of the defence department, Hegseth replied: Our job at the defense department is to have plans for any contingency'
Security guards wrestled Padilla out of the conference room as he explained he was a senator and wanted to ask the homeland security secretary a question. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, claimed the senator 'lunged' toward Noem during the press conference. Noem later said she had spoken to Padilla after the incident
The flag serves as a reminder of a fundamental truth about Mexican Americans: we are from here; we are also from thereRepublicans are using images of Ice protesters waving Mexican flags atop burning Waymo cars to foment fear among Americans. Like this photograph that Elon Musk tweeted on Sunday: a shirtless protester wielding the Tricolor atop a vandalized robotaxi as flames billow toward the weak sunlight backlighting the flag. His dark curls fall to his bare shoulders. He stares into the camera.Frankly, the image belongs in a museum. Continue reading...
The lawmaker will run against Ernst, who had told a town hall we're all going to die' in reply to Medicaid cut concernsWhen Iowa senator Joni Ernst now infamously told a town hall audience last month that we're all going to die" in response to concerns about proposed cuts to Medicaid in Donald Trump's signature spending bill, her Democratic challenger JD Scholten was on his way to a funeral.Scholten, a state lawmaker and minor league baseball player, said it was at that funeral for a local Democratic activist that his tentative plans to run for Congress for a third time - this time for the upper chamber - suddenly became more certain. Continue reading...
Facilities appear to be unprepared for rush of detained people, including young children. Plus, UK-bound Air India flights crashes with more than 200 onboard Don't already get First Thing in your inbox? Sign up hereGood morning.Immigrants, including families with small children, have been held in a cramped office basement for days without enough food and water after being detained by authorities in raids in Los Angeles, lawyers have said.Why are troops being sent to California? Following protests against immigration raids, Donald Trump ordered the military's deployment despite objections from the state's governor, Gavin Newsom.How long has Khalil been detained for? He has been held in a detention facility in Louisiana since March. Continue reading...
One of the world's best strikers talks about being part of a revolution, moving to Gotham FC and the upcoming EurosEsther Gonzalez is at the top of her game. The 32-year-old striker's list of accolades - World Cup winner, three-time Liga F champion, National Women's Soccer League champion, Copa de la Reina victor and Concacaf W Champions Cup winner - is matched by few in the sport. But as a young girl growing up in southern Spain, her path was uncertain, rife with obstacles. As a child, I dreamed of what I wanted to be when I grew up," she says. It was a soccer player. But, let's say, circumstances didn't allow me to see women's soccer or anything close to women's soccer."As she grew up with three sisters, Gonzalez's earliest memories of football were playing with her hermanas in their small village in Andalusia. She dreamed of being a footballer, but there wasn't a path before her. The shy young talent with a nose for goals would play with the local boys: they needed a goalscorer and she stepped in. As Gonzalez grew, her father took her on car journeys of more than four hours each way to get to training. Continue reading...
Advocates worry debt burden is worse with installment payments as credit card debt balloons to over $1tn in USWhen Nicole Hartman purchased her home in Berwick, Pennsylvania, in 2019, the place needed remodeling.The 44-year-old home help aide needed to replace the hot water heater, get two new appliances and fix a water issue, along with making the home more medically accessible for her children. Continue reading...
by Barry Trachtenberg, Victor Silverman, Atalia Omer, on (#6XY73)
We are Jewish scholars who filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court on Harvard's discriminatory assumption that being Jewish means supporting IsraelHarvard is suing to stop the Trump administration's unprecedented interference in the operation of the university, supposedly to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. Harvard maintains it has already addressed a crisis of antisemitism on campus. The government is wrong in attacking Harvard, but so is Harvard in its defense.We are part of a group of 27 Jewish scholars of Jewish studies who have filed an amicus brief in Harvard's lawsuit against the Trump administration. We submitted the brief, drafted by the civil rights attorney Yaman Salahi, because we support the university's fight against government overreach. Yet in doing so, the institution has committed a different kind of discrimination - one that violates federal civil rights law. We reject Harvard's troubling assumption that being Jewish necessitates supporting Israel, or that criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza constitutes antisemitism. Continue reading...
While heart-rate monitoring has provided us with some evidence, it fails to capture the ineffable nature of match dayA recent study of Brazilian football fans, supporters of Atletico Mineiro, monitored their heart rates before and during a big match and concluded that, a single goal aside, the collective rituals of the day were more emotionally intense than anything else. So going to the football is about more than the football; but we surely knew that anyway? Does the kind of neurophysiological approach take us any further?In the end this study relied on a very small sample - just 17 fans - and a very particular sample at that; the kind of supporter who shows up more than four hours before a game, and is all-in with the choreographed pre-match rituals of flares, fireworks and singing. Even then, the idea that heart rate is the most useful cipher for emotion is too crude a proposition to capture how we experience the game. This research was done at the final of the Minas Gerais state championships, against their eternal local rivals; I wonder what the results would have looked like from one of Bristol Rovers' tortuous late-season defeats this year? What is the physiological metric for ennui?David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives. His new book Injury Time: Football in a State of Emergency (Mudlark) will be published in August Continue reading...
Several service members told advocacy groups they felt like pawns in a political game and assignment was unnecessaryCalifornia national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions. Continue reading...
Troops are trained for war, where they can shoot to kill. Asking troops to police is an invitation to brutalityThis was the moment that Donald Trump was waiting for. A Democratic city, Los Angeles. A Democratic state, California. His most popular issue, immigration. And protests where occasional violence could be spotlighted endlessly on social media. What better time to summon the troops and burnish the president's tough-guy image.But Trump should be careful what he wishes for. The spectacle of needlessly calling in 4,000 national guard troops and 700 Marines may be red meat for his Maga base, but for most everyone else it is a bright warning sign of Trump's autocratic tendencies. Rather than quell the protests, he is provoking more, not only in LA but in at least two dozen cities across the US. Even if this is not yet the mass mobilization that such repression has sparked in other countries, it is making Trump's true colors clear.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February Continue reading...
The protesters in LA have a clear message: don't arrest our friends and neighbours when they pose no danger to anyoneWhen Donald Trump was elected the first time round, the works of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt flew off the shelves in the US. It wasn't all good news - JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was also enjoying a surge in popularity and Trump was, of course, still about to be president. But Arendt's famous 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was selling at 16 times its usual rate, which meant that by the time of the protests centred on the inauguration in January 2017, at least some of those people had read it.Arendt's view of popular demonstrations was complicated. She wasn't blind to the way authoritarian rulers use public protest as an excuse for a display of physical power, embodied in the police, which turns the state into an army against its people, altering that relationship. If it's no longer government by consent, it's rule by force, and they have the equipment. Yet how many people here still believe", she wrote of Germany in the 1930s, quoting the French activist David Rousset, that a protest has even historic importance? This scepticism is the real masterpiece of the SS. Their great accomplishment. They have corrupted all human solidarity. Here the night has fallen on the future." It's an elegantly drawn lose-lose situation: if you lose the will to protest, you have been morally murdered", but if you don't, you play into the tyrant's hands.Zoe Williams 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...
by Helen Livingstone (now); Robert Mackey, Lucy Campb on (#6XX6M)
This blog is closing now. You can read all our coverage of the anti-Ice protests in Los Angeles and across the US here.Governor Greg Abbott has pledged to deploy National Guard troops across his state of Texas, becoming the first governor to do so as protests against Trump's immigration raids spread throughout the United States.Abbott said on X that the Texas National Guard will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order". Continue reading...
The tuxedo-clad US president - accompanied by first lady Melania - promised a golden era' for America at his first Kennedy Center production in WashingtonDo you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"When the rousing anthem of revolution filled the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night, Donald Trump may have had a Pavlovian response along the lines of Get me Stephen Miller" or Send in the marines". We will never know. Continue reading...
Among the names announced by the US health secretary are several who have expressed anti-vaccine viewsRobert Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named new members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers on Wednesday after abruptly firing all 17 sitting members of the independent panel of experts, according to a post on X.The eight new members of the advisory committee for immunization practices (ACIP) are: Joseph R Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A Ross. Continue reading...
Vice-chair and Parkland survivor, 25, to leave after members voted to hold elections that could have led to his ousterDavid Hogg, the young vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee whose vow to unseat asleep-at-the-wheel" Democrats roiled his party, said on Wednesday that he would step away from the high-ranking role in a move that ends months of internal infighting.Moments before Hogg announced his decision, members of the committee had voted to hold new vice-chair elections that could have led to his ouster. Continue reading...
The raids, which include the detention of families and small children, have sparked ongoing protests in Los Angeles and other American cities. Key US politics stories from Wednesday 11 JuneWith limited access to immigrants in detention, US attorneys are scrambling to understand the scope of California's immigration raids, and the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security has violated immigrants' rights.Immigration lawyers have said some detainees - including families with small children - were held in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water. Continue reading...
But Columbia University graduate can be held for inaccurately filling out green card application, says judgeA federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can no longer detain Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of federal claims that he is a threat to US foreign policy.In his order on Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz said that the ruling will go into effect at 9.30am on Friday, adding: This is to allow the respondents to seek appellate review should they wish to." Continue reading...
Draft agreement may reassure top US military suppliers after president's tariffs flip-flopping threatened productionThe draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium - a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets - whose supply is entirely controlled by China. Continue reading...
Demarche instructs governments not to participate in meeting on two-state solution between Israel and PalestiniansDonald Trump's administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take anti-Israel actions" following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington. Continue reading...
Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja Sokola by a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday. After a three-week trial, Hayley and Sokola told the press they hoped their testimonies would encourage other victims of sexual assault to speak up. The verdict delivered against Weinstein follows two earlier convictions on similar charges, one of which was overturned on appeal
Singer's lawyer said Aryan Brotherhood and prison officials were plotting to kill him, and asked for home confinementAttorneys for R&B singer R Kelly have filed an urgent request for his release from federal prison, citing a serious threat to his life. The motion asks that the 58-year-old be placed under home detention due to what they describe as an orchestrated plan to have him killed behind bars.In a filing submitted on Tuesday, Kelly's legal team claims that his safety is at risk. The motion alleges that three officials from the Bureau of Prisons attempted to recruit another inmate to murder the singer. Continue reading...
Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja SokolaThe movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on one charge of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree by a Manhattan jury, concluding a three-week trial that revived accusations from a successful 2020 prosecution that was overturned on appeal.Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja Sokola. Continue reading...
Convention resolution also called for defunding Planned Parenthood and criticized willful childlessness'Human rights groups spoke out on Wednesday against an overwhelming vote by Southern Baptists, the US's largest Protestant denomination, to endorse a resolution that would seek to overturn the legalization of same-marriage by the US supreme court.Marriage equality is settled law. Love is love, and the right for LGBTQ+ couples to marry is supported by an overwhelming majority of the American public," said Laurel Powell, communications director of Human Rights Campaign, in a statement to the Guardian. Continue reading...
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