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Eagle Pass residents watch as their city becomes an arena for convoys - and policies fail to address their real concernsJust a few blocks from a riverbank park in Eagle Pass that's been turned into a no-go militarized zone by Texas troops, local pastor Javier Leyva was attempting a normal Sunday.He was cultivating fellowship with congregants of his First United Methodist church and other residents downtown, on the US-Mexico border. But, as so often, events were to intrude. A fringe, rightwing group was headed to town. Continue reading...

Greg Livaudais alleges abuse by Lawrence Hecker in 1974 - and wonders why the retired priest, 92, isn't already in jailAs the retired Roman Catholic priest Lawrence Hecker awaits trial on rape and kidnapping charges in New Orleans, one of his many alleged victims wonders why Hecker isn't facing more arrests in jurisdictions across south Louisiana. For years, Greg Livaudais, 66, has seen news coverage of the church abuse scandal - and it has stirred up painful memories of sexual abuse he allegedly suffered at Hecker's hands in February 1974, when Livaudais was 16.Those triggers started in 2002, when national news about a widespread cover-up in the Boston archdiocese prompted Livaudais to file a complaint against Hecker with the archdiocese of New Orleans in April of that year, when he was 44. Continue reading...

Paris gold medalist Ryan Crouser consumes up to 6,000 calories a day and spends $1,000 a month on food. He's far from the exception among athletesAncient Greek athletes ate dried figs, moist cheese and wheat. The modern-day American who is the greatest shot putter in history sources his raw power from burritos and pizzas, measuring his success in calories as well as centimetres.Ryan Crouser is the only three-time Olympic gold medal shot putter, with his win in Paris following triumphs in Rio and Tokyo. Overcoming recent injury problems, on Saturday his best effort at a rainy Stade de France was 22.90m. Continue reading...

Led by a gen Z employee, weekly series shows skits like leaving ducks around the office to promote the businessA mysterious person leaving miniature ducks around the office. An employee who eats the food at a potluck lunch without making his own contribution. An award that goes to a worker's head. A throwback to paperwork when the computers go down. Or my favorite: a visit to another showroom in disguise" to check out the competition.It's The Dealership, a weekly TikTok series brought to you by Mohawk Chevrolet. It's filmed just like the popular TV show The Office. And it's a hit, gaining close to 6m views in just the past couple of months. Mohawk may be selling Chevrolets. But its marketing team is producing a Ferrari. Continue reading...

Far-right plan for a Republican presidency would undercut unions, strip child labor laws and boost corporate profitsDonald Trump proclaimed he was for all the forgotten men and women", in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. His vice-presidential pick JD Vance consistently portrays himself as a pro-worker populist. But an analysis of the labor chapter of Project 2025 - an ambitious rightwing plan to guide the next Republican presidency - found it has little to offer them.Project 2025's labor section proposes hardly anything to improve workers' wages and working conditions. It is, however, chock full of recommendations that would boost corporate profits, undercut labor unions and advance the rightwing culture war. Continue reading...

Fred Trump III's portrayal of the Queens-born former president shows him as volatile, uncaring and racistAll in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way is a 352-page portrait of Trumpian dysfunction. With an assist from Ellis Henican, Chris Christie's go-to co-author and a Fox News commentator, Fred Trump III delivers a well-paced and engrossing read.The author is the son of the late Fred Trump Jr and a nephew of Donald Trump. Trump III thinks his uncle is a jerk, vindictive and terrified of losing, but also someone who struggles with accepting responsibility. The buck always stops elsewhere.All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way is published in the US by Simon & Schuster Continue reading...

Mississippi's conservative government is waging a partisan war on its majority-Democratic capital cityJackson, Mississippi, knows the blues.There's the old men at sunset carting old amps through a full parking lot to the back of an otherwise nondescript bar, to deliver a fearless late-night symposium in the oldest school of blues. Continue reading...

The Ohio senator has endured gleeful jokes at his expense and scrutiny of past comments, prompting some to wonder if the former president might drop him as running mateIt all started with a tweet about a couch. Within hours of Donald Trump announcing the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the presidential race, a rather lurid accusation cropped up on social media.The user of a since-deleted X account wrote last month, can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181)." Continue reading...

Before attacking childless cat ladies', senator JD Vance would have done well to remember the old showbiz adage...The Ohio senator JD Vance has attacked childless cat ladies", going so far as to suggest infertile cat owners, or cat owners choosing life without children, should enjoy reduced voting rights. Donald Trump has already alienated Elvis Presley fans (Elvis didn't have 50,000 people and he had a guitar... I don't have a guitar") and the wind (I never understood wind ... I've studied it better than anybody"). Now Vance is politicising pets. The MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage, has called Vance a top man". Farage fuels violence, as we saw in the moving cocaine-and-cider vigil in Southport last week. Should Clacton cats, and Clacton cat ladies, fear the fist of Farage?Rightwingers aiming to weaponise pets should remember the old showbiz adage: Never work with animals and children." Especially if, as the American alt-right theorist Jack Psobiec suggests they should, the Republicans sign up the Trumpanzee rock star Ted Nugent. The blood sports enthusiast, and author of the song Jailbait, already has demonstrably poor history with both wildlife and the young. Continue reading...

The online version of idealised homemakers is flawed on so many levels, but that doesn't make it any less compellingThe problems with the rise of the tradwife" are dense and many, from their fascist undertones to their regressive gender politics, but the one that is most unnerving, most irritating, and most difficult to articulate, is that they make this life look so bloody delicious.Tradwives are women who live, online and sometimes in Utah, as idealised homemakers. They cook, clean, raise children, and then perform and document these tasks (tasks more often, of course, taken on by those living in poverty), gaining millions of followers and dollars along the way. Last weekend, the Sunday Times profiled Ballerina Farm, the brand name of Hannah Neeleman who is a Mormon dancer turned beauty pageant winner, homesteader, mother of eight and, with about 18m followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, the undisputed queen of tradwives. She's famous for baking pies, milking cows straight into her coffee cup and giving birth by candlelight before competing in the Mrs World" pageant 12 days later. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris's team think they've hit a nerve, but it's far too mild to describe their targetWeird? As contemporary insults go, it feels fairly survivable. In fact, when compared with boomer, bigot, karen, gammon and hag - key concepts in much progressive civic discourse - weird is practically, in ascribing individuality to the targeted person, a compliment. Which when applied to a tech prodigy, weird usually is.But vagueness about the exact offensiveness of weird is probably one reason this demi-slur is currently considered, by senior Democrats and a host of US commentators, to be the perfect, supremely effective response to the much cruder attacks on Kamala Harris now emanating from Donald Trump and his deputy. For years, Trump's opponents considered restraint the dignified response to his ugliest invective. Today, when Trump/Vance go low, experimenting with the impact of, for instance, she's a bum", Crazy Kamala", it is Democrat strategy smoothly to respond with, just plain weird", or variations like old and quite weird", strange and old". When Trump finally attempted an answer - They're the weird ones. Nobody's ever called me weird" - rewarding clips of his difficulty were promptly and inevitably classified as weird". Continue reading...

The ruling is the first substantive order after a landmark supreme court opinion last month that conferred broad immunity for former presidentsA federal judge presiding over the election subversion case against Donald Trump has rejected efforts from his legal team to dismiss the indictment on grounds that the former president was prosecuted for vindictive and political purposes.The ruling from US district judge Tanya Chutkan is the first substantive order since the case was returned to her on Friday, following a landmark supreme court opinion last month that conferred broad immunity for former presidents and narrowed special counsel Jack Smith's case against Trump. Continue reading...

Ex-president touched upon a range of topics from crime to immigration in his speech with mostly made-up statisticsDonald Trump addressed a fully-packed venue in downtown Atlanta on Saturday, with thousands of people waiting in the Georgia heat outside to enter, or to protest his appearance in a city he has condemned repeatedly.His remarks were consistent with the tenor and comportment of restraint and probity Atlantans are used to hearing at this point. Continue reading...

Named Debby, the storm system had maximum sustained wind speeds of 40mph and was moving toward the stateA tropical storm with near hurricane strength winds and life threatening storm surges is expected to crash into Florida's Big Bend area on the northern Gulf coast shoreline by Monday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.As of 5pm ET on Saturday, the storm, named Debby, had maximum sustained wind speeds of 40mph and was moving off the coast of Havana, Cuba, and towards Florida. The National Hurricane Center has designated Debby with an advisory 6. Continue reading...

St Lucia's Julien Alfred roared to a historic women's 100m gold, Simone Biles triumphed on the vault and Remco Evenepoel won the road raceFrance's male footballers are following suit and yesterday Thierry Henry's side reached the semi-finals at Argentina's expense in a bitter grudge match that spilled into violence at full-time.The song sung by several of Argentina's Copa America-winning side last month, singling out France's players of African heritage, sparked an international incident and justifiable hurt throughout a country whose diversity is a superpower. Its footballers knew the importance of defending their homeland, its predominant values and, not least, themselves.Afterwards Millot, who will be suspended for the semi-final against Egypt, said the game's grim context had given us a pep". France certainly began like a train and so did their support, who whistled through Argentina's national anthem and booed when the visitors' names were recited.He is France's most popular sports star, a smiling powerhouse known as the nation's teddy bear, who for years aced judo contests to crowds' shouts of Teddy Bam Bam!" in honour of his ability to swiftly throw and pin his opponents to the ground.All hopes were fulfilled when Teddy Riner displayed his ice-cold tactical calm and spectacular physical might in his home city of Paris on Friday - making history by taking his third Olympic individual gold medal in the +100kg category. Continue reading...

Ricky Alderete sentenced for three offenses before Kansas unveiling of new statue of baseball and civil rights pioneerA man who stole a bronze statue of Jackie Robinson that was cut off at the ankles and found days later on fire in a trash can in a Kansas park will spend about 15 years in prison, though most of that sentence is related to a burglary a few days after the January statue heist.A judge sentenced Ricky Alderete on Friday in three different cases he said in court stemmed from his addiction to fentanyl. Continue reading...

Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg's success spurred talk about transportation secretary's veepstakes chancesWhile Kamala Harris cleared her campaign diary this weekend to finalize her choice of running mate ahead of a swing-state presidential campaign blitz next week, political spouses were hard at work.The vice-president's husband, Doug Emhoff, and Chasten Buttigieg, husband of the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg - a potential running mate for Harris at the top of November's Democratic ticket whose candidacy has been strengthening in recent days - were on New York's Fire Island on Friday for a sold-out event that raised $321,000. Continue reading...

Rapper and Martha Stewart don uniforms and helmets to watch horses that dance' as Germany win team prizeSnoop Dogg made more headlines at the Paris Olympic Games on Saturday, attending the dressage competition in costume and in the company of Martha Stewart, despite confessing to being afraid of horses.The rapper, 52 and born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, is working for NBC at the Games, as he did during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Continue reading...

Ex-president says he will only debate on Republican-friendly channel on 4 September, while Harris demands he stick to original networkDonald Trump says he would be willing to debate Kamala Harris on the friendly environs of Fox News in September - but the vice-president has not signed on to what would be a switch-up.Trump had previously agreed to appear on ABC News and debate Joe Biden a second time this year before the president ended his re-election campaign. Continue reading...

Two suspects were killed and a third was injured when police stormed the house to rescue a deputy trapped insideA Florida sheriff's deputy was killed and two other deputies were wounded while attempting to reach the first officer in what police called an ambush shooting inside a home.The three deputies were shot at a house in Eustis, Florida, on Friday night, Peyton Grinnell, the Lake county sheriff, said during a news conference at the scene. Continue reading...

American forced to quit in Japan progresses in Paris but says he is damaged goods in the eyes of every brand'The American pole vaulter Sam Kendricks said he was still broken" from the positive Covid-19 test that shattered his Olympic dreams in Tokyo three years ago, as he aims to write a new story at the Paris Games.The Olympics screwed me," he said. Continue reading...

Former president, in hospice care since last year, will turn 100 two weeks before the November electionNearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.I'm only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris," Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Continue reading...

American great edges compatriot Conner Prince to become just sixth individual athlete to win same event four timesThe American Vincent Hancock won his fourth Olympic shooting gold in men's skeet on Saturday, edging out his younger compatriot Conner Prince, who settled for silver on his Games debut. Lee Meng Yuan of Thailand took bronze.Hancock, 35, is only the sixth athlete to win the same Olympic individual event four times. He won gold in Beijing (2008), London (2012), Tokyo (2020) and Paris. He missed out in Rio in 2016, finishing just 15th. Continue reading...

Find out who is leading the way at the Olympics, and drill down to see which events each country has won medals forFollow all the latest action live | Support the GuardianAs is traditional, the table prioritises the number of gold medals won. On this basis at the 2020 Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, the United States led the field with 39 golds, with China second on 38 and Japan third with 27. If countries have the same number of gold medals, the order is then dictated by which has the most silvers, and finally bronze if the numbers are still identical. Continue reading...

Athletes no longer feel the need to stay silent about the role of religion in their approach to sportShoulders still heaving in recovery, Adam Peaty stood poolside talking to the BBC's Sharron Davies. He had just lost his Olympic title by 0.02 seconds - and yet he was smiling. I'm a very religious man," said Peaty, sporting a tattoo of a cross on his torso. I asked God just to show my heart, and this is my heart. I couldn't have done more."It was unusual to hear an athlete famous for his red mist" approach- The Man Who Swims Angry - manifesting the peaceful fruits of his newfound faith. But then there has been a rather heavenly air in the Aquatic Centre atthis Paris Olympics.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Global settlement was reached in suit over fire that killed 102 and destroyed downtown Lahaina in August 2023The parties in lawsuits seeking damages for last year's Maui wildfires have reached a $4bn global settlement, a court filing said on Friday, nearly one year after the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century.The term sheet with details of the settlement is not publicly available, but the liaison attorneys filed a motion saying the global settlement seeks to resolve all Maui fire claims for $4.037bn. The motion asks the judge to order that insurers can't separately go after the defendants to recoup money paid to policyholders. Continue reading...

Challenger Wesley Bell switched party lines to vie for Bush's Missouri seat and has reaped millions from normally Republican-supporting donorsCori Bush was knocking on doors along Arsenal street in southern St Louis where voters were not shy of asking hard questions of Missouri's first Black female member of Congress. But none of them raised the one issue that looms over her re-election race like a spectre.Bush might have been expected to cruise to victory in Tuesday's Democratic primary for Missouri's first congressional district in St Louis as she did two years ago. But her path to re-election veered into rough territory after she characterised Israel's assault on Gaza, following the 7 October Hamas attack, as a collective punishment" of Palestinians and called for a ceasefire. Continue reading...

Republicans are freaking out that their grotesque policies and bizarre politicians are now being called weird by DemocratsMy three-year-old is currently going through a phase where she calls everyone and everything poopy" with the utmost glee. Now you may think this is typical toddler behaviour but I reckon she's got a promising future in Washington DC ahead of her. As you may have noticed, we have entered into a weird phase of the US election cycle - one in which Democrats have realized that childish insults can be quite effective campaigning tools.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, started it. He's been calling Donald Trump and his asinine associates weird" for months now, but the insult only got traction after he used the term on two separate interviews with MSNBC last week. These are weird people on the other side," Walz said. They want to take books away; they want to be in your exam room. That's what it comes down to. Don't go sugarcoating this - these are weird ideas." Continue reading...

From camaraderie to a shared political vision, these campaign rally regulars explain why they're all-in for TrumpThey are the Maga masses - ordinary people for whom Donald Trump represents hope, not fear, and whose lives have been changed by the Trump era.Some drive thousands of miles, seeing parts of the US they might never otherwise see, to attend the former US president's campaign rallies, often camping outside for days to ensure they get a front-row seat. The rallies provide music, politics and a sense of belonging unlike anything else that society offers them. Continue reading...

Act pushing social media reforms for children passed 91-3 in Senate but still faces a long road ahead in HouseThis week, the US Senate overwhelmingly passed major online safety reforms to protect children on social media. But with ongoing pushback from the tech industry and freedom of speech organizations, the legislation faces an uncertain future in the House. The ambiguous fate of the legislation underscores the ongoing struggle to regulate the online world, despite overwhelming support to do so, after years of deregulation.The Kids Online Safety Act, or Kosa, would create a duty of care" for companies operating a platform - meaning companies would be obligated to take reasonable steps to prevent harm for minor users. Social media platforms would also have to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. Continue reading...

Free Jacks and Seawolves head for San Diego, seeking to add to momentum stoked by Eagles' women's Olympic gloryOn Thursday, the New England Free Jacks were escorted out of Quincy, Massachusetts, by the city police. Rugby teams usually receive such treatment after too much post-match socialising but this was pre-game, the Major League Rugby champions heading for a flight to California to defend their title against Seattle Seawolves.From a team practiced in the art of promoting itself and its sport, it was a nice bit of stagecraft ahead of Sunday's championship game. Nic Benson, chief executive of MLR, was headed west too. Continue reading...

Civilians Hamas captured on 7 October are obviously hostages. What about thousands of Palestinians sitting in Israeli jails?If you want to understand the complicated situation in the Middle East, you need to start with two basic sets of facts, which are the foundation for everything else.The first is that Israelis are civilized people, just like westerners. You should believe whatever the Israeli government says, because they are obviously not going to lie. If an Israeli soldier or settler commits a terrible act, they're not considered a reflection on the state as a whole; they're a bad apple who will be held accountable. Even if the data shows they are rarely held accountable. The bottom line: Israelis are good people who want peace; any violence they commit is justified because they have an absolute right to self-defense.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

These areas stop protesters screaming and waving plastic foetuses at close range. All women deserve that protection

Vice-president honored' to be nominee after securing delegate votes - but nomination not official until MondayKamala Harris said on Friday she was honored" to have secured enough votes from delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, announced that the vice-president had earned the majority of delegates' votes to become the party's nominee to challenge Donald Trump in November, though her nomination would not be official until Monday, the end of the virtual roll-call vote. Continue reading...

US secretary of defense pulls rank and withdraws agreements for trio accused of involvement in 2001 terror attacksThe US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has revoked a plea deal for the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and two other defendants, reinstating them as death-penalty cases, according to a memo sent to Susan Escallier, who is overseeing the war court proceedings.The short-lived deal came 16 years after prosecution of the three men began. Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. Read more on the Harris delegate story here Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is widely speculated to be among Kamala Harris's vice-presidential finalists.Martin Pengelly explores Shapiro's background for the Guardian:July was the best grassroots fundraising month in presidential history.Team Harris raised more across grassroots channels in the four days following President Biden's endorsement of Vice-President Harris than Trump's big donor-reliant operation raised in the entire month.More than 3 million donors made over 4.2m contributions - with more than 2 million donors making their first donation this cycle.This month, 94% of all our donations were under $200, and teachers and nurses continue to be among the most common donor occupations.Compared with June, we saw more than 10 times the number of gen Z donors, and more than eight times the number of millennial donors.Sixty per cent of all donors in July were women.Coalition groups that organized calls since launch - like Black Women for Harris, Latinas for Harris, and White Dudes for Harris - raised more than $20m for Team Harris. Continue reading...

A day that began with a rush of Team GB golds ended with French success and records tumbling on the athletics trackTwo-time gold medallist Andy Murray is on the shortlist for Great Britain's greatest Olympian of all-time. In Australia, that battle could be being played out in real time during the Paris Games.Australia has a long and glittering Olympic history. But there is one record no Australian has previously surpassed. Since the first Australians competed at the 1896 Games, none have won more than three gold medals in individual events.At Paris 2024, three Australians across two sports are on the cusp of history and an achievement that would guarantee elevation to the pantheon of greatest Olympians. Jess Fox, Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown have already won gold at the 2024 Games, and now have the possibility to go where no Australian has gone before. Continue reading...

Hullabaloo over clip posted by Cherelle L Parker dispersed when it emerged it was in support of Josh Shapiro and not an announcementA political and media firestorm" broke out briefly in Philadelphia on Friday over whether the city's mayor had published a tweet and video mistakenly revealing that Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, was Kamala Harris's eagerly awaited vice-presidential pick.Heralding a scoop", Ernest Owens, a reporter for outlets including Philadelphia Magazine, said: Philly political sources have told me that a staffer connected with Mayor Cherelle Parker's team accidentally posted the video today. Continue reading...

A Washington Post report details that an Egypt-linked group withdrew funds days before Trump's inaugurationA spokesperson for Donald Trump blamed Deep State Trump-haters and bad faith actors" for a bombshell report on Friday about a secret criminal investigation into whether Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the authoritarian ruler of Egypt, sought to give the former president $10m during his victorious 2016 White House run.The investigation referenced found no wrongdoing and was closed," Steven Cheung told the Washington Post, which published the report on Friday. Continue reading...