by Guardian staff and agencies in Washington on (#6VKPS)
Meeting between US and Ukraine presidents descends into chaos at White House - here's what they said, word for wordA meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy veered sharply off track in front of the television cameras as the US president berated his Ukrainian counterpart then abruptly called off a minerals deal with that he had said would be the first step towards a ceasefire with Russia.Here are the highlights, word-for-word, of the conversation between Trump, Zelenskyy and Vice-President JD Vance in the Oval Office. Continue reading...
Rafael Caro Quintero arraigned in New York over federal agent's death after years as one of US's most wanted menAfter years as one of US authorities' most wanted men, the Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was brought into a New York courtroom on Friday to answer charges that include orchestrating the 1985 killing of a US federal agent.Caro Quintero pleaded not guilty to running a continuing criminal enterprise. Separately, so did Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of another cartel. Carrillo is accused of arranging kidnappings and killings in Mexico but not accused of involvement in the death of the DEA agent Enrique Kiki" Camarena. Continue reading...
Republican senator and close ally of US president Donald Trump has called on Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to 'resign and send somebody over we can do business with or change' in a press briefing after Trump and Zelenskyy's meeting descended into a bitter argument
A meeting at the White House between Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US president Donald Trump descended into a bitter argument in front of the press in extraordinary scenes as Trump demanded that Zelenskyy show more gratitude to his administration, while accusing him of 'disrespecting the US'. Trump told Zelenskyy that he was 'gambling with world war three' while US vice president JD Vance told him he was wrong and ordered him to 'say thank you' to Trump.
Second federal appeals court declines to lift order blocking executive order signed by president on 20 JanuaryDonald Trump's effort to curtail automatic birthright citizenship nationwide as part of his hardline immigration crackdown suffered another legal setback on Friday when a second federal appeals court declined to lift one of the court orders blocking the Republican president's executive order.The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US circuit court of appeals on a 2-1 vote rejected the Trump administration's request for an order putting on hold a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland who concluded the order was unconstitutional. Continue reading...
Russian bombs hit Ukraine, protests in Greece, prayers for the Pope and Milan fashion week: the past seven days as captured by the world's leading photojournalists
Exclusive: state department memo directs officers to bar those deemed to misrepresent birth sex on applicationsThe US state department has ordered officials worldwide to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to come to the US for sports competitions and to issue permanent visa bans against those who are deemed to misrepresent their birth sex on visa applications.The 24 February state department cable obtained by the Guardian instructs visa officers to apply Immigration and Nationality Act section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) - the permanent fraud bar" - against trans applicants. Unlike regular visa denials, this section triggers lifetime exclusion from the United States with limited waiver possibilities. Continue reading...
Forget about inflation. Now it's all about cutting waste' in the form of jobs and our already paltry social safety netDuring his presidential campaign, Donald Trump never missed an opportunity to harp on inflation, promising that on day one" he would end inflation" and lower the costs of groceries, cars and other common goods.Well, it's day 40, and inflation saw its largest increase in over a year. Blink and you might have missed that Trump and his fellow Republicans have largely abandoned their concerns about inflation to focus on government waste". Continue reading...
by Ramon Antonio Vargas in New Orleans on (#6VKA4)
Unearthed emails detail concerns about injuries and work duties in utilizing devices that might have prevented New Year's terrorist attackAt least some public safety officials in New Orleans evidently remain skeptical of easily deployable, 700lb steel barriers designed to prevent intentional vehicle ramming attacks - even after one carried out on the city's most famous street on New Year's Day killed 14 people and injured 67 others, according to a trove of government emails obtained by the Guardian.Received through a public records request, the emails detail how the inventor of so-called Archer barriers - which the city had bought but kept in storage on the day of the deadly Bourbon Street attack - encountered a measure of resistance when he traveled to New Orleans with his company of his own volition to train local authorities on how to expeditiously deploy the barricades. Continue reading...
Patel has signalled he isn't interested in pursuing insurrectionists amid resurgence of extremist groupsWith Kash Patel officially appointed as the new FBI director and Dan Bongino as his number two, experts are warning the fate of federal law enforcement investigations into the far right faces a grim future.Patel taking the reins of the FBI also coincides with a resurgence of the Base, an accelerationist neo-Nazi group with terrorism designations around the world, along with other emboldened extremists connected to the January 6 attacks on the Capitol. Continue reading...
Elon Musk's senseless cuts and email ultimatum have left federal workers scrambling, unsure who to listen toIf you work for the federal government, it has become clear that Elon Musk thinks that he is your boss. The world's richest man and patron of far-right causes worldwide has taken on his bizarre and extra-constitutional role in the Trump administration with an unexpected enthusiasm, enlisting a small squadron of college-aged boys to drastically cut spending across vast swaths of the sprawling US bureaucracy. His efforts have led to public health and safety crises in America, humanitarian emergencies abroad, economic devastation in families and communities that depend on federal employment, and the end of large amounts of American scientific and medical research. He has helped cut off funding for cancer research and Ebola prevention; he has ended services for disabled children, abused women and victims of consumer fraud.Musk has said that he aims to cut the federal budget by $2tn, though he has dramatically overstated the amount of spending cuts that he has achieved thus far - and does not seem to understand that some of these expenditures, such as the ones that prevent mass injury or disease, may in fact save the government money. Congress, for its part, is playing along. On Tuesday, House Republicans passed a budget resolution that dramatically cuts funding to Medicaid, the federal program that provides healthcare coverage to low-income Americans. But much of Musk's slash-and-burn project to eliminate the functioning of the government comes from firing federal workers - which he seems to think he has the authority to do at will. Continue reading...
During talks with UK's Keir Starmer, Trump also suggests Britain will be exempt from US tariffs. Plus, can the sharing of personal stories help counter vaccine skepticism?
Cats in two states tested positive after eating raw food from Wild Coast Raw, which issued voluntary recallAs the bird flu outbreak continues gaining force in the US, a second company selling raw pet food issued a voluntary recall after cats from two different households in Oregon contracted H5N1 from the tainted meat earlier this month.Two more cats in different households in Washington state have tested positive for bird flu after eating the same brand of raw pet food nearly two weeks after the recall, officials announced on Wednesday. One cat was euthanized, while the other remains under veterinary care. Continue reading...
Nothing I have done is more impactful than a day's work in this battleground in the south, the graveyard of politicians' abandoned promisesThe tentacles of disinformation have already claimed its first young victim. This week, an unvaccinated child in Texas died of measles - an entirely preventable disease. Right now, the state is seeing its largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years. Yet at a White House briefing, secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, falsely noted it is not unusual", and did not offer any plans for containment.I am a pediatrician in Texas, and I can assure you the situation is so abnormal that most younger physicians have never seen a case of measles, thanks to successful vaccination campaigns.Seema Jilani is a pediatric physician based in Texas, a first-generation American, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations Continue reading...
The new administration are targeting trans people because they think they can be bullied without great political pushbackIn the video, she sounds exasperated. Hunter Schafer, a 26-year-old actor best known for her roles on the HBO series Euphoria and in the Hunger Games film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, appeared in an eight-minute video last Friday in which she revealed that due to a Trump administration order, she had been assigned a passport with the gender marker male".Schafer, who is trans, began living as a girl in her early teens; she has lived as a woman for her entire adult life. In her video, she says that her IDs have been marked female" for just about as long as she has had them. But after her passport was stolen in a car break-in in Barcelona, she has been issued a government identity document that represents a fiction that she is a man. Every time she travels now, she will have to present this document, she will have to account for the discrepancy between what it says about her, and what she clearly is.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...
Together, we must fight for our long-held values and work with people around the world who share themFor 250 years, the United States has held itself up as a symbol of democracy - an example of freedom and self-governance to which the rest of the world could aspire. People have long looked to our declaration of independence and constitution as blueprints for how to guarantee those human rights and freedoms.Tragically, all of that is changing. As Donald Trump moves this country towards authoritarianism, he is aligning himself with dictators and despots who share his disdain for democracy and the rule of law.Bernie Sanders is a US senator and a ranking member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress Continue reading...
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite fat finger' mistakeThe US bank Citigroup credited a client's account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 - before the fat finger" error was caught.The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank. Continue reading...
Tennis has been awash for nearly 60 years with stellar rivalries, especially on the men's side. But it's becoming clear the next great one might not be around the cornerThe Australian Open exists on its own in the tennis calendar at the start of the year - not really connected to what came before or what ensues immediately after; it's nearly five months removed from both the US Open that precedes it and the French Open that follows it. For most followers of the sport, the real start of the calendar year tennis season, for both men and women, is the PNB Paribas event at Indian Wells, which starts on Wednesday. Long considered the sport's fifth slam", the tournament starts a torrid nonstop stretch of seven months of intense competition. As this long winter slowly loses its grip on the country, fans will revel in watching the best men and women competing under the hot desert sun.But, unfortunately, the men's side of the draw will be somewhat lacking because of the absence of Jannik Sinner, due to his three-month ban from competition for his inadvertent" doping. Sinner will be able to resume playing on 4 May, in time for the Italian Open and then Roland Garros. Continue reading...
Presidents have always used sports to further their own agendas. The current incumbent has identified exactly where he can boost himself the mostDonald Trump's appearance at this year's Daytona 500 was not subtle.Named the race's grand marshal, the president buzzed the speedway from aboard Air Force One, dangling the world's most advanced airliner above 150,000 Nascar fans the way a parent humors an infant with a spoonful of baby food. Later, from the backseat of the presidential limousine, AKA The Beast, he paced the 41-car field around the oval track before the race. The sight of that 20,000lb machine sticking to the track's banked lanes at 70 mph blew away the crowd all over again. This is your favorite president," he told the drivers via their in-car radio system. I'm a really big fan of you people. You're talented people and great people and great Americans." The shock and awe spectacle couldn't have been more fitting of a man who has been taking the country for a ride since he entered public life more than 50 years ago. Continue reading...
The mercurial boxing savant returns to Brooklyn on Saturday with another big payday and signature knockout expected. But the real question is what comes nextGervonta Davis leaned back from the microphone, a slow grin creeping onto his face, brimming with the earned confidence of a man who's seen this all before. You know what I come to do, man," the World Boxing Association's lightweight champion said. You know why I'm here. I don't want to say too much. [His mother] is over there in the corner. Got to keep it polite, but y'all know: fireworks."It was the same styling of laconic menace he's dispensed at nearly every press conference before his fights, and yet it still sent a quiet ripple through the Barclays Center atrium on Thursday afternoon. Because when Davis says it, history has shown he's standing on business. Thirty bouts, 30 wins, 28 knockouts. World titles at 130lb, 135lb and 140lb while selling out arenas from coast to coast. There's a reason why the squat Baltimore southpaw nicknamed Tank has become the face of American boxing and one of its vanishingly few dependable box-office attractions. People don't just pay to see him win. They tune in to see how he finishes the show. Continue reading...
The Ukrainian president is expected at the White House on Friday to sign a multimillion-dollar minerals deal with echoes of a notorious 2019 phone callAlexander Vindman remembers the phone call - and what he did next. Serving on the national security council (NSC), he went to see his twin brother, who was the council's senior ethics official, closed the door and told him: Eugene, if what I'm about to tell you ever becomes public, Donald Trump will be impeached."Vindman had set up a call between Trump and Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in July 2019. He heard the US president attempt to leverage US military aid to the country in return for Zelenskyy launching an investigation into Joe Biden's son, Hunter, over his position at a Ukrainian gas company. Continue reading...
Even the Greens hardened their rhetoric and lost votes as a result. The message is clear: the new government must offer hope, not hatredGermany's next government will be a coalition of the political centre led by the conservative Friedrich Merz. That may sound like stability. Traditionally, a government made up of the two big centrist parties, the Social Democrats (SPD) and Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU), has been called the grand coalition. But it is no longer grand and offers only an illusion of stability.The SPD achieved its worst result in a national election since the second world war, with 16.4% of the vote. The CDU scored its second-worst result, with 28.5%. If you include the Greens and the Liberals, the parties that occupy the political ground from centre-left to centre-right won just over 60% of the votes cast.Johannes Hillje is a Berlin-based political consultant and a fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, an independent thinktankDo 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...
UK PM hopes charm offensive will yield benefits but Eurosceptics in president's coterie could scupper planIs there enough love left in the US-UK special relationship or has the magic faded?That is the question that Keir Starmer arrived in Washington to pose at what Sir Peter Westmacott, Britain's ambassador to Washington from 2012 to 2016, called one of the most consequential meetings of a British prime minister and president that we have had since the second world war". Continue reading...
British politicians think they exercise a moderating force on strongmen. In practice, diplomacy' and pragmatism' only ease their pathWhy is Westminster, supposedly one of the world's great centres of democratic moderation, so welcoming to far-right foreign governments? For more than a century, since the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, authoritarians have often found allies, apologists or a deliberate absence of criticism in the Commons, despite our parliament's self-image as a historic enemy of fascism.One reason for this forgiving attitude is that foreign policy is a pragmatic business, and Britain has increasingly become a country that can't afford to make enemies. The Starmer government's determination to see no evil in the Trump administration can be partly explained in those terms.Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Democrats warn that cutting jobs at Noaa will cost American lives' - key US politics stories from Wednesday at a glanceThe Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US's pre-eminent climate research agency housed within the Department of Commerce, the Guardian learned on Thursday.This will cost American lives," said Democratic congresswoman and ranking member of the House science, space and technology committee, Zoe Lofgren, in a written statement. Her comments were issued alongside congressman Gabe Amo's, the ranking member of the subcommittee on environment, after news of the firings broke. Continue reading...
by Helen Sullivan (now); Maanvi Singh, Coral Murphy M on (#6VJBB)
This live coverage has ended. You can find the latest US politics news here.As Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk work zealously to slash tens of billions in federal spending by axing thousands of jobs and gutting some government agencies, Musk faces mounting claims he has conflicts of interest and no oversight, legal and ethics experts say.Trump's largest campaign donor and the world's wealthiest man, Musk was tapped by the president to lead the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge) in a radical and opaque cost-cutting drive that allows him to keep control of SpaceX, Tesla and other huge companies with billions of dollars in federal contracts.We expect that today's meeting will be the first in a series of such expert consultations that will bring us closer to overcoming the disagreements that have arisen with the American side, strengthening confidence-building measures. Continue reading...
Attorney general had indicated justice department would release files related to Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019The US justice department has released additional files related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The justice department gave a statement on Thursday evening, saying the release largely contained documents that had been previously leaked but never released in a formal capacity by the US government". Continue reading...
Judge says office of personnel management lacks power to order firings, including those of probationary employeesA federal judge in California has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings of some employees.The US district judge William Alsup said in San Francisco on Thursday that the US office of personnel management (OPM) lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience. Continue reading...
US president Donald Trump praises Keir Starmer's 'very hard' lobbying as he again suggested the UK will be exempt from US tariffs. Trump said there was a chance that the UK and US could agree to a trade deal which would mean there wouldn't be a need for tariffs
Keir Starmer handed Donald Trump a letter from the king during his meeting with the president. It was an invitation for a state visit, a historic step as Trump has already had one state visit to the UK, and there is no precedent for a head of state making a second one. His first took place when the late Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne
In letter hand-delivered to Trump by Keir Starmer, Charles suggests he and Trump could meet in Scotland to plan visitKing Charles has invited Donald Trump to make an unprecedented second state visit to the UK in a letter handed to the US president by Keir Starmer.Queen Elizabeth II hosted Trump on a state visit in 2019. Precedent for second-term US presidents who have already made a state visit is usually tea or lunch with the monarch at Windsor Castle, as was the case for George W Bush and Barack Obama. Continue reading...
Group storms building with dean's office over expulsion of two students last month who interrupted a class on IsraelA group of pro-Palestinian student protesters stormed a Barnard College building on Wednesday to protest against the expulsion last month of two students who interrupted a university class on Israel.The demonstrators, who numbered in the dozens, staged a sit-in outside the office of Barnard's dean, Leslie Grinage, in the college's Milbank Hall, the Columbia Spectator reported. Continue reading...
Abdullah Ocalan's call for fighters to disarm is an important moment. But a lasting resolution will require greater rights for KurdsAfter four decades of violence that have claimed at least 40,000 lives, this was a momentous declaration. On Thursday, the leader of the Kurdish insurgency, Abdullah Ocalan, revered by his supporters, called on fighters to lay down arms. In a written statement from his prison cell - he has been held in isolation for a quarter of a century - he urged his Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) not only to disarm but to dissolve itself.Yet optimism must be tempered. Ten years ago, a two-year truce between the militant group and the Turkish state imploded and some of the worst violence of the long conflict ensued. More than 7,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, have died since then.Do 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...
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