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The order, issued in November, also asks the former mayor to provide testimonyRudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who helped to amplify Donald Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors seeking documents about payments he received from Trump or his presidential campaign, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.The subpoena, which was issued in November, also asks Giuliani to provide testimony, said the person, who declined to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Continue reading...

Harry and Meghan are just another ultra-rich, out-of-touch couple but even the most privileged face the ordinary suffering of growing upIn the inescapable story that is Harry v William, what is most striking is how petty some of the grievances sound.Prince Harry is upset his brother didn’t like his beard. Continue reading...

Communities including in celebrity enclave of Montecito, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz told to evacuate as more rain is expectedA series of deadly and destructive storms continued to hammer California on Monday, as the drought-stricken state grapples with the sudden onslaught of a very wet January.Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration for California on Sunday, unlocking federal aid to support recovery as mud slides, engorged rivers and streams, and wind-strewn trees wreaked havoc on already-inundated infrastructure across the state. The California department of water resources warned that more than a dozen places were at high risk of flooding. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our main story on the rules package here.The Guardian’s Kira Lerner reports that the GOP has been waging a legal assault on voting nationwide, with more lawsuits aimed at restricting ballot box access filed last year than ever before:The Republican party filed a record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022, a sign that they are shifting the battle over voting access and election administration to courtrooms in addition to state legislatures. Continue reading...

Incoming majority also created new special subcommittee to investigate justice department and intelligence agenciesHouse Republicans moved to pre-emptively kill any investigations against its members as it curtailed the power of an independent ethics office just as it was weighing whether to open inquiries into lawmakers who defied subpoenas issued by the House January 6 select committee last year.The incoming Republican majority also paved the way for a new special subcommittee with a wide mandate to investigate the US justice department and intelligence agencies, which could include reviewing the criminal probes into Donald Trump and a Republican congressman caught up in the Capitol attack inquiry. Continue reading...

Nurses walked off the job at the Mount Sinai and Montefiore medical centers in Harlem and the Bronx over staffing issuesMore than 7,000 nurses at two New York City hospitals went on strike on Monday, saying their concerns around staffing issues had not been addressed by management.Talks failed on Sunday night. At 6am on Monday, nurses went on strike at Mount Sinai medical center on the Upper East Side and Montefiore medical center in the Bronx. Continue reading...

Partisan lines divided the vote on rules, with no Democrats voting for them and only one Republican voting againstThe Republican-led US House of Representatives on Monday adopted a package of internal rules that give rightwing hardliners more leverage over the chamber’s newly elected Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy.Lawmakers voted 220-213 for the legislation, with only one Republican voting against. All 212 Democrats voted against the rules package, saying it was full of concessions to the right wing of the Republican party. Continue reading...

Wales forward retires with a glittering CV but it was his breathtaking style which truly set him apart from the restFor Gareth Bale, the pitch and the playground may as well have been the same thing. Watch back some of his greatest goals and you can almost glimpse the school tie flapping behind him as he runs, a battered sponge ball sticking to his feet, the cautious teacher carrying a tray of orange squash across the penalty area.Of course Bale always played to win. But in the 30-yard screamers and lightning bursts of speed, you can spot something else there too: a young man playing for the sake of playing, for the thrill of solving a new problem, playing to feel. What was the point in running unless you were going to do it as jaw-droppingly fast as possible? What was the point in taking a free-kick unless you were going to leather it into the top corner? And what was the point of being a footballer at all if you didn’t try these things? Continue reading...

The former Brazilian president has taken up residence in Florida, and some Democrats are calling for his visa to be revokedThe future of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida in his last days in office, is emerging as a potential diplomatic issue between Brazil and the US amid calls for his expulsion for inciting insurrection.Bolsonaro has distanced himself from the mob which stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasília, on Sunday, denying accusations from his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that he had encouraged the rioters from the US. Continue reading...

Fulton county district attorney to decide on any indictments after special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses over six monthsThe special grand jury convened by prosecutors in Atlanta to investigate whether Donald Trump committed crimes in his effort to reverse his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in Georgia has finished its work.Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, who was overseeing the panel, issued an order on Monday that dissolved the special grand jury, after it completed a final report on its inquiries. Continue reading...

Abby Zwerner, 25, had life-threatening injuries but is now continuing to improve in hospitalThe Virginia school teacher shot by her six-year-old student was injured after she sought to confiscate the weapon from the child who had revealed the gun in class, a parent of another child in the class has said.Brittaney Gregory, whose son is in the same class as the shooter at Richneck elementary school in Newport News, Virginia, detailed her son’s reaction to the shocking scene to the Washington Post newspaper. Gregory said her son told her he that he felt like he couldn’t breathe when the gun was fired. Continue reading...

Shareholders were misled by Steve Easterbrook ‘concealing extent’ of his misconduct, says US regulatorThe former boss of McDonald’s, Steve Easterbrook, has been fined $400,000 (£328,000) by the US regulator for “concealing the extent of his misconduct” over a relationship with an employee.McDonald’s fired Easterbrook in 2019 after directors discovered he had been having a secret relationship with a senior female employee, which it said showed “poor judgment” and “violated company policy”. Continue reading...

The real threat from Brazil’s radical right is not from showy coup attempts, but from less deluded ultra-conservatives playing the long gameClad in canary yellow football shirts or draped in the colours of the Brazilian flag, pro-Bolsonaro activists applauded a line of heavily armed police as it marched into their midst in Brasília on Sunday.Hundreds of extreme rightwing followers had been gathering in Brazil’s modernist capital since late on Friday. On Sunday afternoon they breezed past security cordons and trashed the elegant buildings that host the country’s most important democratic institutions – the presidential palace, the supreme court and the two houses of congress. Now, surely, they seem to have thought, these police were moving in to help them secure control, overturn the alleged fraud that had deprived Jair Bolsonaro of a second term in office, and oust what they described as a leftwing dictatorship now in office.Richard Lapper is author of Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro Continue reading...

The home secretary’s plan to ditch the recommendations of the Windrush review is shocking, but not surprisingThe home secretary, Suella Braverman, seems poised to dump almost all of the 30 recommendations of the Windrush Lessons Learned review. An announcement is due to be made this week that 28 of the 30 recommendations are being formally “closed”, even though several have not been completed.The Windrush scandal involved thousands of men and women, the earliest wave of postwar Caribbean migrants, suffering the trauma of being falsely accused of living in Britain illegally. As a result they were stripped of their entitlements as British citizens, detained, and even deported. In response to public outcry, the government commissioned a review led by the lawyer Wendy Williams. Last year she formally looked at progress since the original review. She found that only eight of her 30 recommendations had been fully implemented and that the Home Office had yet to implement the spirit of all her recommendations.Diane Abbott has been the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987Do 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.

Efforts challenging election results and attacking voting rights peaked last year, but courts ruled against the majority of themThe Republican party filed a record number of anti-voting lawsuits in 2022, a sign it is shifting the battle over voting access and election administration to courtrooms as well as state legislatures.Last year, Republican party groups filed 23 democracy-related lawsuits, according to a new report by Democracy Docket, a progressive media platform that tracks voting litigation. The lawsuits included efforts to challenge election results, attacks on mail-in voting and attempts to undermine the administration of elections. The Democratic party, the report found, filed only six voting lawsuits in 2022 and all sought to protect or expand the right to vote. Continue reading...

The Biden administration criticizes conservatives as anti-immigrant – yet pursues policies not so different from Trump’sImagine for a moment you are a dissident citizen of Nicaragua. Forced out of bed in the middle of the night and hounded out of your homeland because of your political activities, you have been deprived of all chances to work, let alone live, in the country you’ve always called home. Your opposition to Daniel Ortega’s regime has put your life and your family’s lives in danger. You must find safety immediately.You know that, despite its long history of meddling in your country, the United States also has laws and traditions that enable people in your position to seek asylum. It may be far away, but the US is also the closest country where you believe you can truly feel safe. You must find a way there – any way at all – and it has to be quick.Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York Continue reading...

9/11’s death toll was a fraction of Covid’s, but there will probably be no comparable memorial for the over 40,000 New Yorkers killed by the virusWhat will we remember of the plague years? It’s easy to project on to the future what we feel now, the memories of the suffering so visceral, the evidence of the reckoning clear enough. People still get sick and die from Covid. Signage lingers, warning of the defunct 6ft social distancing rule or the importance of hand-washing. Certain American cities and colleges maintain mandates for the Covid vaccine.More than a million Americans are dead, and their deaths, in the public imagination, were not created equal. In 2020, Covid deaths were a terror, and 100,000 of them were worthy of bellowing headlines on the front page of the New York Times. And then the body counts, for those not experiencing them directly, became more ordinary, the carnage a backdrop to another year.Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York Continue reading...

Americans are united on some of the most important issues facing our country and they want government to address themI am proud to be assuming the chairmanship of the US Senate’s health, education, labor and pensions committee (Help), a committee with wide jurisdiction over some of the most important issues facing the American people. As I move into that position I’m thinking about how we can best address some of the serious challenges facing my fellow Vermonters and working families all across the country.Today, in terms of health, we have a dysfunctional healthcare system in which we spend the astronomical and unsustainable sum of nearly $13,000 for every man, woman and child, twice as much as most developed countries and almost 20% of our GDP. Yet, despite that huge expenditure, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and we have worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy than many other nations. While the insurance companies make huge profits, over 500,000 people declare bankruptcy each year from medically related debt, and over 68,000 die because they can’t afford the care they need. Our complicated and fragmented system is so broken that it cannot even produce the number of doctors, nurses, dentists and mental health personnel that we desperately need.Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress Continue reading...

President tours scene of riot and orders federal government to take control of policing in Brasília. Plus, the treasure hunt for £15m Nazi hoardGood morning.The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has toured the wreckage of his presidential palace after an extraordinary day of political violence in the capital, Brasília, during which thousands of far-right extremists ran riot through the country’s democratic institutions in a failed attempt to overthrow his week-old government.How did Bolsonaro respond to the attack? “Peaceful demonstrations, within the law, form part of democracy,” he tweeted. “However, depredations and invasions of public buildings like those that happened today, as well as those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, are exceptions to the rule.”Where is he now? The former president flew out of Brazil on the eve of Lula’s inauguration and is currently in Florida. Some senior US lawmakers are calling for the far-right figure to be extradited from the US.What did Biden say when he met with members of border control and volunteers? The meetings took place with no press present aside from those watching at a distance. Biden answered a brief shouted question by promising more help for the border situation. “They need a lot of resources. We’re going to get it for them,” he said. Continue reading...

A pair of Australian punters will take the field when TCU and Georgia meet in Monday’s national title game, exponents of what become one of college football’s most prolific pipelinesThe chant, a staple from American sports fans, started to rise from the stand during a college football game one Saturday afternoon in Iowa.“M-V-P! M-V-P!” Continue reading...

Redundancies expected to be concentrated in investment banking division and consumer armGoldman Sachs is expected to start one of the biggest rounds of redundancies in its history this week, with as many as 3,200 jobs to go as it looks to cut costs.The bank is expected to begin informing people that they will lose their jobs on Wednesday. Continue reading...

The stage was set for the Green Bay quarterback to pull off his usual heroics on Sunday night. But the old brilliance was notably absent when it mattered mostAs it should, the 18th and final weekend of the NFL regular season belonged to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, still in a Cincinnati hospital but in great spirits. But there were still 16 games to play, playoff berths to be earned, brackets to fill, six holes in the TV schedule to plug.The 271st and last game was played for high stakes on a rutted field and under the lights Sunday in frigid Green Bay, which all but guaranteed that Aaron Rodgers, the Packers’ 39-year-old quarterback and guiding light for ages, would help complete the big picture. Continue reading...

In coming months, Biden will probably answer a simple question: would he still want to be president at age 86?Joe Biden has presided over legislative deals that American presidents have sought for years, struggled with unpopularity yet led the Democrats to a historically strong performance in last year’s midterm elections, all before turning 80.Now, in the coming months, Biden will probably answer a simple question: would he still want to be president at age 86? And, if so, is he prepared to take down Donald Trump – or perhaps another, possibly much younger, Republican candidate – to win a second term in 2024? Continue reading...

Rather than give up booze or go vegan for a month, I set myself three ridiculously easy tasks. I’m already feeling incredible – and disgusted with myselfHow are your resolutions going on this, the precise day (unscientifically speaking) when everyone gives in to the general bleh of the season? Perhaps you didn’t make any. The balance has been shifting for a while, but it feels like this year, anti-resolution messaging is stronger than pro. With everything being demonstrably terrible and every sign it will get worse, why bother? As TikToker @erin.monroe put it: “I don’t need 2023 to be my year, I need it to not be a soul-sucking drag through earthly purgatory.” To which, amen (and also good luck).Celebrity endorsements of not bothering are widely available. “I’ve been dogged by a feeling, as real as any of the parts of myself I ‘should’ be remodelling: I’m so fucking sick of trying,” Lena Dunham posted on Instagram. Happy Valley actor Siobhan Finneran dispatched a question about whether she was making resolutions, protesting that January was hard enough, especially with the self-employed tax deadline looming (I feel you, Siobhan). “Denying yourself a drink or some chocolate is just too much,” she said. “Enjoying finishing off the Christmas leftovers.” Continue reading...

A boy aged six is in custody after what police said was 'not an accidental shooting' of a Virginia school teacher in the abdomen during an altercation. As students were reunited with their parents under a school escort after the first recorded US school shooting of 2023, one parent said her heart stopped while wondering if the person shot was her son. Another lay the blame squarely on US gun laws and said she 'would not have chosen to come to this country' if it weren't for her husband's work commitments

President makes brief stop in El Paso, ground zero for the consequences of US system that he acknowledges is deeply brokenPresident Joe Biden on Sunday landed in Texas to visit the US-Mexico border for the first time in his nearly two years as commander-in-chief, even as lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have widely condemned his administration’s latest hardline response to the deepening humanitarian emergency there.Biden – who is due in Mexico City this week for an international summit – made a brief pit stop in El Paso, a recent ground zero for the consequences of a US immigration system that he has readily acknowledged is deeply broken. Continue reading...

Lawsuit accuses companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of harming young people’s mental healthSeattle’s public schools district has filed a lawsuit in the US against multiple major social media companies, accusing them of harming young people’s mental health across the country.The lawsuit which was filed on Friday with a US district court accused the social media companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth”. Continue reading...

Some Republicans indicate they may withhold support unless details of concessions made to hard-right lawmakers are unveiledAfter five days of chaos and 15 rounds of floor votes, newly elected Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is set to face an instant challenge on Monday as the House votes on a new rules package.A handful of establishment Republicans indicated on Sunday they may withhold their support for the rules unless more details of concessions made to ultraconservative lawmakers during a week of torrid negotiations are unveiled. Continue reading...

Rising mixed martial arts fighter Victoria Lee has passed away at age 18. Her older sister and fellow ONE Championship fighter Angela wrote on Instagram, 'She has gone too soon and our family has been completely devastated since then. We miss her. More than anything in this world. Our family will never be the same. Life will never be the same'. Lee wrote that her sister had passed on December 26th, but did not reveal a cause of death. Nicknamed "The Prodigy", Victoria Lee was unbeaten in three fights as an atomweight after following Angela and brother Christian to the ONE Championship circuit, last defeating Victoria Souza via second-round TKO in September 2021.She took a year off from fighting in 2022 to complete high school and recover from an injury, but was set to return for her fourth professional fight against India's Zeba Bano at a ONE Championship event on Saturday January 13th in Bangkok, Thailand.

Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 16, died in collision as police chased suspected car thief in Louisiana townIt was a tragically high price to pay for catching a suspected car thief: two innocent teenagers dead and a police officer jailed, facing serious charges for a car crash that resulted from the pursuit.Maggie Dunn, 17, and Caroline Gill, 16, who were cheerleaders for their high school in the southern Louisiana town of Brusly, died in the collision on 31 December. They’re the latest fatalities among hundreds every year attributed to accidents involving police pursuits in the US. Continue reading...

Man fired nine shots and then helped diners recover the money at the Houston taqueria restaurant before disappearingTexas police are searching for a vigilante diner who shot dead a suspected robber carrying a fake gun in a Houston taqueria restaurant, then helped diners recover the money and disappeared.The incident, which was captured by surveillance video inside the Ranchito #4 Taqueria in south-west Houston, shows the man drawing a weapon and killing the robbery suspect by shooting him multiple times, including in the back and head. Continue reading...

At least six people have died since new year and more than 560,000 homes without power as ‘atmospheric river’ expected to hitTorrential downpours and damaging winds left hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power in California early on Sunday as the area braced for the next onslaught of severe weather.More than 560,000 homes were reported to be still without power in California as of 5.06am ET (10.06am GMT), according to data from PowerOutage.us. Continue reading...

Boy in custody after shooting wounds teacher in abdomen during an altercation, according to authoritiesThe apparently deliberate shooting of a Virginia school teacher by a gun-carrying six-year-old pupil has shocked many across the United States, causing outrage and horror even in a country long-used to regular school shootings that are rare elsewhere in the world.Authorities have not described the exact circumstances of the shooting nor how they believe the boy came to possess the weapon or to whom it belongs. They may struggle to define exactly what action can be taken against someone so young, who is now in custody. Continue reading...

From buccal fat to cellulite, anything innate to humans that can be made into a problem will create a market for the solutionWhen research was released last week showing the level of body image distress among young people, its focal point was social media: what was driving 75% of 12-year-olds to “dislike their bodies” and feel “embarrassed by the way they look”? Why was this rising to an astounding 80% of young people by the time they reached 18? Is Instagram wrecking mental health, or is it TikTok?Others argued that social media may be the gravity, but something more immediate had caused the crash. The rise in acute psychological distress – far higher in girls than boys – is observed in a study comparing 2021 with 2007: suicidal ideation among one in 10 girls aged 16, self-harm at almost a quarter. Lockdowns and long Covid were hypothetical factors. Among young non-binary people, the rates are even worse: 61% had self-harmed and 35% had attempted suicide. This may have its more proximal cause in the relentless campaign against them in rightwing politics and some parts of the media. Continue reading...

No wonder the super-rich are funding anti-ageing research. Getting older must look lovely when you can afford your own climate-controlled islandThe anti-ageing industry is hotting up. Not the one advertising me snail goo and sheep placenta facials (the algorithms can’t accept that I barely moisturise); the one exploring how elastic the limits of life are. A generic diabetes drug, metformin, apparently shows potential to slow ageing (researchers are hoping to secure funding for a large-scale trial). A “longevity diet” could hack cell ageing, but you’d better like your proteins “pesco-vegetarian-derived” and your fats “mostly from plant-based and pro-longevity sources”. There’s a definite buzz, but it’s all in the early stages – as one researcher put it: “It’s a great time to be a rich mouse.”Rich – that’s key. We relish tales of absurd billionaire biohacks – dodgy supplements, cryochambers and fasts so long I’d eat my own arm – as evidence that all their money can’t buy them eternal life. But now we might have to be grateful for their mad hubris: billionaire-funded private sector startups are apparently filling the gaps in longevity science, funding anti-ageing research too speculative for big pharma and too expensive for academia and government, with Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin all getting involved. Continue reading...

The prince’s comments about Afghan war deaths have caused a furore, but he was a decent officer, I’m told, and much of what he says is trueAs a former soldier, I’ve followed Prince Harry’s career with a mix of ironic and genuine interest. We served at similar times and in the same war. Friends who worked alongside him in the Household Cavalry and Army Air Corps reflect that he was a decent, rather laddish officer who did his job – which is about the highest accolade available to anyone who went to Sandhurst.I’m an avowed republican and make no secret of it. I was a republican when I took the oath to the monarch required to join the military and I’ve never wavered from that first political commitment. The army was a refuge from drudgery, not an expression of my politics. What I have gleaned from Harry over the years is that The Mob – the army he was preordained to join – may have ended up as a sort of refuge for him too: in his case as a shield from the withering press scrutiny that seems to have shaped his life, rather than from cycles of precarious work and poverty. Continue reading...

Former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, 65, freed after being found guilty of espionage in 2002One of the highest-ranking US officials ever proven to have spied for Cuba has been released from prison early after spending more than two decades behind bars.Ana Belén Montes pleaded guilty in 2002 to conspiracy to commit espionage after she was accused of using her leading position as a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official to leak information, including the identities of some US spies, to Havana. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison at the age of 45. Continue reading...

Using a paper check is a tedious process, but it’s also tangible evidence of stability and reliabilityIn these days of electronic-everything, you’d think that most businesses wouldn’t be using paper checks any more. Consumers have certainly ditched the paper check. According to one study, only 7% of their bills are paid this way. Many of my clients haven’t received this memo.For most businesses, paper checks are still a thing. As many as one in three business-to-business transactions are paid this way and 81% of firms in the US are still using paper checks to settle at least some of their bills. Continue reading...

Boy taken into custody after wounding of teacher, whose condition is said to be showing signs of improvementThe shooting of a teacher in the city of Newport News in Virginia by a six-year-old student should be a red flag for the US, the city’s mayor has said, as the teacher’s condition showed signs of improvement.The mayor, Phillip Jones, said the condition of the teacher, identified by local media as Abby Zwerner, was “trending in a positive direction” in hospital. Continue reading...

Denny Kellington performed CPR on stricken Bills safety who collapsed after making a tackle against Cincinnati last weekAs Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin reportedly progresses “remarkably” in his recovery from suffering a cardiac arrest during a game last week, a trainer who rushed to his aid after he collapsed and had a hand in resuscitating him has drawn praise as a “real hero” from supporters of the stricken athlete.The Bills’ trainer, Denny Kellington, immediately went to Hamlin when the 24-year-old safety’s heart stopped beating properly after making a tackle during the first quarter of his team’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals on 2 January. Continue reading...

House Republicans are determined to make the president’s supposedly errant son a staple of the news cycleWhen Borat – alias British actor Sacha Baron Cohen – told risque jokes about Donald Trump and antisemitism at last month’s Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, Joe Biden was not the only one laughing in a red velvet-lined balcony.Sitting behind the US president was Hunter Biden wearing black tie and broad smile that mirrored those of his father. Continue reading...

In the New York Republican’s district, some people defend the serial fibber, while others are adamant George Santos must quitIt was only after George Santos was elected to Congress that the news broke: the New York Republican had told lies during his campaign.But these weren’t just little lies, or white lies. Santos appears to have lied brazenly, with abandon, about almost everything it’s possible to lie about: his career, his education, his faith, his relationships, his finances, 9/11. Continue reading...

The deranged politics driving the US Freedom Caucus and Tory anti-Europeans can only lead to one outcome: a death spiral for bothIt is a commonplace that today’s Conservative party has become an ungovernable rabble – a group of factional sects unfit to govern, with too many in the party and among its media supporters careless of effective government as a matter of principle. What else can be said of a party that has delivered three prime ministers and home secretaries, four chancellors and health secretaries and five education secretaries in one calendar year? What is less explored is the deeper ideological source of this phenomenon.An important clue came last week with the spectacle of newly elected Republicans in the House of Representatives taking 15 votes over five days to elect candidate Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, the second most important role in the US constitution after the president. No speaker and the House cannot function – no swearing in of members, committee chairs or passing of laws. Business was frozen as McCarthy made an incredible series of concessions on House procedures and his power as speaker to the “Freedom Caucus” of ultra rightwingers to win their votes. He is now their cipher: US government is in the pocket of a minority faction who do not believe in the very principle of government. Continue reading...