Former national security adviser tells podcast ‘we didn’t feel we would get support’ from president during Russia investigationDonald Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, did not brief the president on suspicions Russia might be behind mysterious “Havana syndrome” attacks on US diplomats because he did not think Trump would support him.“Since our concern was that one of the perpetrators – maybe the perpetrator – was Russia,” Bolton said, “we didn’t feel we would get support from President Trump if we said, ‘We think the Russians are coming after American personnel.’” Continue reading...
I spent 10 years burying the shame of being a failed contestant on the US version of the show. Then a 15-year-old helped me see it differentlyMy name is Emily, I’m a standup comedian and when I was 15, I was on The X Factor US. But if you’d told me back then that I’d be willingly telling you that, let alone regaling audiences – while touring a show – about the experience, I’d tell you that you were in the wrong multiverse, dumbass! Couldn’t be me!I auditioned for The X Factor with my best friend, Austin, in 2011. We went in with full confidence that we not only had the raw talent for stardom, but also the branding: who wouldn’t love a pubescent boy-girl duet with a name as brilliantly punny as AusEm?Emily Wilson is a comedian. She performs Fixed at London’s Soho Theatre from 13 to 18 March 2023. Book tickets here Continue reading...
In his new book, the scholar examines how religion shaped the history of major sports in North AmericaDoes the penalty box have religious connotations? Randall Balmer leans in that direction. A scholar of religion at Dartmouth College, he’s intrigued by the origins of the so-called sin bin.Ice hockey emerged in late 19th-century Canada, influenced by the indigenous sport of lacrosse. As the game became popular among Catholics in Canada in the 1930s, it started to incorporate the penalty box, where players received a sort of absolution through separation. Balmer explores this connection in his new book, Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America, which was published late last year. Continue reading...
The network is facing a $1.6bn false-claims lawsuit – and its top star’s private texts about the ex-president are causing anguishTucker Carlson was once seen as untouchable. Now the most popular TV host on American cable news is at the center of a firestorm threatening to engulf Fox News and also anger Donald Trump, whose conspiracy theory-laden political cause he has long championed and who his audience loves.Court filings attached to the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit accuse Fox News of allowing its stars to broadcast false accusations about rigged voting machines in the 2020 presidential election. Continue reading...
Award winners and nominees celebrated into the night at the Governors Ball after the Oscars ceremony, while some attended the celebrity packed Vanity Fair party Continue reading...
President Saied is scapegoating his country’s small black migrant population to distract from political failings. Does this sound familiar?A little more than 10 years ago, calls for freedom and human rights in Tunisia triggered the Arab spring. Today, black migrants in the country are being attacked, spat at and evicted from their homes. The country’s racism crisis is so severe that hundreds of black migrants have been repatriated.It all happened quickly, triggered by a speech by the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, at the end of February. He urged security forces to take urgent measures against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who he claimed were moving to the country and creating an “unnatural” situation as part of a criminal plan designed to “change the demographic makeup” and turn Tunisia into “just another African country that doesn’t belong to the Arab and Islamic nations any more”. “Hordes of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa” had come to Tunisia, he added, “with all the violence, crime and unacceptable practices that entails”. Continue reading...
Real-estate listing on Zillow showcases home with doorways shaped like caskets, where guests feel ‘a presence’Searching for a quaint home that’s off the beaten path, where no one can hear you scream? This one’s for you: a $125,000 three-bedroom for sale on the 3516 Interstate Highway near Baird, Texas, is an “established and running haunted house”.The spooky home went viral last week after Steven Dennis, a Bloomberg reporter who often chronicles the ups and downs of Zillow on Twitter, posted photos from the listing. Continue reading...
The suit could determine whether US women can access abortion drugs, but judge is trying to limit disruptions and protestsA judge in Texas overseeing a lawsuit in which a conservative group is challenging the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone scheduled the first hearing in the case for Wednesday, but directed that court officials not make the timing public until the evening before.According to sources cited by the Washington Post, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a US district court judge in Amarillo appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, ordered the hearing kept out of the court docket as a way to try to limit disruptions and protests, and also asked that lawyers arguing the case not to disclose information. Continue reading...
Senator accuses president of ‘demagoguing’ issue to fund and protect program, along with Medicare, from proposals to cutThe Republican senator John Kennedy accused Joe Biden of “demagoguing” the issue of how to fund social security and Medicare and protecting the two programs from Republican proposals to cut them, calling it a “very immature thing to do”.Speaking to Fox News Sunday, Kennedy took aim at Biden for mentioning in his State of the Union address last month that some Republicans have proposed to “sunset” social security and Medicare as part of attempts to balance the federal budget. Continue reading...
Announcement comes as Signature Bank was closed on Sunday by regulators – the second to fail in a weekUS financial regulators rolled out emergency measures Sunday night to stem potential contagion from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The measures include ensuring that depositors with the failed bank would have access to all their money on Monday morning.Regulators announced the measure in a joint statement from the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chair, Martin Gruenberg. Continue reading...
Republican House speaker has only let Fox News see the tapes so far, giving access to the primetime host Tucker CarlsonThe Republican speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, said on Sunday he would “slowly roll out” to networks other than Fox News more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 attack on Congress.“We will slowly roll out to every individual news agency,” McCarthy told Sunday Morning Futures, a show broadcast by Fox News. “They can come see the tapes as well. Let everyone see them to bring their own judgment.” Continue reading...
Storm expected to hit Monday after weekend of destruction and flooding left thousands without power and two people deadAnother “atmospheric river” storm was expected to hit California on Monday, after thousands of residents were left without power following a weekend of heavy rainfall, powerful floods and deadly destruction.Atmospheric rivers, streams of moisture that transport water vapor from the tropics following evaporation of warm water in the Pacific, are often accompanied by powerful winds and destructive flooding. Continue reading...
Search continues for seven more people after small craft suspected to have been carrying 15 migrants overturned off Black’s BeachAt least eight people were killed when two suspected smuggling boats approached a San Diego beach and one capsized, authorities said. Crews were searching on Sunday for an estimated seven additional victims.A woman on one of the panga-style boats called 911 late on Saturday to report that the other vessel overturned in waves off Black’s Beach, US coast guard petty officer Richard Brahm said. Continue reading...
New Yorker with mostly made-up CV and multiple investigations calls nominee Angela Bassett ‘Meryl Streep, the Black version’Asked for his Oscars predictions, the Republican congressman and fabulist George Santos said he liked actors who were “genuine”.“I have my favorite actors,” said the New Yorker, who has been shown to have made up most of his résumé and whose behaviour before and after entering politics is the subject of multiple investigations. Continue reading...
Ex-Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson: man facing charge over porn star payment should ‘respect institution of the presidency’Donald Trump should quit the race for the Republican nomination in 2024 if he is indicted in New York over a hush money payment to a porn star during his victorious run in 2016, a prospective rival said.“It doesn’t mean that he’s guilty of it or he should be charged,” said Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas. “But it’s just such a distraction that would be unnecessary for somebody who’s seeking the highest office in the land.” Continue reading...
by Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies on (#69Q4X)
Former vice-president, speaking at Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray January 6 as anything other than a ‘disgrace’Mike Pence has offered a rebuke of his one-time boss Donald Trump, saying history will hold the former president accountable for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Pence, then vice-president, was in the Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.Reuters contributed reporting Continue reading...
I’ve never smeared my sons in Nutella or scared them for the sake of ‘likes’. But there are things I wish I’d kept off social mediaThere’s a box of old photos of me next to my desk. A handful are sweet, but mostly I have a face only a mother could love: baleful, bejowled baby; beret-wearing, simpering tween; thunderously embarrassed teenager in terrible glasses. They are safely analogue, but would that easily mortified 14-year-old have liked her GCSE geography class to have had access to a picture of her seven-year-old self doing a headstand wearing only a pair of red hot pants?I’m wondering because a proposed new French law would enshrine the protection of children’s privacy on social media as a parental duty. If parents disagree about what can be shared online, a judge could prevent them from posting without the other’s consent and, in extreme cases where a child’s dignity is seriously affected, could even appoint a third party (such as another family member or social worker) to act on the child’s behalf in relation to images online. Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Loveland, Colorado on (#69QAT)
Dave Williams backs Trump voter fraud lie and tried to insert ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ anti-Biden meme into his name on ballotThe Colorado Republican party on Saturday selected as its new chair a former state representative and committed election denier who promised to be a “wartime” leader.Several other state Republican parties have recently elected far-right figures and election conspiracy theorists to top posts. Continue reading...
Supporters fear Su, the deputy labor secretary, might have a hard time getting the needed Senate votes as some business groups oppose her nominationJulie Su has come a long way since she first made headlines in 1995 when she, then just 26 years old, was lead lawyer for 72 Thai workers who were essentially kept in slavery, toiling 18 hours a day at a sweatshop just outside Los Angeles.Last week Joe Biden nominated Su to be secretary of labor, the government’s top labor position, a move that many labor, immigrant and women’s groups vigorously cheered, while a few business groups – but not many – opposed the nomination. Now some supporters fear that she might have a hard time mustering the needed votes in the Senate to be confirmed. Continue reading...
The new code revised 120-year-old criminal laws, but the effort was stymied by Joe Biden and an unlikely alliance of Republicans and DemocratsIn Washington DC, the law prohibits the playing of bandy and “shindy” in the streets, the arson of one’s own steamboat and potentially even being a “common scold” – a common law offense levied against those who quarreled with their neighbors.Aware of the need to clean up this 120-year-old criminal code, lawyers in America’s capital city have spent more than a decade and a half going through the law books in a modernization campaign described by those involved as long overdue, only to see the effort stymied this week at the hands of Joe Biden and an unlikely alliance of Republicans and Democrats. Continue reading...
The Twitter owner’s latest public debacle over a sacked worker can only do more damage to the company’s future prosperityAs someone who wishes Twitter didn’t exist, I am obviously an enormous fan of Elon Musk. He seems to be running it like one of those central London pubs that get bought by property developers who then have to prove the business is unviable in order to win planning permission to turn it into flats. I apologise for the length of that simile, but it’s an interesting comparison. Those stealth-saboteur landlords have to keep it plausible. The business must fail by doing the sort of thing an idiot might sincerely believe would succeed. Live music, an open mic night, potato wedges instead of chips, that sort of thing.Musk’s Twitter approach is very plausible. He tried to back out of taking over the firm, but then there was a court case and he was forced to buy it and it was both intergalactically expensive and losing money at a dazzling rate. Hence he seems desperate to cut costs and ramp up revenue. On the face of it, that’s a solid business strategy. Well, almost – it would be, but for the word “seems”. All businesses, whether they’re losing money or making it, want to cut costs and increase revenue, but they have to be wary of seeming too much that they do – especially if they’re in the leisure sector. Even the property developer’s pub must stop short of advertising that they’re now selling worse beer at a higher cost or that they’ve got rid of most of the kitchen staff so you should expect long waits if you order food. Continue reading...
Many of my clients are doubtful of a four-day work week. But embrace it – it’s a carrot to dangle, and it’ll help you attract talentWhen I ask my clients about the four-day work week I generally get the same response: the eye roll.“Let me see if I understand this,” they will inevitably say. “The employee works for four days, but I pay them for five, right? Thanks, I’m out.” Continue reading...
Protesters ask ‘Mayor Andre Dickens – is this enough Black folks for you?’ in demonstration against $90m training centerKamau Franklin stood in midtown Atlanta on a recent chilly, drizzly night, held a microphone and addressed a crowd that had peacefully marched a mile to the headquarters of the Atlanta Police Foundation – the organization behind the $90m police and fire department training center known as “Cop City”.“[Atlanta] Mayor Andre Dickens – is this enough Black folks for you?” he began, with several dozen Atlanta police department officers standing behind him, most with riot helmets and some with long guns, guarding the entrance to the 50-story building. Continue reading...
Leftwing Democrats say defense spending is far too high and query president’s request for more money for border securityProgressive Democrats have welcomed large chunks of Joe Biden’s latest budget request, but there is also anger and disappointment on key issues that the left of the party holds dear, notably defense spending and immigration policy.On Thursday, the president outlined his vision for the next fiscal year, proposing a total budget of $6.8tn, which would decrease the federal deficit by nearly $3tn through a series of tax increases on corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Continue reading...
The co-director of the Lesbian Project, launched last week, tells why the ‘L’ of LGBTQ+ must not be allowed to disappear into the rainbow soupLGBTQ+ activism is everywhere in modern Britain. Alongside lesbians, gay men and bisexual people, each year new orientations and identities arrive to shelter under the rainbow umbrella – from trans and nonbinary to intersex, asexual, polyamorous, queer and beyond. At a distance, it all looks admirably progressive. But when considered a bit more closely, it seems that lesbians – the “L” ostensibly at the front of the LGBTQ+ movement – are badly missing out. In policymaking, the charity sector, academic research, data collection, media representation and political attention – to name but a few areas – lesbians have fallen to the back of the queue.Pride is the emotion usually associated with the rainbow coalition and there are certainly many historic achievements for LGBTQ+ activists to feel proud of. Still, not much attention has been paid to the question of how well the interests of distinct member groups are identified and prioritised, once they are under the rainbow umbrella. A lot of money, resources and public attention flow into this sector – but how exactly are the spoils divided? Continue reading...
In attacking the new asylum policy, Gary Lineker has left a stricken BBC floundering and shown the Tory right how it is misjudging BritainThe Conservative party and its media outriders have overreached themselves in the Lineker affair. The “stop the boats” policy, which flouts democratic, legal and humanitarian standards to reach new heights of cruelty in our proposed treatment of asylum seekers, is not just another political controversy. It goes to the heart of what kind of country we are and how policy should be conducted in a democracy. Authoritarian regimes everywhere progress by breaching one convention as a launchpad for breaching the next until, finally, they land their prize of subordinating human rights to their partisan and untrammelled will. But human rights are indivisible; one breach leaves the rest diminished and weakened.No less fundamental in a democracy are the rules of engagement in the public square. Debate, however passionate, must respect facts. While our broadcast media are regulated to serve that end, upheld by a system of public service broadcasting of which the BBC is the anchor, our newspapers are not. Newspapers, particularly of the right, have increasingly been edited not as journals but as propagandists of rightwing ideology in which facts are subordinate, serving profoundly political ends. The callous extremes of the “stop the boats” scheme could not have been conceived, nor the extravagant language used to defend it, without the poisonous climate they created. They are necessarily ardent critics of the BBC, even stricken and enfeebled as it is, because it stands in the way of how they want to frame political and cultural argument – part of the march towards the unconstrained exercise of executive privilege, the attacks on human rights and the diminution of our democracy. Continue reading...
Beijing is following Vladimir Putin’s aggressive playbook. The US can counter the march of the autocrats, but only if it stops feeding their paranoiaIs there a school for autocrats? As if by rote, authoritarian leaders around the world trot out remarkably similar justifications for their repressive actions, democratic deficits and policy failures. These typically include scary claims that their country is under attack by foreign forces and saboteurs or is the victim of a global conspiracy.Perhaps they have all taken an online correspondence course for aspiring dictators. Tyrants R Us. Continue reading...
His celebration of the mundane reflected the beginnings of a modern sensibilityThere is a scene in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead in which the main character, John Ames, a pastor, walking to his church, comes across a young couple in the street. “The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet,” he recalls. The young man ahead of him “jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress”. It was “a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth”. In such moments, “it is easy to believe… that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash”.It is a wonderful, luminous passage, typical of Robinson’s ability to discover the lyrical even within the mundane. Deeply Christian, and Calvinist, there is in her writing a spiritual force that springs from her faith. She would probably describe that scene as the discovery of a divine presence in the world. And yet, flowing out of that scene, is also an awareness that transcends the religious. It is the uncovering of something very human, a celebration of our ability to find the poetic in our simplest activities. Continue reading...
Donald Trump is exiled in Florida but he was made in New York – in part by a friendship with a controversial baseball ownerWhen Donald Trump was looking to make his mark in 1980s Manhattan, he found a role model up in the Bronx: the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Trump was also a professional team owner: his New Jersey Generals competed in the short-lived United States Football League. But though Trump and Steinbrenner would ultimately become good friends, they didn’t get off to the best start.As Maggie Haberman of the New York Times writes in her bestselling book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the two men sat on the board of the New York State Sportsplex Corporation, which was looking into building new stadiums. Trump was eyeing one in Queens, where the Generals could play. Continue reading...
His appearance comes as the inquiry into the $130,000 the former president paid to Stormy Daniels comes to an endMichael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and intermediary in the Stormy Daniels hush-money affair, is scheduled to testify before a Manhattan grand jury on Monday about payments made to the adult film performer, according to a report on Saturday.Cohen’s appearance before a grand jury convened by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg comes as prosecutors are believed to be nearing the end of an investigation into payments totaling $130,000 that Trump made to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election to stop her discussing their alleged affair. Continue reading...
This shouldn’t need to be said in 2023, but forcing teenagers to become parents isn’t good for the teenagers, the baby or society in generalCongratulations to Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert who is becoming a grandma at the tender age of 36. Speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Moms for America event on Tuesday, the Colorado congresswoman shared the news that her 17-year-old son is expecting a baby with his teenage girlfriend in April. Continue reading...
As the BBC crisis snowballs, it is obvious that director general Tim Davie and those who pushed him into error misread the public moodImpartiality is a knotty old concept, and one of the trickiest things about it is that it relies on the idea that you can safely find the middle ground. Witness the agonised attempts by the BBC and the Labour party to land on that sweet spot of unimpeachable banality after radical centrist firebrand Gary Lineker’s tweets became a rightwing media obsession this week. Instead of establishing themselves as the trusted representatives of the median voter or viewer, they have ceded moral authority to a man who spent last Sunday commentating on Nottingham Forest v Everton.That’s Steve Wilson, one of the Match of the Day commentators who on Friday announced that they would be stepping back from their duties this weekend in solidarity with Lineker. Post-match analysis and player interviews will also be missing. The version of the BBC’s football highlights show that will be on air as a result – and the enforced dropping of Saturday’s Football Focus after its presenter Alex Scott, pulled out – is the natural endpoint of the position that the corporation has so painfully staked out for itself: a (political!) football fizzing about without much sense of why, or what the stakes are. Give up on meaningful analysis in pursuit of neutrality and the result is a version of events which is uncontroversial, certainly, but also difficult to understand. Continue reading...
by Gabrielle Canon in Green Valley, California on (#69PJA)
Heavy snow has wrought calamity across the state; burying roads and houses, disrupting power and snapping branches off treesBlake Heauser’s chainsaw slowly rumbled quiet. Sounds of tall trees splintering and crashing under the weight of the freshly fallen snow cut through the stillness, as the latest round of winter weather bore down on the town, tucked into the foothills in northern California. He had cleared a path through the wooded debris for now but with more storms in the forecast it might not last.Heauser had spent days trying to remove fallen trees from the roads that snaked through the hillsides in his community in Grass Valley, even as those roads disappeared under the heavy snow. He and others worked around the clock to ensure vulnerable neighbors could either evacuate or were able to safely remain in their buried homes, while grappling with the effects of prolonged and widespread power outages that left some without heat or pumped well water. Continue reading...
Ancient classics can reinforce patriarchal lies about women, but they also take us back to the origins of pernicious narrativesLast week, I found myself – at the end of a gloomy day – shot through with a burst of fierce, electric energy. It came from watching Sophie Okonedo’s 90 minutes of flat-out fury as she played Medea, opposite Ben Daniels’s Jason, in Dominic Cooke’s production of the Euripides play.Afterwards, I registered the fact that the woman sitting by me had actually put her hands over her face when Medea decided to murder her own children. I, on the other hand, had not. Why did I mentally urge her on towards the unspeakable deeds, inwardly channelling all the pent-up anti-patriarchal rage at my disposal? Wasn’t there something deeply disturbing about that? Or was the play precisely doing its job in Aristotelian terms: providing a catharsis? Continue reading...
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