US news | The Guardian

President asks voters to reject election denying candidates in midterms to ‘preserve democracy’Joe Biden has issued a rallying cry for the preservation of democracy and a dark warning that America could face political violence as it barrels toward next week’s midterm elections.The US president used a prime time address on Wednesday to argue that his predecessor Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election being stolen has become “an article of faith” in the extreme wing of the Republican party. Continue reading...

The president sent a message to election deniers saying, ‘You can’t love your country only when you win’

The justice department charged 21 people and seized millions of dollars in assets in the takedown of the nationwide operationUS authorities said they have taken down a massive, nationwide criminal ring to steal thousands of catalytic converters from cars and trucks, charging 21 people and seizing millions of dollars in assets.Various defendants were accused in separate indictments unsealed in Sacramento, California, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, of crimes such as transporting and receiving stolen goods across state lines, and conspiring to commit money laundering. Continue reading...

Nikolas Cruz gets 17 life terms for the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school that left 17 deadParkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz formally received a sentence of life without parole on Wednesday after families of his 17 slain victims spent two days berating him as evil, a coward, a monster and a subhuman.Cruz, shackled and in a red jail jumpsuit, watched intently as Judge Elizabeth Scherer sentenced him to 17 life terms for the 14 February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in suburban Fort Lauderdale and an additional 17 for the attempted murders of those he wounded. Continue reading...

The arrests come amid concerns about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm electionsThe FBI has arrested two alleged members of the far-right anti-government group the Boogaloo Boys, as authorities express increasing concern about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections.Timothy Teagan was expected to appear on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, where charges against him would be unsealed, an FBI spokesperson said. Continue reading...

Emails show ex-president’s attorney saying justice was ‘our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion’ by 6 JanuaryIn a last desperate attempt to delay or disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential race, allies of Donald Trump sought to appeal to conservative supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, new emails show.The emails, recently obtained by the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, show that members of Trump’s legal team considered Thomas to be “key” to their efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results. Continue reading...

Meta’s share price is down 73% in 2022 but Facebook investors can’t force the boss to change courseThe other comedy in US tech land – aside from Elon Musk’s realisation that Twitter isn’t worth $44bn – is happening at Meta, the restyled Facebook. The joke in that case is on the shareholders. Having hailed Mark Zuckerberg as a visionary, and having given him effective control on that basis through a form of “golden share” voting structure, investors were shocked to discover it is impossible to sack the boss when he pursues visions they do not like.Meta’s share price is down 73% this year to its lowest level since 2015 for reasons that go beyond the general big tech sell-off. The stock has fallen so far because Zuckerberg is squandering tens of billions of the company’s dollars on building his mysterious “metaverse” and appears determined to sink even more cash into the virtual reality black hole. Outside shareholders wish he’d stick to the safer game of flogging advertising space. Continue reading...

DNA to be collected to identify 21 newly discovered sets of remains believed to be from victims of attack on Black OklahomansThe search for the remains of victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre has turned up 21 additional coffins in unmarked graves in the city’s Oaklawn cemetery, officials said.Seventeen adult-size graves were located on Friday and Saturday, the Oklahoma state archaeologist, Kary Stackelbeck, said on Monday. The city announced on Tuesday that four more graves – two adult-size and two child-size – had also been found. Continue reading...

Jury offered damages to family of Luke Stewart, who was killed after being approached when asleep, but did not indict the officerAn Ohio jury has ordered that a white police officer must pay $4.4m in compensatory damages to the family of a Black man the officer killed after approaching him while the man was sleeping.Officer Matthew Rhodes “climbed” into the car of Luke Stewart, 23, as he was asleep on a street in Euclid, Ohio, in March 2017, according to reports. Continue reading...

US professional men’s rugby union league heads for sixth season after losing teams in California and TexasMajor League Rugby, the US professional men’s rugby union competition, has announced that its new 12th team next year will be based in Chicago.Last week, MLR said teams in Los Angeles and Austin would not play in 2023, the sixth season of competition, after being disqualified for alleged back-office misconduct just before the playoffs in 2022. Continue reading...

Gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels’ comment is ‘a danger to our democracy’, Democrat opponent Tony Evers saysThe Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin told supporters at a campaign event that if he is elected his party “will never lose another election” in the state.Tim Michels’ opponent next Tuesday, the incumbent Democrat Tony Evers, said the comment, which was released by a left-leaning group, showed the Republican was “a danger to our democracy”. Continue reading...

The election of Itamar Ben-Gvir and his Religious Zionism party could put huge pressure on Israel’s international relationships

Judge has no choice but to impose life without parole as jury cannot unanimously agree Nikolas Cruz deserves to dieThe gunman who killed 17 people at at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February 2018 was due to be sentenced to life without parole on Wednesday.The sentencing of Nikolas Cruz was due after two days in which parents, wives, children and siblings of those killed and wounded at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in suburban Fort Lauderdale confronted the killer face-to-face. Continue reading...

Our country faces a material and moral crisis – and Republicans are offering only resentment and false solutionsOur wellbeing is on the ballot this November. Amid a pandemic, rising inflation, and deepening financial instability, we need a strong commitment from all candidates to our children, families and planet.In 2021, we won some of that commitment.The Rev Dr William J Barber II is a national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral RevivalKaren Dolan directs the Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies Continue reading...

Three largest US pharmacy chains tentatively agree to settle thousands of state and local government opioids lawsuitsCVS Health Corp, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Walmart Inc have tentatively agreed to pay about $13.8bn (£12bn) to resolve thousands of US state and local government lawsuits accusing the chains of mishandling opioid painkillers, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.The proposed settlement calls for CVS to pay $5bn over 10 years, Walgreens to pay $5.7bn over 15 years and Walmart to pay $3.1bn, mostly up front, according to the people. The sources declined to be identified, saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. Continue reading...

Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale, accused of beating Nohema Graber to death when they were 16, will stand trial as adultsTwo Iowa teenagers killed their high school Spanish teacher because of frustration over a bad grade, prosecutors said on Tuesday in court documents.The documents were filed ahead of a hearing on Wednesday where a judge will hear arguments on whether to suppress any evidence against Willard Miller and Jeremy Goodale, who are charged with murdering Nohema Graber in Fairfield, a town of about 9,400 100 miles from Des Moines. Continue reading...

Leading anti-Trump Republican has already endorsed Democrat Elissa Slotkin for re-election in MichiganThe Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has now endorsed two Democrats for election in the midterms next week, backing Tim Ryan in his Ohio US Senate race against JD Vance after endorsing Elissa Slotkin for re-election to the US House in Michigan.In Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, Cheney told the journalist Judy Woodruff she backed Ryan, currently a Democratic congressman, over Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist who abandoned criticism of Donald Trump in order to publicly embrace him. Continue reading...

Brazilian president’s chief of staff indicates administration is ready to begin transition. Plus, why swearing makes you fitter, happier and more persuasive

The case for a windfall profits tax is straightforward. There’s a reason why the idea is so popularConsumers are paying as big oil has gobbled up more than $125bn in profits in 2022 – triple the total from last year – doing nothing other than watching world oil prices soar due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The solution to this heist is simple enough: a windfall profits tax that extracts big oil’s unjust enrichment and returns the money to the people.Robert Weissman is the president of Public Citizen Continue reading...

David Coulson, imprisoned in California under ‘tough on crime’ laws from the 90s, was released after decades: ‘Finally someone has heard me’David Coulson, 55, did not see his family for the two decades he spent behind bars. But they were ready to welcome him home last month, starting with a surprise reunion.On his fourth day of freedom, his adult son invited him to his grandson’s football game in Norwalk, California. He thought it would just be the two of them, but halfway through the game, Coulson turned around and saw his daughter, three grandkids he’d never met and several other relatives. Continue reading...

Report finds levels of the radioactive isotype lead-210 as much as 22 times the expected levels at Missouri school serving mostly Black studentsThe US army corps of engineers is testing for radioactivity in the kindergarten play yard, sports fields and classrooms of a Missouri school serving mostly Black students, after an independent report revealed the school may have been contaminated by nuclear bomb-making waste dumped from the second world war’s Manhattan Project.Children from Jana elementary school in the Northern St Louis area were sent home to do online learning last week, following an independent report that found levels of the radioactive isotype lead-210 as much as 22 times the expected levels in the school’s play yards and some indoor spaces. Continue reading...

Some candidates are already questioning the integrity of the vote and undermining the credibility of the resultsLast month Kari Lake, a former local TV anchor on the Fox network, joined a rightwing podcast The Conservative Circus to discuss her bid to become Arizona’s next governor.Lake, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, began by complaining that Joe Biden had just made a speech about the threat to democracy posed by election deniers like herself who claim, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The US president called them “extremists” and warned that they were preparing to repeat their subversion efforts in November’s midterm elections. Continue reading...

Endless pieces have been written about slacking off at work. But now it emerges even the poster boy for the idea is back toiling 50 hours a weekBad news for all the aspiring “quiet quitters” out there: the dubious trend is officially over. A few months ago, media outlets were working overtime to push out pieces about how nobody wants to work hard any more. Hustle culture is over, the narrative went: burnt-out employees are doing the bare minimum. Now, however, the economy is rubbish and a recession is imminent. Instead of quiet quitting, everyone is loudly labouring.Well, maybe not quite everyone, but one guy certainly is. In March, Insider featured an anonymous recruiter using the pseudonym Justin who had started to deliberately slack off at work. That column inspired a TikTok; soon thinkpieces on quiet quitting were everywhere. The trend appears to have been short-lived though. The magazine recently caught up with Justin and found that his work attitude had shifted dramatically. Some of his colleagues had been laid off and he was worried about the economy. “Today Justin, the OG Quiet Quitter, is back to going above and beyond,” writes the journalist in the latest update. “He is working 50 hours a week.”Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Fans in Philadelphia are starting to wonder if their team can go 17-0 this season. That confidence is due in no small part to the poise of their quarterbackWith more than nine minutes left in the game on Sunday – still plenty of time to pad his superb stat line – Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts stayed on the sideline and pulled on a headset, done for the day. Gardner Minshew, his backup, got to mop up a lopsided victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.Hurts was shut down early in large part because the Eagles, the NFL’s only unbeaten team at 7-0, are to play again on Thursday, at Houston. They will need Hurts to keep playing the way he has this season: Not spectacularly, but with conviction, poise and intelligence. Continue reading...

In a swing district in a swing state, Michiganders will vote on whether to protect abortion rightsIt’s true that Carl Marlinga doesn’t have name recognition. Despite running for a hugely competitive seat, in a district where he lives and has been a judge for 30 years, not a single one of his yard signs is visible on a day spent following campaigners in Sterling Heights, Michigan. And when you ask him why he isn’t polling as well as his opponent, John James – the Trump-backed candidate who lost two recent campaigns for US Senate and doesn’t even live in the district – Marlinga says it himself.“It’s name recognition, that’s what my pollsters are telling me,” Marlinga replies at a packed campaign event on an inconsiderately cold October day. Continue reading...

Rightwingers are laughing about an attack that left an 82-year-old in hospital. It’s a watershed moment in politicsWhat do you do when an 82-year-old man is attacked at his home with a hammer? You laugh about it, of course. A number of Republicans – people who like to preach to others about family values and civility – seem to find the recent attack on Paul Pelosi very amusing indeed.Donald Trump Jr, for example, posted a meme on Sunday night showing a pair of underwear and a hammer next to the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” On Monday night, the self-proclaimed “Meme Wars General” doubled down on his post, which referenced a baseless conspiracy theory about Pelosi and put up another crude meme mocking the attack. Continue reading...

Kash Patel’s close relationship with ex-president could provide information on how documents ended up at Trump’s resortThe justice department is weighing whether to grant immunity to the Trump adviser Kash Patel and force his testimony about claims that highly sensitive government documents the FBI seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort were declassified, according to sources familiar with the matter.The status of the documents has emerged as relevant to the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s mishandling of national security materials since it could strengthen a potential case that the former president was in violation of state secrecy laws. Continue reading...

Shower with a friend! It saves power AND water (unless your friend is a horse)

David DePape appeared in San Francisco court where he pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murderThe man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacking her husband with a hammer made his first courtroom appearance on Tuesday, where he pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder.David DePape was arraigned in San Francisco, where he is also charged with assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, elder abuse and threatening a public official. He appeared with his arm in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder, his public defender said. Continue reading...

Panel’s Republican vice-chair says of potential testimony: ‘It’ll be done under oath. It’ll be done, potentially, over multiple days’

Control of the Senate could hang on results in a handful of states while votes for governor and secretary of state could affect the conduct of future electionsHobbs is currently secretary of state in what used to be a Republican stronghold. Lake is a former TV news anchor who relishes sparring with the media and promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Victory for Lake – who has appeared with figures linked to QAnon on the campaign trail – would be a major boost for the former president and ominous for 2024. Continue reading...

Voters in five states will dramatically shape abortion policies for millions of women this NovemberWhen the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, it put the matter of regulating abortion entirely in the hands of the states. This November, voters will weigh in on ballot initiatives that will decide the future of abortion in five of those states: California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont.Reproductive rights proponents are hoping to replicate their historic win in Kansas, where a reliably conservative state successfully defeated an anti-abortion ballot initiative in August. Continue reading...

Joe Biden’s name won’t be on ballots, but this year’s midterms on 8 November will be voters’ first opportunity to render a verdict on his presidencyAmerican elections are like Olympics. Presidential votes happen every four years in step with the summer Games: 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004 and so on.Midterms, meanwhile, happen every four years in line with the winter Games: 2022, 2018, 2014, 2010, 2006, 2002 and so on.All 435 seats in the House of Representatives.Thirty-five seats in the 100-member Senate. This is made up of the standard 34 seats plus a special election to fill the four years remaining in the term of retiring senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.Thirty-six state governorships, and three US territory governorships.Numerous city mayorships and local officials.One hundred and twenty-nine ballot measures in 36 states including laws on abortion in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont. Continue reading...

Victims’ families address Nikolas Cruz in court before he is sentenced to life in prison for attack that left 17 dead in 2018Family members of the 17 children and adults Nikolas Cruz murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school on Valentine’s Day 2018 cursed him to hell, wished him a painful death and called him a coward on Tuesday, as they got their one chance to address him directly before he is sentenced to life in prison.For hours, parents, wives, siblings, children and some of the 17 Cruz also wounded stood 20ft from him. They looked the shackled killer in the eye and gave vehement, angry and sometimes tearful statements. Continue reading...

The late musician saw overdue appreciation for his bold, pioneering 70s gay country album when he was in his golden years• Lavender Country’s Patrick Haggerty, pioneering gay country musician, dies aged 78The last thing Patrick Haggerty expected was fame. In the early 2010s, the Washington native had put the pioneering gay country album he made as Lavender Country in the early 70s to the back of his mind and was contentedly performing covers of Doris Day and Que Sera Sera at local retirement homes. But after an anonymous YouTube user uploaded his groundbreaking music, a flurry of streams and blogs led to 1973’s Lavender Country being unleashed anew. A reissue from North Carolina label Paradise of Bachelors heralded a wave of accolades and interest for the self-declared “screaming Marxist bitch”. In the autumn of his life, Haggerty’s world turned upside down. And no one was more shocked than Haggerty himself. “It catapulted way further than I expected,” he said in 2014, of the album’s overdue embrace. “Lavender Country is going down in fucking history, and I lived to see it.”The music of Haggerty, who died this week at age 78 after complications from a stroke, is a cornerstone of Gay lib-era creativity, a testament to bootstraps activism and among the smartest country songwriting to come out of the 1970s. Today’s LGBTQ+ country stars such as Trixie Mattel and Jake Blount credit him as a foundational artist; Orville Peck, who performed with Haggerty in 2019, calls him the “grandfather of queer country”. Over see-sawing fiddle and honky-tonk piano on Lavender Country, Haggerty boldly told the story of his own life with eccentric and poetic flair. Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears is a pride anthem rooted in rage, calling out macho hypocrisy and phallocentric bullshit, while Waltzing Will Trilogy takes on police brutality and the electroshock conversion therapy that was despicably inflicted on gay men. “They call it mental hygiene,” Haggerty sings, as his voice curdles into a snarl. “But I call it psychic rape!” Continue reading...

Right-dominated court will weigh the former president’s appeal against release sought by Democratic-controlled HouseThe US supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, on Tuesday put a temporary hold on the handover of Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee.Roberts’s order gives the supreme court time to weigh the legal issues in the former president’s emergency appeal to the high court, filed on Monday. Continue reading...

Takeoff, best known for his part in the popular rap trio Migos, has died aged 28 after being shot at a bowling alley in Houston. The 28-year-old rapper, real name Kirshnik Khari Ball, was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1994. Raised with fellow Migos member Quavo – his uncle but only three years older than him – by Quavo’s mother Edna, he began rapping from an early age

Senate candidate risks mockery after saying, ‘We don’t have a Republican senator north of North Carolina on the Atlantic coast’Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania, risked mockery on Monday by giving the impression he believes the state, which is landlocked, has an Atlantic coastline.“Pennsylvania is way is too important,” the celebrity doctor told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. Continue reading...

Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz criticized for not publicly condemning remarks by West and Doug MastrianoAfter a wave of antisemitic comments as the 8 November midterm elections loom, Jewish politicians and leaders are calling on Republican candidates to condemn such remarks made, in many cases, by high-profile supporters and associates.A recent example centered on Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who faced criticism for not condemning support he received from Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Continue reading...

‘Apparently [Nancy Pelosi’s] house doesn’t have a lot of protection,’ says Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake at campaign eventThe Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, drew laughter at a campaign event in Scottsdale on Monday with a remark about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in DC,” Lake said. “Apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” Continue reading...

Some very vocal people were outraged by the video for the new single Anti-Hero. But when you’re dealing with eating disorders, sometimes there’s no escaping the f-wordWant to watch Taylor Swift magically lose fat overnight? No, of course you don’t – you’re not a weirdo. But if you are just a little curious about what I am talking about, then have a look at Swift’s music video for the single Anti-Hero from her new album, Midnights. There is a scene in it in which the musician steps on some scales and looks up sadly as her doppelganger shakes her head in disgust. This visual would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that it was hastily swapped in a week ago, just days after the video’s initial release, to replace the controversial original. In the first version, Swift gets on the scales and, instead of numbers, she sees the word FAT pop up. This upset a lot of people who decreed that, by using the word “fat”, Swift was being “fatphobic”. Swift decided not to risk cancellation or prolong the controversy by explaining herself or defending her artistic choices; instead, she just quietly altered the video.Perhaps you are confused by all the fuss over the word fat. You don’t need a degree in Swiftian studies to glean that the singer, who has described the video for Anti-Hero as a depiction of her insecurities, was referencing her own body issues, not trying to offend people. While Swift has never explicitly said she has suffered from an eating disorder, she has been open about her experiences with disordered eating. In her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, she talks about how constant media scrutiny caused her to have an unhealthy relationship with her body. “It’s not good for me to see pictures of myself every day,” she says in a voiceover during the film. There were times, she says, when the constant media commentary on her body would trigger her to “just starve a little bit – just stop eating”.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Miguel Gonzalez, 25, blames ‘my own stupidity’ for tantrum that led him to post fake sexist and racist headlines on paper’s websiteThe New York Post employee who was fired after publishing a slew of phony, sexist and racist headlines on the newspaper’s website and Twitter account has apologized for what he described as a tantrum and the “utmost betrayal”.“I let my own stupidity get the best of me,” Miguel Gonzalez told the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter in a piece published late on Monday. “I deserved to get fired for a very volatile, irresponsible and disgusting action and an utmost betrayal of the New York Post. Continue reading...