US news | The Guardian

Alleged abuse survivors at People of Praise worry Michael Coney may block group's handling of sexual abuse from becoming publicSurvivors of alleged childhood abuse inside the People of Praise, a secretive Christian sect that counts Amy Coney Barrett as a member, are voicing concerns that the supreme court justice's father, who was recently promoted to a new role, may seek to block information about the group's historic handling of sexual abuse becoming public.Barrett, a conservative justice who was appointed by former US president Donald Trump, has never publicly disclosed her participation in the coveted Christian community, which some former members have compared to a cult.For tips on this story please contact: Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.com Continue reading...

The wealthy seem to love showing off their houses in all their World of Interiors glory. But they're playing with fireA startling discovery in the Atlantic: apparently not closing your curtains, or not even having any, is a status symbol. Americans who earn more than $150,000 are almost twice as likely to leave windows uncovered as those making $20,000 to $29,000," the article explained, quoting US Department of Energy research, and highlighting examples of the affluent curtainless (Patagonia-rocking and $28-cheeseburgers-served-in-mason-jars-eating herds" is one withering description of the uncurtained demographic).But have you ever bought curtains? They're viciously expensive. In everywhere I have ever lived, if the previous occupants have been kind enough to leave any, we've kept them for precisely this reason, regardless of style. Cerise padded satin? Giant swirls? Yes, and yes, with heartfelt thanks. Surely having and closing curtains, showing off your pricey blackout and thermal linings, is more of a statement?Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Ayat, which has faced hate since 7 October, fed a packed room of people dancing, praying and breaking challah breadOn Friday night in Brooklyn, the kitchen of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat brought out platter after platter of stewed lamb and piles of delicate rice for a line of people wrapped past the grocery next door.Everyone and their bubbie is here," a graduate student said, bumping into friends from leftist, progressive, and queer communities. Continue reading...

My wife once pointed out that my white shirts were grey. Now, the way I dress brings joy - to me and to other peopleA year or so ago, I was about to go out to a drinks party with my wife, when she said: You do realise that shirt's dead, don't you?" I was wearing a clean, ironed number, I pointed out. But my wife explained that death was a syndrome particularly likely to affect white shirts, as she took me to my wardrobe and showed me that all but one of my four white shirts had irreversibly lost their snowy glow. Look at them," she urged. They're grey. You might as well chuck them out."I was, at the time, approaching 60, and my wife's shirt critique felt particularly pertinent in that context. Mindful of the looming milestone, she had been proposing a series of prescriptions for me, including not drinking four glasses of wine every day, doing pilates and resuming learning French (which I had given up in protest against reflexive verbs). While I acknowledged that all those things might benefit me, I pointed out that they would also make me miserable. When it came to the shirts, though, and clothes generally, I saw her point.Andrew Martin's latest book is Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro Continue reading...

Detroit had a 24-7 lead at half-time of the NFC Championship Game, and still lost. But they should have no regrets about the aggression that took them that farIn the end, Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions lost the only way they know how: playing aggressively.Detroit held a 24-7 lead over the San Francisco 49ers at half-time of the NFC Championship Game on Sunday. In less than a quarter, that lead had vanished. Even by the Lions' standards, this was a special kind of Lion-ing. Continue reading...

If you thought his first term was bad, brace for a White House that abandons Ukraine, emboldens Putin and encourages the far rightAs Donald Trump romps to the Republican nomination for the next presidential race, there is justified anxiety among the US's European allies about his return to the White House. It is all but certain that 2024 will see a rerun of Joe Biden v Trump. Europe needs to prepare for the possibility of a second Trump presidency.The last one was traumatic for Europe. This was not really for policy reasons. There were policy divisions such as Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. But transatlantic policy tensions are hardly new: there have been times - the US-led war in Iraq in 2003 for example - when the rift was deeper.Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

Iranian backed militia took credit for attack that injured 34 troops and killed first US soldiers since start of Gaza conflictThe spectre of a direct US-Iranian military conflict drew closer on Sunday when the US president Joe Biden announced three US servicemen had been killed and more than 34 injured following a drone attack on a US service base on the border of Jordan and Syria. Biden blamed Iranian-backed militia mainly based in Iraq for the despicable" attack and vowed revenge.Responsibility for Saturday's attack on Tower 22, a military outpost on the Jordanian Syrian Iraqi borders was claimed by the Iranian backed umbrella group Islamic Resistance, and the US made no attempt to disguise its belief that Iran was ultimately responsible. Continue reading...

NYPD body camera footage shows city council member Yusef Salaam being stopped, renewing light on police transparency billNew York city council member Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated group of men known as the Central Park Five, says he was stopped and pulled over by police without being given an explanation.The police stop in New York City on Friday casts a renewed light on a police transparency bill, called the How Many Stops Act, that city council members are set to vote on Tuesday to override mayor Eric Adams' veto. It would require officers to publicly report on all investigative stops, including relatively low-level encounters with civilians. Continue reading...

GOP plans to advance two articles against Alejandro Mayorkas towards a full House vote despite lacking evidence of wrongdoingRepublicans published two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday, and plan to formally advance them on Tuesday towards a full House vote, despite two hearings failing to produce any evidence of his wrongdoing.The politically charged move comes amid a raging battle in Washington DC over immigration, with a senior Democrat announcing Sunday that senators had reached a bipartisan agreement to tighten border security, even as Donald Trump took credit for likely sinking it. Continue reading...

To avoid the charge of complicity in genocide, the US administration must step up measures to restrain IsraelAfter more than three months of Israel's merciless assault on Gaza, Friday's judgment from the international court of justice (ICJ) has come as some vindication for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the hell that the enclave has become. Fifteen out of 17 jurists, legal experts from around the world, found it plausible that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.But this is not the first time Israel has been accused of genocide - and what happened last time is instructive. In 1982, the UN general assembly found Israel responsible for an act of genocide against the Palestinian people living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon. The vote was 123 to 0. The US abstained. The three days of killings, of mostly women and children, were overseen by Ariel Sharon, a man who would later become Israel's prime minister. Though an Israeli independent commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacre, no one was ever held to account. Continue reading...

The case brought by South Africa was weak, but the judgment may encourage Israel's allies to push for a change of tacticsThedecision by the international court of justice (ICJ) to issue provisional measures in the case brought by South Africa against Israel on the basis of the genocide convention came as no shock to most longtime observers of the court. Although most of the evidence presented by South Africa in support of its claims that Israel is violating the convention was merely circumstantial in nature (relying heavily on inferences drawn from the high death toll in Gaza, the dire humanitarian situation on the ground and statements by Israeli officials which could be read as eliminationist in nature), most judges were not willing to determine, at this early stage of the proceedings, that the case was implausible.In fact, only two judges (Julia Sebutinde from Uganda and Aharon Barak from Israel) were ready to accept Israel's position: that Hamas's extensive use of human shields, the harm mitigation efforts by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the causal disconnect between the aggressive statements uttered by Israeli politicians and the actual cabinet directives provided to the IDF, rendered the South African genocide case implausible. Continue reading...

Well done, all the new mothers who cram a full day's work into their child's nap time. But let's not pretend it's easyI might be particularly attuned to this stuff, but I feel I'm always reading about women - mothers - I admire powering triumphantly through the very real obstacles of early parenthood, creating and innovating in nap times, evenings and early mornings. Though time for writing is now more scarce - she mentions the in between' moments snatched in the car and the office - motherhood has made her a better writer'." That's a recent interview with the author Kiley Reid. A Vogue article on motherhood and creativity last year had several examples: I found motivation and grit I had never felt before," one interviewee announced; another wrote her first book between the hours of 4am and 6am during the first two years of her daughter's life". Caitlin Moran expands on the idea at length in How to Be a Woman: In the tiny windows of time that your child is asleep or someone else is looking after her, you find yourself becoming almost superhumanly productive. Give a new mother a sleeping child for an hour, and she can achieve 10 times more than a childless person."These women aren't boasting; they're exploring some variation on How do you do it?" or How has being a parent influenced your work?" (questions almost never asked of fathers). It's a vital corrective to the long-held assumption that a working mother is less-than, distracted and conflicted; to what Vogue called the common perception that once a woman has a baby, she will automatically have no time or energy left for writing" (or for whatever her job is).Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The president is flirting with the pro-natalist far right, even as parliament debates whether to enshrine pro-choice lawsFrance needs babies. During a press conference on 16 January, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, pledged to tackle the scourge of infertility and offered enhanced parental childbirth leave" as part of his demographic rearmament" plan to revive the country's declining birthrate.While his goals may be commendable, Macron's rhetoric sounds alarmingly close to that of authoritarian and rightwing populist leaders who have been aggressively pursuing pro-natalist policies in recent years. After all, Vladimir Putin recently urged Russian women to have eight or more children" as he seeks to reverse the decades of population decline that have only been exacerbated by heavy casualties in Ukraine.Cecile Simmons is an investigative researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), focusing on dis/misinformation, online subcultures, women's rights and wellness Continue reading...

Trump's ascension to the helm of the Republican party undid progress Democrats had made in winning the trust of voters in rural areas nationwideDuring the eight years he served in the Iowa state Senate, Tod Bowman was a self-described door knocker", trekking to the front porches and patios of constituents in the rural counties he represented to appeal for votes.They would, in turn, tell Bowman, a moderate Democrat, of their concerns - that government assistance programs amounted to a handout", that too many undocumented migrants were entering the country, that Barack Obama, the president for much of Bowman's time in office, was planning to take their guns away. Occasionally, whoever opened the door would start interrogating Bowman before he even finished introducing himself. Continue reading...

Dr Art Van Zee set out in the early 2000s to tell anyone who would listen how a powerful opioid was destroying lives. Two decades later, he's still in disbeliefWhen Dr Art Van Zee finally understood the scale of the disaster looming over his corner of rural Virginia, he naively imagined the drug industry would be just as alarmed.So the longest serving doctor in the struggling former mining town of St Charles set out in the early 2000s to tell pharmaceutical executives, federal regulators, Congress and anyone else who would listen that the arrival of a powerful new opioid painkiller was destroying lives and families, and laying the ground for a much bigger catastrophe. Continue reading...

Twenty-five civil war and Reconstruction scholars support invoking 14th amendment to bar Trump from ballot over January 6Twenty-five historians of the civil war and Reconstruction filed a US supreme court brief in support of the attempt by Colorado to remove Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th amendment, which bars insurrectionists from running for office.For historians," the group wrote, contemporary evidence from the decision-makers who sponsored, backed, and voted for the 14th amendment [ratified in 1868] is most probative. Analysis of this evidence demonstrates that decision-makers crafted section three to cover the president and to create an enduring check on insurrection, requiring no additional action from Congress." Continue reading...

Prosecutors allege Rebecca Grossman, 60, was speeding when she hit brothers Mark Iskander, 11, and Jakob Iskander, eightMore than three years ago, a Los Angeles socialite allegedly fatally struck two young boys as they were crossing the street. Now a jury will decide whether Rebecca Grossman is guilty of second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run driving.This week jurors heard opening statements in the long-awaited trial of Grossman for the deaths of brothers Mark Iskander, 11, and Jacob Iskander, eight. Continue reading...

At issue is whether potential vice-presidents, from Elise Stefanik to Tim Scott, could assume control - and whether Trump caresThe last person who occupied the job of US vice-president ended up the target of a violent mob calling for him to be hanged. Even so, as Donald Trump closes in on the Republican nomination for 2024, there is no shortage of contenders eager to be his deputy.It is safe to assume that Mike Pence, who was Trump's running mate in 2016 and 2020, will not get the job this time. His refusal to comply with his boss's demand to overturn the last election caused a permanent rift and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists. Continue reading...

British politicians are deluding themselves if they think that the so-called special relationship' will protect usA spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Donald Trump. In London, Paris, Berlin and every other significant European capital, bar Moscow, the horror sequel no one sane wants to see is Trump - The Return: No more Mr Nice Guy".Having spent the last three years being much too nonchalant about the threat of him recapturing the White House, British politicians and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe can no longer deny to themselves that a Trump second coming is terrifyingly possible. The shock is the sharper for having been preceded by so much complacency. His defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 was greeted with a huge exhalation of relief that the United States was back under the leadership of an Atlanticist who believed in the US's traditional alliances with other democracies and didn't deny the existence of the climate crisis. Welcome back America!" whooped the mayor of Paris in a typically euphoric reaction. It didn't occur to enough people in Europe's leadership that all Biden's victory promised was a four-year breather, not a guarantee that we would never see Trumpism empowered again. Time that might have been spent preparing for that possibility by making the UK and the rest of Europe less dependent on America for the security of our continent has been woefully wasted. Continue reading...

A tribunal has attacked Open University staff for waging a campaign of harassment against herSometimes the people around you scramble reality to turn up into down, black into white and open into closed. That's how ProfJoPhoenix must have felt when she was subjected to what the courts described last week as a targeted campaign of harassment" from her colleagues that was facilitated by her employer, the Open University, in a way that shut down her academic freedom and caused a judge to find she was constructively dismissed.What put a mark on her back was her view, shared by a majority of people and enshrined in law, that whether someone is male or female is a matter of reality, not belief, and that someone's gender identity, or belief about their sex, cannot supersede their actual sex for all purposes in society. That's what paved the way for her fellow academics to miscast the harassed as harasser, and for her university's management to delude themselves that by turning a blind eye to bullying they were protecting free expression, when they were really undermining Phoenix's ability to exercise just that. Continue reading...

A new study suggests a fashionable hobby could help with hot flushes and other symptomsIn a climate that often feels hostile to middle-aged women, maybe it's a sign of progress that an only faintly convincing contribution on menopause management can become, as one did last week, a cause for national rejoicing.That's if it doesn't just confirm suspicions that, where women's health is concerned, any visionary, antique or drug-repudiating theory can still become mainstream. So long as NHS clinicians congratulate women for enduring, say, medieval-style childbirth, maybe it isn't surprising to find an appreciative audience for a new study advocating, for hot flushes and othermenopausal symptoms, cold-water swimming: therapy not strikingly advanced from the cold-bathing regime propounded by a SirJohn Floyer in 1702. Continue reading...

The verdict in the manslaughter trial over the 2016 death of Saints star Will Smith brings to a close a turbulent eight years of legal wranglingEver since the New Orleans tow-truck company owner Cardell Hayes shot the retired local pro-football champion Will Smith to death and wounded the former athlete's wife on a city street late on the night of 9 April 2016, people on all sides of the case have made it as complicated as possible in their fight for what they consider to be justice.It is a case that has gripped south-eastern Louisiana - where football players are huge celebrities - and also involved dark, if unsupported, allegations of another deep south staple: police corruption. Competing theories and narratives have vied for supremacy, with almost as many different ideas of what happened as people willing to voice them.Ramon Antonio Vargas covered the New Orleans Saints in 2013 and 2014 at the New Orleans Advocate and also covered the case of Hayes and Smith before joining the Guardian in 2022. Continue reading...

In the state that is now first on the Democratic primaries calendar, the president offers fresh assurances he would be willing to close down the US-Mexico borderFour years ago, Democrats in South Carolina - and Black Democrats in particular - effectively cleared the field for President Joe Biden's nomination, ending what might have otherwise been a rowdy primary campaign for the right to face Donald Trump.At a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Columbia, SC, celebrating South Carolina's new status as the first Democratic primary state, Biden returned to thank them for it, one week before voters head to the polls. Continue reading...

More than 40 vehicles involved in collisions on Chesapeake Bay Bridge starting at 8am, says local transportation authoritySeveral crashes involving more than 40 vehicles occurred on Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland on Saturday, injuring 13 people and forcing temporary closures.In several announcements on X throughout Saturday morning, the Maryland transportation authority said that all lanes had been closed following a multivehicle crash on westbound lanes and warned of major delays. According to the MDTA, its police dispatch received initial calls of the crash at 8am. Continue reading...

An anonymous person gave Haley's address in South Carolina after calling 911 and reporting a fake killingNewly reviewed records show that presidential hopeful Nikki Haley was the target of a swatting incident in late December when an anonymous person called 911 claiming to have killed his girlfriend at Haley's South Carolina home.Authorities responded to a call on 30 December from a person who said he had shot his girlfriend and was threatening to harm himself, giving Haley's address to the operator. It was shortly deemed a fake emergency, Reuters reported. Haley and her son were not at home during the time of the call; her husband was overseas. Continue reading...

Lucas Bellamy, 40, died from a perforated bowel after repeatedly being denied medical treatment by jail staffA Minnesota family is suing a county jail alleging their son died in prison after staff refused to provide him with medical attention.Lucas Bellamy, 40, died in July 2022 three days after he had been arrested by the Hennepin county sheriff's department. Bellamy's family says that jail staff ignored their son's desperate pleas for medical attention and signs that he was in agonizing pain. Continue reading...

Cardell Hayes faces up to 40 years in prison for the shooting after a traffic altercation that left Will Smith deadA jury found a New Orleans man guilty of manslaughter after he shot and killed former NFL player Will Smith in 2016.Cardell Hayes, 36, could face up to 40 years in prison after the guilty conviction. Hayes' lawyers tried to argue that he shot Smith out of self-defense following a traffic accident that escalated to an altercation in April 2016. But prosecutors for the Orleans parish district attorney's office said that Hayes had fired needlessly, according to ESPN. Continue reading...

But the House speaker said deal involving border security and aid to Ukraine is dead on arrival' in its current formJoe Biden said on Friday that the border deal being negotiated in the US Senate was the toughest and fairest" set of reforms possible and vowed to shut down the border" the day he signs the bill.The bipartisan talks have hit a critical point amid mounting Republican opposition. Some Republicans have set a deal on border security as a condition for further Ukraine aid. Continue reading...

Thousands of hotel workers in southern California have gone on strike over 100 times since last July, with some still fighting for new union contractsLast year was a big year for the US labor movement with historic wins and gains for workers at UPS, automakers, and for writers and actors in Hollywood. But for thousands of hotel workers, the majority of whom are Latina women from immigrant communities, their fight has continued into 2024 without garnering the same amount of public attention.California's hotel workers have led one of the biggest strike waves to ever hit the US hotel industry to secure wage increases they say they need to afford to live in the areas where they work. Their actions coincided with the hot labor summer" that saw ultimately successful union campaigns from Hollywood writers, actors and others. Continue reading...

Their collective anger over AI-generated sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift may help spur changes to federal law when it comes to deepfake pornSexually explicit photographs of Taylor Swift are all over the internet. Except they are not actually pictures of Swift: they are deepfakes created with AI technology. Still, the fact they are computer generated doesn't mean the photos don't look horrifyingly realistic - and it certainly hasn't stopped people from gawking at them. One of the images shared by a user on X (Twitter) was viewed more than 45m times in the 17 hours before it was taken down. Continue reading...

Nearly half of all officials have been insulted, a third harassed, and nearly one in five threatened, according to CivicPulseOn a quiet day, home alone with the windows open at her Michigan home, Tina Barton thought she heard a voice saying: Hello."Her heart started beating quickly, as she believed someone uninvited might be outside her rural house. She slammed the windows shut. She called her husband and had him check the security cameras. He saw no one. Continue reading...

Biden's unqualified support for Israel has exposed the US to potential complicity in war crimes and global condemnationThe international court of justice on Friday ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide by its troops in Gaza, and to allow more aid into the besieged territory. The court, which is the UN's highest judicial body, stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. But it was a victory for the Palestinians, and for the global south in general, in that Israel is being held accountable for its military actions for the first time, and by one of the world's most important courts.By allowing the case brought by South Africa to go forward and calling on Israel to comply with the genocide convention - and to report back to the court within a month - the ruling raises the stakes on Israel's western backers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu's government to rein in its devastating invasion and bombardment of Gaza. The ruling is embarrassing to Joe Biden and his top aides, especially the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who described South Africa's case as meritless" a few weeks ago. Continue reading...

A surprisingly disciplined campaign risks derailment as Trump lashes out at his former UN ambassador for staying in raceIt was a moment for Donald Trump to be gracious, magnanimous, perhaps even presidential. Instead he lashed out at his opponent's clothes. When I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn't so fancy, I said, What's she doing? We won,'" he said of rival Nikki Haley in New Hampshire on Tuesday night.Trump had just won the first primary election of 2024 and all but clinched the Republican nomination for US president. Party leaders and campaign surrogates are now eager to banish Haley to irrelevance, move on from the primary and unify against Democrats. They want Trump to pivot to an almost inevitable rematch with Democrat Joe Biden in November. Continue reading...

Andrea Salinas warns of upstream problem' in US mental health crisis and proposes tax revenue be used for treatmentAmerica's unchecked" gambling boom risks exacerbating a nationwide mental health crisis, according to a congresswoman pushing for federal government support. The industry is pushing back hard.Operators must be held accountable" for rising addiction rates, Andrea Salinas told the Guardian, after lawmakers proposed legislation that - if approved - would provide tens of millions of dollars in funding to help those affected. Continue reading...

Police in Jacksonville draw confession from Billy Mansfield, sentenced to life in prison for five other murders decades agoAfter confessing to the murder of an Ohio high schooler on her spring break outside Jacksonville, Florida, in 1980, a jailed serial killer is continuing to talk to detectives investigating other homicides whose clue trails have gone cold, according to authorities.Billy Mansfield's confession of the killing of 18-year-old Carol Ann Barrett of Zanesville, Ohio, means officials have now confirmed that he has committed at least six murders. He had previously been handed life sentences in five of the killings, four of which were in California and one of which was in Florida, though officials investigating Barrett's death made clear in a statement on Thursday that those numbers could grow. Continue reading...

Snoop plays a former sports star who takes on losing pee-wee outfit in a charming comedy that has more than a passing resemblance to Bad News BearsWhen laconic rapper-turned-actor Snoop Dogg is called on to appear in a film, he more often than not plays himself or a version thereof - and so it goes again in this salty but ultimately very wholesome sports movie. There's even a sly parallel between the character Snoop plays and the efforts he's made in the real world setting up an American football league for kids. Yes, his thespian range may be pretty limited, but there's no denying Snoop has a palpable onscreen charisma and a good sense of comic timing that director Charles Stone III skilfully directs around.The plot, as old as time - or at least as old as vintage 1976 comedy The Bad New Bears - posits Snoop as JJ, a once-feted professional football player best known for his mildly disappointing career despite early promise and lack of loyalty to anyone one team. Struggling to make a comeback as a commentator, JJ hits rock bottom when his reckless driving causes an accident and a judge he knew from the old days sentences him to 30 days of community service, picking up dog poop in a city park in Long Beach, California. There, JJ notices Cerise (Tika Sumpter), an ex-girlfriend from high school who is now a hard-working single mom trying to support her pre-pubescent son Tre (Jonigan Booth, a find) while he plays ball with a team that is, of course, bottom of the league. Before you can remember how to spell Walter Matthau, JJ has signed on to coach the team, aiming to turn these Underdoggs" into a viral success story he can hype on his own podcast and thus parlay into better career prospects for himself. Continue reading...

Harry Spiro endured two Nazi camps, but at 94, he has lived to see anti-Jewish hatred rise again. We must learn from the past

Inaction threatens the continent's security over Trump, Ukraine, the rise of the far right and the crisis in the Middle EastDemocrats fear Joe Biden is sleepwalking to disaster in a November rematch with Donald Trump. Tories level similar criticism at dozy Rishi Sunak as Labour dreams of an autumn landslide. Butfor a truly world-beating slumber party, EU leaders take the bedtime biscuit.The way it's going, 2024 could turn into a nightmare for the 27-country bloc - an all-time annus horribilis. A daunting slew of international and internal challenges is coming to a head. Is the EU ready to meet them? Definitely not. Continue reading...