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Why is everything computerised, automated or impossible to turn off these days?I believe, deep in my soul, that car companies' number one goal in life is to ruin the experience of driving. I don't have any direct evidence of this conspiracy to rob us of the pleasure of the open road, other than the cacophony of beeps, blips, bloops and blops that greet us in the latest models. Oh, and the screens. Every year, they try to find a new place to glue a touchscreen in a car, like Pizza Hut hunting for more orifices to stuff cheese into one of their pies.Everything is computerized, automated or impossible to turn off. According to surveys of new-car buyers by the market research firm Strategic Vision, satisfaction with car controls plummeted by 23 percentage points in the last nine years. The whiz-bang gizmos foisted on the North American car buyer have devolved from the glorious, life-saving back-up camera to gesture controls that allow you to turn an invisible knob to crank up the volume on Espresso without touching a single thing in your vehicle.Turn the volume up: circle your finger in a clockwise direction.Turn the volume down: circle your finger in a counter-clockwise direction.Accept a call: point to the BMW iDrive touchscreen.Select navigation/custom setting: use two fingers to point to the touchscreen.Change rearview camera angle: draw a circle using your forefinger and thumb.Regret your life choices: look in the mirror for 10 seconds. Continue reading...

Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump's America: don't do itJust before the graphic artist Rebecca Burke left Seattle to travel to Vancouver, Canada, on 26 February, she posted an image of a rough comic to Instagram. One part of travelling that I love is seeing glimpses of other lives," read the bubble in the first panel, above sketches of cosy homes: crossword puzzle books, house plants, a lit candle, a steaming kettle on a gas stove. Burke had seen plenty of glimpses of other lives over the six weeks she had been backpacking in the US. She had been travelling on her own, staying on homestays free of charge in exchange for doing household chores, drawing as she went. For Burke, 28, it was absolute freedom.Within hours of posting that drawing, Burke got to see a much darker side of life in America, and far more than a glimpse. When she tried to cross into Canada, Canadian border officials told her that her living arrangements meant she should be travelling on a work visa, not a tourist one. They sent her back to the US, whereAmerican officials classed her as an illegal alien. She was shackled and transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention centre, where she was locked up for 19 days - even though she had money to pay for a flight home, and was desperate to leave the US. Continue reading...

Rather than an explosive split that many predicted, Musk instead appears set to keep close ties with Trump and retain influence on US politicsAfter months of exerting extraordinary power over the US government and becoming a mascot for Donald Trump's new administration, the first signs that Elon Musk may shift away from his prominent role in the White House began to appear this week.Both Trump and JD Vance have stated in interviews over the past few days that Musk would eventually leave the administration and the department of government efficiency" (Doge) that he founded, their most direct statements yet on his tenure. Politico also reported on Wednesday that Trump had told members of his inner circle that the Tesla CEO would be departing in the coming weeks, though Musk called the article fake news". Musk is a special government employee", a designation that technically carries a 130-day term that, depending on how the administration chooses to log those days, could run out at the end of May. Vance made sure to say that Musk would remain a close friend and adviser" to the administration even after leaving, further muddying the waters on how to mark Musk's potential departure. Continue reading...

Congressman tells the Guardian Trump is exploiting fight against antisemitism as a ruse to stamp his will on schoolsJerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House of Representatives, has accused Donald Trump of being a would-be dictator" who is cynically exploiting the fight against antisemitism as a ruse to stamp his will on top-flight universities.In an interview with the Guardian, the New York congressman lashed out against the president for using genuine dangers confronting American Jews as a guise to justify his attacks on Columbia, Harvard and other universities. Trump obviously doesn't give a damn about antisemitism, this is just an expression of his authoritarianism," he said. Continue reading...

Paula White, a millionaire televangelist who speaks in tongues, was criticized for an alleged cash-for-blessings schemeOn the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to protect religious liberty", and two weeks after his inauguration he acted: creating a White House faith office", which will be led by Paula White, a millionaire televangelist known to speak in tongues who called the Black Lives Matter movement the Antichrist" and once encouraged people to buy resurrection seeds" for $1,114.The move brought renewed focus on White, Trump's longtime spiritual guru. And for White, not all of it will be welcome. Continue reading...

The US president's tariffs are vengeful and impetuous - and will have immense costs with no clear goalWith the huge and painful tariffs that Donald Trump announced on Thursday, Tariff Man" is acting like a paranoid 12-year-old bully who is convinced that everyone has wronged him, and he wants revenge. But the president's instrument of revenge - massive tariffs - is going to do serious damage to the US and global economies. Stock market investors are convinced that's the case, with Wall Street and world stock markets losing trillions of dollars in value in recent days as a result of Trump's obsession.The president has escalated his risky, vengeful trade war even though the US economy was in strong shape when he took office - the jobless rate was just 4.1%, inflation was below 3% and US economic growth was the strongest in the industrial world, with its stock market at record levels. So it's unclear whether the US economy needed the shock treatment that Trump is inflicting. The price increases resulting from his tariffs - which are a tax on imports - will cost the average American family $3,800 a year, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. Continue reading...

Alarm over the health of the nation's children' follows federal workforce cuts by health secretary RFK JrMultiple maternal and child health programs have been eliminated or hollowed out as part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) layoffs, prompting alarm and disbelief among advocates working to make Americans healthier.The fear and anxiety come as a full accounting of the cuts remains elusive. Federal health officials have released only broad descriptions of changes to be made, rather than a detailed accounting of the programs and departments being eviscerated. Continue reading...

Our industry must reckon with how we've trivialised activism by turning it into comms strategy - only to abandon itNobody likes to admit we need marketing, but the discipline has always been necessary to match people with the products and services that fulfil their needs and desires.It started simply enough, with us focusing primarily on brands' features and tangible benefits. But as consumer society evolved, we moved on to symbolic benefits: identities, lifestyles. Finally, we began selling values: an ideology that hit its zenith between 2015 and 2022 in the era of brand purpose".Eugene Healey is brand strategy consultant, educator and creatorDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Trump's economic assault on the world stunned economists and sent stock markets into a spiral. Who will pay the price?

A record number of humanitarian workers were killed last year. My staff's red uniforms should have protected them. Instead they became their death shrouds

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Organisations that pumped money into overturning Roe v Wade are making inroads in Europe. Women's rights are truly at riskWith Donald Trump as president, there is now a heavy strain of Christian nationalism driving the US political agenda. From draconian abortion policies to ending birthright citizenship, some of Trump's first executive orders sound startlingly like something out of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the dystopian novel turned TV show set in Gilead, a fundamentalist, fascist version of the US where women have no rights. But it is urgent we understand that what is happening in the US could happen here. This road to Atwood's Gilead is charting a course straight through the UK and Europe, and we may well be sleepwalking on to it.In November 2024 I debated with the American conservative lawyer Erin Hawley at the Oxford Union. The motion was This house regrets the overturning of Roe v Wade", the US supreme court's landmark decision that once protected the right to have an abortion at the federal level. Hawley is vice-president of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group", according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, founded by the US Christian right. She is also a high profile lawyer and supported the state of Mississippi on the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization case that overturned Roe. Continue reading...

Most senior American prelate in Catholic church to face accusations of sexual abuse died in state of MissouriThe first cardinal to be defrocked by the Pope over allegations of sexual abuse has died in the United States, a senior US churchman said on Friday.Theodore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington and the most senior American prelate in the Catholic church to face claims of abuse, died in the state of Missouri aged 94, the New York Times reported, citing a Vatican statement. Continue reading...

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Disgraced Republican congressman made a mockery' of election system and merits long sentence, US officials sayProsecutors are seeking more than seven years in prison for disgraced former congressman George Santos after he pleaded guilty to federal fraud and identity theft charges.The US attorney for the eastern district of New York argued in a court filing on Friday that a significant sentence was warranted because the New York Republican's unparalleled crimes" had made a mockery" of the country's election system. Continue reading...

Global markets plunge for a second day as Fed chair defies Trump's call for interest rate cut and warns of price pain for consumers - key US politics stories from 4 AprilDonald Trump's sweeping tariffs are roiling global financial markets, with stocks tumbling across the board from New York to London.Wall Street suffered its worst week since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago as investors worldwide balked at the US president's risky bid to overhaul the global economy with the vast tariffs. Continue reading...

We have had to be resilient because no one has come to our aid. Myanmar needs tangible support before the humanitarian crisis claims even more livesTwo thoughts entered my head as soon as I saw that Myanmar, my home country, had been hit by an earthquake: Is everyone OK?", followed by, We just can't catch a break".My loved ones thankfully turned out to be badly shaken but physically OK. There were material losses but nothing compared with what so many others are going through. Continue reading...

Millions in grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives may be frozen following rulingThe US supreme court is letting the Trump administration temporarily freeze $65m in teacher-training grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in a 5-4 decision.The decision came down on Friday afternoon, with five of the court's conservatives - Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh - in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented. Continue reading...

Number of cases of highly contagious disease so far this year now at more than double amount seen all of 2024Texas on Friday reported another large jump in measles cases and hospitalizations, leaving the US with more than double the number of measles cases so far this year than it saw in all of 2024.Other states with active outbreaks - defined as three or more cases - include New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio and Oklahoma. The virus has been spreading in undervaccinated communities, and since February, two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes. Continue reading...

White House has said US courts can't order return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose wife has been protesting outside courtA federal judge on Friday afternoon ordered the US to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison after a Trump administration attorney was at a loss to explain what happened.The wife of the man, who was flown to a notorious Salvadoran prison had earlier joined dozens of supporters at a rally before a court hearing on Friday, where his lawyers had asked the judge - Paula Xinis - to order the Trump administration to return him to the US. Continue reading...

Former Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom employees say firm has caved' to the administration's bullying' in letterMore than 80 former employees of Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom sent a letter to the law firm on Friday expressing deep outrage" over its decision to reach an agreement with Donald Trump in order to avoid an executive order punishing the firm.Skadden, a top-ranked law firm, reached an agreement, announced on 28 March, to commit at least $100m in pro-bono services to causes both the firm and the president support, including assisting veterans, law enforcement, local government officials and combatting antisemitism. The agreement also says Skadden won't engage in race-based hiring. Continue reading...

We'd like to hear from people on whether they are stocking up or avoiding buying certain productsWe're interested in finding out more about how people's buying habits have changed due to Donald Trump's tariffs.With the rising prices of eggs, have you decided to avoid purchasing them? Perhaps there are certain items you are stocking up on? We'd like to hear from people and the reasons they are changing their shopping habits. Do you have any concerns? Continue reading...

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has downplayed the impact on global markets of Donald Trump's tariffs. Speaking at a press conference during a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels, Rubio said the US needed 'to get back to a time where we're a country that can make things' Business live - latest updates US politics live - latests updates Continue reading...

Companies with suppliers in Asian countries are likely to have to raise prices after the US president's measures

Owner of Simplified says White House bypassed required procedures when setting 20% tariff on Chinese goods

The white nationalist has been in Trump's orbit for years, although the White House has tried to sideline her at timesLaura Loomer, a rightwing extremist and political influencer known for her incendiary social media presence, appeared to have been sidelined at points by Donald Trump's election campaign and then by his new administration.But she has long had the US president's ear and may have it again, at least for now. Continue reading...

As global stock markets fall, personal investments including pensions and stocks and shares could be affectedGlobal stock markets have been falling sharply for a second day running after Donald Trump's announcement that the US planned to charge tariffs on goods from around the world. A global trade war intensified when China responded on Friday by announcing tariffs of 34% on imports of US goods, accelerating the market sell-off. For people in the UK, there are reasons to be concerned about the falls: Continue reading...

Trump's moves have pushed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians into a state of insecurity after they were welcomed to a safe havenNot long after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Danyil packed everything he could in a bag and traveled 15 hours by bus from the Zakarpattia region in western Ukraine to the Czech Republic.He fled the war at 17, just as the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, forbade men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Now aged 20, he watches from the US as the war drags on. In December, Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 370,000 have been wounded in the war. Continue reading...

Tournaments in 2031 and 2035 are likely to be great events but will be hosted by those who need them the leastThere is an abundance of reasons why staging the 2031 and 2035 Women's World Cups in the United States and UK respectively offers cause for delight. The countries have well-established and emotionally invested fanbases, a genuine buy-in to the women's game and huge, modern stadiums to choose from. These two summer parties will surely eclipse anything women's sport has seen and the countries, having invested in the women's game more than any others in modern times, have frankly earned this.Yet the news that the US and UK are bidding unopposed to host these tournaments is also sad for the women's game from a global perspective. The US's NWSL and England's Women's Super League are the two most-watched women's leagues in the world with the largest average attendances and the most professionalised facilities for players and therefore, while many will agree that means they deserve the Women's World Cup the most, they are also the countries who need the tournament the least. Continue reading...

We should all be worried that the rightwing organisation Alliance Defending Freedom has been increasing its activities in this countryI couldn't sleep the other night, because I made the fatal mistake of reading about US politics directly before bed, specifically the executive order calling for the removal of improper, divisive or anti-American ideology" from the Smithsonian museums. If US politics were a film, I'd say we're somewhere in between having read aloud from the book that summons demons as a joke, and the final bloodbath.If JD Vance rewriting history isn't sinister enough, then came the news that the US state department will be monitoring" a UK woman's abortion buffer zone case (why does everything they say always sound so creepy?) They are concerned", apparently, about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom". The case is that of Livia Tossici-Bolt - who held up a sign reading Here to talk if you want" outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic and was this morning convicted of breaching the buffer zone. Her case was being funded by the UK branch of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a rightwing organisation with links to the White House, which has increased its expenditure and activities in this country of late. It has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the US.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

His failure in Wisconsin could provide a model for the defeatist Democrats. Instead of fearing him, they should make him a symbolIt's important to relish the little pleasures in life, like the knowledge that somewhere, Elon Musk is sad. On Tuesday, the world's richest person faced an unmistakable rebuke from the public when voters in Wisconsin rejected his preferred candidate for a vacant state supreme court seat there: Brad Schimel, the former state attorney general, on whose campaign Musk had spent more than $25m - lost in a landslide to the liberal Susan Crawford. He must have been devastated, a thought which liberal Americans greeted with relish. The Democratic party's official account on Musk's X posted a photo of Musk with the caption loser". All that money wasted. Maybe he cried.In addition to his lavish expenditures, Musk had made himself the center of the race in a deliberate and ill-advised fashion. He appeared at a rally in Green Bay wearing a cheese hat - a deliberately silly article donned by fans of sports teams in the dairy-producing state. He paid for in-person canvassers at a rate of $25 an hour, three times the minimum wage. And in an illegal gesture that the Wisconsin supreme court declined to stop, he handed out giant, novelty $1m checks to voters who signed a petition against activist" judges - a thinly veiled cash-for-votes scheme, something he also did in Pennsylvania ahead of the 2024 presidential election.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The reason we don't see that person is because we're asking the wrong questionEveryone's waiting for that one person to stand up to Donald Trump. Not just that one person. There are a lot of such people. You can read about them in every newspaper. But that one person with real power who's willing to risk something costly in defiance. That one university president who'll say, fuck you and your money. That one Democrat who'll say, fuck you and your threat to my re-election or that of my party. Everyone's looking for our Tank Man, staring down a column of tanks, all by himself, in Tiananmen Square.Why don't we see that person? Where is our Tank Man? (And, no, I don't think Cory Booker doing a marathon-length filibuster counts.)When you're thinking of becoming a hero, you feel like a slob. You feel, do you really have a right to do that?Corey Robin is the author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump and a contributing editor at Jacobin. This piece originally appeared on coreyrobin.com. Continue reading...

All three major US index funds close down as Apple and Nvidia, two of US's largest companies, lose combined $470bnUS stock markets tumbled on Thursday as investors parsed the sweeping change in global trading following Donald Trump's announcement of a barrage of tariffs on the country's trading partners.All three major US stock markets closed down in their worst day since June 2020, during the Covid pandemic. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. Apple and Nvidia, two of the US's largest companies by market value, had lost a combined $470bn in value by midday. Continue reading...

UK foreign secretary regrets return to protectionism' and says Britons will be concerned about impact on finances

The island of Ireland faces a complex challenge with Trump's tariffs. But giving up on transatlantic relations is not the answerIreland believes in open, free trade and has build a strong, resilient economy by being the most globalised in Europe. We are a trading country. That is why last night's news on tariffs came as such a disappointment to us.Imposing tariffs to force companies to locate in the US will fundamentally change how the world sees it. US economic dominance has not been built on scale or purchasing power alone, but on relationships and alliances, something it is now damaging. Liberation day" risks forcing a realignment of how global trade operates, without the US at its centre, as countries rethink their relationship with the US and seek new, more reliable partners.Simon Coveney is a former deputy prime minister, foreign minister and enterprise and trade minister of IrelandDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

With populist leaders on the back foot and EU support at its highest in years, the US trade war could be an opportunity for the unionDonald Trump has unleashed a trade war on the world, and Europe, considered by Washington to be among the worst offenders", is a major target. After hitting European steel, aluminium and cars, this week Trump announced sweeping 20% tariffs on almost all EU imports. Europeans have seen this coming for a long time. Well before his re-election, officials in Brussels were drawing up plans on how the EU might respond to Trump 2.0 and a possible transatlantic trade war.What might the political fallout in Europe be? The good news is that Trump's trade war puts Trump-friendly far-right forces in Europe in a terribly uncomfortable position. It's one thing for the European far right to support Trump in principle, or to support the administration's tyranny over peoples it doesn't care about, be it Ukrainians, Canadians, Mexicans or Palestinians. It's quite another to defend Trump and his policies when the victims are countries that these far-right parties supposedly represent.Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

From UK tailors to Australian farmers to Irish whiskey distillers, firms reveal the impact of US measuresDonald Trump's sweeping tariffs will upend global trade, adding costs and delays to businesses around the world and threatening a recession.The Guardian spoke to eight businesses about the impact. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Aquarium systems, Timberland boots and recycling plant parts were mislabelled as coming from remote Norfolk Island or Heard and McDonald islands

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University says it has not yet been notified, but school was among dozens warned of academic crackdownThe Trump administration is taking aim at Brown University with threats to freeze $510m in grants, widening its promise to withhold federal funding from schools it accuses of allowing antisemitism on campus, according to multiple media outlets including Reuters and the New York Times.University officials said they had not yet been formally notified, but the school was among dozens warned last month that enforcement actions could be coming as the administration seeks to crack down on academic institutions . Continue reading...

President accused of overstepping authority with order requiring new proof-of-citizenship and mail-ballot rulesA coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president that seeks to overhaul the nation's elections was unconstitutional, anti-democratic, and un-American".The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, challenges several provisions of the far-reaching executive order issued last week, including the proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration and new rules requiring all mail ballots be received by election day. Continue reading...

Dow, S&P and Nasdaq among markets feeling share price pain while Trump insists markets are going to boom'. The key US politics stories from 3 AprilGlobal financial markets were roiled by Donald Trump's latest tariff announcement - with trillions of dollars knocked off the value of the world's biggest companies and heightened fears of a US recession.In the US, the main indices saw their worst one-day falls in five years as the president claimed that the markets are going to boom" in response to his sweeping tariffs. Continue reading...

Trump ally presented him with opposition research against a number of officials that she said showed their disloyalty

Former TV pitchman has close relationship with boss RFK Jr but regularly encourages Americans to get vaccinatedFormer heart surgeon and TV pitchman Dr Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).Oz became the agency's administrator in a party-line 53-45 vote. Continue reading...