US news | The Guardian

A man abducted an 8-month-old girl, her parents and her uncle from a trucking company office in Merced on MondayRelatives of a family kidnapped at gunpoint from their trucking business in central California pleaded for help Wednesday in the search for an 8-month-old girl, her mother, father and uncle.Authorities at a news conference Wednesday showed surveillance video of a man kidnapping the baby, Aroohi Dheri; the child’s mother, Jasleen Kaur, 27; father Jasdeep Singh, 36; and uncle Amandeep Singh, 39 from their Merced business on Monday. Continue reading...

President puts up ostensibly united front with Ron DeSantis as duo see recovery effort but comments contrast with governor’s viewJoe Biden has urged action to tackle the climate crisis after surveying by helicopter the devastation wrought in Florida by Hurricane Ian, one of the fiercest storms in American history.Visiting Fort Myers, which bore the brunt of the damage, the US president shook hands and ostensibly put up a united front with Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Florida governor touted as a potential challenger in the 2024 election. Continue reading...

Agency says murders increased by 4.3% in 2021 after a 30% surge in 2020, but new data tracking system excludes some major citiesThe FBI’s annual crime data released on Wednesday suggested a slight increase in homicides in the US in 2021, but officials warned that the statistics were incomplete and excluded some major cities due to a new data tracking system.The agency said that homicides increased by 4.3% in 2021, following a nearly 30% surge in homicides in 2020, which marked the largest single-year increase since the FBI began keeping count in the 1960s. But the murder rate still remained below the historic highs of 1991. Continue reading...

Halyna Hutchins shot dead with prop gun during filming of western as Santa Fe DA says criminal charges could yet be broughtAlec Baldwin has agreed to a settlement with the family of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins who was killed on the set of the western Rust she was filming in New Mexico in 2021 when she was shot with a prop gun the US actor was using.The parties reached an undisclosed settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed in February against the actor and other defendants. Continue reading...

Congressional group writes letter urging Biden to extend WTO agreement aimed at easing generic vaccine exportsUS recovery from the Covid pandemic is in “jeopardy” unless the Biden administration supports making treatment and testing for the disease more readily available to low-income countries, a powerful congressional group has warned Joe Biden.In a letter to Joe Biden led by congressman Earl Blumenauer, chairman of the subcommittee on trade, the group urged the president to extend a June World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement aimed at easing exports of generic vaccines to treatments and therapeutics. Continue reading...

Nishelle Harris-Miles, a mother of four from Ohio, was staying in a rental with friends when the hurricane hitA mother who traveled to Fort Myers, Florida, for her birthday celebration was among the victims who died after Hurricane Ian hit the state last week.Nishelle Harris-Miles, a mother of four from Dayton, Ohio, traveled to Florida with her friends and family to celebrate her 40th birthday when the hurricane made landfall, according to an Ohio news outlet. Continue reading...

Sister of new monarch enjoys tourist staple after visiting National Lighthouse Museum to unveil figurine of Needles LighthousePrincess Anne took a ride on a quintessential New York tourist attraction and commuter staple – the Staten Island ferry that plies the harbor – during a visit to city this week, just under a month since the death of Queen Elizabeth, her mother and Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.Anne, now sister to the new monarch, King Charles III, was ushered to the ferry’s pilothouse as the ship crossed the harbor on Tuesday, sailing towards the skyscrapers of Manhattan and some of the city’s most well-known landmarks such as the Empire State Building and One World Trade, which replaced the twin towers of the World Trade Centre after they were destroyed in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Continue reading...

Democrats write CEO Howard Shultz to look into chain’s anti-union expenditures and alleged ‘weaponizing’ of benefits and payFour US senators have asked Starbucks to disclose how much the coffee chain has spent on lawyers and consulting fees to counter the growing union membership efforts at hundreds of its locations in the US.Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal, all Democrats, and independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, sent their request in a letter late on Tuesday to Starbucks’ chief executive, Howard Schultz, and the company’s board of directors. Continue reading...

Republican Ken Paxton allegedly escaped home and jumped into truck driven by his wife to avoid being served by subpoenaThe Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, must testify in court in an abortion lawsuit after a federal judge reversed his decision to quash a subpoena filed by pro-choice interests.Reproductive rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against Paxton’s office in August in an attempt to stop possible prosecution of abortion funds that help women seek the procedure outside Texas, which has banned almost all abortion. Continue reading...

Talk of nuclear escalation or attacks on pipelines may be far-fetched at present, but Moscow has other levers at its disposalEvery human being liberated from Russia’s savage occupation represents a victory for Ukraine. But the continuing liberation of occupied territories is vitally important outside Ukraine too. The ejection of Russian forces sends vital messages to Moscow, Washington and Brussels as well, and Ukraine’s advances will have broader impacts that are far more significant than the immediate tactical gains.First, as with the Ukrainian autumn offensive overall, they are a clear demonstration to Kyiv’s western backers that the war is not static. Earlier in the year fears of a protracted stalemate were causing hesitation and doubt over whether Ukraine and its supporters could stay the course. Now, Ukraine has removed that doubt by seizing the initiative and maintaining it far longer than most outside observers thought possible. That can only stiffen western resolve to stand firm with Kyiv. In particular it has pulled the rug from under the persistent argument that Ukraine should “make concessions” to end the fighting – concessions that in many cases are indistinguishable from surrender.Keir Giles works with the Russia and Eurasia programme of Chatham House; he is the author of Russia’s War on Everybody Continue reading...

Georgia in focus: Since Biden carried the state with the support of Black voters, thousands of people’s eligibility has been disputedAbout a year ago, Lee McWhorter joined a group of people in the Atlanta suburbs who were concerned about the integrity of elections in Georgia. They prayed over what they should do, and eventually started scrutinizing the voter rolls in Gwinnett county, one of the most populous and most diverse in the US. The group started checking addresses, comparing voter information in different states, and perusing property records. They brought in data experts to help them compare voter information and began to collect affidavits to back up claims that ineligible voters were on the rolls.In early September, the group, which has since grown to 80 people and does not have a formal name, challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of people. The challenges were filed with the backing of VoterGA, whose founder has questioned the raised questions about the 2020 election results. The group has received backing from The America Project, which was founded by Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne, who have promoted serial misinformation about the 2020 election. Continue reading...

Anthony Rapp alleges Spacey acted to gratify sexual desire during an encounter in 1986, when he was 14 and the Oscar winner was 26 or 27Actor Kevin Spacey faces the first of a series of sexual abuse claims dating back decades on Thursday in New York in a civil trial that may come to overshadow a glittering career on stage and screen that included two Oscars and numerous other top awards.The case against the 63-year-old American focuses on accusations by Anthony Rapp, a star of the Broadway musical Rent, who five years ago publicly accused Spacey of sexual assault when he was a teenager. Continue reading...

Tory MPs stayed away, blaming rail strikes. Members perked up at Greenpeace activists, feeling protective of lame-duck leader

The PM is plugging on while the Tory party implodes around her. It might be funny if we weren’t about to feel the aftershocksWatching the Conservative party self-destruct after 12 years of near-untouchable power while the economy tanks is akin to seeing your racist neighbour’s house flood with sewage. It’s delightful schadenfreude – until you realise that stink is heading straight for you. If there is one positive to the Tory party conference this week, it is that these people have been at least temporarily contained. A kind of Alcatraz for Eton alumni. I would say “how much damage can they do?” locked in a conference hall in Birmingham; but based on the last few days, this group would see that less as a question and more as an active challenge.Enter the levelling up secretary, Simon Clarke, who kicked off conference by touting a new age of austerity in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Britain had, Clarke said, been in a “fool’s paradise” for too long with a “very large welfare state”, which must come as news to the people queueing in the utopia of their local food bank. Early figures suggest public services will see cuts of up to £18bn a year, while benefits are being lined up for real-term cuts.Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

While Lynn claimed not to be a ‘big fan of women’s liberation’, her songs told a different story, documenting female pleasure, pain and physicalityIf you wanted to pick a single Loretta Lynn song to encapsulate the country star’s life, career, spirit and the particular way she wove all three together, the choice would not be easy. You might reach for Coal Miner’s Daughter, her signature track, which told of her upbringing in Butcher Hollow, a mining community in Appalachian Kentucky – its poverty, love, perseverance. This was, after all, the root of her storytelling, and that famed vibrato that long carried a backwoods flavour. Or you might lean toward her first No 1 hit, 1966’s Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind), that cemented some of the singer’s presiding themes – relationships, and how a woman might handle her wayward husband’s boozing.But there would be strong argument to choose an outlier: the title track from her final album, last year’s Still Woman Enough. Accompanied by fellow country stars Reba McEntire and Carrie Underwood, Lynn sang of a long life of struggle, determination and triumph. “I know how to love, lose and survive,” the lyrics ran. “Ain’t much I ain’t seen and I ain’t tried.” The song made a companion piece to one of her most famous hits, You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man). Released in 1966, it was a response to a love rival, feather-spitting in its defiance: “Sometimes a man’s caught lookin’ at things he don’t need / He took a second look at you, but he’s in love with me.” Its sister song of 2021 had lost none of the original’s smarts. Continue reading...

Walker would hardly be the first Republican to think abortion is ‘OK for me, evil for thee’Herschel Walker is a former NFL football player turned Republican candidate who is running for a crucial Senate seat in Georgia and has extremely hardline views on abortion. He supports a ban on the procedure with no exceptions for rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger – circumstances he describes as “excuses”. He has also repeatedly likened abortion to murder.All of that is somewhat awkward because it turns out that, by Herschel’s own definition, he may be an accessory to murder and should probably hand himself into the police immediately, if recent allegations are to be believed. On Monday the Daily Beast reported that Walker allegedly paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, provided the outlet with evidence supporting her claims, including a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, an image of a signed personal check for $700 from Walker, and a “get well” card allegedly signed by Walker. The card had “a drawing of a steaming cup of tea” on the front and instructed the recipient to “Rest, Relax, Recover.”Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The prime minister addressed the Tory conference as leader for the first time. What are the chances that it could be her last?Irony appears to be lost on our new prime minister.Mick Lynch is the secretary-general of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Continue reading...

Appellate court ruling prevented special master from examining 100 files seized from Mar-a-Lago. Plus, a record-breaking pumpkinGood morning.Donald Trump asked the US supreme court yesterday to partly reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing for privilege protections materials seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.What else has emerged about the documents? A lawyer for Donald Trump refused to report to the National Archives that the former president had turned over all Oval Office documents as required out of concern that the claim was a lie, the Washington Post is reporting.What have we learned from Confidence Man by Maggie Haberman? The former president really doesn’t like Mitch McConnell, and he apparently relentlessly mocked Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and adviser and made many many diplomatic faux pas. Here are the key takeaways.What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 224 of the invasion. Continue reading...

The Bills are becoming a case study in how property deals get struck between power brokers and politicians, laying bare the question of what, if anything, a team owes its communityThe Buffalo Bills are among the favorites to win the Super Bowl in February but Dennice Barr has other priorities as winter approaches.Barr is a community leader in the Fruit Belt, an historic but deprived majority African American area near downtown Buffalo. With a median household income of under $28,000, a ticket to an NFL game is out of reach for many residents. As the cost of living soars and the weather worsens they are more focused on access to food and heating. Continue reading...

The devastating storm hit Florida’s high population of seniors hard and some are now reconsidering their future in the stateJoy McCormack had just retired and moved to a mobile park in Fort Myers near the Sanibel Island causeway before Hurricane Ian hit Florida last week. Her entire community was wiped out and her mobile home is still flooded.She had managed to evacuate before Ian arrived with just her car and a few belongings, spending the night in a two-story office building inland. “You don’t expect it to be anything, because we’ve never been hit that hard,” said McCormack. Continue reading...

You know the type. These people talk the talk – but for them, getting any actual work done is strictly an afterthoughtIn recent weeks, there has been an avalanche of discussion about “quiet quitters”. These are people who have grown disillusioned with their workplaces and given up putting in additional effort; no monitoring their emails during the weekend or working on a pressing project during the evening. Quiet quitters have retreated into their job description, trying to preserve their sanity by limiting what they do.Yet the discussion about quiet quitters has entirely overlooked their noisier cousins: the “loud labourers”. If you have had a colleague who spends more time talking about work than actually doing it, then you have witnessed a loud labourer first-hand. These are employees who see their core task as telling everyone what they have done. For these individuals, the actual work is a distant afterthought. They graft for the ‘gram, toil for the tweets, and labour for the LinkedIn likes. Actually getting anything done is just an afterthought.André Spicer is professor of organisational behaviour at the Bayes Business School at City, University of London Continue reading...

As millions of Floridians can confirm, there are better places for homes than wetland in a hurricane zoneRemember when Donald Trump reportedly suggested that we nuke hurricanes in order to stop them hitting the United States? That idea was obviously ludicrous and got rightly ridiculed. Ultimately, however, Trump’s ideas weren’t much more absurd than the accepted status quo in the US – which is to build large amounts of housing on land vulnerable to natural disasters. Fantasies of nuking hurricanes are ultimately just as ridiculous as fantasies that millions of people can move on to paved-over swampland in the most hurricane-ravaged state in the US without disaster striking.I’m talking about Florida, of course. In 1960, about five million people lived in the Sunshine State. Now, that number is about 22 million. During the past few decades, Florida has seen a construction and population boom, with millions of people occupying land that is wholly unsuitable for settling on. “The story of Florida is the story of development happening at times and places where it probably shouldn’t,” a member of Florida Conservation Voters, a non-profit organisation that focuses on environmental issues, recently told Politico. Continue reading...

Video of NFL star taking out animal rights demonstrator who interrupted game against San Francisco 49ers went viralNational Football League linebacker Bobby Wagner laid one of the season’s most jarring hits this week on an animal rights advocate who ran on to the field of a game to protest about criminal charges filed against two other activists.“I just saw somebody running on the field, and [it looked like] he wasn’t supposed to be on the field,” Wagner, who plays for the Los Angeles Rams, said when reporters asked him about tackling the protester on Monday night. “I saw security was having a little problem, so I helped them out.” Continue reading...

The man is suspected of abducting four, including an 8-month-old baby, and tried to kill himself before Merced police arrivedA man suspected of kidnapping a Sikh family, including an 8-month-old baby, in central California tried to kill himself Tuesday and is hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said. The family is still missing.The Merced county sheriff’s office said in a statement that investigators identified Jesus Salgado, 48, after he used a victim’s ATM card. Continue reading...

Appellate court ruling prevented special master from examining 100 files seized from Mar-a-Lago with classification markingsDonald Trump on Tuesday asked the US supreme court to partially reverse an appellate court decision that prevented the special master, reviewing for privilege protections materials seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, from examining 100 documents with classification markings.The motion to vacate the ruling by the US appeals court for the 11th circuit represents the former president’s final chance to reinsert the 100 documents into the special master review – and potentially exclude some from the investigation into whether he illegally retained national defense information Continue reading...

Ballistics tests tie together fatal shooting in Oakland with killings of five men and the non-fatal shooting of a woman in StocktonA California serial killer seems to be “on a mission” dating back to last year, which has seen the fatal shooting of at least six men and the wounding of one woman – but authorities have not figured out what’s behind the violence.Ballistics tests and some video evidence linked the shootings in Stockton and Oakland, about 70 miles apart in northern California, police said. Continue reading...

Despite some rainfall, state is still suffering from an extreme water shortage driven by the climate crisis – and La Niña may worsen itCalifornia has witnessed its three driest years on record and the drought shows no signs of abating, officials said Monday. The dry spell set the stage for catastrophic wildfires and has strained water resources and caused conflicts over usage.“We are actively planning for another dry year,” said Jeanine Jones, drought manager for the state’s department of water resources, who was discussing the California’s status at the conclusion of its water year, which ended 30 September. Continue reading...

Unofficial figures more than 100 killed by storm that swept across Florida and made second deadly landfall in South CarolinaThe death toll from Hurricane Ian continued a grim and steady climb on Tuesday, as officials in Florida laid out the next stages of the recovery effort and Joe Biden prepared to tour some of the worst-hit areas.Unofficial figures have recorded more than 100 killed by the category 4 storm that swept Florida last week before making a second deadly US landfall in South Carolina. Continue reading...

Anti-abortion Senate candidate in Georgia reportedly paid for the procedure for a former girlfriend in 2009

In Merrill v Milligan, the court will decide whether Alabama’s new congressional map violates the Voting Rights ActThe supreme court’s conservative majority appeared unsettled on Tuesday on whether it would gut one of the most powerful remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act in a case that has profound implications for the representation of Black Americans and other minority groups.The case, Merrill v Milligan, centers on how much those who draw electoral districts should be required to consider race. It involves a dispute over the seven congressional districts Alabama drew last year. Only one of those districts has a majority-Black population, even though Black people make up a quarter of Alabama’s population. Earlier this year, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the configuration was illegal under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which guarantees minority groups equal opportunity to participate in the electoral process. It ordered Alabama to draw a second district with a minority population. The supreme court stepped in earlier this year and halted that order while the case proceeded. Continue reading...

While Radon Liz and Kamikwasi Kwarteng set quantum dates for fiscal steadiness, Suella Braverman was talking up a coupSmall steps and all that. The Tory party conference may be on life support in the ICU – most delegates have written thank you letters to Mick Lynch for Wednesday’s rail strikes that have given them a gold-plated excuse for leaving early – but things aren’t quite as bad as they could be. It was probably more luck than judgment, but Liz Truss finally got through an interview relatively unscathed. Put it like this. It wasn’t a total car crash. More a minor scrape.There are caveats, of course. For one thing, the interview with Nick Robinson for the Today programme had been prerecorded the day before. So we might just have got a moment in time when a version of Radon Liz existed that was not quite so catatonically hapless. There was no way of knowing whether another iteration of Truss that was live at 8.10am on a Tuesday morning would have given the same interview. Things have turned unusually existential in Birmingham. Continue reading...

Trump told lawyer to report to National Archives that he had given them all the documents, but lawyer was ‘not sure’ that was trueA lawyer for Donald Trump refused to report to the National Archives that the former president had turned over all Oval Office documents as required out of concern that the claim was a lie.Earlier this year, Trump returned 15 boxes of federal government records from his Mar-a-Lago resort home to the National Archives, and he directed one of his lawyers, Alex Cannon, to inform the agency that the boxes contained all the documents taken from his time in office. Continue reading...

Republican condemned by John Fetterman as ‘puppy killer’ after reports allege Oz oversaw animal deaths between 1989 and 2010An already over-the-top and acrimonious US Senate race in Pennsylvania has escalated after John Fetterman – the Democratic candidate – accused his Republican opponent, the celebrity physician Dr Oz, of having killed more than 300 dogs.Calling his rival “sick” and a “puppy killer”, Fetterman cited reporting published on Monday alleging that Mehmet Oz oversaw numerous animal deaths while conducting medical research at Columbia University. Continue reading...

President says sorry to family of Jackie Walorski in Oval Office meeting after remarks at food insecurity summit last monthThe mother of the late congresswoman Jackie Walorski told Joe Biden that her daughter was in “heaven with Jesus” after the president apologized for mistakenly calling for Walorski during public remarks last week despite her death in August.During a private meeting in the Oval Office with the Walorski family on Friday, Biden apologized for a gaffe he made during a summit on food insecurity on 28 September, when he called into the audience to see if Walorski was in attendance, as the Republican representative from Indiana had served as co-chairperson of the House Hunger Caucus. Continue reading...

Christian Walker says Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia lied about paying for former girlfriend’s termination in 2009The son of Georgia’s Republican US Senate hopeful Herschel Walker called his father a liar and a hypocrite after a media report alleged that the candidate, who has publicly opposed abortion rights, paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009.The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Walker, a former pro football player, paid to end the ex-girlfriend’s pregnancy when the couple was dating by depositing a $700 check into her bank account for the procedure. Walker vehemently denies the allegations and has threatened to sue the news outlet for defamation. Continue reading...

Instead of merely ‘trimming the fat’ from the public sector, this government seems intent on sinking the welfare state entirelyWhen a ship encounters a storm, the captain does not rip up the deck and cut off the lifeboats to make the ship move faster. Doing so might temporarily delay flooding, but it gives passengers no chance when an iceberg crashes against the hull. And yet that’s exactly what British governments have been doing ever since the financial crisis of 2008. One by one, the ropes holding on to our welfare services and public institutions have been severed. The current government, which has called on departments to find “efficiencies” to meet its unfunded tax cuts, is no different.So what can we expect to happen if Liz Truss’s cabinet pursues these cuts? Already, Conservative MPs are extolling the benefits of an “insurance-based” health service, and seem to be preparing the ground for further waves of NHS privatisation. Yet Britain’s public sector has already been gnawed to the bone. How will departments “trim the fat”, as the levelling-up secretary Simon Clarke described the approach over the weekend? Is there even any fat left to trim? Continue reading...

It seems likely that Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva will eventually oust the president. Even if he does, a turbulent time in office awaitsThe first lesson from Brazil’s election on Sunday is that public opinion surveys severely misfired. Just a few days before the contest, many reported a 15% lead for Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva over the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro; and many also predicted a Lula first-round victory. The second lesson is that, far from being a flash in the pan – as many had hoped – the rightwing populist movement Bolsonarismo is an organised political force, and it is here to stay, at least for the medium term.Bolsonaro finished five percentage points behind the leftist former leader Lula – as he is popularly known. Bolsonaro’s party and its allies also surprised in the legislative elections the same day, winning around two dozen seats in the senate and almost 100 in the chamber of deputies. While a Lula victory still appears likely on 30 October, the thin margin separating the two candidates promises an even more bruising, mud-slinging campaign, and sharpens the risk of post-election violence should the incumbent lose the runoff.Christopher Sabatini is a senior research fellow in the Latin America, US and the Americas programme at Chatham House

None of the stories from the Yates investigation, which include reports of coaches sexually assaulting their players, were shocking for me or my peers. Silence must not prevailI was asked to speak with the Yates investigation into abuse in US soccer after the Guardian published its own report into the University of Toledo that included my reports of being a survivor of sexual assault and abuse. The reality as a survivor is that you struggle to trust others and any sign of doubt about what you share triggers physical and emotional responses that make reliving those experiences yet again difficult.Talking to the Yates investigators, I felt the disbelief was not that they doubted my story but a lack of understanding of how deep systemic abuse runs through every level of women’s soccer in the US.Candice Fabry is the owner of Fearless & Capable; Head Women’s Soccer Coach at Ottawa University (KS); Head Women’s Soccer Coach for Kansas City Courage, Midwest Region Coach for the US Youth Olympic Development Program; State Coach for Kansas Soccer Youth State Association Olympic Development Program; and a US Soccer Grassroots Coaching Instructor. She was a former assistant coach and player at the University of Toledo. Continue reading...

UN special rapporteur praises step in right direction but says ‘structural inequality is underlying cause of hunger’The White House hunger conference last week was a step in the right direction but missed a chance to address the systemic causes and to expand the “right to food”, according to a United Nations hunger expert.Policymakers should be focusing on those causes if they want to solve hunger, said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Racism, corporate control and poverty contribute heavily to hunger, he said. Continue reading...

People forget that championing whiteness is what makes Trump powerfulA growing chorus of voices is warning that our democracy is in grave danger, but there is much less discussion of the exact nature of the threat. Recently, President Biden emphasized the severity of the threat by going to the place where the constitution was signed to give what the White House described as “a speech on the continued battle for the soul of the nation”.Biden specifically named “Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans” as the ones carrying out the attacks, and that is accurate, on the surface. The deeper, more longstanding threat, however, was articulated by historian Taylor Branch in a 2018 conversation with author Isabel Wilkerson recounted in Wilkerson’s book Caste. As they discussed how the rise of white domestic terrorism under Trump was part of the backlash to the country’s growing racial diversity, Branch noted that, “people said they wouldn’t stand for being a minority in their own country”. He went on to add, “the real question would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and is a Guardian US columnist. His book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good will be published October 18th Continue reading...

In the first of a new series, we look at how November’s midterm elections could be an inflection point as election deniers seek to take control of the vote counting processItem number 28 on the agenda for the March meeting of the county commission in rural southern Nevada seemed benign enough. But by the end of the hour-and-45-minute presentation Sandra Merlino, the longtime local clerk, felt sickened.One by one, a band of activists took to the podium to argue that Nye county should switch from electronic ballots to paper ones in forthcoming elections. They were led by Jim Marchant, a Las Vegas businessman who lost a 2020 House race but refused to concede, alleging fraud. He argued that the county couldn’t trust its electronic election equipment and that it should switch to a system in which it only used paper ballots and counted those ballots by hand. Continue reading...

Georgia in focus: A fragile coalition around Atlanta helped shift the state’s politics, but as the midterms loom the cracks are showing“Very normal” is how Rupal Vaishnav describes his experience as an entrenched resident of Atlanta. He moved to the city at the age of nine, after immigrating to the US from India in the late 1970s. When his parents settled in Clayton county – a suburb south of downtown that’s now home to the world’s busiest airport – it was still largely populated by white families living in 60s-era bungalows; before that, it was the fictional setting for Gone With the Wind.Vaishnav was one of two Indian kids in school – the other was his brother – and a strict vegetarian who spoke Gujarati at home. But he joined the school’s air force junior reserves, studied mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech and earned his law degree from Georgia State. For the past five years, he’s worked in the local district attorney’s office and this year he ran to be a state judge in Forsyth county, once infamous for its lynchings. “The biggest thing I struggled with growing up and that I still see in my son are the identity conflicts,” Vaishnav says, now 50. “Are you American? Are you Indian? You have to get comfortable knowing the two cultures. It’s a balancing act that you get better at over time.” Continue reading...