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Will your small business face greater scrutiny from the IRS? Will your tax bill go up as a result? The answer to both questions: don’t panicThe tax man is receiving a whopping $80bn thanks to the Biden administration’s recently passed Inflation Reduction Act. Some people are losing it.“It’s a middle finger to the American public,” says Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. Small business will be the first to suffer, Joe Hinchman, executive vice-president at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, told the New York Post. “The IRS [Internal Revenue Service] will have to target small and medium businesses because they won’t fight back,” he said. “We’ve seen this play out before … the IRS says, ‘We’re going after the rich’ but when you’re trying to raise that much money, the rich can only get you so far.” Continue reading...

A record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of billionaires, who pay a lower tax rate than the average American. This is indefensibleOn Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019.Over those 30 years, the richest 1% of families increased their share of total national wealth from 27% to 34%. Families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2%.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

Malcolm Kenyatta talks to the Guardian about why the deadly incident at Roxborough high school hit him like a ‘gut punch’A day after a shooting killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded four other children following a football scrimmage at Philadelphia’s Roxborough high school, Malcolm Kenyatta visited his alma mater to talk to students and staffers for the first time in more than a year.It had been well over a decade since Kenyatta, a 32-year-old Black state legislator in Pennsylvania representing north Philadelphia, roamed those same halls as an ambitious student-body president. One of Pennsylvania’s youngest legislators and its first openly gay lawmaker of color, since he was elected in 2018, Kenyatta has advocated for reducing gun violence in a state where Republicans have long dominated the legislature despite having a Democratic governor. Continue reading...

Group allegedly discussed paramilitary training and ‘quick reaction force’ to get weapons to Capitol quickly on January 6The highest-profile prosecution to stem from the January 6 attack on the US Capitol gets under way on Monday in Washington DC, where the founder and four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group will stand trial in federal court on civil war-era charges of seditious conspiracy.It’s a high-stakes trial for the US government, which will attempt to prove that Stewart Rhodes and his associates spent weeks marshaling members of the group to prepare to use violence to deny the certification of the 2016 election and keep Donald Trump in the White House. Continue reading...

With repression at home and aggression abroad, the imperial ambitions of China’s ‘paramount leader’ should worry the worldLike fearsome dictators throughout history, Xi Jinping has a tender side. He loves his mum. In a touching puff piece on Mother’s Day this year, state TV showed China’s strongman president strolling hand in hand with 96-year-old Qi Xin, a Communist party veteran and proud mother of the paramount leader.

Seven people died in 1982 after taking painkillers from bottle someone – police do not know who – had slipped cyanide pills intoForty years after the infamous Tylenol murders killed her father and two other close relatives, a Wisconsin woman refuses to take the popular pain pills.Kasia Janus also always verifies products are properly sealed before she buys anything at stores, she said in a recently published series of interviews with CNN that described the gut-wrenching legacy left behind for her by the unsolved Tylenol killings, which made tampering with medications as well as other consumer goods a federal crime but remain unsolved. Continue reading...

The movie, and TV shows like it, merely add women’s mental and physical suffering to the misogynist mixThere is scarcely a scene in Blonde, Netflix’s new Marilyn biopic, in which Monroe is not topless, crying, being raped or having a forced abortion. Thinking gritty realism? Think again. The whole thing is shot in dreamy high-glamour soft focus, with arty choices and the occasional cameo from a squeaky-voiced foetus. As for realism, some of this stuff didn’t even happen – there is no evidence for the abortions, for example – and much is left out. Filmmaker Andrew Dominik told interviewers Monroe’s activism and success wresting control from a male-dominated industry – forming her own production company, for example – were “not so interesting to me”.At present there’s something of a fetish for biopics about exploited female celebrities, which tout themselves as feminist while dwelling lasciviously on the suffering of their subjects. Take Pam & Tommy, about the famous sex tape, or Judy, which portrays Judy Garland in her last days, or the endless revisiting of the unravellings of Princess Diana, in ever tighter closeup.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

The polls show where this is headed, and it will take years to repair the harm done to the economyKwasi Kwarteng’s anything-but-mini budget was one of the most dramatic shifts in UK economic policy that we have ever seen – a bigger change, perhaps, than if Boris Johnson had been succeeded by Keir Starmer rather than Liz Truss.The new government is focused on the right objective – to increase the underlying rate of growth in the UK economy, which has been too low since the global financial crisis. If we don’t find a way to address this, successive governments are going to be faced with a choice between not adequately funding public services or doing so at the price of a growing and politically unpopular tax burden. Increasing the growth rate will make politics easier whether you are on the centre-right or centre-left. Continue reading...

Siamak Namazi, convicted along with father on espionage charges, freed from Evin prison on one-week renewable furloughAn Iranian American businessman who has been imprisoned in Iran for nearly seven years has been released from Tehran’s Evin prison on a one-week, renewable furlough, the United Nations announced on Saturday.The release of detainee Siamak Namazi comes as his father, Baquer Namazi, is being allowed to leave Iran for medical treatment, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. Continue reading...

Twenty-seven reported dead in Florida and four in North Carolina as residents try to rebuild from one of most powerful recent stormsAs Hurricane Ian upended the lives of millions along the south-eastern United States, authorities sifting through the wreckage in Florida and the Carolinas were reporting a few dozen deaths as of Saturday, and the states’ residents were early in the stages of rebuilding from one of the strongest, most expensive hurricanes in recent American history.The storm had worked its way north after slamming into Florida and slowly weakening, gathering some of its strength back from the warm Atlantic Ocean waters before hitting South Carolina on Friday. It made its second US landfall in Georgetown, 60 miles north of Charleston, destroying parts of four popular piers, including two in Myrtle Beach. Continue reading...

Metrolink also suspends trains because ground underneath stretch of seaside track in southern California has shiftedMetrolink and Amtrak have suspended train services linking San Diego to Los Angeles – along with the rest of the US – because ground underneath a stretch of seaside track in southern California has shifted, according to officials.The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday that service has been suspended indefinitely in the community of San Clemente, on the border of Orange and San Diego counties. Continue reading...

Democratic challenger aiming to wrest governorship away from rightwing Abbott in November electionImmigration, abortion and border security all came up in Friday’s contentious, rapid-paced gubernatorial debate in Texas, where Beto O’Rourke is trying to help the Democrats wrest back the far-right leaning state from Greg Abbott and the Republicans.Abbott and his challenger O’Rourke kept their sole debate fierce and lively in spite of an almost completely empty venue on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus in Edinburg. The lack of a meaningful audience was one of several conditions imposed by the governor, according to O’Rourke’s camp, who described the offer to debate as a “take it or leave it” type of deal. Continue reading...

Families of those killed in May school shooting support Democrat in race against Texas governor Greg AbbottA small photo of Jacklyn Casarez, one of the children killed during the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, in May, graced the front of a greeting card held by Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke, who visited a Rio Grande Valley park Friday morning before the one and only staged debate with incumbent governor Greg Abbott.“Maybe you don’t consider yourself a political person,” Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was also killed in the 24 May shooting at Robb elementary, said Friday during a pre-debate news conference. Continue reading...

The story of a philandering star drew attention to an archetype based on our very low standards for straight menThis time last week I had no idea who Ned Fulmer was. If anyone had asked (which no one did) I’d have said it was that bloke from the Simpsons. It is not. Fulmer is a moderately famous internet personality who, until very recently, was a member of a YouTube crew called the Try Guys; as the name suggests, they’re a bunch of guys who try things. (Seven and a half million people have subscribed to their YouTube channel, so it seems they are pretty good at trying things.) In his spare time, it seems like Fulmer decided to try cheating on his wife with one of his employees: he was caught doing so and has now been booted out of the Try Guys. Like every celebrity who messes up, Fulmer has issued an apology via the Notes app and now appears to be trying to mend his marriage. Continue reading...

We knew the markets would react sharply to us and were prepared for that. These free-market zealots had no plan at allWatching the events since the introduction of the “Not a Budget”, I have sat with my head in my hands. You could almost weep for the lasting consequences of this show of arrogance, ideological obstinacy and incompetence. People’s homes, pensions and the public services they rely upon are all now at serious risk. It’s hard to comprehend just how badly they misjudged the situation and how little they prepared for taking over the highest offices of state.In his brilliant book The Great Crash, 1929, the economist JK Galbraith advises that to avoid a crash in the future you should put in place a vast range of institutional protections, but that the most important protection is memory.John McDonnell has been the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington since 1997. He was shadow chancellor from 2015 to 2020 Continue reading...

The Florida governor, having spent millions on migrant stunt, now passes the hat for disaster reliefFlorida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has become a familiar, and to some a reassuring, face on numerous television channels through the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Ian’s rampage through the state.But the near-constant presence of the Republican, who in less chaotic times limits his on-screen appearances largely to the Fox News faithful, is not sitting comfortably with others, nor are his appeals for public contributions for hurricane relief while he is using taxpayers’ money for “political stunts”. Continue reading...

UFC fighters must wear Dwayne Johnson’s Project Rock shoes under a new sponsorship deal, but the Guardian has learned they won’t see any of the proceeds from the lucrative pactIn the lead-up to the final fight on his UFC contract earlier this month, Nate Diaz took aim at Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson over the film star’s recently announced footwear deal with the UFC.“These shoes fucking suck,” Diaz said while holding up one of Johnson’s Project Rock shoes in front of the camera during an ESPN interview ahead of UFC 279. “Look at these shoes. They made me put this shit on. Fuck these shoes.” Continue reading...

The few Republican supporters of gun restrictions have faced backlash from the party faithfulWhen Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law this summer, he and congressional Democrats celebrated the enactment of the first significant gun control policy in decades in the US.The US president also acknowledged that the law, a bipartisan compromise brokered after the Uvalde tragedy that left 19 children and two adults dead, did not go nearly far enough to address the devastation caused by gun violence. Continue reading...

After the storm knocked out power and destroyed property, people scramble for shelter, funds and news of the missingFor Connie Irvin, 82, and her partner, Cheryl Lange, the cost of Hurricane Ian’s devastating tear across Florida was clear. “Our entire community is wiped out,” said Irvin.The pair lost their mobile home on Sanibel Island off the state’s west coast and are now homeless, staying in a motel inland about 35 miles away near Naples, Florida, that currently has no electricity. Continue reading...

Operators catering for inbound tourists enjoy best month for bookings in three years

Author Jarett Kobek never intended to make the case the focus of his book but he may have solved the 50-year-old mysteryWhen author Jarett Kobek started researching the Zodiac killer for a book during the pandemic, he didn’t want to become just another amateur sleuth claiming to have finally solved the case that’s gripped America for decades.Yet, that’s more or less what happened. Kobek came across Paul Doerr, a San Francisco Bay area man who died in 2007, who he thinks is likely responsible for the killings and is the subject of his book: How to Find Zodiac. Continue reading...

Richard Harvey, 74, says he ‘accidentally’ shot Joan Jacobson, 84, as she campaigned on his doorstep but faces assault chargesMichigan authorities have filed criminal charges against a man accused of shooting an elderly woman campaigning against abortion rights in the shoulder while she argued with his wife last week.Richard Alan Harvey, 74, had publicly claimed it was an accident when he shot the 84-year-old woman. But prosecutors from Ionia county, Michigan, charged him on Friday with one count each of assault with felonious assault, careless discharge of a gun causing injury, and reckless use of a firearm in a case that appears to serve as an extreme example of how heated the debate surrounding abortion in the US can become. Continue reading...

Five bodies identified after crash, with 80% of the plane itself recovered, officials sayThe bodies of six of the 10 victims in a floatplane crash in Washington state’s Puget Sound have been recovered and five have been identified, officials said on Friday.Eric Brooks, deputy director of Island county emergency management, confirmed that four additional victims had been identified, the Seattle Times reported. Gabby Hanna of Seattle, whose body was found shortly after the Labor Day weekend crash near Whidbey Island, was previously identified. Continue reading...

Twenty-one people dead with toll expected to rise after mega-storm carves wide path of devastation and moves northThe coast of South Carolina was hit on Friday with a direct strike from Hurricane Ian, the deadly mega-storm that carved a wide path of destruction on its earlier rampage through Florida.The eye of the hurricane crossed over land at Georgetown, between Myrtle Beach and the historic city of Charleston, after strengthening overnight in the Atlantic. Continue reading...

Building defaced hours before Putin announced annexation of Ukrainian territories and Russian forces killed 30 civiliansThe Russian consulate in New York has been vandalized with red spray paint, in an apparent protest against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Officers said they responded to an emergency call just after 1.30am on Friday reporting that paint had been sprayed across the facade of the consulate on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Continue reading...

Savannah Graziano’s death reviewed under measure requiring investigations of police shootings of unarmed peopleThe California department of justice is reviewing the death of a southern California teenager in a shootout with law enforcement this week under a state law requiring the agency to investigate police shootings involving the death of unarmed civilians.Savannah Graziano, 15, was killed on Tuesday amid a lengthy shootout between police and her father on a stretch of southern California highway. Continue reading...

Lawyer rejects ex-president’s argument that suit, centered on Trump’s denial that he raped her, should be dismissedThe writer suing Donald Trump for defamation after he denied having raped her in the mid-1990s accused him of stonewalling and trying to avoid a scheduled deposition as he tries to delay the case indefinitely.In a letter filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, a lawyer for E Jean Carroll also said Trump was “mistaken” in arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed altogether because the US government, and not he, was the proper defendant. Continue reading...

At least two people and three cats are seen being rescued from hurricane floodwater on Sanibel Island, Florida, in a US Coast Guard video released on Friday.Rescuers went door to door in search of people who wanted to be evacuated and posted several videos filmed on Thursday of airlifting missions in the affected area

Court martial clears Ryan Mays after prosecutors alleged he started blaze after failing to complete Navy Seal trainingA military court judge on Friday acquitted a US navy sailor charged with intentionally setting a fire that destroyed a billion-dollar warship and injured dozens onboard.During a nine-day trial at California’s Naval Base San Diego, military prosecutors argued that 21-year-old Ryan Mays ignited the USS Bonhomme Richard on purpose in the summer of 2020 because he was upset that he had dropped out of Navy Seal training. Continue reading...

Not all teams are as seemingly negligent as the Dolphins in the case of Tagovailoa, but that doesn’t change the league’s bottom line of its players only being of value when they’re on the fieldThere was a football game Thursday night between the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins. The Bengals won. Tyreek Hill had a gazillion receiving yards. There were plenty of highlight-reel moments. But who cares? All the play calling and blocking and stats pale in comparison to the night’s main storyline.Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa left the game on a stretcher after his head was violently slammed into the ground on a sack by Bengals defensive tackle Josh Tupou in the second quarter. Tagovailoa was immediately taken to a nearby hospital. The whole scene was a nightmare. Continue reading...

Wife of US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas holds tight to stolen election conspiracy in interview with January 6 committeeGinni Thomas, the hard-right conservative whose activities have raised conflict of interest concerns involving her husband, the US supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, has told the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that she still believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee, told reporters following the almost five-hour private interview with Thomas that she held fast to her claim that massive fraud in the 2020 election had put Joe Biden in the White House. When asked by reporters if Thomas still believed that to be true, Thompson replied: “Yes.” Continue reading...

The Florida governor ‘put politics aside’ to ask Joe Biden for federal – unlike when he voted against help for Hurricane Sandy victimsAs Hurricane Ian has devastated parts of Florida, the national political spotlight in America has shone brighter than ever on Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor, rising star of the hard right and probable presidential contender in 2024.Since his election in 2018, DeSantis has made his name as a ruthless culture-warrior, a Trump ally but also perhaps his most serious rival. Continue reading...

Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the US mainland, has battered south-west Florida with high winds, rain and storm surges Continue reading...

Adam Curtis’s BBC project, TraumaZone, show us extraordinary events though the eyes of ordinary people, and how ideologues betrayed themOne of the many glitteringly clever quotes circulated in the wake of Hilary Mantel’s death last week was something she said about history. The longer version is wonderful (what did she ever say that wasn’t?), but we’ll clip this bit: “Facts are not truth, though they are part of it … And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.” Yet using these fragments – “a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth” – Mantel could transport you so completely that you felt you were breathing the air of another century, feeling the emotions of other people, moving through other times.This has an intense value. And yet, there is a certain type of historian who concerns themself – or himself, let’s face it – very little with emotion, even though that is all anyone ordinary who was forced to live through events was feeling at the time. Anger, shock, hope, bewilderment, laughter, exhaustion, betrayal – these are the trifling human offcuts of some loftier story, largely unmentionable byproducts of the grand machinations of greater men than them.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistMarina Hyde will join Guardian Live for events in Manchester (4 October) and London (11 October) to discuss her new book, What Just Happened?! For details visit theguardian.com/guardianlive, and order the book from Guardian Bookshop Continue reading...

Photos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban flood waters make for popular hoaxes during heavy storms. But a mobile phone video filmed during Hurricane Ian’s assault on south-west Florida isn’t just another fishy story.A large, dark fish with distinct dorsal fins was filmed thrashing around an inundated Fort Myers backyard. Experts were divided over whether the clip showed a shark or another large fish. Nevertheless, some Twitter users nicknamed the hapless fish the 'street shark'

Many western analysts are clearly hoping Putin’s disastrous Ukraine war brings his downfall. But the track record in these cases isn’t greatVladimir Putin’s 21 September mobilization order, which aims to deploy 300,000 reservists to Ukraine, and possibly as many as 1.2 million, is an act of desperation aimed at saving a faltering war that he now owns. But his military call-up is also a huge gamble. For 22 years Putin has solidified his rule through an implicit pact with the Russian people: don’t make political waves and you will live comfortably. His mobilization order has broken that pact, and many Russians are taking to the streets or running to the border to flee the country.It’s not hyperbole to suggest that Putin is facing his biggest challenge since becoming president in 2000. A leader who once seemed infallible and irreplaceable suddenly appears vulnerable, so much so that the media is now speculating about whether Putin might lose power.Rajan Menon is the director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, a professor emeritus at the Powell School, City College, and a senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies, Columbia. He is the co-author of Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War OrderDaniel R DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek, among other publications Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world Continue reading...

Man films fish ‘flopping around’ in neighbour’s garden but experts are split over identificationPhotos and videos of sharks and other marine life swimming in suburban floodwaters make for popular hoaxes during heavy storms. But a mobile phone video filmed during Hurricane Ian’s assault on south-west Florida isn’t just another fishy story.The video, which showed a large, dark fish with distinct dorsal fins thrashing around an inundated Fort Myers back yard, racked up more than 12m views on Twitter within a day, as users responded with disbelief and comparisons to the “Sharknado” film series. Continue reading...

While the British PM was choosing her words carefully, politicians in France were letting their clothes do the talkingWhile the British government responds to soaring energy prices with the canny distraction-technique of tanking the entire economy, the French – those smooth operators – slip into something warmer and more comfortable. Emmanuel Macron, having lately outgrown his Zelenskiy tribute wardrobe, is still in traditional workwear, but other members of the president’s government have been rocking something closer to country-casual this week, in an effort to encourage shivering French people to layer up rather than turn on the heating. Continue reading...

However, lack of information limits understanding whether the data suggests heightened enforcement or improved reportingMurder rose at an unprecedented rate in the United States in 2020 and likely rose again in 2021, but concrete answers about why this surge occurred have been hard to come by.New data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) provides enticing clues regarding the potential role of newly purchased firearms in the nationwide increase in murders. Continue reading...

Biden says storm could be deadliest in state’s history as it regains strength and heads for South Carolina. Plus, meet Uganda’s first female pro cyclist

Workers at the US insurance company vow to continue their efforts to organise as an independent labor movement takes holdWorkers at an office of US insurance giant Geico have embarked on a unionization campaign in the face of what they say are aggressive and unfair management tactics to prevent them from forming a labor union.Workers at the office of about 2,500 employees in Amherst, New York, near Buffalo, say they have faced deteriorating working conditions in the past two years under Geico CEO Todd Combs. Combs is an investment manager and protege of billionaire Warren Buffett, whose firm Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico – known across the US for its ads featuring its English-accented gecko mascot. Continue reading...

One of the fiercest storms to hit the US swept ashore, making landfall 125 miles south of Tampa Bay, and hit Fort MyersAs Carolinians braced for their dose of deadly Hurricane Ian on Friday, a massive swath of Florida lay underwater or covered in dangerous debris while one major population area allowed itself a small sigh of relief.The 3 million-plus residents of the Tampa Bay area in south-west Florida, dominated by the cities of Tampa, St Petersburg and Clearwater, had battened themselves down expecting the first direct hit from a hurricane there in a century. Continue reading...