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White House hopes climate and healthcare plan will mark turning point for Biden’s presidency and boost Democrats in the midterms

Justice department says making Mar-a-Lago affidavit public could jeopardize investigation as White House lawyers receive subpoenas in separate caseA federal judge in Florida will hear arguments on Thursday over whether to make public an affidavit used to justify a search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, as broadening legal disputes on multiple fronts intensify against the former president and his allies.In a 13-page filing on Monday, the justice department objected to efforts to unseal the document, arguing that doing so would “jeopardize the integrity of this national security investigation” into Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most closely held records after leaving the White House. The prosecutors said that the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort contained sensitive information about witnesses who are key and acknowledged that its investigation involved “highly classified material”. Continue reading...

After Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, relations between the countries are at a delicate stage. There must be no miscalculation

Tamara Cunningham says she believes her son who fatally shot himself struggled with brain trauma from playing footballThe mother of a Delaware man who shot himself to death after driving into a US Capitol barricade over the weekend says she believes he was struggling with brain trauma from growing up playing football.Richard Aaron York III’s mother, Tamara Cunningham, said she suspects his past as a high school football player left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain condition colloquially known as CTE. Some football players develop CTE because of repeated head blows that are common to the sport. Continue reading...

After realising I had time to either do household chores or write, I decided to give up caring and be creative insteadWhen I lived alone, my sisters would joke that I’d have them eat over the sink if I could, to avoid crumbs.I was organised. When I left the house at 6am for the early reporting shift at the local paper, you wouldn’t have known anyone had slept in my house. The bed was perfectly made, the breakfast things cleared away, the bathroom mirror wiped clean and the hairdryer placed neatly in the drawer.Saima Mir is a freelance journalist and author of the 2021 novel The Khan Continue reading...

Unsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against former president. Plus, weeks of heat above 100F will be the norm in much of US

We need more politicians who stand by their principles, even if it costs them everythingOn Tuesday, Wyoming Republicans determine the fate of Representative Liz Cheney, the putative leader of the anti-Trump forces in the Republican party.Six days after the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol – when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump – Cheney charged on the House floor that “the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at 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...

More than five million people became first-time gun owners during the pandemic as gun sales to the community rose by about 43%Vivian Moon, a real estate agent and artist, had never felt particularly afraid as a woman living alone in Buena Park, a small California city outside Los Angeles. But when violent attacks against Asian women and seniors increased across the US early last year, she became disillusioned with the police’s ability – and willingness – to protect people who looked like her.So, like many other Americans of Asian descent, she decided to buy a gun. “I realized I have to take ownership of how I want to live my life,” said Moon, 33. Continue reading...

Questions of free speech offer no simple answers, but it’s clear that this is a watershed moment in comedyIf we don’t defend free speech, we live in tyranny. That’s the tenor of the coverage following the attack on Salman Rushdie. So is it also our take when a comedian uses “extreme racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny” onstage? That’s the question surrounding the cancellation of Jerry Sadowitz’s show on the Edinburgh fringe, and – spoiler alert – I, a mere comedy critic, am not certain of the answer.What I do know is that this marks a watershed moment. Many of the earlier cancel culture v comedy furores have involved powerful acts (your Dave Chappelles, Ricky Gervaises and Jimmy Carrs) not being cancelled at all. I’m being silenced, they yell, halfway through their Netflix specials.Brian Logan is the Guardian’s comedy critic and the artistic director of Camden People’s theatreDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Employees say they have been fired and written up after reporting sexual harassment to corporate HRWorkers at McDonald’s, the largest fast-food chain in the world, are highlighting sexual harassment and retaliation against workers at its stores, an issue they say persists despite claims of reforms and changes by McDonald’s in recent years.Rosalia Manuel of San Jose, California worked at McDonald’s for 24 years, first starting when she was 17 years old. Continue reading...

The Ballon d’Or winners come together to discuss England’s Euros triumph, next year’s World Cup and their teams’ sororityIt’s been three years since Olympique Lyonnais acquired a majority stake in Seattle-based NWSL club Reign FC, forging an international sisterhood between women’s clubs unlike any model in professional sports.The partnership has brought some of the world’s best known players into the same organizational stable, including Lyon’s Ada Hegerberg (who won the Ballon d’Or in 2018) and OL Reign’s Megan Rapinoe (who claimed the trophy in 2019). Ahead of their clubs’ joint US tour, Rapinoe and Hegerberg sat down for an exclusive conversation with the Guardian to discuss their teams’ unique sorority, their impressions of England’s epochal Euro 2022 triumph and their hopes for next year’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. Continue reading...

I inadvertently became a critic of Tinder a decade ago, and the stories I hear about apps are only getting worse

The campaigns of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance have been tarnished by bizarre remarks and unscrupulous historiesIn Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance, the Republican party has three celebrities running for Senate in November.The only problem? At the moment, each of them looks as though they might lose. Continue reading...

The FAA was alerted and said the piece appeared to be a metal sleeve from a wing flap of a large passenger jet; no one was hurtA metal object believed to have fallen from a trans-Atlantic jet came crashing down outside the Maine state house, landing with a loud bang just feet from a capitol police worker, officials said on Monday.The Federal Aviation Administration was alerted on Friday and returned to the State House on Monday as it investigated the object, according to the capitol police chief Matthew Clancy. Continue reading...

Allen Weisselberg has been accused of taking more than $1.7m from the company, including rent, car payments and school tuitionDonald Trump’s longtime finance chief is expected to plead guilty as soon as Thursday in a tax evasion case that is the only criminal prosecution to arise from a long-running investigation into the former president’s company, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization, was scheduled to be tried in October on allegations he took more than $1.7m in off-the-books compensation from the company, including rent, car payments and school tuition. Continue reading...

The former New York mayor has been identified as a key figure in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 electionDonald Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia that has been examining efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state by the former president and his allies, a source briefed on the matter confirmed on Monday.The move to designate Giuliani, 78, as a target – as opposed to a subject – raises the legal stakes for the ex-New York mayor, identified as a key figure in the attempt to reverse the former president’s electoral defeat to Joe Biden in the state. Continue reading...

Unsealing the document could reveal the scope of the inquiry against Donald Trump, whose team is rattled by recent eventsThe US Justice Department has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top Trump aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the Justice Department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes. Continue reading...

Campaign to remove George Gascón did not have the required signatures in a major blow to police unions and conservativesA campaign to recall the progressive Los Angeles district attorney, George Gascón, did not get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot and will not move forward, election officials announced on Monday.The failure of the initiative to remove Gascón in the middle of his first term is a victory for criminal justice reform advocates and a major blow to police unions and conservative groups that have staunchly opposed efforts to reduce mass incarceration and hold officers accountable for misconduct. Continue reading...

Neurologist Ricardo Cruciani, 68, convicted of 12 counts including predatory sexual assault rape, was found dead at Rikers Island jailA once-prominent neurologist convicted last month of sexually abusing patients killed himself on Monday at a New York City jail, two people familiar with the matter said.Ricardo Cruciani, 68, was found unresponsive in a shower area in part of the city’s notorious Rikers Island complex, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly and did so on condition of anonymity. Continue reading...

FBI took records including some top secret national security files after a search of the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago propertyDonald Trump has demanded the return of some documents seized by the US justice department in an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida last week – apparently under the impression that posts on his Truth Social platform carry legal weight.In a post on Sunday, the former president wrote: “By copy of this Truth, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!” Continue reading...

Source close to Donald Trump suggested the justice department would find it trickier to prosecute a presidential candidateDonald Trump “has to” announce a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 in the next two weeks, according to a senior source close to Trump, if the former president wants to head off being indicted under the Espionage Act after the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago last week.In communications reviewed by the Guardian, the source indicated Trump needed to announce because politically it would be harder for the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to indict a candidate for office than a former president out of the electoral running. Continue reading...

Yaqub Talib, the brother of ex-NFL cornerback Aqib Talib, is accused of shooting Mike Hickmon after an argument turned physicalThe man accused of shooting to death a beloved Texas youth football coach has turned himself into law enforcement.Yaqub Talib, brother of retired NFL cornerback Aqib Talib, is accused of shooting Mike Hickmon, a youth football coach, after an argument on Saturday night between opposing coaching staff turned physical and then into a shooting. Multiple children were present at the time of the shooting, Lancaster police said in a press release. Continue reading...

More than 2,000 workers demand that Kaiser Permanente expand the workforce and improve access to care for patientsThousands of mental health workers in California are going on strike to demand that Kaiser Permanente, America’s largest non-profit HMO, better provide “desperately needed” services.As the US grapples with an increase in anxiety and depression brought on by the pandemic, Kaiser patients are waiting months for therapy sessions, according to the union representing the workers. Continue reading...

Cavers discovered Abby about 500ft below while exploring the Berome Moore cave systemCavers in Missouri recently rescued a dog stranded hundreds of feet underground almost two months after the animal disappeared from her family’s home.A small group of cavers discovered Abby, a 13-year-old pet, while exploring the passages of the 18-mile Berome Moore cave system in Perry county on 6 August. They alerted the local fire department and members of the Cave Research Foundation at the surface of their discovery about 500ft below. Continue reading...

It used to be fun holidaying with the French, but now the rest of Europe doesn’t seem to know what to make of usIt used to be a reliable middle-class hack: if you wanted a zero-effort holiday, with no decisions except whether to have a pina colada or a beer, you went somewhere French-run and all-inclusive. The business model relies upon a large number of abstemious French people who prefer aqua aerobics, and a small but noticeable number of quietly extravagant British people. Then you would chat to them in halting French, and they would take over in much more expert English.French parenting is incredibly harsh, and the swimming pool resounds to the sound of: “Non, crétin!” Who knows what this does to the long-term adult prospects of the three-year-old miscreants, but it makes the bar incredibly peaceful and nice, since only the kids who aren’t carrying on are in there. This is the way it’s been for years. Continue reading...

Lethal injection of Joe Nathan James Jr may have taken longer than any other recorded in US history, according to an analysisAlabama’s execution of Joe Nathan James Jr last month may have taken longer than any other lethal injection in recorded American history, and no death penalty ever administered in the US may have taken quite as long, according to an analysis by a human rights organization.An examination by Reprieve US of James’s execution estimates that it took Alabama officials between three and three and a half hours to carry out the lethal injection, a duration that the organization argues violates constitutional protections against inhumane punishments. Continue reading...

While Trump’s coup attempt may have failed, McConnell’s own machinations have proven highly effectiveThe January 6 committee has now revealed how far Donald Trump was willing to go to prevent the peaceful and lawful transfer of power from his presidency to that of Joe Biden. Yet, his deadly serious attempt to upend American democracy also had a slapdash quality to it, reflecting Trump’s own impulsive nature and his reliance on a group of schemers – Rudy Giuliani, Mike Flynn, Sidney Powell, Roger Stone and John Eastman among them – of limited ability. It is not entirely surprising that Trump’s coup failed.Another brazen GOP action, however, has succeeded – this one engineered by the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, whose chess-like skills of political strategizing put to shame Trump’s powerful but limited game of bluster and bullying. The act to which I refer is McConnell’s theft of Barack Obama’s 2016 appointment to the supreme court, a radical deed that has dimmed somewhat in public consciousness even as it proved crucial to fashioning a rightwing supreme court willing to overturn Roe v Wade and to destabilize American politics and American democracy in the process.Gary Gerstle is Mellon professor of American history emeritus at Cambridge and a Guardian US columnist. His new book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, will be published in April Continue reading...

If Brittney Griner weren’t a Black woman, her story would have looked very differentBrittney Griner is still in jail. And last week, the Phoenix Mercury star was officially sentenced to nine years in prison on drug charges. Griner’s fate is excessive and unjust, that much is clear. But more than that, it’s a stunning indictment of how America continues to fail Black women – both on and off its shores.Griner is one of the most accomplished and impressive female basketball players in the world. After an astonishing college career and becoming a number one WNBA draft pick, the ESPY award-winning, all-American champion who has also helped secure multiple Olympic gold medals for team USA is widely thought of as one of the best to ever play the game. And yet, in the early days of her arrest, there was near radio silence about her unfair detention.Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

The US supreme court decision ending the federal right to abortion has led to legal chaos and a de facto ban for manyA day after the supreme court upended reproductive freedom by overturning Roe v Wade, nine out of Arizona’s 10 clinics stopped providing abortions.Arizona was not among the states with trigger laws that automatically banned most abortions after the ruling in June overruled 50 years of legal precedent, yet a slew of confusing and contradictory laws meant abortion care became virtually impossible to access anyway.A so-called personhood lawA ban after 15 weeks due to take effect in late SeptemberA 19th-century law banning all abortions Continue reading...

CDC’s position should be countered by exploiting the science and our clear capabilities of fully containing the virusLast week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidelines for the Covid pandemic, heralding “a new strategy [that] pivots from wide approach to a focus on the most vulnerable”. Coincident with the opening of schools across the country, relaxation of some restrictions, such as quarantining and physical distancing, will help keep children in school, a cardinal objective. Sadly, the CDC missed an opportunity to help protect seniors and highly vulnerable Americans.Back in late December 2021, with the onslaught of the Omicron BA 1 wave, the CDC came up with a five-day isolation policy without any evidence that it would prevent the spread of infections to others, and without advocating the need for rapid antigen testing. Indeed, multiple studies have shown that most people are still infectious after five days, with even rigorous assessment that shows the virus that can be cultured from some people with Omicron infections at two weeks. Ending isolation by arbitrarily picking a short time duration, with or without symptoms, and advocating masking, has undoubtedly promoted the spread of infections. By steadfastly continuing to endorse this flawed CDC guidance, our public health agency has failed its namesake mission of controlling and preventing Covid disease.Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine and executive vice-president of Scripps Research Continue reading...

Foreign ministry spokesperson says freedom of speech does not justify insults upon religion. Plus, Black women around the world share their birth storiesGood morning.Salman Rushdie and his supporters are to blame for the attack in which he was stabbed repeatedly at a public appearance in New York state, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson has said.Has the other man who was injured in the attack spoken out? Yes, Ralph Henry Reese who was on stage with Rushdie has described the lead-up to the attack and what was going through his head when the assailant first jumped on stage.How is Rushdie doing? Salman Rushdie’s “road to recovery has begun” but “will be long”, the novelist’s agent has said.How did one wild week in Washington change the game for Biden and Trump? It was a tale of two presidents: Biden at his zenith, gaining praise for a “hot streak” and earning comparisons with the master legislator Lyndon Johnson; Trump at his nadir, under criminal investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and earning comparisons with the 1920s gangster Al Capone. Continue reading...

Long commutes to and from work, exorbitant childcare costs, ongoing concerns over exposure to Covid citedThe Covid-19 pandemic sent millions of workers in the US from working in offices to working remotely. As unemployment benefits ended, vaccines rolled out, and reopenings expanded, employers and commercial real estate groups have been pushing to try to get workers back into offices.But the pandemic further exposed the issues in returning to office, from long commutes to and from work, exorbitant childcare costs, ongoing concerns over exposure to Covid-19 variants and now Monkeypox, workers are pushing to keep working from home as an option as employers force a return to the office. Continue reading...

In the struggles of many decades, we have asked the novelist to carry the weight of our anxieties. Can we now just let him be human?In a 2017 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David launches his idea for a new show on Jimmy Kimmel’s talkshow. It is to be called Fatwa! The Musical – a Broadway rendering of the Salman Rushdie affair. This angers an ayatollah in Iran, who issues a fatwa on David’s life. All his backers vanish, he walks around in a disguise unable to live his life, and hires an overly paranoid, aggressive bodyguard, who also has very demanding taste in food and thread counts.Fed up, David seeks out, and is granted an audience with Salman Rushdie. In a terrific coup, the man who receives David is played by Rushdie himself. Rushdie sits David down, chides him for being afraid and tells him the biggest secret about being the subject of a fatwa – “fatwa sex”.Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

A new Netflix documentary paints a nuanced portrait of two young people at the center of a catfishing story that captivated AmericaTwo sporting scandals dominated the American news cycle at the start of 2013: the disgrace of Lance Armstrong and the humiliation of college footballer Manti Te’o. But if Armstrong’s belated confession that he doped to win all seven of his Tour de France titles told a story about the rotten heart of American success that felt, four decades after Watergate, somehow traditional, the Te’o affair seemed to offer a warning about the dangers of the internet at a time when techno-optimism was still all the rage – before bot accounts, misinformation, and online harassment became features of everyday life. According to a new two-part documentary about Te’o’s ordeal, however, premiering this Tuesday on Netflix, the scandal needs to be understood as more than the simple tale of catfishing as which it’s often presented. As it’s framed in The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, the romantic hoax at the heart of Te’o’s national humiliation was about much deeper and more interesting questions of identity, faith and belonging – for minorities in particular – in early 21st century America.Almost a decade after the story became meme-fodder, the basic outline of the Te’o scandal is still fairly common knowledge: Te’o, a star Samoan-Hawaiian linebacker at Notre Dame, claimed that his grandmother and girlfriend had died on the same day in December 2012. An outpouring of national sympathy fired Te’o to new heights of excellence on the field, Notre Dame finished the regular season undefeated, and Te’o seemed destined to become a first-round pick in the 2013 NFL draft. There was only one problem, though, and in January 2013 that problem became international news: Te’o’s girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, was not real. In fact, Kekua, who purported to be a student at Stanford and with whom Te’o had pursued a purely online relationship, was the Facebook creation of a young man – also, like Te’o, of Samoan ancestry – from Seattle. Continue reading...

Just because some selfish walrus-gawking raspeballs couldn’t keep a safe distance from her, she was killed by the fish cops

The Satanic Verses author didn’t plan to become a hero, but as he recovers from this attack, the world must stand by himA long time ago – 7 December 1992, to be exact – I was backstage at a Toronto theatre, taking off a Stetson. With two other writers, Timothy Findley and Paul Quarrington, I’d been performing a medley of 1950s country and western classics, rephrased for writers – Ghost Writers in the Sky, If I Had the Wings of an Agent, and other fatuous parodies of that nature. It was a PEN Canada benefit of that era: writers dressed up and made idiots of themselves in aid of writers persecuted by governments for things they’d written.Just as the three of us were bemoaning how awful we’d been, there was a knock on the door. Backstage was locked down, we were told. Secret agents were talking into their sleeves. Salman Rushdie had been spirited into the country. He was about to appear on stage with Bob Rae, the premier of Ontario, the first head of government in the world to support him in public. “And you, Margaret, as past president of PEN Canada, are going to introduce him,” I was told.Margaret Atwood is a novelist Continue reading...

The US Open champion is preparing to face Serena Williams, while fending off familiar questions over her resilienceAs Emma Raducanu fielded questions before her debut at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati, a wry smile slowly spread across her face and she jokingly held her head in her hands. It is a familiar sight in her press conferences these days as the same question, phrased differently and often by local journalists, has followed her on every stop of the tour: are you feeling the pressure?“I just lost count how many times I’ve been asked this question,” she said. “If I lose 2,000 points so be it, I’ll start again from the bottom. I know I can do something that no one else has done. I qualified and won the US Open, so I can start from the beginning, I can start from zero and I’m not afraid of that.” Continue reading...

Crash happened at fund-raiser for victims of fire that killed 10 on 5 August as suspect then went on to kill his mother, police sayOne person died and another 17 people were injured when a car plowed into a crowd gathered at a Pennsylvania bar Saturday evening for a fundraiser benefiting families devastated by a house fire that killed 10 earlier this month, according to authorities.The driver was arrested shortly afterward in connection with the beating to death of his mother nearby, police added. Continue reading...

Larry Hogan describes comparisons of the FBI to Nazi Germany’s secret police, made by Florida senator Rick Scott, as dangerousA handful of Republican governors have criticized the “outrageous rhetoric” of their party colleagues in the US Congress, who have accused federal law enforcement officers of a politicized attack on former president Donald Trump after executing a court-approved search warrant on his Florida home this week.Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican moderate, described attacks by party members as both “absurd” and “dangerous”, after a week in which certain Republicans have compared the FBI to the Gestapo and fundraised off the slogan: “Defund the FBI”. Continue reading...

Police did not determine motive for the man’s actions, but no indication he was targeting Congress members, who are in recessA man drove into a barricade near the US Capitol in Washington DC on early Sunday morning, fired several shots into the air after his vehicle ignited, and then shot himself to death, according to police.Officials were quick to note they had not determined a motive for the man’s actions, though they did say there was no indication he was targeting any Congress members, who were in recess at the time. Continue reading...

Five-member group including a senator will meet president and attend banquet hosted by foreign ministerA US congressional delegation has arrived in Taiwan, days after China held military drills around the island in retaliation for the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.The five-member delegation, led by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, will meet President Tsai Ing-wen and attend a banquet hosted by the foreign minister, Joseph Wu, during the visit, according to Taiwan’s foreign ministry. Continue reading...