US news | The Guardian

Demonstrations have kicked off across the US after supreme court ruling to overturn Roe v Wade Continue reading...

US women's national team forward Megan Rapinoe described the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade as "sad and cruel". The Supreme Court has ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States, upending the landmark Roe v Wade case from nearly 50 years ago.'It will completely exacerbate so many of the existing inequalities that we have in our country. It doesn't keep not one single person safer,' she said

The world’s biggest Black stars have turned to the genre not to pander to white tastes – but to remind fans where it came fromThis week, Drake treated fans to a surprise drop of his new album Honestly, Nevermind. Its release, just nine months after his last record, Certified Lover Boy, received lukewarm reviews from critics, was unexpected. Fans had hoped for a return to the sounds he made famous: conventional, bassy, euphoric hip-hop tunes to brood to; agonised lyrics that would be the mainstay in Instagram captions for the rest of the summer. But instead, another curveball: track after track of deep house beats.A few days later, Beyoncé teased her new single, Break My Soul, featuring the distinctive bassline of the house classic Show Me Love by Robin S. It’s been hard to nail down Beyoncé’s sound in recent years. Her critically acclaimed 2016 album Lemonade featured some songs that entered new territory – take the country-tinged single Daddy Lessons – but on the whole, it was firmly anchored in the kind of R&B that has been popular and chart-topping for the past decade. But this single offered something new – an unmistakeable hark back to 90s house.Michelle Kambasha works in the music industryDo 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...

An abortion clinic escort in Jackson, Mississippi, said people without means would suffer from the supreme court overturning abortion rights, as anti-abortion protesters rallied in the carpark of the clinic. The supreme court has overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. Twenty-six states are expected to do so immediately, or as soon as practicable, including Mississippi, which has a trigger ban that will take effect within days

Threats to politicians, a strained police force and rising tourist numbers leave many concerned about their safetyAs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez placed personal items on a table before walking through metal detectors and stepping on to the floor of the US House last week the New York Democrat, who has been in Congress since 2019, said bluntly: “I have never felt safe here.”Security on Capitol Hill is under strain for both lawmakers and the police officers sworn to protect them, even as they relive the deadly insurrection last year amid the ongoing House January 6 committee hearings. Continue reading...

Analysts say more voters should turn out in the wake of the supreme court ruling – but that could help Republicans too“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” Joe Biden told American voters in the wake of the US supreme court’s decision to scrap abortion rights.The US president was merely echoing a chorus of Democrats urging voters to elect pro abortion-rights lawmakers in November’s midterm elections in a bid to wrest greater control of Congress and perhaps allow abortion rights to be enshrined in legislation. Continue reading...

Soon after the supreme court struck down abortion protection, pro-choice demonstrators took to the streetsMassive protests swept across the US in response to the supreme court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion.Soon after the decision was released on Friday, reversing federal reproductive protections that have been in place for half a century, pro-choice demonstrators began gathering in major cities and smaller towns in a wide range of communities and regions. Continue reading...

California, Oregon and Washington pledged to defend access and protect those seeking care as the US came to grips with losing Roe v WadeDemocratic state governors of California, Oregon and Washington issued a new commitment to enshrine abortion rights across the west coast on Friday, as the US grappled with the supreme court’s ruling removing the federal right to abortion.Calling their states a “a safe haven for all people seeking abortions and other reproductive health care services”, California governor Gavin Newsom, Oregon governor Kate Brown, and Washington governor Jay Inslee pledged to defend access to reproductive healthcare and protect those who cross their borders from other states seeking care. Continue reading...

Disney, JP Morgan, Levi Strauss, Microsoft and others are offering to cover travel expenses but face a Republican backlashSome of America’s largest companies moved swiftly to protect their employees’ access to abortion after Friday’s supreme court decision to end the constitutional right to an abortion in the US. The moves are likely to deepen an expanding rift between conservative Republicans and corporate America.Disney, JP Morgan, Levi Strauss and Microsoft were among the companies to tell staff they would cover employee travel expenses for abortions in light of the supreme court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that the constitution generally protects the right to choose an abortion. Continue reading...

Those in more progressive states assured people that abortion is still legal while Republicans framed it as a celebratory occasionThe US supreme court has ruled that the constitution does not protect the right to an abortion, opening the door for states to ban or severely restrict abortion access. In several states, abortion becomes immediately illegal, while other states have already taken steps to ban abortion.The people who will enforce these anti-abortion laws are attorneys general, the top legal authority for each state. Within hours of the supreme court overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, nearly every state’s attorney general released a statement. Continue reading...

Kamala Harris decried the supreme court's decision to overturn the right to an abortion. She said: 'Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the healthcare and reproductive care that they had this morning.' The decision by the court's conservative majority overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half of all US states

Fourteen Republicans vote with majority for first major gun reform legislation in nearly 30 yearsThe US House on Friday passed a bipartisan bill to strengthen federal gun regulations, bringing an end to decades of congressional inaction and sending the historic legislation to Joe Biden’s desk.Passage of the bill came a day after the supreme court overturned a New York law regulating handgun ownership, a significant blow for proponents of gun reform. Continue reading...

President says conservative justices’ ruling to eliminate the federal right to abortion mean ‘the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk’Joe Biden condemned the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade on Friday, saying the conservative justices’ ruling to eliminate the federal right to abortion access represented “a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error”.“With Roe gone, let’s be very clear: the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” Biden said. “This is an extreme and dangerous path the court is now taking us on.” Continue reading...

Lawmakers react with joy after Roe v Wade overturned, with Texas attorney general Ken Paxton declaring an ‘annual holiday’Shortly after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and removed the federal right to abortion in America, Republican officials and politicians and conservative figures began reacting with glee.Several referenced their belief in God – including one in a public press release – while at least one declared a holiday. Continue reading...

Joe Biden has decried the supreme court’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, warning that it risks the health of women nationwide. The court had taken away a constitutional right from Americans, Biden said in a speech from the White House, on a 'sad day for the court and for the country'

Moves were swift in many of the thirteen US states which have previously passed abortion-banning ‘trigger laws’On the day that the US supreme court ruled to overturn Roe v Wade, stripping constitutional protections for reproductive health, a slew of US states immediately moved to ban abortion across Republican-run swathes of America.The moves were swift in many of the 13 US states which have previously passed abortion-banning “trigger laws” designed to come into effect when the federal right to abortion was removed. Continue reading...

The US supreme court has struck down the nationwide right to abortion that was established by the Roe v Wade decision. The result is expected to send hundreds of thousands of people in 26 states hostile to abortion elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy. More than half of US states will outlaw abortion as soon as is feasible.A draft opinion leaked last month showed the court was prepared to overturn the 1973 landmark decision

Chuck Schumer condemns justices on ‘the extremist Maga court’ but conservative lawmakers move swiftly to trigger abortion bansOutrage and disappointment swept the US after the supreme court decision overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, upending federal reproductive protections set nearly 50 years ago in the landmark Roe v Wade case.Democrats decried the opinion as a painful blow to rights for millions. Continue reading...

The supreme court has overturned Roe v Wade – here is the dissenting opinion by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and KaganAfter today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. The majority accomplishes that result without so much as considering how women have relied on the right to choose or what it means to take that right away. The majority’s refusal even to consider the life-altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment of its decision.One last consideration counsels against the majority’s ruling: the very controversy surrounding Roe and Casey. The majority accuses Casey of acting outside the bounds of the law to quell the conflict over abortion – of imposing an unprincipled “settlement” of the issue in an effort to end “national division”. But that is not what Casey did. As shown above, Casey applied traditional principles of stare decisis – which the majority today ignores – in reaffirming Roe. Casey carefully assessed changed circumstances (none) and reliance interests (profound). It considered every aspect of how Roe’s framework operated. It adhered to the law in its analysis, and it reached the conclusion that the law required. True enough that Casey took notice of the “national controversy” about abortion: the court knew in 1992, as it did in 1973, that abortion was a “divisive issue”. But Casey’s reason for acknowledging public conflict was the exact opposite of what the majority insinuates. Casey addressed the national controversy in order to emphasize how important it was, in that case of all cases, for the Court to stick to the law. Would that today’s majority had done likewise.“The American people’s belief in the rule of law would be shaken if they lost respect for this Court as an institution that decides important cases based on principle, not ‘social and political pressures.’ There is a special danger that the public will perceive a decision as having been made for unprincipled reasons when the court overrules a controversial ‘watershed’ decision, such as Roe. A decision overruling Roe would be perceived as having been made ‘under fire’ and as a ‘surrender to political pressure.’”This has been excerpted from the US supreme court’s minority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It has been edited to remove some legal citations Continue reading...

Nancy Pelosi has responded to the supreme court's overturning of Roe v Wade, ending constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years, calling it 'an evisceration of Americans' rights'. The court's decision is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half of US states. The decision, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been fortified by three appointees of former president Donald Trump

Millions of women are now less free than men, in the functioning of their own bodies and in the paths of their own livesThe story is not about the court. Today, the sword that has long been hanging over American women’s heads finally fell: the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, ending the nationwide right to an abortion. This has long been expected, and long dreaded, by those in the reproductive rights movement, and it has long been denied by those who wished to downplay the court’s extremist lurch. The coming hours will be consumed with finger pointing and recriminations. But the story is not about who was right and who was wrong.Nor is the story about the judiciary’s crumbling legitimacy, or the supreme court’s fractious internal politics. In the coming days, our attention will be called to the justices themselves – to their feelings, to their careers, to their safety. We will be distracted by the stench of partisanship and scandal that emanates from the shadowy halls of One First Street; by the justices’ grievance-airing and petty backbiting in public; or by their vengeful paranoid investigation into the leak of a draft of Samuel Alito’s opinion some weeks ago. We will be scolded not to protest outside their houses, and we will be prevented, by high fences and heavy gates and the presence of armed cops, from protesting outside the court itself. But the story is not about the supreme court. Continue reading...

Why, and how, a decision opposed by a majority of Americans came about has everything to do with political power, experts sayThe short version of how Americans lost their right to terminate a pregnancy might be summed up in one name: Trump.The real estate tycoon and reality-TV star first shocked the world by winning the US presidency, then rewarded his base by confirming three supreme court justices to a nine-member bench, thus rebalancing the court to lean conservative for a generation to come. Continue reading...

Court’s move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate impact on tens of millions of AmericansThe supreme court just overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case, which granted women in the US the right to terminate a pregnancy. A reversal of this magnitude is almost unprecedented, particularly on a case decided nearly 50 years ago.The extraordinarily rare move will allow more than half of states to ban abortion, with an immediate and enduring impact on tens of millions of Americans. Continue reading...

At least 71,000 Ukrainians have entered US since March, in line with Biden’s pledge to admit 100,000At least 71,000 Ukrainians have entered the US since March, with Joe Biden’s pledge to welcome 100,000 people fleeing the Russian invasion on track to be met over the summer.So far, more than 15,000 Ukrainians have entered the country after being approved for sponsorship through the Uniting for Ukraine program, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data reported by NBC. Another 23,000 people have been approved but not yet made the journey; travel arrangements are down to the Ukrainians or their sponsors. Continue reading...

It’s all over for Rupert and Jerry – but pity Boris Johnson if the old mogul wants to see a new broom in No 10Like all true romantics, I can’t believe Jerry has split with the Pacemaker. News that Rupert Murdoch and his wife, Jerry Hall, are to divorce contradicts the lyrics of their most famous hit, confirming that the News Corp boss does, in fact, walk alone. Or at least, alone but for the aid of state-of-the-art tissue engineering, the plasma of emerging-market teens, and the cloven orthopaedic brogues that mark out the real big shots at every barefoot billionaires’ retreat.Alas, there has been almost zero elaboration on news of this major marital sundering, broken briefly by the New York Times on Wednesday night, apparently after Jerry did not attend Rupert’s annual summer party in London. Indeed, there has been almost zero coverage of the party itself, given that guests included local supplicant Boris Johnson and, reportedly, a number of cabinet ministers. Are they all still cabinet ministers this morning? Hard to say. On the plus side, the prime minister will have been able to seek pre-authorisation for installing his wife as party chairman, were a vacancy to suddenly open up, or at the very least try and get Carrie a job as executive producer at Murdoch’s TalkTV. (More on that ratings black hole shortly.) But a lack of party pictures is a shame, particularly given today’s electoral developments. It feels much too long since we’ve seen Rupert in the same photo as the prime minister, stretched across the frame like the anamorphic skull in Holbein’s The Ambassadors.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistMarina Hyde’s new book is What Just Happened?! (Guardian Faber, £18.99). Order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Continue reading...

The writer expected climate change and surveillance but not the wreckage of the entire global system, or our willing submission to monitoringSo many of the worst things of our time would not have been particularly shocking in the time of George Orwell. After all, he and his contemporaries lived through the rise of the Third Reich, the swift corrosion of the Russian revolution into Stalinist authoritarianism, Franco’s brutalisation of Spain, Mussolini’s reign in Italy, and masses ready to cheer on all the villains, drink up the delusions and lies they spread, and even serve as their butchers. The kleptocratic Trump, the totalitarianism-aspiring Putin, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, Lukashenko in Belarus and the rest of the rogues’ gallery of demagogues and dictators are nothing new. The invasion of Ukraine echoes the Stalinist regime’s brutality there in the 1930s.Ahead of an opening lecture at the Orwell festival of political writing, I have been thinking about what his mindset might have been, and it occurs to me that two things in our time would have shocked him. One of them is climate change. That human beings had wrecked bits and pieces of the natural world was perfectly evident in the coal-mining districts that Orwell had visited in 1936 for his research for his book about the working class and their conditions, The Road to Wigan Pier. That there was much that was filthy and poisonous about industrial capitalism and fossil fuel was clear from the smogs of Pittsburgh and London, where the air quality then was more or less comparable to the air quality of New Delhi and Shanghai now, and just as deadly.Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

$13bn package represents a compromise between Democrat and Republican lawmakers. Plus, Ukrainian forces to leave SievierodonetskGood morning.The US Senate has passed a bipartisan gun violence bill by 65 votes to 33 after the mass shootings in Texas and New York, in a development that would have been inconceivable just a month ago.Toughen background checks for the youngest gun buyers.Prevent more domestic violence offenders from accessing firearms.Help states put in place red-flag laws that make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people deemed dangerous.Fund local programs for school safety, mental health and violence prevention.Who did they seek pardons for? For “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania” – a total of 147 Republicans. Continue reading...

The supreme court think that restrictions on handguns are grotesquely exceeding their powers. But outlawing abortion? Totally fineThe US supreme court on Thursday voted 6-3 in favor of more people getting shot. More formally, they voted to strike down a New York law that restricted the ability of people to carry guns outside of their homes. Experts say it is the most consequential second amendment ruling in more than a decade, and it will make it much harder for states and cities to prevent their citizens from roaming around town armed and ready for shootouts like so many cowboys in Deadwood. One thing that is safe to say is that, as a result of this decision, more Americans will die violent deaths – with freedom!To dissect this ruling as a matter of legal theory is a waste of time. It’s all pretext. All you need to know about the legal theories at work in the current supreme court is that if states want to restrict your ability to carry a handgun, they are grotesquely exceeding their powers, but if states want to outlaw abortion, well, it is only fair that states have that power.Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York Continue reading...

Allegations of another sexual assault in the hockey world raise more questions than they answer as youth registration stagnatesEarlier this spring, a woman filed a statement of claim detailing an alleged sexual assault that took place in June 2018 at an event hosted by Hockey Canada, the governing body for the country’s national sport. She said in the claim that she had been forced for hours to perform sexual acts against her will for eight men, including players from that year’s under-20 junior men’s championship team. In April, she asked a judge to award $3.55m in damages. Hockey Canada settled. (The allegations were never proven in court.)Reassuring everyone that the settlement had not been paid with taxpayer money was part of the reason Hockey Canada executives were in Ottawa this week to testify at a parliamentary committee. And they wanted everyone to be reassured of something else, too: that hockey culture is changing for the better. “Hockey Canada is on a journey to change the culture of our sport and to make it safer and more inclusive,” Tom Renney, the CEO of Hockey Canada, told parliamentarians. Continue reading...

Unions say trend of assaults and abuse on staff is intolerable – and crisis will worsen without federal actionMonique Rondon, a bus operator in New York City for 23 years, has been spat on and assaulted several times on the job.Now transit workers and labor unions across America are sounding the alarm over the trend of violence, assaults, and abuse that workers in the transportation industry in the US have faced throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis they say will continue to worsen without federal action and implementation of safety protections and rules. Continue reading...

With World Cups coming and after a disqualifications controversy, the US league wants to put on a show at the Red Bull Arena in New JerseyRugby New York will host the Major League Rugby championship game on Saturday, at the Red Bull Arena in New Jersey. Regardless of the result, the city of Seattle, nearly 3,000 miles away, will celebrate.The mayor, Bruce A Harrell, joined other local leaders in declaring 25 June Seattle Seawolves Community Pride Day, in recognition of the two-time champions reaching a third MLR final in five seasons. (Four completed, 2020 having been lost to Covid.) Continue reading...

‘Fortress’ game reserves displaced the Maasai but ignore the pastoralists’ role in maintaining wildlife and biodiversityThe recent violent evictions of Maasai in Loliondo, Tanzania, to make way for a luxury game reserve is the latest in a long list of examples of community owners of land suffering under a “fortress conservation” model adopted in the heyday of colonialism. And what for? So that others, be they wealthy tourists or royalty, can use swathes of land as their playgrounds.Tanzanian authorities, and other African governments, shoulder the unenviable “duty” of seeing to it that the pursuit of such fun is not jeopardised or hindered by the desire of thousands, if not millions, of people to reclaim their rights to land and to survive on that land. Continue reading...

This nihilistic decision will propel the US further toward mass gun violence and a culture of deathThe conservative justices of the US supreme court just made America an even more dangerous, even more violent place.The decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn, Inc v Bruen took on a simple and commonsense New York state law requiring individuals to have a license in order to own a gun, and requiring people who want to carry a concealed pistol or revolver out in public to demonstrate a particular need to be toting a secret gun around. That law has been on the books in New York since the early 1900s.Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind Continue reading...

The smooth and efficient proceedings with testimonies from Republicans has reportedly infuriated TrumpSomewhere in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Thursday afternoon, it seems quite possible that an elderly man was sitting in front of a television howling with rage.Donald Trump, who spends summers at his Bedminster golf club, is a TV guy, a ratings guy. So the widely televised hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol hit him where it hurts. Continue reading...

In five hearings, the committee has shown the various paths the ex-president and his team explored to overturn the electionThe January 6 select committee held its final hearing for this month on Thursday, sharing new details about Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure top justice department officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Across the committee’s five hearings this month, investigators have presented a meticulous account of Trump’s exhaustive efforts to cling to power after losing the election to Joe Biden. The panel has shown how Trump and his allies explored every possible avenue – from pressuring the vice-president, Mike Pence, to leaning on state election officials and justice department leaders – to promote lies about widespread election fraud. Continue reading...

We learned this week that the public hearings held by the January 6 select committee would be extended into July. The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell tells Jonathan Freedland what we’ve learned so far, why they need more time and what happens next Continue reading...

Bill’s passing hailed as ‘long overdue step’ while package falls far short of more robust restrictions Democrats soughtThe US Senate has easily approved a bipartisan gun violence bill that seemed unthinkable just a month ago, clearing the way for final congressional approval of what will be lawmakers’ most far-reaching response in decades to mass shootings.After years of GOP procedural delays that derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable after last month’s rampages in New York and Texas. It took weeks of closed-door talks but a group of senators from both parties emerged on Thursday with a compromise embodying incremental but impactful movement to curb bloodshed that has come to regularly shock – yet no longer surprise – the nation. Continue reading...

Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz among those who requested to be let off after attempting to overturn election resultsThe Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks sought a blanket pardon of members of Congress involved in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden through lies about electoral fraud, the House January 6 committee revealed on Thursday.A witness said Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania also contacted the White House about securing pardons. The same witness, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, said she heard Marjorie Taylor Greene, an extremist from Georgia, wanted a pardon too. Continue reading...

Federal investigators seized his electronic devices in a pre-dawn search before the fifth public hearing by the Capitol attack panelFederal investigators raided the home of former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark early Wednesday in connection with the department’s sprawling criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.The search of Clark’s home in suburban Virginia and the seizure of his electronic devices suggested an escalating inquiry into his involvement in the purported election plot edging ever closer to Donald Trump, according to a source familiar with the matter and one of his associates. Continue reading...

Alexander Drueke’s mother said her son and the other former soldier should be treated according to the Geneva conventionThe US embassy in Russia this week was pressing the Kremlin to reveal the whereabouts of two Alabama men captured in Ukraine while defending the country from Russian invaders, according to the mother of one of the taken Americans.Lois “Bunny” Drueke also said late Wednesday that her son, Alexander Drueke, and the other captured US military veteran, Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, were not mercenaries but volunteers, pushing back on statements from a Kremlin spokesperson who said the American pair are facing execution. Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, thought Trump might have refused to leave office at all had the Department of Justice not immediately investigated and disproved his lies about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.'I am not sure we would’ve had a transition at all,' Barr said in startling video testimony played by the January 6 committee on Thursday.The hearing, the fifth in a series set to extend into July, focused on Trump’s attempts to pressure the justice department to aid his attempt to overturn the election result – an attempt that culminated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021