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Questions around 89-year-old senator’s cognitive abilities pit lawmakers against each other amid calls for her to step downThe Democratic party is facing an internal rift over how to handle the diminishing abilities of one of their own. There is open debate within the party over whether 89-year-old Senator Dianne Feinstein, whose health and cognitive abilities have come into question after a two-and-a-half month absence due to shingles and other medical complications, should resign.Questions over Feinstein’s ability to effectively represent California, the most populous US state, have been a sensitive issue for Democrats going back years. As her diminishing health plays out in the public eye there is a renewed urgency to the situation. Riding out her term in absentia until retirement next year is also not a viable option, with Feinstein the tie-breaking vote on the Senate judiciary committee, which holds confirmation hearings for judicial nominees, and effectively the only person who can ensure that President Joe Biden’s picks for judges go through. Continue reading...

Republican governor Greg Abbott invoked state clause after likening migrants to a public foreign enemy, but legal experts say it’s ‘unprecedented and extreme’Texas is challenging federal control of policy on the US-Mexico border by exploiting what it sees as a constitutional loophole around the definition of an “invasion” but that migrants rights activists see as dangerously ramping up fears with racist language.Immigration policy has long been under the purview of the US federal government – not individual states – since the US supreme court ruled so in a landmark United States v Arizona case in 2012. Continue reading...

The former England captain is learning managerial skills away from the spotlight of his homeland. It could eventually help in the Premier LeagueOf all the intimate details that surfaced during the Wagatha Christie trial, DC United fans most likely took note of one point in particular. According to text messages read out in court, Coleen Rooney never much liked Washington DC, which she called “a nice place to visit, but different to live.” Her husband, however, appears to have a much stronger connection to the city and its club.After two seasons with the club as a player, Wayne Rooney is DC United’s head coach. The former England captain was linked with several jobs – most notably at his boyhood club, Everton – after getting his managerial start at Derby County. A return to Major League Soccer, however, appealed most of all despite DC United sitting second-bottom of the Eastern Conference when he arrived last season – they’d also suffered their worst-ever MLS loss just days before Rooney was appointed. Continue reading...

From paintings stuck in cellars for centuries to acclaimed sculptures pointlessly destroyed, the art of women has been crowded out of galleries and public spaces. It’s time we stopped putting up with itLast week I was speaking with an artist – highly regarded and in her 60s – when she began telling me about a recent incident with a male curator. She had been helping him install a show at a major institution when he realised the measurements for a large work of hers were off – he’d failed to double check the dimensions of the gallery. As a result, he asked if she could chop off a section of her large-scale artwork so it could fit. Understandably outraged, she declined, and the work didn’t end up in the show. But she also wondered whether the curator would have asked the same of a male artist – to butcher his own work to make it accommodate the space?Women accommodate to a fault. But why have we been made to feel like this: guilty if we take up space; unpleasant if everything we do is not done with grace; demanding if we ask for what we want? It’s shocking to think that in 2023, the questioning of women’s authority – and the disbelief in what we are capable of – is still rife. Continue reading...

After my mental health took a nosedive I deleted years’ worth of data and missed targets – and the guilt that goes with themIn early 2018, I was training for the London Marathon – the first and only marathon I’ll ever run in my life. I had treated myself to an expensive fitness watch that tracked my time, pace, splits – every piece of information I could ever wish to know about what I had just endured.At the end of my final training run – a gruelling 21 miles (34km) during which I got lost on Wandsworth Common and had a lovely little cry on the bus afterwards – I threw myself down on the floor the moment I got home, only to see my watch had failed me. Twenty-one miles briefly flashed on the screen before it went blank and disappeared for ever.Laura Kay is a former Guardian journalist and the author of three novels, including The Split, which is about running Continue reading...

Sneer all you like, but everyone needs a few home comforts when travelling. And it’s not as if I’m taking my favourite mugAnother year, another survey (by M&S bank this time) of the stuff British people insist on taking on holiday. None can beat my mother’s friend who travelled to China for a fortnight with an entire suitcase filled with Ginger Nuts, but honestly, what weirdos take a water filter jug (4%), anti-bacterial spray (30%) and air freshener (9%)? What of spontaneity and seeing where the wind takes you, home fragrance and bacteria-wise?No, I’m sorry I can’t keep this pretence up. For a start, the 43% who bring their own teabags are entirely correct, especially if they are heading abroad. No one should face the morning with only Lipton Yellow or whatever brown, pumpkin-spiced water America is calling “tea” this year. Slippers (36%): yes, of course, because cosiness is high on the holiday checklist. “Your favourite mug” (10%): well, I’m torn on this one. It is a truth universally acknowledged that all holiday accommodation expects you to drink out of a thimble, like a tiny Beatrix Potter dormouse, but what kind of reckless fool risks their favourite mug in a suitcase? Third favourite I could get behind. Continue reading...

Sources reveal discretionary spending cap and changes to the federal food program, among other detailsJoe Biden and Kevin McCarthy have reached an agreement to lift the US debt ceiling and avoid a disastrous and unprecedented default. Prior to the details being presented to lawmakers, ahead of an expected vote on Wednesday, here is what sources familiar with negotiations have revealed: Continue reading...

Safecracker James Lee was apprehended last Wednesday, and body of Bradley Gillespie was found on SundayAuthorities believe they found the body of a convicted killer who escaped an Ohio prison by hiding in a trash container, they said Sunday.The search for Bradley Gillespie began last week when he and another man incarcerated at Allen-Oakwood correctional institution in Lima, Ohio, James Lee, were discovered missing, according to reports. Continue reading...

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri wants to bring case examining alleged role of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his mistreatment by CIAA Guantánamo Bay prisoner tortured by the CIA has accused British intelligence agencies of complicity in his mistreatment in a new case before one of UK’s most secretive courts.Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is alleged by the US to have plotted al-Qaida’s bombing of an American naval ship, is seeking to persuade the court to consider his complaint against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Continue reading...

Prosecutors are asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters of Capitol riotersLess than two months after he pleaded guilty to storming the US Capitol on January 6 2021, Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s then Fox News show and promoted a website where supporters could donate money to Goodwyn and other rioters whom the site called “political prisoners”.The justice department now wants Goodwyn to give up more than $25,000 he raised – a clawback that is part of a growing effort by the government to prevent rioters from being able to personally profit from participating in the attack that shook the foundations of American democracy. Continue reading...

Mayor of Red River says the shooting was gang-related, and that the shooters have all been taken into custodyThree people were killed and five injured in a shooting at a biker rally in Red River, New Mexico, on Saturday.Neither the victims nor the shooters were local residents and were among bikers who were visiting for the rally over the long weekend holiday leading into Memorial Day, Red River mayor Linda Calhoun told the Guardian on Sunday. Continue reading...

What happens from here depends on how many members of the House prefer governing to chaosHouse Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden reached a deal last night to raise the debt ceiling and prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations.Is it a good deal? Who will bear the burden? Should it have ever gotten to this point? Did Biden blow it? Continue reading...

Agreement will reportedly raise debt limit for two years, but deal still needs approval from a divided US congressLawmakers in Washington were busily drafting legislation on Sunday after Joe Biden and the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, reached a deal in principle on Saturday night to raise the federal government’s $31.4tn debt ceiling, with just days left before America was expected to default.There was a slim chance that a bill could be finalized as early as Sunday and be presented on Capitol Hill, where it is expected to have a stormy passage in a divided Congress. Continue reading...

Individuals rather than organized groups more likely to commit extremist crimes as inflammatory Republican rhetoric escalatesThe US is at an increased risk of domestic terror attacks by rightwing “lone wolf” actors, experts have warned, as inflammatory Republican rhetoric around a variety of issues seems likely to continue ahead of the 2024 election.The number of attacks by adherents to rightwing ideology has soared since 2016, as Republican lies about election interference, and escalating rhetoric from the right about minority groups, have served to “provide mechanisms” for individuals to become radicalized, an analyst said. Continue reading...

All eight great-grandparents of the White House hopeful, eager to restrict immigrants’ rights, came from the south of Italy

The Brooklyn Banks, known for being a ‘melting pot’ of skaters, bikers and artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, were closed off over a decade ago – until nowThe Brooklyn Bridge, an icon built to connect once separate cities, is 140 years old this year. But underneath the connecting roadways on the Manhattan side was a series of sloping red-brick embankments that in the 1980s became the birthplace of a gritty New York street-style of skateboarding – the Brooklyn Banks.Last week, the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, took a break from dealing with his city’s social and economic headaches to reopen the cambered banks – “waves” in skateboarder speak – and pay tribute to the skateboarding pioneers who helped turn the kick-flips and grinds of teenage outsiders into a global culture industry. Continue reading...

Ricardo Velázquez was caught in a scam that also ensnared more than 100 others after his immigration attorney lied to himMore than two decades ago, Ricardo Velázquez immigrated to the US from Puebla, Mexico, since then, he has spent most of the time since working in kitchens while dreaming of gaining a visa that would let him visit his home town with his family.Early this year, his former immigration attorney, Kofi Amankwaa, gave him the news he had long been waiting for: his travel application had been approved. The lawyer claimed Velázquez could freely visit Mexico with his family, embrace his parents and see his children interact with their grandparents in person rather than through a screen. Continue reading...

She later became an icon of survival, but fans loved her for the sheer energy she exudedTina Turner, the trailblazing singer who was hailed as the queen of rock’n’roll, survived so many personal and professional challenges that some of her fans might have believed that she was going to live forever.Her death last week at the age of 83 brought home the fact that she was as mortal as the rest of us, but her refusal to stay in the box that Black women are expected to occupy will remain a lasting source of inspiration. Continue reading...

Ministers trumpet their law against ‘no-platforming’ in universities, but that doesn’t stop them disinviting critics from their own conferencesNormally, I’m keen for this column to be widely read. This time, though, I hope not too widely. I’d be happy if it doesn’t catch the attention of Jacob Rees-Mogg or of government officials.I’m due to give a talk to civil servants later this year. If anyone were to trawl through my social media they might discover the occasional criticism of government policy. And I might suffer the same fate as Dan Kaszeta.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...

Help was at hand for ‘the worst routes, the least well-lit stations and the poorest, most violent neighbourhoods’‘Chivalry has returned to New York,’ proclaimed the Observer on 15 July 1979, as it descended into the lawless New York subway underworld, accompanied by the Magnificent Thirteen Subway Patrol, AKA the Red Berets. The group had formed that February, in response to a violent crime wave. From an initial 13, they now numbered nearly 100 and their mission was to make New Yorkers feel safer. ‘They are in their late teens or early 20s, most of them have some training in the martial arts and all are as streetwise as alley cats.’Working-class and from diverse ethnic backgrounds, most worked or studied during the day. Their leader was the charismatic Curtis ‘the Rock’ Sliwa, ‘a poor 23-year-old Polish-American who graduated in garbage collecting and street fighting’. Continue reading...

Default deadline pushed to 5 June as work requirements for food aid recipients reportedly emerge as final sticking pointPresident Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy held a phone conversation on Saturday evening, according to a person familiar with their plans, amid signs that a deal in the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations was close to being struck.McCarthy said earlier on Saturday that he was making “progress” in negotiations on raising the federal government’s debt ceiling, as the nation faced risk of default in little more than a week. Continue reading...

Ken Paxton drew support from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz prior to the voteTexas’ Republican-led House of Representatives impeached state attorney general Ken Paxton on Saturday on articles including bribery and abuse of public trust, a historic rebuke of a GOP official who rose to be a star of the conservative legal movement despite years of scandal and alleged crimes.Impeachment triggers Paxton’s immediate suspension from office pending the outcome of a trial in the state Senate and empowers Republican governor Greg Abbott to appoint someone else as Texas’ top lawyer in the interim. Continue reading...

Women have found a way to channel a flagrant, public up-yours to the culture of gender policing that grows more dangerous by the dayIt was a search for the perfect velour tracksuit that put me on the path to #bimbocore. Work obliges me to catch many planes and I am old enough to appreciate that if you can travel with an elasticised waist, loose cuffs and a hood – as well as a mask – then you should.Internet searches for the soft costume once beloved of early 00s femme celebrity brought me news of a retro revival that apparently started last year. Far further down in the fluffiest of fashion rabbit holes than I had ever intended to travel, I stumbled on to the aesthetic trend of bimbocore. Continue reading...

After 14 years, Polly was a part of Robert Dessaix’s family. One day after her death, the writer grapples with grief and what it is to love a dogWe are a threesome. The most wonderful thing in the world for me – the most joyful, vivifying, meaningful, precious thing in the world – is my tiny family: Peter Timms, the dog and me. We are the only family any of us has. The dog is not a child, of course, nor a mere companion, nor even our “best friend”. The dog is our dog. The dog is our anchor. We love each other, Peter and I, anchored by our dog (we’ve had four). I can see that now. It has taken me all my life to see this. And I held out my arms in front of me in utter impotence with my fingers touching to try to hold us all in.Polly died yesterday, you see. It is unbearable. I am not saying this for the sake of it: I cannot bear the acute sadness. I cannot bear the memories of yesterday before three o’clock or last week or ten years ago or 15. I cannot bear saying goodbye to Polly Timms forever. That’s the point, as it is when we kiss or wave or say goodbye to any loved being: it’s for the rest of time. Continue reading...

Republican-led state house of representatives to debate whether to impeach Ken Paxton over allegations of briberyTexas’s Republican-led house of representatives launched historic impeachment proceedings against attorney general Ken Paxton on Saturday as the scandal-plagued lawyer called on supporters to protest a vote that could lead to his ouster and Donald Trump came to his defense.The house convened on Saturday afternoon to debate whether to impeach and suspend Paxton from office over allegations of bribery, abuse of public trust and that he is unfit for office. They’re just some of the accusations that have trailed Texas’s top lawyer for most of his three terms. Continue reading...

Change in law allows teenagers to serve alcohol in restaurants and could allow children to operate heavy machinery like power sawsIowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, has signed a bill that rolls back several child labor law protections in the midwestern state, including how many hours children can work and at what type of establishments.Iowa and several other states in the US have loosened regulations on child labor in response to some businesses complaining about a workforce shortage. The moves have been met with widespread criticism by Democrats and labor groups. Continue reading...

Vice-president addresses graduating cadets at elite US military academy and warns of threats of Russian and Chinese aggressionVice-President Kamala Harris on Saturday became the first woman at West Point’s 221-year history to deliver a commencement speech.Addressing over 900 graduating cadets at the elite American military academy in West Point, New York, Harris told them that they are graduating “into an increasingly unsettled world where long-standing principles are at risk”, and cited the threats of Russian and Chinese aggression in her speech. Continue reading...

Flaws used to feed their sales but now writers are expected to be saints‘As you get older you realise that all these things – prizes, reviews, advances, readers – it’s all showbiz, and the real action starts with your obituary.”Martin Amis first started spinning in favour of his future obituarists in 2003 – at the juncture, post Yellow Dog, at which prizes, reviews, advances and readers began to turn against him. He knew how things would play out. After two decades of the literary world quiet quitting Martin Amis, there has been a sudden rehabilitation. In the past week the pages of obituary sections have exploded with a strangely pre-2003 phenomenon – a semi-tolerant fascination with Amis’s personal life, and the way it may have bled into his work, and vice versa. Continue reading...

Plans for an accompanying education centre are blocking progress, but London already has one at the nearby Imperial War MuseumThe Nazi concentration camp survivor Manfred Goldberg was 84 when David Cameron promised a British memorial to the Holocaust. “Last month I celebrated my 93rd birthday and I pray to be able to attend the opening of this important project,” he says on the government website.That day has been put still further off by a procedural hitch in plans to amend a 1900 act that forbids buildings on its proposed site, Victoria Tower Gardens, a public park just up the Thames from the Palace of Westminster. Continue reading...

State Farm also cites inflation of construction costs in statement which comes after increasing wildfires in stateThe insurance giant State Farm, America’s biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, will halt the sale of new home insurance policies in California, citing wildfire risk and inflation of construction costs.Starting on Saturday, the company will not accept insurance applications for business and personal lines property and casualty insurance. The company will still accept auto insurance applicants. Continue reading...

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster’s body was exhumed and found to be ‘incorrupt’, a sign of holiness and later justification for sainthoodHundreds of people in the US have traveled to a monastery in a small Missouri town to view a nun’s body that seemingly has no signs of decay four years after her death.Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster was the founder of the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles, a monastery in Gower, Missouri, about an hour outside of Kansas City. Continue reading...

Surveillance footage shared on social media shows a black bear entering a bakery's garage in Connecticut, taking a box of 60 cupcakes and eating them. Workers at Taste by Spellbound, in the town of Avon, are seen trying to scare the bear and then running away moments later, scared themselves. Police officers were called and no one was injured. There are 1,000 to 1,200 black bears living in Connecticut, the state environmental agency says, with sightings recorded last year in 158 of the state’s 169 towns and cities.

Patrick Wattigny, a former school chaplain outside New Orleans, is considering a guilty plea but could be out of prison in three yearsA Louisiana man accusing a Roman Catholic priest of molesting him as a child has spoken out against what he says is an overly lenient sentence being offered to the defendant in exchange for a guilty plea.The accuser, 24, is pressing a criminal case against Patrick Wattigny, who worked as a chaplain at the alleged victim’s high school and was charged with abuse against him in 2013. Continue reading...

Healy has a history of making problematic statements, upsetting Swift’s fans. She has the right to be silent on Healy – but her fans also have the right to judge her for itWeird coincidence alert! Taylor Swift recently released a collaboration with rapper Ice Spice on a remix of her Midnights track Karma. That’s a big deal for two reasons: 1) Ice Spice is going to be the first Black woman to feature on a Swift song; 2) Matty Healy, the frontman of the band the 1975 and the man that Swift is rumoured to be dating, laughed at some racist jokes about the Bronx rapper on a recent podcast. It’s leading a lot of people to ask: is the Swift/Ice Spice collaboration a calculated attempt at damage control? Is this a cynical PR move? Or is the convenient timing just a fluke? Continue reading...

Suwannee county sheriff seeks to capture ferocious feral feline after two people need hospital treatmentAlerts for dangerous animals on the loose are commonplace in Florida, a state that leads the nation for escapes of wild creatures ranging from bears, lions and monkeys to snakes and tigers.But a stalking “beast” currently terrifying residents of Suwannee county after sending two people to the emergency room in separate attacks turns out to be a domestic cat with attitude that has evaded capture for almost a week, officials have said. Continue reading...

Part cosplay, part athletic endeavor, it’s a diverse and encouraging community where magical merfolk lift each other with shouts of ‘Yes, fish!’Last weekend, around a community pool near Sacramento, flippers were being unpacked, glowing bubble crowns secured to wigs, and glittery eye makeup donned: the annual US meeting of mermaids was underway.Hundreds gathered for the California Mermaid Convention: a three-day celebration of the increasingly popular practice of “mermaiding”. Part cosplay, part athletic endeavor, the hobby ranges from casual dress up to certified divers who strap on “monofins” and swim together in a pool or the open ocean. Continue reading...

Campaigners take legal route after success against big tobacco and other industries led to changeAs America’s gun crisis shows no sign of abating, there is some hope for reducing the number of mass shootings and killings. The emerging wave of lawsuits against gun makers echoes previous successes against the car industry, opioid companies and big tobacco.In New York, California, Delaware and other states, new laws aim to provide ways around a near 20-year immunity provided to gun manufacturers and distributors. In Indiana, a lawsuit brought by victims of the 2021 mass shooting at a FedEx facility aims to hold a gun manufacturer accountable for the horror wrought by one of its weapons. Continue reading...

Florida governor enters the primary weakened after Twitter ‘DeSaster’ as wide field of candidates try to scrape aheadNever work with animals, children or egotistical space billionaires. There’s a lesson in there that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida learned the hard way when he used Elon Musk’s Twitter Spaces social media platform to announce his run for US president.Thousands of listeners were greeted with long silences, odd snatches of music and the sound of Musk, would-be kingmaker of the American right, muttering that the “the servers are straining somewhat”. The glitch was soon being described as a “DeSaster”, one of the most embarrassing campaign fiascos in memory. Continue reading...

The Texas attorney general has called for his supporters to protest at the state capitol when Republicans in the House of Representatives take up historical impeachment proceedings against him. The state house has set a Saturday vote to consider impeaching Republican Ken Paxton and suspending him from office over allegations of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust. 'I want to invite my fellow citizens and friends to peacefully come let their voices be heard at the capitol tomorrow,' Paxton said at a news conference on Friday. The request echoes that of the former president Donald Trump for people to protest against his electoral defeat on 6 January 2021, when a mob violently stormed the US Capitol in Washington.

Objects from the front line bear bloodstained witness – not just to what happened, but to Ukraine’s very existenceThe violence of war, and all its horror, has a clarifying effect on what really matters in every aspect of life. In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, those caught up in the terrifying events found that language was reduced to its most fundamental function: telling loved ones they were alive.The work of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv was, similarly, refined to its most basic essentials: safeguarding the objects. Keeping them from destruction. Making sure that they would be there to tell their stories for the next generation.Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer. She will be speaking about the future of museums at the Hay festival on Saturday 3 June Continue reading...

Much of the world views Kissinger as a war criminal – yet in the US, surrounded by powerful friends, he is feted as a celebrity intellectualHenry Kissinger turns 100 on Saturday, but his legacy has never been in worse shape. Though many commentators now speak of a “tortured and deadly legacy”, for decades Kissinger was lauded by all quarters of the political and media establishment.A teenage Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany, Kissinger charted an unlikely path to some of the most powerful positions on Earth. Even more strangely, as national security adviser and secretary of state under Nixon and Ford, he became something of a pop icon.Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in An Era of Extreme InequalitiesJonah Walters is a freelance writer and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics Continue reading...

Ken Paxton’s call for protesters to be ‘peacefully’ heard at the state capitol echoes similar request from Donald Trump before 6 January 2021The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has urged his supporters to protest at the state capitol when Republicans in the House of Representatives take up historic impeachment proceedings against him.The state House has set a Saturday vote to consider impeaching Paxton and suspending him from office over allegations of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust – just some of the accusations that have trailed him for most of his three terms. Continue reading...