Oversight district, created after a row between DeSantis and Disney, calls diversity programs illegal and simply un-American'A Ron DeSantis-appointed Walt Disney World governing district has abolished all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, it said this week, in a move that continues the Florida governor's war on diversity-promoting programs in the state.In a statement the Central Florida tourism oversight district said any DEI job duties" would also be eliminated. Continue reading...
Abuse of power exists wherever toxic working environments indulge it. Pretending that all women are nice is not the answerBeing an icon, the rapper-singer-songwriter Lizzo once said, is not about how long you've had your platform. Instead it's about what you do with that platform", as she told a cheering crowd at last year's People's Choice awards in the US, before inviting a string of female activists who she suggested were more deserving of recognition to join her on stage.Few seemingly embodied inclusive feminism better than Lizzo, who built her brand on an uplifting, joyful, thrillingly body-positive form of female empowerment while glorying in her sexuality as a self-styled big grrrl". Of course it's her bouncy, summery track Pink that plays over the opening scenes of the new Barbie film. Who better than Lizzo to sell the idea of a dreamworld ruled by women for women, where men are just Kens and benign rule by Barbies frees all their sisters to be whatever they want to be?Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Anheuser-Busch InBev revenue fell 10.5% in last three months following controversy over partnership with trans influencerThe scale of the conservative backlash against Bud Light was revealed on Thursday when owner Anheuser-Busch InBev reported a sharp drop in US revenue over the last three months.The world's largest brewer saw its second-quarter revenue in the US - its largest market - drop 10.5% after a rightwing backlash over a partnership with a transgender influencer led to a sales drop. Operating profits dropped nearly 30%. Continue reading...
Many elite women's football players are effectively amateurs. Increased payments should help many of them reach their potentialA month before this year's Women's World Cup, Jamaica's players posted statements to their social media accounts saying they had not been paid. They also said they had been subjected to subpar planning". So dire was the situation that online fundraisers were started to help the team - one by the mother of Jamaica midfielder Havana Solaun.Despite that uncertainty, the Caribbean nation with a population of less than 3 million didn't concede a goal in their first three games at this World Cup, including a pair of scoreless draws against world powers France and Brazil, to advance to the knockout stage for the first time. Continue reading...
Dialogue around coercive control' in relation to financial abuse is gaining steam in the US, with California passing laws to protect victims from collectorsThe bankruptcy lawyer spread all of Jean's debts across the table. She pored over each document, trying to swallow her shame. The papers documented more than $140,000 that Jean and her ex-partner owed creditors.It was June 2021. Jean, who the Guardian is identifying by her middle name to protect her identity during ongoing divorce litigation, had separated from her husband two years earlier. She had already been granted a domestic violence restraining order in Alameda county, California, after experiencing what she describes as physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse. But in the meantime, shared loans and expenses between Jean and her ex-partner had been piling up. Since Jean was the account holder on most of their credit cards, she was beholden to the bank. Declaring bankruptcy seemed like her only hope for a fresh start. Continue reading...
The Argentinian faced Inter's Florida rivals on Wednesday and there were clear signs that MLS's power balance is shiftingThe seasonal south Florida lightning brings a perpetual threat of power surges, but a soccer power shift is also brewing in the Sunshine State.After a huge rain storm paused Inter Miami's unveiling of Lionel Messi last month, the heavens opened again on Wednesday to hold up the club's highly anticipated Florida derby against Orlando City in the Leagues Cup last 32. Continue reading...
Over 85,000 workers hold pickets at 50 facilities across US as union contracts set to expire on 30 SeptemberUnions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September.The negotiations at Kaiser Permanente are the third largest set of contract negotiations in the US in 2023, behind the 340,000 workers at UPS who will be voting on a tentative agreement this month that was reached days before planned strike action, and 150,000 autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis whose contracts are set to expire on 14 September. Continue reading...
Vivek Ramaswamy and Doug Burgum have qualified for the GOP debate after each contributed over $10m to their own campaignsTwo wealthy Republicans running long-shot campaigns for president have qualified for the first GOP debate - even as they remain their own top donors.The candidates, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota and former software company executive, have each contributed more than $10m to their own campaigns. Continue reading...
ACLU and NAACP among organizations condemning homeland security department over domestic violent extremist' labelProminent civil rights and civil liberties organizations have called on the US homeland security department to investigate the agency's intelligence-gathering on protesters against Cop City', the police and fire department training center planned for a forest south-east of Atlanta.The organizations draw attention to the dozens of environmental protesters arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in a letter to the department director, Alejandro Mayorkas. The charges have caused outrage among many observers who accuse Georgia law enforcement of a heavy-handed crackdown on the protest movement. Continue reading...
Fifty-six of the 57 death row prisoners ask governor, who is coming to the end of his term, to act on his anti-death penalty convictionsAll but one of Louisiana's death row inmates are racing against the clock to persuade the state's Democratic governor and the clemency board to commute their sentences to life in prison, ahead of a possible transfer of political power that could see the state aggressively resume executions in 2024.Fifty-six of the 57 prisoners sentenced to death in Louisiana have joined forces to make a rare mass petition for mercy. They are asking John Bel Edwards, the governor who is coming to the end of his term, to act on his anti-death penalty convictions and order the pardons board to consider their pleas. Continue reading...
Pundits lined up to compare Trump charges to criminalizing thoughts' and the dropping of fifteen dozen' atomic bombsAfter he was indicted for the third time, Donald Trump reacted with his now-standard, twin-pronged approach: first, expressing outrage and denying the charges, and second, asking his many loyal supporters for money.But the former US president, who faces four charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, also found defenders among rightwing media in America which has often fervently defended him, sometimes flying in the face of reality to do so. Continue reading...
These thefts are crimes of poverty. Ministers' threats to send culprits to prison will never solve themIs an ever fiercer crackdown on the misdemeanours of the poor really justice? When a government minister suggests building new prisons to lock up shoplifters, Tory priorities are revealed in technicolour: that war should be waged on the symptoms, rather than the causes, of poverty. This is a tradition as British as drinking tea or Morris dancing. When the economy tanked after the 1720 South Sea bubble" collapse, the so-called Black Act was passed, imposing the death penalty on the overwhelmingly poor Britons driven by hunger who poached animals in private parks in order to survive. Today's justice system spares offenders the gallows, but it's driven by the same class vengeance that defined it back then: witness how you're 23 times more likely to be prosecuted for benefit fraud than tax fraud, even though the latter costs the economy nine times more.The Tories' plan to cling on to power is now abundantly clear: appeal to the worst instincts of the electorate. Proffering mandatory prison sentences as a solution to persistent shoplifting is part of that grim package. In practice, that means scooping up more largely poor, often traumatised citizens, and locking them up in institutions so overcrowded that their staff's trade union describes them as a powder keg waiting to blow". That shoplifting is indelibly linked to poverty is beyond debate. Last year, even the new chief inspector of constabulary declared that officers should use discretion" in prosecuting those who steal so they can eat, adding that whenever you see an increase in the cost of living or whenever you see more people dropping into poverty, I think you'll invariably see a rise in crime." He was correct: shoplifting has more than doubled in the last six years, reaching a staggering 8m incidents last year.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
by Joseph Palmer at the Comerica Center in Frisco, ex on (#6DGQ5)
Leagues like the IFL are minuscule in comparison to the behemoth that is the NFL. But they are often popular in the smaller markets they serveDespite being one of the game's most well-known features, indoor football's condensed dimensions are still shocking to fans accustomed to gridiron's traditional, significantly more popular outdoor form. At 50 yards long and 28 yards wide, an indoor football field offers players roughly one-quarter the area of an NFL field.To accommodate for this, indoor football permits fewer on-field players than its outdoor equivalent (eight and 11, respectively). You'll notice, however, that the number of players isn't reduced by nearly the same extent as the playing area. As a result, indoor football fields are crowded and, with so many players crammed into so small an area, the games are action-packed - and that's even before accounting for the padded walls. Continue reading...
I once scoffed at the idea of empty nest syndrome'. Now I scour camp photos like a homicide detective, on the lookout for scowls or sunburnOn Sunday I dropped off my kids at camp and, all going well, I won't see or hear from them for two weeks. This wasn't part of my plan for the summer. Sleepaway camp, a staple of American childhood, isn't in my background and the whole idea of it filled me with dread. At their age - eight - I would have hated it, I'm sure, being sent away and forced to have fun. But my children aren't me and they pushed and pushed until finally last week I gave in. So there they are, at a lake in New Jersey, and here I am, in New York, alone.It should be good for all of us, this period of detachment. Unless you favour the Edwardian model and ship off your kids to boarding school as long-range training for ruining the country, parenting young children is intense. Single parenting, in the absence of immediate family, can feel - in my case, as a single parent of twins - like being one person divided into three.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New York Continue reading...
Gift' to Florida governor's presidential campaign has been criticized online given team's claim of supporting DEI effortsThe Orlando Magic NBA team has donated $50,000 to a super PAC supporting Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis's presidential bid.According to Federal Election Commission records, the Never Back Down super PAC received the donation made by the basketball team on 26 June. Further results showed the team making donations to other political causes in past years, with $500 going to Conservative Results in 2016, $2,000 to Maverick PAC USA in 2014 and another $500 to Linda Chapin for Congress in 2000. Continue reading...
Texas government installed barrier to deter migrants - Mexican and US governments want it removed as dangerous and illegalA body has been found stuck in a floating barrier installed by Texas authorities in the Rio Grande river on the US border, Mexico's foreign ministry has saidAuthorities were working to identify the body found in the river and determine the cause of death, said Mexico's foreign ministry, as it reiterated safety concerns. Continue reading...
Authorities are looking for additional victims after linking Negasi Zuberi to sexual assaults in at least four more statesA man who posed as an undercover police officer kidnapped a woman in Seattle, drove her to his home in Oregon and locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage before she managed to escape, the FBI said Wednesday.The man, Negasi Zuberi, faces a federal interstate kidnapping charge, and authorities said they are looking for additional victims after linking him to violent sexual assaults in at least four more states. Continue reading...
by Léonie Chao-Fong (now); Chris Stein, US politics on (#6DFPX)
John Lauro claims four criminal charges over efforts to overturn 2020 election absurd'; US officials say Trump will have fingerprints taken but no photo
Rise Above Movement co-founder to face charges in Los Angeles in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017Robert Rundo, the influential American neo-Nazi and co-founder of the now-defunct Rise Above Movement, was extradited to the USto face charges in relation to violent clashes with anti-fascist protesters in 2017.Rundo was extradited from Romania to the US on Tuesday, after being apprehended in a Bucharest gym in late March on an American warrant. Continue reading...
Appeals court upholds injunction ordering two school districts to allow trans students to use facilities in line with gender identitiesA federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that transgender students in Indiana must have access to the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identities.The seventh circuit court of appeals ruling on Tuesday upheld a preliminary injunction from the US district court for the southern district of Indiana last year ordering the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville and the Vigo County Schools to give the transgender students such access. Continue reading...
Arianna Davis, 24, and Crystal Williams, 26, described incidents of body shaming and being forced to participate in religious activitiesFormer dancers for Lizzo are speaking out after they sued the artist for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and fostering a hostile work environment.Two plaintiffs in the case, Arianna Davis, 24, and Crystal Williams, 26, talked openly in interviews about the suffering they said they endured by Lizzo, whose legal name is Melissa Jefferson. Continue reading...
A healthy body politic cannot allow its core values and principles to be trashed with impunityThe indictment served on Donald Trump on Monday marks the beginning of a legal reckoning that is desperately required, if American democracy is to properly free itself from his malign, insidious influence. Mr Trump already faces multiple criminal charges relating to the retention of classified national security documents and the payment of hush money to a porn star. But the gravity of the four counts outlined by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is of a different order of magnitude.Mr Trump stands accused of conspiring, in office, to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Following Joe Biden's victory, the indictment states, Mr Trump knowingly" used false claims of electoral fraud in an attempt to subvert the legitimate election results". A bipartisan congressional committee report last year came to similar conclusions and provides much of the basis for the charges. But this represents the first major legal attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for events leading up to and including the storming of the Capitol by a violent mob on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...
Report says ex-president made comments at private White House lunch in June but pledged to do all he could' for re-election bidBarack Obama has reportedly warned Joe Biden about how strong a challenge Donald Trump will be in their second election battle in 2024, should Trump win the Republican nomination next year as expected.Polling now shows Trump and Biden closely matched for a second presidential contest. Continue reading...
Dick Durbin, chair of Senate judiciary committee, criticizes supreme court justice in wake of billowing ethics scandalsA powerful Democrat senator has called Samuel Alito's public expression of opposition to US supreme court ethics reform unwise and unwelcome", rejecting the conservative justice's contention that Congress cannot implement such measures.Justice Alito is providing speculative public commentary on a bill that is still going through the legislative process," said Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois and the chair of the Senate judiciary committee. Continue reading...
Two and half years in the making, special counsel Jack Smith's indictment presents a devastating case laced with telling detailMore than 1,000 people charged over the US Capitol riot, millions of pages of evidence compiled by the House January 6 committee, hundreds of hours of depositions of key players - all this has finally been boiled down to a 45-page indictment that accuses Donald Trump of attempting to destroy American democracy.Why didn't they do this 2.5 years ago?" the former president asked peevishly on Tuesday, shortly before the indictment came down. The answer lies in the document itself: in its painstaking command of detail and in the cool, crisp legal language deployed by special counsel Jack Smith to make his case. Continue reading...
Report shows lack of accountability' for misuse of lethal force, intimidation, sexual harassment and falsifying documentsA new report identifies persistent human rights abuses without accountability at the US-Mexico border by agents with US Customs and Border Protection - the largest civilian law enforcement agency run by the federal government.The report, compiled by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola) and the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), migrant rights advocacy groups, details a pattern of misuse of lethal force, intimidation, sexual harassment and falsifying documents. Continue reading...
Four district attorneys file lawsuit against oversight commission seen as response to election of progressive, Black prosecutorsA group of district attorneys filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the state of Georgia and Governor Brian Kemp challenging Republican-led legislation that gives the state the ability to oust prosecutors it finds are not enforcing the law.The four district attorneys are challenging Senate Bill 92, which Kemp signed into law in May creating a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission with the power to investigate complaints against district attorneys, discipline them and remove them from office if it decides they are not adequately carrying out state law. They claim that the law, which institutes a top-down approach to law enforcement", prevents voters from selecting their own district attorneys. In recent years, Georgia voters have increasingly chosen progressive, Black prosecutors. Continue reading...
Democrats and some Republican opponents welcomed Donald Trump's federal indictment on four charges relating to his alleged attempted election subversion, while the former president's supporters rallied to his defence. Trump is now facing 78 criminal charges, including 40 federal counts in Florida over his retention of classified records, and 34 New York state counts over hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels. Despite this, and the prospect of more charges over election subversion in Georgia, he is leading national Republican polling by more than 30 points and by wide margins in early voting states
Lieutenant governor among officials calling for postponement as thousands on strike demanding better pay and benefitsCalifornia officials are urging Taylor Swift to postpone her Los Angeles concerts and stand in solidarity with striking hotel workers.Eleni Kounalakis, California's lieutenant governor, as well as dozens of other state and local politicians asked the singer in an open letter to support the hotel workers' plight. Continue reading...
What's a guy get his gal for the 50th?' Lee Wilson secretly planted 80 acres of sunflowers to surprise his wifeA Kansas man celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary by surprising his wife with more than a million sunflowers.In May, working with his son, Lee Wilson secretly planted 80 acres of sunflowers, around 1.2m plants, in preparation for the anniversary on 10 August. Continue reading...
Automated tills now take up much more space than those staffed by humans. We must resist!I've wailed before about the proliferation of self-checkout machines. But I will do so again, because my mood darkens every time I visit my local big supermarket. I first honoured the place with my business about 20 years ago. Back then there were about two dozen staffed checkouts, in those days of innocence before the death march of progress gathered pace. A handful of self-checkouts appeared; a handful of human ones vanished. At first we saw them as harmless novelties. They were never all in operation, and those that were rarely worked properly. The whole caper seemed to involve as many staff supervising machines as could have been operating a battery of proper tills. But we indulged the management, bless them. They've got to try these things, haven't they?Then came more of them, and ever fewer human tills. A zero-sum game. It remained the case that some machines were out of action and the remainder invariably had a glitch in store for you. Only the other day I had a torrid time with some pitiful, dried-out geraniums on a three-for-5 offer. They just wouldn't scan. I got them for nothing in the end, but they all died anyway.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...
by Associated Press in Dorset, Vermont on (#6DFYX)
Vermont police say Ryan Koss, 35, pulled out in front of Williams, who was riding motorbike and unable to avoid collisionA driver accused of causing a crash that killed the actor Treat Williams was cited for grossly negligent operation causing death, officials said.An investigation of the 12 June crash in Dorset, Vermont, concluded a vehicle pulled in front of Williams, who was riding a motorcycle and was unable to avoid a collision, Vermont state police said. Continue reading...
Biden's economic policies are the most successful in the US in decades. That puts the Democrats on a strong political footingUntil recently, I assumed that Joe Biden would get a second term despite worries about his age because most Americans find Trump so loathsome.But I've underestimated Bidenomics. It's turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century.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...
Stop was caused by officer misreading car's license plate and suspecting it was a stolen carA Texas police department apologized after officers pulled over what they wrongly suspected was a stolen car, then held an innocent Black family at gunpoint.The driver, her husband and one of two children being driven to a youth basketball tournament could all be heard sobbing on body-camera video posted online by police in Frisco, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Continue reading...
The defending champions have ground their way into the tournament's knockout stage. But they need to improve quickly against a strong Sweden teamAs a fire alarm echoed throughout Eden Park on Tuesday night and the public-address system asked everyone to evacuate, most of the crowd of 42,000 stayed in their seats in confusion. It turned out to be a false alarm, and almost too fitting a metaphor for a night to forget for the United States.A scoreless draw with Portugal secured the defending champions a place in the knockout rounds. That was widely expected by most of the world prior to the tournament. How the US got there, however, could be generously described as a grind. Continue reading...
Vice-president says she will not accept invitation to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery'Kamala Harris fired back at the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, after he invited her to discuss new school standards for the teaching of African American history which claim some enslaved people derived benefits that could be used in later life.There is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery," the vice-president said. Continue reading...
Latest criminal case before ex-president has come weeks after he was charged with retaining national defense information. Plus, experts warn of record US deaths from extreme heat
Super Pac affiliated with anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist received $5m from Trump backer Timothy MellonA Super Pac affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat, owes half its cash to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports filed on Monday.The group, American Values 2024, reported receiving $5m from Timothy Mellon, a wealthy businessman from Wyoming, according to NBC News and Politico. It registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in April, days before Kennedy officially launched his campaign, according to FEC records. Continue reading...
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