US news | The Guardian

President says bipartisan agreement is only way forward to avoid catastrophic defaultThe House has finished its legislative work for the week, and members are preparing to go home for Memorial Day weekend without a deal reached on raising the debt ceiling.The House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, told reporters this morning that debt ceiling talks continued well past midnight last night, and negotiators are working around the clock until a deal is reached. Continue reading...

Gregory Rodriguez accused of abusing 13 people over a decade, as advocate say case highlights systemic sexual violence in prisonsA former correctional officer at California’s largest women’s prison has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting at least 13 incarcerated people over nearly a decade, prosecutors said on Wednesday.Gregory Rodriguez, who worked at the Central California Women’s Facility before he retired last year while under investigation, has been charged with 95 counts of sexual abuse, including rape, sodomy, sexual battery and rape under color of authority, the Madera county district attorney’s office said, as well as one drug-related charge. The assaults date back to 2014, but mostly occurred in the last two years, prosecutors said. Continue reading...

Stewart Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in Capitol insurrectionStewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison, after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress.Prosecutors sought a 25-year term. Lawyers for Rhodes said he should be sentenced to time served, since his arrest in January 2022. Continue reading...

Hamburger Mary’s in Orlando says law has ‘everything to do with the continued oppression of the LGBTQ+ community’A restaurant in Orlando, Florida, is suing the state’s rightwing governor, the Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, over a law that bans drag performances.On Monday, Hamburger Mary’s filed suit in the US district court of the middle district of Florida, alleging a violation of first amendment rights by the state, DeSantis and Melanie Griffin, secretary of the state’s business department. Continue reading...

Florida governor to tour Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina after online 2024 presidential campaign hit by technical glitchesRon DeSantis will attempt to steady his fledgling Republican presidential campaign with a mini-tour of early primary states next week, after technical glitches on Wednesday night made a disaster of his formal launch on Twitter.The Florida governor was ridiculed by political foes including Joe Biden and Donald Trump over an event intended to give one of the leading contenders for his party’s nomination a solid base from which to build his 2024 offensive, but which rapidly became a shambles. Continue reading...

Teen fell ‘when climbing upon one of the arches, in order to post, apparently, a social media broadcast’ said police chiefA 17-year-old boy fell to his death this weekend while climbing a Los Angeles bridge in an apparent social media stunt, police said.Police were sent to the 6th Street Viaduct around 2am Saturday and found the boy, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. His name was not immediately released. Continue reading...

Park staff say calf was a potential hazard to people after man touched the animal, causing it to be shunned by its herdA man who picked up a bison calf in Yellowstone National Park caused it to be shunned by its herd, prompting park officials to kill the animal rather than allow it to be a hazard to visitors.Park officials defended the decision to kill the newborn bison. Continue reading...

Police say a hunter might have fired the shot in Spanish Fork, 50 miles from Salt Lake CityUtah police were investigating after a two-year-old boy was struck in the head by a stray bullet as he played outside at his day care. Authorities now suspect the wayward round came from a bird hunter’s gun.Two adult caretakers found the toddler injured on Monday. Continue reading...

One explanation is that their behaviour is a reaction to past trauma inflicted on one member of the pod by humansRecent accounts of “attacks” on vessels by orcas off the Iberian peninsula are challenging the way we expect the natural world to behave. Increasing in number since 2020, from northern Portugal to the strait of Gibraltar, these incidents suggest the need for a cetacean scene investigation team. On 4 May, in one of the most extreme events, orcas sank a yacht.“There were two smaller orcas and one larger,” the skipper Werner Schaufelberger told German magazine Yacht. “The little ones shook the rudder at the back while the big one repeatedly backed up and rammed the boat with full force from the side.” Continue reading...

Announcement on Twitter – with Elon Musk present – was marred by technical glitches. We look at what happenedThe launch of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign on Twitter was marred by technical glitches on Wednesday evening.Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, has sought to diversify Twitter’s audience, describing himself as a “free speech absolutist” while also reinstating previously banned accounts such as Donald Trump’s. However, he has also cut costs severely, leading to warnings that the platform could become prone to outages more regularly. Continue reading...

Stay Safe book, produced by a law enforcement consulting firm in Houston, was sent home in backpacks of childrenTexas schoolchildren as young as four years old are being given Winnie-the-Pooh cartoon books, teaching them to “run, hide, fight” if a gunman enters their building.Parents and teachers in the Dallas area have expressed alarm and concern that the Stay Safe book, produced by a law enforcement consulting firm in Houston, has been sent home in the backpacks of children in pre-kindergarten and elementary classes. Continue reading...

Far-right Georgia Republican draws laughter after banging gavel and demanding order as Steve Scalise spokeDemocrats in the House chamber burst into raucous laughter when Marjorie Taylor Greene called for “decorum”.The far-right Georgia Republican, controversialist and conspiracy theorist was presiding over the House on Wednesday as Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader, was speaking. Continue reading...

Minority and activist groups say Florida is ‘canary in the coalmine’ and warn rights will be trampled on if governor becomes presidentMinority groups and others in Florida trampled by Ron DeSantis during his march to a White House run are warning of democracy in peril at a national level.The rightwing Republican governor’s announcement on Wednesday that he was seeking his party’s 2024 presidential nomination provoked anger and a renewed promise of resistance from transgender rights advocates, immigrant organizations, and civil and voting rights groups in Florida, who have borne the brunt of his extremist policies and legislation. Continue reading...

The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, rolling out the news with a campaign video and a glitch-riddled event on Twitter with the owner of the social media site, Elon Musk. DeSantis filed paperwork on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, before his planned event with Musk and an interview with Fox News later on Wednesday evening

MyPillow chief promised to pay to anyone who could disprove his ‘election fraud’ data – but Robert Zeidman is still waitingRobert Zeidman was not planning on making the trek to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in August 2021 for a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who was pledging to unveil hard data that showed China had interfered with the 2020 election.Zeidman, a 63-year-old consultant cyber forensics expert who goes to the shows in Las Vegas with his wife and plays poker in his spare time, voted twice for Trump because he did not like the alternative candidates. He thinks there was some fraud in the 2020 election, though not enough to overturn the result. And he believed it was possible that Lindell could have discovered evidence voting machines were hacked in 2020. He was curious to see Lindell’s evidence, and a bit skeptical, so he thought he would follow along online. Continue reading...

Ron DeSantis’s war on ‘wokeness’ is part of a larger effort to make Black people feel unwelcome, their identities un-AmericanThe NAACP has advised Black people to take precautions when traveling to Florida. In a move typically reserved for places experiencing war, social unrest or natural disasters, the group said that it was issuing the Florida advisory in direct response to “Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools”.“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,” the NAACP wrote in a press release issued last week.Tayo Bero is a freelance writer Continue reading...

Our sense of whether women are attractive as they age is so influenced by the media that I’m not sure we’re always in full possession of our feelings about itMy daughter graduated from college last week, so for fun we watched The Graduate, Mike Nichols’s 1967 classic about an alienated young man and his affair with an older woman.I remember seeing it when I was in college and identifying with Benjamin, the main character played by Dustin Hoffman. Like every other rebellious kid, I resonated with Benjamin’s disdain for the bourgeois mentality of his parents’ generation – the absurdity of the man who urges Benjamin to go into “plastics”! But now, at 58, I realized that Benjamin was actually an entitled creep for wanting to date his lover’s daughter, and it was Mrs Robinson who deserved our sympathy – and how did I not notice how hot she was? Continue reading...

The brutal police response to protests against George Floyd’s murder has resulted in millions paid out to the injured

Exclusive: At least 19 cities will pay settlements to protesters who sustained injuries as a result of law enforcement actionCities across the US have agreed to pay out a total of more than $80m in settlements to protesters injured by police during 2020 racial justice protests – a figure experts believe is unprecedented and will rise further as many lawsuits are still playing out.The brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers on 25 May 2020 sparked the largest nationwide demonstrations since the civil rights era, as upwards of 26 million people gathered to protest racism and police brutality. Continue reading...

New York City is planning a landmark ‘homeless bill of rights’, but advocates fear it will detract from housing initiativesNew York City could soon pass a “homeless bill of rights” with a “right to sleep outside” – something that no other major US city has done.If signed by Mayor Eric Adams, the proposal, which cleared New York’s city council unanimously last month, would add another plank to the city’s unique protections for unhoused residents. Since 1979, New York City has been one of the only places in the country with a “right to shelter”, which requires the government to provide a bed under a roof to anyone who needs it. Continue reading...

What unites Musk and DeSantis isn’t libertarianism at all. It’s authoritarianismThe real significance of Ron DeSantis’s presidential announcement on Twitter had little to do with DeSantis but everything to do with Musk.It’s that Twitter, under Musk, has fully embraced the political right.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...

Three years on from the murder of George Floyd, progress has been made but we cannot rest when it comes to racial inequalityThree years ago the world was stunned by the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of people who had sworn an oath to protect him. That horrific act unleashed years of pent-up frustration from black communities all over the world, but it wasn’t just black or brown people rising; honest and decent people from all backgrounds rose to say enough is enough and after the initial clamour for justice there was quickly a movement for long-term change.Football was no different in its reaction and we saw support from players, managers and leaders across the game. Players were at the forefront through their united decision to take the knee, ensuring the debate about racial inequality stayed on the agenda. Continue reading...

‘Alternative asset managers’ are mainly focused on protecting themselves from losses – and they get tax breaks for it, too

World’s second-largest cinema chain filed for protection to restructure debts but further backing has now been securedCineworld has said it expects to exit bankruptcy protection in July as the troubled cinema group secured further backing from lenders for its restructuring plan.The update from the world’s second-largest cinema chain, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, comes months after it filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in the autumn as it struggled with a ballooning $5bn (£4bn) debt pile and low audience numbers. Continue reading...

Stars such as Mick Jagger, Elton John and Diana Ross pay tribute to the singer who has died at 83. Plus, how the invasion of Ukraine ‘has fuelled funding boom for clean energy’Good morning.Tina Turner, the pioneering rock’n’roll star who became a pop behemoth in the 1980s, has died aged 83 after a long illness. An outpouring of tributes has emerged online following the announcement.When did her career start? In the 1960s with her abusive husband Ike Turner. After two decades of working with him, she struck out alone and – after a few false starts – became one of the defining pop icons of the 1980s with the album Private Dancer. Her life was chronicled in three memoirs, a biopic, a jukebox musical, and in 2021, the acclaimed documentary film, Tina. Read her obituary here.What was the cause of death? It’s unclear but she had suffered ill health in recent years, being diagnosed with intestinal cancer in 2016 and having a kidney transplant in 2017.How did the Twitter launch go? Not well. The event marked the first time a major candidate had announced their run for president on social media and nearly 600,000 listeners tuned into Spaces, Twitter’s dedicated audio streaming feature but the results were a disaster. As the livestream began, the audio line experienced feedback, outages and garbled audio. Many users reported their Twitter apps crashing or logging them out as they tried to join the stream.What do we know about DeSantis? The Florida governor claims “blue-collar roots” and an Ivy League education but has pursued hard-right policies as he seeks to take on Trump. Here are 10 things to know about Ron DeSantis. Continue reading...

On the first anniversary of the deaths of 19 children and two teachers in a school mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, US president Joe Biden said too many schools in the country had become 'killing fields'.He then renewed his call for a ban on assault rifles. 'It's time to act,' Biden said at a memorial for the victims of the Uvalde shooting. 'It’s time to make our voices heard. Not as Democrats or Republicans. But as friends, as neighbors, as parents, as fellow Americans.'

After decades of just shovelling in food, I have finally learned to pace myselfI read and listen to an awful lot of words. How many? Let’s see. I must get through at least four hours of speech radio, podcasts and audiobooks a day. At roughly three words a second that’s more than 10,000 an hour, so let’s call it 40,000 a day. And I must be in conversation for about the same amount of time, so allowing for silences and subtracting the words I use, that’s maybe another 15,000 a day. And I must read about the same number. I reckon, all up, 70,000 a day; 25m a year. Some of those words have more merit than others. A few, vanishingly few, are sheer gold. One short sentence can reframe everything.An example: I’ve banged on extensively about my propensity to overeat, at every meal, and between meals, all day, every day. After more than half a century of this, the shame of it hadn’t abated any more than the habit. I’d all but given up trying to change. Then a month ago, I picked up Paul McKenna’s book I Can Make You Thin. This turned out to be something of a gamechanger. I have not overeaten since and I’m 6kg lighter. The whole book is interesting, and I have even quite enjoyed the “weight-loss mind-programming audio”. Continue reading...

John Riddle of Hollywood, Florida, discovered lizard in what seems to be a recurring encounter in stateHearing “splashing” coming from his toilet, a 58-year-old Florida man looked into the bowl and found an iguana.“I look down, and I see this frightened-looking reptile looking back at me,” John Riddle, of Hollywood, told the Orlando Sentinel. Continue reading...

This week’s furore over entirely legal migration proves it was never the kind of foreigner you were, simply your foreignnessFew sights are as sad as someone who gets exactly what they want and hates it, yet that is exactly how the British right behaves.Hacking back the state? They swung the axe for a decade, only to complain about the damage done. Boris Johnson? Once their surefire winner, he has made them all losers. And, of course, there’s Brexit – the summit towards which so many trudged, only to find the view from the top a dud. Every last one of the right’s grievances has been dealt with, and it drives them mad.Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The Arsenal youth product is set to lead the attack for the Americans on home soil in 2026. He could be the goalscorer they have long cravedThe United States is one of fastest growing football nations in the world. Over the last 30 years we have been hoping, maybe even praying, for a savior. Every great football nation has a Ronaldo, a Neymar, a Messi. The US will never have that. Or at least we thought we wouldn’t. We’ve always had to succeed as a team rather than on the shoulders of a superstar.But it seems that our prayers may have been answered. Whereas the US seemingly always figures out the goalkeeping position and sometimes struggles to find a left-back, this generation may be the best collective we have to win the World Cup. And I think Folarin Balogun has figured that out. That’s why he recently switched nationalities and will represent the United States, the country of his birth, even though he grew up in England and has represented them at youth level. Continue reading...

Republican seen as Trump’s top challenger launches campaign with glitch-riddled Twitter eventThe governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, rolling out the news with a campaign video and a glitch-riddled event on Twitter with the owner of the social media site, Elon Musk.DeSantis filed paperwork on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, before his planned event with Musk and an interview with Fox News later on Wednesday evening. Continue reading...

Struggling platform experienced its greatest stress test yet on Wednesday, with glitches piling as more people joined the streamRon DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch on Twitter Spaces was hyped by Elon Musk as “groundbreaking”, and extensively advertised as a new frontier for “free speech” in politics. Instead, the results were a disaster.The event, which marked the first time a major candidate had announced their run for president on social media, marked Twitter’s latest attempt to draw more users and create profit as financial challenges mount. Since taking over the social network, laying off upwards of 80% of staff, Musk’s company has experienced a rise in technical glitches and errors. Continue reading...

Florida governor took swipes at the media and NAACP during trouble-plagued announcement

In the hospital room I lost it. I stood there awkwardly with wet eyes. And then something incredible happenedThe word that our old friend was about to die travelled as quickly as a Mallee scrub fire. He’d been medically evacuated home from overseas a week or so earlier. He was now in hospital with his family about him, not very responsive and unable to talk.“You should get there quickly. He might only have a day or two.’’ Continue reading...

Drug overdoses kill two to three times as many in state as car accidents, data showsOverdoses involving fentanyl were behind one in five deaths of people ages 15-24 in California, the latest indicator of an emergency that shows no signs of slowing.Drug overdoses now kill two to three times as many people in the state as car accidents, according to data compiled by the consulting group California Health Policy Strategies. Since 2017, deaths related to the synthetic opioid, which is 50 times stronger than heroin, have increased 1,027%. Continue reading...

Democrats and Republicans continue to trade pointed remarks, underscoring that agreement is not in reach to avoid defaultLawmakers exchanged sharp criticism about who was to blame for the protracted standoff over the debt ceiling on Wednesday.As the country nears its deadline to avoid a federal default, talks between Joe Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, continued on Wednesday, as negotiators met again to hash out the details of a potential deal. But both parties simultaneously trade pointed remarks, underscoring that an agreement is not yet in reach. Continue reading...

The Florida governor claims ‘blue-collar roots’ and an Ivy League education but has pursued hard-right policies as he seeks to take on TrumpRon DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, has officially announced his candidacy for the GOP’s 2023 presidential nomination. DeSantis joins a field currently dominated by Donald Trump, the GOP’s most popular candidate, and is widely expected to become his chief contender.Here are 10 things to know about Ron DeSantis: Continue reading...

Convicted murderer faces charges after being indicted over allegations he schemed to steal settlement money from clientsThe convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh is facing federal charges for the first time after being indicted on 22 financial fraud counts over allegations he schemed to steal settlement money from clients.The indictments unsealed on Wednesday do not appear to reveal any new allegations against the once-prominent South Carolina attorney now serving life without parole for killing his wife and younger son. Continue reading...

The rightwing culture warrior has been called ‘Trump 2.0’ – but what, if anything, is driving him to attain the highest office in the land?The official Florida governor’s website invites visitors to “Meet Governor DeSantis”. But anyone who clicks on that option is greeted with the message “Governor Ron DeSantis Biography – coming soon”, along with his photo and a big white space.DeSantis’s admirers project on to that blank page the ideal of a strong chief executive, “anti-woke” warrior and consistent election winner. His detractors fill the vacuum with warnings that the Florida governor represents “Trump 2.0”, “Trump with a brain” and “Trump without the circus”. Continue reading...

Bill which would have required every public school to display text in each classroom condemned by civil rights groupsRepublicans in Texas failed to pass legislation that would have required the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in every public school classroom.The controversial bill, authored by the Republican state senator Phil King, would have required schools to display the Old Testament text “in a conspicuous place in each classroom”, in a durable poster or frame. Continue reading...

Counter lawsuit comes after territory alleged bank ‘facilitated’ exploitation of women and girls by sex offenderJP Morgan has claimed the government of the US Virgin Islands is “complicit in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein”, saying the convicted sex trafficker maintained a “quid pro quo relationship” with some of the territory’s highest officials over two decades.The claim, contained in a legal filing on Tuesday, comes as part of a legal tussle that began with the US Virgin Islands alleging in a New York court that JP Morgan “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls”. JP Morgan denies the claims. Continue reading...

GOP attempt to add work requirements to safety net programs such as Medicaid and Snap could harm families already strugglingAs debt ceiling negotiations come down to the wire with the 1 June deadline looming, some Republican leaders seem determined to use critical safety net programs – specifically, Medicaid and Snap – as a bargaining chip, and millions of America’s most vulnerable families may pay the price.Cuts and restrictions to these essential programs, which offer healthcare and food assistance, will cause further hardship to families who are already struggling – and who in many cases can’t afford the basic essentials like food and shelter. The Republican fixation on appending work requirements to these benefits are also ineffective: data shows these policies are not needed and don’t produce any substantial solutions. Some critics say they also force people to find jobs that don’t actually lead to economic mobility, prolonging their need for federal assistance. Continue reading...

Florida governor, the closest challenger to Trump, is due to launch campaign in conversation with Elon Musk on TwitterThe 2024 Republican presidential primary is due to begin in earnest on Wednesday night with the formal entry of Ron DeSantis, the hard-right Florida governor who is the closest challenger to Donald Trump.DeSantis is due to announce his long-trailed candidacy in conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter, followed by an interview on Fox News. The governor is reportedly set to hit the campaign trail after the Memorial Day weekend, with visits to early voting states. Continue reading...