US news | The Guardian

On Monday, Fox News unexpectedly announced that Tucker Carlson, the network's most popular and controversial presenter, had departed from the channel. The network released a statement indicating that it had mutually agreed with Carlson to part ways. The statement read: 'Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways ... We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.'Carlson courted controversy throughout his career relying on provocative and inaccurate reporting to boost his ratings. The Los Angeles Times reported his departure was linked to a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which sued the network for defamation after Carlson falsely claimed that the company rigged the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.

An intense solar storm has entranced stargazers across the world after it created light shows reaching beyond their usual polar boundaries. Australia and New Zealand saw a huge Aurora Australis on Monday night, while the Aurora Borealis graced skies farther south than usual across the US, Europe and Asia

The legislation has slim exceptions – only in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency – up to six weeks’ gestationNorth Dakota on Monday adopted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US as the Republican governor Doug Burgum signed legislation banning the procedure throughout pregnancy, with slim exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation.In those early weeks, abortion would be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency, such as ectopic pregnancy. Continue reading...

Zooey Zephyr hasn’t been allowed to speak on house floor since taking a stand against bill that would ban gender-affirming careMontana protesters brought the state house to a halt on Monday after Republican legislative leaders prevented a transgender lawmaker from speaking for a third day over her remarks about banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.The interruption is the latest development in a three-day fight over Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr’s remarks against lawmakers who support a ban on gender-affirming care. Zephyr, who is trans and a first-term Democrat, hasn’t been allowed to speak on the state house floor since Thursday because she told Republican colleagues last week they would have “blood on their hands” if they banned gender-affirming medical care. Continue reading...

The bank came into focus after two regional banks collapsed in April, shaking confidence in smaller institutionsFirst Republic Bank’s deposits fell by over $100 bn in the first quarter and it said it was exploring options including restructuring its balance sheet, overshadowing market-beating profit and sending its shares down 21% after the bell on Monday.The results mark the most important quarter for the troubled bank as it prepares to increase insured deposits, cut borrowings from the Federal Reserve Bank and loan balances, it said, while aiming to layoff nearly 20-25% in the second quarter. Continue reading...

The neo-fascist group’s leader and four lieutenants are accused of seditious conspiracy to forcibly stop the transfer of power in 2021Ready for “all-out war”, leaders of the far-right Proud Boys viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Donald Trump as he clung to power after the 2020 election, a prosecutor said on Monday at the close of a historic trial over the January 6 Capitol attack.After more than three months of testimony, jurors began hearing closing arguments in the seditious conspiracy case accusing the former Proud Boys national chairman, Enrique Tarrio, and four lieutenants of plotting to forcibly stop the transfer of power. Continue reading...

Launch would come exactly four years after president announced his 2020 bid, where he warned ‘soul’ of the nation is at stakeJoe Biden is expected to announce his 2024 re-election campaign as early as Tuesday, possibly setting the stage for an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.A Tuesday launch would come exactly four years after Biden announced his 2020 presidential bid, in which he warned that the “soul” of the nation was at stake after four tumultuous years under Trump. Continue reading...

Many are surprised by news given Carlson’s popularity, while several conservative pundits expressed displeasureShocked reactions are pouring in across social media on the abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, with the network announcing that the prominent far-right television host is leaving the channel.Many were surprised by the announcement given the popularity that Carlson enjoyed at Fox as well as the highest-rated host on cable television. Continue reading...

Star anchor Lemon, 57, says ‘I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated’ as network confirms exitThe TV news anchor Don Lemon said on Monday he had been fired from CNN – the news breaking shortly after word of another major US media departure, that of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN,” Lemon, 57, wrote on Twitter not long after appearing on CNN This Morning, the revamped show he co-hosted with Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. Continue reading...

Senate finance chair Ron Wyden demands Harlan Crow end ‘unacceptable’ secrecy over dealings with supreme court justiceThe Democratic chairperson of the US Senate finance committee, Ron Wyden, has written to the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow demanding an end to “unacceptable” secrecy around his gifts to the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.“The secrecy surrounding your dealings with Justice Thomas is simply unacceptable,” Wyden, from Oregon, wrote in the open letter. Continue reading...

California senator absent for weeks as Democrats and progressives eye effect on pace of confirmations of liberal judgesCalls for Dianne Feinstein to resign from the US Senate because of ill health are not sexist or ageist, a prominent liberal columnist argued, as debate over the California Democrat’s absence continued.“I don’t think it’s those things,” Molly Jong-Fast, a podcaster and Vanity Fair columnist, told MSNBC. “Sure, there have been senators who have stayed too long on the right and the left, female and male. This is not even an issue of staying too long. This is an issue of just not being in the office to take the votes you must take.” Continue reading...

Two elderly cats found hiding under owner’s bed days after collapse of adjacent parking garage left them trappedTwo elderly cats who were trapped after a car garage’s collapse in New York City have been reunited with their owner, providing a sliver of good news in what was otherwise a deadly mishap.Sandy Imhoff was reunited with her two cats – 12-year-old Dave and Cathy, 14 – on Thursday after the cats and other felines were trapped in an adjacent apartment building when the garage collapsed. Continue reading...

Majority of Americans also don’t believe federal judges should be able to overturn FDA approval of a prescription drug, poll showsA significant majority of Americans do not support laws that would prohibit access to drugs used in medication abortions, and confidence in the US supreme court is at a new low, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released on Monday.A majority of Americans also do not believe federal judges should be able to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of a prescription drug, the poll found. Continue reading...

Letters to Trump reportedly contains 150 messages from key figures also including Queen Elizabeth and Ronald ReaganDonald Trump’s forthcoming book of letters from famous but mostly former friends will include a missive from King Charles III, the Telegraph reported.According to the report, the letter from then Prince Charles was sent in 1995, thanking Trump for an honorary membership at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and inviting him to London. Continue reading...

Ship lacked required onboard morgue and Robert Jones’s body had turned green and was decomposing by time it reached FloridaA cruise line stored the body of a passenger who died onboard in a drinks cooler for several days, causing the man’s body to turn green and decompose, the man’s widow alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in Florida last week.The man, Robert Jones, died of a heart attack on 15 August last year while onboard the Celebrity Equinox during a Caribbean cruise. Ship crew members allegedly told his widow, Marilyn Jones, that she could either take the body on shore in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or that they could store it in the working onboard morgue until they returned to Florida. Staffers told her that the body had only a 50% chance of undergoing an autopsy in San Juan and that she would have to remain there alone until the body was autopsied and embalmed, Jones said in the complaint. She chose to keep the body on the ship. Continue reading...

Protest planned after Carroll county gives job to Myles Cosgrove, who was fired by Louisville police after no-knock raidThe former Louisville police officer who fatally shot Breonna Taylor has a new job in law enforcement in a county north-east of the Kentucky city.The Carroll county sheriff’s office on Saturday confirmed the hiring of Myles Cosgrove, who was fired from the Louisville Metro police department in January 2021 for violating use-of-force procedures and failing to use a body camera during the raid on Taylor’s apartment, WHAS-TV reported. Continue reading...

Fox was never forced to admit to its deceptions, and the far-right echo chamber is still obsessed with voting conspiracy theoriesElection officials across the US have faced an unprecedented amount of threats and harassment since the 2020 election. Now they say that Dominion Voting Systems’ decision to settle its landmark defamation lawsuit with Fox for $787.5m last week may not do enough to stop conspiracy theories about the company’s machines leading into the 2024 election.While election officials in states and localities that use Dominion machines agree the settlement is a win for the integrity of elections, they lamented that election misinformation will continue, especially given that Fox News personalities and executives didn’t have to testify about whether they knowingly spread false claims about the voting machines, or offer a public apology. Continue reading...

Dominion Voting Systems has settled its defamation lawsuit with Fox News for $787.5m. Some fear it may not be enough to stop conspiracy theories about the company’s machines in the run-up to 2024 election

Results reported for what is likely to be the last time as lender’s takeover by Swiss rival nears completionCredit Suisse said customers pulled more than 61bn Swiss francs (£55bn) worth of assets from the bank at the start of the year, laying bare the scale of the panic that contributed to its failure and emergency takeover by its rival UBS last month.The Swiss lender said the “significant withdrawals” were partly to blame for its poor financial performance in the first quarter, with its adjusted pre-tax loss ballooning to 1.3bn Swiss francs for the first three months of the year. That compares with a profit of 300m Swiss francs during the same period in 2022. Continue reading...

Fox News, one of the world’s most powerful media organisations, effectively admitted it broadcast untrue information. What happens now?There are always plenty of grounds for cynicism about the state of the news media, but in the last week we seem to have arrived at a new set of low expectations.Fox News, having settled its defamation case with Dominion in the US and with Lachlan Murdoch withdrawing proceedings against Crikey in Australia, the Murdoch news empire has effectively admitted what was already clear: that it knowingly broadcast untrue information. Continue reading...

Many are surprised that one of the NBA’s most effective pests is from Canada. But the country’s players must fight to prove themselves south of their borderDillon Brooks is doing everything in his power to become the NBA’s next villain.The 27-year-old wing from Mississauga, Ontario has picked up so many technical fouls this season that he earned two one-game suspensions. He punched Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell in the groin, which started a brawl. He shoved a cameraman, which led to a fine. And in last year’s playoffs, he hit Gary Payton II while in the air, causing him to break his elbow. Continue reading...

In their new book, The Big Myth, the authors document the rise of ‘market fundamentalism’ and Americans’ relationship with government regulationsFor the last decade, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway have been digging into the history of the idea that freedom only thrives if businesses are left unbothered by governments. It’s a philosophy that has touched every corner of American life, they argue, even though it has long been proven deeply flawed.In their new book – The Big Myth – How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market – Oreskes and Conway document the rise of what’s more politely called “market fundamentalism” over the last century, from corporate propaganda and fringe academic theory to mainstream ideology. Continue reading...

As a bleeding-heart animal lover, I don’t want to see any creature harmed. But warring, resourceful rats clearly need to be tackledI have a girl crush: Kathleen Corradi, NYC’s newly-appointed “rat tsar”. The former elementary school teacher responded to the city’s search for someone “bloodthirsty” enough to tackle the city’s all-time-high rodent population (primary school will do that to a person). At a press conference, Corradi, wearing shades and a black turtleneck, looked spectacularly badass as she declared, “You’ll be seeing a lot more of me – and a lot less rats … There’s a new sheriff in town.” Swoon.I’m conflicted, though. I quite like rats and admire their initiative and intelligence as only someone who hasn’t had to share living space with them can. As a bleeding-heart animal lover, I sympathise with the Parisian animal rights group Zoopolis, which has campaigned to stop the massacre of municipal rats: surely there are more humane solutions, such as rat contraception. (Or, as one New Yorker cartoon suggested, “teach the rats ethical non-monogamy until none of the rats wants to settle down and procreate”.) Continue reading...

Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people at an anti-racism protest, was guest of honor at Idaho Republican party fundraiserRepublicans in Idaho have been criticized for “glorifying political violence” after the party hosted Kyle Rittenhouse, the American who shot and killed two people at an anti-racism protest and injured another, as a celebrity guest at a fundraiser.The 20-year-old was the guest of honor at a Bonneville county Republican party event, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on 15 April, where an AR-15 style rifle signed by Rittenhouse was auctioned off as part of a fundraiser and people could buy tickets to “Trigger time”: a Rittenhouse-hosted shooting event at a gun range. Continue reading...

Families like mine have listened to the descendants of enslaved people. Today we launch a new lobbying group, Heirs of SlaveryHow many people in Britain today have benefited from industrialised slavery in the Caribbean? A vast and many-stranded enterprise, it was responsible for 11% of British GDP at its height in 1800. Wealth and privilege seeps down the generations, and British slavery ended only 185 years ago: there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Britons whose lives are touched by the money it generated.“You aren’t responsible for what your ancestors did. You are responsible for what you do,” says the writer on culture and racism Emma Dabiri. I examined my ancestors’ involvement in a book published two years ago. Now I, and others with similar histories, have decided we should go further.Alex Renton’s Blood Legacy: Reckoning With a Family’s Story of Slavery is published by Canongate. He is a co-founder of Heirs of Slavery Continue reading...

The 14th amendment to the US constitution clearly disqualifies the former president from returning to office. States must actThe most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president?Answer: he shouldn’t be. Continue reading...

Incident in Broward county was one of a spate involving people lost, at wrong address or getting into wrong car by mistakeA Florida prosecutor on Sunday ordered an investigation into a confrontation in which a homeowner fired shots into a couple’s car after they mistakenly turned on to his property while making a late-night grocery delivery.Police closed the case without consulting the state attorney. Continue reading...

Democratic congresswoman says apology to voting machines maker would have served the public goodDominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said. Continue reading...

Judiciary chair Dick Durbin seeks testimony from chief justice amid scandal over gifts to Clarence ThomasDick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee leading a push for supreme court ethics reform, accused the top court of being a panel of “nine justices [who] believe they are exempt from the basic standards of disclosure”.His claim came amid growing criticism of the conservative justice Clarence Thomas, whose judicial record is under scrutiny after he became embroiled in scandal over taking undeclared gifts from a Republican mega-donor. Continue reading...

Chair of Senate intelligence committee addresses Pentagon leaks and says central entity should oversee classification processToo many people have access to the US government’s closest secrets and a central entity should oversee the classification process, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said on Sunday, addressing leaks of documents in an online chat group.A US air national guardsman was charged on 14 April with leaking classified documents on the Discord platform. Continue reading...

New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu says ‘we need a candidate that can win’ even as Trump dominates national primary pollsDonald Trump is a “four-time loser” who will not necessarily be the Republican presidential nominee despite dominating primary polling, the New Hampshire governor said on Sunday.“Donald Trump is positioning himself to be a four-time loser in 2024,” Chris Sununu said. “We need candidates that can win.” Continue reading...

Former vice-president, adrift of Trump and DeSantis in polls, makes less-than-bold presidential prediction to CBSMike Pence has not decided whether to enter the Republican presidential primary but if he does he will enter “well before late June”.The former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump has been moving towards a run for months, releasing a memoir, visiting early voting states and establishing a political staff. Continue reading...

Senator deflects questions with false claim Democrats want a ‘barbaric’ law allowing abortions on demand until birthRepublican frustration with the supreme court decision which on Friday blocked restrictions on a widely used abortion pill spilled into public on Sunday, as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham lost his cool in a television interview when challenged on his flip-flopping position.Graham, who last September proposed a national 15-week abortion ban only a month after insisting it was an issue for states to decide, became angry on CNN’s State of the Union, deflecting questions with false claims Democrats wanted a law allowing abortions until birth on demand. Continue reading...

The bloody conflict in my birth country has its roots in a power struggle that began with the Darfur genocide 20 years agoThe speed with which Sudan unravelled was the first indication that it had all been building up for a long time. The country’s collapse is the result of a series of failures, complicities and complacencies that have been rumbling away in the background for so long that those living with them assumed they would continue on for ever. That was until a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and the country’s army went to war over who runs the country – and trapped the Sudanese people between them.The country’s capital, Khartoum, has become a war zone, with surreal scenes of tanks, missile strikes and plumes of smoke rising throughout the city. The conflict erupted exactly four years after a colossal revolution succeeded, against all odds, in removing President Omar al-Bashir after almost 30 years of dictatorship, economic pillage and genocide – and in doing so, created a power vacuum over which the two forces are fighting. Continue reading...

Company which shot to popularity in the 1990s has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products floppedBed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, after failing to secure funds to stay afloat, and began a liquidation sale.The home goods retailer, which shot to popularity in the 1990s as a go-to for couples making wedding registries and planning babies, has seen demand drop off as a strategy to sell more store-branded products flopped. Continue reading...

Our rivers run with poo, we have hundreds of food banks and it is virtually impossible to get a doctor’s appointment. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to appreciate how bad things areMy in-laws came to stay recently, prompting a crisis of what some DIY chain has forced me to think of as “housebarassment”. We don’t have many guests, because I get funny when people use my mugs, and offer a welcome along the lines of the peregrine falcon nest boxes I watch on webcams: a few strewn pebbles, dismembered pigeon corpses, me hunched and glaring in a corner, covered in viscera. But some visits are welcome – we hardly ever see my in-laws, since they’re fairly elderly and live in France, but I like them! It’s a miracle. I hardly like anyone.But it’s shaming to suddenly see your home through other eyes. Before they arrived, we surveyed the squalor we’d got used to, each secretly blaming the other. The shoe and pizza box mountain in the hall, an insanitary trip hazard. A pair of socks left on the radiator since last summer. A mummified – what? Apple? Lemon? Mouse? – in the fruit bowl, an unconscionable amount of hair everywhere, the sofa smelling of old dog and surrounded by crisp packets and coconut water cartons.Do 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...

Lieutenant governor has achieved national notoriety over views on LGBTQ+ rights, guns, abortion and moreThe Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, formally entered the race for governor at a rally on Saturday.The sharp-spoken social conservative, who has made controversial remarks about LGBTQ+ rights, guns and abortion, said North Carolina needed a leader like him who can relate to the challenges and desires of working people. Continue reading...

Kevin McCarthy kickstarted talks with the White House, but his proposal may not even have the Republican votes to move forwardAs hundreds of millions of Americans faced a deadline on Tuesday to file their annual tax returns, Congress continued to squabble over paying its own bills.Tax Day came and went this week without lawmakers reaching an agreement on lifting the debt ceiling, the US government’s borrowing limit to cover all of its financial obligations. Experts have warned that failure to lift or suspend the debt ceiling could have catastrophic consequences for the US economy, which would be felt in every American household. Continue reading...

Currently, workers receive wages only for 13 hours of work on their 24-hour shifts, with the rest 11 hours amounting to unpaid laborZhu Nu Jun has worked as a home care aide in New York City for eight years, working three 24-hour shifts a week. That increased to four 24-hour shifts a week last year.It can be brutal and intense work. Continue reading...

Undocumented workers play a crucial role in California’s labor force, but are forced to take exploitative jobsWhen Irma Mejia moved into a garage with her three children, she was hoping it would be temporary. Then, on the very first payday after pandemic lockdowns went into effect, she says her new manager told her she was only going to get paid half of what she was owed.“[I thought] if you couldn’t pay me, you should have asked me,” Mejia recalls. “Because I get to decide if I’m working here or not, right? If you’re only gonna pay me these hours, then I’m only working those hours.” Continue reading...

Those with more money are more likely to agree with policy changes than the less well-offWe aim to bring you surprising and important findings from the world of research. I fear this week’s offering may not manage the “surprising” part but it is important.In a great new study, Swedish researchers investigated how policy outcomes reflect public attitudes towards those policies. They looked across 30 European countries over 38 years on issues ranging from welfare to immigration, foreign policy to the environment. Continue reading...

Netflix’s drama about the Egyptian queen highlights how ideas of race have evolvedIn 1751, the great American polymath Benjamin Franklin worried about the small number of “purely white People in the World”. “All Africa,” he wrote, “is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny... And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also.” Only “the Saxons… [and] the English make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.”The question of “who is white?” might seem to us today as self-evident. Yet it has over the past three centuries been fiercely contested. Many groups we now think of as white were certainly not seen as such for much of that period, from the Irish to the Slavs, from Italians to Jews. It took a long process of social negotiation and conflict before they were admitted into the club of whiteness. Continue reading...

The $787m Fox News settlement was money well spent in saving the media mogul from an embarrassing ordealThere are, as F Scott Fitzgerald famously observed – and as Rupert Murdoch is now belatedly discovering, “no second acts in American lives”. Last week, just as the trial of the $1.6bn defamation action brought by Dominion against Fox News was about to start, a “settlement” was reached between the two parties. Fox, of which Murdoch is CEO, paid nearly $800m to stop the proceedings.Given how highly Murdoch values his image as a swaggering media giant, it was probably money well spent. Otherwise he would have had to testify under oath and the world would see not the robust titan of popular legend but an elderly mogul who is physically frail and, more importantly, who could not stop his TV station pandering to Donald Trump for fear of alienating the audience that had turned Fox News into such a profitable cash cow. Continue reading...

Younger people can only watch in envy as older generations are tempted into golden early retirementThe marshmallow test was invented when the boomer generation was young. It tested the ability to delay gratification. Children who could hold off eating a marshmallow placed in front of them would get two, proving they had the self-control requisite to become concert cellists, scientific geniuses or presidents of the US.But over the years, psychologists have come to doubt the marshmallow test and what it was really measuring. They found that children who had grown up around unpredictable adults – or who were primed with a broken promise ahead of the test – were most likely to grab the first sweet that came their way. This wasn’t always impulse failure, as once assumed, so much as a rational reaction to circumstance. In an uncertain world, it is much smarter not to trust in romantic promises of marshmallows tomorrow. You might end up with none at all. The first lesson – sacrifice pays off – has been drummed into boomers, and the following generation X, all their lives, but life is repeatedly teaching their children the second. We can do everything right and still not get our second marshmallow. Sometimes, even our first is whipped away right in front of us, as we are asked to please stop whining; we shouldn’t have expected so much in the first place. Continue reading...