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At least 30 people were injured early on 19 July when a vehicle drove into a crowd outside a club on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, the city's fire department and local media reports have said. At least seven people were in critical condition and six others were seriously injured, the fire department said in an online statement. Captain Adam VanGerpen, a fire department spokesperson, was quoted by ABC News as saying that a paramedic assessing one of the injured found a gunshot wound. He said he was unable to confirm reports it was the driver of the car that hit the crowd. The Los Angeles police department confirmed that the investigation is ongoing

Christian group Generation Life has sent 20somethings to do beach outreach' at the US haven for hedonism for two decades. A lot about young people's sex lives - and their sales pitch - has changedBy the time the young man in red swim shorts sprinted up the beach to Chiara MacGillivray and Jon Sechuk, the two twentysomethings had yet to convince a single Jersey shore partier to join their crusade for chastity.In fairness, convincing young people to remain chaste" until marriage is a hard sell at the best of times. And the members of Generation Life knew that Saturday in June at the Jersey shore - a stretch of sand south of Atlantic City so renowned for horniness, drunkenness and reality TV show antics that its very name has become a synonym for hedonism - was not exactly a good time for chastity. It may have even been the worst possible time. Continue reading...

Move by Marco Rubio is latest attempt by Trump administration to help former president avoid justice over alleged coupThe US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil's 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country's former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump's Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years. Continue reading...

Measles cases are at their highest rate in the US in decades. Robert F Kennedy doesn't seem too botheredDo you enjoy getting sick from preventable diseases? Do you have a hankering to make once-declining viruses great again? If so, why not pop over to the US where the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his anti-vaccine cronies are making a valiant effort to overturn decades of progress in modern medicine?Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The US president and the man he appointed to head the central bank are at loggerheads over interest ratesAfter years of heated attacks on the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the Trump administration has begun suggesting recent costly renovations at the central bank's Washington DC buildings could justify firing Powell.Donald Trump's antipathy for Powell stems mainly from the central bank boss's refusal to lower interest rates - something the president has repeatedly called for. Continue reading...

Downstream of Camp Mystic, people rallied around to restore Camp Camp, which caters for those with disabilitiesJust days after the devastating Texas floods killed 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, another summer camp has reopened its doors 30 miles downstream. A colossal cleanup effort from the surrounding community enabled Camp Camp, a residential program serving youth with disabilities, to welcome visitors again this summer.Our campers will be able to enjoy our riverfront activities much sooner now," said Ken Kaiser, the director of facility operations for the camp. In the midst of heartache, we got to see the best of humanity through these volunteers who came from all over Texas and beyond." Continue reading...

Chase Childers, 38, displayed extraordinary courage' in saving swimmers in distress, family saysA family in Dallas is grieving after their patriarch - a former pro baseball player turned police officer - died saving five others from drowning while they all recently vacationed, as authorities and an online page in his honor tell it.Chase Childers, 38, displayed extraordinary courage and selflessness ... ultimately paying the highest sacrifice with his life" in front of his wife Nataley and their three children, said a GoFundMe page launched to support his family. His bravery, kindness and love will always be remembered." Continue reading...

Campaigning on protecting democracy' isn't appealing for non-college-educated voters. So why haven't Democrats changed their message?Doing the same thing and expecting a different result - that's the definition of insanity. So I fall into despair when I hear yet another news story, and yet another politician, talking incessantly about assaults on democracy. It's as if folks have read no post-2024 election polling. Defense of democracy was a top issue for Democrats but way, way down for those who voted for Donald Trump: their top concerns were inflation and the economy. Democrats lost the popular vote. They need to attract voters they lost in the last election. What's complicated about this?Assaults on democracy are driven by narcissistic authoritarianism, for sure - but they're also a strategy to control the narrative in ways that aid and abet the far right. Democrats need to stop walking into the same old trap, and supplement defense of democracy with a viable strategy to lure back enough non-college-educated voters to win elections. Continue reading...

Trump's grooming of his followers is impossible to undo. Now he is bedeviled by a conspiracy theory gapSome enchanted evening, Donald Trump saw a stranger across a crowded room.It is likely that there is hardly anyone living who knows exactly under what glowing lights Donald Trump met Jeffrey Epstein, except perhaps Trump himself and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping to procure minors for sexual abuse. Trump said in an interview in 2002, when his Epstein relationship was still tight, that it had been a 15-year mutual admiration society. Epstein was a terrific guy" and a lot of fun to be with," and likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". Epstein described himself as Donald's closest friend for 10 years". Continue reading...

Starmer's successful reset' with Europe highlights an underlying incoherence. The only rational long-term strategy is to rejoin the EU, but our politics is far removed from thatLike a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer's real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe - witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz - does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain's global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second circle, now the European Union, Britain has withdrawn from it. With the revolutionary nationalism of President Donald Trump, the third circle is also fading fast. So here's an 80-year countdown of Britain's strategic circles: three ... two ... one, going on none.Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Former Australian prime minister to appear at hearing about countering China's economic coercion against democracies', select committee says

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Three deputies who were killed were members of department's arson explosives detail, according to sheriffAn explosion at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles has killed three people with the county sheriff's department in the largest loss of life for the agency since 1857, the sheriff said on Friday morning.The three deputies who were killed were members of the department's arson explosives detail said Robert Luna, the sheriff, at a press conference. Authorities were still working to notify relatives of the deceased, he said, and details on the circumstances around the explosion were limited. Continue reading...

President follows through on libel threat over report that said he sent Epstein bawdy' birthday note and sketchDonald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.Trump's lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami. Continue reading...

US president's lawsuit came just before the justice department asked a court to unseal grand jury testimony from the federal sex-trafficking investigation into the former financier. Key US politics stories from Friday 18 JulyDonald Trump on Friday sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a bawdy note and sketch of a naked woman.The lawsuit came just before the US justice department asked a New York court to unseal grand jury testimony transcripts from the federal sex-trafficking investigation into Epstein. Continue reading...

US president, who is pushing for ceasefire deal in Gaza, praises Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as fantastic'Ten more hostages will be released from Gaza very shortly", Donald Trump said at the White House Friday. The news comes as the president continues to push for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.We got most of the hostages back. We're going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly," Trump said during a dinner with Republican senators. He also praised his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as fantastic". Continue reading...

US president files libel suit over report that said he sent financier bawdy' birthday note and sketch

Move seeks to contain controversy that has engulfed Trump administration since it announced it would not release more files from sex trafficking caseThe US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein's case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration's handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move - coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump's relationship with Epstein - seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein's sex trafficking case. Continue reading...

Families of victims sued Activision and Meta, saying the companies bear responsibility for products used by gunmanA lawyer for the maker of the video game Call of Duty argued Friday that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the Robb elementary school attack in Uvalde, Texas, saying the contents of the war game are protected by the first amendment.The families sued Call of Duty maker Activision and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, saying that the companies bear responsibility for products used by the teenage gunman. Continue reading...

Yvette Davids, who took the role in January 2004, will be succeeded by Michael BorgschulteThe first woman to lead the US naval academy is being reassigned, with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, moving to replace her with a Marine Corps general, defense officials confirmed on Friday.The decision marks the first time in the nearly 180-year history of the academy that a Marine Corps officer has been nominated to take charge. Continue reading...

Video at the concert showed Astronomer's married CEO with his arms around its head of human resourcesAstronomer, the company at the center of the Coldplay scandal in which its CEO was caught canoodling with its chief human resources officer, has finally issued a statement on the matter.More than 24 hours after a Jumbotron camera at a Coldplay concert in Boston, Massachusetts, caught the software company's married CEO, Andy Byron, with his arms around the company's HR head, Kristin Cabot, Astronomer has responded to the incident which has taken the internet by storm. Continue reading...

The president is reportedly on a warpath' over a story in the Wall Street Journal - controlled by Trump's top media allyFor days before the Wall Street Journal published its story about Donald Trump's salacious friendship with Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, the president was frantically working the phones.He reportedly put pressure on the paper's top editor, Emma Tucker, and even Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper's business side, claiming that the alleged facts behind the story were nothing but a hoax, and threatening to sue the paper if it forged ahead.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...

California governor accuses Jesse Watters of lying about Trump phone call during anti-immigration raid protestsThe California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Fox News host Jesse Watters have locked into a political tit-for-tat after the network figure admitted to mistakenly claiming that Newsom lied about a phone call with Donald Trump during June's anti-immigration enforcement protests in the state.On Thursday, Watters issued an apology on his program stemming from a $787m defamation lawsuit filed by Newsom against the host and Fox News, as the Los Angeles Times and other outlets reported. Newsom's lawsuit claimed that Watters lied on air about the timeline of the governor's conversations with the president during the peak of the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protests across Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Indigenous leaders warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passesWhile colleges and universities slow down during summer break, Ahniwake Rose is busy wondering what the fall semester will hold for the nation's 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) - and if they will be able to stay open much longer.As the president and CEO of the Indigenous non-profit American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), Rose (Cherokee and Muscogee Creek) braces as the schools she represents face a potential nearly 90% reduction in funding starting in October. President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget includes a proposal to slash operations funding from $183.3m to $22.1m for Bureau of Indian Education post-secondary programs - career and technical schools, community colleges, four-year colleges and universities. On 15 July, a House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation that allotted $1.5bn to the Bureau of Indian Education, though it did not specify how much would go toward post-secondary programs. Congress still needs to finish approving the budget for the Bureau of Indian Education, a subdivision of the Department of Interior. Continue reading...

Long-acting contraceptives will not be sent abroad to women in need, a move costing US taxpayers $167,000The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made - a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July. Continue reading...

Nearly 100 lawmakers claim the agency's recent actions put veterans' healthcare at risk. Department of Veterans Affairs chief says no one is being discriminated against at VA'The US Department of Veterans Affairs has enthusiastically joined Donald Trump's war on DEI - demanding that staffers report colleagues who engage in diversity initiatives, banning LGBTQ+ pride flags from VA hospitals and shuttering an office investigating why Black veterans are more likely to have their mental health disability claims rejected.Last week, the VA secretary, Doug Collins, tweeted that VA is now squarely focused on Veterans - not out-of-touch, woke causes such as DEI and gender dysphoria treatments." Continue reading...

Trump has been under scrutiny from his base over failure to release further Epstein documents

Under the new classification, Schedule G, federal employees will be subject to hiring and firing by the presidentTrump signed an executive order on Thursday creating a new classification of federal employees who would be subject to hiring and firing by the president, Schedule G, for employees working on policy, in the latest action by his administration to reshape the federal workforce.The non-career classified employees will be expected to leave in changing presidential administrations, with the order claiming it will improve operations, particularly in agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs, by streamlining appointments for key policy roles". Continue reading...

Proposal heads to president's desk to be signed after party-line vote was delayed by Jeffrey Epstein controversyHouse Republicans passed Donald Trump's funding cut proposal just after midnight on Friday - clawing back $9bn in federal dollars.The vote was split on party lines, 216-213, with two Republicans, Mike Turner of Ohio and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, opposing the package alongside all Democrats. The proposal will now go to the president's desk to be signed and codified. Continue reading...

The president has long exploited useful fictions embraced by his supporters. Now he's trying to change the narrativeDonald Trump's followers, and the conspiracist influencers turned-government officials through whom he persuades them, have turned on the president and US attorney general after they declared an end to federal inquiries into Jeffrey Epstein's death. But it would be a mistake to think that the investigation scandal is sui generis. It's more like the culmination of a long-running trend, one in which Trump's exploitation of the conspiracist fictions, distrust of institutions, and prurient fascinations of his base have finally come back to bite him.A pedophile ring at the center of power is a recurring theme in rightwing conspiracy theories of the Trump era. During the 2016 presidential election, supporters of Trump, then an outsider challenger for the Republican nomination, began to spread dark claims about his rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton. Online, far-right trolls and members of the population now called low trust voters"- people who believe that something nefarious and conspiratorial is going on in the halls of American power, even if they don't know exactly what - speculated that Clinton was at the head of a massive human trafficking and pedophilic abuse ring based inside Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington DC. There was no secret ring. But that didn't stop a disturbed man from showing up with a gun.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

A 2018 county meeting foretold the Texas flood that overwhelmed the summer camp for girlsInvestigators of the catastrophic Hill Country flooding in Texas may never be able to pinpoint a precise moment that sealed the fate of 27 young girls, teenage counselors and staff who perished after a wall of water surged through Camp Mystic on the banks of the Guadalupe River.But perhaps no bigger clue can be found than the account of an otherwise unremarkable and sparsely attended meeting of Kerr county commissioners in March 2018. Continue reading...

Officials believe Raymond Boodarian was burglarizing home when Robin Kaye and Thomas Deluca returnedA 22-year-old man suspected in the shooting deaths of a longtime music supervisor for American Idol and her husband at their home in Los Angeles was charged with two counts of murder Thursday.Police said officers conducting a welfare check Monday at a gated house in the Encino neighborhood found the bodies of Robin Kaye and Thomas Deluca, both 70. The victims both had gunshot wounds, investigators determined. Continue reading...

Trump reportedly contributed sketch of naked woman to sex offender's birthday album. Plus, Medicaid hands over Americans' personal data to immigration authorities

Islamophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani are a reminder of the difference between individual and structural prejudiceMy only interaction with the FBI came soon after 11 September 2001. A man and woman visited my family's home in Philadelphia - we had recently moved from Palestine - showed their credentials and asked to enter. My parents invited them in and a conversation about political views followed. They left soon afterwards but I knew we were suspect, and I understood why.At the time, I was in high school. Two or three years later, one of my sisters, who wore the hijab then, was confronted by an elderly white man at a department store. What's the significance of the trash you're wearing on your head?" he asked.Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace Continue reading...

Egyptian-born Ayman Soliman was detained while attending a regular check-in with immigration officersA week after the detention of their imam, Egyptian-born Ayman Soliman, worshippers at the Clifton mosque in Cincinnati, Ohio, are still in shock.Soliman was detained on 9 July while attending a regular check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, weeks after being told that his asylum status had been terminated, a provision that he had held for more than seven years. Continue reading...

As Trump tries to claim he was not a fan' of Epstein, photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of a their relationshipIt was a friendship that spanned three different decades. To Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrific guy". Epstein believed himself to be Trump's closest friend", and praised the future president as charming".The relationship would eventually break down, the men falling out over a bidding war on a property in Florida. And after Epstein was convicted of child sex offences in 2008, Trump distanced himself from the financier, claiming he was not a fan" and wondering, in recent days, why his supporters would waste time and energy" on demanding that FBI and Department of Justice files on Epstein be released. Continue reading...

It's the bonfire of the Maga hats. The real mystery is where their wearers got the idea of a paedophile conspiracy from in the first placeYou have to feel for Donald Trump's Maga base. The one huge secret they didn't want disclosed was that he actually really hates them. All populists despise their people, obviously - but please, Mr President, respect the playbook! You're supposed to do it quietly. Regrettably, no one could accuse Trump of hiding his spite under a bushel after a week in which he described those of his supporters who want him to simply do what he repeatedly promised, and release the so-called Epstein files, as weaklings" and stupid people". This is quite the (public) volte face from the guy who originally swept to office declaring I love the poorly educated".Most of you are unlikely to need a recap at this stage, but Jeffrey Epstein is the sex-trafficking financier and socialite, who conveniently died in jail while awaiting trial, apparently by suicide. A woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors, and is currently serving 20 years in a low-security Florida prison. But no big-hitting or even small-hitting male associate in the US has so much as been arrested for participating in what I believe the dead paedophile would have encouraged us to call his lifestyle". This second Trump administration didn't just sweep to power while repeatedly screaming about the cover-up" of this story, but it spent a good portion of its early months assuring its ravenous base that Epstein's supposed client list" was on a desk waiting for release approval. Yet now, Trump and his associates say there is no list. Nope. Never even was a list. Where did these weakling idiots get that idea? To summarise his administration's position: We took a look at the deep state and it turns out to be very shallow. Seriously, I'm standing in it right now and it doesn't even come up to my knees."Marina Hyde 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...

Accusers in rolling Epstein files' revelations could do worse than take a lesson from departing parish priestRightwing American conspiracy theories often circle the drain of lurid abuse stories. So it was quite a twist this week to see the chickens of this particular rancid online conspiracy culture come home to roost in the form of Maga faithfuls turning on Donald Trump for what the US president now refers to as the Jeffrey Epstein hoax". Continue reading...

Internet transfixed by canoodling couple who, instead of waving, look horrified and quickly break apartIt is a moment of shock and mortification in Massachusetts that has transfixed the internet.A camera at a Coldplay concert near Boston sweeps the audience and picks out a canoodling couple. Continue reading...

The 18-year-old No 1 draft pick struggled to shoot in his first Summer League game. But his poise, defense and winning mentality confirmed his billing as a generational talentI would say that might be one of the worst games of my life," Cooper Flagg told reporters last Thursday night. But we got the win, so that's what really matters to me." It was a telling statement from the 18-year-old basketball phenom after his first Las Vegas Summer League game. The No 1 overall pick in this year's NBA draft - taken by the Dallas Mavericks after a one-and-done college career at Duke - didn't have nearly as disastrous a debut as he made out. Though he struggled to shoot the ball, Flagg still managed to flash his playmaking and defensive range. Clearly hyperaware to the moment and the hype surrounding his technical NBA debut, he looked determined to put on a show: aggressively hunting his shot and seeking out highlight-reel dunks at every opportunity.He bounced back with 31 points in his second (and ultimately final) Summer League appearance on Saturday. But it was the second-half of his comment after Thursday night's game that encapsulates why Flagg is one of the most hyped teenage prospects in decades: the kid is a winner. Continue reading...

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Along with Democrats, only two House Republicans voted against the cutThe US's Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed president Donald Trump's $9bn funding cut to public media and foreign aid early on Friday, sending it to the White House to be signed into law.The chamber voted 216 to 213 in favor of the funding cut package, altered by the Senate this week to exclude cuts of about $400m in funds for the global PEPFAR HIV/Aids prevention program. Continue reading...

The millennial comedy Bref was a valuable introduction to life in France. More than a decade on, the show is back - and I've learned my own lessonsWhen I was little I imagined, as most children probably do, that the grownups had things all worked out and someday I would find myself on the other side of a clear boundary. Adolescence on one side; maturity, responsibility, self-assuredness, composition on the other.A few weeks ago I turned 35. As the day ticked closer, I found that old childhood suspicion creeping in again; if any birthday should serve as a demarcator of that boundary, it should be this one, shouldn't it? And now, as the days tick further from that imagined inflection point, it has become a reinforcement of probably the single biggest lesson I have taken away from adulthood": that most of us are simply winging it most of the time, through a process of becoming that never quite reaches become.Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist Continue reading...

Trump said the letter the Wall Street Journal alleged he wrote to Epstein was a fake' and that he plans to sue the publication owned by Rupert Murdoch - key US politics stories from 17 July 2025Growing pressure on the Trump administration has prompted the US president to direct his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek the release of grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein's sex-trafficking case.The announcement came as Trump seeks to tamp down controversy over a story published in the Wall Street Journal that alleges the US president contributed a sketch of a naked woman to Epstein's 50th birthday album. The president has said the letter is a fake, and that he will sue the publication over the story. Continue reading...