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The PM offers a political hybrid designed for a fickle electorate. There are short-term electoral gains to be won, but risks in the long termFor more than eight months now, since shortly after Labour won power, more and more people have been outraged by the government's moves to the right. Starting with its decision to keep the Conservatives' cruel two-child benefit cap last July, the government has regularly given these critics reasons to feel shocked, betrayed or just disappointed.From deportation videos to Keir Starmer's declaration that I like and respect" Donald Trump, from repeated public sector cuts to the chancellor Rachel Reeves's talk of tearing down regulatory barriers" in this week's spring statement, Labour has often behaved as if the boundaries between its supposedly centre-left politics and the politics of the right or even the far right have simply melted away. Continue reading...

The jailing of President Erdoan's main political rival is the low point of a decade-long march towards autocracy - but the protesters aren't done yet either Orhan Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel prize in literatureSince the arrest earlier this month of President Recep Tayyip Erdoan's main political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem mamolu, on what are clearly trumped-up charges of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Square, the city's biggest tourist site and hub of political protest, has been lying empty, cordoned off by police. In my 50 years living in Istanbul, I have not seen as many so-called security measures on the streets as I have over the past few days.Taksim's metro station and many of the city's other busiest stations have been closed. The regional government has restricted car and intercity bus access to Istanbul. The police are checking incoming vehicles, and anyone suspected of travelling to the city to protest is turned away. Here and all over the country, televisions are permanently switched on so people can follow the latest distressing political developments. For the past week, the Istanbul governor's office has banned public protests and political demonstrations - rights enshrined in the constitution. Yet spontaneous unauthorised protests and clashes with the police have continued unabated, even though internet access has been restricted in an attempt to prevent gatherings. The police use teargas ruthlessly and have arrested countless people. Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. You can read more of our US politics coverage hereTop aides to Joe Biden aggressively" warned Democratic donors last summer that if the then president was forced out of the 2024 election over concerns about his age and fitness, the party would inevitably make the mistake" of running the vice-president, Kamala Harris, against Donald Trump, a new book says.One donor on the receiving end of an electronic message summed up the sentiments of Biden's top aides: They were aggressively saying that we would wind up with the vice-president and that would be a mistake.'" Continue reading...

Boasberg will later decide whether the disappearing messages in the Signal chat violated federal records retention laws. Here's your roundup of key US politics stories from 27 March 2025A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to preserve all Signal messages exchanged in the now-infamous group chat in which officials organised a high-level military operation in Yemen that inadvertently included a journalist.The temporary restraining order compels defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, CIA director John Ratcliffe and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to save their texts from 11 to 15 March. Continue reading...

Kseniia Petrova was returning to the US from a trip to France when officials revoked her visa and detained herA Russian scientist from Harvard Medical School has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to her friends and colleagues.On Wednesday, Cora Anderson, who works with the Russian scientist Kseniia Petrova, shared the news of Petrova's detention on Facebook, saying the Russian scientist arrived at Boston Logan international airport on 16 February from a trip to France when she was stopped by US authorities. Continue reading...

Canadian PM says Donald Trump has permanently altered relations, as countries around the globe insist import taxes are harmful to all, including WashingtonCanada's prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US is over", as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticised Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be no turning back". Continue reading...

Yolanda Saldivar will continue to serve a life sentence for fatally shooting the Mexican American music legendThe woman convicted of killing Tejano music legend Selena Quintanilla-Perez has been denied parole after spending decades behind bars for fatally shooting the young singer at a Texas motel in 1995, the state's parole board announced on Thursday.Yolanda Saldivar will continue serving a life sentence at a prison in Gatesville, Texas, after a three-member panel of the Texas board of pardons and paroles voted not to release her. In a statement explaining the denial, the board said the panel found that Saldivar continues to pose a threat to public safety and that the nature of the crime indicated a conscious disregard for the lives, safety or property of others". Continue reading...

Restraining order was issued to ensure that records of Yemen attack group conversation are retainedA federal judge on Thursday ordered that the Trump administration preserve all Signal messages exchanged in the now-infamous Signal group chat in which officials conducted a high-level military operation on the unclassified commercial app and inadvertently included a journalist.The temporary restraining order from James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, compelled defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio, treasury secretary Scott Bessent, CIA director John Ratcliffe and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to save their texts from 11 to 15 March. Continue reading...

Doge members, including Airbnb co-founder, aired their vision for federal government to be Apple Store-like'Elon Musk and seven members of his so-called department of government efficiency" sat down for a rare interview on Thursday evening on Fox News, defending their efforts amid public backlash and concern over cuts to key government agencies.Over the course of an hour-long sit down with host Bret Baier, Musk and team members repeatedly attempted to assuage fears over Doge's targeting of agencies such as the Social Security Administration. Musk also downplayed the number of government employees his initiative has targeted in cuts, saying it was a small percentage of the overall government workforce and others left voluntarily. Continue reading...

Lawsuit says Michael Burch, who died in 2023, languished in cell for a week with no medical care after fight with deputyA 69-year-old man slowly suffocated to death in a rural Colorado jail after his ribs were broken in an altercation with a deputy and he languished in a cell for a week without medical care, according to a lawsuit announced on Thursday.Michael Burch's 2023 death was ruled a homicide. Prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges against the deputy who used a Taser on Burch and wrestled with him in a Huerfano county jail cell. In making the decision, district attorney Henry Solano cited self-defense laws. Continue reading...

Critics say US defense secretary's tattoo of the word kafir, meaning infidel' or non-believer' could offend MuslimsThe US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has a tattoo that appears to read infidel" or non-believer" in Arabic, according to recently posted photos on his social media account.In photos posted on Tuesday on X, the Fox News host turned US defense secretary had what appears to be a tattoo that says kafir", an Arabic term used within Islam to describe an unbeliever. Hegseth appears to have also had the tattoo in another Instagram photo posted in July 2024. Continue reading...

Move comes after months of delays, with unconfirmed New York Republican unable to participate in either UN or HouseDonald Trump announced on Thursday that he was pulling US House representative Elise Stefanik's nomination to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, a stunning turnaround for his cabinet pick after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans' tight margins in the House.Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the New York Republican's nomination in a Truth Social post, saying that it was essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress". Continue reading...

Homeland security chief went to infamous prison holding deported Venezuelans as White House targets immigrants

Paul Hyon Kim allegedly set vehicles ablaze in latest attack on Tesla amid protests over Elon Musk-led budget cutsLas Vegas police have arrested a man suspected of attacking a Tesla service center earlier this month with molotov cocktails that he allegedly used to set several vehicles on fire.Paul Hyon Kim, 36, who is in custody at the Clark county detention center, faces multiple felony counts, including suspicion of arson and destroying or injuring real or personal property, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Continue reading...

Secretary of state called those with revoked visas lunatics' as video shows masked immigration officers sweeping people off streets

Hundreds of people asked to leave their homes amid states of emergency and out-of-state responders battling blazesWildfires continued to rage in North and South Carolina on Thursday, leading to states of emergency and evacuations as firefighters deployed from other parts of the US to help bring the blazes under control.In North Carolina, progress was being made in containing two of the largest wildfires burning in the mountains, but officials warned that fire danger remained from dry and windy conditions. Continue reading...

Justification for arrest not clear as Trump administration increasingly targets students for arrest and deportationThere was an outcry on campus at the University of Alabama on Thursday after US immigration authorities detained a doctoral student - an event which campus officials confirmed on Wednesday.A spokesperson for the state's flagship university said in a brief statement that a student was arrested off campus" by federal immigration officials, but declined to comment further, citing privacy laws. Continue reading...

The chance of the president succeeding in his radicalism is small, but amid the chaos are challenges to convention that were overdueMove fast and break things" was Mark Zuckerberg's motto in launching Facebook 20 years ago. It seemed the antithesis of management-school custom and practice. But it worked, to be imitated after a fashion by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other digital tycoons with similar success. Donald Trump is now seeing if it works in government.The smart money in Washington was that after the fiasco of Trump's first term, his second would see a more emollient president, one careful of his reputation. He would reach out, consult, become a peacemaker, in his desperation to become a Nobel president like Barack Obama.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Democrats Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya said White House violated laws and constitution in firing themTwo Democratic commissioners fired by Donald Trump from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit on Thursday to challenge their indefensible" terminations.Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, whose controversial firings were announced last week, are suing the Trump administration for unlawfully" removing them from their positions. Continue reading...

Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested by masked officers and sent to Louisiana despite order she be kept in MassachusettsA lawyer for a Turkish national and doctoral student at Tufts University who was detained by US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) filed an emergency motion on Thursday requesting that the government produce her after she was shipped off to Louisiana despite a previous court order that she should not be removed from Massachusetts.At court hearing in Boston on Thursday morning, the district judge Indira Talwani initially issued an order giving the government until Friday to answer why Rumeysa Ozturk was being detained. Talwani also ordered that Ozturk not be moved outside the district of Massachusetts without 48 hours' advance notice. Continue reading...

Amid outrage over Trump cabinet members sharing military details, we're forgetting to scrutinize decades of failed US policyThe revelation that top members of Donald Trump's administration disclosed secret US military plans against the Houthi militia in Yemen in a private group chat that included a prominent journalist has generated predictable outrage in Washington. Democrats are calling for a congressional investigation and the resignation of some of the officials involved in the breach, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.In an article published on Monday, the Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, outlined how he was able to follow the conversation among members of Trump's cabinet over two days leading up to a series of US airstrikes on 15 March. But in the widespread outrage over the sharing of military information on a Signal chat, one essential question is getting lost: why is Trump bombing Yemen in the first place? Five consecutive US presidents and administrations (George W Bush, Barack Obama, the first Trump administration, Joe Biden and the second Trump administration) have ordered military attacks on Yemen, which is the poorest country in the Middle East. Continue reading...

I have spent years fighting this reign of terror in the West Bank - and Hamdan Ballal's treatment is typical of it

Atlantic editor-in-chief added to a White House group chat discussing strike plans has history of serving in the Israeli military - and angering TrumpThough exactly how Jeffrey Goldberg ended up on a Signal group chat to discuss what were meant to be secret plans to bomb Yemen remains a mystery, posterity may render it one of recent US history's most serendipitous chance encounters.Had the fates been conspiring to add a journalist to the forum whose presence would inflict the maximum discomfort to Trump and his circle, they could hardly have chosen a more fitting candidate. Continue reading...

High-ranking officials can spill military secrets with apparent near-total immunity

National security adviser faces new scrutiny after adding journalist to group chat discussing Yemen attack plansMike Waltz, Trump's national security adviser who is at the center of the storm over a group chat which leaked highly sensitive military plans to a journalist, left his Venmo account open to the public, according to a new report.The oversight represents a further security breach, days after the news that Waltz added the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic to a Signal chat in which operational planning for a US attack on Houthis in Yemen was shared. Continue reading...

Health secretary aims to close regional offices and establish new division called administration for a healthy America'The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced he intends to slash the size of the department he leads by a huge fraction - around 10,000 jobs out of the 82,000 full time workforce.Kennedy announced on Thursday that he also plans to close some regional offices. Continue reading...

Police arrest suspect after sitter shocked to encounter man when trying to show child there was nothing under the bedA babysitter in Kansas who was asked by a child to check for monsters under their bed was stunned to discover a man hiding there, police have said.The shocking incident occurred on 24 March at a property just outside the city of Great Bend, when the sitter was seeking to put the children she was looking after to bed. However, one of them was afraid. Continue reading...

Rumeysa Ozturk, Turkish national on a student visa, sent to Louisiana detention center over pro-Palestinian activismFootage has emerged of the moment US immigration officials, wearing masks and hoodies, detained a Tufts University doctoral student in Massachusetts in the street and bustled her into an unmarked car.Rumeysa Ozturk was detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents, and on Wednesday was being held at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page. Continue reading...

Key trading partners, including Canada, condemn move. Plus, European Commission advises people to stockpile enough essentials for 72 hours

While Trump muses about annexing the US's neighbor, the NHL star has remained quiet. My fellow Canadians are furiousI remain immensely proud to have lived in Edmonton during the Oilers' glory years, when Wayne Gretzky was not merely that city's darling, but also a fresh-faced, flag-waving ambassador for all of Canada.On ice, he dazzled with his scoring prowess and consistency; off ice, he charmed with his various charitable deeds and aw-shucks humility. Continue reading...

Top aides aggressively' made case to Democratic donors last summer, according to account of 2024 campaign by Jonathan Allen and Amie ParnesTop aides to Joe Biden aggressively" warned Democratic donors last summer that if the then president was forced out of the 2024 election over concerns about his age and fitness, the party would inevitably make the mistake" of running the vice-president, Kamala Harris, against Donald Trump, a new book says.One donor on the receiving end of an electronic message summed up the sentiments of Biden's top aides: They were aggressively saying that we would wind up with the vice-president and that would be a mistake.'" Continue reading...

Democratic Association of Secretaries of State says plans amount to most aggressive' operation to dateThe group that represents Democratic state election officials says it plans to spend $40m on competitive races in 2026 with the goal of Democratic control of election oversight before the 2028 presidential election.The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State says the plans amount to its most aggressive" operation to date, a sign of growing interest in the people who run elections, according to a strategy memo shared with the Guardian. The group will be targeting races in swing states and a few other states where they think they can win control of the office that helps manage and oversee election policies and signs off on state results. Continue reading...

Sympathy for yesteryear is gaining traction among Republican elites, and Trump's relations with white supremacy is too closeGen Robert E Lee is long dead, but the spirit of the Confederacy appears alive and well. Federal contractors will no longer be explicitly barred from racially segregating their restaurants, waiting rooms and water fountains, according to the Trump administration. A memorandum dated 15 February 2025, issued by the General Services Administration, the procurement arm of the federal government, explicitly dropped those strictures.Any open solicitations that contain any of the provisions or clauses listed above should be amended to remove the provisions and clauses," the memo read. Forget about simply putting an end to race-based affirmative action and DEI. Team Trump appears determined to turn the clock back to the 1950s, if not earlier than that. The ghost of Jim Crow smiles.Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 Continue reading...

She's a Grand Prix champion, a triple Axel pioneer and one of figure skating's most formidable athletes. But her artistry, not just her athleticism, may be what changes the sportWhen Amber Glenn takes the ice for the free skate on Friday night at the world figure skating championships in Boston after a disappointing short program, fans will be holding their breath. Undefeated this season, she was seen as the one to beat. The Grand Prix final Champion, two-time US champion, the only woman to regularly land a triple Axel in competition (on which she suffered an uncharacteristic fall, landing her ninth place in the short on Wednesday afternoon), she had been tipped to become the first US woman to win the world title in nearly 20 years. But with less than seven points between her and first place, nothing is impossible. And while much of the tenacity that could still bring her victory this week lies in her raw athleticism, Glenn has something in her arsenal more tenuous, and more volatile: She's an artist.At first glance, Glenn doesn't appear so different to the all-American skating stars of past decades. Slender, with blonde curled hair framing her perfectly made up face, she doesn't overtly break the mold. But when the music starts, something else takes over. She's explosive; her movements deliberate, and there's a weight to her actions that not only enables her to drive across the ice like a hockey player, but to display exquisite musicality, showcasing a sensitivity and showmanship that has gained her a devoted fanbase (and 1.5m TikTok followers). Continue reading...

Los Angeles have one of the most complete rosters in the history of baseball. But that doesn't mean retaining the title is a givenNo, because winning the World Series only requires 11 postseason wins, providing you avoid the wildcard. The best thing that any team can do to win the World Series is to get into the playoffs. Getting into the playoffs usually requires that teams spend money to employ the best players, but last year was the first time since 2018 that the team with the best regular-season record won the World Series. GB Continue reading...

The leaking of top-level military secrets was bad enough, but I'm obsessed with Maga's fratboy lexiconThe Maga-fication of American political discourse, which started, arguably, with Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter in 2015, peaked this week with news of Pete Hegseth referring to European countries in the leaked Signal chat as PATHETIC", and enjoyed a detour last Tuesday when Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former running mate of Kamala Harris, appeared at a town hall in Wisconsin and called Elon Musk a dipshit". (This is not the first time he has referred to Musk this way. Right before the election last year, Walz told a crowd: Look, Elon's on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit.")Parking for a moment the perfection of the phrase skipping like a dipshit" to capture Musk's very particular style of movement and speech, the range of what can and can't be said in politics has clearly, radically changed. When you look back on the phrase that caused Hillary Clinton so much trouble in 2016 - basket of deplorables" - it sounds like a quote from an 18th-century novel. Take that, sir! You and your basket of deplorables!" Now we have Trump referring to Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic editor mistakenly added to the Signal chat, as a sleazebag", and Hegseth, the US defense secretary, telling JD Vance that he fully shares the vice-president's loathing of European free-loading". We are millimetres away from someone shouting asshole" across the floor of the Senate.Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Journalist included in White House Signal group chat releases more messages in wake of Trump administration denials. Here's your roundup of key US politics stories from 26 March 2025The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat among top US officials in which they discuss specific operational details of plans to bomb Yemen, after Donald Trump and other administration officials insisted the information was not classified.It reproduced numerous messages from the text chat between the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth - who said on Tuesday that nobody was texting war plans" - and top intelligence officials. Continue reading...

Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney, describes the levies as a direct attack' and vows to defend Canadian workers and companiesDonald Trump announced plans to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on cars from overseas on Wednesday, days before the US president is expected to announce wide-ranging levies on other goods from around the world.What we're going to be doing is a 25% tariff for all cars that are not made in the United States," Trump said in the Oval Office. We start off with a 2.5% base, which is what we're at, and go to 25%." Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. You can read more of our US politics coverage here

Der Spiegel reports that in some cases it found password details for Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard via hacked data dumps and commercial providersThe private data of top security advisers to US President Donald Trump can be accessed online, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday, adding to the fallout from the officials' use of a Signal group chat to plan airstrikes on Yemen.Mobile phone numbers, email addresses and in some cases passwords used by national security adviser Mike Waltz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard can be found via commercial data-search services and hacked data dumped online, it reported. It is not clear in all cases how recent the details are. Continue reading...

US president had previously called for the impeachment of James Boasberg after the judge blocked his deportation flightsThe US judge set to hear a new lawsuit over the Signal fiasco is the same judge whom Donald Trump has argued should be impeached for blocking him from using wartime powers to deport Venezuelan migrants.James Boasberg, a district judge in Washington, was assigned on Wednesday to a lawsuit alleging Trump officials violated federal record-keeping laws by using a Signal group chat to discuss looming military action against Yemen's Houthis. Continue reading...

As figure skating's world championships began in Boston, a ceremony was held in honor of the 28 members of the sport's community who died in January's midair collisionThe lights dimmed, the arena fell silent and a sport took a collective breath. On Wednesday night at TD Garden, the world figure skating championships paused between events for something far more profound than medals or scores: a solemn tribute to the 28 members of the skating community who died in January when American Eagle flight 5342 crashed into the Potomac River.Held after the women's short program and before the start of the pairs' short program, the ceremony honored the skaters, coaches and parents who were returning from a development camp held in conjunction with the US figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas. Continue reading...

Senior GOP figures warn of potential significant political problem' for Trump administration in rare sign of unrest

National intelligence head Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe argue no classified information' was leaked

Jason Stanley, who says grandmother fled Berlin with his father in 1939, says US may become fascist dictatorship'A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a fascist dictatorship".Jason Stanley, who wrote the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Continue reading...