Until last year, Roe made it more possible for women’s lives to be determined by their choices, not merely by their bodiesIf the supreme court hadn’t overturned it last June, undoing a longstanding precedent and inflicting untold harm to women’s well-being and dignity, Sunday 22 January would have been the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v Wade.Over those 50 years, Roe changed American life dramatically. Abortion became a routine part of life, a resource people planned their lives around having. In contrast to its political controversy, abortion in the Roe era was – as it is now – aggressively common. Approximately one in four American women will have an abortion at some point in the course of their reproductive lives.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

A town in the oil industry’s shadow grapples with health fears as the state fails to limit companies’ use of fresh waterTowering refineries and rusty pumpjacks greet visitors driving along the highways of Kern county, California. Oil wells sit in the middle of fields of grapevines and almond trees. The air is heavy with dust and the scent of petroleum.The energy fields here are some of the most productive in the US, generating billions of barrels of oil annually and more than two-thirds of the state’s natural gas. And in a drought-stricken state, they’re also some of the thirstiest, consuming vast quantities of fresh water to extract stubborn oil. Continue reading...

Biden’s immigration promises fall short as some of Trump’s policies remain in place – here’s what’s similar and what’s differentUnder Donald Trump, Americans were confronted with a near-constant onslaught of racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, especially regarding the US-Mexico border, as the same man who led chants about building a wall there won the 2016 presidential election and took control of the Oval Office for the next four years.Vulnerable migrants were mounting “an invasion”, Trump said. The United States’ asylum system – a key commitment to its humanitarian values – was “ridiculous” and “insane”. Immigrants of color made headlines for supposedly coming here from “shithole” countries, and Mexican immigrants were called drug dealers, criminals and rapists. Continue reading...

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year – probably accelerated by CovidChurches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...

Five leaders of the far-right group on trial for their role in the January 6 attack have tried to turn attention to the ex-presidentWhile federal prosecutors are casting the Capitol insurrection trial of five far-right Proud Boys leaders as an attempt to bring participants of an attack on US democracy to account, the members of the group are using the proceedings to ask one question even some of their opponents on the political left agree is valid.Why have prosecutors so far only focused their energy on the supporters of Donald Trump who are accused of a coordinated invasion of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the previous year’s presidential election? Is it because they regard the former Republican president himself – who urged his supporters to “fight like hell” that deadly day – as too formidable and them as easier targets? Continue reading...

As Russia threatens another offensive, this is the moment of maximum danger. Ukraine’s allies must move fast and decisively Continue reading...

‘Nobody even knows who this guy is,’ critics say, but he was still awarded with House panel assignments – showing the party ‘stands for nothing’“He didn’t just steal from a service dog. He didn’t just steal from a dying service dog. He stole from a disabled homeless veteran’s dying service dog. Oh my God. You evil and stupid!”That was how Leslie Jones, guest host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, summed up just one of this week’s revelations about George Santos, a US congressman whose shameless fabulism has stunned Washington, a capital that thought it had smelt every flavour of mendacity from politicians. Continue reading...

Governor proposes legislation to ban mask requirements and outlaw ‘discrimination based on vaccine status’Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis has announced a proposal to permanently ban Covid mandates in the state.In a press release issued earlier this week, DeSantis said that he has proposed legislation to “make permanent Covid freedoms in Florida”, adding that the “strong pro-freedom, anti-mandate action will permanently protect Floridians from losing their jobs due to Covid vaccine mandates, protects parents’ rights, and institutes additional protections that prevent discrimination based on Covid vaccine status”. Continue reading...

New York Times reports Klain to announce departure in coming weeks, following two grueling years since president took officeRon Klain, Joe Biden’s chief of staff, is reportedly set to step down from his position, in what will be the biggest change to the US president’s inner circle of advisors since he took office two years ago.Klain will announce his departure in the coming weeks, according to the New York Times, after telling colleagues that he is ready to move on following a grueling period of successes and frustrations that stretch back to Biden’s successful 2020 election campaign. Continue reading...

People who live alone spend almost twice as much per person as those in couples, research has revealedSome claim that the first day in the third week of January is the most depressing one in the calendar. This year, Blue Monday arrived with added cruelty – for those of us who happen to be single, at least. A financial services firm chose just that miserable moment to reveal how much more expensive it is to live on your own than in a couple.If you’re currently alone, and the post-holiday slump already has you feeling down about it, you may want to look away now. According to the brokers Hargreaves Lansdown, the cost of living premium for being single comes in at an average £860 a month, factoring in typical expenses from rent and energy bills to groceries, wifi and TV subscriptions. Continue reading...

The reality show in which mothers and sons live together and start flirting is weirdly kinky but also oddly naturalIf you’re a woman of a certain age, struggling in the housing crisis, you could always check into Milf Manor. It’s a new US reality show in which women and their sons live in a house together and then all the ladies and all the guys flirt with each other (Milf stands for Mum I’d Love to Fuck, in case you didn’t know). In the search for a new hit, Milf Manor’s producers have gone back to the oldest human drive on the planet, the mother of them all: the original dyad between a baby and their primary caregiver. Maternal love, filial love, carnal love and erotic love blend together in a mutually jealous, weirdly kinky, televised Freudian melange. It’s natural, it’s normal, it’s common, it’s fine! After all, Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex 400 years before the birth of Christ. Once you pass 40, you become invisible to men in their 30s while every 20-year-old on the planet notices you, including waiters, security guards, interns and other women’s sons. I can explain it in one word: perimenopause. When wise Mother Nature realises your ship is sailing, she starts wafting out your erotic pheromones at double strength like novelty cocktails during happy hour at the last-chance saloon and you attract those virile young males who are biologically best able to “pollinate the flower”. Milf Manor is airing on the cable network TLC, which also happens to stand for Tender Loving Care. As the guys queueing to visit Milf Manor know, that’s exactly what you get when you come to Mummy. Continue reading...

There’s a real problem when the same people cling to power for decades and refuse to make room for new bloodIt was inevitable that someone was going to ask that most cliched of questions and, voilà, they did. Shortly after Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation as New Zealand prime minister this week, the BBC tweeted out a story about Ardern balancing motherhood with politics, with a headline asking if women can really have it all. After being accused of “staggering sexism”, the BBC deleted the headline and apologised. Continue reading...

Asked by a reporter if he supported Poland's call to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, the US president told a reporter: 'Ukraine is going to get all the help they need'. An adviser to the Ukrainian president has since said slow decision-making over whether to send the tanks to the country is costing lives. Baltic countries including Latvia have told Germany to send the tanks 'now' after perceived heel-dragging by Berlin

The refugee camps are riddled with disease, poverty and violence. The French create the terror and squalor – and UK ministers pay them to do it

His ‘campaign event’ this week was a dud, his legal woes are growing and his cronies are viciously infightingOnce again, the legal pitfalls and enthusiasm deficit that plague Donald Trump’s bid for the 2024 Republican nomination are on display. On Thursday, a federal judge imposed $938,000 in sanctions on Trump and his lawyers. Meanwhile, an appearance touted by Trump as a major campaign event was nothing more than a closed-door speech to deep-pocketed election-deniers at a Trump property.For those looking for uplift from a Trump campaign, those days are over. Rather, personal grievance and claims of a stolen 2020 election will likely be his dominant themes. For the 45th president, that may bring catharsis. For everyone else in the Republican party, that spells chaos, headache and the possibility of another Trump defeat at the hands of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Continue reading...

As the wall of shipping crates built through a national forest is removed, environmentalists take stockTruck horns blasted and red dust billowed beneath the blue Arizona sky as surplus army trucks sped up and down a road along the US-Mexico border, hauling shipping containers out of the Coronado national forest.Piles of dirt and oak trees, bulldozed by construction crews, dotted the grassland of the San Rafael valley, south-east of Tucson, known as a vital wildlife corridor. Continue reading...

An ‘avalanche’ of candidates, including Katie Porter, Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff, announce candidacy for California seatDianne Feinstein, the 89-year-old who served as California senator for three decades, has yet to announce her retirement. But the contest to succeed her in two years is already shaping into a bitter battle.After months of shadow campaigning and whispered political leveraging, earlier this month, Katie Porter – the whiteboard-wielding progressive congresswoman – became the first to officially declare her candidacy. Barbara Lee, the old-school leftist with an ardent antiwar record, has reportedly told colleagues she is running. Adam Schiff, icon of the anti-Trump liberal resistance, has reportedly begun prepping for a run. Silicon valley congressman Ro Khanna is expected to jump in as well. Continue reading...

Democrat Kris Mayes will repurpose unit created by Republican predecessor to focus on protecting voting accessA unit created under the former Republican attorney general of Arizona to investigate claims of election fraud will now focus on voting rights and ballot access under the newly elected Democratic attorney general.The Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, told the Guardian that instead of prosecuting claims of voter fraud, she will “reprioritize the mission and resources” of the unit to focus on “protecting voting access and combating voter suppression”. Mayes won the attorney general’s race in November against election denier Abe Hamadah by just 280 votes, a race that went to a state-mandated recount. Continue reading...

Report revealed multiple executions in recent years carried out without proper testing of lethal injection drugsTwo top Tennessee officials have been fired by the corrections department after an independent report revealed striking errors in the state’s lethal injection execution protocol.According to official documents reviewed by the Tennessean newspaper, the deputy commissioner and general counsel, Debra Inglis, was fired, as well as inspector general Kelly Young, on 27 December. Continue reading...

The long road to rebuilding is just beginning in the rain-pummeled state as assessments reveal damage worth millionsMud oozed and swirled under the wheels of Darren Sauter’s tractor. The slick remnants of the state’s epic, weeks-long rainstorms left neighborhoods like this one in Felton, California, inundated even after the waters receded. Days after the downpours, Sauter and others were working to rid homes and streets of the dirty muck, piled 3ft high in places.“People have had to just live with this,” said Sauter, speaking over the hum of his equipment as he worked on Wednesday afternoon. Sauter came down from Ben Lomon, a town just north of this quiet neighborhood in the Santa Cruz mountains, to help volunteer with the daunting cleanup. Riding a bright orange front loader, he shoveled mud to the side to create a pathway through the wet earth, still laden with chemical contaminants from the roadway and the smell of sewage, as solemn-faced residents looked on. “You can’t even walk through it.” Continue reading...

Dieunerst Collin, who became internet famous as a child for video of him at fast-food chain, signs advertising deal with companyA decade has passed, but at last the star of the internet meme showing a boy glancing sideways in confusion with a cup in his hand while standing in line at a Popeyes is capitalizing on his viral fame.Dieunerst Collin, an 18-year-old player for the football team at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, can finally cash in on his online fame thanks to a change in policy from an organization which governs collegiate sports in the US that in 2021 enabled student athletes to earn money from sponsorship opportunities. Continue reading...

The top-seeded Eagles are touchdown favorites on Saturday against a Giants team they defeated twice during the regular season. So why is Philadelphia expecting the worst?Not long after the Philadelphia Eagles were installed as seven-and-a-half-point favorites over the New York Giants for their NFC divisional playoff game on Saturday night, skepticism began seeping through this passionate-yet-gloomy sports town – as it always does.Seven-and-a-half points, great. But, wait. Can we beat the Giants three times this year? Continue reading...

The craze is little more than a rehash of new age manifestation, but January’s bleakness made me desperate enough to give it a goSomething strange happened to me last year. On five or six occasions, I needed the money for something – a plane ticket to see someone I love, a daunting credit card bill, a vital item that needed replacing – and I’d think, “If only I could afford this, everything would work out.” Then, within a day or two, I’d be offered a piece of work that would pay that exact amount to the pound, or I’d be able to travel with work to exactly the place I wanted to go. It was a lucky and auspicious 12 months.Fast forward to this cold, hard January, and nothing is unbearably bad, but I wouldn’t quite say anything is going especially “well” either. Living and working alone, when your major social interaction of the day is bitching about your problems with the nicest man at the coffee shop who always gives you extra stamps on your loyalty card, disappointments can begin to cut rather than scratch.Hannah Ewens is features editor at Vice UK and author of Fangirls: Scenes From Modern Music CultureDo 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...

Potential presidential contenders walk tightrope in demonstrating hardline credentials without alienating moderatesThey came in their thousands, wearing hats, waving flags and exulting in the death of American women’s constitutional right to abortion. But some who marched in Washington on Friday were also thinking ahead: who will be their next champion in the White House?“If it wasn’t for President Trump, we wouldn’t have a post-Roe America,” said Patricia Stephanoff, 66, from Michigan, wearing a pink “Trump 2024” hat. “He’s the most pro-life president we’ve ever had. He’s the only president who has ever come to the march.” Continue reading...

Corruption and unsolved deaths form a gothic backdrop as lawyer Alex Murdaugh stands trial for murder of wife and sonDisgraced former attorney Alex Murdaugh faces trial next week on charges of murdering his wife and son, part of a sprawling case that has exposed a seamy underside to political power and influence in South Carolina’s lowlands.It is a bizarre and southern Gothic tale of brutal murders, still unsolved deaths, an apparently faked assassination attempt, a family fortune and layers of small town corruption going back generations. Not surprisingly, it has gripped America and attracted the interest of numerous documentary makers. Continue reading...

Bills in at least eight states seek to restrict drag performances as part of a broader rightwing backlash against LGBTQ+ rightsAcross the United States Republican politicians are seeking to bring in new laws that crack down on drag shows as part of a broader backlash against LGTBQ+ rights sweeping through rightwing parts of America.Legislators in at least eight states have introduced legislation aiming to restrict or censor the shows, according to a new report from a leading freedom of speech group. A total of 14 bills have been introduced across Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Continue reading...

Search for 65-year-old, who went missing while hiking in Mt Baldy, California, being conducted by air due to hazardous weatherThe search for British actor Julian Sands continues nearly a week after he was reported missing while hiking in a treacherous area of California’s San Gabriel Mountains, where at least two other hikers have already perished this winter.The search for the 65-year-old actor is currently being conducted “via helicopter only”, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said Friday afternoon, because the risk of avalanches around Mt Baldy has continued to make on-the-ground rescue efforts too dangerous. Continue reading...

Anti-abortion activists descend on Washington for annual march and commit to continue fighting to limit reproductive rightsThousands of abortion opponents descended on Washington DC for the annual March for Life on Friday, the first time since achieving its foundational objective: persuading the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade.Every year since the landmark 1973 decision, anti-abortion activists have come to the nation’s capital to march, plead and pray for a post-Roe America where abortion wasn’t just banned but was “unthinkable”. Continue reading...

Ad-hoc tribunal of legal experts and supporters pressures US administration to drop ‘attack on press freedom’Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists detained around the world while the US president continues seeking the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.The campaign to pressure the Biden administration to drop the charges moved to Washington DC on Friday with a hearing of the Belmarsh Tribunal, an ad hoc gathering of legal experts and supporters named after the London prison where Assange is being detained. Continue reading...

23-year-old died after Colorado police put him in a chokehold and injected him with a large dose of the powerful sedative ketamineA group of police officers and paramedics are scheduled on Friday to enter pleas in Colorado court to charges in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was put in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative two years ago in suburban Denver.They were indicted by a state grand jury on manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and other charges in 2021. Continue reading...

US will apply designation in the coming days, says national security council spokesman, imposing new sanctions on the groupThe US will designate the Russian mercenary group Wagner as a “significant transnational criminal organization”, imposing further sanctions on the military contractor which has been aiding Moscow in its invasion of Ukraine.The White House national security council spokesman, John Kirby, announced on Friday that the treasury will apply the new designation in the coming days, putting it in the same category as Italian mafia groups and Japanese and Russian organized crime. Continue reading...

Men were taken into custody on Wednesday, bringing the number of US military members charged in connection to insurrection to 12Three active-service US marines, all with ties to intelligence work, were arrested this week for taking part in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, according to federal documents newly unsealed.The men, all long-serving, were taken into custody on Wednesday on four charges, bringing to 12 the number of US military members charged in connection with the deadly insurrection by supporters of outgoing president Donald Trump as they tried to prevent the certification by Congress of his defeat by Joe Biden. The news was first reported by military.com. Continue reading...

Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told reporters at the US Ramstein Air Base that he did not believe it was realistic to expect Ukraine to push Russian troops out of its internationally recognised territory. 'From a military standpoint, I still maintain that from this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject Russian forces from every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine,' he said, adding the caveat that he didn't believe it was impossible

Larry Ray convicted in April of sex trafficking and racketeering stemming from abuse of young women at Sarah Lawrence CollegeThis article contains descriptions of abuse.A financial fraudster who lured students at an elite New York liberal arts college into a cult-like world of sexual, physical and emotional abuse was sentenced on Friday to 60 years in federal prison.In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit the Men’s Advice Line or Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Actor and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, violated ‘all of the standards … if we have a gun in our hands,’ says Santa Fe DA district attorneyAlec Baldwin’s “recklessness”, and the failure of his production team to follow basic gun safety procedures on the set of the movie Rust, led to the decision to file a criminal charge against the US actor in the death of a cinematographer, prosecutors said.Mary Carmack-Altwies, the Santa Fe district attorney, said Baldwin, and the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, violated “all of the standards that we all have to follow if we have a gun in our hands” in the shooting death of Halyna Hutchins with a prop weapon during a rehearsal in New Mexico in 2021. Continue reading...

Increasing use of digital effects and other on-set precautions among measures after death of cinematographerFilm production and firearms experts say movie sets probably changed permanently when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the remote New Mexico set of the western Rust 14 months ago – as prosecutors on Thursday said they will charge actor and producer Alec Baldwin and the film’s weapons supervisor with involuntary manslaughter.“The gun safety experience on set has become more vocal, it’s a lot louder,” said Joey Dillon, an armorer who has overseen the use of firearms on television shows including Westworld and movies including The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. “I make it a lot louder myself.” Continue reading...

In scathing ruling, US district court judge writes, ‘misuse of the courts by Mr Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law’A federal judge has ordered Donald Trump and one of his attorneys to jointly pay nearly $1m in penalties for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit that accused Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and other perceived enemies of the former president of engaging in racketeering and concocting a vast conspiracy against him.The penalty caps a bruising case for Trump, who had the suit dismissed in September and Trump was ordered to pay tens of thousands in November after one defendant sought sanctions. The latest order came after a group of the remaining defendants, including Clinton, filed a separate request for sanctions. Continue reading...

Violence against women is a threat more lethal than terrorism and our biggest force bears great responsibilityThe whole barrel is rotten. Perhaps it began with a few bad apples long ago, and of course some good ones will remain even now, but the rot in the Metropolitan force has spread.You read of David Carrick, the officer who kept his uniform, his badge and, for many years, his gun even as he pursued a parallel career as a prolific sex offender, and of course you are sickened by the evil he has done: dozens of rapes and sexual offences against 12 women, over two decades, including imprisoning one of his victims, naked and terrified, in a tiny cupboard under the stairs. But an equal horror comes when you learn that the police had been warned eight times about Carrick’s behaviour – eight – but did nothing. In fairness, that’s not quite right; they did do something. They promoted him in 2009 to an elite armed unit.Jonathan Freedland 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...

We worry about our families, ourselves, the threats and society’s expectations. When it leads to burnout, can anyone be surprised?Jacinda Ardern has no gas left in the tank to continue as the prime minister of New Zealand. Her resignation speech was the sort of rare and dignified moment that we have come to expect from her, as a woman who presented the world with the kind of leadership that uniquely lent on her emotional intelligence. I’ll miss her tone and grace. She leaves a legacy she can be proud of.I have been thinking about what burned the fuel that she relied on to govern. Continue reading...

Reason for attack is unknown but scientists found in 2019 that changes in sea ice habitat coincided with polar bears’ use of landSummer Myomick bundled her baby against the freezing winds whipping off the Bering Sea and stepped outside into a blur of blowing snow.It was a short walk from the school where she had visited relatives to the health clinic about 150 yards away, but the young mother could hardly have seen where she was going – or the terror that was approaching. Continue reading...

Claims of ‘Black antisemitism’ are a dangerous distraction. The truth is the fates of Black and Jewish Americans are linkedMy children are blessed to have been raised in a country different from the Germany of the 1930s and the Poland of the immediate postwar era. Both of my parents are refugees from European antisemitism, and my mother’s comments about her experiences in Poland can seem mysterious to my kids. They haven’t been raised with material exhibitions of antisemitism, and our discussions about it over the years have seemed more like lessons in history.But antisemitism is on the rise again in the United States. Harmful tropes have returned to explicit politics, with help from the last president. Meanwhile, remarks by Kanye West and Nick Cannon echo ancient conspiratorial themes. Continue reading...

In this series, Guardian writers share the best advice they’ve ever received and how it has changed their livesIn my second year of university in England, I had one of the smallest rooms on campus but a beautiful view of the university town from the window in front of my desk. There, as the November snow fell outside, I spent hours poring over the great Victorian novels – Middlemarch, Bleak House, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. My professors encouraged close reading of the texts rather than paying attention to the critics’ interpretations.For an essay, I focused on three chapters of George Eliot’s Middlemarch which recount the main character Dorothea’s honeymoon journey to Rome. Despite all the good will in the world, Dorothea and her new husband only succeed in hurting each other by failing to see things from any perspective beyond their own. Dorothea married Mr Casaubon admiring his vocation as a scholar and wanting to help him. But Casaubon has insecurities about his scholarship, and only sees her offer of help in terms of how it wounds his pride. Continue reading...

The new House speaker is just a small man, talking a big game, taking a long walk off a short pierKevin McCarthy might not look stupid.In the privacy of his home, far away from the TV cameras and the Maga bozos in his Republican caucus, he might not always sound stupid.Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of Renegade: The Making of a President Continue reading...