US news | The Guardian

At many points, it looked as if he never would be sentenced. That he was sentenced to nothing, then, is itself a small victoryWhat kind of a sentence, exactly, is an unconditional discharge"? When Judge Juan Merchan, of New York, issued the sentence on Friday, he declared that President-elect Donald Trump, convicted in his courtroom of 34 felonies, will face no jail time, no probation, and no fine for falsifying business records in order to conceal an affair he had with the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election. His punishment, that is, is that there will be no punishment at all.Trump was never likely to get jail time, which would have been unusual for any defendant faced with these charges, and over the past days Merchan had signaled that he would not impose probation, either. And maybe that's just as well - any punishment or sanction at all that he had imposed on Trump would have been likely to be appealed and suspended, at least for the duration of Trump's time in office. There was, that is, no formal mechanism really available by which the criminal justice system could punish Trump for the crimes he was convicted of. This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgement of conviction without encroachment on the highest office of the land is a sentence of unconditional discharge," Merchan said, explaining his reasoning: there is no way to punish a man who is about to be the president. In a sense, the sentencing merely confirms what many of us already know: that by virtue of who he is, Trump is beyond the reach of consequence. Continue reading...

The president-elect has disparaged DEI. As Meta and Walmart drop diversity goals, here's how others may followEven before Donald Trump won the election in November, multiple companies with announced they were ending their diversity initiatives. After the election, some of the country's largest companies announced they too were sunsetting some of their corporate programs.In December, Walmart said it was rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals and would drop using the term altogether. McDonald's made a similar statement in January. On Friday, Meta became the latest major company to announce the end of its DEI goals, saying that the company will scrap its DEI team, its equity and inclusion training programs and requirements to have a diverse slate" of applicants when hiring. Continue reading...

As inauguration day approaches, consumers scooping up iPads, building supplies, shelf-stable foods and electric carsTablets and appliances made in China, hybrid cars built in Canada, European wine. As Donald Trump's second inauguration as president quickly approaches, Americans are stocking up on goods in anticipation of tariffs Trump plans to place on imports, according to a Guardian reader poll.Since the election, Trump has promised to immediately impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, along with increasing existing tariffs on Chinese imports by 10%. On the campaign trail, Trump said he would put tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imports. Continue reading...

Returning Pacific Palisades residents were grieving not just homes turned to ash, but memories buried amid the rubbleWildfires had crept close to the Pacific Palisades before.Just in 2018, the catastrophic Woolsey fire wreaked havoc in nearby Malibu. There'd been other close calls: evacuations because of a brush fire in 2019. A blaze chewing through steep remote terrain nearby the following year. Continue reading...

Zuckerberg's appointment of the UFC supremo to Meta's board appears to be a calculated move to solidify ties with Trump through one of his most influential alliesIn the four months since Donald Trump accused Mark Zuckerberg of conspiring against him during the 2020 presidential election and threatened him with life imprisonment, the Meta CEO has gone to great lengths to curry favor with the incoming president.Shortly after Trump's victory in November, Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago to dine with the president-elect and his transition team, even donating $1m to Trump's inauguration fund. He has also culled Meta's third party fact-checking program, lifting restrictions on topics like immigration and gender. And this week, Zuckerberg took his efforts to align with the incoming administration a step further by appointing Dana White - the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and a close Trump ally - to Meta's board of directors. Continue reading...

The birth of a baby boy on a dangerously overcrowded refugee boat should be a wake-up call to all of usIt has become something of a cliche to compare modern photographic compositions to Renaissance paintings, but that is what I thought of when I saw the image of the baby boy born on a crowded small boat that was rescued off the coast of Lanzarote this week. Granted, Renaissance painters were notoriously bad at babies, and with his wrinkled little face and his full head of hair, this baby is as real as it gets. But composition-wise, there is something in the twist of the torsos of all those exhausted people turning towards him and his mother, the arms outstretched, hands reaching. For a photo not taken by a professional, the effect is startling.What had this new mother just gone through? To be in early labour in such circumstances, let alone the later stages, let alone delivery ... once again, I'm left astonished by the sheer physical and emotional endurance of women.Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett 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...

There is a narrow window. Public media and fair reporting must be supported: the rules must be upheldIn early 2017, Mark Zuckerberg was on what might be termed an apology tour" of the United States. In the tumultuous few months since Donald Trump won his first presidential victory, the young chief executive of Facebook was reeling from his company's part in serving US voters Russian disinformation, and widespread accusations that the social media platform had disseminated a vast spray of fake news". Fighting a rearguard action, Facebook announced changes to its algorithms, and a major initiative to include third-party factcheckers" as part of the content moderation efforts.Touring the country, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, stopped off in Selma, Alabama. They posed for a casual photo outside the offices of the iconic local paper, the Selma Times-Journal. Zuckerberg posted a heartfelt thank you" to journalists who work tirelessly and sometimes put their lives in danger to surface the truth. I don't always agree with everything you say, but that's how democracy is supposed to work." The choice of the Times-Journal was freighted with significance. A paper that had campaigned against the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and reported on the Montgomery to Selma civil rights marches in the 1960s was a pointed reminder of how the local press could provide a bulwark against fascism. Continue reading...

This blog is now closed. You can read our latest report hereAn update on the Hurst fire from the US forest service has increased the acreage burned to 771 and is 37% contained.477 personnel were assigned to the fire. Continue reading...

A visual guide to the damage caused by the wildfires that have devastated the cityWildfires continue to ravage parts of Los Angeles, California, with at least 11 people dead, thousands of homes, businesses, schools and churches leveled and more than 150,000 people still under evacuation orders. The Palisades fire - which continues to burn - already ranks as one of the most destructive in the city's history. The second largest blaze, the Eaton fire, to the east, has destroyed homes and lives in and around Altadena, which neighbors Pasadena, home of the Rose Bowl. Meanwhile, smaller fires rage on but are more contained. Continue reading...

Residents share their stories of evacuation, destruction of homes, and air pollution amid ongoing blazes

California has seen deadly blazes over the years - Camp fire decimated Paradise town in 2018 and Tubbs fire burned 36,810 acres in 2017

Adi Levin and a fellow reservist in the Israel Defense Forces came to New Orleans as part of a six-week trip to the USTwo Israeli military members on leave were critically wounded in the New Year's Day truck attack on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street and remain hospitalized, according to a diplomatic official from Israel.Adi Levin and a fellow reservist in the Israel Defense Forces came to New Orleans as part of a six-week trip to the US meant to finish in Florida, said Elad Shoshan, the Israeli consul in Houston.The Associated Press contributed reporting Continue reading...

It's the second time this week that the former NY mayor has been found to be contempt for defaming election workersRudy Giuliani was found in contempt of court on Friday for continuing to spread lies about two former Georgia election workers after a jury awarded the women a $148m defamation judgment.Federal judge Beryl Howell in Washington DC is the second federal judge in a matter of days to find the former New York City mayor in contempt of court. Continue reading...

US president moves to shield roughly 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans against Trump administrationThe Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for about 230,000 Salvadorans and 600,000 Venezuelans living in the US, in an effort to shield those groups from an incoming Trump administration that has promised to deport them.The decision in the dying days of Joe Biden's presidency came after immigrant advocates and lawmakers urged the Department of Homeland Security to extend temporary protected status (TPS), designed to protect immigrants from being deported to countries that are engulfed in disaster or conflict. Continue reading...

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims case was witch hunt' to prevent president-elect's return to White HouseRepublicans in Washington launched a fierce defense of Donald Trump on Friday after the president-elect received an unconditional discharge in his New York hush-money case, while Democrats maintained a conspicuous silence on the historic conviction.The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, characterized the case as a politically motivated and contrived witch hunt" designed specifically to prevent Trump's return to the White House. Continue reading...

Trump's absence was felt in the New York courtroom, and on video it wasn't the outlandish display many might have expected

Up to 9in of snow expected in Arkansas and Tennessee as climate crisis leads to more frequent extreme weather casesMore than 80 million people across southern US states were on alert on Friday as a powerful winter storm that dumped heavy snow and glazed roads with ice across much of Texas and Oklahoma lumbered eastward.Some governors have declared a state of emergency as the weather forced school closures across the region and unleashed havoc for traffic. Continue reading...

Alice Weidel's livestreamed chat with the X owner made for excruciating listening - but even talk of Hitler won't deter her supportersImagine a politician fighting a general election being granted the opportunity of a publicly livestreamed chat with one of the most powerful figures in the world, only to be heard wriggling out of it after 70 minutes. I don't know what to continue (with)," Alice Weidel said to Elon Musk, in effect shutting down the unique audience the owner of X had gifted the AfD leader on Thursday evening.Admittedly, the rambling conversation felt longer than 70 minutes. It missed moderation and while Musk and Weidel giggled a lot and agreed on almost every issue, the sense that they were boring each other became increasingly acute as they droned on about space travel and religious belief rather than the alleged decline of western civilisation. Had Adolf Hitler not been mentioned, the highly anticipated live talk would have been shocking only for being so unnewsworthy.Thomas Vorreyer is a Berlin-based journalist with a focus on East German politicsDo 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...

Takeover combines electricity generators to become largest independent US power provider, with 2.5 million customersThe US nuclear power giant Constellation Energy has agreed to buy the natural gas and geothermal firm Calpine Corporation for $16.4bn, one of the biggest takeovers in the US power industry.The acquisition would combine two of the biggest electricity generators in the US into the largest independent power provider in the country, with some 2.5 million customers. Continue reading...

Now we have to make sure there's not a second, financial tragedy that follows the physical catastrophe,' says consumer advocate

An evacuation order when the Eaton fire threatened Galen Buckwalter's Sierra Madre home triggered a nightmare odyssey through chaotic streets

Trump and Maga allies are using the fires to attack leaders like Newsom - possibly foretelling power struggles aheadIf ever a situation cried out for elevating national unity over political divisions, the dystopian scenes emanating from the Los Angeles fires surely qualified.The catastrophe that has left at least five people dead, more than 1,000 structures destroyed and forced thousands fleeing their homes would - in an ideal and less polarised America - spur humane empathy and solidarity in place of tribal partisanship. Continue reading...

Media giants had hoped to attract younger viewers who don't subscribe to cable with NBA, NFL and Fifa offeringsDisney, Fox and Warner Bros Discovery on Friday abandoned plans to launch Venu Sports, their live sports joint venture, pulling the plug on a much-heralded effort that ran into substantial legal opposition.Shares of Warner Bros Discovery were down about 2% and Fox's stock fell about 1%, while FuboTV's shares were up nearly 8% after the surprise announcement. Continue reading...

The US president and his broligarch pal are treating their oldest allies as enemies. Britain can't face down that threat aloneFlood the zone with shit. So advised Steve Bannon, onetime chief strategist for Donald Trump, who understood long ago that if you want to get away with an outrageous act, follow it with another and then another. That way, the media will be sure to move on to the newest horror, so forgetting the one before.Trump continues to live by that rule, making it hard to keep up with everything he and his circle do and say - and he's not even back in office yet. It therefore requires a conscious effort to take a step back and see what's happening. That might be easier this week than others because the most egregious outrages form a pattern, one that poses a severe and direct challenge to Britain and its neighbours.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Summer holidays are a time of memory-making. We asked Guardian writers and contributors to share some of the summer holiday photos that transport them back to a simpler time

At least 20 arrests have been made over looting, with Santa Monica declaring a curfew. Plus, the arguments for and against banning TikTokGood morning.Los Angeles officials expect the death toll from the wildfires in the county to continue to rise, as workers comb through incinerated neighborhoods with cadaver dogs.How big are the fires? The Palisades fire is 8,085 hectares and just 6% contained; Eaton is 5,540 hectares and not contained at all; Kenneth is 405 hectares and 35% contained; Hurst, 312 hectares and 37%; Lidia, 141 hectares and 60%.Why is he unlikely to be jailed or fined? In July, a US supreme court ruling granted presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Merchan said that in weighing all the factors and concerns about presidential immunity, a sentence of unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution". That means that apart from being named a convicted felon, Trump won't face any penalty. Continue reading...

Program for skilled foreign workers pits Trump and Musk against Bannon - and progressive Bernie SandersSteve Bannon, one of the architects of Trumpism, is one the most influential voices on the right. Bernie Sanders, the veteran US senator from Vermont, is among the leading figures on the progressive left. In these divided times, they have found common ground.As Donald Trump returns to the White House, a bitter row over H-1B visas - designed to bring skilled foreign workers to the US - has exposed the delicate threads that tie together his broad coalition - and that of the Democrats. Continue reading...

Sadly, the Amazon-Melania deal has much the same flavor as the rest of Trump appeasement moves - not just by Bezos but by others of his ilkThe language in a New York Times article was extremely restrained as it described Jeff Bezos's evolving stance regarding Donald Trump.The Amazon founder and the president-elect had had a rocky relationship in the past, but in recent months, Amazon and Mr. Bezos have taken steps to repair it".Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

I loved to scour apps and charity shops for cheap clothes and toys - but now I know it is another kind of overconsumptionGuess how much this was," I say to my partner mischievously, revealing with relish the latest toy I've found for our youngest son. It's wooden, Montessori in style (apparently a ball dropping through a hole teaches him object permanence), and retails at about 20 new. A quid," my partner proffers, wearily: he is savvy to this game by now. This time, though, I can go one better. Free!" I screech with glee. Free! Can you believe that? Someone was giving it away on that secondhand WhatApp group." I'm giddy with my find, drunk on the size of the bargain, but, as I add the new (to me) toy to the teetering pile of others - dolls, a tunnel, toy cars, a lunchbox - I can feel something - guilt, I think - gnawing away at me. Am I a secondhand overconsumer?I've always been a champion of secondhand shopping. I was plundering charity shops before it was cool and, in a tale that has become family folklore, once found a standard lamp in a branch of the British Heart Foundation and carried it home on the bus. In fairness, that lamp has moved house with me seven times and still stands, resplendent, in my living room. But I fear too many of my other secondhand purchases have been flash-in-the-pan dopamine hits. These purchases gather dust in our bedroom, the study, my son's toy box. Clothes I've bought from charity shops, heady with the exhilaration of them being only 5", lie crumpled and forgotten in the depths of my wardrobe before, months later, being dragged out and sold on Vinted for a couple of quid. And still I buy more, ensnared in the grip of what I've started to believe is something akin to an addiction.Chloe Hamilton is a freelance journalist Continue reading...

The weekend promises a heap of drama in the NFC as the 14-3 Vikings meet LA, while in the AFC a pair of underdogs attempt to stage heistsWhat the Chargers need to do to win: The league's stingiest defense cannot afford the complacency that allowed Tampa Bay to rain 40 points down on them in December. The Chargers' stats look good - they gave up the fewest touchdowns (31) in the regular season, including 18 on 39 red-zone drives, a league-leading efficiency mark of 46% - but would be even better without a few aberrations. Handily, the away day will not faze them considering their 6-3 record on the road this season. LA should take care of an underpowered Houston offense if they can forget about their wildcard shocker against Jacksonville two years ago. Continue reading...

Populist trolling thrives on the oxygen of publicity. It's on all of us - media and voters - to start looking awayEven more than other forms of politics, populism needs an audience. Populist politicians want to be famous personalities, to make attention-getting claims and promises, to create new national myths. Like other ambitious but less ideological entertainers, they want their act to be widely noticed, and then requested again and again. Without a receptive audience, populism can just seem cranky and simplistic - little different from fringe political movements down the ages.In Britain, the US and many other democracies from India to Argentina, populism's current dominant variant is rightwing, and much of its intended audience is the rightwing media. Conservative commentators, reporters and public intellectuals are constantly required to amplify populism's messages and help maintain the public profiles of its leading figures. With only five Reform UK MPs, Nigel Farage needs the Tory press - just as the Tory press needs him, with rightwing politics in Britain otherwise at a low ebb.Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Satellite pictures reveal scale of destruction from the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires in LA

Donald Trump Jr came here, but I sometimes wonder if the world knows anything about us. Our dream is independenceThe news that Donald Trump Jr was about to visit Nuuk felt like a flashback to almost six years ago, when his father, Donald Trump, famously floated the idea of buying Greenland. At the time, I had just moved back to Nuuk after finishing film school in Denmark. I remember working on the production of a segment for a travel series by the comedian Conan O'Brien. He came to Nuuk to film an episode poking fun at the idea of Trump buying us.This time, there's no late-night comedian in sight, and the next president of the United States has just refused to rule out using military force to take control of my country. Instead of poking fun at the latest US intervention, I found myself in my kitchen with four other women, planning a demonstration against Denmark's practice of removing Inuit children from their families. Continue reading...

His mother says he was groomed by drug gangsters despite her attempts to get help. Let his death spark fresh debate about how we care for vulnerable peopleThe last time Mary Bokassa saw her 14-year-old son alive was around lunchtime, on his first day back to school after Christmas. She had no way of knowing that within an hour and a half, her child would be dead, stabbed 12 times on a bus in broad daylight in Woolwich, south London.And yet, as his mother explained in a bleak and haunting interview, his death was a shock but not a surprise. Her son Kelyan had been targeted by gang members trying to recruit him since he was six, she told the BBC: I tried to prevent it. I've tried so many, so many times. I screamed it, I said, My son is going to be killed.'" But the family hadn't, she said, got the help they needed. She had fought for her little boy and she had lost, and there is something about the starkness with which she said it that will have stopped parents across the country in their tracks.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The World Sports Photography Awards are the only global awards for sport photography and are designed to recognise and celebrate incredible sports images and the photographers who take them. More than 2,200 professional sports photographers from over 96 countries submitted more than 13,000 images across the 24 categories to this year's competition, which all tell compelling stories of the emotion, passion, athleticism and focus that are at the heart of sport Continue reading...

The Los Angeles fire department has issued another mandatory evacuation order for a new brushfire, named the Kenneth fire. Law enforcement officials are also working to issue a curfew for affected burn zones in Los Angeles, in order to combat looting, though it is unclear when it will go into effect. Continue reading...

This blog has now closed. Our new California fires live blog is here and you can read our full report on the Californian blazes here.

Burned areas cover more than 30,000 acres of LA and teams search for casualties as fires continue to rage

Injunction barring the release of Jack Smith's report remains in place for at least three more daysA federal appeals court on Thursday rejected an attempt to block special counsel Jack Smith from releasing his final report into the two federal criminal cases he brought against Donald Trump but, crucially, did not lift a temporary injunction that prevents it from becoming public.The order from the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit means the injunction imposed by the US district judge Aileen Cannon who handled the president-electTrump's prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents will remain in place for at least three more days. Continue reading...

Where once kids played and a California neighborhood gathered, the land is now devastated by a ferocious fireIn Los Angeles' Pacific Palisades neighborhood, street after street is laden with carnage that tells part of the story of the ferocious firestorm that swept through the area over the last two days.Buckled trees and telephone poles are strewn across roads, their piled branches and hanging wires a testimony to the winds that whipped the flames. Intersections are flooded with water, even after the loss of water pressure hampered efforts during the harrowing firefight. Mansions lining the yellow beaches hollowed out, homes in the neighborhoods' canyons reduced to dust. Continue reading...

Drone footage from Altadena captured the devastation of the fires that have burned through the area. Across Los Angeles county, fast-moving wildfires, fanned by hurricane-force winds, have destroyed 2,000 homes, forced nearly 180,000 people to evacuate and left at least five people dead in the last two days. The Los Angeles county sheriff has warned that the death toll is likely to rise as teams search burned areas

Fire crews are facing dire challenges, hurdles that have intensified the fires and are complicating the responseAs multiple fires rage around the Los Angeles basin, the 7,500 fire and emergency personnel on the ground are facing unprecedented conditions.At least five LA residents have been killed, and the death count is expected to rise as responders search burned areas. At least 10,000 structures have been destroyed, and several of the five blazes are still burning out of control. Continue reading...

Bryant was Miss Oklahoma and Florida Citrus spokesperson before leading anti-LGBTQ+ Save Our Children' campaignAnita Bryant, a multi-Grammy nominated singer and former Miss Oklahoma who later became a high-profile campaigner against gay rights in America, has died at the age of 84.In an announcement on Thursday, Bryant's family announced that Bryant died at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, on 16 December 2024. May Anita's memory and her faith in eternal life through Christ comfort all who embraced her," her family said. Continue reading...