US news | The Guardian

Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer hail achievement after Nevada victory, while Georgia Senate heads to runoff

House control still undecided as Republicans lead and attention pivots to Florida, where Trump is expected to announce 2024 runAs the balance of power in the US House of Representatives remained unresolved on Sunday, Democrats are celebrating the projection that they won control of the Senate, marking a significant victory for Joe Biden as Republicans backed by his presidential predecessor Donald Trump underperformed in key battleground states.While senior Democrats remained guarded Sunday about the chances of keeping control of both chambers of Congress, House speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the party’s performance in the midterms following months of projections indicating heavy losses. Continue reading...

The leadership in Washington may be geriatric but key wins for younger candidates suggest a generational change is under wayWe are in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 6 November 2024, and after a nail-biting night two men are preparing to give their respective victory and concession speeches in the US presidential election. One of the men is days away from his 82nd birthday, the other is 78.The prospect of a possible rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in two years’ time is instilling trepidation in both main parties. It is not just the political perils that go with either individual, it’s also the simple matter of their age. Continue reading...

Victory over Republican Jim Marchant for state’s top elections post is significant win against efforts to sow doubt in US electionsCisco Aguilar, a Democrat, was elected Nevada’s top election official, beating Jim Marchant, a Republican who is linked to the QAnon sought to spread misinformation about the results of the 2020 race.His victory is a significant win against efforts to sow doubt in US elections, a growing force in the Republican party. Continue reading...

Western democracies want Ukraine to win – but are they all happy for Europe’s centre of gravity to migrate eastward?If the outcome of the war could be determined by the toss of a coin, the camps would be clear: democracies would want Ukraine to win, autocracies would want it to lose. But real-world political outcomes are not so binary. They typically fall on a spectrum between annihilation and total victory. This leaves the democracies divided into at least three camps: the English-speaking, the western European and the eastern European minus Hungary. What Putin calls the “collective west” all want Ukraine to win. But not necessarily to the same extent.For Poland and the Baltic countries the matter is simple. They want Ukraine’s victory to be unequivocal. The advantages would be both material and psychological.Anna Gromada is a social scientist and co-founder of the Warsaw-based Kalecki Foundation thinktank.Krzysztof Zeniuk is an economist Continue reading...

US president expected to urge Beijing to do more to curb North Korea and raise carbon reduction targetsJoe Biden, buoyed by the military breakthrough in Ukraine and Democrat retention of the US Senate, said he would seek to establish red lines in the US’s relationship with China when he meets President Xi Jinping on Monday before the G20 summit of world leaders in Bali.At an Asian summit on Sunday in advance of his first bilateral with Xi, Biden laid down some firm parameters about freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and warned China against attempting an invasion of Taiwan, to which it lays claim. But he also said he wanted to keep lines of communication open with Beijing. Continue reading...

Alphonso Davies is the star but the Concacaf surprise package will look to press at pace rather than sit back and defendThis article is part of the Guardian’s World Cup 2022 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 32 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 20 November. Continue reading...

Full live results of the Congressional midterms, seat by seat, as Democrats retain control of the Senate while control of the House of Representatives remains undecided

By supplying military drones to Russia, the mullahs’ regime is killing at home and away. The national team’s presence in Qatar is sickening and shamefulSome governments, such as Syria and Myanmar, kill their own people. Some, such as Russia, kill people in other countries, as in Ukraine. Iran’s government is doing both, home and away.Now, pressed into action by this murderous regime, Iran’s national football team is about to play England, Wales and the US in the 2022 World Cup – as if nothing untoward were happening. This is not OK. In truth, it’s shameful. Continue reading...

The midterms are a win for democracy but many Republicans await a third Trump bidMidterm elections in the United States are where the hopes and dreams of governing parties go to die. Since 1932, the party in power has lost on average 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four seats in the Senate. In 2018, two years after taking the White House and both Houses of Congress, Republicans lost 40 House seats and control of the chamber. In 2010, Democrats lost 63 seats. In 1994, it was 54 and eight Senate seats. Every two years, after electing a new president, voters, generally speaking, go to the polls with buyer’s remorse.But not this year. In a truly stunning outcome, Democrats reversed the historical trend lines and, at least for the time being, protected American democracy from the worst excesses of the Donald Trump-led Republican party. Continue reading...

The style press might be reporting that ‘thin is in’, but lurking behind the headlines is alarming knowledge that the continuing obsession has been there all alongI respect the Halloween tradition of successfully sluttifying that which, on any other night, would refuse to be sluttified. Scrolling through photos last week I saw multiple slutty ghosts, multiple slutty Toy Story characters. I saw many, many cleavages, one attached to a Minion, and I saw both Marge Simpson and Cinderella’s bottoms. But while I always applaud the mission, one which never goes out of style, this year I was struck by something else – the skinniness.“Thin is back,” the style press is reporting, warily. When Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s old gown to the Met Gala, most news stories concentrated on the scandal of a museum piece being disrespected. But for women, young women especially, the real story ran way down in paragraphs four and five: it was the extreme diet Kardashian went on, eating only the “cleanest veggies and proteins”, in order to make that sparkly dress fit. Similar diets were happening in student kitchens across the UK and shared online in hashtags and well-lit videos. It’s no coincidence that this culture shift, these Halloween costumes featuring vast plains of taut belly, coincides with the return of Y2K fashion. With the return of baby tees and low-rise jeans came the memory for many of how such clothes helped inspire in us the idea that it wasn’t that these clothes did not fit our bodies, it was our bodies that did not fit these clothes. Continue reading...

After the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leaderSitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill. Continue reading...

Biden and DeSantis are on the up, but Donald Trump and some of the Republicans’ more unhinged candidates floppedAfter months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent on advertising, the message from America’s midterm elections could essentially be boiled down to: “Not as bad as Democrats feared.”There were big wins for Republicans in Florida, and the party still seems likely to take the House, but elsewhere candidates endorsed by former president Donald Trump flopped, and there were key victories for supporters of reproductive rights. Continue reading...

The bestselling author wants to help Americans understand those in the military. On Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman hosted a hometown eventOn Friday, Veterans Day, the Democratic congressman Seth Moulton hosted a town hall in Marblehead, his home town in Massachusetts. He first staged such an event in 2015, working with Sebastian Junger, author of bestsellers including The Perfect Storm, War and Tribe, which considers how veterans might be better understood and helped after coming home from war.On the page, Junger considers how Indigenous peoples treated warriors who returned from “intimate and bloody warfare”. Before the Marblehead event, he said: “I’d read about the gourd dance, this process that some of the Southern Great Plains tribes had. I’m sure all of them had some variant on allowing for warriors to recount what they did.” Continue reading...

Gluesenkamp Perez’s win over Trump-backed far-right candidate Joe Kent helps buoy party hopes of keeping a majority in the House

The race was among the tightest in the country and saw record spending with the incumbent senator nearly beaten

Win takes Democrats to key number of 50 seats in Senate, in blow to Republicans who hoped for ‘red wave’

Unclear how many were aboard aircraft at ‘America’s premier world war II airshow’Two historical military planes collided and crashed to the ground Saturday during a Dallas airshow, federal officials said, sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky.Officials didn’t immediately make clear how many people were on board the aircraft or if anyone on the ground was hurt. Nonetheless, an ABC News producer – citing reporting from a colleague – said on Twitter that at least six people, all crew members, were feared dead after the crash. Continue reading...

Classified material claims United Arab Emirates engaged in operations that ‘resemble espionage’A classified US intelligence report details efforts undertaken by the United Arab Emirates to influence American politics, offering a scrutinizing look at a close US ally, according to the Washington Post.Written by the National Intelligence Council, the report says that the UAE has for years – across multiple presidential administrations – illegally and legally attempted to shape US policy. The Post cited three anonymous sources who have read the report, which the council has been showing to policymakers in recent weeks. Continue reading...

Eagles and Os Lobos cruise past Hong Kong and Kenya, setting up one-off game for place with Wales and Australia in Pool C next yearThe USA set up a winner-takes-all meeting with Portugal next week, the prize a place in the Rugby World Cup in France next year, by beating Hong Kong 49-7 in Dubai on Saturday. In the other game of the day, the Portuguese hammered Kenya 85-0.The Eagles, who last week beat Kenya 68-14, and Os Lobos, who beat Hong Kong 42-14, have both taken bonus points in beating lower-ranked opponents. The Portuguese are slightly ahead on points differential and tries scored (19 to 17). Continue reading...

Balance in Senate chamber remains at 49-49, with eyes on race between Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Adam Laxalt

Republican Adam Laxalt’s lead over Catherine Cortez Masto shrinks in race that could hand Democrats control of chamberAfter the Democrat Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his Senate re-election race in Arizona, the outcome of a tight race in Nevada will determine whether Democrats can secure a majority in the upper congressional chamber without having to hold their breath until the December runoff in Georgia.The race between Nevada’s Democratic incumbent, Catherine Cortez Masto, and her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general, got even closer on Saturday when a batch of counted votes were reported. Just 862 votes make up Laxalt’s lead. About 25,000 mail-in ballots and 15,000 ballots that need “curing”, or correcting by the voter, have yet to be reported. Continue reading...

The No 2-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs edged the Michigan State Spartans aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln at San Diego’s North Island Naval Air Station in the marquee matchup of college basketball’s opening weekend Continue reading...

Republican, who ran unopposed, will represent home town in state house of representativesNot every Republican television personality who ran for political office during Tuesday’s US elections lost.The winner of the TV competition Survivor: David v Goliath in 2018, Nick Wilson, secured a seat as a Republican in Kentucky’s state house of representatives. Wilson’s path to victory wasn’t particularly fraught, as he ran unopposed for a seat that was left empty when the prior officeholder, Regina Huff, retired. Continue reading...

Actor says he wants to clear his name after 2021 on-set shooting that killed Halyna HutchinsSaying he wanted to clear his name, the actor Alec Baldwin on Friday sued people involved in handling and supplying the loaded gun that he was using when it fired and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a 2021 filming accident in New Mexico.Baldwin filed a cross-complaint in Los Angeles’s superior court alleging negligence against some of the people sued by a script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell. Among other things, it seeks a share of any damages that Mitchell may win from the people Baldwin names and asks that they pay for any damages assessed against him. Continue reading...

Full live results of the Congressional midterms, seat by seat, as electors across the US vote to decide whether the Republicans or Democrats will control the House of Representatives and SenateUS midterm elections 2022 – latest live news updatesAll 435 seats in the lower chamber of the federal congress, the House of Representatives, are re-elected every two years. (There are no term limits, and incumbents are often returned, so there is substantial continuity in the membership). House seats are broadly proportional to population, so California has lots of seats but Montana only a few. Continue reading...

Students, researchers and scholars are negotiating contracts in what could be the largest strike in US’s higher education historyGraduate workers including teaching assistants and student researchers, academic researchers and postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system have voted to authorize a strike which could be the largest in higher education history in the US.Their unions – UAW 5810, UAW 2865 and SRU-UAW – representing 48,000 workers are currently negotiating union contracts for four separate bargaining units. They are coordinating to push increased compensation, childcare reimbursements, job security protections, sustainable transit incentives, eliminating fees for international scholars and stronger disability accommodations. Continue reading...

Acknowledging that climate breakdown is unavoidable is key to making fossil-fuel companies and governments take actionIn his Cop27 speech this week, our will-he-go, won’t-he-go prime minister said that stopping the planet dangerously overheating was still within our grasp, leaving many wondering just what planet he was on.According to Rishi Sunak, last year’s Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow was all about keeping alive the possibility of preventing the global average temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution from climbing above 1.5C. That is “alive”, as in connected to a drip, in a coma and suffering cardiac arrest every few hours.Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and the author of Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide Continue reading...

In an exclusive extract from her new book, the former first lady shares what she learned about raising a family while living in the White HouseAfter Barack was elected president, word got out that Marian Robinson, my 71-year-old mother, was planning to move to the White House with us. The idea was that she’d help look after Sasha and Malia, who were seven and 10 at the time, at least until they were settled. She’d make sure that everyone adjusted OK and then move back to Chicago. The media seemed instantly charmed by this notion, requesting interviews with my mother and producing a slew of stories, dubbing her “First Granny” and “Grandmother-in Chief”. It was as if a new and potentially exciting character had been added to the cast of a network drama. Suddenly, my mother was in the news. She was news.If you’ve ever met my mother, however, you’ll know that the last thing she wants is to be well known. She agreed to do a handful of interviews, figuring it was just part of the larger transition process, though she said, again and again, that she was surprised that anyone would care. Continue reading...

The incident occurred at the Parris Island training ground last year when temperatures exceeded 90F during physical exercisesA drill instructor at the US Marine Corps’s training grounds on Parris Island, South Carolina, has been charged with negligent homicide after allegedly causing the overheating death of a recruit last year.The instructor, Staff Sgt Steven T Smiley, was in command when Dalton Beals died while undergoing the so-called Crucible event of recruit training at Parris Island on 4 June 2021, the military news website Task & Purpose reported. Investigators determined that Smiley had failed to adequately supervise Beals, 19, and other recruits, making them endure additional physical training even though the temperature exceeded 90F (32C) that day. Continue reading...

Women and young people, furious over losing federal abortion protections, helped Democrats defy expectationsThis summer, after a tectonic decision by the supreme court to overturn Roe v Wade eliminated the nearly 50-year-old constitutional right to abortion, Joe Biden predicted American women would revolt. Republicans, however, saw a “red wave” brewing, fueled by widespread economic discontent.On Thursday, after Democrats defied historical expectations in the first major election of the post-Roe era, Biden effectively declared: “I told ya so.” Continue reading...

Ex-US president tries to reclaim the unhinged ‘stable genius’ as a joke – and a small part of me thinks good luck to himIn among the serious analysis of the US midterms this week, a small nugget of pure joy. Continue reading...

Temperatures in Canada dropped by as much as 20C below normal this weekSignificant cold is spreading widely across North America this weekend, having already affected northern and western parts so far this week.During the night of 9 November, temperatures across central and western provinces of Canada, as well as many western states of the US, plummeted to widely at least 10C (50F) below normal, with some parts of Canada seeing temperatures as low as 20C (68F) below normal. Continue reading...

The former Marine beat Mark Finchem, an ex-member of Oath Keepers militia who was at the Capitol on January 6The victory of Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, may come to be seen as one of the most significant results of the 2022 elections in terms of the future of American democracy.Fontes, a former Marine, managed to fend off one of the most contentious Republican election deniers in a bitterly fought and exceedingly close race. His opponent, Mark Finchem, is a state lawmaker who has been a member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and was present at the US Capitol on the day of the 6 January 2021 insurrection. Continue reading...

Counting continues in key Senate battleground, while Republicans look on course for slim majority in House

The senator defeated the Donald Trump-endorsed Blake Masters after a campaign in which Kelly pitched himself as a moderateDemocrat Mark Kelly has won re-election in Arizona, defeating his far-right challenger Blake Masters in a critical race that puts the Democrats one victory away from securing control of the US Senate.The Arizona race is one of a handful of contests that Republicans targeted in their bid to take control of the 50-50 Senate. It was a test of the inroads that Kelly and other Democrats have made in Arizona, a state that was once reliably dominated by the GOP but has emerged as a purple battleground. Continue reading...

Lombardo, a career police officer, defeats Democrat Steve Sisolak to regain governorship for GOPRepublican Joe Lombardo, a career police officer and sheriff in Las Vegas who was endorsed by Donald Trump, has been elected governor in Nevada.Lombardo defeated Steve Sisolak, regaining the governorship for the GOP and making Sisolak a one-term Democrat amid two decades of Republicans. Continue reading...

The committee demanded the ex-president’s testimony and access to several documents in their investigation of the 6 January riotDonald Trump’s attorneys filed a lawsuit seeking to block the House January 6 select committee’s subpoena demanding testimony in the investigation into Capitol attack, according to court documents and a statement on Friday night, setting up a legal battle over the extent of executive power.The suit appears to reflect an attempt by the former president to delay compliance with the sprawling subpoena, in an effort that could culminate in a constitutional showdown with the House of Representatives before the US supreme court. Continue reading...

Prolific voice actor defined the sound of the caped crusader in acclaimed animated series, films and video gamesKevin Conroy, the prolific voice actor whose gravely delivery on Batman: The Animated Series, was for many Batman fans the definitive sound of the caped crusader, has died at 66.Conroy died after a battle with cancer, series producer Warner Bros announced Friday. Continue reading...

Democrat Mark Kelly appears close to re-election in Arizona, with Nevada still up in the air and Georgia going to a runoff vote

Department of Labor complaint says Nebraska firm employed children ages 13 to 17 to work with ‘dangerous equipment’A Nebraska sanitation services firm is facing a major complaint from the Department of Labor for allegedly employing 31 children in job duties that are illegal for those under 18 years old.The Department of Labor filed the complaint against Packers Sanitation Services (PSSI) on Wednesday, issuing a request for a temporary injunction, as reported by the Daily Beast. Continue reading...

Jody Greene resigned on 24 October after local prosecutors filed petition to remove himA North Carolina sheriff who resigned in late October following revelations he made racist remarks about Black employees will get his job back after voters re-elected him on Tuesday.Jody Greene stepped down as sheriff of Columbus county on 24 October, after the local district attorney filed a petition to remove him over “highly inappropriate and racially charged statements” made about Black employees in 2019. Continue reading...

Joe Biden’s party abandoned timidity and neutered the Republican right. Labour should take heedPolitics has brought so much angst in recent years that when hope comes along we should savour it. This week delivered a dollop of unexpectedly good news from the US, news that should encourage, and perhaps instruct, those who oppose the menace of nationalist populism the world over – even here in Britain.True, the struggle against that danger has enjoyed mixed fortunes this autumn. Jair Bolsonaro was ejected in Brazil, only for an Israeli election to seal the comeback of Benjamin Netanyahu two days later. But the message from Tuesday’s US midterms is clear: populists can be defeated.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. Listen to his Politics Weekly America podcast here Continue reading...

Former president, who is still expected to announce candidacy, posts diatribe against possible White House contender and others

‘We have zero tolerance for any form of bias or hate,’ company says and offers $100,000 reward to help find who was responsibleThe firm building former US president Barack Obama’s presidential library suspended operations after a noose was found at the construction site in Chicago and the police were called.A $100,000 reward was offered by the construction company to help find who was responsible. Continue reading...