A Black man like me is not supposed to love Oklahoma. But in studying my home state's history of violence, theft and wild ambitions, I learned to reckon with its legacyIn a moment, I will tell you how I learned to love Oklahoma, a state I have had to point out on a map more times than I can count to Americans and foreigners alike. One with 77 crimson red counties and a license plate that once simply read: OKLAHOMA IS OK."But first, it is important to tell you about my first Oklahoma school history lesson - one I learned when I was eight years old, after my parents moved our family cross-country. Continue reading...
Trailblazing Illinois Democrat reflects on political career and says party is in a daze' about how to combat TrumpOh, I wish I was in the land of cotton ... "Carol Moseley Braun was riding a lift in the US Capitol building when she heard Dixie, the unofficial anthem of the slave-owning Confederacy during the civil war. The sound was not very loud, yet it pierced my ears with the intensity of a dog whistle," Moseley Braun writes in her new memoir, Trailblazer. Indeed, that is what it was in a sense." Continue reading...
Atlanta Police Foundation forced to disclose a year after a lawsuit, and could have implications for other citiesMore than a year after a digital news outlet and a research group sued the Atlanta Police Foundation for allegedly violating Georgia's open records law, the foundation has sent plaintiffs nearly 300 pages of records linked to its role as the driving force behind the police training center known as Cop City".The outcome opens the door to what we want; it's a guide stone for getting records from police foundations, so they can't be a black box", said Matt Scott, executive director of Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC), an Atlanta-based digital news outlet and one of two plaintiffs in the case. Continue reading...
US president using invented' national energy crisis to justify expansion of coal, oil and gas, experts sayEver since Donald Trump began his second presidency, he has used an invented" national energy emergency to help justify expanding oil, gas and coal while slashing green energy - despite years of scientific evidence that burning fossil fuels has contributed significantly to climate change, say scholars and watchdogs.It's an agenda that in only its first six months, has put back environmental progress by decades, they say. Continue reading...
Six months into his second term, the president has been disastrous for democracy - but extraordinarily politically adeptIn the first six months of his second term as president, Donald Trump has dominated the national political conversation, implemented an aggressive agenda of constitutional reform, scrambled longstanding American alliances, and helped alter US political culture.Pro-democracy forces have been left with their heads spinning. They (and I) have spent too much time simply denouncing or pathologizing him and far too little time learning from him.Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America's Death Penalty Continue reading...
A Salvadorian reporter with an audience of millions, Mario Guevara was arrested while livestreaming a protest against Trump in June - and is still struggling for freedomProsecutors dropped the last remaining charges against Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara last week after he was arrested while livestreaming a protest in June. But the influential Salvadorian reporter remains penned up in a south Georgia detention center, fending off a deportation case, jail house extortionists and despair, people familiar with his situation told the Guardian.Donald Trump's administration has been extreme in unprecedented ways to undocumented immigrants. But Guevara's treatment is a special case. Shuttled between five jail cells in Georgia since his arrest while covering the No Kings Day" protests, the 20-plus-years veteran journalist's sin was to document the undocumented and the way Trump's agents have been hunting them down. Continue reading...
Murdering and massacring innocents is indefensible. So why on earth is it allowed to continue? The answer is moral relativismThe quest for peace in major conflicts has rarely been so desperate and so seemingly futile. In Gaza, talk of ceasefires, truces and pauses typically ends in tears. In Ukraine, the war is now well into its fourth year with no end in sight, despite Donald Trump's new 50-day deadline. Syria burns anew. Sudan's horrors never cease. Last year, state-based conflicts reached a peak - 61 across 36 countries. It was the highest recorded total since 1946. This year could be worse.The sheer scale and depravity of war crimes and other conflict-zone atrocities is extraordinary. The deliberate, illegal targeting and terrorising of civilians, the killing, maiming and abduction of children, and the use of starvation, sexual violence, torture and forced displacement as weapons of war have grown almost routine. Israel's killing last week of children queueing for water in Gaza was shocking, made doubly so by the fact that scenes like this have become so commonplace.Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentatorDo 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...
Measles on the rise and vaccination rates falling; EPA to be gutted of its crucial research function. Key US politics stories from Saturday 19 July at a glanceThe current administration is waging a war on science," warned Celine Gounder, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at New York University in a keynote talk in May to graduates of Harvard's School of Public Health.That war appeared to enter a new phase in the aftermath of a recent supreme court decision that empowered health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, and other agency leaders, to implement mass firings - effectively greenlighting the politicization of science. Continue reading...
Cornelius Taylor was killed during a sweep of a homeless encampment in city's preparation for MLK weekendThe family of a man who was killed after city workers crushed his tent with a bulldozer during a sweep of a homeless encampment in Atlanta, Georgia, filed a lawsuit against the city on Friday over his death, calling it tragic and preventable".The lawsuit filed by Cornelius Taylor's sister and son alleges that city employees failed to look to see if there was anyone inside the tents in the encampment before using a bulldozer to clear it in the 16 January sweep. Taylor, 46, was inside one of the tents and was crushed by the truck when his tent was flattened, the lawsuit says. Continue reading...
Home favourite in disbelief after shot on the 11th sends an old ball flying but eagle a hole later sends fans into ecstasyDeep into day three of the Open and Rory McIlroy is still surfing gigantic waves of momentum and goodwill. He has jumped to six under, at this point only four shots off the lead, with each birdie sounding like a sonic boom over Portrush. It is manic, messianic and a lot of fun. And then it gets weird. Twilight Zone weird.McIlroy has just twirled a drive into the rough at the 11th. For a moment he fears that his ball is lost, only to get the all clear from the marshal. Better still, he will be playing from trampled-down ground. He pauses. Takes aim. And then as his ball flops wearily into air, a member's Titleist ball, which has been deeply buried under ground, suddenly jumps up beside him. Continue reading...
Andy Byron leaves startup Astronomer after he and Kristin Cabot were placed on leave over Jumbotron incidentThe married CEO who was filmed at a Coldplay concert in the US with his arms around his company's HR head in a video that went viral has now resigned, the company Astronomer said on Saturday.In a post on Linkedin, the software startup said: Andy Byron has tendered his resignation, and the Board of Directors has accepted." Continue reading...
This liveblog is now closedAs Donald Trump tries to claim he was not a fan" of Jeffrey Epstein, photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of their relationship, writes Adam Gabbatt:Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a treasonous conspiracy" intended to show that Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference. Continue reading...
At least 30 people were injured early on 19 July when a vehicle drove into a crowd outside a club on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, the city's fire department and local media reports have said. At least seven people were in critical condition and six others were seriously injured, the fire department said in an online statement. Captain Adam VanGerpen, a fire department spokesperson, was quoted by ABC News as saying that a paramedic assessing one of the injured found a gunshot wound. He said he was unable to confirm reports it was the driver of the car that hit the crowd. The Los Angeles police department confirmed that the investigation is ongoing
Christian group Generation Life has sent 20somethings to do beach outreach' at the US haven for hedonism for two decades. A lot about young people's sex lives - and their sales pitch - has changedBy the time the young man in red swim shorts sprinted up the beach to Chiara MacGillivray and Jon Sechuk, the two twentysomethings had yet to convince a single Jersey shore partier to join their crusade for chastity.In fairness, convincing young people to remain chaste" until marriage is a hard sell at the best of times. And the members of Generation Life knew that Saturday in June at the Jersey shore - a stretch of sand south of Atlantic City so renowned for horniness, drunkenness and reality TV show antics that its very name has become a synonym for hedonism - was not exactly a good time for chastity. It may have even been the worst possible time. Continue reading...
Move by Marco Rubio is latest attempt by Trump administration to help former president avoid justice over alleged coupThe US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil's 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country's former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump's Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years. Continue reading...
Measles cases are at their highest rate in the US in decades. Robert F Kennedy doesn't seem too botheredDo you enjoy getting sick from preventable diseases? Do you have a hankering to make once-declining viruses great again? If so, why not pop over to the US where the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his anti-vaccine cronies are making a valiant effort to overturn decades of progress in modern medicine?Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
The US president and the man he appointed to head the central bank are at loggerheads over interest ratesAfter years of heated attacks on the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the Trump administration has begun suggesting recent costly renovations at the central bank's Washington DC buildings could justify firing Powell.Donald Trump's antipathy for Powell stems mainly from the central bank boss's refusal to lower interest rates - something the president has repeatedly called for. Continue reading...
Downstream of Camp Mystic, people rallied around to restore Camp Camp, which caters for those with disabilitiesJust days after the devastating Texas floods killed 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, another summer camp has reopened its doors 30 miles downstream. A colossal cleanup effort from the surrounding community enabled Camp Camp, a residential program serving youth with disabilities, to welcome visitors again this summer.Our campers will be able to enjoy our riverfront activities much sooner now," said Ken Kaiser, the director of facility operations for the camp. In the midst of heartache, we got to see the best of humanity through these volunteers who came from all over Texas and beyond." Continue reading...
Chase Childers, 38, displayed extraordinary courage' in saving swimmers in distress, family saysA family in Dallas is grieving after their patriarch - a former pro baseball player turned police officer - died saving five others from drowning while they all recently vacationed, as authorities and an online page in his honor tell it.Chase Childers, 38, displayed extraordinary courage and selflessness ... ultimately paying the highest sacrifice with his life" in front of his wife Nataley and their three children, said a GoFundMe page launched to support his family. His bravery, kindness and love will always be remembered." Continue reading...
Campaigning on protecting democracy' isn't appealing for non-college-educated voters. So why haven't Democrats changed their message?Doing the same thing and expecting a different result - that's the definition of insanity. So I fall into despair when I hear yet another news story, and yet another politician, talking incessantly about assaults on democracy. It's as if folks have read no post-2024 election polling. Defense of democracy was a top issue for Democrats but way, way down for those who voted for Donald Trump: their top concerns were inflation and the economy. Democrats lost the popular vote. They need to attract voters they lost in the last election. What's complicated about this?Assaults on democracy are driven by narcissistic authoritarianism, for sure - but they're also a strategy to control the narrative in ways that aid and abet the far right. Democrats need to stop walking into the same old trap, and supplement defense of democracy with a viable strategy to lure back enough non-college-educated voters to win elections. Continue reading...
Trump's grooming of his followers is impossible to undo. Now he is bedeviled by a conspiracy theory gapSome enchanted evening, Donald Trump saw a stranger across a crowded room.It is likely that there is hardly anyone living who knows exactly under what glowing lights Donald Trump met Jeffrey Epstein, except perhaps Trump himself and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping to procure minors for sexual abuse. Trump said in an interview in 2002, when his Epstein relationship was still tight, that it had been a 15-year mutual admiration society. Epstein was a terrific guy" and a lot of fun to be with," and likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side". Epstein described himself as Donald's closest friend for 10 years". Continue reading...
Starmer's successful reset' with Europe highlights an underlying incoherence. The only rational long-term strategy is to rejoin the EU, but our politics is far removed from thatLike a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer's real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe - witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz - does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain's global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second circle, now the European Union, Britain has withdrawn from it. With the revolutionary nationalism of President Donald Trump, the third circle is also fading fast. So here's an 80-year countdown of Britain's strategic circles: three ... two ... one, going on none.Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Three deputies who were killed were members of department's arson explosives detail, according to sheriffAn explosion at a law enforcement training facility in Los Angeles has killed three people with the county sheriff's department in the largest loss of life for the agency since 1857, the sheriff said on Friday morning.The three deputies who were killed were members of the department's arson explosives detail said Robert Luna, the sheriff, at a press conference. Authorities were still working to notify relatives of the deceased, he said, and details on the circumstances around the explosion were limited. Continue reading...
President follows through on libel threat over report that said he sent Epstein bawdy' birthday note and sketchDonald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.Trump's lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami. Continue reading...
US president's lawsuit came just before the justice department asked a court to unseal grand jury testimony from the federal sex-trafficking investigation into the former financier. Key US politics stories from Friday 18 JulyDonald Trump on Friday sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a bawdy note and sketch of a naked woman.The lawsuit came just before the US justice department asked a New York court to unseal grand jury testimony transcripts from the federal sex-trafficking investigation into Epstein. Continue reading...
US president, who is pushing for ceasefire deal in Gaza, praises Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as fantastic'Ten more hostages will be released from Gaza very shortly", Donald Trump said at the White House Friday. The news comes as the president continues to push for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.We got most of the hostages back. We're going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly," Trump said during a dinner with Republican senators. He also praised his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as fantastic". Continue reading...
Move seeks to contain controversy that has engulfed Trump administration since it announced it would not release more files from sex trafficking caseThe US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein's case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration's handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move - coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump's relationship with Epstein - seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein's sex trafficking case. Continue reading...
Families of victims sued Activision and Meta, saying the companies bear responsibility for products used by gunmanA lawyer for the maker of the video game Call of Duty argued Friday that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the Robb elementary school attack in Uvalde, Texas, saying the contents of the war game are protected by the first amendment.The families sued Call of Duty maker Activision and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, saying that the companies bear responsibility for products used by the teenage gunman. Continue reading...
Yvette Davids, who took the role in January 2004, will be succeeded by Michael BorgschulteThe first woman to lead the US naval academy is being reassigned, with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, moving to replace her with a Marine Corps general, defense officials confirmed on Friday.The decision marks the first time in the nearly 180-year history of the academy that a Marine Corps officer has been nominated to take charge. Continue reading...
Video at the concert showed Astronomer's married CEO with his arms around its head of human resourcesAstronomer, the company at the center of the Coldplay scandal in which its CEO was caught canoodling with its chief human resources officer, has finally issued a statement on the matter.More than 24 hours after a Jumbotron camera at a Coldplay concert in Boston, Massachusetts, caught the software company's married CEO, Andy Byron, with his arms around the company's HR head, Kristin Cabot, Astronomer has responded to the incident which has taken the internet by storm. Continue reading...
The president is reportedly on a warpath' over a story in the Wall Street Journal - controlled by Trump's top media allyFor days before the Wall Street Journal published its story about Donald Trump's salacious friendship with Jeffrey Epstein on Thursday, the president was frantically working the phones.He reportedly put pressure on the paper's top editor, Emma Tucker, and even Rupert Murdoch, who controls the paper's business side, claiming that the alleged facts behind the story were nothing but a hoax, and threatening to sue the paper if it forged ahead.Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...
California governor accuses Jesse Watters of lying about Trump phone call during anti-immigration raid protestsThe California governor, Gavin Newsom, and Fox News host Jesse Watters have locked into a political tit-for-tat after the network figure admitted to mistakenly claiming that Newsom lied about a phone call with Donald Trump during June's anti-immigration enforcement protests in the state.On Thursday, Watters issued an apology on his program stemming from a $787m defamation lawsuit filed by Newsom against the host and Fox News, as the Los Angeles Times and other outlets reported. Newsom's lawsuit claimed that Watters lied on air about the timeline of the governor's conversations with the president during the peak of the anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protests across Los Angeles. Continue reading...
Indigenous leaders warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passesWhile colleges and universities slow down during summer break, Ahniwake Rose is busy wondering what the fall semester will hold for the nation's 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) - and if they will be able to stay open much longer.As the president and CEO of the Indigenous non-profit American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), Rose (Cherokee and Muscogee Creek) braces as the schools she represents face a potential nearly 90% reduction in funding starting in October. President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget includes a proposal to slash operations funding from $183.3m to $22.1m for Bureau of Indian Education post-secondary programs - career and technical schools, community colleges, four-year colleges and universities. On 15 July, a House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation that allotted $1.5bn to the Bureau of Indian Education, though it did not specify how much would go toward post-secondary programs. Congress still needs to finish approving the budget for the Bureau of Indian Education, a subdivision of the Department of Interior. Continue reading...
Long-acting contraceptives will not be sent abroad to women in need, a move costing US taxpayers $167,000The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made - a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July. Continue reading...
Nearly 100 lawmakers claim the agency's recent actions put veterans' healthcare at risk. Department of Veterans Affairs chief says no one is being discriminated against at VA'The US Department of Veterans Affairs has enthusiastically joined Donald Trump's war on DEI - demanding that staffers report colleagues who engage in diversity initiatives, banning LGBTQ+ pride flags from VA hospitals and shuttering an office investigating why Black veterans are more likely to have their mental health disability claims rejected.Last week, the VA secretary, Doug Collins, tweeted that VA is now squarely focused on Veterans - not out-of-touch, woke causes such as DEI and gender dysphoria treatments." Continue reading...
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