Advocates worry debt burden is worse with installment payments as credit card debt balloons to over $1tn in USWhen Nicole Hartman purchased her home in Berwick, Pennsylvania, in 2019, the place needed remodeling.The 44-year-old home help aide needed to replace the hot water heater, get two new appliances and fix a water issue, along with making the home more medically accessible for her children. Continue reading...
by Barry Trachtenberg, Victor Silverman, Atalia Omer, on (#6XY73)
We are Jewish scholars who filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court on Harvard's discriminatory assumption that being Jewish means supporting IsraelHarvard is suing to stop the Trump administration's unprecedented interference in the operation of the university, supposedly to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. Harvard maintains it has already addressed a crisis of antisemitism on campus. The government is wrong in attacking Harvard, but so is Harvard in its defense.We are part of a group of 27 Jewish scholars of Jewish studies who have filed an amicus brief in Harvard's lawsuit against the Trump administration. We submitted the brief, drafted by the civil rights attorney Yaman Salahi, because we support the university's fight against government overreach. Yet in doing so, the institution has committed a different kind of discrimination - one that violates federal civil rights law. We reject Harvard's troubling assumption that being Jewish necessitates supporting Israel, or that criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza constitutes antisemitism. Continue reading...
While heart-rate monitoring has provided us with some evidence, it fails to capture the ineffable nature of match dayA recent study of Brazilian football fans, supporters of Atletico Mineiro, monitored their heart rates before and during a big match and concluded that, a single goal aside, the collective rituals of the day were more emotionally intense than anything else. So going to the football is about more than the football; but we surely knew that anyway? Does the kind of neurophysiological approach take us any further?In the end this study relied on a very small sample - just 17 fans - and a very particular sample at that; the kind of supporter who shows up more than four hours before a game, and is all-in with the choreographed pre-match rituals of flares, fireworks and singing. Even then, the idea that heart rate is the most useful cipher for emotion is too crude a proposition to capture how we experience the game. This research was done at the final of the Minas Gerais state championships, against their eternal local rivals; I wonder what the results would have looked like from one of Bristol Rovers' tortuous late-season defeats this year? What is the physiological metric for ennui?David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives. His new book Injury Time: Football in a State of Emergency (Mudlark) will be published in August Continue reading...
Several service members told advocacy groups they felt like pawns in a political game and assignment was unnecessaryCalifornia national guards troops and marines deployed to Los Angeles to help restore order after days of protest against the Trump administration have told friends and family members they are deeply unhappy about the assignment and worry their only meaningful role will be as pawns in a political battle they do not want to join.Three different advocacy organisations representing military families said they had heard from dozens of affected service members who expressed discomfort about being drawn into a domestic policing operation outside their normal field of operations. The groups said they have heard no countervailing opinions. Continue reading...
Troops are trained for war, where they can shoot to kill. Asking troops to police is an invitation to brutalityThis was the moment that Donald Trump was waiting for. A Democratic city, Los Angeles. A Democratic state, California. His most popular issue, immigration. And protests where occasional violence could be spotlighted endlessly on social media. What better time to summon the troops and burnish the president's tough-guy image.But Trump should be careful what he wishes for. The spectacle of needlessly calling in 4,000 national guard troops and 700 Marines may be red meat for his Maga base, but for most everyone else it is a bright warning sign of Trump's autocratic tendencies. Rather than quell the protests, he is provoking more, not only in LA but in at least two dozen cities across the US. Even if this is not yet the mass mobilization that such repression has sparked in other countries, it is making Trump's true colors clear.Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February Continue reading...
The protesters in LA have a clear message: don't arrest our friends and neighbours when they pose no danger to anyoneWhen Donald Trump was elected the first time round, the works of the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt flew off the shelves in the US. It wasn't all good news - JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was also enjoying a surge in popularity and Trump was, of course, still about to be president. But Arendt's famous 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was selling at 16 times its usual rate, which meant that by the time of the protests centred on the inauguration in January 2017, at least some of those people had read it.Arendt's view of popular demonstrations was complicated. She wasn't blind to the way authoritarian rulers use public protest as an excuse for a display of physical power, embodied in the police, which turns the state into an army against its people, altering that relationship. If it's no longer government by consent, it's rule by force, and they have the equipment. Yet how many people here still believe", she wrote of Germany in the 1930s, quoting the French activist David Rousset, that a protest has even historic importance? This scepticism is the real masterpiece of the SS. Their great accomplishment. They have corrupted all human solidarity. Here the night has fallen on the future." It's an elegantly drawn lose-lose situation: if you lose the will to protest, you have been morally murdered", but if you don't, you play into the tyrant's hands.Zoe Williams 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...
by Helen Livingstone (now); Robert Mackey, Lucy Campb on (#6XX6M)
This blog is closing now. You can read all our coverage of the anti-Ice protests in Los Angeles and across the US here.Governor Greg Abbott has pledged to deploy National Guard troops across his state of Texas, becoming the first governor to do so as protests against Trump's immigration raids spread throughout the United States.Abbott said on X that the Texas National Guard will use every tool & strategy to help law enforcement maintain order". Continue reading...
The tuxedo-clad US president - accompanied by first lady Melania - promised a golden era' for America at his first Kennedy Center production in WashingtonDo you hear the people sing? / Singing the song of angry men? / It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!"When the rousing anthem of revolution filled the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night, Donald Trump may have had a Pavlovian response along the lines of Get me Stephen Miller" or Send in the marines". We will never know. Continue reading...
Among the names announced by the US health secretary are several who have expressed anti-vaccine viewsRobert Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named new members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers on Wednesday after abruptly firing all 17 sitting members of the independent panel of experts, according to a post on X.The eight new members of the advisory committee for immunization practices (ACIP) are: Joseph R Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A Ross. Continue reading...
Vice-chair and Parkland survivor, 25, to leave after members voted to hold elections that could have led to his ousterDavid Hogg, the young vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee whose vow to unseat asleep-at-the-wheel" Democrats roiled his party, said on Wednesday that he would step away from the high-ranking role in a move that ends months of internal infighting.Moments before Hogg announced his decision, members of the committee had voted to hold new vice-chair elections that could have led to his ouster. Continue reading...
The raids, which include the detention of families and small children, have sparked ongoing protests in Los Angeles and other American cities. Key US politics stories from Wednesday 11 JuneWith limited access to immigrants in detention, US attorneys are scrambling to understand the scope of California's immigration raids, and the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security has violated immigrants' rights.Immigration lawyers have said some detainees - including families with small children - were held in a stuffy office basement for days without sufficient food and water. Continue reading...
But Columbia University graduate can be held for inaccurately filling out green card application, says judgeA federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can no longer detain Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of federal claims that he is a threat to US foreign policy.In his order on Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarz said that the ruling will go into effect at 9.30am on Friday, adding: This is to allow the respondents to seek appellate review should they wish to." Continue reading...
Draft agreement may reassure top US military suppliers after president's tariffs flip-flopping threatened productionThe draft trade agreement with China announced by Donald Trump on Wednesday would ease concerns from top US military suppliers about rare-earth metals and magnets that, if cut off permanently, could hobble production of everything from smart bombs to fighter jets to submarines and other weapons in the US arsenal.While the deal has not yet been finalised, it may reassure major defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, the largest US user of samarium - a rare-earth metal used in military-grade magnets - whose supply is entirely controlled by China. Continue reading...
Demarche instructs governments not to participate in meeting on two-state solution between Israel and PalestiniansDonald Trump's administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take anti-Israel actions" following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington. Continue reading...
Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja Sokola by a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday. After a three-week trial, Hayley and Sokola told the press they hoped their testimonies would encourage other victims of sexual assault to speak up. The verdict delivered against Weinstein follows two earlier convictions on similar charges, one of which was overturned on appeal
Singer's lawyer said Aryan Brotherhood and prison officials were plotting to kill him, and asked for home confinementAttorneys for R&B singer R Kelly have filed an urgent request for his release from federal prison, citing a serious threat to his life. The motion asks that the 58-year-old be placed under home detention due to what they describe as an orchestrated plan to have him killed behind bars.In a filing submitted on Tuesday, Kelly's legal team claims that his safety is at risk. The motion alleges that three officials from the Bureau of Prisons attempted to recruit another inmate to murder the singer. Continue reading...
Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja SokolaThe movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty on one charge of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree by a Manhattan jury, concluding a three-week trial that revived accusations from a successful 2020 prosecution that was overturned on appeal.Weinstein was found guilty of sexually assaulting Miriam Haley, but was acquitted of a second charge of sexually assaulting Kaja Sokola. Continue reading...
Convention resolution also called for defunding Planned Parenthood and criticized willful childlessness'Human rights groups spoke out on Wednesday against an overwhelming vote by Southern Baptists, the US's largest Protestant denomination, to endorse a resolution that would seek to overturn the legalization of same-marriage by the US supreme court.Marriage equality is settled law. Love is love, and the right for LGBTQ+ couples to marry is supported by an overwhelming majority of the American public," said Laurel Powell, communications director of Human Rights Campaign, in a statement to the Guardian. Continue reading...
The resignations follow scholarship cancellations and probe into Harvard's work with blacklisted Chinese officialsAll 12 members of the prestigious Fulbright program's board have reportedly resigned in protest of what they describe as unprecedented political interference by the Trump administration, which has blocked scholarships for nearly 200 American academics.The board, according to a memo obtained by the New York Times, accused the state department of acting illegally by cancelling awards already approved for professors and researchers due to travel overseas this summer, following a year-long selection process that concluded over the winter. Continue reading...
President says disaster relief funds will be distributed from White House: We're going to give out less money'President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he planned to start phasing out" the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the hurricane season and that states would receive less federal aid to respond to natural disasters.Trump also said he planned to distribute disaster relief funds directly from the president's office. Continue reading...
Poll shows large decline in Mexico, Poland and Canada, with just 34% of people expressing some confidence in TrumpBarely one-third of people polled across 24 countries say they have confidence in Donald Trump as a world leader, with most describing the US president as arrogant" and dangerous", and relatively few as honest".The survey of more than 28,000 people by the Pew Research Center also found that opinions of the US had worsened over the past year in more than half the countries polled - including falls of 20-plus points in Mexico, Sweden, Poland and Canada. In the UK, the figure had dropped from 54% to 50%. Continue reading...
Woman in video appears unarmed as she walks alone before police shoot her near her residenceLaw enforcement officers have shot a woman with what appears to be less lethal" ammunition at close range while she was walking alone near her residence in Los Angeles, new footage shot during the recent protests reveals.The video, which was taken by another woman and shared on social media, shows the woman walking down a street alone. A line of law enforcement officers appear to tell her to leave the area. Continue reading...
For decades, LA has been at the center of the civil rights and immigrants' rights movements - and Trump's raids appear to be mobilizing a new generationLos Angeles is home to nearly a million undocumented immigrants, the largest number of any place in the US. For decades, the city has been a catalyst in the US immigrants' rights movement.So when federal agents began conducting raids at workplaces across Los Angeles last week, activists say it's not surprising that the city rose up in protest. Continue reading...
The president had been waiting for this made-for-TV clash that allows the administration to manufacture' a crisisDonald Trump is targeting Los Angeles, the biggest city in deep-blue California - a sprawling metropolis shaped by immigrant communities that the president described on Tuesday as a trash heap" - with a show of force many years in the making.After his first term, Trump expressed regret for not taking a more heavy-handed approach to the 2020 protests over George Floyd's murder by police. So when demonstrations against his immigration crackdown erupted last week in Los Angeles, he turned to the playbook he wished he had used then - federalizing the national guard and deploying hundreds of US marines to confront what Democratic officials insist was a manageable situation, escalated by a president who the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, has warned is increasingly behaving like a dictator". Continue reading...
From Newsmax to Charlie Kirk, outlets and podcasts are calling for hard actions', arrests and the Insurrection ActThere were unsavory scenes in Los Angeles over the weekend, as police used teargas and less-lethal munitions" on thousands of people gathered to protest against the arrest of undocumented people immigrants.The events playing out on rightwing TV channels and in the conservative podcasting realm were almost as miserable, as excitable media figures decried protesters as invaders", called for both the mass arrest of elected officials and the invocation of a two-century old laws and used the chaos to push racist conspiracy theories. Continue reading...
My Body, My Data Act is necessary to protect women from persecution in post-Roe era, lawmakers sayThree Democratic members of Congress are introducing a bill to limit companies' ability to hoover up data about people's reproductive health - a measure, they say, that is necessary to protect women from persecution in the post-Roe v Wade era.Representative of California, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon on Wednesday will file the My Body, My Data Act in both the US House and Senate. The bill aims to block companies from collecting, using, retaining or disclosing information about someone's reproductive health unless that data is essential to providing a requested service. This provision would apply to information about pregnancy, menstruation, abortion, contraception and other matters relating to reproductive health. Continue reading...
Standing by one's identity makes sense in certain contexts. But there is a host of valid reasons for lawful demonstrators to remain anonymousDo protesters have a right to hide their faces? Donald Trump, who likes to show and see his own face as often as possible, clearly does not think so. One demand to universities has been that they outlaw masking at demonstrations; in response to protests in California, the US president demanded on social media that anyone wearing a mask be arrested immediately.Never mind the apparent double standard, as Ice agents refuse to take off face coverings and hide their name tags, defying any accountability; there is a widespread sense that standing by one's identity is a crucial part of standing up to unjust power. In fact, that intuition is at the core of civil disobedience. But it is not plausible in our present moment; what's more, there is a long countervailing tradition of validating citizens' right to anonymity. As recently as the mid-1990s, it was affirmed by none other than the supreme court. Continue reading...
The Connecticut senator is urging colleagues to take risks to confront Trump and show voters a less judgmental facePete Buttigieg. Ruben Gallego. JD Vance. All are young politicians who sport facial hair, perhaps in the belief that it confers gravitas. One headline writer even suggested: 2028 Might Be The Year Of The Beard For Presidential Hopefuls."Cue Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator who recently joined the ranks of the bearded. The 51-year-old's is flecked with white, perhaps implying a warrior weathered by battle. Murphy is one of the most outspoken voices in the Democratic opposition to Donald Trump. Continue reading...
The Georgia megachurch leader called for a #TargetFast over its DEI rollback. Now Dollar General is next, he says, as consumers mobilize against Trump's policiesOn 5 February, a month before lent, Jamal Harrison Bryant stepped up to the pulpit of his Atlanta area megachurch. Wearing a sweater bearing Muhammad Ali's likeness and standing behind a lectern branded with a Black power fist clutching a cross, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church railed against companies that rolled back their DEI initiatives to appease Donald Trump.Explicitly, Bryant, 54, singled out Target - which, among other things, had pledged to invest $2bn in Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025 as corporate reparations after the murder of George Floyd - for going back on its word. He urged the conscientious Christian community" to link arms with his 10,000 church members and commit to a 40-day fast" from the company starting on Ash Wednesday. Continue reading...
The Americans have now lost four matches in a row, and the World Cup is one year away. Serious questions are starting to emerge about their high-profile coachIf you're wondering why there seems to be so much hand-wringing over the US men's national team's current form, consider where head coach Mauricio Pochettino set the bar when he took over.We need to really believe and think of big things," he said in his introductory press conference in September. We need to believe that we can win, that we can win all [the] games. We can win the World Cup." Continue reading...
Protesters defy overnight curfew as California governor issues searing rebuke of administration. Plus, who is behind the hedonistic party palaces of New York's Fire Island?
Men's and women's leagues have announced plans for rapid growth. But secession and expansion have long been central elements of US sportsBetween this summer's Club World Cup, next year's World Cup, the enduring stature of the US women's national team, and MLS's steadily growing stable of teams and star attractions, soccer finally appears to be realizing its vast promise on US soil. Is there a limit to how much soccer America can handle? Several organizations are betting that the answer to that question is no". In late April, the National Women's Soccer League - the oldest and biggest first division professional women's league operating in the US today - announced plans to launch a second division, despite concerns over the first division's financial sustainability and the NWSL's slipping status in a women's club game increasingly dominated by Europe.That announcement came on the heels of news that the Women's Premier Soccer League, the longest-running active women's soccer league in the country, plans to launch WPSL Pro as a second-tier league late next year. Meanwhile the USL Super League, a first division rival to the more established NWSL, launched with eight teams in 2024; Sporting Club Jacksonville will become the league's ninth team when the second season starts this fall. There is nothing in the US Soccer Federation's rules to prevent multiple leagues from occupying the same division. From a single Division I competition two years ago, professional US women's soccer is now facing a future where it could very soon have two rival leagues at both first and second division level. Should all the proposed leagues launch as planned, there could be 50 women's professional soccer teams in the US by 2030. In 2023 there were just 12. Continue reading...
In its first months in office, the Trump administration enacted what could be called soft authoritarianism. Now we are in a second phaseOn Monday, the Pentagon sent 700 active-duty marines to Los Angeles and doubled the number of national guard troops deployed there to 4,000, to quell protests Donald Trump said on Sunday were already under control", still simmering ... but not very much".The same day, the US president used the word insurrectionists" to describe demonstrators against the unprecedentedly large and fierce immigration deportation raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) that started on Friday in that city. The remark echoed his long-held desire to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would authorize him to send the military anywhere in the country to put down dissent. Continue reading...
Protests against Donald Trump's immigration policies continued in Los Angeles for a fifth day even as local authorities ordered a curfew in parts of the city. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, delivered a rebuke of the Trump administration, accusing it of 'pulling a military dragnet' across LA and warning 'other states are next'. Trump had ordered the deployment of nearly 5,000 troops, including national guard and marines, to the nation's second-largest city Continue reading...
Journalists condemn slew of incidents and call on authorities to ensure press freedom is respected'Several journalists covering the protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration's immigration crackdown have reported being attacked by law enforcement over the last several days, prompting condemnation and a call on authorities to do more to ensure press freedom is respected".Some were struck by rubber bullets and fired at with pepper balls while one crew was briefly detained while broadcasting live. Continue reading...
A message tucked into an old book serves as a reminder that the assault on the institution is part of a long-planned effortOn the shelf in my library, I have an autographed copy of a book written by a former Republican congressman from New York, John LeBoutillier, titled Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American. It was published in 1978, two years before LeBoutillier was elected to Congress - and decades before the Trump administration's assault on the institution. But its message is familiar in 2025.The book is a scathing criticism of Harvard University, in large part over its supposed left-leaning professors who allegedly indoctrinate their undergraduates. Its thrust is straightforward: Harvard is America's problem.Long after I had graduated from Harvard and was a freshman member of Congress, I realized just how terrible some of the people educating our young are; they are not only liberals, but they use their power" over their students to preach an anti-American leftist point of view. And this is not confined to Harvard. Indeed, this is a disease spreading throughout the academic world.I believe that this politicalization of education threatens this country. And, coupled with a bias so obviously evident in the media, makes it difficult for we conservatives to get our message across.Bernard E Harcourt is a professor of law and political science at Columbia University in New York City and a directeur d'etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author most recently of A Modern Counterrevolution" in The Ideas Letter Continue reading...
California's governor issued a warning to other states as he decried Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard without his support. Key US politics stories from Tuesday 10 June at a glanceThe California governor, Gavin Newsom, has declared that democracy is under assault" in a blistering evening address in which he accused Donald Trump of pulling a military dragnet" across Los Angeles.On another day of mass protests over immigration raids and the federal deployment of military forces to the state, Newsom said Trump's immigration crackdown had gone well beyond arresting criminals and that dishwashers, gardeners, day labourers and seamstresses" are among those being detained. Continue reading...
In a blistering address against the Trump administration, California governor Gavin Newsom warned democracy is 'under assault before our eyes'. President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles was 'a brazen abuse of power', that has 'inflamed a combustible situation', Newsom said after Trump ordered the deployment of thousands of troops, including National Guard and Marines, to the nation's second-largest city as demonstrations against ICE immigration raids unfolded. Newsom warned the situation unfolding in California was just the beginning
by Marina Dunbar in New York and Robert Mackey on (#6XX3E)
Demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and elsewhere in protest at Ice raids and deployment of troopsProtests against the Trump administration's newly intensified immigration raids, centered on Los Angeles, spread across the country on Tuesday, with demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Omaha and Seattle.Thousands attended a protest against the federal government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in New York City's Foley Square.
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