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West Virginia senator Joe Manchin announced move at memorial for late marineThe last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from the second world war will lie in state at the US Capitol, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin announced at a memorial on Sunday where the late marine was remembered for his courage, humility and selflessness.“He never quit giving back,” Manchin said of Hershel W “Woody” Williams. That included raising money for gold star families – immediate family members of fallen service members – with an annual motorcycle ride. Continue reading...

Zach Gallo was reportedly participating in a water training exercise when incident occurred on Long IslandJust when it was warm enough to go back in the water, Fourth of July revelers on a popular beach on New York’s Long Island were ordered out again after a shark bit a lifeguard.Zach Gallo was reportedly playing a victim in a water training exercise Sunday when a 4- to 5-ft-long shark bit him in his chest and right hand off Smith Point Beach, 70 miles east of Manhattan. Continue reading...

Son of Michael Schumacher’s P8 finish earned four points for Haas ahead of Fourth of July holidayFighting to keep his job at the pinnacle of motorsport, the son of the legendary, seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher scored his first ever points for the only American team on the F1 grid after finishing eighth in Sunday’s British Grand Prix at Silverstone.Mick Schumacher’s P8 finish earned four points for Haas – which is headquartered in North Carolina – the day before the US celebrates Monday’s Independence Day holiday. Continue reading...

Officials brace for fresh protests after 25-year-old Black man was killed running from officers during a traffic stopAuthorities in Akron, Ohio, have released chilling police body-camera video in the shooting death of Jayland Walker, a Black motorist who was gunned down after running from officers during a traffic stop on Monday.The video, which shows a fast police chase of Walker’s vehicle, culminates with several officers surrounding the 25-year-old in a parking lot, attempting to Taser him and then opening fire. Walker was accused of firing a handgun at police from his vehicle before leaving the pistol in the driver’s seat and trying to run from officers. Continue reading...

Case places prominent anti-abortion figures in position of balancing rights of women and girls while defending restrictionsThe case of a 10-year-old child rape victim in Ohio who was six weeks pregnant, ineligible for an abortion in her own state, and forced to travel to Indiana for the procedure has spotlighted the shocking impact of the US supreme court ruling on abortion.The story of the girl came to light three days after the court overturned a nationwide right to terminate pregnancy, and Ohio’s six-week “trigger ban” came into effect. Continue reading...

Alejandro Mayorkas says ‘migrants received false information from smugglers’ after 53 died in a trailer in Texas last weekThe secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, repeated warnings against attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border on Sunday after 53 died inside a trailer in San Antonio, Texas, last week in the deadliest ever migrant smuggling episode at the border.“These migrants received false information from smugglers,” Mayorkas told CBS’s Face the Nation. “They put their lives, their life savings, in the hands of these exploitative organizations, these criminal organizations that do not care for their lives and only seek to make a profit.” Continue reading...

January 6 committee vice-chairwoman says ‘a man as dangerous as [him] can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again’The vice-chairwoman of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is not ruling out a criminal referral against Donald Trump, saying “a man as dangerous as [him] can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again”.Liz Cheney’s remarks Sunday came after the committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, once said he did not expect the panel to indicate whether or not it would make a recommendation for federal prosecutors to charge the former president with an alleged role in the Capitol attack. Continue reading...

I have fancied everyone from cartoon foxes to wrestlers. Do I have to say goodbye to all that?Unlike Jimmy Carter, the former US president, I have not committed adultery in my heart many times. But only because I have never been married. Over the course of my life, I have had more crushes than a Florida orange. As a child, I fancied everyone from a medieval cartoon fox to a noodle-haired wrestler to a student physics teacher. I was lusty before I even realised what lust was. And I know I’m not the only one.The brilliant podcast Crushed by Margaret Cabourn-Smith has delighted me for three months with stories of hapless supermarket flirtations, hopeless workplace infatuations and helpless attempts to make various band members notice you. Listening to an episode featuring Shaparak Khorsandi, I remembered with a flash of shame hiding in a woodshed with a family friend as part of a game of hide and seek, and being so desperate to touch him that I pretended to stroke a woodlouse off his back just to feel his skin. I was six years old. It was on Crushed that I also learned, somewhat encouragingly, that Gary Numan is married to a member of the Gary Numan fan club, while Sara Pascoe’s parents met because her mother camped outside her musician dad’s house with a gaggle of other teenage fans. If it worked for them, you reason, there is hope for us all.Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years and Square One, which will be published on 7 July Continue reading...

This is an attack on the epic social, political and cultural transformations of that remarkable period in the 1960s and 1970sThe supreme court, thank heaven, finally adjourned on Thursday, after a week of decisions that blew up much of the framework of American policy and politics. And a key thing to notice about that assault on American norms was how many of their targets were adopted in a few short years in the 1960s and 1970s.Roe v Wade, of course, dates to 1973, the fruit of many year’s work by committed feminists. Thursday’s attack on the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gases guts the Clean Air Act, which in its strong form dates from 1970 – indeed, both that law and the EPA itself were the result of the first Earth Day protests in April of that year, which drew 20 million Americans (10% of the country’s population in those days) into the streets demanding action. Even firearms sanity, badly weakened once more in last week’s decision on concealed carry permits, reached its zenith in 1968 with the passage of the Gun Control Act in response to the assassinations of that turbulent year.Akaya Windwood, former head of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, is lead adviser of Third Act; the group’s founder, Bill McKibben, is a longtime environmental activist and author. Continue reading...

You can take away a right through legal means, but it is harder to take away the belief in that right. The uproar over the court’s hideous abortion decision is a reminder of how unpopular it isAs it happened, I was in Edinburgh the day Roe v Wade was overturned, and the next day I caught a train back to London and did what I usually do when I get anywhere near King’s Cross station. I took the short walk to the old St Pancras churchyard to visit the tombstone of the great feminist ancestor Mary Wollstonecraft, author of that first great feminist manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. To be there that day was to remember that feminism did not start recently – Wollstonecraft died in 1797 – and it did not stop on 24 June.Women in the US gained this right less than half a century ago – a short time when the view is from Wollstonecraft’s memorial. I have regularly heard the opinions in recent decades that feminism failed or achieved nothing or is over, which seems ignorant of how utterly different the world (or most of it) is now for women than it was that half century ago and more. I say world, because it’s important to remember that feminism is a global movement and Roe v Wade and its reversal were only national decisions. Continue reading...

The ideologically driven conservative majority is likely to further weaken key civil rights legislation after a term of radical rulingsThe final days of the US supreme court’s term offered a clear look at the way its new 6-3 conservative majority is bluntly using its power to reshape American life, but its next term is also set to hear cases that could prove equally, or even more, consequential.“This really is the ‘Yolo’ [you only live once] court,” said Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan who closely follows the court. “I don’t think people fathom just how much more they will do.” Continue reading...

In Madrid, the organisation showed a great sense of purpose. But beware a divided Europe and a US still tired of paying for the continent’s securityMost summits bill themselves as “historic” and those who attend invariably talk about “forging a new consensus”. But Nato’s Madrid summit can credibly make such claims, for there is no question that a military alliance that only a few years ago was famously dismissed by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as “brain dead” has regained vitality and reaffirmed its strategic purpose.As the alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, put it, Nato’s decision to increase its rapidly deployable troops to at least 300,000 to deter any further Russian aggression “constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defence since the cold war”. Continue reading...

The 6 January hearings already confirm a plan for insurrection and recall the civil war and its ‘lost cause’ aftermath‘I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021,” declared congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the select committee, as he opened the 6 January hearings last month.That drop of American history was quickly lost in the cloudburst to come, the extraordinary revelations culminating last week in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. But Thompson opened proceedings with that reminder for a very good reason: because the 6 January insurrection did not merely resemble the dark history of the civil war and its aftermath, it continued it. “Some people are trying to deny what happened,” Thompson added. “To whitewash it. To turn the insurrectionists into martyrs. But the whole world saw the reality of what happened on January 6th. The hangman’s gallows sitting out there on our National Mall. The flag of that first failed and disgraced rebellion against our union, being paraded through the Capitol.” Continue reading...

US president’s visit to Saudi Arabia comes at a moment of great upheaval as Russia and China compete for influenceAcross the battlefields of the Middle East, the ground is shifting. New alliances mitigate old enmities. Revised calculations of national advantage, evolving priorities and cautious diplomatic bridge-building conjure tantalising hopes of peace on multiple fronts.But change driven by fear has shallow roots. And fear, rather than faith in any wider vision, still permeates this contested landscape. The context, as ever, is a great power struggle between a newly aggressive Russia, an expansionist China, and a US determined to get back in the game. Continue reading...

With the January 6 hearings chipping away at the former president’s image, the Republican Florida governor is quietly working to turn the tide in his favorHe was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums and food against the wall.That was the tragicomic story told to America last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over. Continue reading...

Marine Le Pen might have lost the presidential election, but the RN leader’s influence runs deep in FranceIt is not often that the election of deputy speakers to a parliament can be described as portentous. The appointment last week of vice-presidents (the equivalent of deputy speakers) of the French national assembly was almost unnoticed outside France. But it was historic, in an ominous way. Of the six vice-presidents, two were deputies of Rassemblement National (RN), the renamed far-right Front National.At the parliamentary elections two weeks ago, the RN gained 89 deputies, a historic breakthrough. Nevertheless, the RN forms only a small bloc in the 577-seat national assembly. So how did the two RN candidates receive 290 and 284 votes respectively? By persuading large numbers of mainstream deputies to vote for them, leading to rumours and accusations of secret deals between Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc and the RN.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...

Flag was outside Florida home of the Uhuru movement, a Black international socialist groupA person using a flamethrower set fire Saturday to a Pan-African flag flying on a pole outside the headquarters of the Uhuru Movement, a Black international socialist group based in Florida.Security video released by the group shows the driver of a white Honda sedan pulling up outside the group’s St Petersburg headquarters, removing a flamethrower from the trunk and shooting a tower of fire at the flag flying about 30ft (9 meters) above the ground. Continue reading...

Britain’s Liam Broady and Katie Boulter departed the tournament on a day Rafael Nadal beat Lorenzo Sonego in three setsBoulter is broken again. Tan’s returns are incredibly sharp, exquisitely placed at the feet of Boulter who can’t get them back. It’s soon 15-40 and Boulter slams a frustrated forehand into the net. She has some thinking to do. It’s 5-1 to Tan in just 24 minutes.It’s another comfortable hold to 15 for Tan. Boulter is still struggling with her tactics, unsure whether the best approach is to trade shots from the back of the court or come to the net and use her volleying prowess to good effect. Tan 4-1 Boulter. Continue reading...

State public safety chief blamed Pete Arredondo for delaying officers’ confrontation with gunmanThe Uvalde, Texas, school district police chief is resigning from his community’s city council amid criticism of the law enforcement response to the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb elementary in May.Pedro “Pete” Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News that he was stepping down from the city council post to which he was sworn in just seven days after the massacre, the outlet reported on Saturday. Continue reading...

Despite the stereotypes, my generation also wants a house, a family and a career – we just worry they might be unattainableCall me old-fashioned, but I’m a Gen Z who watches broadcast television and much prefers Instagram over TikTok.I’m a 1997 baby and I’ve discovered that talking about my generation, all of us from 1995-2009, is far more complex than portrayals on social media and in the traditional media would have us believe. Continue reading...

New decision temporarily overturns stay issued by lower court last week and illustrates legal chaos for US abortion providersThe Texas supreme court on Friday overturned a block on a state abortion ban linked to the recent US supreme court decision reversing Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling granting nationwide rights to abortion.Friday’s order – an emergency motion for temporary relief – required parties on both sides of the abortion issue to submit briefings to the court by 7 July on a lawsuit seeking to delay implementation of so-called trigger bans, which would outlaw abortions in Texas in most circumstances. Continue reading...

Officers encountered ‘pure hell’ at scene, sheriff says, before man taken into custody after hours-long standoffThree law enforcement officers were killed and five others wounded in eastern Kentucky when a man with a rifle opened fire on police attempting to serve a warrant, authorities said.An emergency management official was also injured and a police dog was killed during the confrontation at a home in Allen, a small town in the hills of Appalachia. Continue reading...

Furious Americans have taken to the streets, but many Democrats believe Biden has failed to capture the urgency and angerHigh above America’s capital, pro-choice activists scaled a construction crane, inching across its latticed steel arm, to affix a banner with a message for the president to see. It read: “BIDEN PROTECT ABORTION.”In the days since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, legions of furious Americans have taken to the streets to protest a decision that was once unimaginable. But as a new reality takes shape, many are demanding the president and Democratic leaders do more to defend reproductive rights. Continue reading...

The law, now in effect, bans discussion of sexual orientation. But you can bet straight teachers who mention their spouses will be fineRainbows are no longer welcome in the Sunshine state. On Friday, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education measure, more commonly known as the “don’t say gay” law, officially took effect. Under the new law, public school teachers are not allowed to “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels”.What will the end of abortion rights in America mean for the world?

Little moderation, huge audiences and biddable owners make porn and gambling sites a safe haven from censorsSix weeks into the invasion of her country, Anastasiya Baydachenko made an emotional plea. She wanted money: not for weapons, not for clothes, but for adverts.Vladimir Putin had been aggressively turning Russia’s internet into a fortress and, as a CEO at a Ukrainian digital marketing company, Baydachenko knew a way to infiltrate it. The plan was simple: buy ad space across websites in Russia and Belarus and use them to link to independent news on the war in Ukraine. The adverts could be direct, or they could be oblique, even titillating, to conceal their true nature and evade the censors.Jemimah Steinfeld is editor-in-chief of Index on CensorshipDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Renee Bracey Sherman argues that abortion rights and police support cannot go hand-in-handOn the day Roe v Wade was overturned, longtime reproductive justice activist Renee Bracey Sherman joined thousands of demonstrators in front of the supreme court as they processed the news.The mood was one of profound sadness, shock and disbelief, she said. Even though pro-choice activists had known this day was coming, it marked a stunning moment of loss for organizers who had spent decades fighting for abortion rights. Continue reading...

Ads like Eric Greitens’, in which he says ‘get a Rino hunting permit’, could lead people to rationalize violence – expertsBefore the Capitol attack on 6 January, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor, had studied political violence around the world but not in the United States because there had not been much to examine, he said.Pape worries that could soon change because of politicians like Eric Greitens, a former Navy Seal from Missouri running for Senate, who recently released an advertisement in which he racked a shotgun and led a team of armed men as they stormed a house to hunt more moderate members of his own party, know derisively as Rinos, as in “Republicans in name only”. Continue reading...

Alex Holder, who had extensive access to Trump and his family, says he suspected January 6 would be a likely flashpointWhen the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack deposed British film-maker Alex Holder, it heard from a first-hand fact witness who inadvertently observed some of the darkest and most politically fraught days of Donald Trump’s time in office.The new witness, who emerged late in the congressional investigation into the Capitol attack, had extensive personal access to Donald Trump and his family as the administration imploded in the post-2020 election period after the former president lost to Joe Biden. Continue reading...

After the supreme court declared war on us a week ago, at first I wanted to weep and howl. But then I wrote – and then I revoltedHow did you feel when it happened? When they came to take away the rights to our bodily autonomy? When they said 12-year-old girls would be forced to carry to full-term, and then go through excruciating labour to deliver, babies with the faces of their rapists. When they legalised paying bounty hunters to pursue us for living in our own flesh and blood and wombs. When they believed that those of us who had given our lives to be free, to walk our own paths and dream our most vital dreams, would easily and quietly surrender to their twisted cage, unable to see they were connected to other cages inside cages, each one taking more of our air and our light. I heard a shrieking, high-pitched laugh-scream coming out of my frothing, ancient mouth, my white hair blazing with fury. I wanted to weep and howl, and I did, for the depth of their hatred for me, for women, for Black women and brown women and Indigenous women and Asian women and young victims of incest and poor women and trans men and non-binary birthers of babies and all the rest of us trying to get free.So I wrote. I wrote and I wrote. I wrote piece after piece trying to say something smart. Something that hadn’t been said. Something so revelatory and earth shattering it would unlock the story, solve the crime, catalyse the opening. Finding the words that would undo this nightmare. That would save the young women and people who would die trying not to give birth and the ones who would be forever emotionally, economically, spiritually tortured and destroyed by having babies they never wanted, which would rob them of their dreams and destinies.V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls Continue reading...

The girl was collecting scallops in 5ft deep water off Keaton Beach when she was attacked; her brother jumped in to save herA teenager is facing the loss of one of her legs after a shark bit her while swimming off the coast of Florida, according to authorities.Facebook posts shared by the Taylor county sheriff’s office and the girl’s father, Shane Bethea, recounted the nearly fatal attack Thursday. Continue reading...

The Higgins landing craft, once 185ft below the surface, is now halfway out of the water as drought deepensA sunken boat dating back to the second world war is the latest object to emerge from a shrinking reservoir that straddles Nevada and Arizona.The Higgins landing craft that has long been 185ft (56 meters) below the surface is now nearly halfway out of the water at Lake Mead. Continue reading...

Mixed doubles pair followed in the footsteps of their siblings to delight No 1 Court in beating Michael Venus and Alicja RosolskaThere’s a certain lèse-majesté in turning up at Wimbledon and calling yourself Venus. And it’s worse if the original Venus herself is in attendance, staring you down from the other side of the net. Certainly, Michael Venus, the world No 11 doubles player from New Zealand, would have known that every time the wags in the crowd shouted “C’mon Venus!” (or even “Marry me, Venus!”), they were exclusively cheering for the five-time Wimbledon women’s singles champion, at whom he was firing treasonable volleys.Venus Williams has graced this tournament with her regal presence for 24 years now, just shy of her silver jubilee. On Friday evening, playing mixed doubles on No 1 Court with Jamie Murray, there was every evidence that she still rules OK. In spite of her age (42), in spite of her lack of match practise since last July, and in spite of the persistent leg injury still hinted at by the tape on her right thigh, Williams still had the power to make her namesake regret taking on her serve. Continue reading...

Joe Biden said on Friday that some US states would try to arrest women for crossing state lines to get abortions after the supreme court overturned the constitutional right to the procedures nationwide. Speaking virtually with Democratic governors to discuss efforts to protect access to reproductive healthcare, Biden added the federal government would protect women seeking medication in states where it had been banned as well as those who need to cross state lines to get the procedure Continue reading...

World Cup winner Megan Rapinoe also among 17 recipients of Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honorThe gymnast Simone Biles and soccer player Megan Rapinoe are among 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor, the White House announced on Friday.The two sport stars are being celebrated for their accomplishments in competition and in social activism. Continue reading...

Homero Zamorano Jr is in custody with three other suspects in case of deaths of at least 53 migrants near San AntonioThe driver of the trailer truck in which at least 53 migrants died before being abandoned in San Antonio this week did not realize the vehicle’s air conditioning system was broken, federal court documents said.The detail was contained in records explaining why investigators arrested a man with whom the driver exchanged text messages, in what is believed to be the deadliest migrant smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border. Continue reading...

Basketball star appeared in Moscow court on Friday after being arrested four months ago on suspicion of cannabis possessionThe US basketball star Brittney Griner has appeared in a Moscow court in a drug trafficking case that Russia may want to use to negotiate another prisoner exchange in its standoff with the United States.Griner, who was arrested four months ago at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on the suspicion of cannabis possession, said that she understood the charges against her. It is not clear whether she entered a plea at Friday’s hearing, which took place at the Khimki city court outside Moscow. Continue reading...

The branch has the military’s lowest vaccination rate but official says ‘we’re not giving up on anybody’About 43,600 national guard members face possible penalties for not receiving a Covid-19 vaccine before a federal deadline.Approximately 10% of national guard troops have not provided documentation that they have received a Covid-19 vaccination, violating a direct order to get vaccinated, the New York Times said. Continue reading...

It was the second warning Cassidy Hutchinson had received before her deposition, cautioning her against cooperating with the panelThe former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson received at least one message tacitly warning her not to cooperate with the House January 6 select committee from an associate of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The message in question was the second of two warnings the committee disclosed at the end of its explosive special hearing on Tuesday, when Hutchinson testified about matters including how Donald Trump directed a crowd he knew was armed to march on the Capitol, the sources said. Continue reading...

The plight of journalists like Rana Ayyub exposes the failure of big tech to tackle threats and harassment, especially against womenThe prominent Indian investigative journalist Rana Ayyub has publicly pleaded with Twitter to take action against the harassment and abuse – described as online violence – she experiences every single day. Incredibly, while the company rarely steps in against the trolls who threaten to rape and murder her, this week it took the extraordinary step of blocking access to one of her posts in India, apparently at the request of the Indian government.In the past few days, the Indian authorities have arrested two other journalists and human rights defenders – Teesta Setalvad and Mohammad Zubair – on national security grounds for allegedly stoking religious enmity through their reporting and activism on sectarian violence, and it appears they have been issuing orders to censor other journalists on social media, including Ayyub.Dr Julie Posetti is deputy vice-president and global director of research at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). Kalina Bontcheva is a professor at the University of Sheffield and a leading expert in big data analysis of online abuse and misinformationDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

Karianne Lisonbee, a state representative, made remark as conservatives celebrated US supreme court abortion rulingIn the aftermath of the US supreme court decision that ended the right to abortion, amid nationwide protests over the removal of women’s control over their own bodies, one Utah Republican said women could “control [their] intake of semen”.The comment by Karianne Lisonbee, a state representative, came in response to an assertion that men should be held accountable for unwanted pregnancies, not just pregnant women, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Continue reading...

Until we have a vision of a less Anglocentric, more conciliatory Britain, nationalists will keep trying for independenceOn the face of things, now may not seem like an ideal time to be restarting the campaign for Scottish independence, as Nicola Sturgeon has done this week. Only one in five Scottish voters think a new referendum is a priority in the next two years, a YouGov poll found this week. For most Scots, independence trails in importance behind the NHS, the economy, education and the climate crisis.On the wider stage, moreover, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked European nations into much greater unity and overarching shared purpose, not their fissiparous opposites. The G7 and Nato summits this week embodied an imperative for Europe to put its often serious differences aside and pull together against Russia’s generational threat. Even Boris Johnson gets that, a bit.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

In a major environmental case, the court has made clear that it would rather represent the interests of corporations and the super-rich than the needs and desires of the vast majority of Americans – or people on EarthIn remarks to the first Earth Day gathering in 1970, the Maine senator Edmund Muskie made the case for the Clean Air Act – a bill he helped draft – in stark terms. “There is no space command center, ready to give us precise instruction and alternate solutions for survival on our spaceship Earth,” he told the crowd. “Our nation – and our world – hang together by tenuous bonds which are strained as they have never been strained before – and as they must never be strained again. We cannot survive an undeclared war on our future.”In its Thursday ruling on West Virginia v EPA – in line with a string of decisions that will make life here more dangerous – the US supreme court all but declared that war, curtailing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plants under a provision of the Clean Air Act and – more worryingly – striking an opening blow to the government’s ability to do its job.Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back Continue reading...

Move comes in response to supreme court ruling that gutted state’s century-old handgun licensing lawLawmakers in New York have begun a special legislative session with the intent of limiting the proliferation of firearms in public, after the US supreme court gutted a century-old state handgun licensing law.The conservative-dominated court decided ordinary citizens had a right to arm themselves in public for self-defense, something New York had limited mostly to people working in law enforcement or security. Continue reading...

Griner has been detained since February when authorities allege they found hashish oil in her luggageThe US basketball player Brittney Griner has gone on trial in a court on the outskirts of Moscow on drug charges that could leave her facing up to 10 years in prison.The case, which coincides with fraught relations between Moscow and Washington over the conflict in Ukraine, was brought after Russian authorities said they found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in Griner’s luggage at a Moscow airport in February. Continue reading...

Republican vice-chair of January 6 committee, trailing in primary, challenges Harriet Hageman to say 2020 election was not stolenDown in the polls and facing losing her seat in Congress over her opposition to Donald Trump and membership of the House January 6 committee, Liz Cheney came out swinging in a Republican debate in Wyoming.“The truth matters,” she said in Sheridan on Thursday night, targeting Harriet Hageman, the candidate endorsed by Trump, and challenging her to say the 2020 election was not stolen. Continue reading...