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The bad faith questions, the baseless accusations, the time wasting – the nominee’s interrogators do not see her as an equalWhat should have been a historic moment for the first Black woman to be nominated to the US supreme court, has become a scene of childish political theatre, thanks to Senate Republicans. And as President Joe Biden’s nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson makes her way through the last round of questioning by the Senate judiciary committee, one thing is clear: she deserves better.As the world watches the hearings unfold, the image from day one of Brown Jackson being grilled relentlessly by a group of old white men still sticks out vividly to me. Not only is she already being held up to far more scrutiny than any white man in her position would be, but the line of questioning from across the aisle has devolved into the absolutely ridiculous.Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Some commentators belonging to the Prime Demographic find they’re unable to appreciate its non-male, non-white protagonists“Some Pixar films are made for universal audiences. Turning Red is not. The target audience for this one feels very specific and very narrow. If you are in it, this might work very well for you. I am not in it. This was exhausting.”With this tweet and the slag review it pointed to, Sean O’Connell, critic for the film site Cinema Blend, exploded the internet, launching a conversation about representation and privilege in storytelling that continues to echo weeks after Turning Red’s release. Continue reading...

Harvard’s Kathy Delaney-Smith, who is retiring from coaching after 40 years, taught me a lesson that goes far beyond wins and losses: You don’t really know a person until you let them downWinning is a meat grinder into which many college basketball coaches feed their players. That sounds terrible but I get it. For a long time, winning was my drug of choice. As a player I’d gladly sacrifice myself for a W – until the sacrifices became too real and too sad. Although I’ve won a lot of games and a few championships, 20 years after playing Division I basketball, the biggest lesson I learned comes from loss.I learned it from Kathy Delaney-Smith, the coach who doesn’t like to be called “coach”, because she thinks too many people have negative associations (see: meat grinder). This March Madness will be her last, as she’s retiring after 40 years of fighting for equity, upending Ivory Tower norms, and yes – winning. Continue reading...

Wisconsin Republicans emboldened by untouchable majority in state legislature are promoting extreme antidemocratic lawsOver the last few months, an attack on democracy has slowly escalated in Wisconsin.A group of Republicans in the state legislature, encouraged by Donald Trump, is pushing an illegal effort to undo the 2020 election. They want to rescind Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for Joe Biden – something that is not legally possible. The GOP-controlled state assembly appointed a special counsel to review the 2020 election, who has encouraged the decertification effort, embraced conspiracy theories, and produced a 136-page report filled with misleading information. He has also suggested jailing mayors of some of the largest cities and employees of the state elections commission for opposing his investigation. And like their counterparts in many other states, Wisconsin lawmakers have advanced a series of measures that would make it harder to vote. Continue reading...

The odds are in the Americans’ favor as the final round of World Cup qualifiers kick off on Thursday in Mexico, but the familiar assurances ring hollow after 2017’s Catastrophe at CouvaIt’ll be OK in the end. Won’t it?With three rounds of Concacaf matches remaining, squeezed into only seven days, there is the potential for things to go wrong in a hurry as the US conclude their qualifying campaign for this year’s World Cup. Continue reading...

Port Freeport in Texas has obtained 95% of property in East End as part of an extensive expansion – and many former residents are upset over being displacedAt age 97, Henry Jones is preparing to move out of the house he called home for more than 70 years, a modest dwelling he built in Freeport, Texas. The exterior is a cool, teal color; the interior walls are lined with family memorabilia and intricate wooden detail. This, he says, is where the best memories of his life have taken place.The process of leaving, however, has made for some of the worst. Jones is one of the final residents of the city’s East End, a historically Black neighborhood that became encircled by industry throughout the 20th century, much of it related to Port Freeport. Like many residents in the neighborhood, Jones’s relationship to the port has evolved over time: when he was younger, he took shifts loading and unloading ships, work he says was hard but helped him provide for his growing family. Continue reading...

The last few weeks have seen a wild round of trades and signings. But which team has improved the most as we eye the 2022 campaign?The NFL has had its wildest offseason in recent memory. The quarterback carousel has been spinning. Record contracts have been inked. And it feels like just yesterday that Aaron Rodgers was getting intimate with oils. Here are the winners of the offseason so far.A quick note: these are the teams that have improved their chances the most for next season.The Colts entered the offseason with Carson Wentz, a bad quarterbackThey leave the offseason with Matt Ryan, a good quarterback, one who comfortably outperformed the surrounding tire-fire in Atlanta last season.They did so without adding any extra money to their cap, with Atlanta absorbing a $40m (!) dead cap hit.Ryan’s cap hold is lower in Indy than Wentz’s would have been.They did it all for the cost of a third-round pick … and they brought in two third-round picks by dealing Wentz to Washington. Continue reading...

Republicans pressed their attacks on a range of issues against Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden's nominee to become the first Black woman on the US supreme court. Jackson, who had remained even-tempered throughout marathon questioning during her Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearing, showed impatience over repeated questions posed by Republicans who accused her of being too lenient in sentencing in cases involving child abuse images

After two years and five jabs, I finally caught coronavirus on holiday in south Wales. But despite my fevered state, I learned something newAfter two jabs in a vaccine trial, and three Pfizers, I was sure my defences were rock solid, impregnable. Turns out they were unbreachable only in the sense that the Maginot line was unbreachable. Like Axis forces in 1940, the subvariant of the Omicron variant – or whatever they’re saying it is – found a way around the undefended flanks of my antibodies. Yes, I finally got Covid. Yes, I know, yawn. As my elder daughter said to me: “It’s so uncool to get Covid now.” I was in south Wales with her and our dog when I got my first-ever second red line. Feeling decidedly awful, I took to my bed. “You’re being very 2020 about this,” she said. Not long after, she packed her bag and buggered off to leave me to it, all alone but for the dog.Thence began 10 days of drifting between sleeping and waking states. I had a raging temperature and a cough like my late Aunt Vesna’s in Zagreb when she was smoking at least three packs a day. I woozily remembered her fondly while snatching bits of sleep between death rattles. I wouldn’t have got out of bed at all were it not for the needs of the dog, who, when requiring attention, would lick my face, or any other extremity poking out from beneath the sheets. He would lie around bored to tears until another round of vicious coughing started up, at which point he would slope off elsewhere. As I drifted back to sleep, I imagined him lying on the floor with his big paws over his ears, desolate with the tedium of it all.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Gathered on the steps of the supreme court, 13 women describe pride and inspiration as the judge prepares to make historyFor many of the Black women who gathered on the steps of the US supreme court this week, the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson – likely to become the country’s first Black female supreme court justice – were a moment of pride, joy, inspiration and validation.Black women turned out in record numbers in the 2020 presidential election, in part galvanized by Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to nominate a Black female supreme court justice at his first opportunity. For many, his fulfilled promise is also a product of their efforts at the ballot box. Continue reading...

Solemn proceedings of confirmation hearing took a nosedive into farce with bizarre moments in Jackson’s epic inquisitionAt 2.54pm on the second day of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings that will determine whether she takes a seat on the US supreme court, the solemn proceedings took a nosedive into farce.Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, turned theatrically to an outsized blow-up of a children’s book, Antiracist Baby by Ibram X Kendi. Pointing to a cartoon from its pages of an infant in diapers taking their first walk, he asked Jackson: “Do you agree with this book… that babies are racist?” Continue reading...

US congressman Richard Neal says peace deal must not be held ‘hostage over domestic politics’A bilateral trade deal between the US and the UK is “desirable” but will not progress while the Northern Ireland peace deal is being used for domestic political purposes, one of the most powerful American congressmen has warned.Richard Neal, the chairman of the ways and means committee, has told the Guardian: “We will not entertain a trade agreement if there is any jeopardy to the Good Friday agreement. Continue reading...

New York Times obtains letter by Mark Pomerantz condemning new district attorney’s decision not to prosecute ex-presidentA Manhattan prosecutor who investigated Donald Trump’s financial dealings wrote in a resignation letter that he believed Trump “is guilty of numerous felony violations” and blasted the new district attorney for not moving ahead with an indictment, the New York Times reported.Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, two top prosecutors on the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation of Trump, resigned abruptly last month, amid reports that the investigation into the former president’s finances was foundering. Continue reading...

A powerful tornado left a two-mile path of destroyed homes, uprooted power lines and overturned vehicles on the east side of New Orleans. At least one person was killed and eight injured. A dark funnel cloud touched down at around 7.30pm on Tuesday, flattening buildings and flipping vehicles

Hearings on Biden’s supreme court nominee resume with chair chiding Republicans for ‘showcasing election talking points’Ketanji Brown Jackson endured 10 more grueling hours of senators’ questioning on Wednesday, after a marathon 13-hour judiciary committee hearing with the supreme court nominee the day before.Multiple Republican senators grilled Jackson about her sentences of child abuse image offenders, accusing her of letting the defendants off too easily. Continue reading...

A package of bills signed by Jay Inslee tighten the state’s gun laws, including adding restrictions to a law prohibiting ghost gunsThe Washington governor Jay Inslee signed a package of bills Wednesday tightening the state’s gun laws, including a measure that bans the manufacture, distribution and sale of firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.Washington joins nine other states, including California and New Jersey, that restrict magazine capacity size. Continue reading...

Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia and rose to become the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, her family said. Colleagues across the US state department and the UN have remembered Albright as a ‘trailblazer’ whose impact is felt ‘every single day’

Former cabinet member was ‘a trailblazer’ as the highest-ranking woman in history when she was named to the role in 1996

Evan Neumann, accused of hitting police with metal barricade, tells Belarusian state TV he has ‘mixed feelings’ about the moveA former San Francisco Bay Area resident facing federal criminal charges from the January 6 attack at the US Capitol has been granted asylum in Belarus, the former Soviet nation’s state media reported on Tuesday.Evan Neumann, 49, was charged a year ago with assaulting police, including using a metal barricade as a battering ram during the riot last year. In an interview with the Belarus 1 channel that aired last year, he acknowledged being at the building that day but rejected the charges and said he had not hit any officers. Continue reading...

Mo Brooks of Alabama appeared at the rally before the Capitol assault and is under scrutiny by January 6 committeeThe Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks said on Tuesday Donald Trump asked him to “rescind” the 2020 election, remove Joe Biden from the White House and reinstate Trump.The extraordinary statement came in an angry response to a withdrawn endorsement in a US Senate race. Trump was angered that Brooks was insufficiently toeing his line on calling the 2020 election a fraud. Continue reading...

US president will take part in an emergency Nato summit, G7 summit and European Council meetingJoe Biden has arrived in Europe for a four-day trip with the aim of keeping up pressure on Russia in the face of sanctions fatigue and splits over energy sanctions among US allies.It will also, to some extent, be a lap of honour for the US president’s success so far in keeping allies and partners together in confronting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Obama, Bush, Blair and others hail first female secretary of state: ‘She lived out the American dream’Tributes flooded in on Wednesday to Madeleine Albright, the first woman to hold the position of US secretary of state, who has died at the age of 84.“Madeleine Albright was a force,” said Joe Biden in a statement. “Hers were the hands that turned the tide of history.” Continue reading...

Diplomat and scholar of international relations who served as the first female US secretary of stateMadeleine Albright, who has died of cancer aged 84, was the first woman to hold the office of secretary of state of the United States. It fell to her to cope with the painful dilemmas presented for the US by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the rise of Islamic opposition in the Middle East.While she fulfilled the role in the administration of President Bill Clinton, she could not take the place that office usually confers as third in succession to the president because she was not a “natural born citizen” of the US. Like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, secretaries of state in the Nixon and Carter administrations, she had been a refugee from Europe. Like them also, Albright came to the job not via business or politics but through an academic background in the study of international relations. Continue reading...

Court took issue with decision to add an additional Black-majority state assembly district in the Milwaukee areaThe US supreme court threw out Wisconsin’s new state legislative maps on Wednesday, in a ruling that boosts Republicans and takes aim again at one of the last remaining provisions to protect voting discrimination.The ruling is the latest of many in recent years in which the US supreme court has been hostile to voting rights. In an unsigned ruling, the court took issue with the decision to add an additional Black-majority state assembly district in the Milwaukee area, raising the total in the map to seven. The Wisconsin supreme court picked the plan, drawn by Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, earlier this month. Continue reading...

Residents of Arabi were still feeling the effects of Hurricane Ida, six months ago. And then the black, spinning tornadoes cameFor Bonnie Norris, the tornadoes that tore through New Orleans on Tuesday evening seemed to come out of nowhere. She and her boyfriend were watching television when something outside caught their attention.Norris described the tornado as a black, spinning vortex. She said the noise was deafening, like a freight train. “I just remember saying, ‘Here it comes, here it comes.’” Continue reading...

App, which refers to ‘minute by minute’, aims to compete with Apple and Google – but will it fact-check Trump’s big lie?If you can’t beat them, join them. After years joining his father in deriding the “lamestream media” as the “enemy of the people”, Donald Trump Jr has launched an app to aggregate news.Don Jr and co-founder Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for the former president, hope that MxM News (the name refers to “minute by minute”) will compete with giants such as Apple News and Google News, the Axios website reported. Continue reading...

‘We’re a greater nuclear power,’ former president who previously praised Putin as ‘smart’ tells Fox BusinessIf Donald Trump were still president, he told Fox Business on Monday, he would threaten Russia with nuclear submarines.Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, who is therefore dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Little St James, where late financier abused women and girls, and Great St James in the US Virgin Islands listed for $125mTwo Caribbean islands that once belonged to the late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein have been put up for sale, according to a new report.Great St James and Little St James, two islands in the US Virgin Islands, were part of Epstein’s extensive global property portfolio and have been listed for $125m, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Nine humanitarian corridors agreed but safe passage for people in heart of Mariupol not granted, Ukraine says. Plus, Pusha T’s McDonald’s diss track

Few anticipated what happened once the war began: the Ukrainians put up a tough resistance, even as the balance of power favored Russia“War, as the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman observed, “is hell.” The one that Russia launched against Ukraine on February 24 certainly fits his description.Cities have come under siege – consider the horrific plight of Mariupol – a hospital and a shopping mall have been struck, as have apartment buildings, in Kyiv as well as Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. The number of refugees and internally displaced Ukrainians already exceeds 10 million, more than a fifth of the country’s population.Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, and Anne and Bernard Spitzer emeritus at Powell School, City College of New York Continue reading...

In an advertisement for Arby’s, the rapper takes aim at the Filet-O-Fish with the explosive Spicy Fish DissFor years Arby’s has bragged: “We have the meats.” Now the menu includes a spicy beef with McDonald’s.On Monday, the hot deli chain released an advertisement for its crispy fish sandwich. Undergirding the EDM-tinged backing beat is the rap song Spicy Fish Diss – a single-verse Scud missile that takes direct aim at McDonald’s pescatarian mainstay, the Filet-O-Fish. And it doesn’t waste any of its 75-second runtime beating around the bush. “Filet-O-Fish is shit,” it crows, “and you should be disgusted.” Continue reading...

Revealed: county data and interviews with displaced residents of Echo Park Lake suggest that many ended up back on the streets in worse conditionsOn 24 March last year, hundreds of police officers descended on Los Angeles’ Echo Park Lake to evict the community of unhoused residents that had swelled there during the pandemic.After police arrested protesters opposing the evictions and cleared the encampment at the popular city park, the local councilman pushing for the sweep said his office had found “housing solutions” for roughly 200 of the displaced residents, calling it the “single largest housing event in the history of the city”. Continue reading...

As health authorities brace for another coronavirus wave, the US is still deeply divided over its pandemic future – even as most states relax restrictionsIn Mississippi and Massachusetts, two pharmacists working in very different parts of America have seen a sharp drop in demand for Covid-19 vaccines in recent months. Their best guesses for why they’ve seen such slowdowns diverge considerably.Saad Dinno, co-owner and pharmacist at four drugstores in the suburbs of Boston, wagers that most people in his community are up to date on their vaccinations. As he speaks from Acton Pharmacy, in the Massachusetts town of the same name, his bet is a fairly safe one – 95% of the people in this county have had at least one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Continue reading...

While the 30-year-old’s self-determined streak might have cost him a lucrative NBA career, he has a decent shot at being elected to CongressIt appears the US has entered the age of the jock politician. First ex-Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville wins a US Senate seat in Alabama. Then Heisman trophy winner Herschel Walker kicks off his own Senate run in Georgia. And now former NBA player Royce White jumps into the fray as the Republican challenger to Ilhan Omar in Minnesota’s 5th congressional district.After going public with his candidacy from the steps of Minneapolis’ Federal Reserve, White, 30, published a 3,500-word open letter rallying Black voters away from the leftist “plantation” and their “globalist” agenda while heading off opposition research into his legacy of legal trouble, his personal debts and unpaid child support allegations, and his overall mental fitness. He made sure to address the letter to “Democrats”, dismissing Omar and her ilk as bought and paid for while promoting himself as a populist. In between he invoked God, raged against Big Tech and its overlords and, well, came off more than just a little unfocused. “You motherfuckers don’t own me,” he wrote, hitting back at the tech bros. “You don’t own my mind. I will die for the rights and freedoms that this nation’s constitution affords me before I see myself, my family or my countrymen returned to chains. Your arrogance and petulance insults me to my core.” Continue reading...

Grant Llera worked to find an old yearbook picture of the man who was working at the World Trade Center when it fellFor years, two tiles showing oak tree leaves stood above the names of two individuals in New York’s 9/11 museum’s “In Memoriam” exhibit whose photos could not be found. The rest of the exhibit features pictures of the 2,977 killed during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.Now, after more than a decade of searching, a photograph of one of those two victims – a cafeteria worker at the World Trade Center – has finally been located and installed. Continue reading...

Aipac defends move by saying that support for the Jewish state overrides other issues as it faces a storm of criticismThe US’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group has been accused of putting support for Israel before American democracy after it declared its backing for the election campaigns of three dozen Republican members of Congress who tried to block President Biden’s presidential victory.But the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has defended the move by saying that support for the Jewish state overrides other issues and that it is “no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends”. Continue reading...

Tornadoes have caused damage and destruction through New Orleans and Texas, leaving a trail of destruction and killing at least two people. Powerful weather systems also pummelled parts of Louisiana and Alabama. At least two tornados ripped through central Texas, leaving a path of destruction in its wake, and injuring dozens.

The 35-year-old petitioned last month to end legal arrangement that has given her mother control of her estate and personal affairsA judge terminated Amanda Bynes’ conservatorship on Tuesday, ending the legal arrangement that has given the former actor’s mother control of her estate and personal affairs for nearly a decade.The 35-year-old filed a petition last month, with support from her mother and psychiatrist, to end the conservatorship she was placed under in 2013 after she was forcibly hospitalized on a psychiatric hold. Continue reading...

Spencer Cox is second Republican governor to overrule lawmakers who have taken on youth sports as part of political debateThe Utah governor, Spencer Cox, vetoed a ban on transgender students playing girls’ sports on Tuesday, becoming the second Republican governor to overrule state lawmakers who have taken on youth sports as part of a political debate over how Americans view gender and sexuality.Cox joins the Indiana governor. Eric Holcomb, who vetoed a statewide ban on Monday. Holcomb said Indiana’s legislature had not demonstrated that transgender kids had undermined fairness in sports. Continue reading...

Judge issues apology to George and Melvin DeJesus, wrongfully convicted of 1995 murder of Margaret Midkiff in MichiganTwo Michigan brothers who were wrongfully convicted in the murder of a family friend walked free Tuesday and were reunited with their family after 25 years behind bars.George and Melvin DeJesus were convicted in the 1995 killing of Margaret Midkiff. Oakland county circuit Judge Martha Anderson set aside their convictions early Tuesday. Continue reading...

Facing senators' questions for the first time, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by Senator Dianne Feinstein if she agreed with statements that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett made about abortion law precedent during their confirmation hearings. President Joe Biden's nominee said that she agreed and added that 'Roe and Casey', two landmark Supreme Court decisions legalising abortion, are 'settled law' that has been reaffirmed by the court and 'relied upon'. Jackson is making history as the first Black woman nominated for the court, which once upheld racial segregation in America and for 233 years has been filled mainly with white men.

Psaki, who will no longer travel to Europe with Biden, says she met with him this week but he has since tested negativeJen Psaki, the White House press secretary, has tested positive for Covid-19 and will not travel to Europe with Joe Biden for meetings in Brussels and Poland this week.In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Psaki said she had met twice with Biden, 79, on Monday but he had tested negative the following day. Continue reading...

Supreme court nominee responds to Josh Hawley’s accusations, which have have been debunked as false, at Senate hearing