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The bills to create and fund universal healthcare face opposition from powerful lobbies for doctors and insurance companiesCalifornia is considering creating the first government-funded, universal healthcare system in the US for state residents. The proposal, which lawmakers will begin debating on Tuesday, would adopt a single-payer healthcare system that would replace the need for private insurance plans.Lawmakers are debating two bills – one would create the universal healthcare system, another would outline plans to fund it by increasing taxes, especially for wealthy individuals and businesses. The sweeping healthcare reform faces significant hurdles, including opposition from powerful lobbies for doctors and insurance companies. If the bills are approved by the legislature, voters would ultimately have to approve the taxes to fund the new system in an amendment to the California constitution. Continue reading...

The daily infection rate hit a new record of 1.35m while 145,982 people were in hospital with coronavirus on Monday

Senator Rand Paul and Dr Anthony Fauci sparred at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. The top immunologist said the Republican senator's behaviour 'kindles the crazies' against him. Fauci testified on Tuesday at a hearing on the federal response to new Covid-19 variants. He blamed Paul's false accusations against him for threats he has received, citing an incident in December when police stopped a man allegedly traveling to the capital to 'kill Dr Fauci'. 'What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there and I have ... threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children,' Fauci said

After Republicans rammed through new restrictions, Biden and Senate Democrats are pushing back. Here’s how the fight unfolded

Massachusetts, New York and Maine brace for sub-zero temperatures with wind chill factor, increasing risk of frostbiteA mass of Arctic air swept into the US north-east on Tuesday, bringing bone-chilling sub-zero temperatures and closing schools for the second time in less than a week.Schools in Massachusetts’ three largest cities, Boston, Worcester and Springfield, canceled classes, saying they did not want children standing outside for extended periods of time waiting for buses. Continue reading...

Deputy tells authorities Jason Walker, 37, jumped on to his vehicle as protesters challenge police version of eventsProtesters gathered in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a second night in a row on Monday after a man was killed by an off-duty sheriff’s deputy.The Fayetteville police department identified the man killed on Saturday as Jason Walker, a 37-year-old Black man who the deputy told authorities jumped on to his vehicle. The Cumberland county sheriff’s office identified the deputy as Jeffrey Hash. Continue reading...

‘We face an elevated threat from domestic violent extremists,’ says assistant attorney general of the national security division

Brad Raffensperger says opponent for key post ‘should know better’ as pastor but dodges questions about election restrictionsThe Republican who memorably resisted Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat in Georgia has said he will run for re-election on a platform of “integrity and truth”, against an opponent who as a churchman “should know better” than to advance the former president’s lies.Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, became a household name after he turned down Trump’s demand that he “find 11,780 votes” in order to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the southern state. It was the first victory by a Democrat in a presidential race in Georgia since 1992. Continue reading...

Those spreading misinformation are doing real damage. But big pharma and rich countries need to stop hoarding vaccinesI am starting to think that common sense really is not that common after all – we live in exceedingly stupid times. Exhibit 874: US anti-vaxxers are now urging people to drink their own urine to fight coronavirus. Over the weekend, Christopher Key, the leader of an anti-Covid-19 vaccine group called the “Vaccine Police”, posted videos online extolling the health benefits of what he described as “urine therapy”. According to the wizard of wee, there is “tons and tons of research … [and] peer-reviewed published papers on urine”; so if you do your own pee-search you will discover it is God’s own antidote to Covid-19. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” Key said. “I drink my own urine!”That is not the only questionable thing he does. Key was recently arrested for refusing to wear a mask and filming proceedings during a court hearing. The reason he was in court? He was arrested in April for refusing to wear a mask at a Whole Foods store. In August he made headlines for suggesting that pharmacists should be executed for administering coronavirus vaccines; in December he also set off on a road trip across the US with a fake badge and firearms, in a mission to arrest a Democratic governor over vaccine mandates. Very busy man, our Mr Key! I cannot help thinking that if his name was Mohammed his shenanigans would have had him locked up in Guantánamo Bay by now.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Investigation reveals that Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell heard the call but ignored it in favor of pursuing a nearby SnorlaxTwo Los Angeles police officers were fired for ignoring a robbery call so they could attempt to catch a character in a game of Pokémon Go, according to court documents.Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were asked to respond to a robbery in progress with “multiple suspects” at a Macy’s in south-west LA, but failed to respond to radio calls. Continue reading...

Seemingly, no one at a potential 100-person boozy lockdown gathering was able to predict it would upset the general publicAs a lot of people in Boris Johnson’s life have discovered, there is a point where he has simply broken too many things for the relationship to be put functionally back together again. Is he at that point with the British public, or even with the Conservative party?Many are getting a really addled whiff of Humpty Dumpty off the latest revelations, that the prime minister himself attended a “mass gathering” in the Downing Street garden during the first lockdown. This May 2020 BYOB drinks party, to which more than 100 people were invited, kicked off a mere 55 minutes after that day’s designated cabinet minister had given a national press conference insisting that people in England could only meet one person from another household outdoors, so … what was the party theme? Let them eat cheese and wine? Come as the last scene in Animal Farm?Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

President and vice-president urged to come to state with meaningful plan or risk visit being dismissed as ‘waste of time’A coalition of influential political activists in Georgia that boosted turnout in a state crucial to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 is refusing to attend the visit planned on Tuesday by the US president and Kamala Harris to speak on voting rights.The group had warned the president and vice-president that they needed to announce a specific plan to get national voting rights legislation passed or risk their high-profile trip to Atlanta being dismissed as “a waste of time”. Continue reading...

Like the ‘baby books’ of old, these emails are time capsules – little intimate tidbits and clues of who my child will become, sent off to her future selfAround the holidays last year, when I’d been fielding lots of deep questions at bedtime about sickness and health and Zoom school and “pods,” I wrote my daughter an email, though she could not yet read:Scratching your back just now before bed, you sleepily asked, Mama, do you know anyone in the family who’s bold? I was like yes! You’re bold. And you said I am? And I said yes, you’re brave. And you said no no, like has no HAIR, mama.Sophie Brickman is a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and the author of Baby, Unplugged: One Mother’s Search for Balance, Reason, and Sanity in the Digital Age Continue reading...

Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irene du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictatorDonald Trump’s elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt – the 1933 “Wall Street putsch” against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets – no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare. Continue reading...

George Tsunis, who gave hapless display when nominated as Norway ambassador under Obama, to go before Senate committeeJoe Biden has styled himself as a defender of democracy but, critics say, is setting the worst possible example with his choice of envoy to Athens.The US president nominated George Tsunis, a hotel developer and Democratic donor with no diplomatic experience, as US ambassador to Greece. Continue reading...

Trump’s secretary of state claims he lost weight via self-guided workouts and diet changes, but nutritionists and fitness professionals say it’s ‘unbelievable’In a phone interview with Fox News Digital on Saturday, Mike Pompeo revealed that he lost in excess of 90lb (41kg) over the past six months after making wholesale lifestyle changes following his exit from the Trump administration last year. The interview came after photos of a slimmed-down Pompeo emerged over the weekend, renewing speculation that the former secretary of state is seriously considering a 2024 presidential run.Pompeo – whose diminished profile in his regular Fox News appearances was not lost on the channel’s dedicated viewers – went out of his way to point out that he lost the weight himself, through self-guided workouts and more disciplined dietary habits and not with surgery or help from any fitness professionals. Continue reading...

The USMNT have rebuilt nicely after a disastrous World Cup qualifying campaign four years ago, but the race to be Gregg Berhalter’s No 9 is wide openBy this time next year, the 2022 World Cup will have come and gone. Soccer’s great and good will have descended on Qatar for the most controversial tournament in the sport’s history, and they’ll have left again. New world champions will have been crowned. Whether or not the US men’s national team will have participated, though, is still unknown.As things stand, Gregg Berhalter’s team stand a good chance of being in Qatar. The USA occupy second place in the final round of qualifying – Concacaf’s first ever ‘octagonal’ – with more than half the fixtures played. The ghosts of 2018 World Cup qualifying still haunt American soccer, nobody is taking anything for granted, but it would be a shock if, from this position of strength, the USA didn’t make the 2022 tournament. Continue reading...

The key to success in the viral word game is understanding the rules that govern how sounds fit togetherIt’s a point in 2022’s favour that, rather than violent insurrection or the misery of lockdown, most English-speaking people on the internet are currently preoccupied with a harmless word game. Harmless at the time of writing, I should say – it’s popular enough that some kind of backlash is inevitable. I’m sure any day now Wordle will be revealed as a Bad Thing and I don’t want to speculate how; I am merely here to observe that it is a) a lot of fun b) linguistically interesting, and I’d like to explain why. I may even be able to make you a bit better at it.If you don’t already know, Wordle is a browser-based puzzle that gives you six goes at guessing a five-letter word. If your guess includes a letter that’s correct but in the wrong place, it turns yellow (more like ochre – now there’s a good starting word for you). If it includes a letter that’s correct and in the right place, it turns green, allowing you to build on your guesses until you hit the jackpot. The solution to the Wordle in the screenshot above is “craze”.David Shariatmadari is the author of Don’t Believe a Word: From Myths to Misunderstandings – How Language Really Works Continue reading...

Scott Baldwin faced backlash after his comments during a hearing on Senate Bill 167, which would ban ‘concepts that divide’ in schoolsAn Indiana state senator has backtracked on his remarks that teachers must be impartial when discussing nazism in classrooms after he sparked widespread backlash.During a state senate committee hearing last week about Senate Bill 167, a proposed bill that would ban “concepts that divide”, Republican Senator Scott Baldwin, who co-wrote the bill, said teachers should remain unprejudiced when teaching lessons about fascism and nazism. Continue reading...

North Carolina group files candidacy challenge, citing Republican congressman’s alleged involvement in 6 January attackA group of North Carolina voters told state officials on Monday that they want Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn to be disqualified as a congressional candidate, citing his involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol.Cawthorn questioned the outcome of the presidential election during the “Save America Rally” before the Capitol riot later that day that resulted in five deaths. Continue reading...

Residents tell of anguish after fire broke out on Sunday morning, leaving 17 people dead and scores injuredKaren Dejesus, 54, was cooking breakfast for her young granddaughter and her son when she heard fire alarms on Sunday morning in the Bronx borough of New York.Dejesus and her family have lived in the high rise apartment building for almost 19 years. Alarms in the building went off erroneously so often that residents on Sunday didn’t register the sirens as real, she told the Guardian. Continue reading...

The Georgia Bulldogs lay more than four decades of frustration to rest on Monday night, defeating the Alabama Crimson Tide to capture the school’s first national championship since 1980

California law mandates that his conviction will be vacated and the charges over the murder of his missing first wife will be dismissedIn the final months of Robert Durst’s life, it seemed as if the walls were at last closing in on the disgraced multimillionaire and real estate heir. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a longtime friend in September, and shortly after, New York officials charged him with the murder of his missing first wife.But his death in a California hospital on Monday has upended the cases against the 78-year-old. The murder case over the death of his ex-wife Kathleen McCormack Durst will come to a halt and, thanks to a legal technicality, the murder conviction for the killing of his friend Susan Berman will soon be voided. Continue reading...

Prosecutors make offer ahead of sentencing in effort to bring swift closure for the victims as Maxwell’s team push for new trialIf Ghislaine Maxwell is not granted a retrial in her Manhattan federal court sex trafficking case, prosecutors are prepared to drop pending perjury counts when she is sentenced, they said in a 10 January letter.Prosecutors said they were prepared to dismiss the perjury counts in an effort to bring swift closure for the victims and prevent them from being re-traumatized at a possible second trial. Continue reading...

The 58-story luxury condominium building continues sinking despite a $100m plan to reinforce its foundation to prevent tiltingSan Francisco’s infamous Millennium Tower – a luxury condominium where star athletes and retired Google employees bought multimillion dollar apartments before they realized it was sinking – is continuing to sink and tilt to the side by about about 3in (7.5 cm) per year, according to the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building.In a few years, if the tilting continues at the current rate, the 58-story luxury building could reach the point where the elevators and plumbing may no longer operate, said Ron Hamburger, the engineer. Continue reading...

The virus has depleted the ranks of emergency and essential workers, leaving California’s health system critically strainedOfficials in San Francisco are asking residents not to call 911 except in dire emergencies to avoid further straining emergency resources, as coronavirus cases deplete the ranks of health workers, ambulance crews, firefighters and other essential workers.The Omicron variant, which appears more likely to cause breakthrough cases even among vaccinated people, has begun to thin the ranks of those most needed to fight this latest wave of infections. San Francisco mayor London Breed said on Friday that ​​about 400 city employees, including emergency responders, had either tested positive for Covid-19 or were isolated at home due to exposure. Continue reading...

Reverend Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy at Valentina Orellana-Peralta’s funeral, saying ‘it was like the wild, wild west’ with LAPDThe Rev Al Sharpton delivered a eulogy on Monday for Valentina Orellana-Peralta, the 14-year-old girl killed by a Los Angeles police officer, denouncing LAPD’s longstanding abuses, as her family remembered a bright young girl who excelled in school and had big dreams for her life in the US.“There is nothing normal about shooting so recklessly that a young teenage girl looking to live the American dream, shopping with her dear mother … for a Christmas dress, ends up being dressed for her funeral,” Sharpton said in his eulogy, recounting his marches in LA and fight for justice 31 years ago when LAPD beat Rodney King. “I led marches and joined in all kinds of efforts to call on the prosecution of those police, and calling on the Los Angeles police department to reform how they do policing … Through those 31 years, we keep seeing LAPD get it wrong. Here we are again. How long will it take for you to get it right?” Continue reading...

Thomas Welnicki expressed interest in killing then president in interview with Capitol police in July 2020, complaint saysA New York man upset with what he perceived as Donald Trump’s threat to democracy was criminally charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president, who he once referred to as Hitler.According to an unsealed complaint, Thomas Welnicki, 72, from Rockaway Beach, expressed interest in killing the then president in an interview with US Capitol police in July 2020 and in several calls to the Secret Service the following year. Continue reading...

Diplomats stress they have not made progress towards resolving fundamental disagreementsUS and Russian diplomats have emerged from a day of negotiations in Geneva over the fate of Ukraine, describing the talks as “useful” and “very professional” – but also stressing they had not made progress towards resolving fundamental disagreements.The two sides largely spent the eight hours of talks presenting their points of view on the situation in Ukraine, currently hemmed in by some 100,000 Russian troops, and on European security in general, and deferred further debate on them to a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday between Russia and all Nato members. Continue reading...

Advances for economic and political rights are dead on arrival in the Senate unless Mr Biden can rewrite its procedural rule bookJoe Biden wants to go down in history as a transformative US president. He began his time in office by passing a popular economic stimulus and Covid-19 relief bill. The Biden White House basked in comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s country-changing presidency. With Democrats in control of the executive and legislative branches of government, the sky seemed the limit. However, in recent months Mr Biden’s agenda – most notably on climate change – has been buried in a legislative graveyard.This is in part because the US Senate is a rare law-making body: it needs a supermajority for ordinary business. Its rules require 60 senators to give the green light for a bill to go to the floor for passage with a straightforward vote. This is the hurdle required to beat a filibuster, where debate is extended so that no vote on a bill can take place. Frustrated and hamstrung, President Biden has cooled on such mechanisms. He’s right to think about ending this manoeuvre, which is used to block legislation a majority wishes to pass. The 41 Republican senators needed to defeat “cloture” motions – those required to end a debate – could represent less than a quarter of the US population. Continue reading...

Durst died in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for the murder of Susan Berman, after appearing frail at his trialRobert Durst, the convicted murderer and disgraced multimillionaire real estate heir, has died. He was 78.Durst died in a California hospital while serving a life sentence for the murder of Susan Berman, his friend and confidante who prosecutors say helped him cover up the killing of his first wife. Continue reading...

Initially 19 people were believed to have died in the blaze – city’s deadliest in three decades – as doctors battle to save gravely hurtThe mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, on Monday revised the death toll from a high-rise fire in the Bronx on Sunday, saying 17 people were killed, two fewer than originally thought.Adams said nine adults and eight children died. He did not immediately provide a reason for the lower count. Continue reading...

The new-look Chicago Bulls are top of the Eastern Conference standings and bona fide title contenders again for the first time since the 1990s heyday of Jordan and PippenTo be a Chicago Bulls fan over the past two decades is to somewhat know the true pain of injuring a strong knee or a healthy hand. It takes time to adjust to the idea that the body could be anything less than perfect. And when the mind eventually catches up, alas, it’s beyond frustrating.The Bulls I grew up rooting for were so able. They were led by the shrewdest coach, the finest sidekick and the best player who ever lived. They beat back the Bad Boy Pistons, outran the Showtime Lakers and abused the New York Knicks while distinguishing themselves as the preeminent sports dynasty. As the Last Dance docuseries explicitly showed, the Bulls were a cultural force – one that not only put my overlooked hometown on the map, but made basketball the global game it is today. Continue reading...

The responses to my London accent show how UK Black culture is changing perceptions in the US – but only for someI hadn’t even reached Ithaca, the tiny university town in upstate New York – my home for the next six years, as I studied for a PhD – when the confusion over my Blackness and British accent began. I was ill-prepared for Matt, the skinny white American in a cap sitting beside me on the plane. “But you don’t seem like you’re from London,” he said (I’m from Hackney, and very proud). Matt had never been to the UK, let alone London.This response emerges from the US’s own unique history of race and class. The British accent remains for some the epitome of white privilege, reviving memories of high-born English settlers and exuding an air of aristocracy. Blackness signifies the opposite. The property of those settlers. The lowest of the low. Slaves. And so I was violating the US’s time-worn prejudices. Matt was trying to put me back in my place.Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a freelance journalist, PhD student and author of Becoming Kwame Ture Continue reading...

The tennis player may be unjabbed, but he did what was asked of him to access the countryThere is so far only one lesson in the “acquittal” of the tennis player Novak Djokovic on a charge of seeking to enter Australia unvaccinated. It is that something is badly wrong with that country’s border controls.The judge found that the tennis star had met all reasonable requirements for admission, as was conceded by the Canberra government. He had two separate permits for exemption from vaccination, one from the Australian tennis authorities and one from the state of Victoria. His visa was cancelled at the gate after he had landed, without time to reach his lawyer. He was detained in a notorious hostel used to house asylum seekers. The procedure was bizarre.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The UN has appealed for urgent help following militia attacks on camps for internally displaced people. But money alone won’t solve the crisisIn a bare and violent patch of land in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 75,000 people are living in what one UN field officer described as “hellish conditions”. Food and water are scarce. Even the flimsiest shelters are in short supply and sanitation is nonexistent. Girls have been raped by militiamen while attempting to find food in fields around the site. Ibrahim Cisse of Unicef says people here are effectively being held hostage.Rhoe – a remote camp of internally displaced people (IDP) approximately 45km northeast of Bunia, the capital of DRC’s Ituri province – is “a tragedy waiting to happen”, according to those who have visited. Continue reading...

Experts caution the defense department’s safeguards don’t go far enough and that ‘we’re behind the ball on what we know’Fears are growing among experts, politicians, and former generals about the rise of rightwing extremism in the US military and the potential threat it could pose to American democracy.Even as the US Department of Defense issues new policies to root out extremism in its ranks, some experts caution that the safeguards don’t go far enough, leaving the next election vulnerable to attack as well as fears about a broader violent “insurgency” by rightwing radicals. Continue reading...

The next attempted coup will not be a mob attack, but a carefully plotted and even technically legal one. Instead of costumed rioters, the insurrectionists are men in suits and tiesAmerican democracy suffered two brutal blows on 6 January.The first has been seared into the national psyche: costumed insurrectionists ransacking the US Capitol, attacking Capitol police, and interrupting the constitutionally mandated electoral college count. They got closer than anyone could imagine to Vice-President Mike Pence and other terrified leaders, some hidden behind makeshift office-furniture barricades.David Daley is the author of Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count and Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy. He is a senior fellow at FairVote Continue reading...

The Ohio Republican, claiming an ‘outrageous abuse’ of authority, is the second member of Congress to resist the investigation

Despite how many times, under how many presidential administrations, I have been disappointed, I hold out hopeInjustice takes many forms. After 20 years in US custody, most of that time spent in Guantánamo, you could say I am an expert.It may surprise you to know that I think America has a very good justice system. But it is only for Americans. In the cases of those like me, justice is not something that interests the US. I wish that people understood how Guantánamo is distinct. Continue reading...

Police in Los Angeles pulled a pilot from a plane that had crashed on to rail tracks near Whiteman airport in Pacoima just moments before it was hit by an incoming train.

Video shows Los Angeles police officers freeing pilot from plane that had crash-landed on rail tracksPolice in Los Angeles, California, pulled the pilot from a crash-landed Cessna seconds before the aircraft was hit by a train, sending debris flying in all directions.Dramatic video obtained by Reuters shows several officers freeing the man from the downed plane, which had crashed shortly after takeoff in the Pacoima neighbourhood, according to local media. The officers and pilot were only a few feet away from the tracks when the passing train destroyed the plane. Continue reading...

World No 1 immediately released from detention, but immigration minister considering cancelling visa again. Plus Succession triumphs at low-key Golden Globes

A baby was rescued from a massive fire in New York where at least 19 people were killed, including nine children, and dozens were injured.

Uncertainty facing nation hits its second-largest school district on a vast scale as Omicron fuels soaring casesFor students across the US, the return from winter break has been marked by chaos and confusion as the Omicron variant has exacerbated staff shortages and sparked fierce debates about how to reopen classrooms safely.In Chicago, classes resumed and then were canceled abruptly last week as the teachers’ union and school district failed to agree on safety protocols, while teachers in San Francisco and other Bay Area schools staged a “sickout” to demand more N95 face masks, testing and paid sick leave for those who contract the coronavirus. Continue reading...